Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Sarah: Welcome back to Fiber in Between. For today's topic, we're going to be exploring our move from Minnesota to the mountains of Idaho. Our whole ranch and us kids and everything in between and all that it entailed. It's a pretty crazy story. I don't anticipate anything like that will probably happen again with us.
[00:00:25] Rachel: I hope not.
[00:00:26] Sarah: Doing an adventure like that, that is
[00:00:28] Angela: a lot of work.
[00:00:28] Rachel: I'm fine with that being a once in a lifetime,
[00:00:31] Sarah: so. So we're going to take you along for the ride and share all the things that happened in that season.
[00:00:38] Rachel: So who are you? Sarah.
[00:00:40] Sarah: Right? O. I am Sarah.
I am the second youngest daughter. No.
[00:00:45] Rachel: You're the host of this podcast.
[00:00:46] Sarah: Yes. Yes, I am the host of this podcast
[00:00:50] Rachel: with Rachel, your sister, also co hosting
[00:00:53] Angela: mom
[00:00:54] Rachel: and mom. This is only Sarah's third time. This
[00:00:57] Sarah: is our third episode. Welcome.
[00:00:59] Rachel: Y
[00:00:59] Sarah: still learning the ropes here.
[00:01:01] Rachel: Y okay. Where were you going, though, Sarah?
[00:01:03] Sarah: Well, there's six of us kids in all. We're a blended family. I'm the second youngest daughter, and I just wanted to share that in that we moved everything.
[00:01:12] Rachel: Yeah. So we. A lot of people are surprised when they find out that it's not just me and Sarah. We do have many other siblings, ranging from various ages, I think. How old's our oldest brother? He's like 38,
[00:01:27] Sarah: 42.
[00:01:27] Rachel: I forget.
Oh, is he? I can't remember.
[00:01:30] Angela: We have the oldest who is a retired teacher, and he lives in a
[00:01:37] Rachel: private chemistry. He has a master's in chemistry and
[00:01:39] Angela: he now works in the private sector.
[00:01:41] Rachel: Yeah. And he lives in the
[00:01:43] Angela: Black Hills.
[00:01:44] Rachel: The Black Hills with his family.
[00:01:45] Angela: Yep. And then next we have a daughter who was a pastry chef,
[00:01:50] Sarah: professional Le Cordon
[00:01:51] Angela: bleu, all the fancy stuff. And then she became a car salesman,
[00:01:56] Rachel: which is very.
[00:01:59] Sarah: She needed to change things.
[00:02:01] Rachel: She's the one who first got us into goats. She
[00:02:03] Sarah: got us into
[00:02:04] Angela: goats. She was the goat girl.
[00:02:06] Rachel: She's an animal lover. And she still lives in Minnesota.
[00:02:09] Angela: She does. And now she works behind the scenes doing all the techie stuff at a car dealership.
And then we have a son who is a Finnish carpenter. Second
[00:02:19] Rachel: oldest brother.
[00:02:19] Sarah: He's incredibly creative,
[00:02:21] Angela: very talented at his craft. He can build and make anything you can imagine.
[00:02:26] Sarah: I need some of his artistic,
[00:02:27] Rachel: detail oriented.
[00:02:28] Sarah: He's really
[00:02:29] Rachel: talented. He lives in town. Both
[00:02:31] Sarah: of them are. All of our siblings are very talented and creative.
[00:02:34] Rachel: He lives in town here with his family.
And then it's me and then Sarah.
[00:02:40] Sarah: Hello.
[00:02:40] Rachel: And then our youngest sister, who also lives in Town. But Sarah and I are the only ones that bleed the ranch.
[00:02:50] Sarah: Breathe, sweat, cry.
[00:02:52] Rachel: Yeah. So we're the only ones that have strayed, stayed true to the family ranch. So that is why you only see us two.
We're the only two good ones. You could say so.
[00:03:05] Angela: Guys, that's not true.
[00:03:08] Rachel: Anyway, so when we moved, it was me, Sarah, and our youngest sister that moved with mom and dad. Because everybody else
[00:03:17] Angela: start back at the beginning, why we moved,
[00:03:19] Rachel: everybody else had already moved on with their life. So we grew up on the plains of southern Minnesota. Yep.
[00:03:28] Angela: Think about the
[00:03:28] Rachel: river.
Yep. And we had all the animals we have right now. We had the goats and the dogs and the horses and the cats and the chickens. You know, we were deeply involved with 4H. I grew up doing 4H. Absolutely loved it. It was amazing.
But one thing, I mean, what comes to your mind when you think of Minnesota? Because I'm guessing it has to do with the weather. And so most people, when they think of Minnesota, it's Minnesota. And so lots of snow, lots of cold, lots of ice.
Very much so, yeah.
[00:04:02] Sarah: The snow does not fall straight down, it's sideways.
[00:04:05] Rachel: Thing is, every season in Minnesota is biblical.
So you have the winter, which, you know, growing up, we've always done chores. Morning, night, all the time, every day, chores. Okay. And it's not just like taking out the garbage, doing the dishes. No. It's bringing in all 10 horses for grain, doing chores. It's little me at 60 pounds, leading around 12, 1200 pound horses. Okay. Like we had legit chores that we had to do. Rain or shine, tornado or waters are full
[00:04:45] Sarah: feeders. It
[00:04:46] Rachel: was stuff. And so during the winter, you know, we're watching the news, it's 40 below with then a negative 20 wind chill. So it's actually like negative 60 outside Fahrenheit. Not joking. Actually, negative 40 Fahrenheit and negative 40 Celsius are the same temperature.
So it's cold. Yeah. And you have the guy on the news channel saying, do not go outside.
Do not have any freeze.
I'm eight years old. I have to go feed the goats. I have to go trudge through five feet of snow. And so it's like very hard during that.
[00:05:28] Angela: Gates would be frozen, snow would be packed. We'd shovel them out.
[00:05:32] Rachel: We had to save goats that were buried in snow.
I mean, it was insane, the stuff we had to do in the winter. And that's just the winter. Then we have spring and fall, both of which were the flooding seasons. So we lived next to a river and we would become a lakefront property twice a year. And I don't just mean having a cute little pond. No. I mean, our ranch would go six feet underwater,
[00:05:59] Sarah: accessible
[00:06:00] Angela: by canoe
[00:06:01] Sarah: only.
[00:06:01] Angela: But all the pastures,
[00:06:03] Rachel: our driveway, our house was on a hill, thankfully. But everything below the house would be deep underwater.
Sarah would go canoeing through over the fences. Okay. And mom and I, one morning, we had to race down there, go straight into the water and save more goats. Because the river had rose during the night and they were drowning. Didn't lose any, but it was very close.
[00:06:28] Angela: They were floating.
[00:06:29] Rachel: I mean, you had all of the bugs crawling up the fence post. Their
[00:06:32] Sarah: mohair would be intertwined with worms. There would be ant balls. I mean, seeing all the little critters try to survive was quite fascinating.
[00:06:41] Rachel: I mean, and our driveway would be six feet under. So you would have to hike through a cornfield to get up and around to the road, which was like half a mile away. I mean, if not a mile away. I mean, it just. And that was every spring and fall. And then you had summertime where it would be 100% humidity every day. And it would get so hot, It'd be over 100 degrees. You'd step outside and it'd be like a sauna. Oh,
[00:07:09] Angela: and
[00:07:09] Rachel: don't
[00:07:10] Angela: get the mosquitoes.
[00:07:11] Rachel: You'd have the state bird, the mosquitoes trying to drain your blood every day. Not to mention the summer storms where the sky would turn a sickly green. And you'd hear that.
This is the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities issuing a severe thunderstorm warning for the following counties. Wahseca County. I mean, that still raises my heart rate. It's awful because then you'd have the tornadoes. Do you get what I'm saying here? It was not an easy place to live as a child.
And also raising animals. It
[00:07:48] Angela: was beautiful, though.
[00:07:49] Sarah: It had good food.
[00:07:50] Angela: It was really beautiful.
[00:07:52] Rachel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were some good aspects of it, but. And, Sarah, how was the fair that one year? Huh? How was the fair? You would be in every picture.
[00:08:02] Sarah: I would turn into an absolute tomato. Cause I could barely breathe. And that was just from the humidity. But I also had really bad hay fever. My allergies would get so bad. Red
[00:08:12] Rachel: ragweed at the time. It'd
[00:08:13] Sarah: be like my eyes were, like, bleeding. Cause they'd be so red. And I'd sneeze so many times in a row, I couldn't catch my breath.
[00:08:20] Rachel: Yeah. But
[00:08:21] Sarah: I thought that was normal. So I just thought that'd be anywhere. So when I learned we were moving out here. Never even crossed my mind. It'd be a perk that I wouldn't die every time that came around.
[00:08:30] Angela: Right. So my husband and I always wanted to live in the mountains and ride our horses there. Cause riding horses in Minnesota was very much dependent on the weather. Whether the weather was too hot, too cold, too buggy, too this, too that. There were very few days that it was just really, really nice.
So we wanted to go somewhere where we could actually ride our horses, which is what we love to do as a family.
[00:08:54] Rachel: Well, we've always been drawn to the mountains. We love
[00:08:57] Angela: the
[00:08:58] Rachel: mountains.
We took, what, I think I can count, three family vacations that we went on, because with all the animals, we couldn't leave
[00:09:08] Angela: and we couldn't find anybody to take care of
[00:09:10] Rachel: them. And so one of those was we went to the National Colored N. Gorgoat show in Estes Park, Colorado.
And I remember every time I saw the mountains and I'd leave the mountains, I would cry.
[00:09:22] Angela: They were so beautiful. Coming into Estes Park. Estes park is so beautiful. And the goat show was so much fun.
[00:09:28] Rachel: So then
[00:09:29] Angela: that was our big thing
[00:09:31] Rachel: with Dad's job, because he's a software engineer. As long as we had Internet, we could pretty much live anywhere. Problem is, we had a ton of animals that we also have to bring with us as well.
And so you guys listed the house for sale.
[00:09:45] Angela: We decided that's it. We've had enough. We're moving to the mountains. So we actually thought we were going to move to Westcliffe, Colorado, which we fell in love with. Westcliffe. We actually went out there and looked at land and took all the kids. And it was everything I had hoped for and dreamed of and a place to move to.
But we had to sell our house first.
And a house in Little Waseca, Minnesota, isn't as easy to sell as one would think, even if it is beautiful.
And so we had to wait for the right buyer. And in the meantime, properties were coming and going out in Westcliffe that would have been so perfect, but our house hadn't sold. And then one day, this lady came along and wanted to buy a cash offer, but she wanted it really fast. So there was no time, like
[00:10:34] Rachel: within weeks.
[00:10:35] Angela: So there was no time to really go find another property in Westcliffe. The plan was, let's just get out to the mountains and then we'll figure out how to get to Westcliffe. So I looked out on Craigslist up and down from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. We'll Go anywhere. We just need to be within two hours of an airport for Todd's job.
So I found out on Craigslist, this little farm for rent in Elmira, Idaho.
And we, we rented it sight unseen.
And Todd and I drove out here with all the fencing supplies we could think of because the place apparently did have goat fencing, but no one had lived there for two years.
So we loaded up the horse trailer, the girls stayed back with my aunt and they were supposed to be packing and we came out here and this place had not been lived in for two years. It was back in this mountain valley. Everything was overgrown and it was a double wide trailer home. It was so dirty inside. So the plan was that we were going to get the house cleaned up, the barn cleaned up, and Todd was going to get all the fencing ready so that we could get the animals moved out.
Well, the first night we had a blow up bed and by morning it had completely deflated. We were deflated and thinking, what have we done? We sold our beautiful place and this is where we're moving to.
So I went out to the barn that morning to start pitching out all the old hay and straw and start getting that ready.
And I look up and there's this emu staring at me.
And he's really big. I didn't know emus were that big. And I yelled, todd, there's an emu looking at me. And he came around the barn and started walking towards this emu and it just cushed down and, and it was the neighborhood pet. And he just ran free and wild and you could go up and pet him. And he kind of became our mascot there after a couple of days. And again we came here sight unseen. So we, we had no idea where anything was. We didn't know where the grocery store was and we didn't know where to buy gas. So we went down into Sandpoint, which was the closest town, and started learning our way around.
Really started liking the area.
And then we met some people who said, have you been up to Bonners Ferry yet? And no, we hadn't. So they said, well, you need to go up to Bonners Ferry. You sound like people that would really love Bonners Ferry.
And one evening after working hard all day, we were going to go up there to eat because all we had was a toaster with Pop Tarts in the place we were staying.
And came down the hill into Bonners Ferry and it was golden hour. And the light was coming over the mountain and the long shadows across the valley floor and all the pine Trees.
And it was like, this is it. This is home. This is where we belong. And we fell in love with Bonner's Ferry.
In fact, by the end of that week, we didn't even want to go back to Minnesota. We just thought if we could just hire someone to bring the kids, all our stuff, all the animals out here, we'll just never go back to Minnesota. It was absolutely incredible here. And we fell in love. But we did have to go back to Minnesota and get everything all loaded up.
[00:13:54] Rachel: Yeah. Cause we had, you know, 10 horses and 60 goats. Well, we had chickens,
[00:14:00] Sarah: a hundred goats. But we downsized. We
[00:14:02] Rachel: did. We found them all good homes.
[00:14:04] Angela: Yeah, we downsized quite a bit because we hired a livestock hauler that could move all of our horses and all of our goats at one time.
So the goat trailer was this really, really long double decker specifically for goats. It wasn't like those big cattle. One were probably more for sheep, I guess.
And so we had to downsize so that we could get all the animals on there without overcrowding them. So this particular hauler had a huge livestock trailer for the horses with compartments so they didn't have to be tied up. So they were three to a compartment.
And then we put all of the does on the bottom of the. The one double decker and then all the boy goats on the top with all our laying hens
[00:14:51] Rachel: bonding.
[00:14:52] Angela: And then all the cats, we had to catch all the barn cats because they were going too. We weren't leaving anybody behind.
[00:14:58] Rachel: Well, the guard dogs, this would have been Fluffy and Brooke.
[00:15:00] Angela: And they were not going to. They were. They went down with the dose. It was really hard.
So to do this whole trip, to organize this whole trip, everything we owned that we wanted to take had to fit into the U haul.
So we came out here with hardly anything because we had to make sure we had everything for the animals first. And then our stuff came second. So basically we came out here with our beds and
[00:15:25] Sarah: our nice wood bookcases.
[00:15:27] Angela: Our bookcases, but
[00:15:28] Sarah: not our beds.
You brought like two bed
[00:15:30] Angela: frames. Yeah, that's right.
[00:15:31] Rachel: It was pretty much a pioneer covered
[00:15:34] Angela: wagon. We basically sold everything. I
[00:15:37] Sarah: kept my crafts
[00:15:37] Angela: and moved out here. We came out here, sold the piano.
Yes, my beautiful piano.
So yeah, we had to sell pretty much everything we owned to come out here. Plus that little giveaway
[00:15:49] Sarah: garage sale.
[00:15:50] Angela: We couldn't fit in again.
[00:15:51] Rachel: All in a matter of
[00:15:53] Angela: weeks. Of weeks. So Todd and Rachel and our youngest daughter and Rachel's little teddy bear, pom Pomeranian, went in the U Haul and they had to go first to get out here before the animals did.
[00:16:05] Rachel: Plus, we pulled our van, our grand caravan behind on a flatbed filled with all of the house dogs. There
[00:16:11] Angela: were four German shepherds
[00:16:13] Rachel: in the
[00:16:15] Sarah: well. You guys pulled out. As the livestock haulers pulled in. And so mom and I had to catch and put into the trailers every single animal. Cause the haulers were not allowed to help us get them in legally. They only haul them.
[00:16:29] Angela: They would only haul them. They would not handle the animals. And Sarah, you were like what, 14?
[00:16:33] Sarah: I was 13 and I have horsephobia. So I really had.
[00:16:38] Rachel: It was Sarah's worst nightmare.
[00:16:41] Sarah: And I had to get everything loaded. It was crazy.
[00:16:44] Angela: I don't know how we did it. All the animals. Well.
[00:16:46] Rachel: And Sarah wasn't necessarily pleased about this whole moving thing
[00:16:50] Sarah: anyway. I hated it because I had only ever known life in Minnesota. And that's
[00:16:56] Rachel: not one that does well with change. Let's say that first.
[00:17:00] Sarah: Well, I've changed for the better by now. But not at that time.
All of our family.
[00:17:06] Angela: You were happy with your life then?
[00:17:07] Sarah: I was. All of our family was in that area. I'd never considered leaving. I had friends. I. I had family. I had the woods. I had my crafts. I had a YouTube channel where I was doing my Palmer Clay tutorials. And that was. That was gonna be big.
[00:17:22] Rachel: Sarah was 13 and thriving.
[00:17:23] Sarah: I was. It was my best life.
[00:17:25] Angela: And we're taking her away from. It all.
[00:17:27] Sarah: Took me away from everything. Let's
[00:17:28] Rachel: go live in the boonies.
[00:17:30] Sarah: The boonies. We didn't know anyone out here. I honestly had no idea about Idaho. I just thought it was potatoes. I didn't know it had mountains and beauty and all manner of things.
And even though I love potatoes, I didn't want to move here. I couldn't believe that we were moving here. I was. Yeah. I was really upset.
[00:17:46] Rachel: I was 15 and I thought this was the best thing ever. I was so ready.
[00:17:52] Sarah: I wish I had that. I was
[00:17:53] Rachel: so ready. And then I remember. Yeah. So mom and Sarah had to stay back and load everything up. And I was like, see ya. And you all. And then mom or not. Mom, dad, my youngest sister and I then drove the horrible drive out here. And It's. It's a 24 hour drive, non stop. Okay. So it's incredibly long. And just driving straight across through either north or South Dakota and then all the way across Montana.
[00:18:23] Angela: And Montana is not all mountains. Montana,
[00:18:27] Rachel: Montana is only mountains in the last third, if that of the state. Okay.
[00:18:34] Angela: South Dakota. Yeah.
[00:18:36] Rachel: And so it was. And then we.
We had to.
We had to keep going so that we could get there before the livestock haulers. So we had a fire lit under us. So, like, I remember eating at a Subway and we were just scarfing the food down before we got going again. And I don't know if any of you have ever been in a U Haul, but I mean, the. The seats are ramrod straight and you can't. You can't go back. Okay. It was awful because that's how we had to sleep. We got. We get.
[00:19:05] Sarah: And you made sure
[00:19:06] Rachel: your
[00:19:06] Sarah: Pomeranian had plenty of space. The poor younger sister stuck in the middle.
[00:19:10] Rachel: Teddy needed room to sleep.
But then we'd have to stop and let all the hooligans and the van out to go pee. Oh, my gosh. We had to adjust, Ben. People probably driving by were like, what is going on there? And then we finally got to. We turned off the highway. It's all foresty and mountainy. I'm like, this is nice. This is very nice. You know, driving around. It's three miles back on this gravel road, and you go around this one final turn, and it kind of goes into this valley.
And Dad's like, there's our new place.
And I gotta say, I wish I.
It wasn't what I was expecting because we came from a big. A frame house. I mean, it was just beautiful. Where we lived in Minnesota, it was just beautiful.
And then going around this turn back in this valley is just this trailer.
It's this trailer home.
[00:20:11] Angela: And everything's overgrown
[00:20:13] Rachel: and it's white and it's just. It just sticks out. I mean, it's just this white trailer home in the back. And I was just like. For a split second I was like, what have we done?
Well, and. But.
But then I was like, you know what? I'm excited. This will be fine.
This will be fine. It has to be fine.
It has to be fine. There's no going back. And so I just. I chose that it'd be okay. And I chose Joy. And it was honestly amazing. And it was honestly. I would. I would go back there in a heartbeat. I loved living there. That place was just amazing. So dad, dad, our youngest sister and I all arrived there. It's fine. And standi. We're getting everything situated for the animals to come. And then the animals do come. And they all made it safe and sound. Nobody got hurt. You know, all the horses got this big, big, beautiful green pasture with a creek running through it. You know, we got everything sorted, everybody situated and Then we waited for mom and Sarah.
[00:21:18] Angela: Cuz we had to stay back. After we loaded up the livestock, we had to clean the house. We had to get the last little bit of things. Like you can't just pack up their temporary fencing. The fencing goes after they leave. So we had to take the temporary fencing, take the livestock, the, the livestock water tanks, all these things that had to stay with the animals till the animals left.
And we had our pickup trucks, we're piling it all in. We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.
[00:21:44] Rachel: You did.
[00:21:45] Angela: And then we have our special needs pets that had to come with Sarah and I in the pickup truck. So we had Rachel's bird.
We had,
[00:21:55] Rachel: which was a cockatiel.
[00:21:56] Angela: And then we had. And she was not a happy bird about this whole thing. Her name
[00:22:01] Rachel: was Robin.
[00:22:02] Angela: He was a really mad bird in that Pretty
[00:22:05] Sarah: bird, pretty bird, pretty bird.
That's what he said the whole time coming out.
[00:22:11] Angela: And then we had this old cat, like 21 years old. She was deaf and blind.
[00:22:16] Sarah: I'm allergic to cats, by the way.
[00:22:18] Angela: Sarah's allergic to cats. So we have the cat in the cat carrier. Then we had Rachel's rabbit,
[00:22:23] Rachel: silky in
[00:22:24] Angela: the carrier. And then we had Sarah's shih tzu Dusty. And then we had my shih tzu Cody, who was a rescue from a domestic violence situation with severe PTSD and hated all men.
So we're packed into our truck. Our goal was to make it to Billings and I was exhausted. Montana.
[00:22:45] Rachel: Billings,
[00:22:46] Angela: Montana. Billings, Montana. By the time we got there, it was late, late at night. That's
[00:22:50] Sarah: a long,
[00:22:51] Angela: long haul. Had
[00:22:52] Sarah: to take care of all those special animals.
[00:22:54] Angela: We took care of all our special animals. So it was August. So the bird was okay in the pickup truck.
I just put a blanket around her for the night. But we had to take the rabbit and the cat and the two dogs and into the motel for the night because I was exhausted. There was no way I was pulling over in a, in a gas station and trying to sleep there.
So. And then the next day was the rest of the way to the place. Oh, are you coming join us? Thor. Thor just came to join us sitting out here in the pasture.
So anyway, I'm Sarah and I finally come around the corner at the new place. And Sarah is not a happy camper.
And her motto once we finally got moved in and something went wrong or we didn't have something, like we just had basic dial up Internet. Everything was boonie problems.
[00:23:44] Sarah: Hashtag boonieprobs.
[00:23:45] Angela: Hashtag boonieprobs with so much attitude.
[00:23:50] Sarah: I didn't have social media or any phones or anything, but hashtags were the thing. And boonyprobs was what it was so on my side. While we were driving there, I remember it was golden hour when we churned by Samuel's to get to Elmira. And I was like, oh, this is nice. This is pretty. Take me back to Minnesota. Bye.
And it took forever to get down that road to the farm in Elmira. And I remember you drove up in the long grass and it was dark by then.
I just stayed in the truck until I think Rachel opened the door because she knew I hated life. And I'm like curled into a ball and I fall out of the truck. Cause I was leaning against the door. Like, as long as I don't open this door, this new chapter is not real.
And she's laughing and I'm like, Rachel's just like, ah, life is so wonderful. And they had no food and I was starving, by the way. I
[00:24:45] Rachel: didn't have any food.
[00:24:45] Sarah: And so because
[00:24:47] Rachel: it's an hour trip to town,
[00:24:49] Sarah: so Rachel's like, oh, it's so great. And I'm like, ah,
[00:24:55] Angela: take me back.
[00:24:56] Sarah: And so it was everything I didn't understand.
And so honestly, for the first year we lived out there, I pretty much hated every day, which I really is like my biggest life regret because it was a really magical place and such a special season in life. And I mean, there was bears in the neighboring pasture that I just watch and hang on, Rachel. We had a wonderful library, but I will say, business wise, I was thriving in Minnesota. I have my Palmer Clay channel and I couldn't do that in Elmira because we didn't have enough Internet and so we couldn't do anything on the Internet. Bye bye Ravelry. I could only do that at the library. And I was a moderator for several groups.
Couldn't do that anymore. Buy online friends. Buy physical friends in Minnesota, I would call them. But it wasn't the same.
And yeah, it was boonieprobs, but it was an enchanting forest and we got to go on a lot of cool adventures. And after that first year, when I realized we weren't going back to Minnesota and that I wouldn't be moving in with grandma and decided to make it a life. It was good.
[00:26:06] Angela: It was good.
[00:26:07] Sarah: And it was very different from what we do now.
[00:26:08] Rachel: Store wants more snuggies, but
[00:26:10] Sarah: it was
[00:26:10] Angela: a snuggle store.
[00:26:11] Sarah: But it took me a while to get to that point. And I learned a lot from that so now when there's change, I look at it with an open point of view and that it is not all doom and darkness and that there is light at the other side.
[00:26:25] Rachel: That's good, Sarah.
[00:26:26] Sarah: Yeah.
[00:26:26] Rachel: Character development.
[00:26:27] Sarah: Oh yes, lots of character development in that area and Season of Life.
[00:26:32] Rachel: Well, see, for me, I was 15 and it was everything I could have possibly imagined and dreamed of. It was absolutely amazing. And because we were backed right up to National Forest and so I would literally just go and spend all day exploring the forests and mountains and taking pictures and like, it was just, it was amazing. When I like. And we were homeschooled, mom did not teach us anything. We did like,
[00:27:01] Sarah: well, she did through sixth grade.
[00:27:03] Rachel: We did courses, so we did like Bob Jones University homeschool course where it's DVDs and then you do the work. And so I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning, I'd watch all my DVDs for my subjects. I'd get done by 8 and I figured that's good enough for homeschooling for the day. Just listening. I didn't really need to do any of the homework. Like I got it. And so then, then I'd literally just go, I'd pack myself a little lunch and I would just go and explore the mountains all day. I'd read, I'd take pictures, I'd explore and walk around. It was amazing.
It was so good. It was just the best.
Those were some really, really wonderful times for me.
[00:27:46] Sarah: And also what we did there is we. How big was the property? 10 acres.
[00:27:50] Angela: It was 10 acres.
[00:27:51] Sarah: So. But we backed up and we would on our neighbors, we talked to them so that we could shepherd our goats on their land so that they could eat pasture because they weren't using it. So they let us shepherd the goats. So we're literally out there with our shepherd crooks and our four livestock guardians doing the old traditional thing of shepherding them by foot.
[00:28:13] Angela: There's no fencing
[00:28:14] Sarah: and it was pretty darn cool to be doing that. I mean, I'd get tired of it by ourselves. We'd
[00:28:19] Rachel: go through the, the forests along our neighbors and we'd just go down because the neighbors had a lot of forests that they'd let us shepherd the goats through and eat. So we would shepherd them through the forests with all four guard dogs that were totally loose. You know, they'd all stay with. You know, none of us have videos of during that
[00:28:38] Sarah: time. No
[00:28:38] Rachel: videos because all we had were flip phones that were only for, you know.
[00:28:43] Angela: Well, there Was no cell service. There
[00:28:44] Rachel: was no cell service. Well,
[00:28:45] Sarah: we didn't have phones. Just mom did.
[00:28:47] Angela: Yeah. You guys didn't have one? Well,
[00:28:48] Sarah: Rachel did actually.
[00:28:49] Rachel: I had a flip phone. It had two games on it. Texas hold' Em poker. I think I was really good at it.
But yeah. So that was an extremely unique time.
[00:29:01] Sarah: Very. That.
[00:29:02] Rachel: Literally shepherding the old fashioned way with our four livestock guardian dogs.
[00:29:07] Angela: It smelled so good there for you.
[00:29:09] Rachel: You remember it. Thor, don't you remember?
[00:29:11] Angela: Thor
[00:29:11] Rachel: remembers it. Thor chasing off bears.
[00:29:14] Angela: Yeah. Because we
[00:29:15] Sarah: moved out there with Brooke
[00:29:16] Angela: and
[00:29:16] Sarah: Fluffy and then we got Baron Thor as puppies there.
[00:29:20] Rachel: Yeah. And we'd go hiking and Thor and bear would come with us and
[00:29:25] Sarah: the emu
[00:29:25] Rachel: without, without Clyde. The emu would come with us everywhere. We would
[00:29:30] Angela: start riding and Clyde would go along on our trail ride.
[00:29:32] Sarah: And we have absolutely no content of that.
[00:29:35] Rachel: No
[00:29:35] Angela: pictures. But it
[00:29:37] Sarah: was real. It would look like AI now. It was
[00:29:40] Rachel: so cool. It would. Because
[00:29:41] Sarah: he'd be doing that loud thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
[00:29:43] Angela: Yeah. Emus have a really unique
[00:29:45] Sarah: running in and around the horses.
[00:29:47] Rachel: Horses were freaked out for like the first two minutes of him just racing by. And then, then they got used to it.
[00:29:53] Angela: He'd race in and out between them.
[00:29:55] Rachel: So it was passed
[00:29:56] Angela: through the forest.
[00:29:57] Rachel: It was a very, very interesting, unique
[00:30:00] Angela: time. I would
[00:30:01] Rachel: have loved to have stayed down there. Except our neighbor across the way,
[00:30:06] Sarah: the ranch from hell.
[00:30:08] Rachel: It literally, literally.
[00:30:09] Angela: That's. Literally
[00:30:09] Rachel: had the sign that said that he was okay with us in the beginning, but then he had some friends that I think for some reason turned him against us. And he had a cannon and he would shoot cannonballs over our house in the middle of the night.
[00:30:30] Angela: It was the wild west.
[00:30:31] Rachel: We would call the police. The police. Yeah, we'd call the sheriff. The sheriff had. They had a folder on this guy. But they. And because of that they wouldn't come out. They
[00:30:40] Angela: wouldn't come out. They were not going to have a standoff with him.
[00:30:42] Rachel: No. So we were on our own. And it just. It kept getting bad. It was getting bad. Cuz we would overhear them talking about putting sugar in our gas tank. Cuz
[00:30:53] Sarah: the valley would echo.
[00:30:54] Angela: Yeah.
[00:30:55] Rachel: Killing the guard dogs. Yeah,
[00:30:57] Angela: he was.
[00:30:57] Rachel: And so we got to the point point where somebody always had to be at home. I couldn't really go exploring anymore just due to my own safety. And it just, it wasn't well.
[00:31:07] Sarah: And we only had a two year for that rental place.
[00:31:10] Angela: Two year for renting,
[00:31:11] Rachel: two year rental agreement.
[00:31:12] Angela: And we were really having trouble finding A place to buy, which seems so strange, but back in 2014, there were not a lot of places available.
And we would either find the land with either no house or a really small house that wouldn't work for us, or we'd find the perfect house and barn. But it was only on 5 acres. So trying to find the perfect combination was really tricky. And we looked and looked and look. And then our two year lease was up. We actually found a house down in North Fork, Idaho. We were all packed up, ready to move down there.
And at the last minute, it fell through. Because this was a log cabin and it wasn't built on a normal foundation. It was built on piles of rocks that had been concreted together.
So that fell through at the last minute. So here we're all packed up in this house and we were able to move to another rental here in Bonner's Ferry up on the mountain.
And we moved up there, lived up there for two years, which was a completely different adventure.
While we were continuing to look for just the right place to move to.
[00:32:20] Rachel: Yeah. So we moved up onto the mountain, which I can see right now. It's the. The ridge over there.
[00:32:27] Sarah: A homemade log cabin.
[00:32:28] Rachel: Beautiful, beautiful log cabin.
Beautiful views. Oh,
[00:32:33] Angela: it's
[00:32:33] Sarah: the dawning
[00:32:34] Rachel: view
[00:32:35] Sarah: we see looking west.
[00:32:37] Rachel: Just. We were up like
[00:32:38] Angela: another thousand
[00:32:39] Rachel: feet. Yeah. Higher we were. We were over 3,000ft there. And I mean, it was just, just stunning.
[00:32:47] Angela: So beautiful.
[00:32:48] Rachel: Most of the land was at a slant. It
[00:32:51] Angela: was unusable.
[00:32:52] Rachel: So it was unusable land. And it was a treacherous drive up to
[00:32:56] Angela: two miles up a treacherous
[00:32:58] Rachel: road. Two miles up a treacherous road. It eroded away one spring.
And we had to always take the truck because we were going through three feet of water.
[00:33:09] Angela: Yeah.
[00:33:10] Rachel: And
[00:33:10] Sarah: there was a lake at the other end. So it had a lot of crazy drivers.
[00:33:14] Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Because it's split. There was a public lake. If you went to the right and then to the left was a. Was our private road.
[00:33:22] Angela: Had a lot of traffic.
[00:33:23] Rachel: So it. It was very, very difficult bringing hay up there
[00:33:28] Angela: for all the. There
[00:33:29] Sarah: was one time that dad got hay and he got like jackknifed or something.
[00:33:33] Rachel: His truck. The trailer started slipping off the road.
And we're on a. It's a mountain road, so it's a city, steep drop off. And the trailer with the whole load of hay was going off.
And so we ended up having to call neighbors who really came through it. Ended up getting five trucks chained together to pull our truck and trailer out and up the road. And
[00:34:00] Angela: it had to Be people who lived further up the road because nobody
[00:34:03] Rachel: could get by.
[00:34:04] Angela: It was a single lane.
[00:34:05] Rachel: There was another time where dad was trying to. Because it was a weird driveway where it turned up and around itself and the truck and trailer got stuck. There were so many times up there. I'm like, how are we ever going to get through this? How are we ever going to survive this? It was
[00:34:21] Angela: beautiful, but it was really hard. And that's when we realized wildland fires were a real thing.
[00:34:27] Rachel: And
[00:34:27] Angela: if we were.
[00:34:28] Rachel: We were in a very dangerous place. If
[00:34:30] Angela: we were stuck up there, everything would burn up all of our. There's no getting animals out of there.
[00:34:35] Sarah: Speaking of animals,
[00:34:37] Angela: I
[00:34:37] Sarah: can probably hear the goats around us.
[00:34:39] Angela: Yeah. Should we just stop and listen for a minute?
[00:34:46] Sarah: They're just kind of. They're very
[00:34:47] Rachel: quiet.
[00:34:47] Sarah: They're very quiet. They're just kind of milling around us right now. Hi, flower.
[00:34:51] Rachel: So, yeah, it was not an easy place to live with. It was
[00:34:55] Angela: beautiful,
[00:34:55] Rachel: though.
But Sarah had her own problems up there as well.
[00:35:02] Sarah: Let's see. I was 15 or 16 now.
Yeah, that was a bit tricky. And the bug infestations that home had.
[00:35:09] Angela: Yeah, it was a poorly
[00:35:10] Sarah: particular room built log
[00:35:12] Angela: cabin.
[00:35:13] Sarah: It was a very open log cabin. You could. There was one bathroom, didn't even have a lock on it. One shower. And you could hear a pin drop in that home. Okay. Imagine no privacy because there was none ever.
And the bugs in that home because it had been homemade
[00:35:28] Angela: by
[00:35:29] Sarah: children with an abusive father back in the day, and it wasn't built right at all. And the amount of bugs, 24, 7, 365. I completely destroyed our vacuum with sucking them up. And the amount of gunk it experienced. Ants would rain down on the ceiling. Helmeted squash bugs, white spotted spruce beetles. I mean, spiders, wasps, hornets, flies. It
[00:35:53] Angela: was the right place for us. It
[00:35:54] Sarah: was awful.
And I did not like bugs. And it was very challenging for me during that time.
There's some good aspects of it, but I would say
[00:36:04] Angela: it's good hiking up there.
[00:36:05] Sarah: I came from Elmira and had finally accepted my fate that I was living out here and liking it. And then we moved there and I was like, oh, my gosh,
[00:36:12] Rachel: could this get any worse?
[00:36:14] Angela: And then we found
[00:36:15] Sarah: character development.
[00:36:16] Angela: We found this place where we're at now, which is everything we didn't want when we moved out here because we came from the prairie where we did have trees because we lived along the river. But for the most part, some southern Minnesota doesn't have trees. It's prairie and farmland.
So we wanted a creek, we wanted mountains, we wanted trees, we wanted rocks, we wanted everything we didn't have.
And the place we're living at now is it's all usable land. It's slightly gently rolling, but mostly flat. Does have a pond. No trees. They removed every single tree from this property because it was an alfalfa field.
And when we came to look at it, it was just. It was a for sale by owner. And it was, oh, let's go look at it. Well, the house was amazing. Had lots of space. We would be able to do all of our mohair here, run our business here.
No fencing, there was no infrastructure. So we were going to have to do all of that.
And I wasn't even sure my husband would like it because there's no running water, there was no trees, there's no giant rocks.
But it did have the name Caprine Lane. And Caprine is the scientific name for goat.
So it ended up actually being just the right place for us.
And I'm really glad we're
[00:37:31] Sarah: here. They had. When we came to look at the house, they had just pulled out warm cinnamon rolls out of the oven and gave us some. So I was like, okay, sign me up. I really liked it because there was enough room for all of us. We could each have privacy and there was enough room to grow our businesses because that's when I had started my business, Pine Rose and Company, up on the mountain in the cabin. And I could actually grow it here.
So I liked it.
[00:37:56] Rachel: Mom's getting cuddles.
[00:37:58] Angela: What
[00:37:59] Rachel: a lovely bird. Mom's getting cuddles from Tilly right now. Olaf's dreaming. So I was getting. So
[00:38:03] Sarah: we're in the dip and you can probably hear the goats
[00:38:06] Angela: picking
[00:38:06] Sarah: up leaves around us. If you hear
[00:38:07] Angela: snorting, it's Tilly right here.
She's leaving me.
[00:38:11] Rachel: Yeah. Finally found where we are now, which is
[00:38:14] Sarah: our piece of paradise.
[00:38:15] Rachel: Really, really a perfect place for us. And we're hoping to make it even more.
[00:38:20] Sarah: It's allowed us to grow Caprine. We have a wonderful flat driveway and a flat part of the highway that we can see both directions. And there's no weird corners.
[00:38:29] Angela: Easy in, easy out for a game.
[00:38:31] Rachel: Well, except for our telephone pole.
[00:38:33] Sarah: There's a telephone
[00:38:33] Rachel: pole or a power. Power pole. I should say not.
[00:38:35] Sarah: There is a pole in the ground that's a bit tricky to get around, but you can see. And where we lived on the mountain, you couldn't exactly see. And when we lived in Elmira and on the mountain, the roads Were really long and washboarded and full of potholes. And that doesn't happen here. So we can. It's accessible, which is very good.
[00:38:53] Rachel: We have really good neighbors.
[00:38:55] Angela: We have wonderful
[00:38:56] Sarah: neighbors trying to
[00:38:57] Rachel: kill us.
[00:38:58] Angela: We have amazing neighbors here.
We love Bonners Ferry and we're close to Canada, so we pop.
We can see Canada just to the north. The
[00:39:08] Sarah: animals were
[00:39:09] Rachel: perfectly situated for exploring the three mountain ranges.
I mean, God really, really blessed us with the perfect place where we are after. After our eight years of.
[00:39:21] Angela: It was kind of like being in the wilderness.
[00:39:24] Rachel: Four years of trying to find
[00:39:25] Angela: out.
[00:39:26] Sarah: Yeah. And since we moved to Idaho, Rachel and I have gone to university, have done study abroad, built these businesses and have been able to do a lot of really cool things.
[00:39:36] Angela: University of Idaho was wonderful, you guys.
[00:39:39] Rachel: Our animals were with us every step of the way.
[00:39:42] Sarah: Yes,
[00:39:43] Angela: we brought them with us. And some of these goats that we still have were born in Minnesota.
[00:39:49] Rachel: Yep.
[00:39:50] Sarah: Like Lady Sif right behind
[00:39:52] Angela: you. Yeah, Lady Sif right behind me here. She was born in Minnesota.
So they've been with us through all the changes, all the moves. Agatha's trying
[00:40:00] Rachel: to eat the tripod
[00:40:01] Angela: leg. Are you eating the tripod leg? Agatha? Come here, honey.
So yeah, a lot of these animals have made every move and every trip with us.
[00:40:10] Sarah: It's been a really long journey and the journey continues, but it's been a pretty crazy adventure. I know personally, I've gone through a lot of different seasons in character development.
[00:40:22] Rachel: Well. And
[00:40:23] Sarah: yeah,
[00:40:23] Rachel: mom and I are working now with nrcs to help bring this property that we have.
Really make it shine. Because it
[00:40:33] Angela: was.
[00:40:34] Rachel: It was totally deforested decades ago and then just uses as an alfalfa field for a very long time.
[00:40:42] Angela: And overproductive. They just put chemicals on
[00:40:45] Rachel: it. So it's, it's really.
We now have, you know, little goaties grazing on it. And we're going to work with nrcs. We're going to get.
[00:40:53] Sarah: What does that stand for?
[00:40:54] Rachel: National.
Not National Natural. I'm like National Reason Natural Resource, Soil and conservation.
[00:41:03] Sarah: There you go.
[00:41:04] Rachel: And so we're gonna. We're going to re. Establish the soil. So mom is reading Gabe Brown.
[00:41:10] Angela: Yep. From dirt to soil.
[00:41:15] Rachel: Yeah. Because we want this place to reflect our values, which is harmony and working in harmony with the land and the animals around us. And you hear the birds. So reestablishing tre for the birds and the wildlife and reestablishing the soil for all of the microbes underneath. All the ecosystem engineers and planting. So we're going to. We have since it's all flat here, pretty much we're in the dip right now. But we're going to. We have two pastures. We're going to make it into four pastures so we can do rotational grazing and then. So we can then have pastures that won't get over grazed, essentially. So we can rotate the pastures so that the pastures can rest and reestablish themselves. And then we're gonna. So we have the fencing coming in. We're gonna do restorative work with the pond. We're going to plant trees, we're gonna plant beautiful, diverse grasses and forbs on the pasture.
So it's really.
Yeah. To rebuild the soil. So it's really, really exciting things that we're going to do here and really make this a beautiful place that represents our peace and harmony, essentially.
[00:42:28] Angela: That's basically what we're about. It's peace and harmony, living with the land and the animals in a cohesive way where everything has a chance to grow and flourish.
Yeah. And reach its potential.
[00:42:42] Rachel: Yeah. To really pour our love into this place is what. What we plan to do. So we have been here eight years now.
Unfortunately, half that time mom was battling cancer.
So we weren't able to get on working the place as much as we wanted to, as quickly as we wanted to because that set us back away since Sarah and I were also going through school and whatnot. But we are all here now and all pouring ourselves into the ranch in this place now. And I'm very excited to see how it continues to grow and what we're able to do here and really bring this place to life.
[00:43:21] Angela: Yeah. Because our jobs are a lifestyle and our lifestyle, our jobs, they're so interwoven. And it's like every waking minute some people work 8 to 5, but like we wake up and we go to bed. We're pouring ourselves into this place and building it. And we thank you for being along on this journey with us. Because it's because of you that we get so excited for all the possibilities in the future. It's because of you we have these cool T shirts, these cool sweatshirts, and because people want to be part of this journey and they want to wear a red Falcon Ranch T shirt and know that they're part of something bigger than what's going on in a lot of this world. This, this crazy, upset, upside down world.
People like the predictability of knowing that we're here, the animals are here, we have our ups and downs, but yet there's the steady rhythms that happen every day with the animals with us. With the seasons changing and we're here, and it's a constant.
So thanks for being on this journey with us. We really appreciate you all.
[00:44:35] Sarah: It was never our plan or even in our dreams to have our little ranch reach people around the whole world and connect with so many people over our love of animals and our shared ethos. It's been truly an incredible gift to be able to steward not only our animals, but this community that Rachel has led to, led the charge to cultivate. Truly, it is our honor to share what we've learned and experienced with all of you.
[00:45:05] Rachel: I gotta say, it's a lot easier to live here than Minnesota.
[00:45:08] Angela: It is easier than Minnesota.
[00:45:10] Sarah: I missed the food.
[00:45:11] Angela: The food was way better in Minnesota.
[00:45:13] Rachel: It's pretty good up in Canada.
[00:45:15] Sarah: Families.
So we do. We do see our family, but,
[00:45:20] Rachel: yeah, you can't. You can't beat those mountains.
[00:45:23] Angela: We love our Canadian friends. We go to Creston at least once
[00:45:26] Rachel: a week. You can't beat the mountains. Here, everything is just a glow with gold.
You know, it's. The weather is so much more milder here.
You'd think. You'd think it'd be more, you know, being in the mountains and on the other side, over in Montana, it is a lot more extreme. But where we are, it's. It's truly one of the most beautiful places in the world. And we are so incredibly grateful to live here and to have all these animals and to live this life even when, you know, the days are dark and hard and things aren't going right and we're all getting on each other's nerves and everything, it's.
It's still such an incredible place to be and live, and today is just perfect.
[00:46:06] Sarah: And I feel all the experiences and seasons that led us to this point in time help us to cherish it even more.
[00:46:13] Rachel: Yeah. Because it hasn't been easy. It hasn't been, you know, social media. You see, I try to show, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly and everything, because then you guys, you know, you get to experience the low lows and the high highs, because the lower the low, the higher the high.
But, you know, it was really, really hard when mom was going through cancer and all the other things that life throws at you. And so to have her sitting here on the log, talking on the podcast is a real blessing. Being here in this beautiful place after all the trials and tribulations we have been through to get to right here, it makes it that much more special.
[00:46:53] Sarah: So thank you for sharing in Red Falcon Ranch, Caprine, and now Fiber in between. We love sharing it with you, so be sure to stay tuned. And if there's anything else you'd like us to explore with you, just let us know.
