When do you finally get to call yourself a homesteader, quilter, baker, or anything else you’re working to become? After looking back through eight weeks of my Transformation Journal, I realized I had a whole lot of evidence that my life is changing. I’ve harvested and preserved food and herbs, finished my first quilt top, cooked more from scratch, milked a friend’s goats, navigated some stressful real estate closings, watched my daughter reach some pretty exciting milestones, and learned a whole lot about myself along the way. In this episode, I’m sharing the little wins, tender mercies, hard moments, and ordinary experiences that reminded me of something important: transformation is easy to miss when you’re busy living it.
When do you actually get to call yourself a homesteader? Is there some committee that sends you a certificate? 😂
I’ve realized that I have a funny habit of doing the thing and then still telling myself I’m not quite the real deal.
So in this episode, I’m opening up my Transformation Journal and looking back over the last eight weeks of life.
We’re talking about:
- Harvesting and preserving elderberries, moringa, goldenrod, skullcap, and butterfly pea flowers
- Why walking through my food forests brings me so much joy
- Finishing my quilt top and finally saying, “I’m a quilter!”
- Cooking more from scratch and becoming more intentional about the food I eat
- My adventures as a substitute goat milkmaid
- Some pretty exciting milestones for my daughter
- Celebrating 29 years of marriage
- How motherhood prepared me for the emotional side of real estate
- The real estate experience that made me realize, “I AM a Realtor”
- Changes I’ve made to the Joyfully Prepared Library
- What teaching the Old Testament has taught me about God, Christ, and myself
- Why I believe Jesus Christ celebrates our growth with us
- And the realization that yes, I really am a homesteader
We are very good at finishing something and immediately moving the goalpost.
But sometimes we need to stop, look backward, and notice the evidence.
You may already be becoming the person you’ve been trying so hard to become.
Ask yourself: What evidence from the last eight weeks shows who you’re becoming?
A few things worth writing down
- The five categories, if you want to start tonight: three wins, at least one tender mercy, one way you were anti-fragile, one transformation, and your goals for tomorrow. That’s it. It fits in a cheap notebook.
- Anti-fragile isn’t “nothing can break me.” It’s that you’ve been broken before, and the next hard thing meets a person with more experience and more insight than the last one did.
- Write both first and last names of anyone you mention. A week later you will read “ran into my friend” and have absolutely no idea who that was.
- Freeze-dried herbs are the low-effort win. Harvest, wash, tray, freeze-dry, blitz in a blender. Moringa, goldenrod blossoms, skullcap, butterfly pea flower all went in the same summer.
- Single-ingredient preserving buys you options. Plain tomato sauce becomes anything later. Pre-seasoned spaghetti sauce only ever becomes spaghetti.
- Batch-cook, don’t meal-plan. A cooked chicken pulled off the bone, a pot of dry beans, and cooked pasta in the fridge means dinner is assembly, not a project.
- You are not starting at zero in a new career. Patience, negotiation, listening, keeping people calm — those transfer. Wendi’s motherhood is doing real work in her real estate business.
Links
- Azure Standard (organic wheat and bulk food, delivered to local drops) — https://www.azurestandard.com/?a_aid=2be6b9010a
- Carol Little, R.H. — Studio Botanica, on goldenrod — https://www.studiobotanica.com/gorgeous-goldenrod-health-benefits/
- The Urban Farm Podcast with Greg Peterson — https://www.urbanfarm.org/blog/podcast/
- The Mamapreneur Podcast with Robbin Kelton — live August 28, 2026 — https://mamapreneurpodcast.com/ · https://www.youtube.com/@mamapreneurpodcast
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb — where the term comes from
- The Joyfully Prepared Library (now buy-once, yours to keep) — https://learn.joyfullyprepared.com/library
- Earlier episode: Skill Stacking —
- Earlier episode: the original transformation journal episode —
- National Center for Home Food Preservation — tested recipes for anything you’re canning — https://nchfp.uga.edu/
- Work with Wendi (Florida real estate) — https://joyfullyprepared.com/realestate/
- All episodes — https://joyfullyprepared.com/podcast/
- Contact — https://joyfullyprepared.com/contact-me/
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/
Come find me
If you don’t keep a journal yet, don’t buy anything. Grab whatever notebook is already in the drawer and write down three wins tonight. That’s the whole assignment.
And then tell me what you’re becoming — I really do want to know. https://joyfullyprepared.com/contact-me/
If this one landed, send it to the friend who does more in a week than anyone you know and still says she “hasn’t really gotten around to anything.”