27. Fourteen Years of Homestead Experiments with Darren and Espri Bender-Beauregard of Brambleberry Farm

When it comes to homesteading and small farm entrepreneurship, Darren and Espri Bender-Beauregard have had their fair share of successes and failures over the last fourteen years running Brambleberry Farm.In this episode of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I sit down with Darren and Espri at the kitchen table in their magnificently handcrafted straw-bale home to talk about their history as homesteaders, market gardeners, and natural builders.We discuss how they became homesteaders in rural Paoli, Indiana, how they got their start as scrappy young farmers and organically evolved into purveyors of edible perennial plants over time, and all of the various ways that they've tried to eke out an honest living for themselves by working with the land.Along the way they share a wealth of knowledge about natural building, and breeze through countless tidbits of wisdom they've picked up about making a lifestyle and a livelihood out of homesteading -- Espri calls it "homesteading with benefits."This is a dense one, and it also offers a very realistic portrait, I think, of what young newbies might reasonably expect from pursuing this way of life.Homesteading offers a great deal of opportunities in terms of deriving an income, but the success or failure of any given enterprise is based on so many different factors that you can never really predict what's gonna stick. Let Darren and Espri's story be a lesson to you to diversify your skills and your knowledge!