E41: Impact Your Community Through Homesteading | Samantha Armel of Frederick County Homesteaders
We get questions all the time about how to find local community with a shared mindset around homesteading. After asking the same question in her community, Samantha decided to make the first move and create the network she was looking for. Not only has she grown a thriving local homesteading community in her area, she teaches people all across the country to do the same. This episode will inspire you with a reminder about why camaraderie is so important and will equip you with the practical steps to build a network of your own.
In this episode, we cover:
- How Samantha started a movement in her county to connect homesteaders
- Why building strong in-person community is vital in our current day
- What is a farm crawl and why is it beneficial to a community?
- Overview of what kind of team it takes to create and run a local homesteading organization
- The personal growth that takes place as the leader of a community organization
- What does it take to start a homestead collective in your own community?
About Samantha
Samantha is passionate about helping local homesteaders in her area tap into the tools and resources that they need in order to build stranger, more self-sufficient, and resilient communities that can’t be overrun by government regulations and restrictions.
Samantha is committed to pointing families towards food freedom and creating opportunities to cultivate deeper connections through the work she does at Frederick County Homesteaders.
About Frederick County Homesteaders
farmer to farmer and farmer to consumer. Our mission is to revitalize agriculture within the Valley through community interdependence, education, and good clean fun!
Resources Mentioned
Check out the Frederick County Farm Crawl
Connect
Frederick County Homesteaders | Website | Instagram | Facebook
Homesteaders of America | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Pinterest
Impact Your Community Through Homesteading Transcript
Amy Fewell Welcome to the Homesteaders of America Podcast, where we encourage simple living, hard work, natural healthcare, real food, and building an agrarian society. If you’re pioneering your way through modern noise and conveniences, and you’re an advocate for living a more sustainable and quiet life, this podcast is for you. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m your host, Amy Fewell, and I’m the founder of the Homesteaders of America organization and annual events. If you’re not familiar with us, we are a resource for homesteading education and online support. And we even host a couple of in-person events each year with our biggest annual event happening right outside the nation’s capital here in Virginia every October. Check us out online at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. Follow us on all of our social media platforms and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can be the first to know about all things HOA (that’s short for Homesteaders of America). Don’t forget that we have an online membership that gives you access to thousands—yes, literally thousands—of hours worth of information and videos. It also gets you discount codes, an HOA decal sticker when you sign up, and access to event tickets before anyone else. All right. Let’s dive into this week’s episode.
Amy Fewell Welcome back to this week’s episode of the Homesteaders of America Podcast. I am so happy to have my friend Sam Armel with me. Welcome to the podcast, Sam.
Samantha Armel Hi, how are you?
Amy Fewell Good. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, which is so much. I feel like you know exactly what it’s like to run some big projects, so tell us all about it.
Samantha Armel Yeah. So my name is Samantha Armel. I am the founder of Frederick County Homesteaders in Frederick County, Virginia. We are an organization that is focused on connecting farmers, homesteaders, families and local businesses to revitalize agriculture in our county. One of the ways we do that is through our farm crawls, which is, I think, how we connected through a friend, Rhonda, who is a big part of our organization, and she always keeps me on my toes. So we have started to just create an organization for homesteaders (that’s how we started) and I didn’t know anything about homesteading, actually. I had started the organization… If it’s okay, I’ll just kind of give you like a little bit of a rundown in my kitchen of all places. So I’m in real estate and in 2020, I think I was just taken aback hearing some of the concerns from my community, concerns from some of the families that I knew. I have always loved projects and loved events and loved just creating community. And when I heard about a lot of the food shortages and the food prices going up, I was like, okay, well, this is kind of scary, number one. And number two, what am I going to do for my husband and I? We live in a town home. We aren’t equipped for this. And so I started praying and just sharing with the Lord my heart. And he really checked me and he was like, what about your next door neighbor…
Amy Fewell Right?
Samantha Armel Who has children? What are they going to do? What are the other people down the road from you going to do? And he just… I’m a visual person and he just laid this vision on my heart of the stores being bare and of these families not knowing what to do. So on top of hearing it from the community, I was hearing from the Lord, Where is your heart in all of this? What are you wanting to do? Are you going to worry about your family or are you going to worry about the bigger picture here? And so very shortly after that, the word homesteader kind of came to mind. I don’t remember where I was researching or where I had heard it from, but I thought, oh my goodness, this is what I have been seeking and searching for for so long without having a name for it. I just thought it was really cool to make your own soap and to try to make sourdough, which I’ve never been successful at, and all of these other things. I just thought, these are really neat, neat concepts, but I didn’t know there was an all encompassing term for them. So then I hopped online and I created a quick private Facebook group for my entire community and started inviting everybody, whether or not they were homesteaders or not, and just sharing it with as many people as I could, and then going to the farms and spotlighting the farms and sharing that with people in the community and saying, “Hey, did you know there’s this homestead you can buy eggs from?” “Hey, did you know there’s this butcher over here and they actually have meat right now? So go here.” So I don’t know if that kind of gives you an overview of how I started in this, but that was my heart behind it was making sure that my community had food and access to food sources, and even more than that, access to nutrient dense food sources that weren’t vaccine laden or any of these other things that people talk about, but just healthy food options that you didn’t have to worry about. And it kind of exploded from there. And I’m humble about it because I wasn’t expecting it and I have no business being here, so I always joke that if I can do it, anybody can do it. And yeah, that’s really how I got started.
Amy Fewell Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of how HOA started too, like, I just was like, hey, there’s this need, let’s see what happens. And it just happened. And you know that’s a God thing, right? Like, it’s not within our own power because we’re like, super tired and we’re not even sure how this stuff is coming together. Right?
Samantha Armel Yeah.
Amy Fewell But I love that you said, you know, this is new. This is only, what? Four years new for you. And you’re just a regular person who was like, “You know what? I see this need and I want to do it.” And on a monthly basis, sometimes a weekly basis, we are asked, “Can I start an event? What can I do for my community? I feel this draw.” And your kind of that walking testimony that it doesn’t take anyone special to put together something. It just takes motivation and drive. And so why don’t you tell us what a typical year looks like. Like, what do you guys do? What are the types of events you guys host?
Samantha Armel So much. So it really is a day to day and a week by week. I’m constantly trying to prayerfully search out the needs of the community and how can we meet those needs? How can we make sure that we are constantly walking in the mission that the Lord has set before us and exceeding the expectations of the community? Monthly we put on a homesteaders meeting and that came about from a desire within our community. We had done a food freedom meeting with Nick Freitas and I had people approach me after that meeting asking if we could do meetups. And so there was this hunger that I didn’t realize within my community, from the farms, from the homesteaders and from the families to just meet and have that connection. I think people were missing that from 2020 and feeling like they couldn’t go out or they were, you know, they had their hand slapped if they did. So we do a monthly meeting and that could be anything from having somebody come in and share their farm’s story to learning how to make Fire Cider is what we’re doing next week. So just simple things that we can do. We also do two farm calls a year and the reason we do two is because in our area, in Virginia, there’s different seasons and so farms have different cycles that they’re on. And it’s really important that our community can figure out and learn, you can get your Blackberries here, you can get your corn here, and helping people to understand these different cycles, inviting them into the farm so that they can really experience this. So we put those together and then we also have something called a Shop Local Guide. And that’s kind of my passion. I love to create and design things. I get excited when I talk about it, but it was my way of preparing the community in the event that we can’t go online. In the event that the power goes out. I wanted people to have a tangible object in their hands that could not be deleted, their voice could not be canceled. That drove me nuts. So I had this image, again. Everything to me is very visual. I’m a visual person and I always joke it’s because I need a road map. The Lord just knows my blindness.
Amy Fewell Right.
Samantha Armel So if he doesn’t help me that way, I’ve lost. But we created the Shop Local Guide based off of this idea that you have more resources next door to you, even if you’re in a residential neighborhood, than you realize. And so in the middle of the map, there’s the centerfold, and it’s of Frederick County. And it’s the outline of Frederick County, and it’s all of our farms, all of our herd shares, anything that we have in our community, all of our local businesses, our heart behind it is to fill it and create a resource and then also add in recipes from our local homesteads, recipes from our local farms, canning tips. One of our amazing business partners has local canning classes and self-sufficiency classes that she teaches through her business from Solenberger’s Hardware, so we post those every year. So we’re constantly doing something and constantly trying to cultivate community within Frederick County Homesteaders.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So this is, you know, something that really every county should have. I mean, it’s such a beautiful plan that you’ve kind of put together. And I know that some counties have it. Some counties have the grow your own food guide and things like that. But those are more through like Parks and Rec where yours, you know, flipping through the guide that you have, it’s very personal. You actually get to feel like you’re getting to know these farmers and the people in the community. And so I love that you have taken… You know, this is something we get asked all the time, “Well, how do I take what I feel and learn at HOA and take it back to my town or my county?” And so you’re doing that. You know, you saw that need and you’re doing that. And so I love it because now people in your county, as it grows of course (I’m sure not everyone knows it exists yet), but they know where they can get their food locally, for people who want to participate in that. They know, you know, that there are meetings. And one of the things that’s so important about that is that, you know, those meetings bring people together that are like minded. And so when stuff does happen, you’re like, Hey, this guy has this, and I know I can call him up and he’ll help me or I can help him or and vice versa. And so you’re creating a network within a network, essentially. And so the greater network is nationally, then it’s state, but then you’re even taking it smaller into your county. Because the reality that we have to face is that if something catastrophic were to happen, or if something really did happen with the food and health system that’s even worse than the 2020 pandemic, then you literally only have yourself and your neighbors and the people that you know in your county and maybe the surrounding counties. And so, you know, you’ve created this network. Now, how long do you feel like it’s taken to create this and get to a point where it’s been successful to some degree?
Samantha Armel It shocked me how quickly things have come together. Definitely each year we chisel down, right? And we really hone in on what needs to happen and, you know, I prayed for a while for a content committee, and the right people have come to the forefront, which has taken something off my plate as a new mom, which has been helpful. But we did our first farm crawl event and I was approached to do it. So we started with our Facebook group and I got very intentional about highlighting a new farm each month, highlighting a new Homestead each month, asking as people came into the group, “Introduce yourself, introduce your homestead, tell us your story,” because that is how families connect from a business mindset, right? I came in with a business mindset. So how do I help people connect and to develop and cultivate trust within the community? So developing trust within the community is the first step. And that’s why I also made the community group private, because I wanted people to feel like you can share your address so that somebody can pick up fresh eggs. You can share these things and not worry about how much of this is getting out to the, you know, to the public where I may not want somebody in a different state knowing where my kids live. So we created it to foster that sense of community without feeling like it’s… I guess the right term is worldly, so to speak? As we developed the community within Frederick County Homesteaders, the Facebook group, we had folks that noticed other counties doing things and they were doing them through, like you said, Parks and Rec and other things, which is great, but they said, “Sam, we don’t have a farm crawl here. Other counties are doing this. Could we put one together?” And I just said yes because I wasn’t thinking. And so I said yes. And before we knew it, we had a Lunch on the Lawn event so that we could highlight and show people you really can source every single ingredient here. And so we had a menu put together, we had volunteers, we had people dropping off heads of cabbage from their garden. It was such a neat experience to watch the community come together in about a month’s time, and before we knew it, we had people lining up outside of Solenberger’s to get their tickets and to just participate. And from there we just knew we have to do this. This has to be something that we implement to let people and families explore because they were so hungry for it. So it’s been really neat. It started and it grew before I knew what was happening, I guess is the best answer.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So what does a typical farm crawl look like? Some people might not know. We have a lot of people in different states that are kind of in like a barren area, so they have no idea with this even is, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about.
Samantha Armel So the Farm Crawl is a self-guided, self-paced tour and it takes place on Saturdays. It’s a one day tour. Typically what we do and every county can do it differently… Really you need to structure it based upon what your community needs and what you feel like your community will receive. We have a check in and then you get your farm crawl map for the day, and it has a list of farms that are participating and the families can go farm by farm. The farmers will be there. They’ll let you tour the farm. Sometimes there’s demos, sometimes there’s hay rides, sometimes there’s Apple picking, BlackBerry picking, whatever is in season, but it’s a way for this family to connect individually with the farm and to learn more about what that farm is providing for the area. We like to add in some sort of food event the day of, so if there’s a Lunch on the Lawn, we just switched it to an evening on the farm instead so that we could have a longer time frame where you can go farm to farm because our county is larger. So it’s important, like I said, to know your county and know your locale because you may have a smaller area that you’re working with and you may not need to extend it out, whereas for us, it can take 50 minutes to get from one side of the county to the other side of the county. So depending on how many farms you have in a farm crawl, it’s kind of important to have an idea of, you know, what are your time frames for the day. And then we also have just implemented a farm crawl passport. So we’ll do just different things that speak to our county and speak to the residents within our county and help to facilitate just more connection within the farms and the families that are coming out to these events to attend them.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Now, obviously, you’re not doing this on your own, and I know someone’s going to ask that. So how many people do you have helping you put this together every year?
Samantha Armel It truly is a community event. The farms want to participate, the community wants to participate, so it’s been really neat. We have 3 to 4 people on our board of advisors and they are business owners, they are farmers, they are local folks that are involved in nonprofits, but having an array of voices is very important to me as far as having input and figuring out what direction we need to go forward in. And those are family efforts. I do want to say that. When you’re part of an organization like this, you have these moving pieces, it truly is. We’ve been putting together meals in the evenings with all of our families involved, with the children involved. So it’s a family effort and I never want to disparage that because it’s a commitment to our community. We also have folks that come in and they just volunteer their time for check in in the morning. So we have 5 or 6 folks that come in for check in to help make sure that people get their little swag bags, which is another way that we just encourage people to buy things from the community. We figure if we give you a shopping bag, you don’t have an excuse not to buy food. And then we also have folks that help with our Shop Local Guide. We have about a team of four ladies that edit the guide, that put together the content. We have a photographer that goes out and gets photos of our farms. We have somebody that designs the guide, as well as people that are very gifted in storytelling that can shape and helped us extract from that farm what we need to share their story with the community. So there’s probably about 20 to 30 people involved throughout the year and then more that just will, you know, pop in to help with putting together tables for a meeting.
Amy Fewell Right. Yeah. That’s incredible that you’ve been able to pull this together in such an efficient way so quickly and with so much of the community’s help. What would you say has been the most challenging part of this? I imagine the most challenging might also be the community, but…
Samantha Armel It can be. I have had to learn how to take input and advice from so many people in a short time. Anybody who does this needs to be ready to be chiseled, I think is the right word. You’re going to have your character examined and you’re going to have your character honed and shaped. And so for me, it’s been very humbling because I’ve had to grow very quickly as an individual, and I’m okay with that. I’m very thankful for the opportunity. You need to prayerfully accept the challenge because I think that’s what it is. It’s been one of the most gratifying experiences that I’ve had to watch a community come together, but it’s also been one of the most humbling. So your time, your effort and your energy are going into this. I’m reminded of what the Founding Fathers said when they pledged their lives, their liberties and their sacred fortunes, their honors to proceed with, you know, walking away from the crown. And personally, myself, what I’ve experienced is I had to set real estate aside. I had to set my primary source of income aside to take this on. And I was okay with that. Talking with my husband, we were okay with that because we understood the impact and the value that it was bringing to the community. I don’t say that to be prideful, I say that very humbly. It was a humbling experience for myself, but it was so worthwhile because I have learned so much about people and about the heart of the Lord for his people.
Amy Fewell Right.
Samantha Armel He wants his bride coming back together. He wants the communities to be reknit. And I feel like this has been such an honoring experience to see him working this way in people’s lives, both individually and as a whole.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Yeah and that’s true. You nailed it. I mean, a lot of people don’t think about any kind of leadership position, right? Because what you’re doing is a leadership position. And when you take on the leadership of a movement within a community, you do have your character tested. You have your thoughts tested. You have your words tested. You know, there’s all kinds of things that you… Now it’s not just me and my family that I’m leading, it’s an entire community that I now have to think about. And we’re all different in this community, and we all have different wants and needs and beliefs. And so it can be challenging in that way, but it is so rewarding. Like you nailed it. It is the most rewarding thing. Even though you’re dead tired sometimes mentally and physically, it is the most rewarding thing that you can do to see a community flourishing through efficiency of these things that you’re doing. And so I think I remember you saying that you’re working on putting together kind of a plan if other people want to implement this. So why don’t you talk a little bit about that?
Samantha Armel Yeah. So we are working on something called Community Interdependence Workshops, and our desire is to teach other people and equip other people to go out and bring this to their communities. We are working on checklists for farm crawls, checklists for Shop Local Guides. We’re also working on interactive worksheets where you can start to identify your key players in your community. You’re going to need a village. It takes a village to put something like this on, so understanding the personalities and the mindsets and the profiles of individuals that are like-minded, that you can link arms with in this endeavor, is very important. So we are working on probably about three different workshops, but they all are symbiotic, they work together and our hope is to have these rolled out in time for the next farm crawl, because one thing we would like to offer is if folks are interested in coming out and participating in a farm crawl and then taking that back to their community, they can come out, they can participate, and then afterwards they can ask questions of our businesses, they can ask questions of our farms or homesteads, and they can ask questions of some of the families that volunteer their time to kind of get an idea of what is this going to take and what can we take back to our communities? What do we not need? What do we need to take with us? And then we will also have an opportunity… One thing that I’m really excited about is the opportunity to partner with American made businesses and bring those American made products into our local farm markets, into our local homesteads, into our local businesses. So we’re working on partnerships that would allow products to get placed into these store fronts through Shop Local Guide magazines and through our website. Our hope is to create an interactive map on the website where you can go link and it would be a map of the county and then that would link you to the homesteads so you could hover over it, see it, and then click on it and go to the website or the web page for that specific homestead. But the reason I mention that is because with our workshops that we’re working on, we’re also working on the subscription within there. So if you need to save time, if you’re a homesteader and you just love the concept of this but you’re worried about the amount of time that you have, we want to give you the option of a plug and play. So you would have access to our farm crawl map that we’ve put together where you can just go in and plug in your addresses and plug in your county map. You’ll have access to our farm crawl passports, you’ll have access to our Shop Local Guides that we’re creating for the season that you can then turn around and enter your local farms, your local homesteads information into and use that, as well as social media templates and our website. We want to take our website and give it back to these communities so that you aren’t having to learn how to do all of this by yourself. It’s working together to help you take back your county.
Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s awesome. I mean, to have that available… Because I know that’s one thing people are thinking of when they’ve been listening to this is, well, I don’t have the experience to do all this. I don’t have time to learn how to do these things. Is there an easy way for me to just grab your knowledge, right? I just want to grab the information from your brain and make it happen. And so this is going to be a real resource for every county in the nation and maybe even beyond that, you know? So I love what you’re doing. And I was actually talking to a friend about it a couple days ago, you know, she was asking me, “Hey, are there any homesteader groups here in our county?” And I’m like, “Well, there are, but you really need to check out Sam and what Sam’s doing over in Frederick County.” And you know, all of this is amazing. All of it’s great. But the one thing I told her and the one thing I’ll tell all of you guys that are listening is at the end of the day, these things are wonderful and Sam is probably going to tell you the same thing, but you have to have discernment in who you’re linking arms with because not everyone is your friend. Not everyone is there to help you. You know, there are certainly people out there who don’t have good motives or who are in this for the wrong reasons. And so as you’re making these plans and these plans sound amazing, one of the benefits of being a believer and being a Christian is that you have the Holy Spirit with you and you have that discernment that you can use and partake of at any time. And so, you know, all of these things are amazing, but I just want to insert just that little brief caution, you know, because I know when I first got started and Sam, this might be you two, I was so gung ho to do these things, and then there were people… I could have saved myself a lot of heartache. There were people that came in that were like, “Hey, I want to help you, I want to do this.” And seem like they had a grateful heart but really didn’t. You know, they were in it for different reasons, and so just make sure. Like you can be so excited about it and pulling this together but make sure you have your foundation set. Like Sam said, it really is a family thing. You know, link arms with the families in your community, but start with your family. You know, if you’re a wife, make sure your husband’s on board. If you’re, you know, an older child and you want your family on board… Because there’s plenty of brilliant older children that would want to do this to, you know, teenagers. And even if you’re in early adulthood, you know, make sure you have some kind of covering, you know, where you’ve got strong people in your life that could help you really steward this, because what Sam is doing is really stewarding an entire movement within her county. And so there will be opposition, there will be things that don’t go right. You know, all of this to say, Sam, we really enjoyed having you on the HOA podcast and I’m excited for people to learn about you and all you have to offer. So why don’t you tell us where everyone can find you online?
Samantha Armel Thank you. We are online at FredrickCountyHomesteaders.com. You can also find our social media at Frederick County Homesteaders on Instagram and then also FCH Farm Crawl. We have a public page and that’s how we get our farm crawls out to our local community so you can follow us there, too. But everything that we will put on our social media is also found on our website which is FredrickCountyHomesteaders.com.
Amy Fewell Yeah, awesome. And we’ll link all that information in the show notes for you guys so you can check it out. And Sam, I think you’ll also have a booth and HOA this year. Is that right?
Samantha Armel We do. We’re so excited to be part of HOA this year.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So if you guys are coming and you want to talk to Sam personally, Sam will have a booth there where you can learn more. And you guys have your next farm crawl the week before or after HOA?
Samantha Armel The week before HOA. Yeah, October 5th.
Amy Fewell Okay, so if you guys are in town early, you can check that out and ask questions there too. So, Sam, thank you so much for joining me this week. Is there anything else you’d like to add to our listeners?
Samantha Armel Yeah. There has been a story on my heart that I haven’t shared much with people when they get to ask, but I would love to share it with HOA. And it’s really just a testimony that God can do so much with your little if you’ll give it. When we did our first farm crawl, we had set up tickets through an online or, you know, ticketing platform. And there was an issue with our ticketing platform where we had so many tickets for Lunch on the Lawn event that year. And we had planned out our meals, we had somebody covering our meals that knew exactly how to make sure that there would be enough for the event. Somehow there was a glitch in the ticketing system and we oversold tickets for the amount of meals that we had prepared. When we got there, the Lord had doubled our portions. We had no idea how it happened, but we continued to sell tickets and still have meals available. In fact, we had so many excess of these little pie filling things that we were able to donate them afterwards. And so it sounds far fetched, when you hear about it, it sounds bizarre, but at the same time, all I can think is I have seen God work so much in this organization and so much through the people that are just willing to participate. It encourages me and reminds me every day when I get up and I’m questioning my why that if we are just faithful with what the Lord gives us, he can do so much. And it’s not dependent upon us, we just have to be faithful to step forward. So I encourage you in whatever the Lord has put on your heart to just step forward in that and to walk confidently in it, because he will go before you.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Amen. 100% agree. Well, thank you for joining us, Sam. I really enjoy talking to you and I know you guys have enjoyed listening because this topic you guys ask a lot about all the time. So I’m excited that you have created and are creating this resource. So now I can just send people to you.
Samantha Armel Well, thank you. We’d love to help if we can.
Amy Fewell All right, guys. Thank you for joining us for this week’s episode. We will see you next time. Happy Homesteading.
Amy Fewell Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s Homesteaders of America episode. We really enjoyed having you here. We welcome questions and you can find the transcript and all the show notes below or on our Homesteaders of America blog post that we have up for this podcast episode. Don’t forget to join us online with a membership or just to read blog posts and find out more information about our events at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. We also have a YouTube channel and follow us on all of our social media accounts to find out more about homesteading during this time in American history. All right, have a great day and happy homesteading.