E49: Transform Your Family Culture with These Two Foundational Decisions | Ginny Yurich of 1000 Hours Outside

Could the simple act of spending more time outside be the key to restoring health, peace, and connection in your home? In this episode, Ginny Yurich shares how embracing long days outdoors not only transformed her entire motherhood experience but also sparked the global 1000 Hours Outside movement. From letting go of rigid schedules to reclaiming childhood from screens, Ginny’s story points us back to the simple, grounding rhythms of home, health, and family life that brought us to homesteading in the first place.

In this episode, we cover:

Ginny’s early struggles with rigid parenting schedules and exhausting days with little ones
How Ginny first stumbled upon Charlotte Mason’s recommendation of spending 4–6 hours outside each day
What marked Ginny’s first good day as a mom and how it changed her family’s trajectory
The birth of 1000 Hours Outside to reclaim childhood from screen time
How her family’s health transformed by being outside each day– kids eating, sleeping, and playing better, fewer doctor visits
Why natural light and outdoor rhythms are essential for eyes, sleep, and overall wellness
Tools for families: trackers, coloring sheets, and a mobile app to make goals fun
Shifting from traditional homeschooling to a slower, life-centered approach
Homeschooling without constant testing—kids will thrive, learn deeply, and pursue real-world goals
Reflections on industrialization, homesteading, and restoring family life at home

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About ginny

Ginny Yurich is a Michigan homeschooling mother of five and the founder and CEO of 1000 Hours Outside; a global movement, media company and lifestyle brand with a mission centered around reclaiming childhood, reconnecting families and helping people live a fuller life.

She is the host and producer of the extremely popular The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast, a keynote public speaker, zinnia enthusiast, and published author.

Holding a Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Michigan, Ginny and her husband, Josh have been married for over 21 years and are lifelong Michiganders. They love raising their five children on their little hobby farm in “The Great Lakes State.”

resources mentioned

Get your hands on the REFORMER merch Amy is wearing in this podcast episode

Track your family’s hours outside using these resources on Ginny’s website

Grab your copy of Ginny’s book, Homeschooling: You’re Doing It Right Just By Doing It

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Transform your family culture with these two foundational decisions 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 the Homesteaders of America podcast. I am excited to have a new guest this week. She’s not been on the podcast yet. It’s so exciting. Welcome Jenny Yurich to the HOA podcast.

Ginny Yurich I’m so excited to be here. We talked on our podcast, so I’ve spent time with you. It was wonderful. I would like to let everybody know that I’m standing up. This is incredible. I got this standing desk and I was like, maybe it’s going to be weird. But you said it’s not weird, so it’s working out.

Amy Fewell It’s not weird. If you would have never told us… For those of you watching on YouTube, you’re probably like, no, she doesn’t even look like she’s standing. Oh, also for those of you on YouTube, because I know people are going to ask, I have this new hat on. It’s going to be on the Homestead Revival website for those of you who are following that. So it’s not up at the recording of this video, but it will be at the posting of this video. So you guys can check it out there.

Ginny Yurich Oh I love the hat. I love that hat. Actually, as soon as you get on, I was like, I should probably have a hat on.

Amy Fewell No. Oh, stop it. No, but you definitely need one.

Ginny Yurich It’s so cute. Yes, for sure. I love it.

Amy Fewell So let’s talk about why you need one. Why don’t you tell our audience who you are and what you do? I’m sure a lot of them already know who you are and what you do, but I’m sure there’s also a lot of people who don’t.

Ginny Yurich Absolutely. So, you know, it’s interesting. We’re like mini homesteaders, I guess, or kind of like wannabe homesteaders. And I feel like that all started from becoming a parent. My journey as a parent, and it took a while, but my journey as a parent is really what led me to living differently. But it really started off with being the crummiest mother ever. You know, I just thought it was going to be easier, Amy. We had these babies and I had friends that did a schedule with their kids. You know, we were like the last of our friend group to have a kid. I was like holding out and, you know, I was kind of nervous about the whole thing and all these friends, they already had kids, and they had their kids on this schedule. And so when it was like right around time for the birth, I thought, well, I’ll just do that schedule thing. And I don’t know what the difference is between like their kids and our kids, but they were like every two hours is this time block and, you know, they nurse and then we do an activity and then they sleep. And so Amy, I had this thing scheduled out like to the minute. I was like in the 8 a.m. time block, he’s going to nurse and then we’re going to read books and then he’s going to sleep and then when he sleeps, I’m going to exercise. And then at 10 a.m… I mean, I had it like that and it was a shock to my system when it did not work at all. You know, first of all, the day doesn’t start at 8 a.m. I was like, it never really ends, it never really starts, or kind of like in this quasi like, I’ve been awake for 16 weeks at this point or whatever. But I really struggled in those early years and for quite a long time, Amy, with just enjoying being a mom because I was so frazzled and so exhausted. And, you know, we had a couple kids right in a row, and I was just signing them up for activities. You know, how do you pass a 10-hour day? My husband’s gone for eight hours plus commute. It was like, how do I pass that time? I’d been a math teacher before. You know, I had a job and now I’m home with these babies and I just thought it was exhausting to take them to anything. So I’m going to take them… And I love the library, but I’m going to take them to the library for the 45-minute program at 11 a.m. I was like, well, you know, I got three little kids. I mean, you know, they’re all in the car seats. They’re all having to get buckled in. I’ve got the diaper bag, but the diaper has everybody’s outfits and everybody’s diapers and everybody has different snacks. And then I’ve got, you know, the book bag and the big stroller and you got to get them out and you’ve got to make sure they don’t pinch their fingers and you’re trying to get them through the parking lot. And then you’re trying to get them to sit for this library program that they don’t want to sit for. And this one’s nursing and that one’s crying, and then they dump these toys in the middle and the kids are fighting and you’re nursing on the side and you can’t help. I mean by 11:45, I was like, I am done. You know, I am so toast with his day. I would call my husband like, “Any chance you can come home early?” He’d be like, “It’s not even lunch yet.” You know, how much longer?

Amy Fewell “What time are you going to be home again?” I do that to my husband all the time, “Are you on your way home yet?”

Ginny Yurich Yeah, he’s like, “You got six hours and 15 minutes to go,” you know? So it just was like that. Like every day was like that. And I had a friend at MOPS, which is now called MomCo, and I did MOPS, it was the same thing. It was like you get to go, you drop your kids off for a couple hours twice a week. My kids always cried so they’d always bring them back, and I’m holding these crying babies, and I have a friend at MomCo—who knew that she was going to homeschool, so we always knew we were going to homeschool too—and her kid was one year older than our oldest. So she was doing all the research Amy, and I was like, “This is fantastic. Please, please do all the research and tell me what am I supposed to do for this homeschool thing.” So she came one day and she says, “Charlotte Mason says that ‘kids are supposed to be outside for four to six hours whenever the weather is tolerable.'” And I was like, “Hmm, that’s a long time.” You know? I just thought it was a ridiculous idea. And she also did not preface it by saying that Charlotte Mason is dead and has been dead for a really long time. Like she’s from the 1800s. Otherwise I wouldn’t have listened. Like Charlotte? I mean, I know some Charlottes. So I’m like, this probably is current information. And I thought, well that’s weird. You know, who does something for four to six hours? Everything we do—the little soccer program and Mommy and Me music and all of these different kid activities—are like 40 minutes or 35 minutes. I thought, four to six hours? So then she says, “Well, we should try it.” And I thought, no, like we shouldn’t try it. What are they going to do? They’re going to be bored out of their mind. I’m thinking about when I make them Play-Doh. It lasts like 12 minutes, you know, and then they’re on to the next thing. So I just thought this was a ridiculous idea, but I was also desperate for friends. So if you’re listening to this and you’ve got young kids at home, you just know, like you can hardly finish a conversation. It’s just so hard to have friendships. So I decided to go. This is all the way back in 2011, and we had a three-year-old and a one-year-old and a six-month-old at the time. We’re going to go to this park in 2011. It’s the fall—September. So it’s like, you know, exactly however many years ago that is. I used to be a math teacher. Like 14 years I guess? All right. So 14 years ago, we’re going go to this park from 9 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon. It was a park, not a playground, just like grass, a little creek that ran through, and I just thought this is going to crash and burn. This is going to be our worst day, like our worst day among bad days. So we go to this park. There’s no playground. I’m like, I’m supposed to bring stuff, right? Like shouldn’t I bring our train table and a huge bag of books? And I’ll bring crafts, you know, four hours. And she’s like, “Well, Charlotte Mason says ‘you’re not supposed to bring anything.'” I was like, “You’re not supposed to bring anything? What are these kids gonna do?”

Amy Fewell “Who is this Charlotte lady?”

Ginny Yurich Yeah, right. Exactly! I was like, “Has Charlotte ever even been around children? Like has she been around children like mine? Like what are they going to do?” So we brought a blanket and food. And I tell people that it’s “my best day of my entire life” because it was the first good day I had as a mom. I had not had a good day as a mom up until that point. Three years in, not had a good day. And what happened is the kids just played. Who knew? You know, she had two toddler-ish preschoolers. So did I. We each had a baby and the babies would nurse and they would sleep when they wanted to sleep. You know, not in this two-hour block schedule and there’s the leaves and the breeze and it was beautiful and the kids, I don’t even know what they were doing. They were like running around, throwing rocks in the creek, chasing each other, and we immediately changed how we were doing early childhood, because I felt like if I can be more present, if I can enjoy mothering more, then that’s going to make the whole thing better. But the last 14 years has been a journey of me learning that when kids are allowed to play outside freely, you don’t have to bring the train table. You don’t have to do a scavenger hunt. You can but you don’t have to. When they are allowed to play freely, it helps them in every facet of their development. So this is helping their cognition—incredibly helping their cognition which is really needed in a day and age where things are rapidly changing. This is helping their social skills—same thing, incredibly important in a day and age where kids are going to have possibly many different careers. This is helping them emotionally. It’s helping their physical bodies obviously in a lot of ways, and then God’s creation is like this mirror of so many of his spiritual principles. So in every facet, the kid is growing and I’m also having a good day as well. So it kind of started way back then.

Amy Fewell Okay, so you had the best day of your mom life, and then you’re like, let’s turn this into a business called 1000 Hours Outside. So why don’t you tell people about that?

Ginny Yurich Well, yeah, the bridge there is that we lived that way for about two years, which was this four to six hours a day, a couple days a week with some friends, and it was about 18 to 20 hours that we were getting outside a week. We’re in Michigan, so it’s a little bit more in the summer and the fall in the spring, a little less in the winter because it’s really pretty frigid cold. But overall we were trying to get outside like this 18 to 20 hours a week and we just did not run into other kids, Amy. Like constantly, where are the kids? I don’t see any kids, you know, there’s no kids. There’s some older people with their walking sticks and they’re out hiking, but we’re in the Metro Detroit area. It’s very populated. We were just popping around from park to park and area to area—no kids. And I just felt that this had changed my life so much that at some point, I calculated how much time we are getting outside because I had seen a statistic that said the average kid in America is outside for four to seven minutes—four to seven Minutes daily—but on screens for four to seven hours. There’s a huge disparity there. Outside for four to seven minutes, on screens for four to seven hours. And I calculated like this 18 to 20 hours a week, how much time are we getting outside? And it was about 1200 hours a year, which at that time exactly matched the average amount of screen time in America for kids. 1200 hours. And I thought, you know, we’re not against screens necessarily. I do think that the screens are becoming more addictive. There’s a lot of evil that kids can be exposed to but at that point it was more about how our year would have been so different. It would have been so unbelievably different if all those 1200 hours would have gone to screens and not to these formative, beautiful memories with us together, with friends, and so that’s when I started writing about it. I called it 1000 Hours Outside instead of 1200 Hours Outside, it’s a little catchier. But it is definitely in line with current research. There’s a woman named Angela Hanscom who wrote a phenomenal book called Balanced and Barefoot. She’s a pediatric occupational therapist and so she’s been on the front lines of seeing like these wait lists that are just getting so tremendously long. A year, you have to wait for therapy, and she says a lot of it has to do with these kids are not getting formative time outside. They need hours of it—three hours a day, she says on average for all ages, including your teens. So all these homesteaders that are listening in, they’re like, we’re nailing it. And I think you should be really proud of that. You know, your kids are out there with you. Whatever kind of homestead that you have that is allowing for your kids, your family to be outdoors often for hours on end, and is really important. Especially in this day and age.

Amy Fewell One of your quotes on your website says, “1000 Hours Outside is the global platform reclaiming childhood and reconnecting families and restoring mental health in the age of artificial intelligence.” And I loved that when I was reading it and going through your website. You know, sometimes even homesteaders can have a hard time because think about how many homesteaders are running businesses now. And so in the beginning of the whole homesteading movement it wasn’t like that. People were not necessarily, you know, YouTubers and online influencers and writing Instagram pages and all of these things, and so it’s interesting to me to see that there are so many homesteaders even now who are trying to find that happy balance again in being outside. And so why don’t you tell us a little bit like did you see a change in your children? What kind of happened in your children? Because it’s not even just mental health, it’s like health in general. There are so many studies that show that sunlight, you know, a good amount of sunlight every day keeps us more healthy. So maybe you could talk about the health aspect a little bit.

Ginny Yurich Sure. And I love that you brought that up, Amy. The reason that we have a goal for getting outside… And that is all that 1000 Hours Outside is. We’ve got a goal for it. We’re aiming to be outside on average three hours a day, but it’s over the course of a year because life has seasons figuratively and literally, so maybe you just had a baby or maybe you are starting a new business or you moved. You know, we all have upheaval. You’re grieving, these different things happen, and people talk about, you know, I lost a baby… There’s so many things that happen in life that can throw you off kilter. So over the course of a year, we’re aiming to get outside for X amount of hours and the reason is because it’s hard to do. Like you don’t have goals for easy things. You have goals for hard things. So even if you’re, you know, a business runner, you’re an entrepreneur, I think that we all, especially in this day and age, need to pay attention. Pay attention to where our time is going, and hands-on life offers kids a lot. So when talking about their physical health, I did notice within a couple days, Amy, like these kids are different. All of a sudden they were eating better, they were sleeping better, they were getting along better, they were playing better inside. So like when we come in for the day, then they’re playing pretend better, they’re a little bit more imaginative, and actually since 2011 (and now we have five kids at this point), we have not needed a doctor’s appointment for anything acute. Nothing. You know, they were getting sick a lot. Like we’re going in for this and going in for that. And so the physical benefits, obviously there’s more movement so you’re moving the lymphatic system, but it really is… There’s a depth there that I don’t even think we’ll probably ever really understand, but when you’re talking about the eyesight. Well, first of all the kids’ eyes are being formed all the way up till they’re about eight (the rods in the cones) and they need that natural light, that full spectrum light, in order to form those eyes. You know, myopia is on the rise, kids are not letting their eyes relax because the only time your eyes relax is when you are outside. Even when you’re sleeping, or for sure when you are inside, the ring around the eye is always flexed, you know, like if you’re flexing a muscle. So the only time that it relaxes is when you go outside and people call it “long distance looking” which I love. Long distance looking is actually really important. So that full spectrum light is not only affecting the eye and the shape of the eye and the health of the eye, but also, it’s affecting the whole body system because there’s over a hundred body systems that depend on that day and night cycle. So I read this book called The Rested Child by Dr. Chris Winter. He’s like a sleep guy, he’s been studying sleep for decades, and he kind of spurred us on to get this light meter, Amy. So you look like a Ghostbuster. It’s like this really cool thing. It’s got this, you know, orange coil and you’re like, “I’m going to go measure the lux,” and I think you can just do it on your phone, but the little machine is pretty cool. I think photographers use it. So you’re going to measure the light, and you have to hit into the thousands before your body is like, oh, it’s the day. And even on cloudy days, there is such a wide difference between the brightest room in our house right by the window, and going outside. You know, inside you’re like it’s six hundred, seven hundred—the kids got to see this, you know? You go outside, it’s three thousand. It’s ten thousand if it’s sunny. It’s probably sixty thousand if you live in the south and it’s Florida. It’s those bright days and dark nights that our biology needs. So your kids are being exposed, especially if you can get outside in the morning, which is so wonderful for homesteaders, isn’t it Amy?

Amy Fewell Oh, yeah.

Ginny Yurich In some ways, it can feel like a burden. Like I’ve got these animals to tend to, but I feel like this is how God made it—that you get out and you go tend to your flock, you tend to your crops. You tend to this beautiful life that God has given you, and that helps to reset your circadian rhythms, which I mean, there are so many systems that depend on that.

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Amy Fewell And I mean, there’s plenty of studies that show too that, you know, your melatonin is made in the morning when you get up with the sunlight, right? So if you’re not sleeping well at night, well, maybe you should try getting up in the morning and rising with the sun and going outside. And one thing we’ve lost is the simplicity of health, right? Because we were taught that we don’t know anything about our bodies. Well, our ancestors did and the way they lived proved that. So something as simple as just being outside multiple hours a day, and just you and yourself and dirt under your fingernails and all of those things, there’s so many simple things that help the microbiome in the body. And so I love that. So you’ve made it easy and fun for us mamas because you have some coloring sheets and stuff on your website, right? So why don’t you kind of talk about what kind of tools and resources have you created to make this more interactive with our kids?

Ginny Yurich Well, it’s good because our kids are up for more than we are. The screens have already gotten more addictive. You know, every couple years, I mean it’s just more and more. And I love that you brought up the ancestors, Amy, because I actually started writing about getting outside in 2013 because it had so changed our life. Like so changed our life, this simple thing, and I had no idea about it. You know, getting outside was our leftover thing. It was like, well, we’re going to do this. We’re going to take French class and tuba lessons and you know, like how it is in American childhoods a lot of the time. You’re like, I’m going to fill it with all these enriching activities and oh, if we have time we’re going to go to the park. So when I started writing people were like, “This is really stupid. This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of,” you know? And people are like, “Why would you ever pay attention to the time you spend outside?” Because no one had done that. No one ever did that up until that point. And it’s because society was set up in a different way. And I don’t think necessarily it was on purpose, but there was a time, for a very long time, when society was set up in a way that protected the space of childhood—those open spaces of childhood. Well, it’s like the houses didn’t have air conditioning and homes were smaller and people had larger families and you didn’t have as many toys and there wasn’t video games and the TV time was bounded in—you know, it was Saturday mornings from 9-12 and then it was over. And so kids just played. They were out in the neighborhood because there wasn’t anything else to do and so they were enticed out there. That has completely changed. Now you can access screens at any time of the day and you can access an endless amount of content. It never ends. I read one time that there was 67 hours a week… Now that’s still a lot, but 67 hours a week of children’s programming and that was it. And that’s all there was. It’s not like you can watch YouTube for forever. So things changed, and because of that change, it has become more imperative that we guard our time. So we do have these tracker sheets and we just like color… People put it on their fridge. You can get them blown up like at Office Depot. People put it on their wall. Someone told me one time they were like, ‘My chart,”they messed it up and, “My chart is as big as our couch and I have it above the couch in the living room.” You know, this huge chart and you just color in one space for every hour that you’re outside or every half hour. It’s not necessarily about the number. The number is research backed. But if you’re a single mom listening in or you’re transitioning into being this entrepreneur with your business and you’re like look, we’re going to aim to get outside this year for 700 hours. We’re going to aim to get outside for 500. We’ve kind of like, you know, it’s kind of gone by the wayside. Which, like you said, would be kind of odd for homesteaders but could be, like especially if you’re really trying to get your social media presence up or you have a lot of desk to do and you have this intention of getting out there and it just keeps it at the front of your mind. And if you have kids that are old enough to color and start to understand time to a degree, you are modeling to them how to craft the life they want and how to schedule in or prioritize their hands on life and leave the leftover time for screens and not the other way around. So we have those coloring sheets. They’ve been designed by people all over the world. We do a little contest every fall. So we have new ones that come out every year. So there’s probably 10 or 15 options there. We have a mobile app. Same thing. It’s got like a little journal feature and you can keep track of your time on there and those help. They really help. I mean, I still need them Amy, even after having done this since 2011. It is so easy for the time to go to other things.

Amy Fewell Yeah, when there’s so many things now that don’t even pine for children’s attention, even just adults attention, right? You know, I find myself even on the days when I just shut my phone off and I shut the work stuff down and I’m just the mom. I’m just a mom. I’m a homemaker. There’s so many things to do inside. There’s laundry. There’s dishes. There’s floors. Constantly when you have multiple kids especially. And it’s like by the time you’re done with your day, it’s almost, you know, five or six o’clock. And so one of the things that I’ve told our little girl… She loves to go outside. Our kids love to be outside like they live to be outside. And normally right around this time of year, we can’t really go outside until the sun starts going down because in the front of our house, it’s like eye-blinding sunlight. And so she was really sensitive in the summertime sun because she’s just fair-skinned. And so I would always tell her when the sun starts going down, we will go outside and we’ll play outside. And so even now she remembers that. She’s like, “The sun is going down! It’s time to go outside.” And you know, you can get so many hours in even if it’s from like three o’clock to six o’ clock, seven o’clock. So it is even homesteaders, believe it or not. Like so many mamas, especially who are homemaking and taking care of kids and homeschooling, it’s hard sometimes to get those hours in. So I love those sheets that you have and every kid gets their own sheet, and kids are so motivated by rewards and seeing their progression. And so it’s really cool. But speaking about homeschooling, so you started with the Charlotte Mason. So let’s kind of go into what your homeschool looks like to support this.

Ginny Yurich That’s the only Charlotte Mason line I knew for years and years. Now, I have her volumes of work, but I haven’t read all of them. I actually was preparing for an interview once and I was like, I’m going to read all these Charlotte Mason books to prepare. And I was like, these are so long and the words are so small. So I’ve only read the first one. We love homeschooling. It is the best decision that we have ever made. Ever. Ever. I do not regret it for one second. If you are listening in and you are on the fence, this will change everything. It changes everything. You change as a mom. You grow. You change as a dad. Your world is expanded. You develop the patience if you feel like you don’t have it. You develop all those things. And that’s the point of life. The point of life is to grow and to expand your knowledge. It is so unbelievably wonderful. And, you know, you have some hard days, but you also are going to have hard days too if your kids are in school. I was a high school math teacher. Let me tell you what: there’s a lot of parents that are having hard days when the phone calls come home. They are not exempt from hard days. I mean, everybody has hard days, it’s just part of life. So we started homeschooling. From the very beginning, I was very knee-knocking about it. I was, you know, nervous and like my knees are knocking. Really nervous, I’m going to mess my kids up. And we started off pretty traditional, like box checking. That was my goal. But then we had a bunch of kids in a row. My husband lost his job right when we were going to be starting to homeschool. We lost our home, which was unrelated to losing the job. It was just kind of like this… We did these home-births. We switched to that. It was like a lot. And because of the circumstances, Amy, and I actually think this is probably the biggest part of my story in general is that all of the successes (if you could call them that), like all of the things I love about homeschooling, this, you know, getting outside… I mean, I didn’t grow up as some outdoorsy person, like talking about getting outside. It’s all been birthed from failure. It’s always been birthed from lack. It’s also been birthed from things not going how I wanted them to go. And I just think that’s so biblical—that when we are weak, he is strong. Therefore, I will boast about my weaknesses. And so I was hoping to have this really organized check the box homeschool. And I also think that that’s okay. If you are listening and you’re like an organized check the box homeschooler, you’re a little bit more type A, that’s great. You probably have some type A kids and we’re passing along these skills that we have. These are the kids that God gave us. They have our genetics. So I truly believe that no matter how you homeschool, you’re doing it the right way. But you know, it ebbs and flows throughout the year, you know how that goes, which is really different than traditional school. It’s like fourth grade might look a lot different from kindergarten. And that kind of mirrors life. That’s how life is. My life doesn’t look the same as it did four years ago. So, you know, I was planning to check the box—wasn’t able to circumstantially. And so we kind of did an about-face and fell into the like Waldorfy, Finland, the philosophies that talk about slowing down and saying that look, you know, there are some physical markers that kids are supposed to have before they start reading. And some kids might read when they’re three, but some kids might not read till they’re nine or ten or twelve. And that’s also normal. It’s all normal. There’s a huge range here. So we slowed down. We didn’t start formal education until around age seven. In the Waldorf schools they say that the adult teeth have to be coming in and that signifies that the internal organs have fully formed. So your kids eyes and ears have fully formed, and so of course, then they’re going to be able to read and hear the differences between the sounds, like the nuance between B and D. So we did that and I’d say we lean a little bit more toward life-schooling, which is if there’s something going on, I’m not pulling you in to do your schoolwork, you know? If you are out in the garden or you’re out even on the trampoline with your siblings or there’s an opportunity to go to this museum or friends have invited us over, I will always set aside the bookwork for those things. And then we just get to the book work when we can. It’s a couple hours a day if we do all of it, and I think our kids are thriving. I’m going to tell you a story because I have a book. I have a book out called Homeschooling, but this story happened after the book came out, so it’s not in the book. Our oldest daughter, when she was 14, came to me and she says, “I want to be a personal trainer.” That’s what she said. “I want a personal trainer.” I was like, “Okay, I don’t know anything about that.” You know, I know nothing. She was like, “Well I already figured it out.” She says, “I want to become a personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.” Like never heard of it. You know, she’s like, “Well, I learned that there’s this class that you can take by this man named Joe Drake and he teaches people how that they can pass the test and become a personal trainer and I’d really like to take his course. Could you please call him and ask him if I’m allowed.” I was like, “Okay.” So I call this guy and I was like, “I’ve got this daughter. She’s 14. Is it okay if she takes this class?” You know, and he’s like, “Well, we’ve never had anybody that young, but if she wants to try it, like totally.” So in the mail comes these books, like these huge textbooks, Amy. Like Anatomy and all these textbooks. She’s 14. She’s in middle school and she’s taking this class every Wednesday, it’s on zoom. And I see her like unmute and answer the question and then later on she’ll be like, “There’s older people mom and they don’t even know. They must not be reading the book.” And she’s starting to get exposure to all the class type things. So she finishes this class, you know, reads the textbook, studies, and then all of a sudden she’s going to have to take this test. We have to go to a testing center, right? So like you don’t cheat. So I take her to this testing center. I’ve never been to one. She’s the only kid in there. By this time she’s 15, and we go to this testing center and I walk her in there. Like I can’t stay. It’s only for people taking the test. So I go wait in the car and this is the first test that she’s ever taken. 15 years old. And I think a lot of people will be like, “That’s really irresponsible.” But I just think, you know, we have a limited amount of time. And so where’s your time going to go? And like as a parent… It’s obviously different depending on what state you live in. You may have requirements to test, so please follow the law. But in Michigan, we don’t have that and so we are just learning. We’re just learning. No tests, we’re going to learn. We’re learning alongside each other. We’re growing, just like our crops out in the field. We’re just growing. Anyway, so I’m sitting in the car waiting and she walks out with this piece of paper. She passed. Her first ever test. She’s 15 years old, a certified personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. And I texted the man who ran her course and he said, “I just hope my daughters turn out like her someday.” You know, he’s so impressed. And I thought, you know, those are the things that you can’t ever predict. When she was littler, I was like, she can’t spell, you know, this is going south. It’s not working, but you just have to give it time. And that’s just how life is.

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Amy Fewell Going back to what you’re saying about testing, it was her first test. I am convinced, you know, because we’ve done this… So I have a 16 year old and we have a three month old. You know, we have such a huge span in between kids. And with our first child, we tried to do everything by the books, right? We tried to do the checklist and it was torture for him and it was torture for me. And I really began to realize like, I think that testing all the time sets kids up for failure because it teaches them to fear testing, right? And so one of the things that you probably did well was not testing her all the time because she didn’t go in with that fear. You know that overbearing fear like, oh, I’m going to fail, you know, because when we think that, ultimately we could, just because we think we’re going to fail. And so I think that’s amazing. Kids get the opportunity in homeschooling to do what they want to do. You know, there’s no reason that a 14 or 15-year-old can’t take college type courses if that’s what they want to do, and it gives them that opportunity. One of the overall things I hear in your message is just bringing it all back home. You know, you’re homeschooling, and you said you were home-birthing, you’re starting to homestead, you’re doing all these things, and that is really the mission of Homesteaders of America—is bringing it all back home. I was speaking with a friend yesterday and how society in America used to be a family-based society. The church used to be a family-based society. When I say family, I don’t just mean one singular, you know, like the Fewells, but family. We were a community. We all were like minded. We did things together and at home. My wish, my hope is that as we see this homesteading movement—this not succumbing to AI, not succumbing to the screen time, but being outside and teaching our kids these things and ourselves these things—it’s that we’re going to start seeing a shift in the culture of society. Like we can shift the boat back to where it’s supposed to be going and it’s because of people like Ginny who are teaching you guys, like, “Hey, this is the health benefits. These are the mental benefits. These are the things…” And you write books with information, and you do your podcast, which is also really incredible, and you have so many cool people on there. And so that’s just my desire to see, when we do podcast interviews like this to encourage our audiences, you know, it’s time to shift that culture back because we believe… In order for America or any country to be sustained, it’s the backbone of the family. It’s bringing it all back home and turning the hearts back—of the children to the father and the father to the children, right? And so I love what you’re doing. I think it’s incredible. You guys can check out all of her information below. There’s so many things that we couldn’t even go over in a podcast, but I do want you to speak to our people about your books real quick because you have two books, right?

Ginny Yurich Yes, I actually have a lot of books because some are self-published and Amy, I have three books that all have the same name—1000 Hours Outside. I think that is so funny. You know, like I was a math teacher. So this is not my forte and I also think this is the world that we’re sending our kids into. Like they may have to pivot and learn new things and what better way for them to be prepared for that, you know, is there than spending time outside. You’re constantly pivoting or, you know, you’re living life alongside your kids, and they’re seeing you learn how to craft a life. I think it’s so valuable. That modeling piece is so valuable. So I have these three books that are called 1000 Hours Outside. Those are like activity books. They’re pretty cool, but your homesteaders might not need them. You know, they’re figuring out what to do on their own. So my two newest books are… One is just called Homeschooling. That’s the one that came out in May, so I just love that that’s the title. It wasn’t taken yet. Homeschooling. The subtitle is You’re Doing It Right Just by Doing It, which is what I firmly believe, and it is about all the things that you’re doing right, often that society would say that you’re doing wrong. Like, you know, there’s a lot of space and time for being bored and that is a critical component of childhood. It’s a critical component of setting a kid up for being someone who can flex and pivot and come up with their own ideas and be imaginative. But someone might look at that and say, “Look, you’re not teaching them for seven hours a day? You’re not standing in front of them, you know, with a chalkboard? You’re doing it wrong.” But I believe that that’s actually the right way and especially in this day and age. The second book is called Until the Streetlights Come On, which is what kids used to say when they were growing up in earlier generations that they had freedom, that they would just play outside, and that they knew by the cycle of the day and that change in the light that when the streetlights came on and it started to get dusk, that was when they had to go back inside. The parents didn’t know where their kids were. They were just out and they had a lot of freedom and that helps your today. So Until the Streetlights Come On, is a book about how play helps your today, it’s going to help your today be better. Like your kids are going to become more imaginative and you’re going to have a little bit more space in your life, but also about how that prepares them for a rapidly changing tomorrow. And I love what you brought up about home earlier because there’s a man named Rory Groves who wrote this really cool book. It’s called Durable Trades, and I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot in the last year. I read his book, and he talks about how there was this change in the Industrial Revolution to Individualism. Everyone’s going to go off to the factory, they’re going to make their money, they’re going to come back. But he’s talking about how, like you said, this base of family, and that where does the kicking the kid out of the nest… Like is that biblical? Does that really make sense? Our kids are starting over from scratch as soon as they hit 18. Can we do it a different way? And I think when we look at play and space and time and imagination, and also what we’re doing as a family, especially as homesteaders, there are often ways to expand that and include our kids and the talents that God has given them. So this is about, you know, a good today, but it’s also about preparation for tomorrow because play is allowing kids to become the type of person that could possibly handle seven career changes. That’s what they say. The average kid today will have seven career changes, not just jobs. Seven career changes. So the play is contributing to that flexibility of mind and the social skills that they’re going to need to have a bunch of different bosses or their own boss, and how do I become an entrepreneur type thing? So that’s what that one’s about.

Amy Fewell That’s awesome. You know, you bring up so many more things we could talk about. You know, one of the things you were talking about, should we kick our kids out as soon as they turn 18? And I love the conversation about the Industrial Revolution. It’s one of my favorite conversations to have with people because it ruined the family. A lot of people will say, “It’s when women left the home that you saw the family unit falling.” No. It started with the Industrial Revolution when men left the home, and people don’t realize that. Like sure, men had odd and end jobs. They left the farm or the home to go do things, sure, but the Industrial Revolution really took men away from the home. You know, they were working eight plus hours a day and they weren’t providing for their family in a physical way, just a monetary way now. And so that’s a really interesting conversation that I love to have, but the next thing is that homesteading kind of repairs that, right? We’re looking for that restoration in the family where we can do exactly what you just did with your 14-year-old. She wanted to learn this. You provided that opportunity for her. Now she’s already head of the game, you know, and it’s like that with our kids too. So many of us talk about this: let’s buy more land so we can have generational homes on our properties. And one thing that has really lacked over the last few generations is just generational wealth. You know, not riches, but generational wealth—like teaching our kids and setting them up for success. Not necessarily entitlement. Like there’s a balance. You don’t want to entitle your children, but you do want to set them up for generational wealth to inherit something. And inherently, that causes a more wealthy environment. A nation. A community. And so those are all things that bringing it all back home does. And, you know, when you were talking about the streetlights, I immediately had nostalgia to when I was a kid because I grew up in townhouses. So when you live in a townhouse, way back when I was a kid, you always had friends. There were always kids outside playing and that is one of the things that my mom would say, you know, “When it starts getting dark, it’s time to come home.” And do you ever think back to the differences? Like our world is so different now. It’s almost like how do we let our kids just… You know, especially if you’re in a city. Like how do you let your kids just go outside and play? You know, is it safe? So maybe speak to that real quick and then I’ll let you go for real.

Ginny Yurich I love that you said that because when it starts getting dark, there was this paying attention, you know, paying attention to the way the light changes throughout the day, which we don’t have anymore. We’re disconnected. But you bring up a good point. This is actually a question a lot of people ask: they ask about where you live. So what if I live in the city? What if I live in a suburb? What if I live in the country? And then some people are like, “Well, I live in an apartment in the suburbs.” So obviously, there’s a lot of mix and match that can happen there. But, you know, this is where God has you and each place has its pros and cons. So if you live in the city, there’s a man named Dan Beuttner who talks about blue zones, about these places in the world where people live to be into their hundreds. They’re centenarians. Like what are the common threads between these centenarians? So one of them is keeping a Sabbath. It’s really interesting to learn about. But he would say that the most important thing that you could do if you’re looking to live into your hundreds is to live in a walkable city. So he’s actually putting the city as sort of this North Star because you’re just going to walk more and you’re out and you’re walking. So you may be out with your kids taking them to the corner park or walking with them to go get your groceries, but that’s really good for all of you. And I think that is a big change that’s occurred in the last couple decades, is that the mom or the dad is often with the child. And at some level, that seems like a total pain. I used to be jealous of the moms that were like from the 90s and they just shut the door and the kids were outside and they’re like, “Come back later.” You know, I don’t know where you are, but I’ve got this innate trust that you’re going to be fine. I trust you and you’re gonna come back. But in this day and age, like you mentioned at the very beginning, we are all inundated with screens. So the fact that in some cases we have to set up the plans or we have to call the friend over or we have to invite a couple families to get together to meet up at the park or we have to walk with our kid in the city, I think that’s really good for the adults as well. The adults need it more than they probably did in the 90s because of the screen culture and how our work follows us everywhere. So if you live in the city, I mean at some point your kid is going to be old enough though to navigate that city. There’s a book by Lenore Skenazy called Free-Range Kids. It’s the funniest, most entertaining parenting book that exists, in my opinion. I mean, I spit laughed through the whole thing. But she sent her kid on the subway at age 9 and he was in New York. So, you know at a certain age and especially if they’ve got friends that they can run around with, possibly they can go do those things. If you live in the suburbs, now you don’t have the walkable city. So there’s pros and cons, but there might be a lot of neighborhood kids and that’s a great thing too. And you might have to do some things to try and entice those kids to come out, but you got the neighborhood kids. And if you live in the country, that’s kind of what people idealize, right Amy? It’s like, “Oh you live in the country. You’ve got an acre or three acres. You’ve got these animals.” But there’s usually no friends and friends are a big part of enticing kids outside. They want to play with other kids. So there’s pros and cons to all of it, and I think you have to kind of figure out how to manage your own personal situation. And I guess be grateful for the parts that work and then put in a little effort for the parts that are a little bit harder knowing that there’s a generational impact here and it helps the entire family if you put in the effort.

Amy Fewell Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. All right, Ginny. I’m so happy to have you today. I think we could probably get into a ton of different topics, you and I, but I always give everyone the opportunity at the end of the podcast—if there is something burning inside of you that you want to share or say to our audience, now is the time to share exactly that.

Ginny Yurich Aw, well, I do want to say that my favorite line of the whole podcast was when you said, “Industrialization is one of my favorite conversations to have with people.” It’s like can you ever have imagined? Could you ever have imagined that at some point down the line, I’m going to say this thing that tens of thousands of people are going to hear and it’s this. Industrialization. You know, I just believe that God has a beautiful plan for you and for your family, and I think home is where it’s at. Family is our first community and I believe that it is the weaknesses where God’s power shines through and then you can say, “It’s God.” People, they will probably say the same thing to you like, “How is it so successful? You know, you run this Homesteaders of America? Everybody gets together and it’s like 72,000 people and it sells out in a half a day.” And you’re like, “You know, that’s God’s hand.” I think we would all say that, right? It’s God’s hand because it’s like, well I didn’t do anything amazing. I’m not super outdoorsy. You know, I like to play the piano and read Nancy Drew books. Like that’s how I grew up. And so you look back and you see it’s God’s hand. And so I think if you’re in a spot where you want to make changes in your life, whether that’s moving into more of a homesteading lifestyle or you just need encouragement to stick with it or move more into homesteading or change your schedule, if your kids are in school and you’re going to be like, “Well, we’re spending the afternoons outside. And we’re not going to do the homework they give us, and we’re going to really invest in the life we want,” I think you just have to trust that God is going to bless that and he blesses the work of our hands and it’s going to turn out beyond what you could have ever asked or imagined.

Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s faith, right? You know, that’s the definition of faith. So, awesome. Ginny, I love talking to you. I’m so happy you came on the podcast today and, you guys, you can check out all the information we talked about. All Ginny’s information, anything that we mentioned are in the show notes below, whether you’re watching on YouTube or on a podcast platform. So we thank you guys for listening and we love you guys, and don’t forget, 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.