Episode #30 of The Coop is for anyone standing at the edge of a bigger life … and wondering if they have to leap overnight.
Homestead Living Editor-in-Chief Anna Sakawsky sat down with Jason Contreras (Homestead Living contributor and the voice behind Sow the Land) to talk about the long road from a standard modern life outside Los Angeles to a working homestead in North Carolina.
Jason shares how a Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis at 30 started the questioning … and how the last thing his oncologist said after chemo (“go back to your normal life”) is what made him and his wife refuse to. They didn’t sell everything the next week. They grew one tomato. Then they canned. Then they hosted a food swap. Then they sold the kitchen table. Six years later, they moved.
In this episode, Anna and Jason discuss:
What life looked like before the diagnosis: 17 years at a drafting desk, fashion-industry hours, two cars, four bedrooms they didn’t use
How “go back to your normal life” became the turning point
Starting with one backyard tomato, and why you can’t go back to the store-bought kind
Homesteading in the city: raised beds, pickles, tomato sauce, living with one car, and a no-money food swap at the park
Why the move took six years (2016), not six months
Learning to process chickens at Primal Pastures before they owned land
Trading a day of weeding for a CSA box to learn a new climate
Treating 1.5 acres like a college course to find out if they even liked the work
YouTube’s first year: about $80, and why the skills came first
What he’s most proud of: a family that harvests and cooks together, and a daughter who doesn’t remember the old life
Why you have to dare yourself to fail, because the next vision is better than the first
Whether you’re still in a backyard, still in a job you’re questioning, or already on the land and wondering if you started too fast, this conversation is proof that the leap can be slow, deliberate, and still count.
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