A mum swapped city life for a rural farm and now forages food, has homegrown supplies to last six months and sells alpaca poo.
Karee Upendo, 35, and her husband, Avery, 35, decided to move to a homestead when they found themselves working 12-hour days and felt they didn’t have enough time for their kids.
The couple realised they were happiest when on an adventure – on a farming tour or travelling – so decided to look for an "escape" in the woods.
Karee found a six-acre property, and sold their $195k seven-bedroom house in Racine, Wisconsin, US – moving 800 miles to Hampton, Georgia, US.
Now the couple and their children – Alex, 16, Aven, nine, Asher, four, and Solea, nine months – forage Chanterelle mushrooms, beauty berries, and peppers on their land to make meals such as mushroom pizza and dandelion soup.
They grow over 80 different edible wild plants and vegetables and barter with local farmers for their meat – swapping their excess edible wild grown food.
Karee says she is at her “happiest” since leaving their busy lifestyle behind and moving to the farm.
Karee, who owns the homesteading farm with Avery, said: “We’re pretty much self-sustainable.
“We have three to six months of preserves.
“I felt like I was losing my mind before.
“I was never as happy as I am right now.
"If the apocalypse happened, we could sustain ourselves off our land alone.
"We've tapped our own well for water, have solar electricity and have created a permaculture food forest."
The family sell their alpaca poo to gardeners and horticulturist all over the globe to make a living.
Karee said: "Our alpacas bring in a large portion of our income. Their fibre and poop is a gold mind.
"We sell 'magic beans' to gardeners and horticulturist worldwide. We sell s**t for a living."
Karee said her late grandmother, Mae, 69, taught her about foraging from a young age.
After meeting Avery, the pair started raising their family in Racine, Wisconsin, and worked long days – Karee as an educator and her husband as a handyman.
Karee said: “We were working 12 hours day and so tired at the weekends.
“We had everything we say you should want but we were completely unhappy.”
The couple decided to “sell everything” they owned for a slower pace of life on a homestead.
Karee said: “We were always trying to escape life. We wanted to make life the escape.”
They moved onto their new land June 2021 – which had a cabin which needed “a lot of work”.
Karee said: “There was mould throughout.
“We started working on the homestead. We wanted to make the money from the homestead.”
By October 2021 Karee and Avery had built two cabins on their land for guests to stay in – and now run foraging workshops.
The pair also grow vegetables such as peppers and tomatoes - and even harvest the oil from beauty berry leaves to make their own mosquito repellent.
They keep 180,000 bees on a one-acre bee apiary and make their own honey and keep chickens to fertilise the land and provide them with eggs.
Karee said: “Growing up I didn’t see black people represented in the farming industry.
“People say they have never seen a black woman beekeeper or farmer – I get that message most days.”
Karee makes her meals from mostly foraged foods from her land – or local produce – and challenges herself to cook dinner from 50 per cent foraged food on a Sunday.
She said: “Every Sunday we have a forage, catch or harvest challenge for the family, which means 50 per cent of the meal has to be one of those three.
"It’s a food forest.”
She makes mushroom pizza – from homegrown Chanterelles and peppers – and mushroom ravioli.
Karee uses canning to preserve their food – and stocks of three to six months in her pantry.
The family also use wildflowers for herbal medicine – and don’t use any modern medicines apart from cough drops.
Karee said: “We don’t buy medication.
“We eat dandelion soup.”
Karee even uses pine needles and lemons to make an anti-viral for cleaning.
Karee said: “We have an almost no waste farm, old food and scraps get composted for new soil or made into animal feed.
"We repurpose all materials to build our animals enclosures.
We’re living in a utopia.
“It’s a feeling of unity.
“I couldn’t have imagined this life for me and my family in my dreams.”
Karee Upendo, 35, and her husband, Avery, 35, decided to move to a homestead when they found themselves working 12-hour days and felt they didn’t have enough time for their kids.
The couple realised they were happiest when on an adventure – on a farming tour or travelling – so decided to look for an "escape" in the woods.
Karee found a six-acre property, and sold their $195k seven-bedroom house in Racine, Wisconsin, US – moving 800 miles to Hampton, Georgia, US.
Now the couple and their children – Alex, 16, Aven, nine, Asher, four, and Solea, nine months – forage Chanterelle mushrooms, beauty berries, and peppers on their land to make meals such as mushroom pizza and dandelion soup.
They grow over 80 different edible wild plants and vegetables and barter with local farmers for their meat – swapping their excess edible wild grown food.
Karee says she is at her “happiest” since leaving their busy lifestyle behind and moving to the farm.
Karee, who owns the homesteading farm with Avery, said: “We’re pretty much self-sustainable.
“We have three to six months of preserves.
“I felt like I was losing my mind before.
“I was never as happy as I am right now.
"If the apocalypse happened, we could sustain ourselves off our land alone.
"We've tapped our own well for water, have solar electricity and have created a permaculture food forest."
The family sell their alpaca poo to gardeners and horticulturist all over the globe to make a living.
Karee said: "Our alpacas bring in a large portion of our income. Their fibre and poop is a gold mind.
"We sell 'magic beans' to gardeners and horticulturist worldwide. We sell s**t for a living."
Karee said her late grandmother, Mae, 69, taught her about foraging from a young age.
After meeting Avery, the pair started raising their family in Racine, Wisconsin, and worked long days – Karee as an educator and her husband as a handyman.
Karee said: “We were working 12 hours day and so tired at the weekends.
“We had everything we say you should want but we were completely unhappy.”
The couple decided to “sell everything” they owned for a slower pace of life on a homestead.
Karee said: “We were always trying to escape life. We wanted to make life the escape.”
They moved onto their new land June 2021 – which had a cabin which needed “a lot of work”.
Karee said: “There was mould throughout.
“We started working on the homestead. We wanted to make the money from the homestead.”
By October 2021 Karee and Avery had built two cabins on their land for guests to stay in – and now run foraging workshops.
The pair also grow vegetables such as peppers and tomatoes - and even harvest the oil from beauty berry leaves to make their own mosquito repellent.
They keep 180,000 bees on a one-acre bee apiary and make their own honey and keep chickens to fertilise the land and provide them with eggs.
Karee said: “Growing up I didn’t see black people represented in the farming industry.
“People say they have never seen a black woman beekeeper or farmer – I get that message most days.”
Karee makes her meals from mostly foraged foods from her land – or local produce – and challenges herself to cook dinner from 50 per cent foraged food on a Sunday.
She said: “Every Sunday we have a forage, catch or harvest challenge for the family, which means 50 per cent of the meal has to be one of those three.
"It’s a food forest.”
She makes mushroom pizza – from homegrown Chanterelles and peppers – and mushroom ravioli.
Karee uses canning to preserve their food – and stocks of three to six months in her pantry.
The family also use wildflowers for herbal medicine – and don’t use any modern medicines apart from cough drops.
Karee said: “We don’t buy medication.
“We eat dandelion soup.”
Karee even uses pine needles and lemons to make an anti-viral for cleaning.
Karee said: “We have an almost no waste farm, old food and scraps get composted for new soil or made into animal feed.
"We repurpose all materials to build our animals enclosures.
We’re living in a utopia.
“It’s a feeling of unity.
“I couldn’t have imagined this life for me and my family in my dreams.”
Category
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FunTranscript
00:00 For dessert I wanted to do a hive check on my bees so I told my husband lets go outside
00:03 with a little plate and get some fresh honey and comb and bring it in because I had some
00:07 leftover rustic bread that I made into baguettes and I made some really cool desserts.
00:13 You can try a piece of comb.
00:15 You just chew it all the way until it makes a wax in your mouth and you throw it away.
00:25 You keep chewing it until it makes a wax.
00:29 It's so sweet right?
00:31 Asher come take a piece.
00:33 Try a little piece and bite it and chew it until it gets into a wax.
00:40 For dessert I went and got some fresh rosemary and I mixed it with goat cheese and then I
00:44 used some fresh honey from our bees with walnuts and then I made another different variation
00:48 with the tomatoes and fresh mozzarella with balsamic vinaigrette and basil as well as
00:53 cream cheese and fruit.
00:54 And for me to have not been walking in the last 16 weeks today was amazing.
00:59 Raviolis yes.
01:04 Ok we're making raviolis today.
01:06 You want to start with 5 cups of flour then make a well in the center.
01:11 5 large eggs, a half cup of water and 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
01:15 Beat it in a bowl and then you're going to pour that mixture right in the middle of your
01:18 well.
01:19 5 of these.
01:25 Five of those?
01:26 Ok 5 cups of flour.
01:27 And a half cup of water.
01:28 Ok.
01:29 I'm trying to put this yogurt stuff thing inside.
01:33 It's olive oil.
01:34 To pour this in the middle and we're going to make our ravioli dough.
01:37 It's going to get in the table.
01:40 Ok get it grab it grab it grab it.
01:43 No I'm not grabbing it.
01:45 I'm kneading it.
01:46 Let's fold it.
01:47 Here let's fold it.
01:48 Let's fold it and then push.
01:49 Push.
01:50 Push.
01:51 Push.
01:52 Oh.
01:53 Oh.
01:54 Oh.
01:55 Ricotta cheese.
01:56 They were sitting there the whole time.
01:57 How long?
01:58 Well maybe they just laid down over there?
01:59 First I want you to roll the dough until it's a quarter inch thick.
02:11 So you want to do your bowl a little like an inch apart.
02:15 Yep right there.
02:16 And then you just fold it over and then start crimping the sides like this.
02:21 So that they all look like that.
02:23 Magnolia flowers are in abundance in the woods right now so I grabbed a broken stem and got
02:27 some flowers home to prepare them.
02:29 I took the stem out because it can be bitter.
02:31 Rinsed the petals off and rolled them up and sliced them up cabbage style and prepared
02:35 them with some sliced cabbage slaw, carrots, some apple cider vinegar, and some sea salt.
02:39 The flower slaw was made to go on top of the spicy shrimp tacos.
02:42 I made it alongside elote.
02:43 That's a cabbage slaw.
02:44 Some rich crackers with a jalapeno popper dip and then I also made some homemade refried
02:50 black beans, some spicy rice, and homemade tortillas.
02:53 I make dinner homemade every day usually finding forest finds from our woods so if you'd like
02:57 to see more recipes and what I create for my family follow me for more.
03:00 If I told you this pizza was made from the woods would you believe me?
03:03 Yeah they big like this back there.
03:04 Most people wouldn't which is why we're here teaching foraging and farming.
03:07 We forage for food and I cook every day.
03:10 These are chanterelle mushrooms.
03:11 Some of the most prized and expensive used by Michelin chefs all over the world.
03:15 We live on a six acre food forest or pretty much a prima culture farm and what that means
03:19 is most of the things that we harvest don't take any cultivation from us.
03:22 In less than 30 minutes we picked over 3.8 pounds worth of mushrooms.
03:26 Today is Sunday and on Sundays I like to make really large comfort meals so I'm going to
03:30 make a really large cheesy yummy mushroom pizza.
03:33 I was taken out of the home at 7 and I aged it at kinship care at 16 and being a homeless
03:37 teen parent I know what it feels like to experience food insecurity and the reason I teach foraging
03:42 is because I don't think anybody in the entire fucking world should ever go to bed hungry
03:47 and I feel like if more people knew that there was food surrounding them that it would be
03:51 more accessible and there'd be less people going to bed hungry at night.
03:54 These berries are called beauty berries.
03:56 There's no mistake as to why they're called beauty berries but the genus is called Calicarpa
04:00 Americana.
04:01 Let's talk about the taste profile.
04:02 Eat them raw they're not very palatable.
04:04 You don't want them to taste sour.
04:06 Put them both.
04:07 Good job Asher.
04:08 Can I try one?
04:09 Yes you can try one.
04:10 Don't wipe them.
04:11 As you can see my son Asher was very young there and he's been picking these berries
04:20 since he's been old enough to stand and he does not really like them raw but cooked they
04:24 make delicious jam, wine, jellies and one of our favorite recipes that we actually make
04:29 here on the farm.
04:30 It's actually one of our biggest sellers here and we make beauty berry jam.
04:33 I want you guys to look around your neighborhoods and yards to see if you see any beauty berries
04:36 where you are because beauty berries are blooming between August and October.
04:40 Just be certain they haven't been sprayed with pesticide.
04:42 We made this recipe here for our farm and it's one of our customers favorite.
04:46 One thing that most don't know about beauty berries is that their leaves are just as beneficial
04:49 as the berries if not more.
04:51 When crushed their leaves secrete an oil that's more beneficial than any repellent I've ever
04:55 experienced on the market.
04:56 Many of you have asked how we are not getting ate up by mosquitoes here on our farm and
05:00 this is our secret.
05:01 We make our own repellent salve and spray right here on the farm.
05:04 We have hundreds of beauty berry trees here on our farm and that is actually what protects
05:07 us from mosquitoes as well.
05:09 Gotta water the plants and fruit trees around the chicken coop.
05:11 It was a great egg day.
05:13 You want that from me baby?
05:21 Next we gotta let the pacas out of their enclosure.
05:24 As most of y'all know we are a rescue farm and his brother old man Chance recently passed
05:28 away and he will be getting three more brothers before the end of the year.
05:34 Next I gotta carry this heavy ass hay to the pasture.
05:37 Now I ain't gonna hold you.
05:38 I was ready to give up at this point but I'm a Gemini hoe and I don't give up.
05:41 This 110 degrees had me contemplating my life's choices.
05:44 This is my one acre bee apiary where I take care of over 180,000 bees and I was trying
05:48 to set my phone up because my son did not want to record me because he's scared of the
05:51 bees because he's 6'4 and we can't find no bee suit that can fit him.
05:54 All I'm doing is doing a thorough hive check because we had remnants of that hurricane
05:57 pass through and I just need to make sure there wasn't no water inside the hive.
06:01 One of the baby hives is ready for another hive box so all you see me doing is carrying
06:04 the hive box with 12 frames over to the new hive and gonna add another top portion to
06:09 the beehive.
06:10 As you can see my son was not about that life and he was gonna keep his distance baby.
06:13 Now that I've given the new colony more space to grow let's go package some eggs for the
06:16 farm stand.
06:17 And like I told y'all before yes I'm an extra ass bitch and yes we sell rainbow eggs and
06:20 no I do not dye the eggs myself.
06:22 I have different breeds of chicken that lay different colored eggs in different varieties
06:25 and I set them inside of a carton to make them look like a rainbow.
06:27 Different chicken breeds can lay a variety of colors from green, blue, dark brown, light
06:30 brown, pink to even dark purple and even chocolate colored.
06:33 Here I'm packaging homemade farm to table pizza kits.
06:36 Next I'm gonna grab some honey from our bees and then I'm also gonna grab some honey butter
06:39 lip balm that I made here on the farm right from our bees as well and these are a hit
06:43 at the farm stand.
06:44 I also got a few jars of pine soil cleaner that I made homemade from pines on our farm.
06:49 And I'm also gonna grab some magic beans which is alpaca poop our number one seller, our
06:52 alpaca fertilizer.
06:54 Yes we sell shit.
06:55 Packing the stroller up because I gotta get ready for this mile long hike up to the farm
06:58 stand.
06:59 Many of you asked why I don't have a golf cart and I do have a golf cart but it stopped
07:01 working and $700 for a mom with 4 children and 22 farm animals just isn't feasible right
07:06 now.
07:07 These boots was made for walking.
07:08 Bitch I'm a mother and mothers don't stop mothering okay.
07:11 It's honestly a blessing to walk because last year when I got diagnosed with that illness
07:14 in April and told I had 8 months to live I couldn't even walk baby so at this point I'm
07:17 happy as fuck.
07:18 I'm just a mom that lives in a cabin in the woods with 4 kids and 22 farm animals.
07:22 If you wanna watch me pack the farm stand and learn more about farming or even learn
07:25 how to identify wild edible plants in your backyard follow me for more.