Backyard Climate Activism

Stephanie Seferian (0:00)

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1800gotjunk.com Well, hello there, my friends, and welcome back. My name is Stephanie Seferian, and you're listening to episode 607 of Sustainable Minimalists. This is a listener-supported show about intentional and eco-friendly minimalist living. And on today's show, we are discussing the ways in which simple, rewarding, daily habits can turn your home into a force for good. They can also bring you lots of joy.

Now, my guest today, she considers herself a homesteader, but that wasn't a conscious choice. She fell into homesteading by accident, and through that transition into homesteading, my guest discovered that some of the most powerful climate solutions are not happening in boardrooms, they're not happening at the capital.

Those most powerful actions start right in our homes through simple and intentional daily habits. So today, we're exploring how dipping your toes in self-sufficient or homesteading habits can evolve into a way of life that actually reclaims the word activist. Because of course, you can be an activist in your own backyard. So whether you're managing a full on garden and growing 100% of your food, or whether you're experimenting with composting, or maybe you're just trying to leave a smaller footprint on the world, we're offering you tangible ways to again, be a climate activist at home. My guest today is Devon Ballard-Hudson. She's an author with a new book coming out very soon. It is titled Backyard Climate Activist, Healing the Planet from Home. Devon, really excited to have this conversation with you today. How are you?

Devon Ballard-Hudson (2:59)

Wow. I am so good. This is my first podcast where I'm talking about my book. So I could not be better.

Stephanie Seferian (3:09)

Yes. I want to talk about your book, but I want to first get to know you a little bit. Who are you? What do you do? How did you become a backyard climate activist? Tell me everything I need to know.

Yeah.

Devon Ballard-Hudson (3:20)

So I'm Devon Ballard-Hudson. I live in Southern Indiana, just across the river from Louisville, Kentucky. So pretty much we're known for bourbon and horses, but just on the Indiana side of the river, I'm a rider, I am a small business owner, and as you said, a backyard climate activist. I stumbled into this lifestyle by accident. So I always feel like I had some connection to nature, especially growing up. My parents have 80 acres in a pretty rural area, so I spent a lot of my childhood playing in the woods behind the house, fishing through the creek, just looking for rocks and things. And as modern life does, it pulls you away from that natural connection that we have with nature. And in 2018-ish, I started with a small little patio garden at my house, but then the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and I feel like that's a time where all of us re-evaluated our lives, and we're like, we've got some extra free time on our hands, we're at home.

And one important thing that happened for me is, I couldn't go to the gym anymore, I couldn't go to my yoga classes, and so I started hiking, and getting outside in all weather to hike that year, that first year of the pandemic was really transformative for me. It was my rewilding journey, and then simultaneously I had all this free time, so I wasn't calling it homesteading, but I was expanding my garden, and I was getting chickens, and learning to ferment, and so it was just this evolution to where then my corporate job that I was doing at the time felt less and less aligned with who I really was. And so that's where I just took the plunge at a certain point and said, I'm going to go all in on my writing, my fermentation business, and I figured out my parachute on the way down.