when a Conversation Helps You Understand Your Own thoughts

I recently had the chance to sit down with Tracy Burnett for an interview on The Farming Impact Show, and I went into it thinking we would talk about the usual things I spend a lot of time thinking about — rural living, real estate, homesteading, money, why people are moving to the country and what The Wealthy Acre is becoming.

What I didn’t expect was to come out of the conversation understanding my own ideas a little better.

We talked about the seven principles I’ve created for The Wealthy Acre, and as I started explaining them to Tracy, I realized how personal they actually are to me. I don’t think I had really stopped and looked at them that way before.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what The Wealthy Acre is really about. Yes, it’s about rural living. It’s about owning land, growing food, learning useful skills, taking care of what you have and being financially strong. But during that conversation, I started thinking about why those particular things matter so much to me.

A lot of it goes much further back than moving to an acreage.

I grew up with very little, and I think that shaped my relationship with money more than I realized for a long time. As an adult, making money and creating financial security became incredibly important to me. I built a career, invested and worked hard because I never wanted to feel like I didn’t have choices because of money.

Then years later, we moved from the city to the country, and I started discovering another side of that same idea.

There were suddenly so many things I didn’t know how to do. Things that had simply never been part of my life before. Growing more of our own food, caring for animals, understanding the land, figuring out water, fencing, weather, equipment and all the other things that come with living on an acreage.

And I loved learning it. Not because I have some dream of never needing another person or never going to a grocery store again. That’s not realistic, and honestly, that’s not even what I want.

What I realized while talking to Tracy is that all of these things give me the same feeling that financial security gives me. They make me feel more capable. They give me options.

That’s when the seven principles started to look different to me.

Owning something real, building useful skills, growing what you can, protecting your peace, creating financial resilience, taking good care of your land and animals, and living with less dependence aren’t really seven separate ideas.

For me, they’re all connected by one thing: building a life where you have more choices.

And I think that’s why my definition of wealth has changed over the years.

I absolutely still think money matters. I’m never going to tell people that money isn’t important or that wanting to make a lot of it somehow makes you less authentic about living a simpler or more grounded life. I want both.

I want investments and financial security, but I also want a freezer and pantry full of food we produced. I want to know how to do things myself. I want to look after our animals well and leave our land better than we found it. I want to keep learning. I want a peaceful home. I want to know that if something changes tomorrow, I have more than one way forward.

To me, that’s abundance, and that’s really where The Wealthy Acre is going.

I don’t expect everyone to sell their house, buy an acreage, get chickens and start growing potatoes. That’s my life. It doesn’t have to be yours.

Maybe for someone else it starts with growing a little food, learning one skill they normally pay someone else to do, getting their finances in better shape or finally buying something that produces income instead of constantly consuming it.

I think we become less fragile one decision at a time.

That’s what I hope to encourage here. Not some impossible version of self-sufficiency, and definitely not the idea that we all need to go backwards. I want us to become more capable while still moving forward. I want us to build money and skills. Use technology and know how to grow food. Own assets and know our neighbours. Have ambition and still protect our peace.

I probably understood all of that before the interview in pieces. But I hadn’t put it together quite like this.

Sometimes you have to say something out loud to another person before you finally hear what you’ve been trying to say yourself.

That’s what happened in my conversation with Tracy.

And I think it gave me a much clearer understanding of what I want The Wealthy Acre to become — and, more importantly, why I want to build it in the first place.

“The goal isn’t complete self-sufficiency. It’s becoming capable enough that you’re not easily knocked over.”
— The Wealthy Acre