Off-Grid Living: Home Birthing & Homesteading

This week I am joined by Tara, the Maverick Mama, as she takes us through her transition to an off-grid lifestyle in the Northern Arizona countryside. Imagine uprooting your suburban life for 20 acres of desert, facing harsh weather conditions, the fickleness of solar power, and strengthening your resilience when repairs are a matter of survival. Tara's story follows a personal health crisis that fundamentally reshaped her family's story and their pursuit of quiet away from the noise and turbulence of the city.

In the second half of this episode, we talk about stepping away from the medical field to pioneer her own birth method called "Biblical Birth", that combines hypnobirthing with scripture. This former medical professional, now a childbirth educator, shares her personal departure from the conventional medical field to pursue a more authentic birthing experience. Through her lens, we talk about faith and the innate human experience of suffering, discussing how adversity can be the basis of growing our character and how a belief in a good God can illuminate the darkest of our trials. 

Join us for a story of personal evolution, where life's struggles are met with steadfast hope and the courage to redefine the status quo.

Chapters

• 0:05 Off-Grid Living
• 18:47 Natural Birth and Biblical Birthing Method
• 28:46 The Power of Faith in Suffering

Transcript

Cicily: 0:05

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Creative Mountain Mama podcast. Today I am joined by Tara at the Maverick Mama. She is living her off-grid life in the Arizona Noruegan countryside. She talks about homeschooling, she has a company called Biblical Birth and a little bit about homesteading as well. Thank you for joining me, tara. Thanks for having me. We are live in your gardens.

Tara: 0:37

Oh well, today was a fun morning. I was kind of afraid I wasn't going to make my meeting because we are off grid and yesterday it was so cloudy that we have a full solar system here and all of our power is solar generated, unless there's really bad weather or an emergency or something and we run our generator. But the generator would not run yesterday and it has broken down and so this morning I haven't even had coffee. We were totally out of power and I had to be careful. I didn't even think I could do my hair this morning before the interview and maybe the internet might go out. So I'm just so grateful that I had enough power to make it through the day.

Cicily: 1:28

What kind of generator are you guys running?

Tara: 1:32

Oh gosh, I honestly can't even tell you that's totally my husband's.

Cicily: 1:41

Honey, what is it?

Tara: 1:43

He's been trying to fix it for like two days, but that is one skill that you definitely want to have when you move off grid is how to fix things, because you know you're the only person that you have to be able to do that. So, yeah, he's thankfully very mechanical and I'm sure he'll figure it out today, but it was just such horrible weather yesterday he couldn't be out there for too long.

Cicily: 2:09

So yeah, that is, off-grid living. In a nutshell, can you tell me a little bit about how you guys made that move and how you got started? What was that transition like?

Tara: 2:30

got started. What was that transition like? Oh yeah, um, it was a lot started when, um, I got really sick two years after having my last baby, my fourth baby, um, and nobody to this day really knows what caused it or what happened. Um, but I just got really really sick. I was, I was still had like all the baby weight after my last pregnancy and I think it was like 215 or so pounds, and I was so sick that I lost 60 pounds within about three to four months and that's just really really fast. And it was because I couldn't eat anything. Anytime I would eat, I would have stomach cramps that were just horrible pain and running to the bathroom and vomiting and all this stuff, and even was bedridden for about a month where I was just in constant pain.

Tara: 3:27

And so I feel like it was definitely when God woke me up and we had been kind of slipping into some bad habits of just, I guess, a typical suburban life where my husband would work nine to five and he'd be gone most of the day and I was home with the kids. We've always homeschooled, so they've always been home with me, but you know you are so pressured to keep your schedule busy, busy, busy. So we were busy all the time. We had crazy things happening to us in our neighborhood happening to us in our neighborhood, like one day we woke up and SWAT team was in our backyard saying that there was a horrible criminal in the house behind us that they were going after and we all needed to get down in case there was shooting and stuff. And I was struggling with anxiety and um and bad eating habits. I think I was just really starting to eat a lot of processed food and junk food and sugar and you know, kind of the typical mom diet, when you have a bunch of littles and you're just trying to survive, drinking lots and lots of coffee and my body, I think, just freaked out. You know it just started rejecting everything. My hormones were out of whack and it was forcing me to fast, you know, and lose all this weight and really detox, I think, my body. And that was really when I, when we, woke up and we're thinking, you know, woke up and we're thinking, you know, what are we doing here? You know, I feel like I felt like life was just flying by, but we were so busy and caught up in so many other things, you know, watching TV every evening and stuff and missing out on so many amazing experiences. So we decided, when the pandemic hit, my husband's job went online and I work all online that we didn't have to be there anymore. So we just started talking like what, if we move, let's get out of here. We've always liked the idea of homesteading and being out rural somewhere. So we thought, well, now's our chance, you know, let's do it. And we did. We actually bought a motor home and we lived in the motor home for one year while traveling around the US trying to find where we would want to buy land and homestead. We're from Phoenix, so we're a little tired of the desert biome and what was funny is we ended up back in the desert. So now we're here on 20 acres and our goal is.

Tara: 6:21

The main reason, I guess was because one thing I just felt spiritually led to do this. I you know, really, after being sick, the only thing that would help me in my painful moments while I was sick was singing and listening to praise and worship music and just really connecting to God through that time. My mom is an amazing praying mom, so I could feel like everyone that I knew was praying for me and she would come in my room and pray over me and stuff, and so that was a really big waking up time for me, spiritually too, and I felt led to be out, away from all the noise, and it was just. There's just so much noise in the city, not just the air conditioners of your neighbors and the airplanes always going overhead and the dogs barking or the cars driving by on the freeway you know all that noise but also just the TV constantly going, the neighbors talking to you all the time about scary things, or you know current events which lately have been a little crazy and scary, and it's just, you know, things that always make you that will encourage fear, and we had to get away from that.

Tara: 7:52

We felt like we just really needed more peace, and so the place to do that, we felt, was out in nature, and it really has been. I mean, it's been amazing. We absolutely love it. We love being out in the elements and in the sun, and even though the desert has some crazy weather it has very extreme weather weather but it's so cool and just so awe-inspiring.

Tara: 8:30

And you know I heard this somebody else say the other day about how we are really creatures made to worship and I really feel that now that I'm in nature, because I catch myself all the time being like, oh, wow, look at that, that's amazing, that's so beautiful, wow, I can't believe you made that, god. That's. That's incredible, you know. And the fact that the God who made all of this also knows me, you know and loves me and has a personal relationship with me, and that's just so incredible. So it's been hugely beneficial on many levels spiritually, physically, I'm the most fit and active I've ever been Digging in the garden, you know, building things all the time, chasing animals. We have rabbits that constantly get out, so we're chasing rabbits and catching them all the time. I'm getting fit now carrying feed bags. So, yeah, it's been awesome on a lot of different levels.

Cicily: 9:41

Can you walk me through a little bit of your infrastructure there?

Tara: 9:45

Yeah, so actually this property was my parents' property before and they bought it about and that's why we ended up coming back to Arizona, because they were wanting to get rid of it, and it's 22 acres and me and my dad built the cabin that's here when and we started when I was about 12 years old and we would come up every weekend from Phoenix, which is like a three and a half hour drive.

Tara: 10:16

Each weekend We'd come up. It was before they built a home Depot up here, so we would have to carry on, haul all of our um equipment and all of the materials and everything and we would work a little bit each three-day weekend he had and then head back to Phoenix for the week. And we did this for seven years until I was graduating high school. And then something really tragic happened when I graduated high school that same year, a really good friend of my dad's who lived up here never smoked a day in his life but he came down with lung cancer and he was coming down to our house in Phoenix to get treatments and so we were very close and we were watching the whole thing really closely with them and he ended up passing away and I think it just took all the wind out of my dad's sails and he abandoned the property and the cabin was about 90% done, but at that point the rats took it over.

Tara: 11:24

And so it was rat infested and just a huge amount of damage that was done to the cabin. And at first I kept telling them no, no, no, I do not want to take on that project. But that's what we do. That's what we did in Phoenix before it was fix and flip houses. That's what we do. That's what we did in Phoenix before it was fix and flip houses. And so eventually we decided, you know, it'll be a good, good place to start.

Tara: 11:55

Our plan was always to fix and flip it and then sell it, and then we will move to the land that we wanted to go homestead on.

Tara: 12:04

But now that we're here, we're really starting to fall in love with it and I think we're going to end up staying here. But so when we got here, the cabin had to be totally stripped of everything, all the way down to the studs, you know and then redone, and we've been working on that. And then we also built a chicken coop and we built a greenhouse and a garden area. We're about to build an even bigger garden area, because now we realize this is way too small for us and we've also built some tiny cabin Airbnb rentals. So we've just been building, building building when you just have raw land that you can do whatever you want with. I mean, it's like the projects never stop, because you know you're always creating and being able to come up with some new project you want to work on. So it's been fun, we love it and that's what my family's always done. So thankfully, I already had experience in building and renovating things, so that was really helpful to know before we got out here.

Cicily: 13:16

What's your yield? Harvest wise, and then are you using the animals that you're raising as well?

Tara: 13:24

animals that you're raising as well. Yeah, we have for animals. We have ducks, turkeys and chickens and those three we raise them and then we'll also process them and we have them for meat. And I have determined that turkeys are my favorite for meat birds. They have the most meat and they grow the quickest and, um, for the ratio, for how much food they eat, you get the most meat out of a turkey, um, and they also are just kind of easier to care for. But, um, the chickens, we have a flock of gosh I don't even know because it's really hard to count chickens because they're always moving, but I think it's like 40 chickens and we love having fresh eggs. And then we'll have specific meat birds that we will process. And then we have rabbits. Those we don't eat Because they're just way too cute, but we use their poo For fertilizer For our gardens and stuff.

Tara: 14:37

And right now I have a greenhouse and you can see these four beds Behind me. They're four by eight foot and they were full last year, but I realized that it's not enough for me to have extra to can and preserve for the winter. So over this winter we've still had to go to the grocery store, but my goal is that we won't have to do that as much. I don't want to have to get most of my food from the grocery store. I want to be able to have most of my own food here. Of course, you know there's always little things you'll still have to go get.

Tara: 15:17

But so this spring we're planning on building another garden area that is going to be much, much larger.

Tara: 15:26

I think we measured it out to like 50 by 50 foot and it'll just be a giant in-ground garden area.

Tara: 15:35

But here, where we're at, our soil is only about six inches deep and then you hit a layer of caliche and that is just rock, um, like a sandstone rock, and you cannot get on, you can't get through it, like there's no digging a hole here. You have to, like, use a pickaxe and or a big heavy piece of equipment or something, because you just can't do that here because you just hit rock. So we're having to bring in a lot of dirt, some big loads of soil to put on top. So there's a lot of preparation and outside sources that you have to bring in to get started and outside sources that you have to bring in to get started, and that was one thing I didn't really factor in. I was really hoping that we would be able to use a lot of our natural resources here on the property, but just because of our location it's really really hard to do that. But if you're in a different area, though, you wouldn't, have to do that as much as we do.

Cicily: 16:50

Sure, do you have water access through a well or is there natural water nearby?

Tara: 16:54

We have a well, we have a solar well, and when my dad bought the property about 20 or so years ago, he had the well drilled at that point, but then, when we took it over, two years ago now, it had been struck by lightning, and, yeah, we have some crazy lightning and thunderstorms here. It's so cool, though, because we live in a valley and there's a ridge that goes around us on three sides and the thunder just ricochets off these ridges and it's amazing, it's so awe-inspiring. But you can really feel the power of God in these thunder brains and they're like oh please, you know, project us because it can get crazy. But, um, yeah, we, it got struck by lightning. So when we took it over, we had to redo it.

Tara: 18:02

We had to have the whole thing pulled and have a new well pump put in, but we have really great water, and it's definitely definitely the most important thing on the homestead. Without water, you know, none of this would be possible. Obviously so, but a lot of people in the area they will drill wells and never hit water, and ours is 220 foot deep where it hits water, and many people have to just haul water, and I can see that we would never be able to have a homestead if we had to haul water. So we're really blessed that we have that.

Cicily: 18:47

I do want to switch gears just a little bit. I know you talked about being a mama of four and I know you have this business Biblical Birth Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Tara: 19:00

Yeah, so that's my background actually is in the medical field and I started out just loving biology and anatomy and so I wanted to be a nurse and I moved to Texas, which is actually where I'm originally from, and was going to go to nursing school. I was in nursing school for a while and working at a hospital at the same time. It was like a program that the hospital had that will put you through nursing school and through that experience of working there I just really started to see a lot of things. I saw that while there were a lot of great people who work in that field and who really do truly care about people, the way that the medical system is set up and the rules that the hospitals have, they are not for really truly for caring for people, they're really for making money and it was all about the making money and that just really bothered me and I didn't want to be a part of that anymore. And I got pregnant with my first baby and I started thinking you know, I don't want a birth here, and so I looked into alternative methods and started learning about home birth and birth centers and natural birth, and I had worked at the on the OB floor and um, and just because of what I had seen, you know, it made me really interested in learning some other methods. So I started, uh, reading every book that I could find, and I wanted to have a home birth with my first baby, and I wanted to have a home birth with my first baby.

Tara: 20:54

I ended up transferring, though, to the hospital, because I thought, like I would just read all of these books and it would just come back to me during labor and I'd be able to use all these little techniques and tips that I had learned. But that's really not how it works. Things don't just come back to you, really, during labor, and because you just go to this different part of your mind, you know and it's just so instinctual and I wasn't really thinking logically during that time and that you know that's actually the ultimate goal is to not really be in that logical, rational mind, but instead you just go into this instinctual kind of part of your mind when you're giving birth, to let the body do what it needs to do on its own. And so I ended up transferring back to the hospital, because I wanted some pain relief and I went to the hospital that I actually worked at and because I worked there and I knew everyone and they knew me, things went really fine for me. I mean, it was a healthy mom, healthy baby. And I always say, of course that's the most important thing, but it's not the only important thing.

Tara: 22:07

And there were a lot of things that happened that I just really didn't feel satisfied with, like, for example here's a funny story my doctor who was attending the labor as my first baby was emerging, I had told them earlier I want to do delayed cord clamping and so don't clamp and cut the cord right away. Well, as the baby was crowning like right at that moment coming out, the most special moment you know, my doctor looks up at me and goes so why do you want to do delayed cord clamping again? And I'm just like I'm kind of busy right now. You need to just do what I say. You know, like this is my experience and I really had to advocate for myself. And then I thought, man, if anybody else had been in this, the knowledge and I had the rapport with these people to be able to do that. So then I thought, well, I got to teach moms, I need to become a childbirth educator so that I can help moms be prepared in case something like this were to happen for them, prepared in case something like this were to happen for them. And so I started working with a midwife and I was actually training to be a midwife myself and just absolutely loved birth and that became my passion.

Tara: 23:43

And then I learned about hypnobirthing. Hypnobirthing is a method that uses breathing and relaxation techniques and they teach you meditation practice and it's like a guided meditation that you listen to throughout pregnancy and then you use it during the labor, and I had an amazing experience with my second baby using hypnobirthing experience with my second baby using hypnobirthing. But the one thing about hypnobirthing is it's kind of either not spiritual at all, you could say, or it even kind of has a little bit of a new age bend to it, and so I didn't like that. My spirituality wasn't involved. So I started creating my own method and it was using relaxation and meditation techniques still, because, no matter what you do or believe, those are going to be really, really helpful during the birth.

Tara: 24:51

But also I added a lot of Bible references and the guided meditations are very spiritual. Like one of them, you're imagining yourself walking with Jesus, you know, and feeling his peace that he gives you and just stuff like that feeling his peace that he gives you and just stuff like that. And you know, the Bible says that we're to meditate on his word, and I think that there's a big difference between the meditation of the Bible and the meditation of new age, and the new age meditation is all about clearing your mind, and that's what hypnobirthing teaches too is clear your mind. You know, don't really think about anything. Well, the Bible is specific on that. You're to meditate on the word.

Tara: 25:43

So, it's not clearing the mind, because maybe a cleared mind could be vulnerable to, you know, evil things. So it's really important that you're not just clearing the mind but filling the mind with the right things. So my meditations are doing that. You're really meditating on the word and Bible verses and things like that so that I used myself on my fourth baby, my fourth baby's birth, and had a home birth this time. I finally got my home birth. My first was at the hospital and my second was at a birth center. Got my home birth. My first was at the hospital, my second was at a birth center. My third was at another hospital. But I really wanted to try them because I was teaching classes and stuff at the time. A lot of my students were saying this place was amazing. They were super, super supportive of natural birth and I had a midwife who was going to be there and they did a really, really great job for a hospital.

Tara: 26:51

And so my fourth was finally that home birth I always wanted and it was awesome and just an amazing experience I had. She was actually 10 pounds, 10 pounds nine ounces, and came in two and a half hours and I can honestly say I only had one moment of discomfort. I was so connected with God and I was listening to worship music, listening to my meditations, and there was one moment where the worship music had stopped and some people had arrived. I had a birth photographer and a doula as well at the birth, and so they were kind of distracting me a little bit and I wasn't being focused on it like I had been prior. And I remember just the fear crept in and I thought, oh gosh, this is, this is getting intense, you know, and I could feel the fear. And then I could feel myself, rationally, think like I remember the thought okay, this is it, this is your choice. Are you going to freak out with fear right now or are you going, gonna trust in him and let everything go the way it needs to go? And so I did. And I turned the worship music back on and I and it was that song you're no longer a slave to fear. Wow, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's a sign, like you know, and it got me right back into the, the moment, and and everything was great after and I never had any discomfort and I just thought, wow, that that was just the most amazing experience. And so, yeah, now I teach it because I just really want to share it with other mamas.

Tara: 28:46

You know, and I think that birth is one of those times in life it's a rare time in life because we only do it a few times. You know where you are so uniquely open to the amazing power of the supernatural and I think a lot of people might not like this answer. But suffering is when those times come. When you are suffering is when you know your character grows the most and when God has the biggest opportunity to you. Know ideas that the world has of suffering, or are you going to allow the suffering to take place? You know, that's kind of, I think, you being humble to the will of God.

Tara: 30:07

You know, I actually saw another lady post that she had a supernatural birth experience and she also had a pain-free birth and there were actually a lot of women who got really mad at her for posting this and they were saying some really horrible things to her in the comments because she said that she had a lot of faith during that time and you know they started kind of berating her, saying well, that also means that if you don't have enough faith, then you are causing the bad things to happen to you just thought, wow, I, you know, I didn't really think that about it that way, because, um, I had never heard that perspective.

Tara: 30:57

But it is a little bit flawed, because it's not that you having a lack of faith causes bad things to happen.

Tara: 31:07

I think that it's more of you have the faith, but that doesn't guarantee that no bad thing will happen. Part of the faith that you have is being okay with have no idea about, because maybe it's affecting, maybe somebody is watching your story and they're just seeing how you're going through the tribulation, you know, but yet still having faith during that suffering, and then that helps them to have faith or that, you know, opens their eyes to God or whatever reason he has. The whole point of faith is not that you're just trying to prevent bad things from happening through faith, but that you are okay with good or bad things happening, no matter what, because your faith is that all things happen for good for those who love God, whether it's for you personally, in pain relief, or whether it's some other reason. But there is a reason and that's the. That's the faith is that you, you always know that he's got a good reason, no matter what happens to you.

Cicily: 32:25

Jesus promises that we will face trouble. Thank you so much, Tara. I really appreciate your time.

Tara: 32:36

Yeah, definitely. I'm so glad you had me on.