Show Notes
In Episode #29 of The Coop, Anna sits down with Anne Briggs (Anne of All Trades … homesteader, woodworker, teacher, and Homestead Living contributor) for an honest conversation about getting things done when your brain, your time, and the farm all pull in different directions.
Anne didn’t grow up on a farm. She grew up “farm adjacent,” lived abroad as a missionary kid, and picked up her first four chickens on the way home from her honeymoon … then dug up a suburban Seattle backyard after her husband had already said no.
That first garden failed. But the next season, it worked! Fifteen years later, she and her family are in Tennessee with a raw dairy, a large garden, multiple kinds of livestock, and a beautiful baby boy.
Anne opens up about the struggles she’s faced too: severe dyslexia, not really learning to read until she was 22, ADHD, time-blindness, and years of being called lazy despite working harder than others to achieve the same outcomes. When reading finally clicked, learning became Anne’s superpower … especially when she turned around and taught what she was practicing, first in a garage, then on camera.
In this episode, Anna and Anne discuss: How Anne went from a suburban Seattle backyard to a working homestead in Tennessee Why being called a “Jack of all trades” is a compliment How learning disabilities shaped the way she learns, teaches, and has built a life Why tracking time and data makes hard decisions easier Frameworks for removing friction, implementing systems, and knowing what to prioritize Building margin before adding anything new What a “successful” life looks like in retrospect, and how to measure any task against what’s truly important in life The point of productivity, they agree, is not about checking everything off your list. It’s about creating margin for the things that truly matter: family, friends, good food on the table, and building a life you’ll look back on with pride.
More from The Coop
John Bush has spent years teaching people how to move toward greater freedom and autonomy through his work with Live Free Academy and the Exit and Build program.
Rory Groves has spent fourteen years on a southern Minnesota homestead building a practice of resilience. He’s made his mark asking questions like “How do you build a life that still stands if the job, the market, or the news goes sideways?”
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.
In Episode #28 of The Coop, Anna sits down with Larry Littrell … urban homesteader, specialized real estate agent, and author of Fresh Starts Old Roots. They have an important conversation about one of the biggest decisions many homesteaders face: whether to stay, move, buy, or sell.
In this solo episode of The Coop, Homestead Living Editor-in-Chief Anna Sakawsky reflects on more than ten years of living this homesteading life and shares the 10 biggest lessons it has taught her. Rather than focusing only on practical skills, Anna digs into the deeper truths that shape a sustainable, meaningful homesteading journey: why mindset matters more than acreage, why starting before you’re ready is essential, and why perfection is never the goal. She talks about the dangers of taking on too much too soon, the value of treating “failures” as lessons, the myth of complete self-sufficiency, and the quiet power of regularly checking your actions against your real priorities.