Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 0:05

Welcome to Transacting Value, where we talk about practical applications for personal values when dealing with each other and even within ourselves. Where we foster a podcast listening experience that lets you hear the power of a value system for managing burnout, establishing boundaries and finding belonging. My name is Josh Porthouse, I'm your host and we are your people. This is why values still hold value. This is Transacting Value.

Stacey Langford: 0:34

Ask difficult, what I call more beautiful questions. You know, the better the quality of our questions, the better the quality of our life.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 0:42

Today on Transacting Value. Is the pace of our routine really normal? Does adjusting to it make it more manageable for our mental health or worse? We each outwardly express the extent of our tolerance for stress differently. Now, maybe you don't reach emotional exhaustion and mental fatigue to the point you're crying in the street on a work day, but our newest contributor did. Stacey Langford used her breakdown as an opportunity to reach back to the values that she was raised on, to restructure her life and reframe her perspective. She went from fast-paced and complex to slowness and simplicity. Now she writes a blog called Simplicity from Scratch and, alongside her family, operates a homestead, Coghlin Cottage in Vancouver, Canada. Welcome to our February core values of play, spontaneity and fun. Thanks, without further ado. I'm Porter, I'm your host and this is Transacting Value, Stacey, how you doing Thanks.

Stacey Langford: 1:34

Thanks for having me.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 1:35

Yeah, of course I appreciate the opportunity. I know well not firsthand, but I understand how busy running a farm can be, so I'm glad you could take some time out.

Stacey Langford: 1:43

Absolutely yeah.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 1:45

Now, what brought you to start a farm? You know, like did you grow up on a farm? Did you happen to see one in a magazine? You said, hey, that looks cool. What was it that brought you to this?

Stacey Langford: 1:56

Absolutely not. No, I'm from a small town on Vancouver Island, western Canada, and I thought I was going to be in New York, or London, and selling art by this point in my life, or maybe a high school teacher. But I fell in love with the country boy. And here we are. Farming was became a shared love. We started out with a urban farm in East Vancouver, Canada, which, if you know East Van, it's pretty colorful and pretty urban. And, yeah, one thing led to another and we serendipitous leave, came across this little piece of property outside of Vancouver and the rest is history. Yeah, it's been 11 years.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 2:31

Since you started and made this jump.

Stacey Langford: 2:33

Yep, since I left, I was working downtown Vancouver in stilettos and a pencil skirt with a bunch of lawyers, and now my coworkers are heritage breed pigs and chickens.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 2:44

So now much has changed, Okay, so all right. So so you were an attorney.

Stacey Langford: 2:52

No, I have an art degree. Actually, that's a weird twist of fate landed me working in a quasi judicial setting for human rights, which is what you asked me to refer to as civil rights. Yeah, it was supposed to be a four week gig and five weeks later I had the largest caseload and yeah, I was arguing with Crown Council for the province and go in toe to toe with seasoned lawyers with my painting degree in tow.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 3:15

So yeah, and now you're tackling what two, eight and nine year olds, I'm assuming younger kids.

Stacey Langford: 3:22

One just turned in, my daughter just turned 10 and my son is 12 and not so little anymore.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 3:28

Yeah, but giving you a run for your money, I suppose 100% and eating me out of house and home.

Stacey Langford: 3:32

I'm always grateful we've got the farm when the grocery bill comes.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 3:35

So yeah, yeah, that's a great point. So you've got a blog now. Simplicity from Scratch. Well, we're not now, but you've had it for a while. Simplicity from Scratch, what is that? Simple living, like a better home and gardens, kind of thing, or what's the point?

Stacey Langford: 3:49

Yeah, for me, because of how I left my career, I became quite interested and, out of necessity, in slowing down my job. As I alluded to, I had the highest caseload and some of the most contentious cases in the entire country, to the point that I was literally losing sleep for fear that a major newscaster would get my name associated with one of my cases which had death threats associated. It was a very intense job. Yeah, I found myself crying my face off in the downtown of Vancouver one afternoon. I just knew I couldn't go back. So for me, my journey into a simple life wasn't some graceful swan dive that I envisioned. It was a belly flop. It was painful and it was messy and it was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 4:36

Messy and the best. All right, I'm going to jump into this real quick. So the point of Transacting Value for anybody who's new to the show is identifying the impact of a value system. Right, and generally speaking, that revolves around themes like self-worth or mental resiliency, boundaries or mitigating burnout or more of the prevailing trends. Believe it or not, everybody that's come on the show and everybody that's listening to the show actually has in common. It doesn't matter, like you heard with Stacey, our citizenship, it doesn't matter our ethnicities, it doesn't matter our backgrounds, perspectives, jobs, affiliations, sexual preferences or anything of the above right. So the reality is, I guess you could say, conditioning to being human over the duration of our lives. Right, it's a human condition, and so we all go through the same things. Now, don't get me wrong, Stacey. I'm sure we have different opinions and I'm sure we're going to disagree on things, maybe not here and now, but in general as people. But it doesn't detract from the fact that we're all going through the same stressors. And so I want to jump into yours. You said crying in the middle of the street. You said working in what did you call it? Human rights? You said a heavy caseload, and to me that sounds like, really, either a poor enforcement of your boundaries, assuming you knew how you wanted to manage them, or unintentionally getting in over your head and burning out just mental and emotional fatigue. How far off the mark am I. What did that look like? What contributed to that for you?

Stacey Langford: 5:56

I think, a little of column A and a little of column B. I think we have a tendency to want to follow a path that is set out for us. I tried early in my life, by studying art, to take a step away from that path and to follow my heart and chase my passions. Life situations being what they were, I found myself in a new city and I just needed a job, and it was supposed to be temporary. But I think we sometimes get creep and, especially when we're too busy, we don't pay attention, we don't notice, we miss those whispers from our body saying hey, you need to slow down or you're on the wrong track, you're heading in the wrong direction. And especially because, for me, I was great at my job, all of the things that made me excellent at my job my compassion, my empathy, my ability to listen, make people feel heard those were what made me vulnerable to the work itself. I realized wait, a minute, this wasn't their direct, I wasn't going this way, and I think this happens to a lot of us where we wake up one day and you realize how did I get here and why am I living this life? That isn't aligned with my values, and for me it was a really big wake-up call.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 7:01

Well, that's assuming that you've got awareness of one, your value systems, or two, how deep you're digging yourself. Assuming you're unhappy to whatever degree. Right, because, like you said, that's what made you vulnerable to the job. I mean, you possessed the skills that made you do well, like you were doing well from the sounds, better, you wouldn't add a heavy course load or a workload.

Stacey Langford: 7:18

Yeah, I was promoting it in six months of being there, despite being the youngest person in the office, and there was a lot that I loved about my job and I think that's where it gets tricky and if we don't have a clear idea of what our values are, it screws up our cost-benefit analysis.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 7:32

What do you mean?

Stacey Langford: 7:33

Right. So we might say I'm doing good work. This is purposeful work, it's meaningful work. I'm helping people in the most difficult time of their lives. It's important. But because I wasn't protecting my health, for example, as a value in my own well-being, I didn't weigh that heavy enough on the balance scales. Because I wasn't clear about what my values were. I didn't give my values enough weight. I gave the external world's values more weight than my internal assessment of how I was doing.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 8:04

Well, there has to be a compromise Right. Like you, can't just do your own thing every day and expect to be successful all the time.

Stacey Langford: 8:10

And I think that was what I was telling myself. That was the story that I was telling myself right down to the moment that I was crying with my coffee in the middle of Robson Street. Right, I told myself this is what I have to do and this is the way people do things. I was 28 and successful. You know, quote unquote successful. We bought a house in Vancouver, which is one of the most expensive housing markets in North America, nevermind Canada. I was about to get married to the love of my life, all of these things, but yet I was like having a quiet cry every morning before I stopped myself onto the Skytrain and it was all I could do not to have an anxiety attack getting on that train. I still, to this day, 11 years later, cannot it's more than 11 years Cannot walk like that without having like a visceral reaction. So it's one thing to say you know, you got to go along to get along, and there's things that we have to be able to balance in terms of setting aside some of our personal values or boundaries in order to make our way through the world. But that's what I mean in terms of the cost benefit. So at some point you've got a lot of diminishing returns.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 9:15

I think. To better clarify that, let's start with where you were. You said. Identifying your values, obviously, is what triggered this feeling of misalignment, otherwise you wouldn't know you were off track. So I'm going to start there. This is a segment of the show called developing, character Developing character, the segment where we talk personal values, past and present. And so for anybody new or any continuing listeners to refresh your memory, the point of this segment is two questions, and Stacey is vulnerable. As you want to answer, as willing as you want to be, it's totally up to you, but these two questions are meant to showcase, over time, where your values started, maybe as you grew up, what you were exposed to, and then to where they are now, and we'll use that to move on into the conversation. So my first question is as you were growing up attribute that to whatever age you want what were some values that you were exposed to or that you actually attempted to embody or preferred to have, if any?

Stacey Langford: 10:08

Work ethic, perfectionism, don't rock the boat in terms of don't put anybody else out yeah, good person, but work hard to your best. High expectations in terms of performance yeah, and I think some of those things that's you know, our strengths are often our greatest weakness. So any of those things pulled, you pull on that thread too much and you go from a character strength to a character weakness pretty quick.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 10:34

All things in moderation, I think is Ecclesiastes, if I'm quoting it right. But there's a lot of and not to get super biblical, that just happened to pop in my head. But you know, when you say, our strengths can become our biggest weaknesses. What does that mean? Is that pride? Is that a lack of humility? Is it a lack of clarity or presence? What do you mean, by that?

Stacey Langford: 10:54

Well, I think, in terms of like, for example, like I mentioned, work ethic and wanting to do our best and show up in the world and do well, the flip side of that is living our lives based on somebody else's expectations and not true to our own values. It means perfectionism, which is not a healthy you know. That's something that still, I still have to struggle, that like, no, this actually isn't always a benefit. If I take this to the point, if it's going to stop me from actually going out and doing the thing that I want to do because I can't do it perfectly, that's not serving me as a value.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 11:29

I see, okay, so this sounds like you know the typical do well in school, do your chores, don't be rude to your parents type things growing up as a sort of catalyst to reinforce these things and so, moving more to the present, or since that point in time, my second question is well, so then, what are some of your values now?

Stacey Langford: 11:49

stewardship, presence, joy, drawing healthy circles around myself. That has probably been the biggest practice that I've learned since we've moved out here to the farm and recognizing that you can say no from a place of joy and respect and all of that good stuff and hold your boundary in a way that isn't it's not always a negative thing. I think, especially for women, that us asserting our values in a broader context, outside of our homes, can be a really difficult process. So practicing that and finding the joy in that has been really powerful.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 12:28

Finding the joy and saying no, absolutely. What do you mean?

Stacey Langford: 12:32

Absolutely Well. For example, you're on the farm, I have a strict, no jerk policy. Okay, after dealing with some pretty colorful characters at the tribunal, I decided no, whatever I do next, I want to work with people and creatures who I adore. Like life is too short no, so you know, if it's a rude rather, if it's a rude rooster or a customer who's getting their you know shorts and a knot over something silly like eggs, I say thanks, but no thanks, this isn't the place for you. So I say no to customers and fire customers If I know that. You know they're not my people or they're not going to give me a decent terms of my other values. For example, I put my family first. I've recently closed my store early on Friday so I can take my daughter to soccer. That's my priority, that's my most profitable half hour of my afternoon, but my daughter comes first. And the result of that although it was really frightening to assert that value in the beginning and it felt really uncomfortable and unnatural the result is which, after 11 years, I have this incredible community of people because people who are lovely human beings, know other lovely human beings and all different and, like you alluded to at the beginning. People who hold very different values for me that different political views, different religious views, different socioeconomic situations but we all come together around a love of great food and good, open conversation. We talk about important stuff here and I feel so blessed Like. I feel like that's my life work now. It's not about the meat and eggs, it's this amazing community of people who I'm so humbled to get to serve.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 14:11

That makes a lot of sense. Nobody likes rude roosters. Yeah, exactly, that's a definite downer in any social circle. Allright folks, sit tight and we'll be right back on transacting value. Are you a marketer, brand strategist, ceo or podcast fan at work seeing the benefit and profitability that podcast advertising can bring to your business, noticing that billion dollar valuation that advertising through a podcast can convey? Maybe you're missing out on the millions of listeners to audio podcasts and wondering how do I reach that market segment? Recapitalize your wealth generating strategy with add value from SDYT media. Turn your business marketing gaps into added value. We'll work with your marketing team to highlight your brand's values, vision, mission and social governance with your product or service in a custom designed audio only podcast ready advertisement, written and recorded in-house with our decentralized team. Don't just think of adding value. Work with SDYT media to transacting. Here's some of our work featured in our most recent season of the podcast Transacting Value, and visit transactingvaluepodcast. com to read along in the transcripts as well To get your custom design advertisement from SDYT media email advalue. ad value@ SDYTmediacom. It makes a lot of sense. Nobody likes rude roosters. Exactly, that's a definite downer in any social circle I think You're talking about, I guess you could say like-minded people, sort of finding their way to you. But it took you taking risk to do that. It took you taking a stand to do that. How did you do that? You just said you woke up one day and you said everybody out, we're done, it's 3.30 or whatever time that was it.

Stacey Langford: 15:57

Yeah, I mean out of necessity to begin with, because when we started this, I was a full-time mom to two little wee kids, as you and I chatted about previously. Early on in this journey my mom died. I lost her to cancer. She was only 64. And I just didn't. I couldn't be open 24-7 or available 24-7 or tied to my email or social media. I just couldn't. It just wasn't an option. So at the beginning it was just a necessity, and so that meant that my business grew slowly. But as it's gone on and as I realized what I had been doing kind of intuitively, I started doing it more intentionally and it's now actually become part of like I'm known for being like if you don't like it, and the folks who come to me like love me for it. That's part of what draws them, the fact that I'm open about it. I'm very vulnerable and I love myself to be seen by my customers. That's something that's become a really important value in terms of showing up as a human being, and especially through these really difficult times that we've all lived through cultivating space. You know we up until a year ago, we're working off of the front porch of our farmhouse. We named it the free speech front porch that you know nothing you say here is going to offend me. You know you can cry here, you can rant here, you can talk about whatever you want here, and that kind of space I think is really lacking in our culture.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 17:21

Yeah, I think there's a certain intentional distance. People need to learn and I'm using people generally here, obviously but that people need to learn to build. There's a certain degree of distance being in the Marine Corps that you can't avoid. Physically, obviously, because you're deployed in a lot of cases or in training environments or whatever. And mentally, even when you're physically present, there's a very high chance. Mentally you're still not there. You've preoccupied due to stress or anxiety or fears or any other apprehensions, right picking emotion that might be a tide to that anger in my case, and a few other issues that might creep up, and I think a lot of those things may be more directly attributed to a stress factor than probably anything else. It's induced from stress, is what I'm saying. And so now, or at least over the last decade, you've been writing and spreading this message about simplicity. Does that mean decreased stress? Does that mean less variables to contend with? What is simplicity as you write about it? What do you mean?

Stacey Langford: 18:24

For me, it's about being present, and I think one of the things that we get mixed up in is that, you know, we think that a good life is about being happy all the time, and that simply hasn't been my experience. I have a beautiful life, and farm life in general teaches us about the basics. It's like you got to be fed, they got to eat before you do, they've got to make sure you have water, keeping everybody warm, keeping yourself warm, you know, if forces you to live in the moment, right, there's certain things, lambing season, it doesn't matter what I want to do. Well, sheep are going to come with. Sheep are going to come right, and so learning to take the rough with the smooth and finding beauty in all of it. You know, when I left my job, I was in a crippling depression and that's been something that has haunted me throughout my life. But by learning to embrace and roll with those horrible things, even when the sky falls, even when my mom died, to be willing to be open to that, that, for me, is what simplicity and slowness is about. It's just being present in that moment and to those people right, being open to and be compassionate and curious in that moment Curious, because that's, at the end of the day, all we have right.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 19:41

What do you mean? Curious.

Stacey Langford: 19:42

I think curiosity coupled with compassion has been really key to this whole process. I'm curious compassion within myself and also curiosity about what does make a good life right. So here I did all the things I thought I was supposed to do to build what's a quote unquote good life, and I was miserable. Okay, so that didn't work. So what does a good life look like? Right, and actually intentionally asking those questions and also being open to the possibility that, open to serendipity, open to people who aren't like me. I think we're really obsessed with alignment. Now, that's a word that we use a lot and I'm like screw alignment. I've got an 82 year old man who lives down the street from me, who is misaligned with me in every possible, and I love him to bits. I feel really grateful to have him in my life. He shows up literally with truckloads of fruit for my kids every summer, brings my dog home when she gets lost. That curiosity about people who aren't like us. I think all of that comes together to build a really rich life and a much more rich perspective on what a good life can look like and what it can look like to be a good person.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 20:52

Yeah, the interpersonal relationships or the depth of conversation, the bigger talk type topics I think you're definitely lacking. Well, you know what? Here's an example. So my son and I we talk on a video call most nights each week when he doesn't have homework or something else, because we live in two different states. Now he's nine years old. The games we play aren't necessarily like I don't know what's an example call of duty or something, or fortnight or something, right? So we're playing Roblox, if you're familiar with that, and most times he'll pick a game and, frankly, most times he'll leave the server or leave the game before I'm able to join and then tell me later. But once I get into these games assuming we're in the same game on the same server and we start playing with each other, sometimes we'll talk. It's sort of this unwritten rule. I say we'll play video games because I only talk to him an hour a day if he doesn't have homework, sometimes five, 10 minutes a day and that's the only time I get with him. So on the days where we have more time, we have this rule unwritten, but repeatedly, ridiculously repeated If we're going to play video games, you have to be able to have a conversation too, otherwise we're going to stop playing video games and then we're just going to talk to each other, and that's failed more than it succeeded. He is nine. Last night, I think it was, or two nights ago, we were playing video games or attempting to, and there was something that happened and I can't remember which game it was on the platform, but it was in Roblox and something happened where the skin, the costume of my character, was black, like the shirt or whatever. He was wearing the clothing, right. And so I told him. I said I don't know what happened to my character, because normally it's blue. I said I don't know what happened to my character in this game, now it's black. And he said whoa, that's kind of racist. I said what are you talking about? No, it's a different color, it's black, it's just not blue. And he said, yeah, well, still kind of sus. Right To whatever impact that actually means. I'm not entirely sure anyways, but the point being he's nine, like we're talking about colors or shades, or it could be a painting, it doesn't matter and the first thing that comes to his mind, based on whatever catalyst or whatever happened in his day, could be wow, that's racist. Now, still kind of sus, you brought it up. I think there's a problem with that. I think when the majority of conversation at least in his case that my kids are hearing is about racism. I'm not an anthropologist, but as I understand the human race by ethnicities or citizenship and nationalities, we're all sort of in the same boat anyway. But when we're talking about different colors, why is that offensive? If I tell you that your hair is longer than mine, should you be offended? I don't think so, but it's just as much an observation as saying your skin color or skin tone is not the same as mine. So what? And something that I think is important, that isn't altogether. You brought up human rights earlier, or civil rights. I think you're right, appropriately to the state's perspective, is that what was in 1963, 64, something rather Martin Luther King said his I have a dream speech, and that was 60 years ago, almost to the year, and he said in his dream that men, mind you, not gender related, just humankind should be or could be judged not by the content of their deeds but by the quality of their character. And I'm paraphrasing. But what's happened over the last 60 years? Have we gotten so complex and so complicated and so inundated with extra stuff that we don't see it. I mean, is that something that farm life could alleviate? Is that something that getting a hog farm could solve Like? How did you come to decrease in the complexity, enhancing simplicity? How did you gain clarity?

Stacey Langford: 24:21

I think by having a lot of difficult conversations.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 24:24

What do you mean?

Stacey Langford: 24:26

We've had all these conversations here on the farm and ask difficult, what I call more beautiful questions. You know, the better the quality of our questions, the better the quality of our life. And by asking questions like well, why am I seeking a mind quote, unquote aligned people to surround myself with, and is there really a benefit to that? Or do I really need to follow this rulebook for how I run my business right? I run my business rooted in my slow values, and a lot of the stuff that I do in my business goes against what I learned in marketing school, but it's working. I think it's been a matter of having those more complicated and nuanced questions to realize how much, at the end of the day, everybody's worried about the same thing. They just want their family to be healthy, they want to have enough to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. They want to feel a sense of belonging. I think people were, I think were, starved for a sense of belonging. And so when you start to see those themes between all these seemingly desperate people, you really realize what matters. And again for me, losing my mom, who was a warrior, and realizing that all of the things that she worried about, you know, came to at the end it all came down to love. That was what it came down to, that was all that mattered. And having that lesson that I was 34 when she died, so still relatively young, and learning that lesson in that way that early, was a real gift. You really it shakes you at your core in terms of like, okay, all this stuff that I thought mattered, that my mom thought mattered, none of it mattered, none of it mattered in the end.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 26:05

Well, that was only a few years ago, Eight or not, I think it's 2016,. Right, 16. Yeah, and actually from what I remember and we don't have to dive into this too deep if you don't intend to or don't care to, and that's fine, but from what I remember you saying you really only had eight or nine months anyways, to sort of get your affairs in order, get your perspective together, process, cope and maybe even grieve in the meantime.

Stacey Langford: 26:29

Yeah, this time of year is always kind of a gut check, because she sat me down while my kids were trick or treating and told me that they'd found a tumor and by July she was gone. So and she was healthy, vibrant woman, you know, enjoying her retirement and her grandkids. So that was like okay, you know, and I did the math, she's 64. I'm 34. I'm already past what ended up being her midpoint of her life. You really realize all that stuff. You know life is short and all that trite until until it's true. You live it and you realize that, like man, tomorrow's not promised. You know I personally marry Oliver. You know. Tell me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. That was my core, beautiful question what do I plan to do with this wild and precious life and showing up and being present for my people and doing my best to live a life aligned with my values and rooted in that, that legacy of love that I learned from my mom? That ended up. That was the only thing, and it doesn't get more simple than that.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 27:28

Well, like you said, it's taken the rough with the smooth. You can't pick and choose and I don't even know that. That's unfortunate. I think it would be a disservice if you could.

Stacey Langford: 27:37

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that the true pain and the pain that a lot of us are suffering, I think culturally, is that we're trying to avoid suffering. It's the trying to avoid the suffering that's causing the real pain. And if we simply embraced it and accepted it and did our best to make meaning from it, then we would find that. You know, I wrote on the blog about the gifts of grief, right Like there's been so much in my life that I've received even from something as simple as being able to in that moment. You know, there was one day I was in that my mom was in hospice, I had the kids with me, I was by myself. I came out and I just dissolved into a puddle of tears with both kids in my hands and a janitor stopped and helped me. So people like that became stars. I could point you for my kids and say like this is how we move through grief. The universe isn't conspiring against us. There's compassion everywhere.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 28:33

All right, folks sit tight, We'll be right back on Transacting Value.

Announcer: 28:37

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Stacey Langford: 29:07

So people like that became stars. I could point you for my kids and say like this is how we move through grief. The universe isn't conspiring against us. There's compassion everywhere. And I could have chosen that moment to be like you know. This thing happened to me, but instead it was like well, yeah, these death happens and it sucks, and I would have rather that it not happened like that, but it did.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 29:28

Yeah, well, it's not something we can control either. You wrote an article well, actually, I think it's the article that sort of turned me onto your blog to begin with, a few years ago I don't know, 2020 maybe, but it was around this time I think you wrote it. It was about setting boundaries more specific to business, I think, but either way, about setting boundaries, slowing down, simplifying our routines and our expectations and, in the rough patches, the unanticipated, the unexpected, maybe even mismanaged expectations on our own behalf. I think those are the opportunities that, to your point, instead of building walls and setting boundaries to block them out, I think we need to consider and I'm agreeing with you here but I think we need to consider setting up walls and setting up boundaries that sort of funnel them, our direction, right? Not just to say do with me what you will and I can handle whatever comes, because sometimes cockiness is bad too, but there's, I think, a certain degree of hardship. That's good. You can't get any hard work done without calluses. You can't build any strength or fortitude or direction progress without traction and hardship. And there was an opportunity in the Marine Corps for me and, I assume, for a lot of other service members, where the inherent sacrifice. I'll put it to you like this so, at the time of us recording this conversation for everybody listening, we haven't yet hit Veterans Day in the States. This is early November, I don't know where we're at November 8th. Veterans Day is coming up Now for everybody listening in the States. If you're unfamiliar, if you're outside the States, you're unfamiliar. I guess doesn't really matter. But Memorial Day is for all of the service members that didn't make it, that died, that aren't alive still, and Veterans Day is for those who are. And it's first responders, it's law enforcement, it's all the above, but it always makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't know what to do with it and I don't necessarily flaunt it. Right now on my podcast and radio show, I put it out there that I'm in the Marine Corps and there's different responses. They go oh, thank you for your service, thank you for your sacrifice, type things. Okay, all right, but it's for relatability, it's for resonance, it's not necessarily gratitude. Guys, I don't know what to do with it. All right, so come Veterans Day, and then we hear things like well, thank you for your sacrifice. I'm sorry, which sacrifice exactly? I have all my limbs, I have all my fingers, I have, all things considered, every aspect of what I came in with, probably better in most cases as a person than I was when I joined. What sacrifice is that? And one thing that I've learned over the course of my career is the majority of what we in my case, but we as service members put ourselves through is internally driven, it's not necessarily external factors by proportion here. So there's divorces, plenty of those long distance parenting, plenty of those grief you've got to deal with. Stress you've got to deal with how do I pay the bills, my roommate got shot, any other number of things that come with being deployed. I can't be home for my son's birthday or any firsts. I can't be there for my grandmother's funeral or any lasts in some cases. And those things, I think, bring a certain amount of resilience that, in my experience in Marine Corps, infantry, everybody's going through, and that's where the camaraderie rests, because everybody's dealing with the same sort of struggles. Now, that being the sacrifice that, okay, well, you have to deal with that, but you volunteered. It's an all enlisted force in America, so you volunteered for that and if you didn't know, based on informed consent or anything else that you're getting into, that's not our problem that's yours Now, saying that, I have a few friends that have farms and they advocate a lot of what you're explaining, the simplicity, let alone the fresh air. But the quality time they have with their families and the projects they can work on and the abilities to be more intentional with the time they spend with each other has made all the difference for their mental health and stress management and mental resilience and self-worth. But they're also only hanging out with other farmers and other homeschoolers and other arguably small bubbles of people. So how do you bring variety into your circle? How do you introduce other perspectives or how do you encourage your kids to appreciate other perspectives, when it's all like-minded people?

Stacey Langford: 33:46

It has to be intentional. We've been really lucky here in that we have a fantastic community where we live. We're not on large acreages so there's lots of people. We're not super rural in that regard. But it's been an intentional effort on my part and on you know. I have another girlfriend who lives in the neighborhood. She's from Kenya. She's gone from Kenya to Paris, france, to London, england, to here in Canada and she's like look, mate, I figured a long time ago that if I want community, I got to build it, so she would put the scrammers on her minivan. She saw another mom out walking the baby and it didn't matter who you are or where you came from. Your mom, you got kids. You're coming for tea on Tuesday. No, like that was it. You're coming right and because of that you know we have this really beautiful, diverse community and I think also you have to allow people who do come into your life to feel that they'll be welcome. We need to do that explicitly in our culture. Now I'm very explicit that I don't care. You know, especially when things were getting really here in Canada you know we had the truckers protest. That was a really for all us polite Canadians it was a pretty contentious time, and so I like explicitly said I don't care. I don't care where you land on any of these issues that we're all arguing about right now. You're going to stay with people. You are going to stay with people and you're welcome here, regardless, and if you need to talk about it, no matter what side you're on, you're welcome. But I had to explicitly outline that for people and repeat it over and over again, especially as when things happen in the news or whatever, I address that. Yeah, even though it has nothing to do with Canadians.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 35:30

Yeah Well, I mean, I suppose it could if you're having tea and breakfast, but right now we're moving in the States. I don't know about in Canada, but in the States we're moving into election season or election year. Essentially, our major political primaries will come January the official and then within a year after that we'll have, let's just say, a new presidential term beginning, and every news station and I'm arguing, every talk radio station as well, in our case conservatives, liberals, republicans, democrats, respectively, for some reason that's the attribution that comes because there's plenty of people that straddle the divide and that, for the sake of being able to vote, align with one party over another but otherwise see things more individually than this pack group think mentality. But what we hear on the news liberal Democrats, left wing media, they're all idiots. Right wing media, right wing conservatives, they're all what I don't know terrorists or something right. What? All of them we're talking, 40% of 300 million people in some cases are all terrorists. What are we doing? How does nobody care about this? But I think what gets overlooked often is it's for ratings. I mean now, unfortunately, in the US, in my opinion, politics, politicians, to a certain degree of reality TV stars more than they are focusing on policy more than they are focusing on maybe let's just call it this greater good, and it's not to be a socialist reference, right, but there's a misprioritization, and I don't know if it's American, I don't know if it's North American, I don't know if it's what, but I feel like there has been a movement away from this focus on deeper questions strengthening interpersonal relationships, values, characters, civic mindedness. Is that something? And this is really, I guess, for the sake of time, one of my last questions but is that a similar trend that you're seeing in Canada or that you're seeing hearing on the news in Canada?

Stacey Langford: 37:26

Yeah, I mean, like I say, we're known for being polite here and we are, but I think that there's a shift because people are willing to talk to me freely in a way that maybe they aren't elsewhere. What I've seen is that those old boundaries and the stories that we tell about who we are are dissolving for the better. In terms of that, I see people much more concerned about, like you say, civic mindedness, freedom of speech, our democracy in general, and people on both sides of the spectrum who are saying something's wrong and we need to fix it and we need to be able to talk about it. So that gives me a lot of hope personally, because I see us talking about our values more and asking those questions Well, wait a minute, is this actually what I want from my country? Is this how I want my government to behave? How much power should power have? These are all really important questions when it comes to our character as a nation, and I think Canadians have definitely been asking those questions. I think they're doing it quietly. I think they're doing it quietly and I think that it's underestimated how many of us are having those conversations.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 38:34

I think that it's underestimated, the impact that it can have, the positive impact that it can have. Also, when we talk about character, more to the point, when you were just talking about character and government and governance, and how well does this actually align with us as a people, as a citizenry? I mean, that's what, in my opinion, I guess that's what patriotism is. It's not so much wearing flags and parades and whatever. Sure, those things are there.

Stacey Langford: 39:05

You don't have parades. We don't do patriotism in Canada. We're quiet about our patriotism, okay.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 39:11

Well, the meek will inherit the earth, I've heard.

Stacey Langford: 39:13

You have weird feelings about it. But yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that folks are concerned for various reasons and I think it's a good thing. I think my father always says not nice but necessary. Well, the rough with the smooth right, yes, yeah, I think it's about a laundry to be aired and I think we need to reevaluate what our values are and whether or not we're willing to. For me, during that contentious time, as someone who has always self-identified as pretty left on the spectrum, I was quite shocked at how and, having worked in human rights, how quickly a lot of folks who belong to my group in that way of speaking, I realized those folks actually don't value the things that they say that they valued because when the rubber met the road, all of those values went out the window, when the person who, or group of people who, are talking about things differently than us, has different beliefs and has made different choices and that was what concerned me is like, never mind what we're arguing about, the issues, or secondary, it's the fact that we're willing to say I'm willing to set aside my values because I don't think that you're worth equal rights to me, basically because of who you are, how you think, and for me it's, especially with having my background in human rights that's exactly why we have these kind of values culturally is because it's easy when things are easy Right. When there's some mistakes, it's easy to say, oh, I value this, I value that. It's only when one hits a fan that we actually find out well, did you actually live your values, did you actually embody those things, or did you do the opposite in the name of? Well, this person holds different values than me, so it's okay. So those are some of the questions that we talked a lot about here on the farm with our people during that time. That, geez, we all need to take a really hard look at ourselves and ask those more beautiful questions Am I actually living my values? Do I actually value the things that I say, that I do?

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 41:15

Yeah, well, and then here's what's cool too, just in the last couple of seconds before we close this out. That's all, or most of what we just discussed is from the perspective of how we treat other people or how other people treat us. But in how we treat ourselves, right, there's something to be said for self-worth in the sort of niche instance that how we let what other people say and do affect us, I think is largely based on how worthy we see ourselves of their judgment and of their opinions and of their observations. Right For somebody to say and as a podcast about values, you might be particularly familiar, I suppose, if anybody's listening to this with a baseline that it's not a popular topic for discussion. It's the class people sleep in high school, right? So how do you talk about things without people feeling like they're being attacked or preached to or from some sort of a soapbox? I think it comes down to if you feel guilty, I'm sorry you feel guilty. We can talk about why, maybe, but I'm not saying you're worthy of my judgment. I don't know you well enough to judge you, and even if I did, why would I? It doesn't accomplish anything but for us to put that kind of pressure on ourselves also, in my opinion, indicates that we've moved a little bit further away from our value systems as well, because we're no longer standing on our own. We're basing our images and our worth on other people's opinions of us, and I think that's just as detrimental. But it stays you for the sake of time and I know you've got a farm to give back to you. I really appreciate the conversation and your perspective and your input and for whatever free time you happen to have somehow, I hope you keep writing your blog. But for people to find it, for people to get in touch with you, for people to hear more and just do more research on Coghlan Cottage and your farm, where do they go? How do they get in touch?

Stacey Langford: 42:59

And it's at CoghlanCottageFarm. com. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, we're in Langley BC, or you can find me at simplicityfromscratch. com or slofolk. co, All right.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 43:11

So, for everybody who's listening to this, we'll have links to all three of those websites and if I can track you on some of your social links, I'll put them in there as well. So, depending on which player you're listening to, click see more. Click show more under this conversation and you'll be able to see the description in. There will be links to Stacy, her farm, her insights, her blog. I really appreciate the opportunity, so thank you for your time.

Stacey Langford: 43:32

Thank you so much for having me.

Joshua "Porter" Porthouse: 43:34

Definitely. And you know what I got to say, as off color as this might sound. I got to thank your mom for the wisdom she gave you. I got to thank your husband for the opportunities he's helping secure. I got to thank your kids you said a son and daughter, I believe for all of the frustration and rough edges that they're causing you and giving you opportunities to grow. If nothing else, material for your blog. And then, obviously, best of luck on your farm. Super cool, I love what you're doing, awesome opportunity. Thank you to our show partners and folks. Thank you for tuning in and appreciating our value as we all grow through life together. To check out our other conversations, merchandise or even to contribute through feedback, follows, time, money or talent and let us know what you think of the show. Please reach out on our website, transactingvaluepodcast. com. We stream new episodes every Monday at 9 am Eastern Standard Time through all of your favorite podcasting platforms and we'll meet you there. Until next time, that was Transacting Value.