Episode #10: Educating Children Through Hobbies With Sonia Hubly
In this episode on the HobbyScool podcast, I chat with Sonia Hubly who is the Founder of Mom, Wife, Homestead Life. Sonia creates content to help families become self-sufficient in simple and creative ways.
On her family 14-acre homestead, you can find her raising livestock, growing and tending a large garden, and preserving as much healthy organic food as she can for her family. Having grown up in the woods of Wisconsin, where she often gathered maple sap and cooked it down with her family, Sonia has held a passion for agriculture and gardening her entire life.
After starting a family, she left teaching to focus solely on homesteading and homeschooling and has loved every minute of it. Sonia has long worn many hats, and that is how Mom, Wife, Homestead Life was born – to allow her to share her love of agriculture with everyone who wants to learn.
Listen in as we discussed how Sonia turned hobbies and life skills to further her children's education and how she has turned her hobbies into thriving businesses.
Mentioned In This Episode
Where you can find Sonia: Mom, Wife, Homestead Life website
Free gift: Homestead Beginner's Checklist
Free gift: 5 Ways to Get Your Kids Into Nature
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Transcript:
00:00:02 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And my special guest today is Sonia Hubly. Sonia is founder of Mom's wife and homestead life, and we are super excited to chat with her. Today we're going to be talking about educating children through hobbies. And Sonia, I know you have a lot to share. I have so many questions for you. But before I jump right in, can you tell the good audience a little bit more about you and how you help people?
00:00:31 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Yes, well, so I started Mom, wife, homestead life over a decade ago when I became a stay at home Mom with my first child, I kind of started having that, I don't know, isolated feeling, I guess you could say that a lot of new moms have. And so from that I built my website, Mom, wife Homestead life. And then as my children grew and our family grew, I decided that I wanted to kind of branch out and start using what I was teaching everybody online.
00:01:01 Sonia Hubly (guest)
To also teach my children, we've been a homeschooling family for a long time, since the very beginning. We like to say now, since before it was cool. And so for us it was something that was a needed item that we could pass on to our children. Taking those things that I do on a regular basis that some people call hobbies and teaching them as life skills to my children, which we felt was the most important thing.
00:01:26 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And you're right, a lot of us call them hobbies you. For you, they're just a way of life, right?
00:01:33 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
A little bit maybe. What are some of your favorite hobbies and one of the ones that you focused on in terms of educating your children?
00:01:42 Sonia Hubly (guest)
So we started off keeping it kind of simple. We went with cooking and also gardening. Those were my two biggest passions because obviously I'm cooking for the family every single day, and then gardening because I love to be able to preserve the harvest as well. I'm a big canning fan, so having my children be able to know how to do some of those things felt.
00:02:04 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Like a needed item. So my 8 year old knows how mom makes her mashed potatoes, which sounds crazy, but it's different than how everybody else in the family does it. So it's kind of entertaining at the same time. And gardening was just one of those things that, you know, my first experience with. My oldest. We took him out into the garden. I was pregnant with our second, and he came out to the garden with me and I had planted everything without him. So he wasn't truly aware of which items were plants and which items were weeds. So I was walking through the garden, going down to plant.
00:02:36 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Peas or beans and the other end and I turned around and he had pulled up every single one of my seed tomatoes that I had planted 2 weeks prior. So we laugh about it now because it was like this most tragic thing at the time, but very entertaining to be able to then, you know, sit back with him and say, OK, this is a, this is a learning experience. These are plants that we need. They're going to grow us food. And so we kind of were able to evolve that conversation so that he could understand.
00:03:04 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And, and I'm sure that your kids are probably, you know, they could almost self sustain themselves after learning how to garden and do all of that on their own. But really let's talk a little bit more about really what made you decide to turn these hobbies into life skills and education. Was it something in your family or something that you were thinking, you know, this is a life skill that they this is a skill they can take and use for life.
00:03:36 Sonia Hubly (guest)
So for me personally, I was a former public school teacher and I noticed that a lot of the things being taught in the schools, I actually taught agricultural education. So I feel like I had more opportunity to teach some of the outside of the box curriculum. But even even then, the teachers hands are really tied on what they're allowed to teach in classrooms just based on state standards and things like that. So for me, when we had the freedom of home schooling, I wanted to make sure that we could teach them.
00:04:06 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Everything they would need to know to be able to be on their own. And my my father passed away when I was 25 and I really wanted everything that the boys remember about me to be like something that as they're, you know, like the mashed potatoes. As he is making mashed potatoes every single time, he can remember learning how to do that with Mom.
00:04:25 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So that.
00:04:25 Sonia Hubly (guest)
It's it's always a happy memory that's sticking inside of his brain whenever he's doing those life skills that come up on a regular basis.
00:04:34 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Now, Sonia, do you live on a huge farm or is it more, you know, you know, kind of what a lot of us might be used to, like a more of a suburban type, you know, half acre or one acre lot. What, what is, what does it look like for your kids there?
00:04:49 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So.
00:04:49 Sonia Hubly (guest)
We are kind of surrounded. We're in the middle, I would say, because we're we're not a suburb in any way shape or form. We have 14 acres that we reside on plenty of space to graze our cattle and we have pigs. We have three pig barns and quail and chickens and ducks and you know, all of our, our fun little animals that we get to entertain every day. But we are surrounded by a lot of generational farmers. So that means that they have, you know, anywhere from 300 to 600 acres really easily.
00:05:20 Sonia Hubly (guest)
So to to them, we're small potatoes, but living compared to living in like town or in a suburb. My sister-in-law lives in town and she has a smaller, smaller lot, but she's still able to do a lot with it, which I think is something that's super important that no matter how big of a space you're living on, there are options to be able to grow food.
00:05:40 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So, you know, when you said 14 acres, my first thought was, OK, she lives on a huge farm.
00:05:47 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So I guess we all have it in in perspective because we're we're used to being out in the suburbs within half acre or one acre. Would you say that even if somebody is sitting on a smaller plot of land like I am, would they be able to, you know, do you know, use this, use gardening and cooking in their child's education and what would you recommend for them?
00:06:11 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Oh, absolutely. So my sister-in-law that I just previously mentioned their backyard is probably.
00:06:17 Sonia Hubly (guest)
I'm going to say 20 by 24, square footage. And then their front yard. She actually talked to the city and most people leave their front yards, especially in town, as just grass, and then they mount really short. But she went ahead and actually put in raised beds. It was totally within the ordinances for her to be able to do so. So she put in raised beds and she grows food not only in their front yard but also in their backyard. It's been a great experience for her son. She also homeschools her little guy is a couple years behind my middle son.
00:06:48 Sonia Hubly (guest)
But they they're able to take everything that's around them. All those plants, all those animals, all those life cycles that are happening on a daily basis inside your garden, you can teach your child about. And it actually is a really great, carefree way to use your hobby to educate your child because it's stress free. It kind of lets them explore and adventure in their own way.
00:07:10 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So you mentioned that you you're using the cooking hobby and the gardening hobby, and you even talked about Canning. Are there any other hobbies?
00:07:18 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
That you have incorporated into your children's education.
00:07:23 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Well actually just recently we switched our oldest over, so I work as a executive virtual assistant for a bunch of different bloggers and I noticed that there was a really high demand to learn how to do like graphic design on Instagram, like things like that. So I actually taught my 11 year old how to start using Canva a couple weeks ago, and I let him do it with just the items that he wanted to learn about and explore. So he made a whole bunch of different digital images for Lego.
00:07:55 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Because he loves Lego. And then I think, what else? Oh, he tried looking up transformer stuff, but there really wasn't much material in terms of having Transformers already in the system. But it was kind of cool to see that even an 11 year old can start creating those images. And you know, it'll be a life skill that he can use for a business in the future.
00:08:16 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Now, Sonia, one of the things that we have talked about is you've been able to turn several of these hobbies.
00:08:24 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Into a business. Can you walk us through #1 why you decided to do that and #2 how you made that transition from a hobby into a business?
00:08:35 Sonia Hubly (guest)
That's a really great question. So one of the ways there are, I guess, the answer to #1. The reason that I wanted to do that was because living, living rurally and staying home with your kids, while it provides a lot of really great, wonderful moments, it can also put a financial strain on families. And for me personally, I had the mental struggle, especially when I was staying home with the kids and not working, that I wasn't. I felt like it wasn't contributing to the family, which looking back.
00:09:05 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Now is a really silly thing to say because I was preserving all this food and feeding our family. So, you know, they always say you should take a look at all of the different things that you're doing. So I was mom, chef, you know, Gardner preserving. I was doing all of those things, but it still felt empty because there was no paycheck involved, which is such a sad thing to realize. So if you're out there and you're experiencing that, just know you're not alone.
00:09:30 Sonia Hubly (guest)
But so I wanted to try to find a way to take the things that I was already doing and make a little bit of residual money off of it. So by doing that, it gave me a little bit of a boost back up so that I didn't feel like I was falling short. And then to get started with it, it was, it was actually kind of a simple transition. So when it came to the gardening side of things, I went to plant garlic for our family and I was going to plant 30 cloves. So when you plant a clove ahead, grows from it. And I, my husband was like, well, if you're already going to take the time to plant.
00:10:01 Sonia Hubly (guest)
30 cloves and they grow over the winter because you plant garlic in the fall and then it it produces and becomes.
00:10:07 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
A full.
00:10:08 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Head of garlic by the next summer, he's like, why don't you, why don't you think about planting a little more? And so I actually ended up planting 300 instead of 30. And then we were able to sell all of those heads of garlic for about $2.00 apiece, which came out. Or we bartered with neighbors for honey. Things like that, too. But it it came out to be a really good, profitable side hustle.
00:10:32 Sonia Hubly (guest)
But then I was like, OK, and then to put a spin on it, my boys were getting older and so I decided, you know what? I have all these extra tomatoes and stuff and I just don't have the time because we had a baby at the moment to go to a farmers market. And so I let the boys set up a little like lemonade stand out by the road and they sold all of our surplus produce from the garden and it was just their pocket money. That's what we told them. They could you could keep it and do whatever you want with it. And it was only a pitfall to do that when.
00:11:02 Sonia Hubly (guest)
They started selling all of my tomatoes and I was like, hey, hey, hold on, these aren't even red yet. They're all still green. And so then they they finally slowed down and took it a little easier.
00:11:13 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So you're teaching kids how to earn money?
00:11:17 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And I'm sure you taught them how to save it, too. So that was a that was a great thing. So what what is what are you doing next? I know you have a couple irons in the fire, if you would. Can you tell the audience a little bit more about those?
00:11:31 Sonia Hubly (guest)
So because of the demands that I'm finding for my time, that is the hardest part to be able to come up with. Money is never finite, guys. It's it's time that is finite. We only have so much. And so I was talking with my husband and I said, you know, I want to teach everybody.
00:11:48 Sonia Hubly (guest)
About homesteading so much because I think it's so empowering that, you know, like we were saying earlier, you don't have to have a huge acreage in order to be able to grow some of your own food. It may not be all of your own food, but even if it's just, you know, lettuce all summer long, that will save you money over time. So I started Homestead Academy and part of the vision with Homestead Academy is helping anyone and everyone who wants to have some form of sustainability be able to attain it. So even if you are living in an apartment, there are options for you.
00:12:18 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Still that we can come up with to help you accomplish those goals.
00:12:23 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So Sonia, thank you so much for joining us today and walking us through how you started a lot of this as hobbies, how you turn in the business, but also how you used all of these skills to further your children's education. So thank you so much for sharing.
00:12:38 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.
00:12:40 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Before we go, can you tell people where they can find you?
00:12:43 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Oh, absolutely. You can find me at Mom, wife, Homestead, life.com. And if you were interested in the business side of things, it's Mom, wife.
00:12:52 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Instead, life.com back slash business on a budget.
00:12:56 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Thank you so much. And we'll make sure that those links are in the show notes. Sonia, thank you.
00:13:01 Sonia Hubly (guest)
Thank you, Destini.