Couple lost suburban home, then built a better life on Ozarks homestead

After losing their suburban home — buried under three mortgages and then a flood — Catherine and Phillip Lightfoot decided not to start over the same way. They wanted the homestead they'd dreamed of since childhood, and they wanted to build it without owing anyone anything. For $37,000, they built a strawbale-and-cob home entirely by hand: no contractors, no debt. Their first seasons on the land were spent in tents with their two children (cooking outside, bathing in a wood-fired tub, figuring it out as they went). Rocket stove for heat. Composting toilet. Outdoor shower before indoor plumbing. They taught themselves the plumbing, electrical, and structural work from books and friends who knew a little more than they did. The farm grew alongside the house. Pigs and goats for meat, goats for milk, chickens for eggs, and a big garden planted with intention — leaning toward crops native to the Americas that actually want to grow in the Ozarks. The Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) became the backbone of their diet. They learned to grow and eat corn the way it was meant to be eaten: flour corn, hominy corn, dried and nixtamalized into masa for tortillas and flatbreads — not the sweet corn most Americans think of as the only kind. Tornadoes have come through. Big storms too. The house is still standing. Now Phillip works part-time. Catherine doesn't work at all. Their bills are low enough that they don't have to. Peace of Earth Farmstead https://peaceofearthfarmstead.com https://www.youtube.com/@peaceofearth/ On *faircompanies: https://faircompanies.com/videos/lost-suburban-home-won-big-starting-over-in-little-ozarks-homestead/