Why I Keep Going Back to the Okie Homestead Expo Every Year

This was my third year going to the Okie Homestead Expo, and every time I go I come home with the same feeling — I learned a lot, missed just as much, and realized how much more there still is to figure out.

If you’ve never been, the Expo is one of those events where there are multiple speakers going at the same time all day long, and you spend half the weekend wishing you could split yourself into six different people. Five to sit in the sessions, and a sixth to walk the vendor booths and actually have time to stop and learn what people are offering instead of just passing by.

This year I went in planning to spend most of my time in Shawn and Beth Dougherty’s sessions. They were there last year too, and I made a point to sit in on them again this time. Not because they’re flashy or loud, but because they’re the kind of people that make this lifestyle feel real.

They’re a genuinely good couple, and you can see it when they’re up on stage together. The way they talk to each other, the way they explain things, there’s a lot of respect there, and a lot of years behind what they’re saying. They’re simple, approachable people, even though they’re a big name in the homesteading world. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to get close to a celebrity when you listen to them. It just feels like you’re sitting in a room learning from folks who have actually lived what they’re talking about.

That’s part of why I made sure to sit in their sessions this year, even though it meant missing some others I really wanted to hear. Temple Grandin was there, and I hate to admit it, but I didn’t make it to her talk. Not because I didn’t want to, but because there’s only so many hours in the day, and this Expo will make you choose whether you like it or not.

Day two especially was packed with sessions I wanted to be at all at the same time, and that’s honestly part of what makes the Expo what it is. You never leave feeling like you saw everything. You leave feeling like you got enough to keep thinking about for the rest of the year.

One thing that stuck with me this year was something Ruthann Zimmerman said during her cooking-from-scratch session. She talked about how this lifestyle isn’t just about raising animals or growing food. It’s about passing down skills. Because there may come a time when going to work and bringing home a paycheck isn’t enough to provide for your family, and knowing how to do things yourself matters more than ever.

That one sentence reminded me why I keep choosing this path, even when it means being tied down more than most people would ever want to be. The more animals we add, the more responsibility there is. Chickens, cattle, and someday dairy cows don’t exactly make it easy to pack up and leave whenever you feel like it.

I was even talking to my mom about that the other day. She said she wants to be able to retire, travel, sit on a beach somewhere, maybe work from wherever she feels like. And I realized… that doesn’t sound like freedom to me. I might enjoy the beach for a day, or a short trip here and there, but after that I’m ready to come home to all my animals.

What feels like fulfillment to me is watching the flock here at Cross B get better each year, knowing we’re helping preserve breeds that deserve to still be around. It’s raising calves that grow into good nutritious beef for someone’s table, or into solid mama cows that become part of this farm for the long haul. And when I think about adding a dairy cow someday, I don’t see it as being tied down. I see it as the center of the farm — from our own nutrition, to providing natural protein for pigs and chickens, to building fertility back into the ground.

That’s the kind of life this Expo reminds me I actually want.

You Can’t Go to Everything (and That’s Part of It)

One thing about the Expo is you never get to see everything you want to see. Every hour there are five speakers going at the same time, and then the vendor booths on top of that. If you really want to dive into what people are offering, you could spend half a day just walking the booths and talking to folks. So the whole weekend ends up being a constant decision of what to sit in on and what to miss.

Friday started out with me thinking I had a pretty good plan, but that didn’t last long. During the morning session I ended up waiting in line for auricular therapy with Dr. Jed Adamson, and I’m glad I did because that stuff actually worked. It wasn’t even something I had planned on doing, but that’s kind of how the Expo goes. You go for one thing and end up learning something completely different.

At one point I sat in on a talk about making poultry profitable, but it was geared more toward backyard egg production and picking high-laying breeds. Good information, just not where my brain is at right now. So I slipped out of that one and went over to Craig Beam’s live chicken processing demo instead. Watching someone actually do the work is always more useful to me than just hearing about it. The old poultry breeders used to say that if we don’t eat these birds, the breeds won’t survive, and there’s a lot of truth to that. If you’re going to preserve a flock, you have to be willing to process the extra cockerels and the hens that are finished laying. That’s why I think it’s important that people are still teaching how to do it the right way.

Later that day I tried the Dexter cattle session, mostly out of curiosity. I don’t really have plans to raise Dexters, but I figured there might be something in there I could use. When it wasn’t really clicking for me, I did what most people end up doing at this Expo at some point — I went back to the vendor booths and started walking again.

Anna Hill was there again this year with all of her fermented foods, and I swear it’s hard to walk past that booth without stopping. I stood there longer than I should have looking over all the different kinds of kraut she had laid out, and at one point I realized my mouth was actually watering just smelling all the different flavors. That’s not something I ever expected to say about sauerkraut, but there I was trying to decide which ones I wanted to take home instead of trying to talk myself out of it.

After taking my kraut back to the truck, I kept making my rounds through the booths for a while, stopping here and there and talking with whoever caught my attention. You could easily spend the whole weekend just walking that building.

The problem is the Expo doesn’t slow down just because you want to look around. By the afternoon the schedule was stacked so tight there was no way to be in every session I wanted to hear.

Divide and Conquer (Our Expo Strategy This Year)

One of the Friday afternoon sessions I sat in on while the rest of our group split up to cover other talks.

This year the four of us that went together had a little bit of a strategy going in. We knew ahead of time there was no way we were all going to want to sit in the same sessions all weekend, and there was no way one person could make it to everything. So instead of trying to stay together the whole time, we decided we would split up when it made sense and record sessions for each other.

We didn’t force anyone to go listen to something they weren’t interested in, but if two talks were at the same time and we had different things we wanted to hear, we divided up and hit record. That way later on we could compare notes and fill in the gaps on what we missed.

Friday afternoon was the first real test of that plan. The 2:30 time slot had several talks going at once that all sounded worth hearing. Ruthann Zimmerman was speaking on growing what you eat and eating what you grow, Laraine Cihak had a session on canning, David Stelzer was talking about food as a powerful medicine, Kristi Huntsman was doing one from the pantry up, and then there was the donkey milk lady session that I ended up going to.

There was no way to sit in all of them, so we split up and covered what we could. I chose the donkey milk talk partly because she’s been a big part of pushing for changes to raw milk laws here in Oklahoma, and I wanted to hear what she had to say in person. The others went to different sessions, and by the end of the day we had recordings from several of them to go back through later.

Saturday ended up being the same way, maybe even worse. There were talks I really wanted to hear, like Temple Grandin and Dr. Patrick Jones, and I still hate that I missed both of those. Jim Park’s estate planning and asset protection session was another one that could have easily been twice as long, and it felt like we barely scratched the surface before time ran out.

By the end of the weekend I realized our divide-and-conquer plan was about the only way to keep up. There’s just too much information at that Expo for one person to take in alone.

The Food & From-Scratch Talks Hit Different This Year

Ruthann Zimmerman speaking at 2026 Okie Homestead Expo

One thing I noticed this year was how many of the sessions that stuck with me had to do with food. Not just recipes or cooking, but the whole idea of knowing how to feed yourself and your family without depending on convenience for everything.

Ruthann Zimmerman’s sessions were some of the ones that made me think the most. She talked a lot about cooking from scratch, learning how to make basic foods, and not overcomplicating things. One thing she said that stuck with me was instead of saying “I don’t like this,” try saying “I don’t quite like this yet.” That sounds simple, but it changes the way you look at a lot of foods, especially the ones that are actually good for you.

It made me think back to standing at Anna Hill’s booth the day before, smelling all the different kinds of kraut she had laid out and realizing my mouth was watering. That’s not something I ever expected to say about sauerkraut, but there I was trying to decide which ones I wanted to take home. A few years ago I probably would have walked right past that table without even stopping.

Another thing Ruthann said that I liked was that you don’t have to love cooking to cook from scratch, and you definitely don’t have to love doing dishes. That hit home more than I expected. A lot of times people think this lifestyle means you have to enjoy every part of it, but that’s not really true. Sometimes it just means you know it’s worth doing, even when it’s not the fun part.

The more I listened, the more I realized that a lot of what we’re trying to do on our farm already fits into that way of thinking, even if we don’t always call it that. Raising our own meat, working toward more of our own food, learning skills as we go… it’s not about doing everything perfectly. It’s about knowing how to do it if you need to.

And that seems to be a big part of what this lifestyle really is — not convenience, not speed, but learning how to do things for yourself.

Why the Okie Homestead Expo Still Matters to Me

Every year I go to the Expo thinking I have a pretty good idea of what I’m doing, and every year I come home with a notebook full of things I want to try, fix, or learn more about. Not because what we’re doing is wrong, but because this kind of life is always a work in progress.

Between the sessions, the vendor booths, and the conversations in the hallway, it’s hard to leave without being reminded that homesteading isn’t just about having animals or growing a garden. It’s about learning skills, paying attention to how things work, and being willing to do things the harder way when it makes more sense in the long run.

This year especially, a lot of what stuck with me came back to food, responsibility, and knowing how to take care of things yourself instead of depending on someone else to do it for you. From cooking and pantry talks, to dairy, to animal production, to estate planning, it all pointed back to the same idea — the more you know how to do, the more capable you are when life doesn’t go exactly the way you expected.

The sessions I sat in with Shawn and Beth Dougherty probably tied into that more than anything else, but that’s a whole conversation by itself. They have a way of explaining this lifestyle that makes you look at your own farm a little differently, and I’ve got enough notes from their talks this year that it really deserves its own post.

That’s one of the reasons I keep going back to the Okie Homestead Expo every year. Not because I expect to come home with everything figured out, but because it always gives me something to think about, something to work toward, and usually a reminder of why I chose this path in the first place.

It also helps to spend a weekend around people who think the same way. People who understand why this life is worth the work, even when it isn’t the easy road. That kind of community is hard to find, and the Expo is one of the few places where it feels like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.