Having always gone by the nickname Gubba, this 23-year-old Oregon native wears many hats: she’s a homemaker, homesteader, animal caretaker, and local community member.
Gubba is part of a 5th generation homesteading family and is trying to help others reach into the wisdom of the past to better their health and their well-being. For Gubba, much of the wisdom she seeks is found in the lives and examples of her grandparents.
Looking toward one side of her family, her grandparents “owned the largest sheep ranch in the northwest,” and on the other side, her grandparents owned a “very large” cattle operation. Gubba told the Epoch Times her family “had many self-starter personalities.” They were “original thinkers and pioneers in different realms and professions” who left war-torn Europe to build a new kind of life in America.
“They were individuals that did not blindly accept and live by prevailing narratives. Some of them have inspired in me a similar outlook on life,” she said, adding that she seeks to follow in their footsteps.
“Wake up and face reality,” she said. “We live in a system driven by profits from sick patients, a system that purposely disconnects us from our food. A system that brainwashes us to believe bad food is okay to consume. ... We are disconnected from our communities because instead of supporting a local family who is raising meat in their farm field, we are handing our money over to some mysterious foreign entity.
“By reconnecting to our food, we find healing. By reconnecting with our communities, we find power.”
From Pandemic Chaos to Homesteading
Though she grew up in a family of homesteaders, Gubba was on her way to becoming a specialized medical professional when the COVID-19 chaos of 2020 struck, and she felt a call back to her roots.“In 2020, when the pandemic was erupting, and chaos was pulsing through society, I remember the panic at the grocery stores,” she said. “I mingled through the aisles staring at empty shelves, passing by barren fridges and freezers, and witnessed people fighting over bags of beans. I thought to myself, ‘This is insane.’ Because it was.”
Gubba thought there had to be a better way than just depending on “this broken grocery store system.”
“I set out to learn how to garden more efficiently in my little backyard, how to seek out and source from local farmers, and how to cook and bake from scratch,” she said.
Alongside her wake-up call to get back into homesteading, Gubba also became disenchanted with the medical profession in general.
“[I] came to the realization that it was a dead end I didn’t want to venture into,” she said. “I saw how the medical system was polluted and profited off of sick people. How could I ever be a part of something so nefarious?”
With the call to get back to what her family had done for the past five generations and her growing dissatisfaction with the modern medical system, Gubba took the plunge in 2017 and traded her home for a “rundown” homestead in Washington.
The Non-Glamorous Work
With a new homestead in her control, Gubba was ready to get to work and get her hands dirty, saying she had big dreams and aspirations—and still does.“I began following tradition by getting my hands in the dirt and working towards a bountiful garden,” she said. “My great-grandma grew food to feed her family of 12 over the winter. She preserved her harvest by canning and had a root cellar with walls lined with home-canned food.”
Gubba looked to do the same for her family. But running a successful homestead is not for the faint of heart, she soon realized.
“People are jumping in expecting cute chickens, friendly neighbors, and a dairy cow named Daisy,” she said. “Instead, they find their chickens going missing in the night, hostile communities, and Daisy ... busting through the fence, and because you didn’t milk her, she now has mastitis.”
Gubba says the work on the homestead is “not glamorous,” but it is still worthwhile. She is constantly working towards what her great-grandparents had and slowly learning the knowledge they had.
“I plan to preserve this knowledge and pass it down with my children, hopefully instilling its importance so it is never lost again,” she said.
Though she has 38 acres of land, Gubba has not yet purchased any large farming vehicles. She lets neighbors run cattle on the land to keep it trimmed and short.
Her homestead also came with an old farmhouse, a garage, and storage areas for food and animals. Beyond the fields and buildings, there is also a patch of pine trees and a seasonal stream that flows through the homestead.
“I always approach everything with open arms, welcoming new challenges, so my ‘family’ here is constantly growing,” Gubba said.
Her homesteading family includes dairy cows, two colonies of bees, chickens, goats, and dogs. She grows garlic, berries, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and “all sorts of fruit trees.” While she’s getting close to growing all of her family’s food independently and becoming self-sufficient, Gubba prefers to buy locally when she needs to get something outside of what she grows herself.
Returning to Ancestral Roots
In addition to the work on her homestead, Gubba has also delved into other important reasons for understanding the source of our food and cosmetics. She encourages others to reconnect with the lifestyles of their ancestors.“If you think about how our ancestors survived, they had to subsist without the convenience of grocery stores,” she said. “They had wells of knowledge that allowed them to ... grow their own food, forage local foods, and work the land they lived on.”
On the flip side, she says, most people today are completely disconnected from the food they buy—not knowing where it came from or what it’s been sprayed with.
Returning to ancestral roots has benefited Gubba, as seen in an interaction with a family member. Gubba knew her grandparents used to use tallow for skincare and when a relative, who was struggling with eczema, asked Gubba if she knew of anything to help, Gubba recommended tallow—with incredible results.
“It turned out so good that I am now offering this skin care solution online, and the reviews have been amazing,” she said. “People from across the world are sharing how my tallow is helping their eczema, vitiligo, psoriasis, rosacea, and other skin ailments.”
Going back to the roots of her ancestors, Gubba says, goes deeper than the food she eats and the products she creates.
“My great-grandfather did not blindly obey those around him,” she said. “When he left Europe for America, many of his neighbors, I am told, laughed at him. But then most of them were dead a few years later when the machines of war rolled across that land, along with the politics.”
Like her great-grandfather, Gubba refuses to follow blindly.
“Freedoms are being tested worldwide in many ways,” she said. “We have lost touch with our ancestral wisdom. Instead of family wisdom, we blindly trust commercial products.”
From clothing to sunscreen, Gubba says dangerous chemicals are lurking in the foods and cosmetics we buy from stores.
“I’m not saying someone is trying to intentionally hurt us,” she said. “Rather, I’m saying that in trusting people we don’t know or see—people driven by profit—we are taking huge risks.”
Questioning the Narrative
When Gubba was in college, an anonymous person left a peculiar note for her, which sparked more seeking on her part. The note said, “Where does fluoride come from? Research it.”She did, and she was shocked.
The toxicity goes beyond products, Gubba says. She says the media we consume is just as damaging. Now that she is so busy with life and work on her homestead, she hardly has time for all that electronic entertainment, which has been liberating.
“Consuming such media is similar to consuming processed food—it affects your mind and body. You may not realize it until you break free,” she said. “I don’t really care how others spend their time or what they decide to watch. I only care to share my experience and how liberating it has been, and, hopefully, I can inspire that one person who is seeking truth and freedom, like I was many years ago!”
She encourages others to get in touch with their ancestors.
She said: “Open your eyes. Ditch your toxic skincare routine and use tallow. Stop drinking soda and look into raw milk. Quit frequenting the big box grocery stores and go support a local farm.
“Question things you take for granted. The system doesn’t want you free, and the only way to be free is to seek truth and take action. Our freedoms have been slyly stolen over the past century, and I know anything coming from the system will do you no good.”
