This morning Chris and I woke up to over 100 subscribers on our YouTube Channel. While it may be a small number, it was our first milestone and we were excited to meet it! It had me reflecting a bit on my goals for this channel and why we REALLY started it. New subscribers and lots of views really don’t mean anything to us, IF we don’t meet the goals we set out to meet in starting this channel.
So why did we start the Sunshine Farm YouTube channel?
Share Our Story and Our Life
I have always enjoyed living outside of the box. I tend to ignore what others expect and I like to embrace adventure, spontaneity, and big dreams. This has allowed me to embrace so many unique experiences and has really brought me to where I am now, living out my dream on our little hobby farm, in my early twenties. This wasn’t by luck, it wasn’t because of some secret inheritance, it was by dreaming big, and living towards my dreams. Now of course there was a lot of privilege that allowed me to do this, I’m not discounting that, but in addition, it was because of a decision to just go for it, and not live according to what culture or society said I should be doing.
So how does this relate to YouTube? Well… I want to share that message. I want to encourage people to dream big, to pursue a life that is meaningful, regardless of whether or not it looks like the rest of society. There is a lot of pressure to follow a linear life course, but I think that can be such a disadvantage, and in a lot of ways, goes against what God has called for us. I want to share that message in our videos, through simply showing our life here on the farm.
In addition, I think it can be really easy on many forms of social media to show the highlights of our lives, and I really feel this blog and our YouTube channel can be an avenue for us to share our authentic selves. I know authentic is often overused, but I simply cannot find a better word with the same meaning. So our first reason for starting the YouTube was so simply share our life, to encourage others to dream BIG, and to show our authentic selves to the world.
Build Community and Connection
Before we started our YouTube channel, I had been actively watching other channels for months, and throughout that process I realized something. It is easy to create community with people who are like-minded, but it is hard and much less common to see community between people who are not.
We may be homesteaders focused on sustainability, self-sufficiency, and growing our own food, but we also are quite different in the fact that we don’t raise meat animals here at our farm. Despite that difference, I am eager to build community not only with others who have that in common, but also with people who don’t. I want to connect with people of diverse walks of life, so that we can learn from each other, and appreciate the diversity that exists in this world. We don’t have to make all of the same choices or have all of the same convictions to be in relationship or in community with each other, and I think that is GREAT!
So… have we met these two goals in starting our YouTube channel?
YES! We’ve had a blast sharing our life, and have met many others who are interested in following our journey. On top of that, we have also found people who share our beliefs, and also people who don’t, and they are all engaging in community with each other. How cool is that?!
I am excited to continue in this journey and discover new goals for our channel, while also continuing to check back on how we are doing with the two we started with.
That’s all for now friends.
All my best,
Jenn
SUNSHINE FARM 
So proud of all that the two of you have accomplished!
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