We were surprised last year when the folks from The Discovery Channel and their show Homestead Rescue contacted us for a third episode. Back in the summer of 2019, the crew spent a couple weeks at our house filming two episodes, which released early in 2020 right before the global COVID pandemic hit the US.
House of 30,000 Tires first aired on January 16, 2020.
Cobbers Nightmare followed the very next week on January 23.
Based on all the comments about our episodes, I was positive we’d seen the last of the Raney family. A ton of people loved the shows and were very supportive of what Wendy and I were doing on our property. Some people thought we were crazy. Other people … well, let’s just say the world is filled with some very unhappy people who have nothing better to do than hide behind their keyboards and make a nuisance of themselves. And then there were the folks — bless their hearts — who believed that everything they saw on the screen was 100% real.
Four years after the show originally aired, and after countless loops of re-runs, we thought we’d seen the end of our fifteen minutes of fame. Occasionally, people would stop us in the grocery store and ask if we were those people. Or a coworker would say, “I was flipping through the channels the other day, and you’ll never believe who popped up on my screen!” Some folks even showed up at our house during dinner and asked for a tour! But the show eventually moved on to other families who needed the Raneys’ help, and we had moved on and nearly finished the house. It was a really fun ride, but the ride was long over.
Or so we thought.
The show’s producers called us in late winter/early spring last year and asked if we’d be interested in filming a follow-up episode, sort of a “where are they now?” kind of thing. This time it would be only Marty Raney. His kids, Matt and Misty, wouldn’t be joining him. We had developed a close friendship with Marty and his family, keeping in touch every now and again over the years. We had no idea what kinds of projects he had in mind; most of our large projects were all done, and we were focusing now on smaller projects inside the house. But of course we said we’d love to have him back, even if the kids weren’t coming.
So in May 2024, the crew lugged all their gear across the country and trekked back out for another week of filming. I took a few days off work. Our older kids — who are all off on their own now — came home for the week. We didn’t have to worry about keeping Marty busy or finding projects for him to work on. He’s a homesteader himself up in Alaska, and he found plenty to do. Our berm in the back of the house needed leveling and re-shaping. Our girls worked with a contractor on the show to seal up our gutters and route them into our water cisterns. And Marty busied himself with building a concrete tornado shelter next to the driveway.
It took several months of editing work, but the show finally aired on November 17, 2024. They called it Crash and Berm.
We didn’t bother reading any of the comments or reviews this time. We learned our lesson on that. When we filmed the first two episodes back in 2019, we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. We watched several episodes of the show before they came out and kind of understood the message they were trying to convey. This was the Raneys’ show, and they were coming to bail out the homesteaders and teach them some vital skills about this crazy lifestyle we’ve all chosen. We were nervous about being on camera. We were nervous during the interviews. We were nervous about how things would turn out. We were nervous about what our friends and family would think. We didn’t care so much about the neighbors since most of them hate us anyway. Basically, we just didn’t want to look like idiots.
We were much more comfortable this time around with the filming and the crew. We loved having Marty back and spending time with him. It was a much more relaxed atmosphere for all of us. Camden and Marty spent time together playing harmonicas and guitars and singing songs. We joked and laughed and had a great time while we worked. Marty even punked us when he felled a tree on the brand new shelter we’d all spent a week building. Friendships were strengthened, both with Marty and returning members of the film and sound crew, some of whom we hadn’t seen in years. If you’ve seen the episode, you know that tears were shed when it was time for everyone to say goodbye. I thought for sure they’d edit that part out, but they left it in.
We will be forever grateful to the show for contacting us and asking us to be involved. The whole experience was just a blast, and the entire crew was just amazing to work with and interact with. The producer of our show is also a screen writer and has worked with Kevin Costner on Yellowstone. I had so much fun talking to him about how he approaches screenwriting for Hollywood. Doing the show was great, but the best part for us were the friendships we developed. Would we do it again? Absolutely. But I’m fairly certain our TV days are behind us now. Maybe.
If you want to know more about our experiences filming the first two episodes, I wrote about those a while back. You can read more deets here and here. In the meantime, enjoy some behind-the-scenes photos.
