Feel Northern Air
Meet Joe and Melissa Bates—a husband-and-wife duo whose shared life weaves together family, faith, and a hands-on commitment to their Aitkin, Minnesota community. As owners of Northern Air Plumbing & Heating, they bring a grounded, practical touch to keeping homes warm and water flowing, reflecting the same resilience that defines their story.
Joe, once a sports-driven kid turned lay pastor, merged his Legacy Plumbing into Northern Air in 2017, taking full ownership with a vision for steady growth. Melissa, a free-spirited thinker with a knack for nurturing curiosity, complements his structure, having guided their four kids through a homeschool journey rooted in integrity and real-world grit.
Together, they’ve built more than a business—they’ve crafted a legacy of conviction, adaptability, and quiet strength that echoes from their plumbing work to the lives they’ve shaped.
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 9 minutes
- Episodes
- 27
- Years Active
- 2025
007-Integrity Over Conformity: Our Homeschool Way
How do you raise kids who stand firm in a world that pulls them to conform? In this episode, Joe and Melissa Bates peel back the layers of their homeschooling life, where faith, community, and convic…
006-From Little House to Big Lessons: Unforgettable Trips
Picture this: a creaky 1972 pop-up camper swaying in a Minnesota storm, parked at the end of an airplane runway, with a family of six scrambling for safety in a mosquito-infested truck bed. In Episod…
005-Failure as Fuel: Our Homeschool Experiment
What does it take to raise kids who thrive outside the traditional classroom? In Episode 2 of the Feel Northern Air Podcast, Joe and Melissa Bates dive into the uncharted waters of homeschooling afte…
004-Why We Ditched School Rules for Our Kids
What happens when two parents with opposite instincts—one a rule-following athlete, the other a free-spirited dreamer—face the daunting choice of how to educate their kids? In this raw, relatable deb…
003-New Guy, New World: Surviving Aitkin’s Trades and Temps
Joe steps out of an Illinois hospital gig into the raw, frostbitten unknown of Aitkin’s trades, where self-doubt gnaws as fiercely as the subzero winds. Picture a guy who’d never swung a hammer, now …
002-From Chicago’s Edge to Aitkin’s Quiet: A Family’s Bold Reset
Joe and Melissa unravel the jarring shift from Chicago’s restless pulse—where convenience hummed 24/7 and violence lurked too close—to Aitkin’s stillness, where shops shut at five and a fevered kid m…
001-Why We Left Illinois for a Frozen New Start
Joe and Melissa Bates peel back the layers of their leap from a noisy, unsafe Illinois city life to the quiet, frigid unknowns of rural Minnesota. Picture this: a young couple, two small kids in tow,…