A Tiny Homestead

Dawn's Dirt - Farming In Midlife

Today I'm talking with Dawn about homesteading and farming as we age at Dawn's Dirt.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt and Dawn was a guest on my show, not two weeks ago, and told us about what she does. But today we're going to be a little more focused and we're going to talk about  homesteading and farming and gardening once you get past the age of 40, especially as a woman.  Good morning, Dawn. How are you? Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity again. I just love talking about these things. So yeah, it's good.  Me too. so
00:55If we're talking about when you get past 40, obviously I'm past 40, I'm 55. I think you told me you're 44, is that right? I was just going to say who says I'm past 40, but I'm just teasing. I'm 44. I almost had to edit all that out. Okay. So the first thing I want to say is aging is a privilege denied to many. And so I'm really glad that I'm getting older and hopefully wiser.
01:24trying anyway. But there are some real things that come  with getting older, especially with our bodies and  manual labor. So  how's that going for you Dawn? Because I will share mine after you share yours. For sure. Make me go first.  Well,  I'll tell you this. Like I'm not a
01:46bigger, fatter woman, but I'm a bigger woman. I'm tall and I've got big bones and I've got good muscle structure. So I can actually lift  and outlift a lot of people.  I was just thinking back this morning, I went to the gym  for a couple of months just after I  got through my busy season on the farm. And on the farm, I could lift, you know, three buckets of potatoes, which was about 150 pounds.  And I went to the gym and dead lifted 185 pounds.  So
02:13I can do it, I am stronger than most, but I'll tell you this, my back hurts a lot at the time and my lower back and my upper back and into my neck. It hurts a lot of the time and I've learned, I used to be able to do the 150 pounds in one shot and just do it and bust it done, but I've learned in the last couple of years here that I'm better off to do three trips of 50 pounds than one trip of 150 pounds.
02:42It's harder. Everything aches a bit more and I fall into bed at night and I'm just physically exhausted, tired from  doing physical work.  Yeah. And it takes longer to recover  once you get past 40 as well. Yeah, for sure.  My youngest son still lives with us and he's 23 and his job is to help us out on the  quote unquote farm.
03:12And this kid can just bust his ass for two days in a row,  be  mildly sore the next day. And  the fourth day from the first day, he's like, let's do it again. I'm like, nah, I'm not doing anything.  You can go play. You do it. For sure. And I found that too. know,  back when I had my farm, I would have to, in the spring, I'd have to get my boiler system going again. so,
03:38What that involved was taking a ladder around the greenhouse and crawling up it and crawling back down it, know, opening the valves and things like that.  And so I was up and down ladders, up and down ladders, up and down ladders all day  for a full day. And I could do it while I was going because once I'm moving, I'm moving. But let me tell you, the next day when I try and do it again, my body says, uh-uh, you do not want to do this again. Like it just took  longer the next day. And I was sore for several days after that.  Yeah.
04:06It's just your muscles don't recover the way they did when you were young. And  part of it is that your body has extended a metric but ton of energy up to the age of 40 because you had all the energy in the world. And at some point your body is just like, you can go easier now. I give you permission by telling you to stop. Yeah. The problem is, is my brain doesn't want to stop and I just keep pushing. And so
04:35Yeah, it's not the same as I was when I sold my farm. I'm I and then starting this new this new farm I'm I'm starting over from scratch and I'm you know doing cleaning jobs and  you know have my animals and my gardens and things like that again  and I'm doing it on my own. I'm a single mama  and yeah, it was easier the first time around to keep up and do it all and work, you know 12 14 16 hour days and now I'm like  a 12 hour day like a 16 hour day right now is is it
05:04It basically makes me  unusable the next,  on the Friday. I still have to work.  I still have to keep going. But yeah, I'm sore and I'm tired and I'm  a bit grumpy the next day.  And the thing that I get a kick out of is  I used to stay up till, you know, two in the morning  and I would get up at 5.30 a.m. and grab a shower and get ready to go to my job when I was 19, 18, 19.
05:34And I would do that for couple weeks in a row. I'd get a couple hours of good sleep. And then after that two weeks, I would take a weekend and just crash. would sleep most of the weekend because that's how I did it.  Now,  I can't do that anymore.  I really love  sleep.  sleep is where I recover. It's where I dream.  It's where I get to just not have to think about anything purposely.
06:02I love sleep. I love sleep more than I love food.  I'm so sorry. I've got this little tickle still.  Yeah, absolutely.  People would say to me all the time when I had my farm and was running three companies and had 30 people on payroll and was doing  all the things that I had and the stress load and all of it, people would say like, how  are you even surviving? Like, how are you even doing it?  And I would say to people, I sleep.
06:32That is how I survived it is I slept and I slept hard and I'm still like that when I go to bed at the end of the day, I sleep and I sleep hard and I don't wake up during the night  and  the next day I get up and I do it again.  And that's the only thing that saved me was my sleep.  If I  didn't sleep hard, I think I'd be a puddle on the floor. Yeah,  I have said this on the podcast a bunch of times and I probably should stop saying it, but it's the truth.  My husband snores.
07:02And so I go, I try to be asleep asleep by nine o'clock at night at the latest so that I get at least four hours of solid sleep before he will wake me up with his snoring. And I'm telling you, we're gonna have to figure out a better sleeping arrangement because this four hours of solid sleep a night is about killing me. We have to figure something out. I don't know what's gonna happen because
07:28I can do the podcast, obviously. I sit down, I talk to you guys, it gets my adrenaline boosted and all the happy endorphins kick in and I feel great.  But if I had to do a real job on somebody else's schedule, it would not be possible at this point, I swear to you. Yeah, well, sleep is what fuels us.  People discount sleep.  Sorry, I'm to to pick a drink.  I'm sorry.
07:58Um, yeah, sleep is what fuels us. People need sleep just like they need sunshine, just like they need food, just like they need water. Sleep is another set of fuel that just feeds us.  And I know for myself, like I need, in the summertime, I can handle six to seven hours of sleep a night,  but, and then in the winter time, I like eight or nine hours of sleep. It's just the way my body is.  Um, but if I don't get that six or seven hours of good, solid sleep,  I'm,  I start to cry actually.
08:28That's when I really start getting weepy is when I don't have enough sleep. And I've been like that. My mom has said, I've been like that even since I was little.  If I would start crying, my mom would say,  oh, Dawn needs to go to bed. And it's true. I wake up the next day and I'm okay again. Yeah, I get weepy or I get really snarky and I have to work really hard to keep my thoughts in my own head and not let them out of my mouth.  So yeah, it's not good.
08:57I think that's an over 40 thing, you know?  You lose your,  you gain your confidence and you lose your inhibitions to like,  in some ways care. Like I don't care what you think or what you whatever, and it just comes out your mouth.  I think that gets worse and worse as we get older and older, because I can see it more in my mom,  and then I can see it even more in my grandmother now is that  the thought process and the thoughts are just coming out of the mouth.  Yeah, I...
09:26This is going to be a very interesting podcast. used to have a really sharp tongue when I was,  probably from 10 years old  until I was in my early twenties. And it was partly because I was brought up on the East coast and East coast people are very blunt. So I was raised around very blunt people.  The other thing is that I was insecure. so insecurity sometimes comes out sideways, especially verbally. And it took me a long time.
09:55to count to 10 in my head before I would say the thing that wanted to just pop out. And I'm a lot better  these days, but man, if I am exhausted,  I choose not to be around anyone because it's so much harder to keep that  mean streak inside of my head, you know? Yeah, absolutely.  I've gotten better too.
10:22But for me, I'm Dutch background, like my heritage is Dutch and the Dutch are known for being direct and I'm not necessarily unkind. I'm not necessarily mean,  but I just am very direct. it's in my head, I'm going to say it and it's not mean, it's just  literal and direct. And so, yeah, I think there's a bit of a difference between being just literal and direct and  mean.  I can't say I'm mean with my comments.
10:50Yeah, and I mean, I'm not going out of my way to be bitchy with people. just have to think about the delivery because  how someone receives what you say is in how you deliver it, what words you choose and what tone of voice you say it in.  And the more tired I am, the less careful I am with both of those things.  Fair enough, fair enough. mean, I think we all are to some degree as women, you know.
11:18We're just created like that. I don't know.  But I do also think that there's a difference between a kind bitch and a mean bitch. Have you heard of that before?  What's your thought on that? A kind bitch and a mean bitch?  I don't know.  I think a kind bitch is going through things and things that she says come out sounding bitchy.  And I think a mean bitch is just a mean bitch. Yes.  I agree.
11:45Yeah, I think so. And I've run across both. I sometimes I've been called a bitch,  but it's just because I'm direct. But I'm not unkind in it. I'm just very direct and just  call a spade a spade.  Whereas a mean bitch is out to get you. I think one has selfish motivation and one has just. It's just direct. Yeah, and I think that the kind one has no spoons left. You know how people say I'm out of spoons, which means I have nothing left for today.
12:14Yes. I've never thought of that. But yeah, you're right.  The kind one just,  yeah, you're right. She gives and she gives and she gives of herself till she's got nothing left. Yeah, you're 100 % correct.  Yeah. There are days where my husband's had a rough day at work and I've had a long day here  and things are going on for me. And I'm just like, honey, I'm out of spoons. I'm going to bed. And he's like,  good night. I love you. I'm like, I love you too.
12:44Sorry, I cut you off. No, it's okay, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think that's a healthy relationship and a healthy couple to just say, hey,  I'm out.  I saw  a quote from, I think it was Brene Brown, I think.  And she said that she comes home to her husband at the end of the day and they'll say where they are on a scale of one to 10.  And she'll say, I've got a three and he'll say, I've got an eight. And so they'll just meet each other where they're at. And sometimes she'll be higher and he'll be lower.
13:11You know, to just meet each other where they're at. And I think that's good communication.  And that's where you can really build a strong, healthy relationship is to know that if you're both at it too,  rather than wasting your energy on fighting, just stop for the day. Tell each other you love each other and  carry on.  exactly. And,  and there are times, I mean, this is really funny. I did not expect to be talking about this today, but we're going to talk about it anyway.  When you are in a long-term relationship,
13:41There's a lot of patience and respect required to make it work. And when I started the podcast, I was so obsessed, you I was consumed with learning how to do it that I was putting in 45 hour weeks one way or another.  And after a couple of weeks, I was just swamped. was like, I need somebody else to do the dishes because I've got to do this thing for work. And I haven't really had a job in years.
14:10And I finally sat my husband down and I said,  now that I've made myself a job where I'm the boss and the CEO and the COO and everything,  said, could I get a little help with some of the dishes and maybe folding laundry?  And he was like, oh my God, I didn't even think of that. Of course you can. I said, thank you. That would be wonderful. And so he and the kid have been pitching in.
14:34And both of them love to cook. So two nights a week, I just give them free reign. I'm like, go make whatever you want to make for dinner. I will grab a bowl of granola. I don't care. I'll eat something else because they're like really spicy food and I do not. So two nights a week, I don't have to, I don't have to cook. And those are the nights, those are the nights that I try to schedule podcast episodes to record them with people who are, who need that time in the evening because they're not available during the day.
15:03That's amazing, honestly.  And that's what a family unit is, is picking up where someone else  can't pick up.  And I'm single now. I've been single for six years now.  But to be really honest with you,  I'll tell you about some  parts of my marriage is we were not teammates. We were not team players.  My ex-husband, he's a decent man. He's not a bad man at all.  But  his work ethic and my work ethic didn't match and didn't align.
15:31And so I would work a 12, 14, 16 hour day and he would work, you know, a three or four or five hour day and I'd come home and he's watching TV and on a farm or a homestead, like that just, it doesn't work. You have to have high drive and high work ethic to make a farm go. And yeah, we just weren't aligned and I tried changing that, but 16 years of marriage taught me that I can't change someone.
16:01And so ultimately it did enter our relationship. There was a few other things behind closed doors, but  yeah, the not being aligned in work ethic was a huge problem in,  you know, respect and love  within our marriage.  Yeah.  You've got to have  not the same goals, but I think you have to have the same core fundamental values as your partner.
16:29For sure. And if you're not on the same page, like,  it's just not going to work, especially as teammates, especially on a farm or, you know, trying to  reach the goals when one person is, I always say I picked up all the drop balls behind him and the heaviest drop ball I picked up behind him was I took on all our, 100 % of our debt  and I bought him out of the farm and he moved to our house in town.  And  yeah, that.
16:55It's just not,  we're not meant to do that. Like that doesn't work in a partnership. so, yeah.  And so I've been single here for six years now trying to build it back on my own. And  in some ways it's good because I don't have to answer to anybody. I don't have to  ask anyone's permission to do this or do that, but I do push myself because I am a single mom and doing this by myself. I do tend to push myself  just that much harder, you know?  And after 40,  it's tough.
17:24Yeah, how old are your kids, So my girls, I've got three daughters. So they are 14, 16 and 18. And it's there. There's that little meme that says, you know, when I was a kid, I had to roll up my chores were rolling the garbage bin down the driveway. And my girls, the farm depends on it. So even when my girls were younger, they would come with me to farmers markets. And so they would work their little butts off and they would work with me and we would do it as a team. And we spent lots of time together.
17:52And then when I sold my farm, interestingly enough, several people said, oh, you have more time for your girls now. And I said, actually, no, it's the opposite because I took a full-time job last summer  and  I did not see my kids because I couldn't take them to work with me.  And  so this summer I'm doing it on my own again  and they helped me. They helped me load my chickens, my meat birds into the trailer the other night.  They sure didn't want to,  but they did it. And I'm so thankful for my daughters for doing
18:21the things that  they can do to help me for the farm, you know? And that meme is  my chores were rolling the garbage can down the driveway and,  you know, the other farm kids, the farm depends on it if they do their chores or not, because,  you know,  there's bigger stakes on a farm.  I am so proud of you.  You are a good mom because you are teaching them so many things are going to help them later on.  Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.
18:51They are really good kids, honestly, and they have work ethic themselves. They are sought after in our community to do jobs and to work farmers markets and do different things.  And  ironically, like two of my children, well, all three of them in different roles are going to work for my former farm. The people that bought my farm are going to work.  They're going to work for them as employees this year.  it's pretty cool. know, last  summer we weren't ready for that, but this summer,
19:20They genuinely want to help and see that that farm survive because farming is so important and  it's a way for them  to still feel connected to their childhood, to the way they were raised.  It's pretty cool actually. That's beautiful. I love that.  Okay. So now we've talked about relationships  and partnerships and coupling and  uncoupling and all the things I don't usually talk about on the podcast.  It's for me,
19:49this whole thing about being over 40. It really kicked me in the ass when I was 44. So I was your age and I will tell you what happened. My husband was replacing a window in one of our son's bedrooms in the old house. It was a little tiny window and he needed help with something because he was actually out on the roof and I was in the room on the inside where the window was. And he had asked me to
20:17give hand him something through the open window space and I knelt down and there was carpet in that room. It was like a ugly shag carpet. So it was a really long deep pile and I knelt down and I felt something under my knee and I tried to move so that I wouldn't put all my weight on my knee on the thing and rocked my knee funny and also ended up on this screw that was in the carpet and hurt my knee.
20:45And I didn't think any of that. I was like, oh, that's going to hurt tomorrow and  I'll walk it off and I'll be fine.  And a year later, if I move my knee wrong, it still hurt. And I was like, oh, we have hit the,  I can't necessarily walk injuries off anymore stage. That's when I knew that I was over 40. Okay. You're putting some fear into me because I haven't  had that experience yet, but I'm sure it's coming.
21:14Because I'm that same way, like,  oh, I hurt myself or that smarted a bit. And  yeah, I've always been the one to walk it off. You know, if it hurts in some places, like it'll, if it comes by itself, that's what my mom always said, if it comes by itself, it's going to go away by itself.  you know,  I'm very much like that. kind of personally avoid the doctor, like the plague. And yeah, I just  grunt it off and walk it off.  so you're saying it's coming. It's going to hit that one of these days I can't do that.
21:44Yeah, it's coming. I'm sorry. I hate to be the  bearer of bad news, Dawn, but yes, at some point you're going to injure yourself and be like,  think I might want to get that looked at this time. Yeah. Well, and I can see it in my mom. mean, my mom is,  I got my work ethic from my parents and  my kids are getting it from me.  And my mom has recently, yeah, hurt her knee. And it was one of those things she thought if it comes by itself, it'll go away by itself. And yeah, it's
22:11she's going to end up with a surgery over it. she's been limping. the thing with my mom that I must say, and she's older than both of us, she's 65 and she, it doesn't stop her. even though she's limping and even though she's using a crutch to walk a lot of the time and you know, things like that, she's still going on holidays. She is still planting her gardens. She is still doing the work required. Like she's just a bulldozer. She's still doing what she needs to do.
22:39And she's not letting it stop her. I think that there's  something to be said for that. When you let something stop you, when you get an illness or when you let something,  you know, hold you back, I think it can hold you back from other possibilities as well. Whereas if you just  accept it and work within it, I mean, she, went to Cuba  last January and she, we got a wheelchair for in the airport, right? So she's still.
23:07She still allowed us to help her, but she still did the things that she wanted to do. She just didn't say  to us,  well, I have a bummed knee, so I'm going to not go.  exactly.  So we've spent 23 minutes talking about stuff I don't need to talk about and some of the stuff we wanted to talk about. So let's talk about  how to support your own self, your body and your mind to stay strong past 40.
23:35to doing the things.  What I would say is you gotta stay hydrated, number one.  You gotta get sleep and you have to eat food that supports your body because if you just eat junk food, you're done for.  I couldn't agree more. I've always been a proponent of my guts are like a dog,  but I noticed the other day, I forget what I had, but I had something the day before and it was.
24:00It was probably pasta. I've noticed it with pasta actually. If I eat pasta with, you know, a sauce or whatever,  especially if I've gone to a restaurant,  the next day I'm quite lethargic.  And I think that's to do with the food. And so quality food, quality water, quality sleep, I think  those help you.  They're the fuel for your body and you're right. And so when you've got a homestead or you've got a farm,  you've got access to these great foods and
24:27Yeah, sometimes I used to say with my farm, I sacrifice meals at my table to put food on others, but I'm still able to make different choices. can grab the vegetables or a salad or  just even a burger in a lettuce wrap even is something different than  the burger and fries or the chicken fingers and fries, you know? And so just making those different choices.  Yeah.
24:53I'm going to say this and I could be totally wrong, but it's my take. So it's my podcast. So I'm say it.  I feel like all of the fried  foods  are  not great for me. And I think they're not great for a lot of people. My husband and my son really do like to have like,  they like to make homemade donuts.  Homemade donuts are made in vegetable  oil or lard if you have it.  And I can't do it. Like I eat one donut and I'm like, okay, that's good for six months.
25:24You know, that's it.  Because I just feel so terrible that  evening into the next day because it's not good for you. And it's not so much that the oil isn't good for you. It's what happens to the oil when it gets hot and then it's in the food and then you eat it. Yeah, I, well, they made canola oil. Excuse me, they made canola oil.
25:50for fuel. It's meant to be biodiesel. I have no issue with  canola that's being used for biodiesel. I actually understand why big grain farmers use canola in their fields. It does clean up the weeds.  I know of a really cool farmer around these parts. He has a five-year rotation.  He only puts canola, which means he only uses Roundup in his  field once every five years. It does. It cleans up the weeds.
26:16But yeah, I don't think canola oil is meant to be food. I think it's meant to be fuel  for our cars, gasoline, or diesel, biodiesel.  it's not meant to be ingested. I think we've just had,  just like with a lot of things, I don't know if I can say these things now, but you can edit them out if you don't want me to. But  I do think there's a lot of things that it's big business, you know, and if you've got a big business and you've got money generated around it. So if you can  sell it off as
26:46the canola as food, someone's going  to profit from that. And  they've just done a really good job of  trying to  trick us into thinking that canola is food.  Well, it's like soda,  or cola, or pop, or whatever people call it. You're in Alberta, What is a fizzy drink called?  Pop. We call it pop. Okay.  In Minnesota, it's pop. Where I grew up, it's soda. But
27:14There are name brand pops and sodas. I'm not going to disparage anybody by name because I don't want to get sued.  But that's like a hundred and something calories per can  that is completely empty calories. Your body doesn't gain anything from drinking it.  And I would much rather have water with a squeeze of lemon juice and  maybe a half a teaspoon of sugar. I have no problem with sugar.
27:43I have a problem with grams and grams and grams of sugar. It's not good for you.  you know, water is the thing that hydrates you and sugar makes you, sugar converts to, don't know, carbs convert sugar, sugar converts to whatever energy.  But if you're not actually burning the energy, it just builds up in your body and it makes you fat. So I just feel like we as Americans, Canadians, people in general,
28:11We eat things because we've been told it's okay and it's not necessarily okay and it's not necessarily good for our systems.  No, and I do think that there is a full  pandemic, epidemic, I don't know what the right word would be  of that. You know, if you look in your centre aisles of a grocery store,  a lot of that quote unquote food does turn to sugar and sugar turns to fat if it's not burned off or not used.
28:38And I do think, and again, with our sodas or pops,  it's just not healthy. Like there are some types of pops that can even be used as cleaner. Like they'll clean the rust off of screws even. Like  how is this healthy to be putting into our bodies? Like  it just isn't. I don't think we've been designed for these foods and I don't think, well, I don't even think they're food.  And so that's where we need to get back to our roots. That's where it's so important. And that's why your podcast
29:06my podcast and you know,  teaching people to go back to their roots, eating from the land, having your eggs  and your butters and your milks and your chickens and your garden and your vegetables and your lettuces and eating seasonally.  I think that's how we're designed. We're supposed to eat those things from the land  and be stewards of our land. that's why these things are so important. And I think that's why there's a whole shift.
29:34back into this is because people are recognizing that the other food quote unquote is not food and that the stuff that you're growing in your backyard is actually nourishing good for you food. exactly. And since we're rolling toward 30 minutes, I want to get this in. Once we women hit 40, it's really that 40 to 50 stage. You really do have to take care of yourself because if you don't,
30:04Your  50s,  60s, and 70s are going to be exhausting and painful and you will wonder why you're even still here.  So,  and I don't want women to feel bad because there's things that happen like, oh,  I raised four kids. I spent a lot of time on the floor playing blocks and Legos with them. And I would get down on the floor on my hands and knees and play with these kids.
30:30My knees freaking hurt a lot now because I had so much stress on my knees.  I carried my kids on my hip  until they were at least 60, 70 pounds. If they wanted to be picked up, I picked them up. And so my back took a lot of wear and tear. And there's a thing called repetitive motion injury.  That's what I was doing to myself raising my kids. So
30:58Expend all that good energy, live your life, do all the hard things you can do, all the  physical things you can do.  While you're young,  you will probably pay for it when you're older, but at least you got to do the things you love.  I agree. I  think that we  were supposed to do that. We're supposed to care for our kids. We're supposed to do the work.  And I do think that
31:22It's about taking care of your body later on and don't feel bad if you got a few extra pounds It's all about how you feel. It's not about how you look  That's for sure.  And I just think too like if your knees hurt or your back hurts, you know Just do what you can  go for a walk if you can only you know walk a little ways  just do that It's it's doing what you're able to and and pushing yourself just a little bit even  That's what's gonna keep you young and keep you going. I can think of my grandmother who's
31:50She's in well into her nineties and she's still a go-getter, you know, even when she was late eighties and early nineties, she was still  working at  the tickle trunk thrift store  in her hometown because that kept her busy, that kept her going. And I think it's when we become stagnant and stop and go,  my knee hurts, therefore I have to sit on the couch for, you know, days and days on end.  I think that's where the trouble comes in,  not in,
32:20It's not the fact that your knee hurts.  It's if you,  and I'm not saying push yourself to the point that it hurts even more, but you know, just do what you're able to do. Yep, absolutely.  And I guess what I'm getting at is don't beat yourself up in your heart and your head if you're not as active as you used to be,  because you're not necessarily meant to be as active as you used to be. You're supposed to be as active as you want to and can be at the age that you're at.  I agree.  Absolutely.
32:49It's doing what you can do with the body you have. And I'll admit it,  I actually had to do a bunch of  online computer work yesterday and that is not my strength. Like I would rather be outside gardening and  you know working with my animals and doing the physical thing outside.  I would much rather be doing that but yesterday I had to be on my computer more  and it tuckered me out that mental strain and that mental whatever and  I took a little 10 minute cat nap.
33:17at three o'clock. I just did. I hit a bit of a wall. I put myself into bed. I closed my eyes and  it was 10 minutes, but it just gave me a slight bit of fuel to keep going.  was a power nap. Yeah.  And those are great. Do that. And you can do that when you're 15, let alone when you're 50. Yeah, absolutely. Just listen to your body and give it what it wants, you know?
33:43And I find too, even with food, my body is craving protein and my body is craving,  my body craves the  good whole foods, the salads, the things like that.  Yep, absolutely. I've been into a fresh,  well,  store bought fresh sweet bell pepper.  A month ago we had gotten some for some recipe and it was a decent pepper. wasn't terrible. And I hadn't had quote unquote a fresh pepper since September.
34:12I was like, oh my God, I always forget that I love bell pepper because I eat it for like two months in the summer and then that's Yeah, for sure.  So I had the greenhouse and I'll tell you what, my little girls,  they weren't actually tomato eaters. They didn't love, the tomatoes,  but they would eat those peppers as apples. Like I would even throw a pepper in their lunchbox as an apple because  they loved them and my peppers were so sweet. That's the thing, colored peppers.
34:41A green pepper is an immature  red, yellow, orange,  purple, or whatever. A green pepper is an immature pepper like a green tomato,  but a coloured pepper, they're  right. Especially a sweet bell pepper,  should be sweet in flavour, not that bitter flavour.  Are the yellow, red, and orange, are they different  levels of sweet?  Yes,  I always found that my orange peppers were the sweetest, then red, then yellow.
35:12Here's another little tidbit of information. People always think that peppers go from green to yellow to orange to red.  And I'm always like, no, they go green orange or green yellow or green red or green white or green purple, whatever  the color pepper is.  It starts off green, which is immature, and then it goes to the color. It doesn't go through this color changing process. I learned something brand new today. Thank you, Dawn.
35:41You're welcome. Yeah,  yeah, absolutely.  And  the little things and that's why these podcasts are so important too,  is it's just the little things to connect people to their food and to farming and to agriculture, you know,  to know the little things. And so when you see a picture, I've seen this a couple of times,  I've seen a picture of a pepper plant online  and it's got green, red, yellow, orange, you know, what all the colors on the plant all at the same time. And I'm like,  that's fake. That's not possible.
36:11Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, that leads me to a thought that I will leave you with.  I have been seeing commercials online on TV when we're watching YouTube, because we watch a lot of YouTube, because we're homesteaders, we need to learn things.  And there's all these AI commercials now. And I swear to you, they creep me the hell out. They look like real people, except they don't move like real people. And I keep saying this, like, I hate this so much.
36:41Yeah, yeah.  That's,  AI, I think there's positives to it, but I don't know. think the ultimate big picture  and  whatever  of AI could be a little dicey and slicey. And  that's why we need to get back to nature and homesteading and just doing things in our own spaces, because  to rely on this big technological system  is a little, for me, it's a little dicey, you know?
37:11Yeah, remember the toilet paper wars of 2020? I  just think if something happened to,  this is me getting slightly tinfoil hatty  again, like  I just think if something happens to our big system,  we still need to get back to basics and we just need to get back to food and hopefully nothing ever happens. Hopefully I'm always wrong.  But I just, that's part of wanting to be on a farm or a homestead and have my own food is just to know that I'm in control of it, not someone else.
37:38Yeah, two really important words, self-sufficient and self-sustainable. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then teaching my kids where it all comes from. My kids know where good food comes from.  Yeah, my husband just told me that he talked to our second kid. So I have four. I have a daughter,  son, son, son. So first, son.
38:02called last night, he lives in Nebraska and he and his wife are thinking about getting five goats, four does and a buck.  And I said, um,  two questions. And my husband said, what? I said, where are they going to put them and what are they going to feed them? Because they have like an acre. That's it.  And they don't have a whole lot of  tree line that belongs to them. And so my husband was like, don't know. didn't ask. And I said, okay, I will message him later. Cause
38:32I have friends that have goats. grew up with a friend that had goats and I know that it's going to get real expensive to feed those goats if they don't have some grazing area for them. So I think my kid and I are going to have a chat about goat husbandry at some point in the next week. Yes, for sure. And they do. They eat a lot of food. They're constantly eating and they'll eat anything. Yeah, I've got mine.
38:57I rotate them. I've got two  doughs left and I'm milking them actually for myself.  And yeah, I rotate them. I don't own this property, but I have access to a lot of property and yeah, I rotate them through,  I have to be careful where I put them because if there's a tree there or if there's  a small tree there, they're going to eat those leaves and they're going to kill that tree.  yeah.  Yup.  Okay, Dawn, thank you so much for coming back to visit. I appreciate it. Where can people find you?
39:27So I'm DawnsDirt.  You can find me online, Instagram, Facebook,  YouTube. I've got my own podcast, DawnsDirt.  And I love these collaborations. So thank you so much for having me on the show yet again. And  we just need more of this. need, I appreciate that you do this all the time and we need more of this, you know, homesteading farm to table talks. So thank you so much for having me. And a little bit of psychology and marriage counseling in there too.
39:53Well,  you know, to me, nothing's I'm very raw and open and honest and authentic and  I got no secrets. I'll just call. I  just say it. And so, yeah, I'm always happy to have a  raw, real conversation. So thanks for thanks for going down some rabbit holes of,  yeah, life with me.
40:14I feel like it's all part of life and homesteading is absolutely real and raw life. So we're doing it right.  As always, you can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com.  Dawn, thanks again. Have a great day. You too. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
 

A Tiny Homestead Update

Today it's just me with a very short update at A Tiny Homestead.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Hey friends, it's Mary. It's just me today.
00:29Um, I thought I would give a little update on what's going on in our place.  And to begin with, I want to say thank you to everybody for listening and people who talk with me every day.  It's been an amazing, almost two years of getting to people.  And secondly, it was a really rough weekend in Minnesota.  We had two lawmakers attacked in their homes,  um, early morning, Saturday morning.
00:57One of them died. One of them is recovering. And the one who died, her name was Melissa Hortman. She was 57 years old. She was the speaker of the Minnesota House. And the other one was Senator Hoffman, and he and his wife survived. Melissa Hortman's husband was also killed. And the person that shot them was actually taking cover in the county that I live in, in Minnesota, Sibley County.
01:26So it was very much a nerve-racking, anxiety-inducing weekend around here.  On the flip side of that, it is a beautiful day in Minnesota. Our gardens are thriving and flourishing. We have wild plums that are growing. We have apples. We have black raspberries.  We have the usual suspects in the garden, cabbages,  tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, peas,  and
01:55It's been an amazing start to the summer season.
02:05As I say on the podcast a lot,  if you support your local growers, you are supporting your community and we really need to do that.  And we really need to do it every day in every way, shape and form that we can,  which means that we should all probably take a big deep collective sigh or breath of relief  and step back and think about how we approach conflict, how we approach problems  and try to find the positive ways.
02:35to uh...
02:38To not have bad things happen  this weekend really shook me and  I'm not going to get into Democrat, Republican, any of that.  And when President Trump was shot,  I felt bad about that too. Luckily he didn't die.  So yeah, violence is not the answer. So I really don't love doing solo podcasts recording and I'm going to keep this really short.
03:06There should be a new podcast out tomorrow afternoon, new episode,  and there should be one  on Friday in the afternoon.  There probably won't be one on Thursday.  So thanks for listening guys and keep coming back to learn things. Bye.
 

My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0

Today I'm talking with Melissa at My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Melissa.
00:27at My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0, and  we're going to find out why it's 2.0,  in  Ontario, Canada. Good evening, Melissa. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm very excited to chat with you. Number one, why is it 2.0? It is 2.0 because  about two years ago, I started My Homesteading Chronicles  and I had about 2,400 followers and the hackers got me.
00:54Oh no. they hacked my Facebook, they hacked my Facebook page. So I had to start at nobody. So it was June last year that I got hacked.  And  yeah, I've been trying to grow my page back. So it's 2.0. I do not know why people have to suck so much. Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea. They didn't get anything out of me. just,  yeah, they got my followers, I guess.
01:24I'm sorry. It's so much work to rebuild it too. Oh yeah, it is. It is. But it's doing better than I expected it be. So I'm over 3,000 followers since June last year. So it's about my one year anniversary of 2.0 this week. Well, congratulations. Thank you. This social media thing is so weird. Yes, it is. It is. I've been on social media, but this starting a page is...
01:53It was new to me. had friends that kept telling me you need to start a page and I kept saying, no, I'm not going to. And well, I did.  Well, I'm thankful that you did because people need to know about this homesteading thing because it's important. So  tell me about yourself and what you do at  my homesteading Chronicles. So I am just a mom.  I have a 13 year old daughter this week and my son will be 18  next month.  I'm married. I have a wonderful supportive husband.
02:23We live in a  very small town, about 500 people,  just kind of five minutes from the shores of Lake Huron. I work full-time  in corporate finance.  I live in the village, so I don't have a lot of space, but I like to grow everything I can and make as much as I can from scratch. That's about it.  About 10 years ago, I hurt my back and had to change careers.
02:51and I was off work for about eight months. And that takes a toll on your income of your family.  So I started  to learn how to make things  myself.  So I've kind of over the last 10 years, I've been growing mostly a lot of tomatoes and I learned how to can and I learned how to crochet and I'm very self-taught.
03:19Very nice. We talk about tomatoes on the podcast a lot. I  am the tomato lady.  Tomatoes and chickens.  bet if I went through and had some computer program count the number of times  chickens and tomatoes have been mentioned, it would be in the probably 50,000 by  now.  I believe it. I don't have any chickens. I'm absolutely terrified of chickens, but I love to buy
03:47local farm fresh eggs. So I like to look at the eggs from far away and the chickens from far away. But tomatoes is my thing. love tomatoes and my husband has planted over 200 tomato plants this spring in our garden. He's got me beat. I've got 185 plants this year.
04:09What kinds? Because if we're going to talk tomatoes, let's talk tomatoes. What varieties? Okay, we'll talk tomatoes.  I have 71 varieties of mostly heirloom.  About 20 different kinds of cherry, chocolate cherry,  a lot of the bumblebees.  I'm trying a whole bunch of different paste tomatoes this year, different romas.
04:33Um, one called OptiMax that I hear is really good, but only one of them survived. So I'm hoping the plant does well.  but  I like, it's funny because I don't eat tomatoes at all  and no one in my house eats tomatoes,  but, I can them all.  um, yeah, yeah. They have a lot of heirloom beef steak type.  Uh, last year, my, my number one was lucid gem.  sounds pretty.
05:02It is beautiful. It's an orange tomato.  The top is purple and when you slice it, it's red inside.  Nice.  So you say you don't eat tomatoes, but do you eat like tomato sauce or salsa?  I do. make a lot of tomato sauce and a lot of salsa.  About 20 years ago, I ate a bad tomato and I just haven't been able to do it. So I was telling somebody the other day, my goal this year is to eat a toasted tomato sandwich again.
05:32You should give it a Give it a try. You might be surprised. I OD'd on cherry tomatoes when I was like 10. They were so yummy. My dad was growing them in our garden and I loved them. And I said, can I eat as many as I want? And he was like, well, sure. Cause he thought I was being eaten of them. I ate like 40 cherry tomatoes in one sitting. And then I proceeded to expel them through my face out of my stomach.
06:02And I hated cherry tomatoes for a very long time after that. And about probably 10 years ago, somebody had a different variety and said they were really sweet. Yeah. tomatoes. And I was like, what's the worst thing that happens? One is not going to ruin me. And I cut it in half so I could just take a half. Yeah. And I bit into it I was like, oh my God, I can eat them again. Yay. Now the dumbest thing about that whole story is that like when I was 15,
06:32friend of mine gave me a package of Andy's candies, Andy's mints or what the hell they're called, the mint chocolate candies.  And  I did it again.  I ate almost that whole package over the course of four hours and ended up being sick again. I'm like, am I ever going to learn not to overeat the things I like? And have you ate them since?  No, but I do like mint chocolate chip ice cream. So it didn't ruin me forever. Well, that's good.
06:58Yeah, if listeners don't overeat on anything you really love because you'll end up hating it
07:07I cherry tomatoes for very long time.
07:11So you said you're  like Roma style tomato growing them.  Yeah. Are you doing,  have you tried the Amish paste tomatoes yet? I do. I have about four of them in the garden now. So. Okay. And have you heard of the health kick variety?  I have not.  Okay. It's a, I think it's a hybrid. I don't think it's genetically messed with cause I don't really appreciate that.
07:40But it's like a Roma tomato, but it's supposed to be higher in antioxidants than the rest of the Roma style tomatoes. And  they're really, really good for sauce. I'll have to look them up. Yeah.  Probably the only place you'll be able to find them is online. You'll have to order them if you want to see. We've grown those for quite a few years and we really like them. They're great for saucing. They're great for slicing for like on a hamburger because they're small.
08:10They're maybe a little bit bigger than a quarter in diameter. Yeah. And they're just, they have a really nice flavor. So I will have to look into them. Yeah. I process a lot of tomatoes and last year I had planned to try and make enchilada sauce, but I never got around to it. So that's on my list for this year.  Okay.  Well, we're not as fancy as you are. We're not growing. I think we may be growing to heirloom varieties. think mostly we're growing  beef steak.
08:40early girl, some kind of cherry tomato  and San Marzano's because we did that last year and they did really, really well. Yeah. have  three San Marzano's this year.  they didn't do well last year. So I thought I'll try them again and we'll see. Last year was a strange year for the tomatoes.  Yeah. And when I say the San Marzano's did really, really well.
09:04There's a caveat on that. We had a lot of rain here last year. My husband had to plant tomatoes three different times to get anything to grow.  Oh, wow. So relatively speaking, the San Marzano's that grew did really well. I think there were only six plants. Wow, that's all right.  So yeah, but the summer before that, we were swimming in them. We had tons.
09:28Well, I had more  the year before last I had planted 120 plants  and last year I planted 175 and  I think my yield for 175 was less than the 120 from the year before.  Yeah, last year was a terrible growing season for almost everybody. For us here this year it's not going so well.  It's beautiful today but we just got our  I got my tomatoes in the garden
09:57about a week and a half ago. Because it's just, it's been real cold and wet.  And yeah, the temperatures have been fluctuating a lot.  And your growing season is shorter up there, right? It is.  It is, yes. Where usually I try to get to the beginning of October,  but  I  actually got a greenhouse from my husband for Christmas this year.
10:24I'm hoping to move some of the peppers into there to see if I can prolong their life a little bit.  Yep. We just put in a greenhouse last May, like two years, not two years ago, two Mays ago. a little year ago. And that thing has come in so handy because that's why we have tomatoes that are blooming right now because of that freaking greenhouse. That's perfect. I'm hoping to do an experiment and try and  winter sow them in the greenhouse.  I don't know if it's going to work, but
10:53It doesn't hurt to try.  Winter, so like in  the milk jugs or?  Yeah. So I'm hoping I was going to actually maybe try and just put them in cups and put them kind of like in a clear tote in the greenhouse.  With a lid on it?  Yeah. Yeah.  Like that can air out, but I'm going to, I don't know. I don't know if it'll work, but  I have all kinds of volunteer plants that have survived the winter. So why, I don't know, maybe it'll work.
11:23And what's the worst that happens? You learn a lesson and don't do it again. Exactly. And I save tomato seeds, so I have more than enough for the rest of my life.  yeah, yeah, absolutely.  So, um, how  I've talked to like three people in the last month and a half in Canada, but one of them raises many horses  and one of them, I can't remember. They grow things, but I don't think they try greenhouse stuff.  Um, so.
11:52If you're going to, if you're,  you have a greenhouse or you're, putting it together this year?  have, I have it. We put it together, um, about, uh, two months ago.  Okay. So could you,  it's expensive to heat a greenhouse, number one. Yes. But, could you, could you put like a space heater in there? I could, could. Yes. Yes. I have a lot of experimenting to do.
12:18Yeah, because tomatoes are real finicky about changes in temperature. You know this. Yes.  So if you could get, you know, a small space heater and maybe put up plastics that you're only working with a smaller space to heat inside the greenhouse in the winter. Yeah.  Yeah. That might help. We put one in ours this year  in  March and March, 1st of April, because we had put our little tomato seedlings that we started on the kitchen table in the house.
12:46out in the greenhouse and the temps just weren't coming up fast enough.  so,  and we had like a couple of weeks of cloudy days. So it wasn't even getting hot from the greenhouse.  And I think that that was the problem here.  I had started the seedlings in the house, but I had moved them to the greenhouse, but the temperatures just,  you know,  we're Celsius here. So I'm not really good with Fahrenheit, but  it would be like, well, it would be below freezing a lot.
13:16Yeah.  So,  yeah, they just,  they didn't grow very fast and they turned purple and, but I'm happy to say they're all in the garden now and they're all green. So.  Fantastic. I  have such high hopes for this season for everybody, including us. Yep. Last year was just so heartbreaking. We lost money last summer because of it. Yeah. Yeah. It happened. ones. So. No.
13:45No. Okay. So do you have any animals on your roomstead? I  do not know. I have no animals.  No cats, no dogs either?  No cats, no dogs. My husband is allergic to animals and well, my kids have allergies as well.  So yeah, I grew up on a dairy farm. So I had a lot of animals in my life and I am an animal lover,  except for chickens.
14:13Yeah.  Or yeah, any birds that fly near me.  I'm not a fan, but  I do love animals. I love other people's animals, but I don't personally have any.  I'm sorry that you don't have any because  my dog is the love of my life.  I almost love her more than I love my husband. Do not tell him this.  I do have  four niece and nephew dogs that I love very much. So I get to spend time with them.
14:42So get your  I do get to have my puppy fix. Good, good. Yes,  I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to rave about Maggie. I'm going to mention Maggie. She has  been a really good girl lately. She hasn't really barked in the background, so that's been great.  But  she's a mini Australian, Australian, talk, shepherd. She's going to be five in August and I love her almost more than life itself. And I had no idea that I would love her this much.
15:12Nice.  We had a lot of dogs on the farm as  a kid and we were definitely very close to them.  Yeah, she's like a little human in a dog body. It's ridiculous. If anyone had told me,  oh my goodness, five and a half years ago that I would lose my heart to this crazy dog, I would have laughed at them. So  there you go.  Yeah.  Okay. So you said that you learned to make things on your own from scratch. So I assume that you cook.
15:42I do. Do you love to cook? I do. Good. What's your favorite thing that you make? I love to make lasagna from scratch as possible. I haven't made the mozzarella cheese yet, but that's coming. But I like to make lasagna noodles and I like to make the sauce. yeah, I think lasagna is my number one. I love lasagna twice a year.
16:11I will make it twice a year.  will eat like three pieces of it and I'm good for six months. Yep. It's a of work. It's a lot of work when you're making it from scratch.  It's a lot of work when you're not making it from scratch. Like I make my sauce from scratch. Yeah. But I buy the noodles and cook them and I buy the mozzarella cheese and the other, the other stuff, the ricotta and  all that. But I do make it with our own eggs and the ricotta mix. So.
16:39So it's partially from scratch and partially not. Yep. The hardest part with lasagna is  if you're trying to make it all at once, like from beginning to end, what I do is I make the sauce the day before and put it in the fridge. And that way all I have to do is cook the noodles and make the ricotta filling stuff and pull the sauce out and I just assemble it and bake it. So it's just easier for me to do it that way. Yep.
17:09Yeah, we don't have it that often, but I would say maybe once every two months I make a good lasagna on a Sunday.  Nice.  What's your favorite dessert to make? you dessert? I am not,  I'm  baking  is not my  number one thing.  My favorite dessert to make, my daughter who's 13, she's a much better baker than I am.  I  don't know.
17:37We attempted a pumpkin pie that was pretty good. Yeah.  Um, with homegrown pumpkins last year, and I had never done that before.  So that was pretty good, but I would say cheesecakes the best.  Oh yeah.  Cheesecakes number one.  Yeah. I haven't had a piece of cheesecake in like two years. I may have to go find some in a week or two.  Yeah. I'm not, I'm not going to make it because if I make it, my husband will eat half of it. My son will eat a quarter of it and I might get a sliver. So.
18:07Yeah. Don't waste your money. Just get a slice. would be. Yeah. And then I'll know that I'll know that it tastes the way it should too. Cause cheesecake's not hard, but you can really screw it up if you're not paying attention. Yes. So I've made like three of them in my lifetime and they all came out really good. Like the first one I made, I thought I'd screwed it up. I thought I cooked it too long. It said to look for the wobble.
18:35when you moved the pan  and I went to pull it out of the oven, there wasn't a whole lot of wobble. I'm like, oh no, I ruined it.  I let it cool and I bit into it. was like, oh no, this is fine. I made cheesecake for the first time. It was really good.
18:51But yeah, there's a wobble you're supposed to look for. I'm like, okay, that's an interesting way to say it. The same thing with the pumpkin pie. The pies have to wobble. Yeah. My least favorite thing to make, but the whole family's  most favorite thing to eat is a recipe called Outrageous Brownies.  found it online.  Ina Garten, I think is her name, the lady on TV. Yep. She's a little kind of round lady with dark hair.
19:21It's her recipe and it has like six eggs in it. It's got baker's chocolate. It's got chocolate chips. It's got cocoa.  It's oh my God, they are amazing. And I only make them for birthdays because they're so incredibly fattening and decadent that I don't want them in my house at any other time. That's one thing I have never mastered the brownie. So I'll have to look up that recipe and see if maybe we can.
19:47We can try it, my daughter and I, sometime. I need her as my sidekick because she just is better at it.  Well, the one thing that I will tell you is when you get the batter together,  when all the ingredients are mixed together in the bowl,  it will look like chocolate silk.  Oh, okay. It's got that same glisten that silk does when you move silk. Yep. So if it doesn't look like that, there's something not quite right.  Yep. But yeah, and the magic of cooking.
20:17I don't want to sit here and rave about this too much because I talk about cooking a lot, but  there is just something inherently  magical when you take all these ingredients,  put them together in the right way, and you come out with something fabulous. Yeah. And it's amazing what you can do with what little you have sometimes too.  Yup. I'm going to talk about sourdough again. I've brought it up four times in the last four interviews.  Just made my first sourdough loaf last weekend.
20:47and I
20:50I am not a master. It was the first one I ever did and it was underproofed.  The thing is,  it's got like a bagel chew to it and I love bagels. So I made bagel sourdough bread.  Oh, yum.  Yep. That's what it tastes like. And I'm so tickled with it. And I'm like, how could I do this again? I have no idea how I underproofed it. So I'm probably going to overproof it next time. Yeah.
21:17But proud of myself, I have avoided sourdough bread for years because I didn't think I liked sourdough bread because I don't like the tang of it.  Yeah. Come to find out there's a way to not have it be so tangy and I got that right.
21:32Yeah, you don't have to let the  sourdough.
21:39Sorry, I just got interrupted there. Yeah, you have to let the,  when you feed your starter, don't let it go too long.  Yep. That way doesn't get that acidic, tangy thing to it that I don't like.  Yeah.  People are like, you don't like sour rubber? I'm like, no, cause it tastes sour. Like really sour to me. I don't love it.  And they're like, but you love pickles. And I'm like, it is not the same sour.
22:07It is different.  I like to make sourdough bagels. That's my number one favorite.  But I don't get around to it a whole lot because it does take a lot of time,  but it's a good skill to have.  It's the waiting. It's the waiting time that kills me. Sometimes I just have to add yeast.  Yeah, I did a shortcut sandwich loaf recipe.  I typed in shortcut sourdough bread  and it gave me that recipe. It still took me from
22:36from putting the  sourdough starter, the flour and everything together in the bowl and getting the dough ready,  still didn't have a loaf of bread until five hours later. I was like, oh my God, do I have the patience for this?  Yeah.  Yeah. I only make sourdough when I have enough time over a whole weekend.  And I make a lot of things at once.  Yeah. And the good news is that if you're doing it like I am, I had other things I could do in that half an hour  between the stretch and pull time. Yeah. Yep.
23:05But if I had nothing to do, it would drive me insane waiting that half an hour every time. Yeah, I do highly recommend you should try English muffins though.  don't know English muffins are the best.  Yeah, I have the little  circle thingies, whatever they are, the little circles that you make the  mold for the  English muffin.
23:29I don't know what they're called. I just ordered them because I was like, I want to make English ovens. And I saw the recipe for the sourdough English oven recipe. I was like,  have all the things to make that. That's next. Yeah.  It's so exciting. It's so silly. Like I probably sound like a kid at Christmas, discovering new ways to do things just really lights something in my brain. Yeah.  So I don't know.
23:55I may just be crazy. knows? I don't think you're crazy at all. I was talking to my mom about the sourdough thing and she said, you know, she said, I got some friendship bread starter years ago. Yeah. And I said, yes, I remember you named it Herman. And she's like, oh, I did. I said, yeah, I was Herman. I said, as I remember, Herman got fed a couple of times, stuck in the fridge and basically was a hermit in the fridge for a year or two. then you threw him out.
24:25She said I was too busy.  I remember that my mom used to make friendship bread, that Amish friendship bread when I was a kid.  I  can still remember her pouring milk into the Ziploc bag and letting it sit on the counter.  Uh huh. Yeah. And she said, she said, I was busy raising you and your sister and your brother. I did not have time for that. And I'm like, no, I'm just teasing you. It's fine.  Yeah.  Raising kids is a lot of work. I understand. I did four or so.  Yep.
24:56Okay, so  what brought you to the homesteading thing? Did you tell me at the beginning or not?  I can't remember now.  So about 10 years ago,  I  hurt my back and I wasn't able to work in it. I was working in a  nursing home at the time and I decided that I needed to save money and so I...
25:22When  I was first with my husband, I had planted a garden, but I honestly can't tell you what I grew in it  because the weeds were  100 % in charge.  But that summer I was like, okay, well, we need  to figure something out.  So I grew a smallish garden and I thought,  I'm going to learn how to can. I remember my grandma canning when I was a kid,  but I thought I want to do that. So I  learned and I...
25:51taught myself and I watched YouTube videos and back then there wasn't as many people that were into canning.  So I would say,  well, that was 10 years ago.  But yeah, people are definitely starting. There's like a new generation of canners coming. Yeah, I'm part of it. We didn't start canning until three years ago.  Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping to like,  one of the reasons why I started my page was just to kind of inspire the younger generation.
26:19Let them know the world isn't that great right now and money isn't really great right now. There's a lot of people struggling, but with a few things you can actually, you can make a lot. You can make your own spaghetti sauce for pennies if you grow your own tomatoes. so yeah, I just wanted to show people that you can do it. Anyone can do it, even if you have a small space. People think I have acres of gardens, I don't.
26:49I don't at all. grow my tomatoes vertically. I  grow everything as tall as I can and  as close together as possible.  And yeah, I can make a lot of food for  pretty cheap.  Yeah, it's amazing how that happens. And  I'm really glad that your grandma kind of planted the seed with you because  there's a lot of people I talk to and they're like, I didn't have a homesteading bone in my body. I didn't know what I was doing. I just saw it and went, I want to try that.
27:19Or the other side of the coin is that people are like, oh yeah, my grandparents grew gardens. My grandma can, my grandma baked. My grandpa did this. My grandma did that.  thank God for grandparents and great grandparents who spent time with their grandkids and great grandkids and showed them these things. Yeah. My grandma,  I remember her specifically canning beans. She had like a French slicer where she would like slice the beans  and she canned them in her all American canner.
27:49And a few years ago, she gave her canner to me that she used to use when I was a kid. And  I use it now  when I do some pressure canning.
28:02That's awesome. Yeah, it definitely meant a lot. Yeah. And it gets, it gets well used. It gets, it gets well used and it's pretty amazing how something, you know, that's so old still works just as well as it did, you know, 30 years ago. Yeah. We didn't luck out like that. We had to buy a pressure canner and we had to buy the canning tools and that's okay because we'll probably end up handing it off to somebody eventually.  Yeah.
28:31I wanted to ask you, because I was looking at your Facebook post about introducing yourself.  And in it, you mentioned that you're the canning committee chair and you're also on the board of directors for your local agricultural society. Is that still accurate? That is true. Yes.  So tell me about that. Like, what does that involve? What do you do in those positions?  So  on the board of directors, we  organize, we have one of the biggest fairs in the area.
29:01the Ripley Fall Fair. We also have one of the largest  homecraft exhibits.  And so I'm involved more in that sort of thing.  We arrange  a lot of programs in the community. So specifically myself,  I have kind of brought  Master Canner to come to our town and teach people how to can.
29:29He's a master food preserver, which I should give you his information because I think you'll want to talk to him.  Yes, please.  I will give you his information.  He's been to our town a few times. he's actually was just in town doing a sourdough or two or it was two sourdough classes. And then last fall he came to do two canning courses and we're hoping to have him back again  this fall.  Just, you know, promote agriculture in our community and
29:58Yeah, teach people all these old skills and  yeah. And then the canning, so the commanding committee chair,  we have a really large exhibit for our area. We have about 300 entries  just in canning,  which is a lot for this area.  We're hoping to have more next year,  but yeah, so we organize that part of the Homecraft exhibit.  Awesome.  Awesome.
30:26So not only are you walking the walk and talking the talk,  you're sharing the information too.  Yes. Fantastic.  See, it's people like you that are going to save the world. swear.  Things are so hard right now. You alluded to it like five minutes ago. And  I know that you're in Canada and I'm in America, but things are,  things are a little nutty here too.  Yeah.
30:56And my son,  my son and my husband ran to the local grocery store, know, the small town grocery store on Saturday or Sunday. And they got back, my son's 23. And he says, mom, he said, would you believe that a regular sized bag of Doritos chips is $9? Wow. I said, I'm glad you didn't want any. said, I'm not paying $9 for Doritos. Are you out of your freaking mind?
31:26I was like, I raised you right. I'm very proud of myself. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I know it's crazy going to the grocery store these days and seeing the inflated prices. And I think it's, you know, not just in America or Canada, it's all over the world. I'm so thankful that I learned to cook from scratch. Yeah. If we were trying to buy stuff that's already made, we would be starving to death because we wouldn't be able to afford it. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so important to learn how to make things.
31:54And  it's not hard.  People think it's so complicated and it really isn't because there's so many, like I said, there's so many things you can do with so few ingredients. You just have to find some creativity.  I keep saying that learning to cook is time and intention. Yes.  And if you don't make the time and you don't intend to do it, it's never gonna happen. Yeah.
32:22But if you can eke out the time and you really want to try, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. For sure. For sure. I've mentioned this before. I made a roux, you know, flour and butter thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
32:48Timing. Timing is everything. Yeah. And if I had tried that at 20, I would have been angry. I never would have tried it again. Age gives you more patience. I swear to God, it really does. And I was like, okay, I knew that one was going to burn and I did not let it burn to the point that I ruined the pan, but it was not edible. So I scraped the pan out. I washed the pan. I did something else for a couple of hours and I tried again.
33:14That time  I managed to make a gravy that thickened up the way it was supposed to. And I did not brown the roux as dark as it said to. And I was kind of glad because I don't like my gravy's dark from a roux.  Yeah.  But I did it and I learned how. And now I use that skill all the time. Yeah. And it's not hard. It's just  learning the steps.  Yeah. Yeah. Like there's a lot of things you can learn.  It's like dancing.
33:44Cooking is like dancing.
33:48You  have to learn the first steps and then you build on those steps and you continue to build until you feel accomplished. I think it's a wonderful thing. for sure.  All right, Melissa, I am going to have to extend these to an hour. I'm going to have to warn people from now on  that we're going to try for an hour instead of half an hour because I feel like half an hour is never enough.  Lies, bye. But I'm going keep this one to half an hour.  So thank you for your time.  How can people find you?
34:17They can find me on Facebook at myhomesteadingchronicles2.0. Okay,  and are you on  Instagram or do you have a website or anything?  I am not yet,  no. And I know I don't have a website yet. I'm still pretty new to this.  You will figure it out because you are determined. I can hear it.
34:40All right. Thank you so much for your time, Melissa. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com  and I hope you have a lovely night.  You as well.  All right. Thanks. Bye.
 

Little Cabin Big Woods

Today I'm talking with Keesha at the Little Cabin Big Woods.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Keesha at Little Cabin Big Woods in Tennessee. Is that right, Keesha? That's right.  Where in Tennessee? We're in Middle Tennessee, about an hour from Kentucky, so  northern middle. Okay, and how's the weather there today?
00:44Today it is gorgeous out. We are on day two of what should be three days without any rain, which is the first time that's happened in a really long time.  Oh, so you're getting the same weather my parents have been getting in Maine for the last three weeks. All they do is tell me it's raining. Yes, constantly. Yeah, we had that last year here in Minnesota. This spring has been fabulous. I am so thankful, like dropped down on my knees. Thank God, thankful.
01:14And today it's kind of gray, but it's not raining. So I'm, I'm thankful for that too.  Okay. So you got you or you guys, is it just you or are there other people? Oh, there's my husband too. Okay. So you guys are off grid. Are you completely off grid? We are, but we have  solar.  So we do still have  some luxuries. mean, we've got a window.
01:41AC unit for the days that it's just really, really still and stagnant.  We've got a TV for an occasional movie.  Got a couple of ceiling fans. So. Okay. So this leads me to tons of questions because the closest I have been to off grid in my entire life,  I think I was about 15.  My parents lived in Steve falls main and I live there with them with my siblings.
02:10And we had the tail end of a hurricane come through  and we were without power for an entire week. And the first, the first day and a half, we couldn't even get to fresh water because there was a huge pine tree across the road  between us and the fire barn where they had water. And so luckily my mom,  what grew up in Illinois where, where tornadoes happened and every time there was bad weather in Illinois.
02:38her mom would draw water. She'd fill the bathtub, she'd fill pictures of water  for drinking,  and my mom grew up with that. So  luckily,  we had drinking water and we had water to flush the toilet with.  But we had no power, we had nothing going, no heat, no nothing.  It was September, so it was in the sweet spot of not too hot and not too cold, thank goodness. But
03:02Yeah, my parents cooked outside on the grill or they actually had a fire pit so they would cook on the fire pit because they couldn't use their stove.  So that's the closest I've ever been to off the grid. And so tell me what it's like.
03:20That's a good question. I will say it  has its challenges, but it's also really satisfying.  And from your taste of being off-grid that week from the storm,  I so you have an idea. When you cook out over and open a flame, there's nothing quite like that. It's really, really good.  since we do have solar,
03:48It's an adjustment period. You do have to keep an eye on things. But we do  like pressure canning and such we do outside on the patio and get these wonderful views. And so  yeah, it can be a challenge, but it's worth it. And we just love it. We have an regret a thing. Okay, well, that's awesome. What brought you to it?
04:16Well, we lived in Arizona in Tucson for about two decades and raised our kids there.  And  as time went by, just, we weren't really satisfied anymore.  And so  we did always bring our kids up with, you know, going camping and learning things about how they worked and such.  so they got older and we just started thinking.
04:43You know, maybe we should just go ahead and take the leap and do it. And so when the kids were in high school, we kind of had a timeline thinking, okay, we've got four years left until they graduate. So let's start making plans. So we started looking at different states  and growing seasons and narrowed things down  and finally ended up picking Tennessee. But I think what really convinced us to go ahead and go for it was my husband and I.
05:13We went on a 500 mile pilgrimage hike overseas in Spain  and you learn a lot when you're living out of a backpack for six weeks.
05:25And we realized all this stuff that we had waiting for us at home was just stuff.  And you don't own it, it ends up owning you. So when we got back from that, I think we got rid of about 75, maybe 80 % of what we had  and sold the house  and off we went. Wow. So that trip inspired it. Well, it didn't inspire it all, but it definitely cemented your plans.
05:54It really did. Nice.  Okay, so the thing that I remember about not having any electricity and our phone didn't work either, really. I mean,  it  was a true old-fashioned landline then. So yes, the phone worked. We could call 911 if we needed help. But for a couple days there, there was no getting into where we lived. So  we were pretty well screwed if anybody got hurt. Luckily, nobody did.
06:22But what I remember about it is that it was so  quiet. Like the only real noises that we heard  was  chainsaws because people had to get the trees out of the roads.  And granted, was back,  good God, I'm 55. So it was a while ago  and we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have home computers. That stuff didn't exist yet.  And so I was very used to it being
06:52I mean, we lived in the middle of  the woods in Maine.  There was birdsong and there was breeze through the pine trees, but there wasn't so much noise back then. So in the area that you're in, is it quiet? Is it nature sound?
07:11It is very, very quiet.  And we do joke sometimes that it's kind of like a jungle. Sometimes  because you just hear the owls making a racket outside. My chickens always have something to say. They always do. We have dogs.  Yes, they do.  And yeah, but yeah, it's really quiet. But yeah, the animal noises.
07:37Yeah, that takes some getting used to when you first come out here because we hear that, you know, the coyotes are walking around  and the owls and the raccoons, oh, the raccoons talk a lot. The raccoons make of nature noises. Do the raccoons chitter or do they have other noises that they make? They do chitter. They do. Sometimes we have to stop and think, wait a minute, is that an owl or is that a raccoon? Because sometimes they sound a little bit alike.
08:07We have coyotes that kind of hang out in the cornfield around our place. We don't own the  field.  And I was up at about three o'clock in the morning three weeks ago, because I wake up at three and my husband snores and I'm like, I'm going to get up until I'm sleepy again.  And  I was sitting on our little porch with the windows open and it's dark out and I'm fine with that. No big deal.  And I heard a howl  and I was like,
08:35I've never actually heard a coyote howl in my whole life. I've heard them  yipe and yip and bark, but I've never heard them howl.  And it made  the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was like, wow.
08:51I think that happened with us once with my husband and was outside and I was just inside the house but with the windows open. Yeah. And he calls out to me and we're not sure if it was a cougar or a bobcat but it was pretty close in the tree line to where my husband was. That was a bit unnerving. Yeah and the thing that I had to remind myself of is all of these animals were here before we were.
09:21We are infringing on their home. And so  I was like, okay, that is the fear response that your body is supposed to have, but there's nothing to be afraid of. It's okay. It's out in the field. It's doing its thing. I'm in the house. Nothing bad is going to happen  with this animal. It's okay.  And then I was like,  Oh, how cool was that?
09:46And we also just had an incident with a big raccoon a couple nights ago. We have chickens and he's discovered we have chickens. And I'm not sure that he's after the chickens, the eggs or the feed, but he was kind of nosing around the run, the fence that's around the coop. And so my husband shot off our 12 gauge shotgun above the raccoon's head. He did not shoot the raccoon. And I asked him why and he said,
10:15I just didn't feel right about shooting this raccoon. He said he's only doing what he's supposed to do. And I said, okay.  And he said, if it had been  in the run, that would have been different. I said, okay, fine. So  we now have a raccoon who had the daylight scared out of him the other night and he hasn't been back. So we're  on alert for any more showing up.
10:40That worked at least.  Yes. The possums are a lot more of an issue for us than the raccoons are.  possums are just relentless.  Yeah, we don't have too many here.  do have possums in Minnesota.  When I moved here long ago, over 30 years ago,  I was told that possums don't, they're not in Minnesota, but they are. We've seen them in our
11:08nesting boxes in our coop, actually.  All curled  up. Officially, don't have wolves here. Authorities say that we don't have any wolves here, but  everybody up and down where I live has seen a wolf.  It's not all the time,  but we've all seen them. We've seen them twice in the last five years.  I mean, you they're around.
11:38Yeah, here in Minnesota, we have the Department of Natural Resources, DNR. What's the acronym for your thing like that in Tennessee? Probably TWRA, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency, I believe. Okay. Well,  our agency like your agency, except ours is DNR,  swore up and down that we did not have cougars in Minnesota. And my husband and I knew
12:07years ago that there are big cats in Minnesota because we would hike along the river and we would see their paw prints. And cat prints look a lot different than dog prints. Big cat prints really look different. And about, I don't know, at least five years ago, the Department of Natural Resources finally put out information that yes, there are cougars in Minnesota.  And I was like, no shit, Sherlock, what was your first clue?
12:37And  the way they discovered is people were catching them on their trail cams.
12:45So yeah, there are big cats in Minnesota and they don't like people. You  will rarely see one in person.
12:55So they don't really come around too much. Oh, no. No, they do not like humans. No. The only ones that I have heard of people seeing in person have been hit by cars. On the highway. So yeah, but they hide. They like to be in really dense forested areas because then they're not bothered. But anyway, very far afield here. What do you?
13:23How do you support yourself on the off-grid homestead?
13:30Well, my husband still works outside the home. He's in IT  and I do  odd jobs. Basically. mean, my career was,  um, I was in middle school and high school English teacher and I'm not anymore, but now I do probably like a lot of homesteaders. sell eggs  and I barter a lot. So I've got a wonderful local lady who's got an absolutely amazing garden.
13:58And she needs eggs and I like the produce that  pardon me. like the produce that she has. So I bought her eggs for food,  do pet sitting and  animal care.  And I do some occasional tutoring for some local high schools.  So it's not like all the stuff that you do on your homestead is supporting you and the homestead all on its own. Right. Okay.
14:26And I didn't ask at the beginning, and I should have, how far away are you from the nearest town and your nearest neighbors?
14:34I've got  neighbors, I don't know, I'm bad at distance, I'd say half mile.  But as far as, you know, going to a grocery store or something, it's about 45 minutes.  Okay. So you're a little ways away.  Cool. Cause most people here off grid and they think, you know, the middle of Montana or Alaska where you're  hours and hours away from everything.
15:01Yeah, it's really not too bad. mean, it's far enough away where we have peace and quiet, but you know, if we really need something, then it's not too big of a deal to go do. But we do live in a holler, so very, very small one lane road. And when we get ice storms, it gets fairly ugly. I mean, during the, I think it was 21, we had eight inches just
15:29solid ice and nobody got out of here for over a week.
15:35Yeah, we get some pretty good ice here too.  there was a time two winters ago where my husband didn't go to work because he could not get out of our driveway. He could not get any traction to get out of our driveway at all. He was like, I'm working from home today. said, you do that. yeah. I had to do that too sometimes.
16:03Sorry, I to swallow. I'm trying to think what I was gonna ask you. So do you have like any livestock? You have chickens? We have chickens. I think we have around 30 right now. And we've been doing, well, we've built this cabin that we're living in. I mean, literally ourselves by hand without any help. And so.
16:30It's it's a work in progress. It's always a work in progress. So we've been doing that for the five years We've been here  and we've been living in it for Three and a half four years now because we were on in a pop-up camper for a little over a year on the land Okay, so I mean it's plenty far enough we've got ceiling and the insulation and the walls and all of that is done  and A couple weeks ago, we got the kitchen cabinets my husband's
17:00built those and put them in. And so this week he's working on  the doors for the fronts of the cabinets.  so yeah, by doing it himself, I mean, he does it all. mean, local trees, he mills it himself, planes it, all of it. So it all takes time, but it's worth it.
17:23Absolutely. And did he have any skills regarding that before you guys moved there?
17:30The first time we took down a tree was here. He had built a couple of  furniture pieces, our TV stand,  a table, believe.  But boy, he's, it's a talent and we're on a five year plan now to where he can leave his current field.  And he would like to do woodworking full time. Nice.  Isn't it beautiful watching someone you love learn new skills?
18:02It is. And he's, he's just so happy when he's doing that.  He just gets lost in his own little world. Yeah.  It's, like watching actual magic happen. My husband loves to garden and he didn't even know he loved a garden until probably 20 years ago.  His mom gave him some hand-me-down plants and he stuck them in. were flowers. And I said, uh,
18:27I said, those flowers are doing great. said, you want to dig up a backyard and we can put in food we can eat? And he said, yes. And watching him tear that small backyard apart,  get some good dirt,  get the baby plants in, them all summer. And we had food at the end of the summer.  He was just glowing with happiness and watching somebody go through that process was just amazing. was, I mean, who knows? I never would have expected
18:57I never had chickens before coming out here.  And  they are the funniest, most ridiculous little creatures. They are entertaining. I would have expected to just love chickens.  Yeah, we have chickens and their run is now where I can see them from the house. So if I step out on the porch, I see them screwing around in the run.
19:21And they actually act like they're playing with each other. don't know. I don't know if chickens do play with each other, but it looks like they're kind of hanging out, talking to each other, chasing each other around like little kids. I think they do. just, took a photo yesterday. I was out in the front yard with them  and two of them, you know, they were out laying in the yard and sunbathing  and one had its head across the other one. Like they were just laying there cuddling.
19:50It's the silliest thing, but...  I love it.  I love it when they take their dirt baths. I think it's really funny to watch them do that.
20:02I don't have goats yet,  but I'm planning on it. Yes, you will be highly entertained with goats.
20:13I hope so.  think I'm just going to get probably two or three. Try to keep it a little little easier, but we need to finish a couple of other things outside. And then we'll have the room for that.
20:29Hopefully. Okay, so if you guys,  I'm trying to go back to the off-grid thing here because I know nothing and I want to know more.  If you guys are off-grid, does that mean that you do a lot of cooking outside? Do you have the solar hooked up to a stove in your house? How do you do cooking? Oh gosh, that's a good question.  We have an old wood cook stove.
20:55So we do a lot of cooking on that, but not in the summer, of course. It's just too dang hot.  But that's also our only heat source as well. So that's how we provide our heat for the cabin.  lots of cooking in winter on that. And then in the summer, we do a lot outside because we have  one of those blackstone kind of big flat griddle.
21:20Call them a grill. Yep  So we've got that and I have a  dual burner Propane stove camp stove that I do my pressure canning on out on the patio Nice. I really want one of those but we're not quite ready to get one  Do you guys hunt and fish or not?
21:43Not as much as we like, but we're getting there. Okay. So  I don't want to be nosy, but I'm so curious. Is the, is the cabin, is the cabin that you built small that you're building? It is. Um, I'd say  maybe 600 square feet. And is it one level?  We have a loft upstairs when, when we first came out here and started building.
22:13Um, our youngest son was still with us.  And so he was living,  he lived up in the loft  and he's 22 now. So he's off on his own doing his own thing, seeing the world  and our other ones off  in another state because he's in the military.  So it's just two of us here now. So  yeah, it's pretty small. mean, we've got it's open floor plan  and then we have kind of a half wall that divides the bedroom.
22:42from the living room. And that is opened up with the kitchen. So it's pretty small, but it's plenty big for just two of us. Oh yeah, 600 square feet is way big enough for two people, especially if you like each other. If you don't like each other, it's not ever going to be big enough. Now we've got our moments. Yeah, I think every couple does. So do you have like actual plumbing or do you have a compost toilet or do you have an outhouse or just use the woods or how does that work?
23:13Okay, so for the kitchen we have a sink, we've got hot and cold water. On the outside of the house we have  a tankless water heater that's hooked up to propane. Okay. And so that is also what makes our shower work. And then for the toilet we have composting toilet.  I want one. I want one of those. We have a perfectly functional bathroom in our house, Keisha.
23:42There's my husband, our 23 year old son and me. I'm the only girl in the house. And I swear that bathroom is tied up all day long, every day on the weekends, one way or another. And I'm like, I am never going to get in there. It's not going to happen. I was like, I just need a closet with a compost toilet so I can use the bathroom.
24:03I want. Yes, just a place for you. Yeah, just a place for me or they can use  the water closet and I can actually use my nice bathroom and it's really pretty. That would be great. That  would work.  Aha. Yeah, I would love that.  I said to somebody the other day on another interview, I said when we were looking for this place before we found it, the two prerequisites were that it must have a flat space to have a big garden.
24:31and that hopefully it would have two bathrooms.  The flat space for the big garden won out.
24:39Well, having a big garden, that's amazing.  My garden is not where I would like it to be right now,  but it will be.  So  we're getting there. I I  have raised garden beds, but this year we decided to relocate them to a different spot for better sun.  And so we are setting those back up again now.
25:07That's the joy of garden beds though. You can actually move them to the better conditions. We were really lucky. This garden that we've had in since the summer after we moved here, we moved here in August of 2020. It happens to be a flat spot. The space is like, I would bet if we used the entire space, it would be more than half an acre, but we don't use all of it. We use about 100 feet by 150 feet. And it's...
25:35The sun pours on it all day from the south, which is ideal. And there's a tree line that kind of blocks the wind so it doesn't  beat the hell out of it in, you know, midsummer when it's windy. We  lucked out so big and  I know it. I mean,  I am  so thankful that we found this place. I don't have words big enough to explain how thankful I am. That's amazing.  So yeah, and
26:04If you're not into gardening and you're not into having your own chickens to have good eggs and you're not into any of this, no one cares. No one wants to hear about it. And part of the reason I started the podcast so I could talk to people who get it and know what this is like. I know. I think my oldest son thinks we're kind of crazy. He is not a country kid. likes his urban or suburban living. My daughter is like that.
26:33She is living in Florida right now and she works at a shop that makes like, healthy smoothies and sandwiches, like a health food, fast food kind of place. And, um, I said to her one time, it's after we moved here, I said, do you think we're nuts? And she said, I don't. She said, you guys have been working toward this since I was about 15. She said, if you weren't doing this by now, I would think you were nuts. I was like, oh, okay.
27:03So yeah, it's a lifestyle choice. It is literally a choice. No one does this without choosing it.
27:15That's true. That's really true. And no one chooses off-grid living unless they, no one does it unless they  absolutely commit to it because it's not easy.
27:29Yeah, it can be a lot, but we love it.  We  know somebody who's thinking about doing it, but isn't quite ready to take that step yet.  It's really something you have to be  sure that you want to do. Yeah, is there anything that you really don't like about it?
27:52Not that I can think of. I hadn't thought about that before. No, I mean, we get such kind of crazy weather here. so, I mean, sometimes it's ice storms, sometimes it's tornado or flooding and the area loses power so much. so, you know, I'll step out on the patio and I'll look, you know, way up down the street one way or another, and try to see if everybody has.
28:21if anybody has power or not. But for us, we're just here doing our thing because it doesn't make any difference for us. We still are just running  as normal.  Yeah, we're the same way. We have one of those generators that will kick on and send the power to the house automatically if the power goes out.  And so we could be off grid if we wanted to be here. And it's not really
28:48a big deal either way. love the fact that if it's minus 40 mid-January and the power goes out,  we still have heat to the house.  That's good. Yes. But we're not off-grid by any stretch. Do we have the potential and capability to be off-grid? Yes, we do. But is it really off-grid if you have a convenience that makes you off-grid?
29:17Oh, I did think of one thing that  hasn't been ideal, but we wouldn't have known until we got here is the cook stove I was telling you about.  love it.  You know, it's heated the place well for the last few years,  but  because of how they're designed, they have a very, very small firebox where you put the wood. Yes. And so if it gets down to  one, two degrees, mean, anything below 10, I'd say then.
29:47We ended up taking shifts at night, probably every 45 minutes we've got to, we have to feed wood into it. Yeah. And it's, it's just, it makes for some very long nights when it gets that cold. And so a couple of weeks ago, we went and bought a more, traditional wood stove and we don't have it in yet since we just got it we've got to redo the, you know, the pipe through the wall, but that will be a, that will make a really big difference for us.
30:16Mm-hmm.  Yeah, getting up every wouldn't have known that.  Having to feed the wood stove every 45 minutes when it's cold does not sound like a fun way to spend night.  No, it really isn't.  That will change next winter.  Good. I'm glad.  What's your favorite thing about your whole lifestyle choice?
30:40It's got to be a tie between the peace and quiet and the self-sufficiency. Just  knowing that you're capable of doing things. And even if you don't have the skill when you start, you learn it.  And it just makes it so.
31:02Hmm. That's a good word for it. It's amazing. it really is satisfying. You can go to bed at the end of the day, you know, exhausted and sore and so happy and content at the same time. call it, I call it sleeping like angels because you're so, you're so comfortable in, where you're at that you just, you're tired, your body is exhausted and you sleep.
31:31Like you restfully sleep. Yes. Yes. Not, not anxiously sleep and dream about the repetitive thing that you do at work all day.  Or you wake up every hour worried about your job or your kids or your car breaking down. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. I haven't slept  so well other than my husband's snores. That's a whole different thing,  but
31:59I hear you there. used to sleep  so well when I was a kid in that house in Maine,  because I knew that my parents took really good care of us and they had a solution for pretty much every problem. Because they kind of lived like off-grid homesteaders. That's how they did it. And I always felt safe there. And living here, I have felt more safe than I have in 30 years. It has been  such a gift.
32:31That's awesome. love that.  Yup. And I'm not saying it's for everybody because it's not, it is absolutely not for everybody. But if, if,  if, if any of the listeners, if, if, sorry,  if any of the listeners  have an inkling in their soul that this is something they'd be interested in, I think that if it's there, you should pursue it. Cause if you hate it, you can always change your mind and move back to the city. Yes.
33:01All right, Keisha, I try to have these run half an hour. We're there. Where can people find you online?
33:10You can find me on Instagram. My handle is little cabin big woods. Okay. And that's it. No, no Facebook, no website, no nothing.  I've got YouTube is also little cabin, big woods and not as active there as Instagram. Okay.  All right.  I so appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. You are the, think you're the first really off grid.
33:37person I've talked to and I've been looking for somebody  and I'm so glad you the time to talk to me today. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me.  Have a wonderful day and as always people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Thank you, Kiesha. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.
 

Secret Farmstead

Today I'm talking with Heidi at the Secret Farmstead.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Heidi at Secret Farmstead.
00:29in Texas. Good morning, Heidi. How are you? I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. I would normally start off with questions about the weather and things, but  I was reading your introduction on your Facebook page  and are you sure you want to talk to me in a public forum because it's a secret, farmstead? Yeah. No, I'm not worried about it at all. Let's do it. Okay. What I'm alluding to for the listeners is that
00:58Heidi lives on a couple of acres from what I gathered, but there's something about an HOA situation. Do you want to elaborate, Heidi? Yeah, I can do that. We live in a super bougie neighborhood. Our houses in this subdivision range from probably the high 700,000 up to close to $2 million homes. We bought this
01:25location because we left the house and it has a guest house or casita and initially my parents had moved with us. So we were told that we didn't have an HOA when we purchased our land and that is technically true.  However, we do have what's called an ACC, an architectural control committee that thinks they're an HOA and we do have deed restrictions. So  despite living in the county and
01:52The county allowing, you know, so many  heads of cattle or livestock per acre and those kind of rules,  our little subdivision technically does not allow anything like that except for your household dogs or cats. So while I have a couple of acres that is flat and completely usable, technically I'm not supposed to have anything like what I have. And it started with maybe a couple of chickens from
02:21uh, tractor supply. Um, and now I might have 24 chickens.  Um, and then I thought, well,  uh,  I want dairy. So  now I have maybe a few goats. So  anyway, it's just kind of expanded from there and where we live, we're on a kind of a corner lot at the entrance of the subdivision. So we don't have a neighbor behind us and we don't have a neighbor on
02:50the other side of the property where the animals are kept.  It's next to a frontage road. So  no one's disturbed by our animals. And really most people don't even know we have them. We don't advertise them,  but we also are respectful and don't advertise that we're breaking the rules either. Uh-huh. Except for being on a podcast that anyone can listen to.
03:14You know, I used to be really concerned about being more open about it, you know, because I'm, you know, I have a career in law enforcement and I was always a rule follower and a rule enforcer.  But my  neighbors all love my animals. So the ones that are directly  adjacent to me basically across the street or next door, the opposite side. So that's not been an issue for us. And I  routinely provide them, you know, fresh baked sourdough or goat milk or
03:44eggs, you know, so  they really do benefit from it, even though they're not quite willing or able to break the rules themselves, they are kind of reaping the benefits of my break in the rules.  And I did a lot of research  as far as how the laws work and,  you know, an ACC is architectural control. So really that  is they can dictate, you know, the size of your home and what is built out of and your fencing and things like that.
04:12As far as the deed restrictions that they have put into place for our subdivision, technically, in order to enforce those, a neighbor would have to take me to court. And if I thought, you my husband and I had this conversation initially, if we thought that truly this bothered any of our neighbors, we wouldn't do it. I mean, I don't want to a bad neighbor. But also, I want to be able to use my land and not have people tell me what I can and can't do because it seems silly.
04:40that I have a couple acres that I'm not allowed to utilize in a way that would allow me to be a little more self-sustaining  and a little more, you know,  organic in my approach to my, you know, skincare and my food. So anyway.  okay. Thank you. Thank you for elaborating. Because  once I realized what was going on when I read your, your about you thing, I was like, Oh boy, I don't know if she's really going to want to talk to me, but clearly you do. I'm very excited about this.
05:10Um, so what, what brought you to doing this? Well,  you know, I always have kind of tried to be on the healthier side of things once I had kids and my kids are grown now, but you know, I like made my own sandwich bread for my kids. I just didn't like the idea of preservatives and fillers and, and all these things being put in what we, we eat and put on our bodies. And so I wasn't perfect when my kids were young because I work shift work and
05:39So we did have little Debbie snacks here and there, different things like that that aren't the healthiest. But generally speaking, for the most part, I tried to make everything from scratch. And then as I've gotten older and a little more educated in different things, I just lost trust in all of commercialized products pretty much in general. So especially learning what ingredients are  put in things and how they're modified to be addicting.
06:08I remember it's been brought up recently by some pretty popular people in the media, but growing up, I would look at pictures of my parents and my grandparents and all of the family, and there were never any obese people. It was rare to see someone that was overweight or  super  morbidly obese. And then it just kind of started to make sense to me that
06:34with the way things are being made addictive,  you you're eating more and more and you're in this cycle of, you know, this metabolic dysfunction and it's creating this problem. so just  as time goes on, just,  I tend to inch more and more  on that conspiracy side of things. And I thought, well, you know, why can't I make this or why can't I make that? Because then I have complete control of what's being put in my body and what we're eating. So
07:03And that's just kind of how it's evolved. You know, started with the whole bread thing. read somewhere that  I think Subway puts  an ingredient in their bread that's also put in yoga mats. And I thought, well, that's really weird because bread should only be, you know, flour and water. And so,  and then I started my sourdough adventure and that was challenging, but I've got it down now. So,  and then soap kind of became a thing. I thought I had an interest in making it.
07:33little intimidated. I like bought the things but didn't do it until I actually took a soap making class. And I thought, well, that's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. And I loved it.  The lather, the  way it felt on my skin, just I really enjoyed my own soap and I shared it with friends. And then  I started hearing stories about how their kids' eczema cleared up and how much they liked what I was making and I should sell it. And I'm like, yeah. And then it's just kind of
08:02You know, evolved from there and here we are.  I have a bunch of soap curing right now  anyway. So yeah, and now I'm doing lotions and body butters and sunscreen and  just trying to be as healthy as I can be and be in complete control of what is going in and on my body.  Okay, I'm glad you brought up your sunscreen because I was  was scrolling through your Facebook page and I saw the sunscreen post.  What do you?
08:32You listed the ingredients for the sunscreen bar or whatever it is.  What is actually keeping your skin from getting burned in that?  the coconut oil and the tallow both have some properties that  are protective from the sun,  but it's the non-nano zinc oxide that also. So I don't know if you have looked at pictures of like old lifeguards back in the  50s or the 40s, like they would have the white on their nose or whatever.
09:00That's  the zinc oxide except  it wasn't the non-nano zinc oxide. So  what I have is white, but as you rub it in it, it goes clear.  So that's why I use the non-nano version. But those are all skin protectant.  Okay. I didn't see the zinc part in the post.  I was like, how is she making that work? Because I've made some too with the same kind of zinc and it actually does work. It's amazing. Yeah.
09:27And I personally really don't use sunscreen because I don't typically burn. I just kind of have a natural olive complexion. if I do get a little red, goes, gone the next day. But my husband and my daughter are both very fair skinned and they both burn super easy. So I'm like, well, look at all these chemicals in these sunscreens that we're buying. You know,  I'm going to make you sunscreen. now that's  whether they like it or not. That's what they use. It's my stuff. So and then again, it's like, well,
09:55friends were interested and I'm like, well, there's no reason I can't make this as a part of the product line as well. So that's what I did. Yes. When  I made ours, I had a couple of friends who were willing to be guinea pigs  and I said, you're trying this at your own risk.  Do not sue me if you burn.  And they were like, no, we trust you. And I'm like, don't trust me. I'm new at this. I'm just trying to see if it works.
10:20I said, I tried it, but I'm not out in the sun a whole lot, so it's not going to have the same impact, you know?  Right. And one of the people came back to me and said, I'm going to need like three more sticks of that stuff. It works great. And so anytime we create anything here for sale, we always say, your mileage may vary.  You're doing this at your own risk. Right. Don't come burn my house down if something goes wrong, you know?
10:50Yeah. And I love that I have a group, you know, my family number one, and then I have a select group of friends that have young children too. And they have been super beneficial to me because they'll test anything I make and give me some feedback before I actually put it as a product and, at my vendor events or at the store we have in Harker Heights that carries our products.  Because that way I can make modifications. Like I'm now doing lotion bars because
11:17I have some friends out of state that want me to send them my body butter, but it doesn't have any stabilizers and it doesn't have any really emulsifiers other than the beeswax in it. And when it does separate, we learn this the hard way.  It doesn't go back together. not, it's never right again. Yep. And so  I won't ship it because I can't guarantee with the heat that it's going to get there and it's going to be usable, but I'm hoping my lotion bars.
11:42are going to kind of be the happy medium that maybe I can ship those to other people that want those products with the lotion  and not have it be a separation issue that it's not going to be good when it gets there.  Yeah, I love lotion bars. I started making them maybe 10 years ago.  And  the only thing I didn't like about them is I made them in little tins. So basically you would tip the lotion bar out into your hand and then you would have it all over your hands.
12:10And so you had to have paper towels or something nearby to wipe your hands on.  And I finally got smart and they make these little half-size  twist up, like deodorant shaped containers.  And I've been putting the lotion bar stuff in that and then you don't end up getting it all over your hands when you're trying to put it on your arms or on your feet. Right. Yeah. I haven't gotten, I haven't done the tubes yet. I just have them in molds and I put them in little boxes.  Um,
12:38I think they'll work out well. might have to explore that tube ID at some point. That might be a great option as well. Yeah. And when I started making them, my youngest was, I don't know, 10. And so there were a couple of times where I was trying to put lotion on my elbows, because you get ashy, dry elbows in the wintertime in the Northern States.  And he needed something. And I was like, you're going to have to give me a minute, because I had lotion bar all over my hands.
13:07And I was like, I got to find a better solution so that it's not all over my hands when I'm using it. Right.  So, and I also don't like the lip gloss pots. I would much rather have the tubes. So I'm just like that. That's just me. Yeah. No, that's a great idea. hadn't even considered that. I know they do it for deodorant and I haven't made my own deodorant yet. I know that's kind of like  on my radar, maybe the next thing to try.  But
13:34I kind of have to also pick and choose because it's just, you know, it's a rabbit hole. Once you get started, it's like, man, it's, you get pulled in so many directions, making so many different things, you know, jack of all trades. But a master of none is kind of where I feel like I'm at right now. So I want to, I want to get comfortable and good at what I'm doing before I, I add to the mix and maybe, you know, overextend. Cause I don't, you know, I don't, I just do this kind of mostly for fun. I'm not doing it as a, as a career. So,  um, mostly for me and then.
14:04or like I said, our friends and family. then if I can make money on the side to pay for my hobby, even better, know? Yeah, for sure. Definitely.  I started mine out out of necessity because I really can't use store bought soaps. And I had bought the  the cold process lye soaps at a farmer's market. I bought them from somebody who made them  and loved it because my skin didn't itch. I was hydrated. It smelled good. The lather was great. And I was like,  honey.
14:34husband of mine and he said what and I said can we try making our own soap?  He's like what's  how you do it? And I said um Google it. And he pulled it up and looked at how to do it and he said yeah I can I can make this in the garage and we did it when the kids were smaller we were concerned about  doing it around them  and  ever since we made ours it's been a thing and it's been at least 15 years of us having our own homemade soap in our house I  freaking love it.
15:04And that just sent us down the rabbit hole on lip balms and on lotion bars and wax melts and candles and all the fun things, you know? Yeah. You don't realize how much is in all of that stuff. I before this, you know, most of my adult life, was Victoria's Secret lotion. I'm not Victoria's Secret Bath and Body Works lotion. Like I love their cherry blossom and like I just I would go on their sales and stock up and buy a gazillion of them at a time.
15:32And I actually still have a few tubes like buried in the back of my cabinet in my bathroom that every time if my daughter has friends come over, I'm like, hey, he wants some bath and body works lotion because I'm not going to use it. So, but yeah. And then like when we started doing the soap, the whole goat thing came into play because I couldn't find goat milk anywhere.  number one in Texas, you can't sell it for consumption, which is fine.  I didn't need it for consumption. I just needed it for my soap making.
16:02Um, but I kept trying to find places, whether through Facebook groups or  on Craigslist. And I couldn't find the closest one I could find was an hour away. And I thought, you I'm not going to drive, you know, two hours every time I need to get some goat milk. So  it just made sense. I mean, we got the Nigerian dwarf goats. We've got them, they're on about  half to a three quarter of an acre area where they, where they live.  And, um, that it's,  it was a problem solver and they're easy and they're
16:31our entertainment. Honestly, they're so much fun. We just adore our goats and had no idea. I grew up in a city in the Bay Area.  I was always a city girl. I never grew up with anything other than a couple of dogs and cats my whole life. So never thought I would be living in Texas on a couple of acres raising livestock. So  it's been a complete turnaround for me that I never saw coming.  And then I tried the goat milk. I thought,
16:59I had goat milk years ago.  Some friends of ours in the state that we were living in had goats and I tried it I'm like, I don't really like that. That's kind of gross. But I also didn't realize because I didn't know that the kind of goat, the breed of goat, what you're feeding them, if you have any bucks nearby, like there's  so many different factors that contribute to how it tastes. So  with our goats, I thought I'm going to try this. And I tried my goat milk one day and I was like,
17:28Holy cow. This is amazing. It is delicious. I cannot differentiate between this and whole milk. Like it may be richer even. It was just better. now that's all we drink is goat milk as well. So.  Yeah. When I tried goat milk the first time, I didn't like it either.  And friends of ours have goats and I got to have goat milk cream in my coffee at their place.
17:56If I could buy stock in goat milk cream, I would do it. It's so yummy. Yeah, I so now I'm making cheese with my goat milk. I made ice cream recently with my goat milk.  It's just, I never would have thought in a million years that this is kind of where I would end up being  on this whole life path. it's been really neat. So I'm enjoying it. Good.
18:21Good, we need more people to do these things and learn to enjoy it because then we would have a better world.  I had a question and then I said that and I completely forgot what the question was.  So you didn't foresee yourself making soaps or lotion bars either then, right?  Never in a million years. Nope.
18:45And like I said, I had a career in law enforcement. So I worked 40, 50, 60 plus hours a week, you know, and so did my husband. And so, and then we had kids where, you know, sporting events and different things, different obligations. And so I never was in a position where I even really had the time. What little time I had, I kind of committed to baking like the breads and things like that from scratch. Yeah. But yeah, now I got medically retired a few years back due to some injuries sustained and couldn't
19:15couldn't do law enforcement anymore.  I mean,  we do real estate on the side for kind of fun as well.  But yeah, I just like I have this time, why not venture in doing some of these things? And I'm not artsy at all. Like I don't, I can't draw, I can't envision things, but soap, I can kind of get a little creative and be like, okay, this turned out really pretty, you know? So  it gives me that little creative outlet, even though I have zero creative ability in the big picture.  So.
19:45It's kind of fun. Yeah, the honeycomb bars. I don't know that was soap or lotion bars or whatever it was on your Facebook page are so pretty. Yeah, those are my I have  it's my  my oat and raw honey. get my raw honey from a place here nearby called  Walker Honey Farms  and  I buy it by the gallon and I go in there and I spend too much money on all of the all of the honey things.  But I love that it never goes bad. And so I thought, well, with my
20:15raw honey bars, my oat and honey bars, I'm just going to do those with those, those bumblebee molds. It was perfect to me. And so even my lotion bars, I'm doing with those molds too, because they're so high  in beeswax. So I feel like it's kind of appropriate. It's, you know, bee based. So it'd be molds anyway. you should change your name to secret hive farmers did.  Yeah, I would maybe if I had bees myself and  I'm just not brave enough. So I'll just buy from
20:44my local source here and I appreciate that they're doing all that hard work for me. So. Yes. And how thankful are we for local sources? There's a guy down the road from us, maybe two miles that has honeybees. He raises honeybees and his bees come visit our garden every summer and pollinate everything for us. And at some point we're going to have to take some of our produce to him and be like, here, this is what your bees provided for us. So we're giving you some.
21:13Yeah, yeah, I love I feel like our country or at least my area in general is kind of venturing towards the more handcrafted homemade locally sourced items,  whether it's food or, you skincare or or, you know, whatever.  And, you know, the product that the store that carries our product in Harker Heights, which is a neighboring town, it's called Solstice Studios.  And they that all they carry in their store is
21:41local handmade products. And so  it's just neat to go to these things and see what all kinds of people can make, you know, that you can get here. And then to  meet other vendors, you know, I was at a recent vendor event  last month for Mother's Day and the vendor next to me  does also honey  bees and sells honey and other honey tinctures and products and whatnot. And then I found out, well, shoot, she's like 15 minutes from me.
22:11So, you know, she grows, she grows luffa and I'm just growing luffa now for my soaps, but I'm months out before it's going to be usable for my soaps. But now I have, you know, an even closer source for local honey and for the luffa and other things that I can incorporate into my products. And so it just, I like that we seem to be going that direction versus a big commercialized, you know, made up product with chemicals and things. I don't know. I just feel like
22:41It's bettering our community by keeping things local and having a partnership with people in the area that have kind of like a similar mindset. Yeah. And when you do that, everybody in that community wins in some way. Yes. You know, a rising tide raises all ships. It's been said a bunch of times on the podcast in the last year and a half. And it's true. You know, when you buy from a local grower,
23:09You're supporting them in their continuance of their business. When you are a local grower, you are helping feed your community or sharing whatever it is that you make and everybody wins. And I don't mean to beat a dead horse over this, but you are literally proving my point with what you said. Yeah, no, I, I more and more am going that direction. If I can get it here, I'm going to get it here. I don't care if I have to pay a little bit more for it. It's worth it to me.
23:37to know where it comes from. even we have a local source for beef  and I started out with a quarter beef to try it out. And then we're like, oh, this is amazing.  And then it's like, and we increased, increased. Now we get a whole cow once a year from this family, but they're the next town over. And I can look at their cows and I can be a part of what they're doing. And I'm supporting their family and they're giving me grass-fed, grass-finished beef.
24:06product that is far superior than anything I've bought in the store. Even like round steaks and that was what surprised me because I grew up, know, where we  ate the cheaper cuts of meat because, you know, the times were what they were and you were when you're raising a family cost is everything. And so my parents would buy a lot of sirloin steak and I like would chew it and chew it and chew it and like wouldn't break down and I hated steak as a kid. So we got this whole beef and
24:33Even like the round steaks, which normally you have to tenderize the heck out of to get them really  where they're tender enough to eat. I don't have to, I can barbecue that just as is and I can cut it and it's just like, almost like a New York quality in this, in  the tenderness. so the quality of what I'm getting for what I'm paying as well is far superior than what I was getting in the grocery store.
25:00Yeah, and if you're anything like me, the security feeling that you get from knowing that you have that beef in the freezer and it will last you quite a while is probably helpful too. That's what I love about it, about when we get a half. When I fill my freezer with that meat, I feel like I'm the richest woman in the world. And I know that's the dumbest thing to say, but like, man, I've made it.  It's not dumb. And I say that all the time. When I say things like that, I go, and that's really dumb.
25:29It's not dumb and I have to stop saying it too. It is seeing the benefit of planning ahead, using your local resources and having the means to do it. It's not dumb. Well, I, you know, we moved out to Texas in 2020 and we went back and forth as far as what we wanted. Like, did we want a house in a subdivision with amenities? Did we want a house with some property?
25:57We went back and forth and then this house popped up and like I said, it had the guest house, which was going to be perfect for my parents.  So that's kind of where we ended up where we ended up. And we also had factored in our age, you know, I'm going to be 50 this month. And so how many years do I have that I can really work land? But now I always grew up in a subdivision. I never lived on land my whole entire life. And so we were always sandwiched into a neighborhood where you had no room in between. And now that I've had a couple acres.
26:23I can't imagine going back to a scenario where I have a neighbor,  like neighbors right on top of me, number one, and number two. Now,  you know, between,  I don't know if you follow like Joel Salatane, the lunatic farmer and people like that, but we've kind of gone that route as well. And I'm like, man, we're looking for more land, actively looking to like, how can we get enough land where we can grow our own beef and have our own dairy and
26:50be able to move paddocks and do the sustainable farming and regenerative farming  to properly support our land and have a water source. That never was important to me. And all of a sudden right now with some obstacles that we've had with our water provider, I  would probably donate a kidney to have a well. So I didn't have to rely on a water service provider.
27:19Maybe, I don't know,  at some point, the right time we can look at upgrading our space.  But for now, I feel like what we have,  it's humble, but  I feel like utilizing it pretty well.  I think you are from everything you're saying.  We have a well here, and I am so thankful for it  because there was a summer or two summers ago, last summer we had all the water we could stand, like it ruined our garden. But the summer before that,
27:49Basically from the first July until the first of September, it really didn't rain here.  And  we were very thankful for the well because  the problem with it raining a lot is you can't suck the water back out of the garden. But if it's dry, you can water a garden. Right. I would rather have a drought situation because we have the well than what we dealt with last summer with the endless rains for six weeks.  Right.
28:17Yeah, our  scenario is a little bit different in that we have what's called a water service corporation. It's technically a member owned thing, but unfortunately it's kind of  got a corrupt leadership  and office. And I just am at the point where I don't want anyone to have control over my resources. So,  you know, I don't like, they had threatened to disconnect our water.
28:46because we don't have a second meter for this guest house on our property, which was built over a decade before we bought it.  anyway, so  just, I don't like the ability for nefarious activity that someone could cut me off of a resource or have control over my access to that resource. So  for any reason other than non-payment, of course, because you need to, you  it is what it is. You have to pay for what you get, but.
29:14Yeah, if I could get a well,  would absolutely. And that's one of my criteria. If we do end up moving, we do buy land somewhere, it's got to have a well, or we have to have the ability to put in a well  so that we can be in control  of our resources. So I'm jealous of you. I would give  anything to have a well  for our water.  Well,  I'm always saying I'm jealous of people too, so I get it.
29:43But it's really weird when we moved here. It was so weird to not have a water bill because we had lived in town and had a water bill for 20 something years.  And my husband was like, I'm going to go water the garden. And he hooked up  the hose to the spigot thing on the well.  And he watered for an hour and a half.  I was like panicking. I  was programmed to panic because, you know, I was used to having to pay for the water.
30:13Right.  And I came in and  he came in and I said,  that was a long watering. And he said, yes, he said,  it's a well, we don't have to pay per  the gallon anymore. Yeah. He said, you're going to have to get used to this. He said, remember when we paid off the house that we used to live in and you  panicked  the first three months because you were like, did you pay the mortgage?  And I said, yes. He said, you're going through the same thing.
30:43I was like, oh yeah, I am okay.  So it's really weird when stuff that you've been doing forever changes because your body and your brain  are so programmed  to the thing you used to do. It takes a while to get used to the new way of doing things. Yeah, no, it definitely does. you know,  my sister-in-law her husband live in North Texas up in the Panhandle and they live on a lot of acres and they have a well and we
31:12We have a water filtration system set up  for our water because I just, don't, the water doesn't taste good. I don't like all the chemicals in it.  So  we only use the filtered water. But when we went to my  sister-in-law's house recently,  my brother-in-law was funny because I was drinking a bottle of water and he's like, why don't you drink our well water? It's  delicious. And so I'm like, okay. And so I gave it a try and I'm like, man, this is amazing. You don't have a filter, you don't have anything.
31:42And this is just straight from the ground, you know, and you're in your well and it was fantastic water. So  just amazing how much what we do consume is altered.  Um, you know, and I, it's supposed to be for the health and benefit of the community and safety and all of that. But like just straight natural from the ground was far better than even my filtered stuff. So anyway, yeah, one day, maybe one day I'll have a well dreaming of a well.
32:10I will keep my fingers crossed for you,  All right, I try to keep these to half an hour  and I always feel like half an hour isn't enough. I'm going to have to consider making them an hour long.  But  I really enjoyed the conversation with you. I have one more quick question. Do you grow any produce? Yes, we do. We have a garden that seems to expand every year. So,  you know, between kale and peppers and corn and tomatoes and
32:39Yeah, all of the things we grow as much as we can. And have a greenhouse that we put in last year to help us get through  the colder months. So we don't have to lose a lot of stuff and  we can start things early. But yes, we we grow our own produce. So and it's been hit or miss on success. We have a lot of problems with squash bugs and things like that. But  this year we learned about beneficial nematodes  and
33:03applied them and that has made a world of difference this year already. So we're excited for our garden this year.  Nice.  I've got to look that up. keep reading about that, but I haven't done enough research yet. And the other thing is that we've been trying the diametaceous or however you say that  earth, I guess it is  on the ground around our tomato plants.  And it seems to be keeping the pests away. So I'm hoping this is a new thing.
33:33Yeah, DE works great too. We use that in various places. I kind of use it in  the goat shack area to help keep flies down. And yeah, I use the heck out of that too, but the beneficial nematodes have been for us a game changer this year. So maybe give it a try. Hopefully you'll have a success that we've had with that. I'm going to have to look it up and do some digging about it because I don't know enough about it yet.  All right, Heidi, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you?
34:03So I'm on Facebook and Instagram under secret farmstead. So I don't have a website as of yet. I kind of intimidated by that, but maybe eventually or my email at secretfarmstead at gmail.com. All right. Awesome. As always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com Heidi. I hope you have a great day. And again, I've said thank you three times. I'm going to say it again. Thank you so much for talking with me. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. It's been my honor to be on your podcast. All right. Have a good day. You too. Bye.
 

CZECH BAKER MN

Today I'm talking with Michaela at CZECH BAKER MN. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Michaela  at Czech Baker, Minnesota.
00:29in Savage, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Michaela. How are you? I am good. How are you today?  I'm good. Sorry about the technical difficulties logging in.  I'm going to be emailing Riverside tomorrow and being like,  what is up guys? Cause it's not working very well for my guests.  No problem. We figured it out. So we're good.  Yes. So my
00:51I usually I say how's the weather, but I'm in Minnesota too. So we know the weather has been kind of rainy, kind of sunny, kind of cloudy, and we never know what we're going to  get. So,  Okay. So you are a Czech baker and I need you to tell me how you pronounce K O L A C  H  Y or E or whatever it is. So Koláč would be a traditional size that we have in Czech Republic. And that would be one item, just one.
01:20Kolache would be multiple. And then here in Minnesota, they do use Kolache keys. So they add the S at the end to make it multiple. But if you say Kolache key, that would be multiple already. And single would be Kolache. And that is just a smaller version  from the regular Kolache word. Okay. And that particular pastry we're talking about is the one that...
01:46that's flat on the bottom, but the corners are folded in and it has like a jam or jelly in the middle. Is that right?  You know, we're going to be  hearing a lot of people about this because I was born and raised in the Czech Republic.  Koláč comes from words, kolá, which means round. So  in Czech Republic, if you ask for koláč, you're going to get a round circle item with the filling on the top and open face. And that's the ones I make. And then the ones here in Minnesota,  they do
02:16put in the two corners or sometimes they just do two of the sides, kind of wrap them over and kind of hide the filling a little bit. So we make those in Europe as well. We don't call them kolache. We have different names on a different presentations. It's the same dough, same filling, just a different presentation and gives you a different name. But in Czech Republic, if you ask for kolache, you're going to get a round thing with open face. Okay.
02:41See, this is why I love talking to you people on the podcast because I learned things I didn't know. My husband and I were at a friend's house last year or the year before and the male of the couple was telling me that it's Kalachi and I've heard it called Kalaki, like Kalaki days in I think Montgomery. Kalachi days in Montgomery, yeah. Yeah, and for the longest time, I'm like number one, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly.
03:10And number two, I don't care, they're yummy. arose by any other name would smell as sweet. And I suppose that whatever this pastry we're discussing is called, it tastes just as good. Yep, I would think so. mean, know, different names, but different views or different looks, but the same dough, same kind of filling, of course, depends, you know, if you get it from commercial store, if you made it from homemade, but yeah, whatever they're called, they are delicious. You're right.
03:39Uh huh. love the pastry dough. is so good. And I'm not even a bread girl. Like I don't love bread, but these things are amazing. Okay. Thank you for sort of straightening that out for me because I figured you would know the correct answer. And where in Czech Republic are you from? I was born and raised in Ostrava, which is the East North side. I lived about, I don't know, have 20, 30 minutes to Poland and then about
04:0830 to 45 minutes to Slovakia. So we're kind of up in that corner and all of those three cultures kind of, know, interlope in there for us as far as food goes. So we'll get a little bit of everything. And when did you come to America? I have been here since 1998. Oh,  wow. OK. So how old were you when you came over? I was 19. So I've been here longer than my original start of life in Czech Republic.
04:36Was that hard for you? mean, this is not a geography podcast, but was that hard for you? Was it a real culture shock?  Not at  all. mean, you I grew up  with one brother and a mom, kind of. She was married for a while, but we never really kind of had a stable  father figure in our lives. And  I don't know. I was just always advantageous. You know, I wanted to do different things.  Right after high school, I went to England as an au pair.
05:04for a year and then I went to Italy for summer job and I stayed for like a year and a half and that's where I met my ex-husband and that's how I got to the States because of him at the end. But I have not, I mean I love travel. I have been to many, many different countries and I hope that I'll have many more to see. Okay, cool. So tell me how you became a cottage food producer because you make a lot of things out of a small kitchen, I would assume.
05:34Yeah, so that happened back in 2014 when I got married with my second husband who is actually from Montgomery grew up there and is a fifth generation of the Czech heritage here. We kind of joked around and I said, well, why don't we move to Czech Republic? And he was like, well, yeah, let's do it. Where are we going? I was like, well, wow, hold on. Like, we need to plan it. You know, I have two kids and
06:00little kids obviously so school and language and house and all that stuff and he was ready to retire so we decided that we're gonna have a year  kind of get it all together and figure out what we're gonna do and we're gonna move to Czech Republic for two years  and we did that we actually stayed for three and then  upon our return back I mean after my three years being back home and eating all the
06:23proper food and good bread and good kolache and you know, tasty  baked goods, not just sugar filled stuff.  I was like, well, I got to start doing it at home. So I actually started with the sourdough bread, the caraway rye was the first thing that I started doing and I brought it to Sokol  in St. Paul. We have a Czech and Slovak Sokol Hall. So we were meeting there with parents and kids for dancing lessons and Czech and Slovak lessons. So would bring it there. So that would be kind of like my first customers.
06:52once a week when I brought the kids over there and then I started thinking that, you know, I should make kolacha and make them the right way,  not the  Montgomery way.  So I did. And then I got very lucky of going to a farmer's market that was in Prylake. It was called the Little Market That Could. And it was towards the end of the season. I mean, I think there were like two or three weeks left. It was early September.  And the organizer,  Lady Rosemary,
07:19Was like yeah, of course come we don't have a fresh Baker and yes, you need to come here So I did it for like the first  for the last two or three weeks of the market  and I kind of got hooked and got some customers and it's been now it's  Is seven years six or seven years that I'm doing it. So Wow fun fun  So who taught you to bake did you just learn on your own or did someone teach you?
07:46It would be my grandmother. My grandma was the one who was doing all this stuff, you know, baking and cooking. mean, my mom, growing up in Europe, actually, everybody cooks at home.  Difference there is that some people enjoy it and some people just do it because they have to, you know, we didn't have all that, all those restaurants and stuff. mean, everything we cooked was from scratch and we would eat, you know, at home all the time. There was no really restaurants eating unless it was a big celebration or some kind of special occasion.
08:15So cooking more or less, you my mother used to do that. She didn't bake too much because like I said, she did it because it was needed to feed the family, but she didn't really enjoy it. Well, my grandma, she just loved anything in the kitchen. So when I was little,  I spent as much time as I could with her and try to learn stuff from her. Very nice. I kind of wish my grandmas were still around. I'm 55. So my grandmas have both been gone for  quite a while.
08:43I think my mom's mom passed away over 10 years ago.  Yes, I don't have my mom nor my grandmother anymore either. So I do have still and  who is left in Czech Republic and she enjoys the baking  as much as my grandmother did. So she got that from her rather than my mom, guess.  Uh huh. Yeah.  I have been learning sourdough lately. Sourdough bread  made my first loaf this weekend and it was, it was dense.
09:12It was dense  and it turned out that it tastes really good, but it's got like a bagel  mouthfeel to it. You know, when you buy bagel  and I kind of love my mistake.  It, I had cream cheese on it today. I was like, this is like a bagel. I'm okay with this.  Right. You like the chewiness of it. Yeah.  Yeah. It's probably under proof. That's why it's kind of chewy. Uh, so it didn't prove all the way, but.
09:37For me, like I said, actually started with the bread here first and that was easier for me because the sourdough is forgiving. You don't have to watch the clock and stuff. then once I started using the yeast dough, which is for my kolache, I was kind of having problems first because it's completely different. You do have to watch it, then you have to be on the top of it. So for me trying to figure out the schedule and how it works. And although I've been doing it for, like I said, six or seven years,
10:04I will not bake anything out of dry yeast. That just never works for me. I actually buy fresh yeast each time and that works perfect for me. But dry yeast, I mean, I have used it a couple of times in a pinch that I couldn't get the fresh one, but it was not good. I was not happy with the result. So I'm not sure what that is, but in Czech Republic, we would always use dry, sorry, fresh yeast when I was growing up. So I think that's kind of stuck with me that that's a better way to go.
10:32Okay. I have never seen fresh yeast, but I've read about it. it like a, is it like a little chunk of yeast or is it, how does it come? Yeah, I actually buy it as a one pound brick. We have a Hy-Vee here that has a bakery that they bake fresh every day. So they sell me the one pound. You can buy them in a little smaller, like a cube. Sometimes I've seen them at London Birely's I think, but
10:57That one small cube is only like 45 or 50 grams and I'm not sure how many that is in ounces, I'm sorry. But that one cost like three or four dollars and the one pound I buy at Hy-Vee cost me five bucks. So. Okay. So what's the texture of it? Is it like clay-ish or is it? Kind of, yeah. It's kind of like clay-ish, like a plasturine, modeling. So do you just like scrape a spoon into it to get what you need or how do you use it?
11:26Well, because I bake in a big batches, obviously, since I bake for the farmers market, you know, I weigh it. I just I usually use about third of that brick. So I, you know, take off whatever I need, obviously, wait, make sure I have enough and then I just  scramble it with my hands into warm milk with sugar already. And then the same process like with the dry yeast, you let it, you know, sit for a little bit so it starts blooming. But it works way faster than the dry yeast. So
11:52Okay, I had no idea.  again, this is why I love you guys. I learned so many things I had no idea about.  My husband is the yeast bread baker. I kill every yeast dough I deal with. I gave up. He's so good at it. I'm like, you do it.  And then I had a friend bring me some sourdough starter a couple weeks ago and I killed that too. Didn't feed it for three days and I was like,
12:16It's not good. Forget it. Oh, didn't tell it. The sourdough were last.  I brought mine actually dried up from Czech Republic. I bake once a week.  during the season, during the summer markets, but in the wintertime, I don't necessarily bake at all or for a month or two at a time.  And if as long as you keep it in a fridge, you can always revive it afterwards. It might take a little bit longer, but  it works. well, I have two starters. I have the white regular flour and then I have the rye.
12:45And the rye one is much easier to keep track of or take it easier to keep it going because the rye flour just has a little more power, I think, for the sourness.  The second part of my story is I also broke the jar that the sourdough starter was in. So  it went in the trash and then I started over. I started my own  and it worked. And that's when I made the loaf out of this weekend.  And so my sourdough, I have two now.
13:14I have two starters going because this is a thing. It's like chicken math and it's sourdough math.  And  I want to make two loaves of bread every Sunday now because number one, salt, flour and water only. That's it. That's what makes it. And it's inexpensive and it tastes really good. Who knew? Yeah, there's nothing better than home baked bread. And you know, while there is different
13:40ways you can make it and use it. Being it yeast bread or sourdough bread, there are just very simple recipes as well. Just like you said, three ingredients, know, give it some time, fold it over once or twice, plop it on a baking sheet and it will be, it might not look pretty, but it will be good. It will be edible. And even if you under proof it, it might turn out like a bagel and I don't make bagels. So I was very happy to have bagel bread this morning. It worked out great.
14:09So we've talked about Kalatchee's, however you say it, I'm never gonna say it right,  and sourdough bread, but what else do you make?  The other thing I make is vanocka, which is  some American  Czechs  know it as hovska, but it's basically a braided bread, kind of like  a  shala, challa bread. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. I think it's challa, yep.
14:35Yeah, it's that I mean, I use exactly the same dough as I use for collages. So it's just slightly sweet.  My customers actually compare it to brioche bread because of the sweetness a little bit. So  that's another one. And then I make bubla nina, which is a traditional Czech cake that's just poured in a baking pan and you know, baked as a as one whole thing and then you slice it as in little things. It's basically a coffee cake  with fruit.
15:03on the top of a different types of fruits. But  for that one, I actually use a Czech flower.  We have  three different types of flower in Czech Republic for the white one. And  this one you can't find here in America. So I actually buy it in Chicago when I go usually once or twice a year and I bring home like 200 pounds of the Czech flower. And then I use it throughout the year. But  the fun thing I always see is like, you know, comparing the ingredients of the Czech flower.
15:33you look at it and it says wheat, that's all there is. And then when I look in the American one, know, I, unfortunately I do not buy organic because  I couldn't make it financially for business that way. But I do buy the  unbleached and unbromated  from Sam's Club. So I'm trying to do, you know, at least something good in there. But still, if you look at those ingredients, it definitely does not say just one word. So.  Yeah, we Americans have a...
16:01crazy need to overcomplicate everything, including ingredients. Yep.  It's sad.  my podcast is about homesteading and cottage food producing and people who make things, so crafters.  And  we walk the walk and talk here. We have a big old garden and we grow a lot of our own food in that garden and we also sell it to people.  when you get buttercarnes lettuce out of my garden,
16:30That's exactly what you're getting.  It has no pesticides, no herbicides.  And if it has manure, it's chicken manure from our chickens in the dirt.  And it's, want people to know that it doesn't have to be complicated. Like flour should say wheat.  So I don't know why, I don't know why we all go so far out of our way to make things so difficult for ourselves.
17:00Yeah, well, I think it's the,  especially for the flower, I think it's the stability, know, shelf stable for who knows how long. Cause when you do, and I actually did look into trying to do my own  flower milling, you know,  but  I use,  I don't know about 100, 150 pounds of flour a month. And that's just not doable unless I would have a commercial miller,  you know, which there is no room for that in my house anymore. So.  Yeah, exactly.
17:29So tell me, you go to a bunch of different farmers markets, yes? I actually do just the one now, Chanhassen. I do different events that I see throughout the year. I try to stay kind of with the main events kind of thing that I can get into. But then I have done a couple different ones, like in Shakopee there were a couple, there was like a food truck event and then they do ales in the alley.
17:57which is like a couple open breweries on the  downtown there and then they have music and vendors and stuff. So I've done that for the third time this year. But the farmers markets only one on Saturday at Chanhassen 921 and that's strictly because I have a full-time job. This is my fun job. Okay. Yeah.  You have a jobby job and then you have your favorite job. Yep. I have a job I have to pay for health insurance with. That's correct.  Uh huh. Yeah. I know. I get it.  Um,
18:26So the reason I asked about the farmers markets is because  clearly you have an accent. It is absolutely beautiful.  And you're making foods that have different names than most Americans have ever seen. So do you get like questions when people interact with you about where are you from and what is this  and  what's it like for,  how does it compare to an American dessert? Yeah. So most of the time I would say probably 90, 95%.
18:53is people who actually know Kolache or who has actually followed me on Facebook and they come really specific for that so they know what it is. There's few others there are like you know kids who walk by and see my display and they go oh donuts and I go yeah donuts and then you know off and on there's a couple of people who will like ask what it is so obviously I can explain it and then you know just
19:17tell them what the flavor is and what the  reason of it is because I was born there. Obviously, like you said, as soon as I start talking, you can tell that  I'm not from the US. So  yes,  but honestly, I listen to accents all day long every day because of the podcast.  Your accent is so pretty and  you are very, very understandable. You know, it's not like it's in the way of my understanding what you're saying.
19:46Yeah, and I guess I would agree with you on that. I do work with calling insurance companies and I deal obviously with lots of different people and their accents sometimes are very horrible. But it's just a personal thing. mean, I have spoken or learned English since probably my fifth grade and then I also had German. I lived in Italy, so was able to communicate there as well. So it's kind of just, know, some people have the head.
20:14hard for languages and some just don't. So  yeah, I do not. I took, I took two years of French in high school  and to this day I can still sort of read French as long as it's words on paper. I can't speak French to save my life. Even after having an excellent teacher who I adored  and she required us all to start speaking French from the get go. Like she gave us a couple of phrases that were common  and
20:43made us use them in class from the first day of class.  I don't even remember what they were at this point.  I also took a year with Spanish because we had to take a different language in high school for three years out of the four.  So I was like, okay, well, I took French. Spanish isn't that much different. I'm going to take Spanish one this year. And it's very confusing because Spanish and French are alike, but they're also very different.
21:09And I would start saying things in French instead of Spanish and my Spanish teacher would be like,  Mary Evelyn, this is not French class, this is Spanish class. I'm like, I know, but I just got done with two years of French.  And she and my French teacher would like giggle because they'd get together and they'd see me in the hallway and  they'd say things that I could understand then in French and in Spanish, kind of teasing me about the fact that I would speak French in the Spanish class.
21:38Yeah, I mean, I was more required in here to do, you know, another one.  I mean, Spanish, I know that it's  you know, optional, more or less, I guess, or  if somebody does it, there's a requirement maybe for one or two years or something. But,  you know, I don't know. I've traveled all around the world and while English has been really good and most of the people speak them or most of the countries you can get around, it's always much nicer and you always looked at
22:06very differently if you know just a couple of basic language, basic sentences, even if you just try to, you know, say, hey, thanks to you, how are you, you know, how can I get there or just again, basic sentences and local people will just look at you completely different. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble if I say this wrong. I feel like if you are in a different country with a different language and you can, you know,
22:35communicate in the language of the country.  Even on basic level, it means that you're trying. You're trying to make them comfortable as well as making you comfortable.  I'm going to fail. If I ever go to France or Spain, I'm going to fail that test because I don't remember any of it.  But  my son actually took a year of Latin in high school  and he was doing online school. So that was even more interesting.
23:05And he needed help with the conjugation part.  Oh my God, Michaela.  I spent a month learning about Latin verbs and nouns and how it's built. And I was like,  I don't really want to do this. This is not, this is hard. This is really hard.  I think he got a C in the class.  I probably would have gotten an F  and learned a lot about
23:33the fact that a lot of English words have Latin roots, which I already knew, but now I really know it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That would be probably the hardest language for me, I think, because it doesn't really flow at all.  No, it's very flat. Yeah.  He had to actually record himself saying some of the words and  the stress on  the first  syllable tends to be just flat.
24:01there's barely any up and down in how it's spoken. when you listen to Latin, you know, in the Catholic Church, it always sounds like, I don't know, like mumbling because there's no inflection at all. So yeah, not only was it difficult to learn, but it was really boring as a listener to listen to. And I love music. So for me, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be asleep in five minutes if I have to listen to any more of this.
24:31So yeah, languages are,  some of them are beautiful. Some of them are boring as all hell.  So anyway, not a language podcast. It's a cooking podcast, homesteading podcast. I love that you have brought the traditions of your baking from the Czech Republic. I think that is amazing.
24:56Yeah, mean, we're trying, like, you know, once you move somewhere, when I originally got here when I was 19, I was like, oh, I couldn't care less for any Czech food. I wanted to try everything American. So, you know, at that point I was on, yeah, hamburger helper, Kraft and mac and cheese. Yes, all the fast foods I could have, you know. And then I was pregnant and I had my child. And at that point, I realized that it's all junk. And I just tried to.
25:24go back to my roots and try to do the cooking from scratch and everything.
25:31Good job, mama. I'm impressed. Good. I'm glad. Yeah. Do your kids, this is going to be a weird question because I haven't talked to anybody like you ever on the podcast. Do your kids love the cooking from scratch with the traditional foods? They enjoy the food. There's really not much that they don't like. There might be a couple of things like liver.
25:57When they were little, they would still eat it because they knew they had to. Now, obviously, they would be like they're 16 and 19. So now it'd be like, yeah, I'm not going to eat that anymore. But, you know, that's just one kind of funky thing, of course. But yeah, they really and Viv has living there for three years.  They were going to school and  lunch is the main dish  that you would have every day.  And they were getting it at school and it was always cooked from scratch there. And it would include, you know, soup.
26:23full meal  and then usually some kind of either salad or dessert kind of something sweet. So they have had everything and anything that I grew up on  and they really enjoy it. Making them cook it at home,  that's another story. My son is more of the cooker kind of adventurer, but some of this stuff takes really long time.  There's like different sauces and baked goods and stuff, not baked goods, but sorry.  Meat, that's been...
26:52roasted in the oven with vegetables and stuff and takes a long time and  making dumplings from scratch, you know, it's not a quick,  quick food to be done. So he,  don't believe that he would be able to cook anything traditional Czech.  But  my daughter, the other hand, she will eat anything as well, but no, she's not into cooking at all. I love that your son is into it though. My son loves to cook too. He just made  some,  some battered fried.
27:21uh, chicken tonight for dinner.  I don't, I don't make it. don't like frying in hot fat. It scares me. And when he puts, when he puts the chicken in the hot fat, makes that sizzling noise and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I hate it.  And he said, are you going to have any of this? It was chicken thigh meat and I don't love chicken thighs. And I was like, nope, spice it up the way you want to. That's the best part. There's the thighs.  I am not into chicken right now.
27:49I had chicken the other day and I was like, nope, I don't want chicken again for six months. I'm good. But he's really good at cooking. And part of it is that when he was little, I invited him to cook with me. And clearly I make American food from scratch. so lots of soups and stews and steak and, and chicken. God, I'm so sick of chicken and, and cookies. He would help me make cookies.
28:16and that's probably his favorite memory from when he was learning is making chocolate chip cookies. He still likes to make them. So cooking is not just a girl thing, it is a human person thing.  I'm glad that he loves to do it.  Okay, I don't think I have any more questions, but Michaela,  thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me  and where can people find you?
28:41Well, the Facebook site is probably the easiest to see where I'm going to be.  That's the most,  well, that's really the only thing that I kind of use for keeping in touch with people and it's the Czech Baker MN.  I am located in Savage. I do bake from the house, so don't have, you know, I don't bake every day. I don't have a storefront.  The best other way of contacting me is probably either emailing the CzechBaker at gmail.com or to texting me.
29:10at my phone number that you can find on my Facebook site.  Or  if you're already a customer, obviously it's on all my products as well, so you can find it on the  label. Awesome, fantastic.  One more question.  Are you a member of the Cottage Foodie website?  Cottage Foodie, you mean on Facebook?  No, it's actually a website.
29:36Matt Rosen started a directory. no, okay, Matt Rosen. I know that name. He does the cookies, right? He's the surgeon cookie master or something. Yes, yes. He has a website now that's a directory for bakers, food bakers.  I saw when he was trying to put it together, I think.  I saw that online somewhere and then I kind of lost track of it. So no, I am not there, but I might have to do it again. I will message you the link when I...
30:05tomorrow morning so that you have it. But yeah, he's doing it and it's  starting to pick up some traction and I  think he's going to have an actual  conference next spring. Oh really? Oh, that's pretty cool. In Minnesota. I keep meaning to mention this and I keep forgetting. So was like, this is the perfect time. Bring up Matt in the cottagefoodie.com. think it is. So.  Okay, yeah, definitely. I will look into that again.  Yeah, definitely. Because that way more people can find you.
30:35All right. So as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And Michaela, again, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out, Mary. Have a great day. You too. Have a good night. All right. Bye. Bye.
 

Tee's Kitchen - Keeping Cool Regarding Summer Foods

Today I'm talking with Christi at Tee’s Kitchen.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Christi.
00:27at Tee's Kitchen in Louisiana. And Christi was a guest on my podcast back, I think, in March.  And it was cold and snowy and gross, and we're rolling into summer.  So Christi and I are going to talk about some  less hot,  cooler summer dishes that we can maybe introduce people to so they can make their electric bill go down.  Good morning, Christi. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. I'm so excited to be back on. I had so much fun. had
00:56Such a great conversation the last time.  We did and I listened to it this morning because I was like, what exactly did we talk about? And I was like, oh my God, I still love this lady. She's fantastic.  Oh, I feel the same way about you. Thank you. Good.  I just I make so many new friends who I probably will never meet through the podcast. And my husband says, so what new friend did you make today? love that. I'm like, oh, well, do you really want to know? And he's like,
01:25Kind of?  And I give him the short version. He's like, I'm so glad that you have people that you get to talk with all over the place. He said, because  you need that. I'm like, I do. I really do need that. So it's wonderful. you're in Louisiana. We're rolling into summer. We're not quite there yet, according to the calendar, but it's literally a week or so away.  And  we've had some really hot days so far here this spring in Minnesota. I'm guessing  Louisiana hasn't been any different.
01:55Louisiana has been really, really hot.  We're approaching 100 degrees here and it's just,  the humidity is insane. So it's pretty hot here.  So it's summer here as far as I'm concerned. Okay.  So how do you combat that when it comes to feeding your family? I have lots of ideas, but I want to hear yours first.  Well, we,  you know, we, we try to grill outside, but then again, it's very hot. We always have to have a fan going.
02:25Um, so I try to do meals that I don't have to  use my oven as much, or if I have to use my oven, it's like a shorter period of time. Um, because it just, it gets really, really hot in my house. We do a lot of like,  uh, rice cooker meals. do,  uh,  one pan sheet pan meals. Sometimes I use my air fryer, but I don't like to use it for, it's not big enough for the whole family.  Um, yeah, we grill just simple quick meals, I would say.
02:55Okay, well, let's back up just a titch. The first thing I would tell anybody right now in the climate that we're all living in, meaning weather  and government, is if you don't know how to cook, it's a really good idea to start learning how to cook. It's also a really good idea to start maybe learning how to grow something, even if it's just herbs  in a pot  beside your doorstep, because
03:24I am, I don't want to talk politics, I do not, but  we're in a kind of iffy,  bouncy, chaotic world right now. And  one of the things that makes me sane is that I know how to cook  and I have a garden.  So cooking is not hard. I swear to God, people, it's not.  It's time and intention. And you don't have to start out making a gourmet meal. can.
03:50You can make a grilled cheese sandwich with two slices of bread, some butter and some cheese you love. And  it's  super easy. And then once you get that accomplished, you can make scrambled eggs and you can boil eggs for  egg salad sandwiches.  There are really simple things that you can do to start the steps to learning to cook. And I don't, I don't want to like force this down people's throats, but
04:17but cooking is such a vital skill for everybody to learn.  Secondly,  one of the things that we do around here is we do a lot of salads, like just lettuce,  sweet peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes,  know, that kind of stuff, because it's cold food on a hot day.  And you can throw  some shredded chicken or some ham that's been sliced up or
04:47If you're into steak, you can take steak that you've already cooked from dinner the night before, slice it really thin and put that on your salad if you want meat in your salad. Yes,  absolutely. Yeah, we try to do a lot of that to my husband.  I will be honest, gardening is not one of my strong suits, but I can take, my husband is great at that and he runs the garden.  And so I just, whatever he, he harvests, I'm good at cooking up. So I agree with that. We do a lot of, you know, salads and.
05:17We have like fresh cucumbers and tomatoes and just, try to use what's in the garden and try not, you're right. I think  the thing most people think is that  to cook for their family, it has to be this big extravagant meal. And it really doesn't, especially in the summertime. Like at night, we, I just find that we don't, we don't require as much food. Like a lot of times when you're hot and you've been working outside all day, you're, you're not that hungry at night. So the  simpler meals, the simple, as simple as you can make it.
05:47the better in my opinion.  Yeah, we're the same way here. Like  when I was raising my four kids, I mean, basically they're all adults now and three of them live different places.  But when they were young, the kids didn't want to eat heavy food in the summer. They wanted light things. They wanted  juice. They wanted popsicles. They wanted ice cream. They wanted stuff that was cold  and quick. Right. So
06:12So I used to do cold pasta salads because they could eat just a little bowl of that and the carbs and the protein in the pasta salad would keep them, you know, full. Right. I love a good pasta salad.  Oh, I do too. I wish my husband liked pasta salads. He does not.  The only one he likes is a tortellini salad that I make  and I will share  it real quick because it's easy. You get frozen tortellini's at the store.
06:42That's the start. And you cook your torolinis in boiling water for like, I think it takes seven minutes from frozen. And you drain them and you put them into a Tupperware bowl or you can even put them in a stainless steel bowl. It doesn't matter. And then you can put in whatever veggies you want. We do onion, diced onion, diced sweet pepper,  and artichoke hearts if I have them.
07:10And then you basically put like a garlic, herb, seasoning, whatever brand you want to use. And you stir that together. put like a pinch of salt, a little bit of black pepper, and you stir that all together. And then you add in probably half a cup of olive oil and half a cup of balsamic vinegar and you stir it again. That's tortellini salad. And it stays good for like three or four days in the fridge. It's never in the fridge for days in my house because it's gone.
07:38We eat it. It's yummy.  And it's just that little bit of tang and it's got the cheese and the cheese tortellini. So you've got protein, you've got carbs.  It will fuel you if you're going to go out at like, you know, afternoon for some reason to do something  because it's got all the things that your body needs to keep going. Yeah. That sounds delicious. I'm going to have to try that one.
08:03Yeah, it's one of my favorite things to make in the summertime because I'm never bored with it. You know, we have it probably six, seven times  over the summer. I can't do it more than that because I would be sick of it. But that's a lot of times in one summer to have the same meal, but it really does  hit all the buttons for  being hungry in the summer. Right, right. Yeah, that sounds delicious. And the other thing is that I try to make the tortellinis first thing in the morning before the house gets hot.
08:32Because you can make that ahead of time in the morning. You can make the tortellinis and stick them in a bowl in the fridge covered and they're fine until you want to throw the salad together. Yeah, that's a great idea.  I know that also will help a lot is like, you know, repurposing meals that you already have and  that way you don't have to heat up your kitchen, you know, or like you said, making things ahead of time and then, you know, conserving all that energy. That way you don't have to use your AC so much, you know.
08:59Here in Louisiana, our air condition is constantly running,  but you know, I know it's not that way everywhere.  Yeah, when my kids were young, we didn't have air conditioning in the house. So if I had to cook something that was going to throw heat in the house in the summertime, I always did it at like six o'clock in the morning because I was up anyway. Right. Yeah, good idea. Because the last thing you want to be doing is throwing heat into your house between five and eight o'clock at night.
09:28Yes,  absolutely.  Because I like to be cold at night.  Yeah, I like my sheets and my pillowcases to be cold when I climb in. I don't mind if they warm up, but I like them cold. Me too. Other things that we can do in the summertime regarding food.  Oh, fruit salads are fine for dinner. Yeah, why not? Yep. And Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt.
09:55the honey, the strawberry, the cherry, whatever sweet flavors you like.  Greek yogurt is fabulous in fruit salads. Yes,  I actually had that last night for  like a snack. I was around eight o'clock and I got hungry and I said,  I think I'm going to have some yogurt. And it just, was perfect. I put a little bit of honey and  a little bit of  like coconut flakes and some nuts in there. And it was like the perfect little snack late at night.  Yeah. The other thing that's really good is freezing grapes.
10:24Frozen grapes are delicious. Who knew? Oh yeah. Great idea.  My family loves fruits. boy,  I'm not so much of a fruit fan, believe it or not, but my boys love fruits. They love that.  And we recently started, I found this  someone on social media and she started making this,  she did different versions of it, but it's like a homemade Gatorade. So like an electrolyte drink  and my family is hooked on it. So we've been buying like the fresh fruits and
10:54We'll make different versions of it. And it's just, man, it's so hydrating and you know, it feels, it's so good after a long day being outside or just, mean, you don't even have to go outside to be hot here in Louisiana, but it's just like the perfect little drink. we're hooked on that too. Yeah. And let's not forget sweet tea.  I  am,  I am a Yankee at heart, Christie. I grew up in Maine. I live in Minnesota, always have lived in Northern tier States. Okay.  But  sweet tea is the best freaking.
11:23hydration when you've been outside working and you're thirsty right now. If you have sweet tea in your refrigerator, you pound a 12 ounce glass of that, you're going to feel better. believe it. Would you believe that I am not a fan of sweet tea? What? I know. Like I will drink hot tea, not in the summer, but I drink hot tea, but I do not like sweet tea. I know it's crazy. Huh? Well, I'm taking your Southern card away. No, you can take it. I get it.
11:52No, it's one thing that I just don't like. I never liked it. And my family really like we don't, we never make it. My little one likes it, but I know it's so not Southern of me. Well, I used to hate ice cream and I was, I got accused of being un-American for it. So go fig. Um, my son started making iced, not iced coffee, um, cold brew coffee, like two summers ago. I thought the cold brew coffee was a
12:20a good way to screw up a perfectly good coffee  until he made it  and he was like, you have to try this. It's really good. And I was all ready to hate it because I just wasn't a fan of cold coffee.  And we happened to have actual half and half in the house at the time.  And so he made  the simple syrup,  the boiling water and sugar.  And we had half and half in the house and he made me a cold brew coffee.
12:50with Simple Syrup and half and half in it and handed it to me.  I have loved cold brew coffee ever since.  I'm a huge fan of coffee, but yeah, cold brew. Like I'll drink my one cup of hot coffee in the morning. That's just how I wake up.  But in the afternoons, I always reach for cold brew.  And we actually have this local, she's a friend of mine.  She does,  she has a little food truck where she does cold brew and  regular coffee.
13:18And every now and then she'll sell her big jugs of the coffee and she'll come and she'll deliver it for me. She'll put it in a little refrigerator outside on my back porch  and she'll come and she'll deliver it. And I just, I pay her and it's like the best little treat, but she has like several flavors and it's like my little guilty pleasure.  Well, that's awesome that, that, that you have that available to you.  Um,  once my son got me hooked on this, we were at, um,
13:47a caribou cabin, not the ones where you can go in and sit, but where you just drive through. And they had a vanilla sweet cream cold brew on offer.  And I was like, I'm going to try it. I'm going to put on my girl, big girl panties. I'm going to try, try bot, botan, know, got from somewhere else.  Cold brew.  And I ordered a small one because I really didn't think I would like it. And I figured my husband would drink it if I didn't.
14:13And I tasted that one and I was like, oh my God, we have to put vanilla in the cold brew at home now. That's like my favorite flavor with cold brew is like vanilla, sometimes cinnamon. good. Yeah. And the thing that's wonderful about all the things that you can get out in the world at the store or a restaurant or a coffee shop is that you can actually replicate it at home. Absolutely. Yes, you can. So, um, and then.
14:42The other thing that I wanted to bring up in this whole food discussion,  I've been thinking about this for like four days now,  is  money is tight for a lot of people  and things are so expensive right now, especially food, which drives me insane. You should not have to starve when you're making the same amount of money you've always been making. It's not right.  But  if you learn to cook,
15:10You can feed more people  on  less money. And that's really important right now. I mean, we just made a turkey.  It was like a mock turkey, um, pot pie last night for dinner, but it's just,  it's, um,  onion diced up celery, diced up carrot,  cooked up ground turkey  in like a turkey gravy. And you put it in a glass baking dish.
15:39and then you put biscuits on top. So they make like a biscuit on top and a dumpling on the bottom of the biscuit. Just made that last night and it was like, I don't know, three bucks a person a plate. You can't get that anywhere else already made at that price. Oh no, even, you know, we don't, my family doesn't really eat out a whole bunch. We cook at home, but like, you know, if we have to go to even like a fast food restaurant, I was shocked when we went to a fast food restaurant. I'm like,
16:08What  happened to the prices? This is insane.  So, I mean, you're much cheaper eating at home. Yeah, and if you're lucky enough to have a membership to like Sam's or Costco and you happen to know how to cook, again, you're going to save yourself a whole lot more money. But the other thing that you can do is every grocery store on earth, well, not on earth, in America,  has flyers that they send out every week.
16:35with what are called lost leader prices to get people in the stores. And you can plan your weekly meals around those lost leader items. Yeah. And lost leader items are usually stuff that they have too much inventory of and they're trying to move.  Or it's something that's around a holiday, like July 4th is coming up in a month or so. And they will have their ground beef marked down. They'll have their hamburger buns marked down.  Pickles, because that's what people eat for July 4th.
17:05Yeah. And hot dogs.  I won't eat a hot dog, Kristy. I can't. I can't do it.  I have looked at what's in them. I'm like, no, that's gross. I'm not doing it.  I know. We usually do the same thing. well,  my  boys, hunt and fish. So most of what we have in the freezer is, you know, seafood, fish or whatever that they've caught  or, you know, deer or hog or whatever.
17:30But we'll go,  we always watch the sales, especially the meat sales. we'll go like we just went,  they had the pork butts on sale for like 99 cents a pound. So we went, we bought them and we cut them up ourselves and  vacuum seal them and then freeze them. And then you have several meals, you know, off of that. So yeah, you just have to be smart about it. And like I said, watch those sales and like we're about to get corn, like we'll get
17:57fresh corn from a local guy. It's the sweetest corn ever.  And we just take a date and we get two big bushels.  They put them in a crawfish sack. So we say  two crawfish sacks.  we just take a date and the whole family just, process our corn and then we have corn for the entire year.  know? Do you process it in the house or do you cook it outside?  So it gets, we have, it's really hot and there's a lot of flies. So.
18:23We'll do it outside if we can, if it's really hot, we'll just do it in the house and then I clean up after because it's just unbearable and the flies are terrible. You know, when you start.  bet your house smells amazing while you're doing this.  It does. We love that fresh corn. There's nothing like it. My boys will like eat it while I'm cutting it off the cob. They'll just,  they'll eat it.  Oh yeah. It's so good.  I'm not a big corn fan. I don't eat a lot of it, but that
18:51Every summer we try to get at least six or seven years from a local grower and we basically husk it in the kitchen because the husk smells good when you pull it off too. Yes. And then we throw it in some boiling water for a couple of minutes and we have melted butter, not stick butter, we melt butter and we just drizzle the melted butter over the top and we eat it and that's like a, it's like Christmas in July.
19:20No, it's like the best. As a matter of fact,  he told me to call him. I was like, all right, I'm ready for my corn. said, text me June 10th and you can come pick up. So I need to text him today and  go get my corn.  Yeah. And you're like a month or so ahead of us here in the Northern States. Right now,  I'm just real thankful that the tomato plants have bloomers on them.  Yeah. See, we've been harvesting tomatoes for a couple of weeks now. yeah.
19:48And then usually it gets so hot, like by July the bugs take over and it's just unbearable.  And then, you know, your tomatoes aren't pretty anymore. So we pick them early. Yeah. We don't have as bad a mosquito problem where I am as it sounds like you have.  And we don't have too many hornworms here either, which is really nice because the house we used to live in, the side yard garden we had,  we would have these great big hornworms every year we'd have to pick off.  I know they're terrible.
20:18Kids loved it. The boys thought they were really cool. I know it looks really creepy,  yeah, hate whenever I see those I'm like,  They can destroy a whole plant.  Yeah, the issue we run into here is blight. We get blight on our tomatoes. We finally learned that if you cut the stems, the leaves off the bottom of the plant when it's first growing,  that helps because they're not touching the ground. But we do end up with blight on our cucumbers. And we still haven't figured out a solution for that beyond
20:49trimming the cucumber vines back a little bit. it's all  trial and error when you garden because  no one starts out knowing anything about anything. all learning. Exactly. Yeah. I know my husband still like one year he'll have, you know, some of his plants do really well. And then the next year he's like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what happened. It's just like, yeah, it's trial and error.
21:17So back to  summer food real quick, because I always do this. get off on tangents that are adjacent to what we're talking about.  other thing about summer food is that you don't have to eat dinner food at dinner time.  If you want dinner in the morning, you can have dinner food in the morning. If you want breakfast food for dinner, you can do that too.  There are  no rules in the summertime. If you just want to grab a watermelon from your local grower or at the store or wherever,
21:46cut that thing up, throw it in a bowl and just eat watermelon all day. You can do that too, it's fine. Absolutely, rules do not apply in the summer.  No, no. And  I actually like winter far better than I do summer, which is funny because winters can be pretty brutal  here.  But in the wintertime, if you're cold,  you can put on more layers. In the summertime, you can't be any more naked than naked. Absolutely, yeah. And when you get to being, you know, I'm in my 40s and...
22:14I don't like to be hot anymore. I don't like to sweat like I did when I was younger. I'm like, I don't know what happened. It seems hotter.  I never liked sweating. Even when I was like six, it would get hot and I'd be like, can we please go somewhere where there's water I can be in?  No, I know. And my mom's like, you are in water, you're sweating. I'm like, no, that's not the same. And you know it. And I was like six, you know? Mm hmm.  Mm hmm. Yes.  Way too hot.
22:42But I figured you would know about some keeping cool foods because you are in  one of the hottest states of the United States, I think, in the summertime. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We have to do a lot of quick meals. And like I said, just, you know, sometimes we'll just even if like on a Sunday, I like to do that too. Like I'll cook a big meal and then we can have leftovers. so for the, you know, during the week, we'll have the leftovers or I'll take like if I cook a roast on a Sunday,  I'll
23:11find different ways to use it throughout the week. know, like we'll use, we'll do like,  we'll turn it into like a, almost like a  pulled pork sandwich, or if you have beef, you know, add some barbecue sauce, put it on a bun, or  I'll put it into a taco, or I'll just have it with a salad. And so, you know, that helps too, to where you don't even have to cook anything, you know, just warm it up. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the other thing, I mean,  you have a local source for meat, because you guys hunt.
23:39But the other thing that you can do is you can go and get  like five pounds of ground burger.  You can cook that all up in the same day and freeze it in quart size Ziploc bags.  then all you have to do is thaw it out,  warm it up, put whatever you want in it, barbecue sauce or whatever thing you want to do,  put that over hamburger buns and it's basically a sloppy job. Yeah, absolutely.  And then you're not heating up your house.
24:06five nights a week, you're heating up your house in the morning on Saturday or Sunday morning. Yes,  yes.  So, and I'm just, I'm trying to come up with ideas because not everybody knows this stuff, especially if they don't cook.  And last resort,  if you're, if you've got stuff going on and you know you're going to be busy at dinnertime, one of the easiest things to do  is get some sliced cheese,  some
24:34sliced ham or sliced turkey or pastrami or roast beef or whatever at your deli at the store you like  and just slap together some cold sandwiches. You can eat them on the run.  Oh yeah.  We do that. Like  we used to go, we call them Vicky sandwiches.  family friend of ours, we used to go to the beach and she would make them and send them with us.  And  she would just take like a French bread and she would buy the, you know, the, the nice deli meat and.
25:04She would put like some nice cheese on there and lettuce and tomato and wrap them up real tight. And we keep them in the cooler and we'd bring them with us when we went to the beach. And it was like the best little treat. Like it was, we,  we thought we were so fancy cause it was better than just sliced bread, you know?  Um, but yeah. So I say,  I am a sandwich  fan. I can eat a sandwich every day. So that doesn't bother me at all to eat that for dinner.  That is so funny because I am not a sandwich girl.
25:33I'm not a bread girl. Like I made sourdough bread for the first time this weekend  and it was slightly undercooked. So it's got like this bagel texture to it. Yeah. And I literally had a slice of that bread this morning with a little bit of cream cheese on it. It was like eating a bagel.  I'm so in love with my mistake.
25:54I love that. I love sourdough. really do.  I love bread. I wish I did not, but I love bread. I said, if I had to choose between bread and pasta, I could live without pasta for the rest of my life,  but bread do not take that away from me. couldn't live without watermelon. I could not live without sweet peppers  and I could not live without granola. I actually love granola.  It's one of my favorite things to eat. I'm really weird,  but  I am a super
26:23girls. So  when we roll into summertime, I'm like, oh,  oh,  but we hit August, September, I'm like, soup seasons come in. Yay.  I know I love soup to soup and gumbo and all of that. It's like, it's like a warm hug. Like, we're the same way. We love winter food, but we don't get a whole lot of winter here. But  yeah, I just love those comfort meals. It's, could eat soup all the time.  Uh huh.  Yep.  I
26:53Because I am a Northern Tier State girl, I have lived on soups in the wintertime my entire life. My mom would make some really, really nice venison stew. And my son's girlfriend's family just gifted us a bunch of venison. Oh, nice. And like this weekend is not supposed to be cold. But as soon as I saw the venison, I was like, who's up for venison stew? And my husband and son were like, we are.
27:21So we're gonna have some venison stew Saturday  in June. Perfect. Just turn up the AC and you're gonna turn down the AC and you're good.  Well, I'm gonna have my husband cook up the venison pieces because I'm not good at  it. It's not my forte, but he is really good at it. It's already cut into like soup and stew beef sizes. Yeah. So I'm gonna have him cook it up really quick Saturday morning before it gets hot out.  And then
27:49The soup part doesn't take long because I'm really good at flavor profiles in a short amount of time because I've learned to be.  So I have  celery, have carrots, I have onion, and I have thyme, and I have garlic,  and I have beef stock. So I think I'm good. I think I'm good on making venison stew, I think.  Now I'm hungry.  Yeah, me too.  We haven't had...
28:17We haven't had venison in like three or four years now.  when my son got back from his girlfriend's house, was like, by the way,  look what the girlfriend's family gifted us. And I was like, oh my God, are you kidding? He's like, nope.  Oh nice.  We've almost, it's like I've forgotten almost what beef tastes like because we eat so much venison. Like we just have  a freezer full and it's,  you know, but some people  don't like it.
28:47I don't know. Some people just don't like it at all, but I guess we've gotten accustomed to it. I love it and it's lean. It's healthy. So  yeah, I don't love venison steaks, but I do like venison in stew. think it's because of the way that it cooks. Yeah. And that's what we usually do. well,  I mean, we'll, cook the backstrap. We, cook it, uh, we grill it and then we slice it and I'll usually make like a  chimichurri to go on it.
29:12Um, we love that. That's our favorite way to cook that. But as far as the other pieces, we'll usually cook it in like a rice and gravy or stew or whatever, because it's just a little tougher, you know? Yeah, exactly. And I grew up with parents that hunted for deer and they were in Maine. So Maine deer where we lived, they like acorns and pine needles and  the occasional apple if they can get into the orchards.  so venison in Maine is very, very
29:41gamey. Venison in Minnesota, they're like corn fields and they like alfalfa and they like soybeans. So it's not as gamey. So it's not as hard for me to eat it. Apple fed venison. Oh my God. It's probably the Never thought about that. Yeah. I would think that you have a different taste. Yeah. The acorns and the pine needles that the deer in Maine like to eat, they have a bitter
30:11flavor to them and that comes through in the meat. Yeah. So lucky you are to have grown up in Maine.  I know. Don't make me cry.  Oh,  I always tell my husband I want to go vacation there.  I just I want a lobster roll.  You should go. You should go do it. It's on my bucket list. It's a we plan to it's just I need to get there.  Yeah, it's
30:39You're in Louisiana, so it's probably a good 36 hour drive Yeah, I assume you would fly so  I'm sure we would fly but yeah But yeah, I would love to just just drive up there drive, you know,  how beautiful so yeah We always drive because I don't fly. I do not like being in planes. I've done it three times in my life I don't want to do it again
31:06The road trip from Minnesota to Maine is so gorgeous because  we go through Wisconsin  and Illinois and Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania. And I think we go through a little bit of New York, upstate New York,  then Vermont, New Hampshire, and then into Maine. And it's gorgeous. We try to go between May and October because  we went in October in 2014.
31:35And I spent the entire time we were there worrying that the weather was going to shift and we were going to be driving back in snow because you never know. You literally never know. I hadn't been to Maine in the fall in forever and trees were turning and it was just amazingly gorgeous. And I don't regret it at all. What I regret is that I wasted time worrying about if we were going to be driving home in a snowstorm or not. Right. Yeah. Well, when I plan my vacation, I'm going to have to call you so I can get all the
32:04the scoop on where to go. Just don't go to the main mall. know, you know how Minnesota has the Mall of America? Right. Yeah. The main mall is like the big mall in Maine. And I think it's still there. Like I haven't been near it in 20 something years, but don't bother. It's not worth it. What you want to do. We've totally veered off topic here, but I'm going to tell you anyway. What you want to do is you want to go.
32:34to  the lobster shack, I think it's the name of it. I think it's in South Portland, it's on the beach. Well, it's actually on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.  And you walk in and they have a tank full of live lobsters that are fresh caught. You get to pick the lobster that you want. They pull it out of the tank, they  do the thing. They either give it to you whole or you can get a lobster roll made out of it, however you wanna do it.
33:01and you go sit outside at a picnic table with the red and white tablecloths  and you eat french fries, lobster roll, and a Coke.  What a dream. In the breeze, off the ocean. If you want the real experience, that's the thing to do. I'm making notes because this is what I'm, this is like, it's like a foodie's dream.  Oh my God. Yes, it is. And I haven't done it in...
33:30I would bet 15, 20 years was the last time I was there. So if you do it, you'll have to do it. So, and tell me about it so I can live through your vicarious life. Right. Yes. right. So try to keep these to half an hour. Christi, thank you for helping me try to help people with staying cool with food in the summertime because it is a trick. It is a trick. This was a pleasure. I had so much fun. I always enjoy our conversations. Me too. I adore you. I think you're fantastic.
33:59Where can people find you?  Well, I am on  Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.  It's all under T's Kitchen.  And yeah, go look me up  and follow. I mostly do Cajun food.  But you know, I like to sprinkle a little bit of mom life in there too and just random stuff here and there.  Yeah. And if anybody wants to listen to  our original episode, it's  T's Kitchen on my podcast episode. So that's what it's called.
34:29And it'll give people some background on why I wanted to talk to you specifically about food because you're really good at food.  So thank you so much for your time, Christi. And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Have a great day, Christy. Thanks. You too.  All right. Bye.
 

60 Acre Wood

Today I'm talking with Stephanie at 60 Acre Wood.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Stephanie at 60 Acre Wood in Arkansas, United States.  Good morning, Stephanie. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I don't think there's an Arkansas anywhere else, but I figured I'd throw the U.S. on there anyway. Sounds like a plan.  How was the weather in Arkansas this morning? Well, it was real beautiful and now we're raining, which we need for the gardens. I'm pretty happy.  Good. Good, good, good.  I've got everything crossed that the weather is not as insane.
00:55this season as it was last season, because we had rain for six weeks straight in spring and our garden was terrible.  So, and I've talked about ad nauseam on the podcast because it just drove us insane last year.  bet. Yeah, we've had a turbulent spring,  more tornadoes than any other season.  I think in history or something, it's been a rough spring and now it's kind of calming down. So it's pretty nice.
01:22Fabulous. I wish you all the luck with all the things you're trying to grow because man  It will break your heart when you put all that work into it and it just doesn't go Yep, and if you get hail and we do get hail so  We get little  we get little pea-sized hail. I'm really hoping that I never see golf ball size I really don't need to that.  No, I we don't like to see it at all, but it does happen here. So  Good
01:52Okay, well, tell me about yourself and what you do at 60 Acre  Woods. Wood. Wood. Wood or woods? wood.  Acre Wood. Okay. Well, my late husband and I had a dream to be self-sufficient. We have six children and five grandchildren, and we wanted to not be off-grid 100%, but more self-sufficient. Just raising our own food,  staying away from the grocery store.
02:19And when he passed away, I said, you know, I'm going to make this dream happen.  And I moved to Arkansas, bought a farm site on scene, never even been to Arkansas, which is crazy.  And started building this farm that was in  the end of 2019. I  closed on the farm in the beginning of 2020 and been doing it pretty much ever since.  We do a lot here.
02:47We have a lot of animals for food and we have a lot of pets and we homeschool and it's, it's, it's a busy life and it's really rewarding and we love it. We love being that. We love that self-sufficiency. We're at about 65 to 70 % of our food comes from our farm now. And for us, that's Number one.
03:14Congratulations on being a strong, capable woman. Proud of you. Thank you.  Number two, that much food grown on your own property is amazing. That is astounding. It's huge. It really is huge for us. Yeah. And are you still a single mom? I am not. I remarried  a wonderful man who  thinks I'm crazy, but lets me buy goats. So  keep him.
03:43I'm going to keep him. Yeah. I would love to have goats and I've talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast too. We don't really have the room because we don't really have anywhere for them to eat, to graze. And I'm sure you've noticed that feed prices for every animal known to man have gone up in the last year or two. So we just visit goats. don't have any here.
04:11Well, you know,  our goal also is to start growing food for them. are not right now, but we have a goal to. the thing, goats have been our hardest animal so far. Believe it or not, we have, we have cows with pigs, we have chickens, donkeys, horses. If you name it, we've probably got it on this farm, but the goats have been very, very hard because there's a large parasite load in Arkansas.  We've had a lot of problems with the, with the goats, but milk is
04:40Cheese butter. I love them. They're fun Most of all they're But they're hard to grow hard to grow here so what's the what's the pesticide load not pesticide, um, what's the  What's the problem? What what is it that's making it so hard? So the parasites here are very I want sorry parasite.  They're very What is the word?  resistant
05:10to a lot of the common things that you use here. And we tried doing the natural, we do black walnut, we tried doing all the natural things and then we switched over to some of the not so natural things because we didn't want these animals to suffer. But we have just a resistant population of parasites, which we had just got under control probably in the last six months  because we just could not
05:38We finally had to, you know, the vet came out and said, well, this is what's going on, but they're resistant to everything. we found a combination that worked for them, thankfully, because it was a very rough go when we started, but we're on track now. So your goatees are okay now? They're okay now.  Good. Do you breed them? We do. Do you have babies on the ground now? We do.  We have one little, well, we have one right now.
06:06who my granddaughter is raising, bottle raising, because his mommy didn't like him. So he is kind of thinks he's a dog and spends a lot of time with our granddaughter. And oh, they're so much fun. They are so much fun. They look fun. The story I keep telling is that my best friend in high school, her parents raised goats. And so she would call me in the spring and say,
06:31your mom bring you over there's baby goats and I would go hang out with the baby goats and that was a lot of fun and they are so soft. Yes, they're wonderful. And then a current friend as an adult right now has goats and she just went and picked up a new one to add to their genetic line and he came to visit in the back of their truck because they picked him up and then came here. He was eight weeks old like two weeks ago. I think it was two weeks ago.
07:01And I haven't actually petted a baby goat in a very long time and he's black and white and his ears are speckled black and white. That's crazy because that's exactly the one that we have. His name is Fanta and he is black and white and his ears are white with speckles.  Yeah. So cute.  And I stood there and just kept trying to get him to come to me because he was in a big dog crate thing in the back.
07:27It was hot and they'd given him water, but he was, it was hot and it was a  new situation. He was shy and he finally came over and sniffed my hand and let me pet his ears. And that was it. I was like, Oh my God, I wish I could have a baby goat.  Yeah, they're definitely good entertainment. And like I said, they make the best milk. They really do. So that's,  they're fun. They're fun. And it's so good for my grandkids to have that experience of raising them. She actually delivered him.
07:57my granddaughter.  And that was  huge. She delivered him. She clamped his cord. She bottle fed him. And she told me, Grandma, I don't want to be a mommy anymore. And I'm like,  Oh, what a great experience you just  had.  So but she's  wonderful with him. And they, you know, they don't wake up a lot in the middle of the night. But we told her if you want
08:22to do this, have to wholeheartedly do this. She's almost 11. And  she said, oh yeah, yeah, I want to do it. And waking up in the middle of the night, you know, at least once to give him a bottle. Now he doesn't need, he's not even, he's weaned now.  But she, that experience for them is  huge. Just a hands on.  Yeah. That reminds me of my human story regarding a baby.  I have four kids, my oldest,
08:52was 12. My next one down was 10. Next one down was four and a half and I had a newborn. And none of the older kids want kids of their own. And I think it's because they remember the youngest being up in the middle of the night all the time with me. maybe, maybe having your granddaughter take on this challenge, this charge to
09:21deliver a goat baby and take care of it in all the ways that matter.  Maybe she'll be ready  when she decides she does want to have a baby because she'll know what  she's getting into. I think she will. think  she wants to be a vet  and I'm a large animal vet and I'm so excited for that. I love that for her.  And she said she's very mature for her age. She says,  I want to have a baby someday.
09:47but I want to go to school and I want to go here and I want to do this.  so, but I think it does help them to know that real deep responsibility for another life.  And it's,  it's, it's great. It really is.  It sounds like it's a blast cause your voice is just ringing when you're telling me about it. I'm so proud of them.  All of them. My older kids are all in there.
10:14Well, let's see, the youngest is 16, the oldest is 35. So they're all grown. And so the grandbabies, we homeschool, there's five of them and we homeschool them. And it's been so different of an experience with them being on the farm for one, but also just, it's like I'm a different person from when I was a mom. Do you have more patients? I think I have more patients and I also have less
10:46Um, what's the word? Like when I, when they, when my kids were little, I wanted them dressed in their cute clothes and I have expectations. think I have less. mean, I have a lot of them, but not that way. I don't know if that makes sense. It's changed. The priorities have changed. The priorities have changed. Yeah. If they want to make cookies and throw flour all over the kitchen and get dirty, it's.
11:13perfectly okay where with my kids it's like, please don't make another mess. All six of you trash, know, tearing up the house.  So I think it's just like rearranged. What, what's very important. Yeah, exactly.  I, I remember just being in deep, deep in the trenches with the four that I had and  the last baby, the one who still lives here, he's 23.  Um, I was a lot less crazy with him. Like,
11:42My first baby, my daughter, only daughter, I didn't know what I was doing. I was 20 years old. I had all the energy in the world, but  I was very nervous and very anxious and very overly concerned about everything all the time with her.  I was also madly in love. You have your first baby and you're like feeling all the love in the world for the first time.  Every bit of it. Yes, absolutely.
12:11And with the last one, I had the other three sort of helping. I mean, they really were a help. They would bring me his diapers and bum cream and, you know, the stuff I needed to do things if I was holding him. And  the two older ones really did adore him and held him a lot. So it freed me up to do other things. So I wasn't nearly as stressed with the last baby as I was with the first.
12:37Yeah, that I think the stress definitely with the first, well, even with my second, I, they, mine were very close together. They were a year and 10 days apart. So I don't think I came out of shock from the first one when I had my second, but yeah, definitely by my last he's 16 and he's like, can I just go ride my motorcycle through that dangerous patch of blackberries? I mean, yeah, don't die, you know, but the first one it would have been like, bubble wrap on it.
13:05Yeah, knock yourself out. Go see how much damage you can actually do to the second one. Isn't that crazy? That's how, you know, you just, it's like learning anything. It's like learning anything, I think.  Exactly.  So, um, does the farm support or the wood support itself, or is it just a way of life for you?  Um,  we, so it helps  support  like the homeschooling.
13:32and the animal feed, it's pretty self-sufficient in that. As far as like 100 % of our expenses, it doesn't. We still have to work outside. Okay. Yeah.  But that would be a wonderful goal to have us both home. And I think it can do that.  Just time and effort, time and effort. And we've been at it for five years now, just over five years. And we're doing pretty well so far.
14:01on that respect? feel like five years or almost five years is the number because we've been at our place for five years in August, this coming August. And this is the summer that we have been building towards since we moved in in August of 2020. We have our farm stand set up. We have a heated greenhouse now. We have a high tunnel. have a 100 by 150 foot farm to market garden.
14:28We have barn cats, we have a dog, we have like 25 chickens. And we are looking at probably clearing anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 this summer from what we produce on the homestead. That's wonderful. And it just depends on how the weather goes and how many people come to the farmer's market and buy things. But it's so exciting.
14:54when you get to a point where you're like, oh, everything is starting to come together. And that's where we're at. Our greenhouse is going to go in this fall.  We're putting  a 10 by 30 or 12 by 30 foot greenhouse in. was supposed to go in the spring, but with tornadoes, we haven't been able to get it done.  And we have these beautiful 100 year old buildings on our property. They're just gorgeous. And one of them is going to
15:21be part of this greenhouse. once that's established, and yes, the five-year market seems like everything now has kind of gotten into a rhythm.  And it's also just kind of humbling  just to look around and go, wow, what we have done. But with 13 people, we have 13 people on our farm. Each one of my older children, we gifted them  property and they're building houses. Nice. So they're all here. So to feed everybody, I...
15:50don't have a lot of the produce to take to the farm. do the farmers market all summer and it pays for school books and everything for five kids, which is pretty darn good.  It's an expensive venture homeschooling.  But it,  like I said, it's the five year mark does seem to be where everything just starts to it's okay. We can breathe. This is, you know, this is working now. Oh, and look at this is working and we can do this. also raise Highland cattle, which
16:19are, I don't know, everybody's dream.  And they're just beautiful fuzzy cows that we just love and they help a lot. And we're just coming to the point now with them  where they can start supporting and  giving back where we have a big enough herd to start selling and stuff. that's going to be a game changer for us. again, really exciting.  Very, very exciting.
16:47Yeah, I have been waking up every morning for the last week because  Farmers Market Day is Saturday, our opening day for Farmers Market in our town is Saturday coming up.  And my husband said to me yesterday, he said, why are you so excited about the Farmers Market? You don't even go. I go to the Farmers Market.  And I said, because you love it. You're so much happier in the summer because you get to go see your people. Oh,  that's awesome. And he was like, oh, I said, plus I said,
17:16we get to sell actual produce on the first day of farmers market season. We haven't been able to do that.  You know, we've been, he's been going to the farmers market for two years in a row. is third year. And in Minnesota, typically no one has actual produce. They grew  at the first part farmers market because you can't get anything in the ground yet.  And because of the, uh, the greenhouse, we were able to get things started really early this year for the first time. So we'll be selling.
17:46radishes and lettuce and I think baby spinach and  I can't remember what oh cabbages we actually have little cabbages. how fun that's a neat thing about Arkansas our growing season so we've had plants in the ground since February.  We're already eating potatoes from the garden asparagus of course lettuce  we have almost mature peaches the weather here I moved here from Wyoming where our growing season is very very small.
18:15And being here and watching like we're eating, I'm like, wow, it's February  25th or February, whatever. And we're eating asparagus already out of the garden and berries and strawberries. have dew berries and  five acres of blackberries that are just about around the corner. And that was huge coming here. Just this, difference in the growing season and what I can, when I can pull things out. It's been amazing for us. Like, oh, we're gonna go just.
18:44have a salad out of the garden in March. And that's without a greenhouse. So next year,  it's going to be phenomenal.  do you just get butterflies in your, in your heart because it's going to be different? Yes. Yep. I am so giddy and just over the moon with the thought of having  those veggies in that greenhouse. It's just, yes.  Well, I can relate because back in April,
19:13My son came in with a small bowl behind his back and he said, I have something for you. And I said, what? Cause when kids come up to you, doesn't matter if they're adults or kids, if they're of your body and they walk up to you and say, have something for you and it's behind their back, you don't know what they're going to show you. And I said, what you got? And he turned, he pulled his hand out from behind his back. It is small bowl. It had about eight strawberries from the greenhouse, red strawberries in April.
19:40Wow. That's awesome.  Never had that happen before. And they were so delicious.  I don't know if it was because it was April  or if it was because they were just delicious, but I was just like, oh my God, strawberries in April and we grew them.  So first off, yes, the thing with the kids with the thing, my oldest son brought a five pound totem behind his back the other day and he's 33 years old. says, mom, I got something for you. And my first question is,  is it alive? huh. Before he puts it in my hand.
20:10And so yes, I know that feeling.  And the other thing,  I don't know what the difference is between the work you put into it  or what, but the flavor of everything that we put in our mouth from our garden seems 100 % better. Now, I mean, I know some of that's just like if we're eating lettuce from the store, it's like a week or two old  or a tomato that's been in a box  suffocating for two weeks.
20:37I know that makes a difference, but it's like something about the work you put into it and the sweat and the tears and everything that goes into it makes everything taste heavenly. It's pride of ownership is what it is. Yeah, that's yes. Yes. Yeah. I had the same conversation with somebody six months ago because she's a big gardener, da da da. And I said, what is it?
21:02Why is it that we think our food tastes so much better? And she was like, well, because the stuff you get at the store sits at the store for weeks and weeks and weeks.  And I said, it can't just be that. And I said, is it maybe pride of ownership? And she was like, yeah, there's a bit of that in there too. Yeah. It's like the spice on top of it. It's extra. And I see that with my eggs  and our meat, everything. And it's  like this extra umami.
21:30It's just that work that went into it and that pride that you did that it's it's the love it's the love energy we throw into it. the love and regarding the eggs we have some Some chickens that are just starting to lay I think the first one out of the the 12 or 13 and we have their new later first egg a week and a half ago and Most people who don't have chickens don't know that when chickens start to lay they're like half
21:57the size of the eggs they will eventually lay. So we call them fairy eggs.  And my son brought in the first one and I just grinned and he's like, you love the little fairy eggs. said, I do. said, they only happen  now.  one time for that one  for that little chicken. Yes. We also call them fairy eggs  around here. And it's always like this. It's like a little bit of magic.  It's just a little bit of magic. And we have good gravy. We probably have 70.
22:27I know, 70 something chickens. I don't do math well with chicken. I don't do the chicken math at all. It's not a real number. Have as many chickens as you want. Have as many chickens as you can afford. And we just hatched for it. So every year we hatch, we use the incubator and we hatch babies for our classroom for one, but also just to have the babies. And we had 46 babies hatch. Somebody went a little overboard this year. So we have
22:57all these little babies at different age ranges around the farm right now in brooders and everywhere  waiting for them to come out. sell a lot of the babies each year. The kids use that money for pocket  money from selling chicks.  And  I just loved, I love chickens. They run our yard. are free range.  So they have, we also have roosters with them and they run everywhere.
23:25Definitely make it make the farm a fun place. Well, the farm can be a lot of fun. And  I just listened to a podcast this morning from somebody I interviewed the other day. has her own podcast and she was talking about how  it's really good work, but it can also be really hard. And  I don't want people to think that having a homestead or a farm or I don't know, an acre lot with a house on it, they can have some chickens on.
23:54is perfect all the time because it's not. Homesteading and farming, it isn't idyllic. It doesn't look like what you see on Instagram. There's those tough days where there's money boots and animals that have passed away and unexpected surprises. I want to say there's a 90 % of the time everything is good and hard work.
24:23And that 10 % it's heartbreaking and hard work. Yes. Yes. And the reason I even bring it up is because I've been trying really hard for a little over 18 months now on the podcast to let people talk about what they want to talk about and tell their stories. And people want to talk about the good stuff because that's what they want to think about. But I think that if we're going to be honest, we have to share that there are bad days on
24:52the farm. We had chicken get killed by a predator the other night. We don't know what killed her. it wasn't like gross to look at because there was hardly any blood, which makes me wonder what got her. But there were feathers everywhere and her body was split in half. And if I was new to this, that would have made me really cry. I was just like, we've been here almost five years.
25:22Shit happens  all the time. And yes, this is the worst thing that happens this year We should probably count ourselves lucky and that's kind of why I I touched on the goats because a lot of people  Love how baby goats are adorable. They're cute. They're fun. They're full of energy and  and They die  it happens,  you know, and we like I said, we had a very bad go with the goats and it was heartbreaking
25:50And  if I had had those goats five years ago, I would have gone,  I am done. I cannot do this because they're so cute. They're so much fun. They're  wonderful little animals.  And we fought, you know, and fought and we lost some. that's  it. It's, I don't, it's not easy, but it's worth it. I think is that one phrase you hear everywhere. It's not easy, but it's worth it.  exactly.  And that's the perfect way to put it.
26:20because  it is not easy. And even on your best day, it's not easy because you're working really hard. Yes.  I mean, my husband loves to garden. That's why we have a farm to market garden. I don't love to garden. It's not my thing. And I asked him the other day, said, you've been doing this for four summers now. I said, do you still love it?
26:47And he  gave me the most beautiful smile that climbed from the side of his face, the other side of his face. And he said, I do.  said, but you're so tired. He's like, I'm getting old. He saw me 56 in two weeks. I was like, Oh, okay. Okay. Well, we'll, we'll chalk it up to that.  And I said, I just don't want you to do it unless you love it. I said, you don't have to do this. And he said, I don't have to do this. He said, I want to do this. I said, okay.
27:16And I, you know, that I am also in my fifties and people ask me, why  did you get to this age and then decide to start a farm?  It's like having a whole new career in life.  And, and that is the reason I love it. I love the animals. I love the food. I love  the, I love that my kids and my grandkids know where their food comes from. They watch it go from.
27:42this little tiny seed to a full grown plant or they see it grow from a tiny egg to a full grown chicken. They know where their food comes from the very beginning. When, you know, like when we raised pigs to the last and they always say only one bad day on our farm grandma, only one bad day. So they've watched the pigs go from being born to Sunday dinner, which it's, know, there's ways to run a farm without eating your animals. know that.
28:10But we eat ours. That's what we raise them for. And my grandkids had it best. just say one bad day. They have one bad day and that's it.  And I'm like,  that's a good way to think about it. And I learned so much from them. They, the way they see things and that. Yeah. That's what kids and grandkids are for. Yeah. They're the best teachers. Yeah. I can remember watching my daughter cause I didn't have my next kid.
28:40until she was six, I think. And I remember the time I spent with her from when she was born until she was about four, four and a half. And just watching her discover the world and I got to discover it too  through her. It was so fun and I learned so many things from her.  Yeah,  I say I homeschooled them, but I actually, think they teach me
29:08so much. I learned so much from them. Then again, through their eyes, through their actions, I've learned so much. It's kind of just the coolest thing.  I'm  glad you're a grandma. You are the perfect person to be a grandma. You're very good at it. I can hear it.  I adore them. I adore them.  Awesome.  So I don't know what else to ask you because
29:35I feel like  we've just been talking about raising kids, but we haven't. We've been talking about animals and stuff too. Where can people find you?  So we are only on pretty much on Facebook, 60 Acre Wood.  I think that's about it. I think we might have an Instagram. I'm not real good at computers and stuff. I started the Facebook page kind of as a way to just document the journey.
30:02I haven't really done much else.  You know,  you get very busy and social media takes up a lot of time, but we are 60 Acre Wood on Facebook.  And I think, and I would, I would love to just share the best advice that I was given with your listeners  is start small, but think big.  Because that's really, and there's a song out there and I wish I knew who sang it, but that's the name of the song.
30:30Start small, think big, edit is  definitely good advice.  I'm gonna have to go find it. I think his name is Michael something, but I  can't remember, but  you'll love it. Yes, it's kind of like our war  cry song around here when people get frustrated as we listen to that song. And it's like, okay, okay, we got this, know.  Dream big for sure. Yes.
30:58The thing with dreaming big is even if you only accomplish a quarter of it, you've accomplished a quarter of it. Yes, absolutely. And you have to look at it like that because if you look at the big picture, like if I was to sit and look at the big picture, we have 70 acres out here. It's 25 of it is solid overgrown woods that we have to clear. if I looked at the big picture and I dream about it,
31:25oh yeah, I'd love to get this done, but if I focused on just, I'd never, I'd feel like I'd never accomplish anything. So we just kind of go one acre at a time,  one space at a time, one project at a time. And then ours is one project at a time here.  And sometimes those projects are half done and sit half done for, you know, three months while we wait for the rain to stop. But that's okay because we know we got, we started. We started.
31:54Yeah, my husband and my son built our green, our heated greenhouse a year ago in May. And it took them all of May and I think almost into June to get it done. It's only like 20 by 30  because of all the rain, they didn't dare to be up on the ladder trying to get the top parts done when it was so wet. Yep.  So that happened with ours. Yeah. Yep. The weather impacts everything we do.
32:24And that's a big, that's also a big thing on a farm. The weather is everything.  Everything. I mean, you wake up in the morning and you go to bed at night and you have to know what the weather is doing. I have looked at my weather bug app more times since we moved here in 2020 than I have ever looked at the weather in my life. Or your whole life rolled into one. Yeah,  same. Yes.  It's crazy how much the weather impacts.
32:51every aspect of your life on a farm or a homestead. Yeah. And, um, the other thing that I really learned is we have apple trees here  and, it seems like  one out of two years. So every other year we get the blooms come in, they look great. And then there's a massive rain and windstorm. All the petals get blown off and we get no apples.  We have the same problem with our peach trees. I hate it. It  makes me insane.
33:21And we also have peonies and peonies will do the same thing. If they are open and bloomed,  if there's wind, you lose the flowers because the wind just strips the petals off the flowers. Yep. Speaking of, just about, it looks like we're getting into a storm. I can hear the wind picking up out here. Yes, I was going to say, hear  your weather alert system going off.  It surely is.
33:45All right, well, Stephanie, I try to keep these to half an hour. I really enjoyed our conversation and I love what you're doing. Please keep being you. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And it was really nice talking with you.  You too. Have a great day. You too. Bye bye.  Bye.
 

A Farm Wife

Today I'm talking with Diane at A Farm Wife.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Diane at A Farm Wife. Good afternoon, Diane. How are you? I'm fantastic. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Michigan? You bet. Are you guys getting the wildfire smoke like we are in Minnesota? Yeah, it's kind of hazy. It's not really bad, but yeah, it looks a little bit weird. Yeah, it's raining here. So the air is already wet. And if I look across the cornfield that borders our property, it looks like it's foggy, but it's not fog, it's smoke.
00:55Well, we actually have sun trying to peek through and it's very windy but it's getting it's like an 80 something right now, which is great for drying out our hay. I bet it is. We don't have any hay and I'm so glad it's raining right now because we've had like a week or so of beautiful dry weather and that's great because this time last year it was raining every day here, but
01:23But it hasn't been and we've got a really good garden started this year. Like last year was a miserable fail for gardening season. So  we've got everything crossed that it just keeps doing this week of really nice weather and then a day or two of a good rain and then another week of nice weather. Everything crossed. Us farmers are never satisfied with the weather.  Oh, I know. And I feel so bad about complaining about it, but
01:49If you could have seen my husband's disappointment last year,  May into mid-June, because all it did was rain. We  know  what that's like. He was so good. Like it's just a farm to market garden,  or farm to table, whatever you want to call it. But it's his, it's his joy. It's how he unwinds in these stresses. Yeah. It doesn't matter how big or how small you are, the weather affects what's happening.
02:16Yeah, it was just rough and he was so good. He  never blew up about it.  He just had faith that this year was going to be better. And I said to him the other day, said,  that faith is paying off. It's much better this year. He just laughed. Yeah, that's kind of our mantra as farmers. It'll be better next year or next harvest or next planting. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that's all you have to hang on to. There's nothing you can do about what's going on in the atmosphere. So.
02:45You just pray or send up smoke signals or just open up your hands and say that I will be done and hopefully everything turns out Okay, so yeah,  all right So I have been looking forward to talking with you for a week since I well not week We only talked a day or two ago, but since I found out about you I have been very excited to talk with you because you are not a 25 year old  lady Just getting started in this you have lived a very full very
03:14I think lovely, wonderful life so far. Yes, very blessed, but I am not in my 20s. That is for sure. Yeah, so tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, just to back up a little bit, I was raised on the east side of Michigan. My dad was a tool and die maker and had a normal, what I thought was a normal life. Dad, home at 430, weekends home, went summer vacations and I
03:44graduated in June, turned 18 in July, got married in September and moved across the state onto a farm and into a unknown territory. My husband would leave at five in the morning, come home at 10. It was crazy. It was so different that I couldn't even begin to tell you how different it is. And you learn how to do a lot of things that you didn't know you could do because there was nobody else around to do them but you. So I was,
04:13Very fortunate to land on a beautiful farm here in West Michigan, a dairy farm. We had four boys. And to tell you the truth, the farm was my enemy for quite a while because it took my husband away and it took away what I thought was supposed to be family time and how family was supposed to look. And, um, he would be home on Sundays, um, after church for a little bit in the afternoon, because on Sundays we just did, uh, feeding.
04:41and milking and everything else waited because it was Sunday, so that was the only time we had together. So it was very, very difficult  trying to acclimate to  a life that I never saw coming. But once the kids got a little bit older, you know, and they were on the farm and I was able to join in, then the farm became my passion. And  I can't say enough about  all the goodness that comes from being on a farm.
05:11Are you and your husband still together? Yeah. Congratulations, because that is a testament to how committed you were to making it work. Oh yeah. It was, I said I do, so I did. Uh huh. Yup. So what do you do now? Oh my goodness. We have been away from the farm now for about two years. I say away. We're not.
05:36working. We're still right across the road from the farm. So we see everything going on. Our second son and his family is running the farm now.  And  my husband is still kind of trying to find out where he's supposed to land.  I, on the other hand, am busy. Oh my goodness, I cook, I sew, I can, I bake,  I  walk my dog, I spend time with my grandkids. I don't know, I'm always busy doing something. I'm not a sitter.
06:03I like to be doing things. write, I blog.  I'm still trying to find a place. I was revamping or kind of looking at my  website. And I've been trying to figure out how to go from being a proponent of farming and  sharing all the good stuff about farming, which I still will do.
06:26but I'm not in it daily and I don't see things that I used to see and transition into this part of life and what it's like. And I'm not sure how or what that's gonna look like yet. It's always a work in progress. It'll hit you when you least expect it, Diane, I promise you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm 55 and the reason the podcast exists is because my youngest was gonna be moving out.
06:55and he's the youngest of four.  And  I needed a project because I refused to go through empty nest syndrome without a project. That's why the podcast exists.  Nice. And  he ended up moving back like a couple months later and the podcast still exists. So that tells you how much I love doing it.  I know my kids have told me you need to have a YouTube channel and do your baking and cooking. And I have, um,
07:24They all come home for Sunday dinner. Well, most of them come home for Sunday dinner after church. And I just love cooking for my family. And I used to have a cookie shop and I sold cookies at Farmers Market years and years ago.  they I've done some cooking classes in my house and stuff like that. And I just tell them that just seems like way too much work to try to do that. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of stuff to do.  I have my cottage food producer
07:53registration for Minnesota. And I keep like dreaming about making dozens and dozens of cookies and breads and stuff. And I wake up in the morning and I'm like, don't know why I keep dreaming about this. I don't have time. I'm already sucked into finding people to interview for the podcast and then getting them out. I don't have time to make dozens of cookies. And the first farmers market is this coming Saturday.
08:21And I keep toying with leaving Thursday open. think Thursday is the day I don't have any interviews scheduled and making some cookies just to make myself stop dreaming about it and get them in little bags and labeled and send them with my husband to the farmer's market.  Cause maybe that will stop the recurring dream about chocolate chip cookies. Cause it's kind of driving me insane. Does your market  allow cottage law? Yes.
08:45Our market does not. used to have a commercial kitchen  when I was doing the farmer's market before, but now that I'm just doing cottage law, they don't allow it. that's totally out of the question, which is fine. Cause have other things to do,  it's, the farmer's market is a great place to be. It's one of the best places to be a part of. And I sell cookies and therefore.
09:07I don't know how many years I did that and I would trade with other vendors trade for you know vegetables fresh fruits plants it was a lot of fun it was great community.  Yeah we have friends that make  bagels and sourdough bread  and so my husband will will trade them things that we make for for baked goods and  I'm like hon if you want cookies or if you want bagels or you want bread we can make it and he's like
09:33You know as well as I do that other people's baked goods taste better than ours. I'm like, okay, fine. Yes.  You always have a place to shine. Yeah, exactly. And, and they don't necessarily want to make soap or lip balms or candles. And those are things that we make and sell at the farmer's market too.  So we ended up trading things back and forth and barter is an excellent system. Yeah.
10:02So,  I took a look at your blog and I read the post about your walk and your wonderings.  You are a really good writer.  Thank you.  I grinned. I giggled. I was like,  this is really good. And  is your dog a German Shepherd? Yes, Max. He's beautiful. Yes, he is. He's quite princely and he knows it. Yeah,  I like to...
10:30If I could just download my thoughts,  there'd be a whole lot more writing that would have been recorded.  it's, you know, I'm walking and I'm thinking, and then I get home and then something distracts me. And then I go to sit down to write and then,  what was it I was thinking about? And, you know, it's kind of one of those things, but I do enjoy walking and I do a lot of thinking when I walk and mowing the lawn. That's my other muse spot.  mom mows their lawn on their, their,
10:5914 acre plot and she's not mowing 14 acres but they have a pretty big backyard and she mows the backyard on a riding mower. Yep. She loves it and she's 78 years old and she's out there mowing the lawn. Yep. I love it. I think it's so great. I will call her and she'll be like, it's perfect weather this morning to go out and mow the lawn so I can only talk for five minutes and I'm like, that's fine. And she's just so excited to go out and do it.
11:27I think it started when my kids were littler, when I would mow the lawn. It would be one thing that I could accomplish that looked like it was done for more than like five minutes. Because when you've got kids and you're trying to clean your house or cook food or whatever, it only looks good or done for very few minutes. And then  they come in and either devour the food you've cooked or mess up what you've cleaned. But when you were mowing the lawn, you could see where you were going and you could see what was done. And it stayed that way for a little bit.
11:55Oh ma'am, I can relate.  The only time I feel like our house is ever actually clean these days is if we're having company.  And it's actually clean for a couple hours while they're here and then it's right back to stuff everywhere. I'm like, how does this happen? Yeah, I clean for the very first time somebody comes after that. They don't get a clean house. They get whatever it is and that's what they get.
12:21Yeah, I'm not at that point. I  can't handle people walking in and seeing stuff everywhere.  Our door is always open and we do get people who will stop by. I have a new front porch, at least new to me in the last couple years, and I spend a lot of time out there. I read,  I sew,  I do puzzles, I do word puzzles.  do anything I can drag out on the porch with me to do. do. So a lot of people go by and every once in somebody will just...
12:49pull off and stop in and come in for a visit and I actually love it. I think it's great. That's really sweet. What a beautiful way to spend some time. You were saying that your German Shepherd is princely. Yes. I'm always saying that our dog is way too fancy a dog for us. She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Oh, a little wild type? No, no. She's really calm. I swear she has the personality of a
13:18seven-year-old lab. She's very calm in the house.  I,  my sons, son and daughter-in-law, they have two and they are just  runners. They are so fast and they are just all over the place. I don't, I guess they do have their calm moments, but I always think of them as being like the herding dog. I mean, you can't walk across the yard without them trying to direct you where you want to go. Oh yeah. When we're outside, she definitely is walking behind us and she does the diagonal walk behind your legs.
13:47And she's fast. She's really fast. She has a frisbee and we throw the frisbee for her and you don't even see her feet hit the ground when she's running. Yeah. Yeah. But  she's, she's a perfect example of a black tri Australian shepherd. So she's black and white and has the golden, golden, um,  beauty marks above her eyes and on her legs.  And she's fancy. She's a very fancy looking dog.  And  there are times where I just look at her and think,  man,
14:17We got way too beautiful a dog for our not fancy life. And I say it out loud. Yeah. And my husband laughs. He's like, she's such a goober. She's not fancy. I'm like, okay, fine. I think she's fancy.  So I understand your Prince Lee  remark about your German Shepherd. He's, I'll say, he's more like a cat because he allows you to pet him and he allows you to spend time with them. And then when he's done, he just kind of...
14:45walks away and says, okay, that's enough. I have no idea what that's like. Maggie is a pocket dog. She is everywhere we are as often as she can be. Nice. Yeah. And she's only about 36 pounds. So it's not too bad if she jumps in my lap. Yeah. Max is, I had, I took him to the vet just this week and he's 105 right now. So he's not jumping on anybody's lap right now. That is a big boy. Yep, he is, but he's, he's pretty cool dude. Nice.
15:16Okay, so I have a question about your blog as I was looking at it.  the blog a hobby? Is it something that you do just to get your thoughts out and share them with the world and maybe teach people a little bit?  what is what's the purpose?  It started out that way. It started out.  I remember when I first started decided to do this.  There used to be a commercial on TV. This is really going to date me.
15:44about these two bigger guys with coveralls on just doofus looking guys went charging through the door acting like a farmer and it had something to do with green giant or something like that.  And it's like, I was to the point where I was so sick and tired  of TV media, whatever you want to call it portraying farmers as dumb buffoons.  To be a farmer  nowadays  takes
16:14a little bit of everything to become a successful farmer. You have to be an accountant, you have to be a mechanic, you have to be a veterinarian, you have to be a crops person, at least for a dairy farm  like we are. You have to know how to grow your crops, you have to know how to prevent pests, you have to know how to harvest your crops, how to take care of your animals, how to  get the best quality milk and have the best quality cows to take good care of them.
16:41And then along came all of the animal activists that would say that a dairy farm kills their calves because they only want the calves so they can get milk.  So much baloney, so many  lies that were being told that it just was very, very frustrating.  And the fact that people in general, and still I believe this is true, do not appreciate the amount of work that goes into food.
17:08It seems to be that most of the people that who are listening to you are somewhat aware of growing crops. You know,  they're more of like you said, table farm to table type people.  We are more of a conventional farm. We  milk 1100 cows on our dairy and,  um,  but, people just don't get  the  blood, sweat and tears that go into it. instance,
17:35We can go out and spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on seed and plant alfalfa in our fields that we have plowed and disked and gotten ready only to have rain come and wash it all out in the road and have to redo it again or not have rain and have it totally dry up and that that crop is lost. And people don't  understand.
18:02For instance, we've had people say, why do you have to, excuse me, why do you have to be out in the fields after 11 o'clock at night? Our kids are trying to sleep. We don't have that personally, but I've heard it before because our neighbors aren't that close. But when you've got a hundred acres of hay on the ground that needs to be chopped and put in the silo and you got rain coming, you have to do it. You have to get it done. You can't wait another day. You can't stop at five o'clock and take care of it.
18:32an expiration date on everything with farming.  And the fact that  the activists  would say that we are mistreating our cows or not treating them kindly. Well, that made absolutely no sense at all. If I am not doing the very best for my animals, how do I expect to get good quality product that we're selling that is our business? So there's just a lot of things that went into it that got very frustrating.  And I thought, well, I'm just going to start that.
19:01And then,  um, through the course of selling cookies at the farmer's market,  I ended up  coming in contact with  a local, the local radio DJ guy there. And he started having me on air and I ended up being on,  um, the local  news  station in Holland, probably for 15 years under, um, I had a program called a farm.
19:28life with a farmwife and then random ramblings of a farmwife  and had 10 minutes a week and could bring different things on and talk about different things, the value of milk, all the nutrients in milk, and about all the different things that was in the news and all of the things that were being misrepresented. So that's kind how it all started.  And it's just kind of grown with where we were or where I am  in the whole farm thing. And that's kind of where I am right now.
19:56kind of done with that and I'm on another stage or another area and I'm trying to figure out which direction to go with it. love it. I love that you basically stumbled into being on TV. That's fantastic. Radio. Radio. Sorry.  Yes. And you have a great voice for it. So.  Well, thank you. My kids probably don't think so, but thank you.  None of our kids love our voices. They only love our voices when we're, when they're babies. Yeah.
20:25My son said to me the other day, said, you don't sing as much as you used to. I said, well, I don't listen to music as much as I used to because in the old house that we lived in four and a half years ago, it was a little small house. Like downstairs was all of 400 square feet and music carried through the house. If I put it on in the bedroom, I could hear it fine in the kitchen. Here it's a bigger space and I don't have a really good place to put speakers and things. So I don't play music all the time.
20:54He said, you should sing more. said, you were happier when you sang. And I'm like, uh-huh, I know I'll get on it. So  my plan tomorrow is to clean off my kitchen table now that all the seedlings are finally not on it and put my speakers on it and bring my laptop over and set it up and have music on again. Cause he's right. need to, I need to do that again.  Um, so I have a question. You, you were a dairy farm or you are a dairy farm. Yep. Okay.
21:24Somebody was saying that bottle calves are really freaking expensive right now. Why? What is going on there? Because you used to be able to get a bottle calf for $100 and that is not the case anymore. Well, for us, when we breed our animals, you have to have a cow that has a calf in order to have milk. we have been, personally, we've
21:52breed a lot of our cows now to Angus because a black calf is much more expensive than a whole stinking calf or probably even,  you know,  any other breed because it's beef. And I, this is just my personal opinion. I don't know for sure, but with the whole COVID thing and everything  with,  um, people not trusting the supply food supply chain, they're wanting to do it on their own.
22:19And so there more and more people, I believe, that are trying to raise their own food, which would include their beef.  And so that has driven the prices of beef up. That's what I think is happening.  And  that makes sense to me because I do know there's a lot more people who are trying to do things on their own, which I think is great. And if you don't, aren't able to raise your own beef, find a local beef farmer. I  think for the most part, our food supply is fairly safe.
22:49I'm just  wish there, you know, there's been a lot of people have been trying to get  labeling better for us. And there's a lot of things that we aren't finding on our labels as far as where this meat actually came from. It'll say packaged in the U S but we don't know where it came from. So  I  recommend getting your, your beef, you know, from a local farmer if you can, we get it, son raises beef. So I get it from him.
23:19And I know we've got a couple of local beef places around here that that's been pretty busy, but I'm guessing that's why. Okay.  I was wondering if it was because  the cost of feed has gone up so much. Well, if you're selling a bottle calf, you're not feeding that calf at all. So that doesn't go into the equation of you getting that amount of money for it. if you're going to buy a bottle calf, what are you going to do with it? Are you raising it to
23:49start a dairy farm, are you raising it for beef?  And the amount of feed that you're putting into it is going to come out in the end when you harvest that animal one way the other.  Right. Yeah. Okay, cool. I was just wondering, and since you raised cows,  thought maybe you'd have least some idea, some, some. That's,  that's my uneducated guess.  Okay. I'm going to have to  catch up with a friend of mine because they raised cattle in
24:14Nebraska, I'm gonna have to send her a message and be like, so why are bottle caps so expensive right now? Since I know you'll know the answer and she will, I'll find out. Yeah, and if she's a beef farmer, then I'm guessing it's gonna be connected to that. Yeah, she's fantastic. I freaking love talking to her. She's Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook. Okay, yeah. I know when you talk to a beef farmer and you talk to a dairy farmer,
24:42Totally, they think, well, a cow is a cow is a cow, but it's not. There's nothing the same between beef farming and dairy farming. Oh yeah.  Totally different. Well, totally different objective. Yes, and they're totally different animals. For instance,  when our  cows have their calves, we're right there  and  we take care of them immediately.  Beef farmers, their critters are out in the field and they drop their calves and
25:10When they go out to try to tag their calves, the mama cow can be a little protective where our cows are so used to us being around them and with them all the time that there's really no problem. Just the difference  in  the way they are taken care of and raised.  One is not better than the other. It's just the different business. Yeah, I feel like the dairy cow mamas  are like, come see this beautiful thing I brought into the world. And the beef cow mamas are like, get the hell away from my kid.
25:40That's pretty much the way it is. And that was another thing that these activists would say that we would take calves away from our cows and the moms would just cry and cry and cry and cry. Well, that's never ever happened. We do take our calves away  after  they're born because we treat them and we bottle feed them to make sure they get the right amount of colostrum, which we take from the mother.  And we don't want other cows stepping on them.
26:08And so there's a reason why we do that and that's for the calf not to harm the mother and to say that the mother is standing there crying her eyes out. No, that doesn't happen.  And this is why I invite people like you on my podcast  so that you guys can tell the real story of what you do, how you do it and why you do it. Because  maybe, maybe with any luck.
26:34My podcast will educate enough people that the activists will have to step back and go, okay, maybe I need to go actually see what happens on a farm. Yeah. Yeah. That the thing is, is you don't know what you don't know until you know. Right. And most people don't want to take the time to figure that out. They, um, they're so passionate about what they think is true and what is right that they, they won't look at it through any other lens.  Yeah.
27:03That's, um, it's no fun.  I, I love a good debate. I love a good discussion. I don't love having a conversation with someone whose heels are so sunk in that they can't even begin to hear what my opinion is.  Right. They want to be right over knowing the truth. Yeah. And it's, it's fine. I mean, people can be who they are. I just don't necessarily want people who don't want to learn in my life. Right.
27:33And we've all got room to learn. Yeah. I'm doing my damnedest, Diane, to get the word out about what you guys do, how you do it, why you do it,  what you love about it,  and that it's not always easy, but it's good work. Yeah. There's nothing more rewarding than  having a newborn calf and taking care of a calf  or the smell of dirt in the spring or watching that corn that  you think about planting corn, you take a seed.
28:02You shove it down on the ground, you bury it, it gets no light, you hope it rains, and it's got to fight its way up through the soil to sprout. And then that little one kernel will turn into hundreds of kernels of corn to feed your cows. It's just, there's miracle after miracle after miracle on the farm. And I think the fact that farmers get a chance to see how God works gives them the ability to continue when it's really, really, really hard sometimes. Yeah.
28:32Absolutely.  We have a cornfield that surrounds our property and we've met the owner.  every year, well, the last two years is the third year running, they have been growing corn.  It was alfalfa.  And  I have found myself like feeling some weird kind of ownership regarding the corn coming up. They  seeded three weeks ago now, I think.
29:00And the corn plants  are probably five inches tall, six inches tall.  And the first year I was like, fricking corn, because I have allergies to the pollen. So basically mid July to mid August, I'm sneezing my head off from it, but that's okay. I'm getting used to it.  But this year they put in the seeds and I was like, oh, please let the weather be good this year. Please just let it be good. And this isn't even my corn.
29:29Diane, this is basically our neighbor's corn. And I was watching it just kind of misty rain this morning out there. was like, I bet those corn babies love that. And I'm like, why do I even care? It's not my corn. Well,  it's good that you do. That's part of the problem that we have here. These people will...
29:48move out into the country because they see these big old fields and they think, how wonderful, it's beautiful. And then when we go out there and we spread manure on the fields, then they complain because it stinks. But they don't realize those beautiful fields is food for our cows and the manure is a fertilizer. So,  you know, you have these visions of how things are supposed to be, but at least you're understanding and you're appreciating what it takes. And that's a good thing.  Yeah, the first year they grew it.
30:18Part of the way they plant is they kind of round the corner of our property. So there's actually corn growing on a few feet of our property. And I walked out and I said, Kyle, I said, do you think that they would mind if I grabbed an ear of corn that's actually on our property? He said, do you want to eat it? I said, no, I want to look at it. I want to husk it. I want to see what it looks like, because this is field corn. It's not sweet corn. And he was like, OK.
30:45He said, don't care. And I did. I pulled an ear off when I thought it was ready and I, I husted it and I looked at it. said, why does it have dents in it? And he said, cause it's dent corn.  I said, I don't know what dent corn is. I didn't grow up around anyone who grew corn. Explain this to me.  He said, it's field corn. He said, it's for feeding animals. He said, it's, it's not like sweet corn. And he said, he said, go Google it. He said, I can't explain this to you in a way that you will understand it. He says, I'm not going to explain it right.
31:15So I looked at dent corn versus sweet corn. I learned a whole lot of stuff that probably doesn't really matter to me personally, but I was like,  that's interesting.  Even the raccoons prefer sweet corn over field corn. We have acres and acres and acres of corn behind us. And then my son plants a few rows of sweet corn for us  and the raccoons will ignore the field corn and strip our sweet corn. Well, yeah, cause sweet corn is really yummy.  Very much so.
31:43You were talking about the manure being stinky.  I would  rather smell manure spread on a field than the gross slurry  that Minnesota has adopted. Yeah. Comma manure is much better than I believe than chicken or pig.  But it's whatever you get used to, I guess. But you know, that's one of the best fertilizers there is. Farmers have been
32:12doing this kind of stuff before it got popular in the mainstream, that's for sure.  Yeah, they're doing something now and it just is the stinkiest fertilizer. I'm assuming it's some kind of cow manure mixed with other stuff and it's like a liquid. we  have  slurry stores where we pump the manure in. In fact, we have to have that because in the wintertime we can't spread manure so it gets stored.
32:40And when that gets stirred up, it can be pretty pungent.  And it's a little bit different than spreading freshman new around the field. So yeah, it can get pretty stinky. That's just  the way it is. Yeah, the stuff that they are using around us, I don't think it's just what you're talking about. I think they have added stuff to it because it's got this  really chemically smell.  Oh, yeah, I don't know. I don't have any idea. Ours is straight.
33:10poop. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. But oh, the first time I smelled it, wasn't they don't I don't think they use it on the field around us. We were driving down a road nearby.  And they were doing it. And I was just like, I can't freaking breathe. I mean, the windows on the SUV were rolled up and I still was like, Oh, my God. Yeah.
33:31So I don't know what it is. I am all good with actual calminor. That's fine. I  grew up around people who used it. My dad would get a load for the garden in Maine when we lived there. And it actually was a normal smell for me in the fall and in the spring.  And then you were talking about people complaining about the people doing stuff in the fields after dark.  The first...
34:00The first year we were here in the spring,  they were doing stuff in the fields after dark.  And I was like, huh,  I wonder if that's going to keep me awake. And I couldn't really hear it, but the lights were coming in through the  curtains. And I just turned over the other way and went to sleep. was fine. And now if I hear them working out there with the combine when they're harvesting the corn,  it's comforting. It's like, oh, all is right with the world. They're doing their jobs. Everything is good.
34:30Yeah, yeah. It's all what you get used to.  Yeah, I kind of really love it.  I didn't know if I would, but I do.  So I think I might be a farm girl at heart. I don't know. Might be. don't think everybody should be. I think that we need all kinds of different people doing all kinds of different things because  variety is the spice of life. And all different kinds of farms. There's not one best way to farm. I don't believe there's.
34:59all kinds of farms that should be  respected.  Yes, I think that if you are doing good work and you are kind and respectful of other people, that's all that is asked of you. think that's perfect. Yep.  All right, Diane, where can people find you?  Afarmwife.com  and I'm on Facebook, A Farm Wife. I think I do have an Instagram, but I don't do that very much.
35:29Like I said, I'm tinkering around with trying to get a little bit more actively posting on the blog and I post on Facebook frequently, but the blog is kind of  been not as active as what it was before, but I  put my recipes and things out there too sometimes. So either one of those, a farm wife, there's several farm wife kind of things, but mine is a farm wife. Okay. Awesome.
35:58All right, Diana, try to keep these to half an hour and we are definitely there. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. This has been really enjoyable. I'm glad you did. Keep up the good work. People need to hear about all the different ways and things that people are  creating food and involved in taking care of Earth. Yes, because it's the only one we have. Yep.
36:26All right, as usual, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Diane, I hope you have a lovely evening. You too, thank you. Yep, thanks, bye. Bye.
 

Rawly-Mae Farm

Today I'm talking with Daniel and Joni at Rawly-Mae Farm.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Daniel and Joni at Rawly-Mae Farm in Tennessee.  Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Good morning, we're good. How are you?  I'm good. And as we just said before I hit record, you guys have been up all night getting ready for things going on in your life. And I have  some pretty good allergies kicking my ass this morning. So we're going to try to make this as good as we can.  So you were saying that  it's really  muggy in Tennessee this morning?
00:54It is. It's very humid and muggy and we're, it's dry enough for us to our hay. So we're getting our hay done right now. So. Says it feels like it's 87 degrees. Ugh, gross. Well, it's raining here. Just so listeners have a weather update from Minnesota to raining. Nice soaker. I'm really happy about this. This is good. So tell me about yourselves and what you do. So, um, we.
01:22of course, own Rawly-Mae Farm. We started that in 2021. We are a first generation. We've both been around agriculture, our whole lives. But when we got started, Daniel was a police officer with the city of Cookeville and I was a special education teacher in White County. So we have
01:52We both put in  over 10-year careers in those before we were both able to step away to just doing the farm. We have  two  children, Eliza who is nine and Ralston who is seven.  They are big into rodeo. We travel a lot with them and  try to support them the best we can  with all of their endeavors.
02:19I think we have too many pets to actually name  as far as the livestock and the  dogs and stuff. But  that's just kind of like a short snippet of our life. Okay, awesome.  And I don't want to,  I'm going to do the opposite of burying the lead on this one. You said that you are getting ready to sell your farm. So does that mean that you're getting out of this?
02:48No, it means we have outgrown where we're at currently. So we are landlocked where we are at. The airport in our area owns the land for the majority around us. So there's nowhere for us to expand. And with the amount of animals that we currently house,
03:17needing hay and just the production of it all, we're needing to expand. So  we've been looking in White County for a farm that offers more acreage.  Okay, good. Cause I was,  I was afraid this was going to be a sad episode because I just talked to somebody last night and she did end up selling her farm,  um, year or two ago and she's moved on to a new thing and she's very happy doing it, but she misses her farm a lot.
03:46Yeah, so I was like, oh no, not a second one selling no  Right  No intentions to stop  Good. Okay. So what do you guys do at Raleigh May?  So  we sell  various livestock  we focus mostly on menter cattle  and highland cattle  as well  as  various exotics like llamas alpacas,  especially chickens
04:14Polish, Silkeys, know, stuff like that. Mature donkeys are a big thing that we sell. And we do little bit of everything. I we travel all over the United States. I think we go to several livestock sales across the country. we recently, the first of last year, started doing our own deliveries, which has expanded to, you know, we're delivering to, I think we're up to 23 different states that we have delivered to or sold.
04:43livestock to over the past three and a half four years Wow, okay, and did I see that you guys take in animals that that need a home as well We do we've got Various rescue animals a lot of times when we buy animals to resell They just stay here. We all fall in love with them and they don't go anywhere. So that's
05:10One of the perks of the job is we get to see all kinds of animals and sometimes we like them too much for them to go anywhere else. They become part of your family? They do. They do. They're a large family. Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like you are overrun with family. Yes. We have new members of our family coming sometime in next two weeks. We have three barn kittens coming to live with us. Awesome. We just actually might.
05:38My cousin just gave us, she was going to give us a couple of her barn kittens and it turned into six barn kittens. we've recently found homes for four of them. So we're down to just the two. Well, we are the home. Our friends have three mama cats and the first one had babies about seven and a half weeks ago. All orange striped kittens. Oh wow. The whole litter. Oh yeah.
06:08And my son says that orange cats have  one brain cell spread amongst all of them. So  we're getting dumb cats as far as  my son's concerned. He thinks that they're all stupid.  I don't think they're stupid. I think they're pretty. So I'm good with this. And then her second cat had all orange kittens,  but one was black and they were born, I think five weeks ago. So they're not ready to leave mom yet.
06:36And I really want that one black kitten, but I don't want to wait another three weeks to get it. So,  so we're getting two females and a male because, um, luckily these kittens are free, but to buy barn cats is expensive. It's at the, at the humane society here in Minnesota. It's like $50, $50 for a barn cat.  Oh, wow.  Here in Tennessee, cats, you can't hardly give cats away.
07:06Uh huh. Yeah, well, I thought we were going to get one female and two males and my husband informed me yesterday that he wants two females and a male. And I said, um, that's a lot of kittens to find homes for. He said, we've lived here for almost five years. He said, how many cats have we lost where they've just flaked off or they've gotten him by a car  or a predator has picked them off. And I'm like,  um, more than I can remember. So probably a few.  said,  yeah. He said, do you really think we're going to have a problem with.
07:35with having too many cats. was like, we might. He said, well, we're going to get two females and a male and we'll see how it goes. I said, okay, that's your choice. I said, cause it was my choice, it would be two males and a female. So we'll see how it goes, but we're very excited to have new kittens on the property again, cause I love kittens. They're so cute. So does our daughter. Yeah. And that's about the only thing we, we home here where we bring in cause
08:03We have chickens, have a dog, we have two male barn cats right now and that is it. There are animals on the property.
08:11Wow. Yeah. Little tiny space and not a whole lot of critters. And I'm good with this. I'm really good with this. I understand that when it comes to taking care of all of them. Yeah. But so excited that you have so many different kinds. Like I looked at the photos on your website and I was like, wow, they have got to be tending to animals from sunup to sundown and probably past midnight. It's a lot.
08:39I say that our house gets neglected because we're never in it.  So we plan to downsize  house-wise. So  we spend all of our time at the barn. It's a never-ending  job, but  the kids are really good helpers. They each have their own favorite to take care of. Good, because you are teaching them responsibility and pride of ownership and all the good things. Yes.
09:08Yep. Good.  So do you have milk cows? We don't currently have milk cows. We have had some,  um, miniature jerseys before.  Um, usually we get those per request for people that are looking for certain specific ones.  Um, I would love a milk cow,  um, of my own,  but  Daniel seems to think that we don't exactly have the time.
09:37Poor milk cow. Daniel might be right. not, I don't know, I to get in middle of your marriage, but you guys get a lot going on.  We do, yes, yeah.  Okay, so  I don't want to ask a nosy question. I always feel like I'm being nosy when  I bring this up, but  is this all you guys do? Is this your job? It is, yes.
10:02You know, most of what I do  is, you know, like, so we go different livestock sales, we buy from... A lot of times we'll buy out small farms. So there'll be farms that are just either they're elderly and don't want to  or unable to maintain their farm and want to sell their animals  or they have a large ranch  and they're looking for folks to bring a trailer and buy in bulk. And so a lot of times I will buy and then we'll do a lot of deliveries.
10:31And then Joni  is  usually here feeding, helping with  the rodeos.  And in September of last year, we decided to homeschool our children, which is  another full-time task that she has taken on.  So  that's our full-time  gig.  It sounds like a good gig. You get to be with your family all the time. That's fabulous.  Absolutely. Great. And Joni?
10:59Good job and congratulations on the homeschooling thing. It's a lot of work. I did it with my two.  It's a lot of work. It's a lot of time and patience and good on you for doing that. Well, thank you.  It is a lot of time and  I, you know, I taught for 11 years and  I just, we kind of had the realization I'm spending seven hours a day with other people's children.  Our son is a top one diabetic.
11:28So we  felt the need for us to be more readily available to him  was a priority as well.  for sure. Yeah, definitely. You guys are good parents. I love it when I get to talk to people who take parenting  seriously and as  the joy and the honor that it is. Yes. Yeah. Well,  they're definitely a blessing  from God.
11:59We wholeheartedly believe  they're only ours for a little while. They belong to our father and we're honored that he chose us to be their parents.  And, you know,  we only get the blessing to  raise them, to turn them out into  a world where hopefully they're going to be, you know, warriors for him. And  we do take a lot of pride in that. Good. Good. I'm glad.
12:25I have four grown kids, youngest is 23 now, oldest is 35. And I lived, I like literally lived to raise them to the age of adulthood so they could take care of themselves. That was my one goal after I had my first daughter, my first child who was my only daughter. And now that the youngest is 23, I'm like, huh, I did my job and I kind of worked myself out of a job.
12:53And that's how the podcast got born because I needed a job. needed something to do. Yeah. It's kind of, it's bittersweet that you work your whole life as a mom and a dad to raise them, to take care of themselves. And then it's bittersweet when you've accomplished that. Yeah. It's a weird thing. Like I've said it a couple of times on the podcast already, when they put my daughter, my first born in my hands.
13:19After she was born, I looked at her and I thought, oh my goodness, 18 years is a long time. Because I was really young, I had just turned 20. And  it looked like a very tall mountain to climb. And  she hit 18 and I was like, oh my God, 18 minutes went by in a blink.  sorry, it's not a  18 years went by in a blink.  And so for anybody out there who's in the trenches with their kids right now,
13:47try to enjoy every moment of it, even if the moments are hard because they go so fast. Yes, yeah, they do. They go so fast. it's, you know, something we get caught up in is the hustle and the bustle of, you know, the farm and there's always something to do and something to get done. But  it,  it's nice when the kids can come along and  you're teaching them
14:15while making all these memories with them.  yeah, they're never going to forget this stuff. They're going to talk to their great grandchildren about it. Yes, yeah. And that's the other thing I hang on to is that everything we do as parents, if we're doing it right, it's going to be a happy memory that gets passed down. Yeah, yes. I know I was just  was reading something. I just posted something on Facebook this morning.
14:44And it was like something about my mom was always, I never understood why my mom was always irritated and now I'm irritated junior. And I got to giggling because I never really thought my mom growing up, my mom passed away the same year we moved here. And I never really,  I always tend to compare myself to her because she was such a good mom and  Daniel, he can vouch for this. I'm hard on myself because she always
15:12went through life so gracefully raising us and we never knew her struggles. And I've recently found some of her journals and I have been reading them and I have, I'm fixing to be 37 and I've just realized, oh, well, you know, my mom, struggled too. Like she has all these feelings that I had and you know, she, so I hope and pray that my, we're passing on the memories that the kids will remember all the good and that we've kind of shielded them from most of the struggles.
15:42Yeah, and don't beat yourself up too much, Joni. We all see our parents as like not human.  They're not people. They're just our parents.  And I'm just as guilty of it as you are. I have called my mom and my dad many, many times in the last 30 years and said,  I was thinking about this thing when I was 12 or when I was 13 or when I was 15 or when I was 17 that I did. And I'm so sorry.  And they laugh because they don't  even remember it.
16:10It was just a blip for them. Yeah.  So yeah, we don't see our parents as actual human beings that have their own thoughts and feelings and lives. We see them as the boss, think.  So,  Okay. So,  what else can I ask you?  What's the best thing about what your life is?  What do you think the best experiences that you've had in doing what you're doing? Well, I think one thing is
16:39You know, there's,  if you read the news and you see the stories about  farmland disappearing and you see everywhere, you know, farmland is disappearing. There's, you know, subdivisions coming, businesses coming. What we get to do is we supply  many farms  all over  the country. And it seems like many farms are popping up everywhere, small homesteads.  So we're getting to help.
17:09agriculture, you know, we're helping establish many farms, we're, you know, walking people through the process. And that's a lot of fun because we're seeing a lot of like-minded families that are trying to do, raise their children, do what's right. And so even though farmland is disappearing, we're seeing more mini farms, more hobby farms pop up with, you know, people having the right intentions of raising their family and trying to get back to, you know,
17:38taking care of animals and going through the process that we've got away from. So that's sort of rewarding on our end.  awesome. And  since you brought up farmland disappearing, here in Minnesota, if there is a big tract of farmland, I  think it has to be over 40 acres before you can sell any part of it. Like if your property is only 40 acres, you can't subdivide it.
18:06Really? that how it is in Tennessee or not?  It's not, no.  They have tax incentives here.  If you have 15 acres plus, they consider it as farmland.  You get some tax exemptions for certain things, but there's no requirements of certain acreage before subdivision or any requirements like that. Okay. Well, I think part of it is that half of Minnesota is
18:34forest land and half of it is farmland. The top half is forest, the bottom half is farmland really. And Minnesota is interesting because it has so many different geological  features. Like we had the prairie lands, had the  oak savannas, we had the  evergreen forest stuff.
19:00I think Minnesota has been really trying to preserve what they can that's left. And I think that's why that law is in place.  And also Minnesota is part of the heartland. We may be upper Midwest, but we also grow a lot of food here.  So I think that Minnesota knows that we've got it pretty good. We probably ought to take care of it.  think. then  what's the, what's the worst day you've had at your place? Cause I'm sure there's been a bad day.
19:31Every other day. Oh no. It's very stressful. know, because the expenses have gone up, fuel has gone up, know, feed prices have gone up. You know, there's always, you know, something that needs to be repaired or something fixed, more equipment you buy. You know, so it can be very stressful. You a of times we have social media accounts and
19:57you know, all the positive things get shown on social media, but not necessarily all the behind the scenes.  You know, we want to show the best of the farm and the best of the agriculture.  And of course we, you know, we follow several of our farm pages, but everybody wants to their best.  And most people don't realize that I think every farm out there has a stress and struggles that we don't often share with each other.
20:25Yeah, I feel like we should probably share it more. Like we've  had bad days here at our little three acre homestead, but it hasn't been anything earth shattering. It's just been sad.  But I know I follow some accounts where people have lost horses they've had for 20 something years out of the blue and I have watched them cry on camera. You know?
20:51And I really think that more people should be just slightly more transparent about the bad days. Because I've said this before and I will stand by it. I think that you have to be a certain kind of person to raise animals. You are putting your heart and soul into them.  And if something bad happens, it really hurts your soul. And so  I think that people need to know that because everybody posts all these beautiful things.
21:20of these gorgeous animals that are in the prime of their lives, running around, having the zoomies, eating great food, doing the thing. And he was like, Oh, that looks like so much fun. I want to do that. And then you see the stories of an animal dying and these people just sobbing. And it's like,  I might need to think about that a little bit longer. Yes. Yeah.  And I think I posted one time. So the kids and I hatched some goslings last summer. We hatched  geese eggs and
21:50We had three that hatched out of all the ones that we and we  Those little things would follow the kids around like they were their parents  Hand raised them they got big enough to where they could go to the barn so we had them in like a cage and one of the  horse stalls  and I came out one morning. This is probably the most  One of my worst days here Daniel wasn't here. He was off. He was hauling livestock and
22:20Um, I went out and I thought, man, that little  one looks  different. Something's not right with it. So I got over closer and it's lower mandible of its jaw, like its beak,  um, was gone. Yeah. Entire bottom portion of its beak and I found it and something through the night where we suspect maybe a raccoon  reached and tried to pull it out.
22:48But it had pulled  its tongue, its jawbones, like off of its face and it was still alive.  in my head, I knew that it could not survive because they had no way to eat or drink. But dealing with that  and losing that one.  And then we had  a dog that,  some pups that we had rescued.
23:17that  their livestock, like they were blue healers  and they didn't fare well with my chickens. So  that was another bad  day. So you don't see the raw  of it.  And sometimes I wonder if people are prepared for  what is the raw of farm life.
23:44Yeah. And I don't think everybody needs to be prepared for it because it's going to hit you whether you're prepared for it or not.  Like if you want to buy land and you want to have animals and you want to grow a garden,  do not let me discourage you from doing that. But listen to people who already doing it.  I think my saddest day here on the farm in the last four and a half years  was we had a mama cat who was basically a teenager herself.
24:14and she had four or five babies. And when the kittens were about three and a half weeks old, mama cat disappeared. Like we couldn't find her. We didn't, we don't know what happened to her. We had three and a half week old kittens.  They are not, they are not old enough to take care of themselves. They still need mom's milk and  they were starving to death. And we gave it a day to see if she would come back and she did not. And  my husband said, we are not raising kittens.
24:44We're not doing it. We're not bottle feeding them. He said, we have enough going on. We're going to be up every hour and a half feeding kittens. This is not going to work. And I said, you're absolutely right. I said, but I can't watch you put them down. I can't. Yeah, it's, it's hard, but we, we bottle fed one kitten that didn't even have its eyes open. So I fully understand not wanting to do that.
25:10Yeah, that was probably the saddest day and I didn't actually cry then because we'd already lost barn cats to cars and they just disappeared but the mama cat was such a sweetheart and I was more sad that she had left her babies like like she something must have taken her because  mama animals don't leave their babies for anything if they can help it and the next day my husband was like are you okay and I'm like I'm just sad I said that's
25:39something bad happened to her.  he was like, well, something bad happened to the kittens too, obviously. We dealt with it. And I'm like, no, I know. But mamas don't leave their babies.  It's not natural for them to just leave.  I said, so something must have gotten her. And he's like, I think you love mama cat more than kittens. I said, I hadn't even gotten to know the kittens yet. I knew the mama cat. Right.
26:05So even that, I mean, I always know that if we have cats on the property, they are here for a limited amount of time. That's just how I look at it.  But that one kicked my butt.  was very sad for about a week and a half about it.  And I know what I'm getting into. I mean, we knew when we moved here what  we were looking at. So it's okay. But there are just hard days. And there are also days that just make you want to
26:32I don't know, get on your knees and thank God that it went the way it went, that it was great, that it worked out. Yeah, absolutely. So, I don't know, it's a hard life, but it's a good life, I guess is what I always come back to. Yes, yeah, it is. All the good outweighs the bad. Hopefully, if we're really lucky and the Lord is shining his light upon us, we are going to have that result. There are also people that that doesn't happen to.
27:02You know, and if you're lucky enough to be in that situation,  awesome. It's fantastic. It's a freaking miracle.  Yes. Yeah. So,  um, so you guys are moving to a bigger property. Have you already found it?  Yes, we have  put an offer  contingent on the sale of  the current farm.  so we're just waiting for this one to go on the market. Probably.
27:32this week sometime, even as early as tomorrow and start the moving process. Awesome. Awesome. Are you going to bring in anything new or are you just going to continue with what you're doing, way that you're doing it, just on a bigger property? Well, I'm voting for a zebra. Yeah. There's a zebra running around Tennessee right now that is loose. It's quite the stir, but yes, we've
27:59We've had some exotics.  We've had water buffalo. We've had an e-lend, which is like an antelope.  And so we're open to maybe bringing a few more exotics and we  try to locate exotics for folks as well. So if there's different exotics that people are looking for, we can help them locate what they're wanting and  facilitate that as well.  But my vote is a zebra or a camel. Yeah, camels are a
28:28Big, big animal, Joni. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Or a kangaroo maybe. How about a wallaby? I hear wallabies are friendlier than kangaroos. I don't know. Daniel had a bad, they, Daniel and the kids had a bad experience with a wallaby not too long at a,  a live dog tail. It got loose and was like  running or got into a pen with some of the,  what was it? Black-tailed deer  and the deer and the, when it was a disaster, they had stuff running everywhere.  Oh no.
28:58Okay.  When you guys talk about exotics, would you consider like, um, I don't know, parrots or cockatiels or, you know, those kinds of birds, would you consider an alligator or are you just, are you just talking to- Our kids would. Yeah.  There's a certain states have different laws on exotics.  And so there are certain exotics you have to have permits for, and we would probably never get to the point of having to be a permitted,  um, exotic dealer.
29:28you know, our law stock dealer license is a little bit restrictive on what we can and cannot sell. We're registered through the state of Tennessee and we have to, you know, our records get inspected by the state and we also have to be bonded through Packers and Stockyards through USDA. So there's, we're limited a little bit on what we can buy, purchase, you know, and sell. So can't go too crazy with it, but we can still get.
29:57you know, various exotics, which is basically anything other than your cows, horses, you know, stuff like that. Okay, cool. I just, hear exotic and I think of the exotic, um,  veterinarian lady on TV. don't remember her name now  and she does, she does all kinds of stuff. like, Oh my God, I can't believe you're treating that animal. That's crazy.  Um, okay. So where can people find you guys? We have, uh, we're on Tik TOK,  uh, YouTube.
30:26Facebook, we have a website that we keep trying to update and keep running out of time. know, have a Google, the phone number and all that's on there. Okay. Are all your accounts Raleigh May Farms? Yes, ma'am. sure are. Okay, cool. All right, you guys, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today and sharing your stories about how hard this stuff is because it is hard, but it's good. And as always, got any...
30:55As always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  I hope you guys have a great day. Thank you. too. Thank you.