A Tiny Homestead

Ironstone Creek Farm

Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. Good morning, Carri. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. Thank you. You're in Pennsylvania? That is correct. Okay. What's the nearest city to you?
00:27Um, and most people are familiar with either Reading, Pennsylvania or Allentown, Pennsylvania. We're kind of in the middle of that, those two. Is that the Allentown in the Billy Joel song? Do you know? I actually do not know. I'm not sure. I'm willing to bet it is. Okay. So, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Um, so, um, we have.
00:56a multi-faceted farm, I would say. We have a little less than 20 acres here, and we, number one, raise some animals for meat. So we raise Berkshire pigs, chickens, and turkeys. We also have some sheep that we do raise for meat as well. And then the other side of our farm is our pet animals. So our.
01:25Pet animals include pet pigs and goats, bunnies, and we have a little mini cow. So we do some on-farm events here, and then we also have a mobile petting zoo. Fantastic, I love it. Okay, so tell me how this started, because not everybody in the world goes, hey, I'm gonna buy a farm and share the animals with the whole world. Right, correct.
01:54Um, so I grew up in Southern Lancaster County. I was surrounded by farmland. Um, growing up, I spent probably 95% of my time outside barefoot, playing in the creeks, um, around animals. And I've just always loved animals. Um, so I didn't have a farm for, um, many of my married years, um, but it was always the goal.
02:20So we had been searching for a farm for probably about 12 years and finally, you know, came upon this one here in Boyertown that seemed to be the right fit. So we went ahead and purchased it and we spent about 10 months fixing up the house in order to move our family in. And then once we were in, we started with 12 chickens and two goats.
02:47And it just rapidly expanded from there. I wasn't planning on having a petting zoo. I wasn't planning on really any of this, but it just happened organically where our herd expanded really quickly. I fell in love with the animals. I was getting a ton of joy out of spending time with them. And I just figured, why shouldn't everyone else enjoy them?
03:16So I started really small just with like, you know, a little mini petting zoo and it's just grown exponentially over the past couple years. So I don't know how to ask this without sounding weird. How many people have been to your farm do you think to see the animals? You know, I don't know the answer to that question.
03:44I'm not open to the public. We are open by appointment. And then we do have several public events throughout the year where we open the farm up. And those are kind of paid events where we have other vendors coming in and lots of activities for kids. It's always geared toward kids. But, I mean, there have been.
04:10been events where we've had a lot of people. Our fall festival is always very popular. And I think last year we had somewhere around 1,000 people for that particular event. So I guess over the past couple years, again, I don't know exactly how many, but several thousand. Yeah. Reason I asked is because back when I was younger and our kids were small.
04:40We used to go to places like yours, only in Minnesota. And we'd take our kids to see cows and sheep and goats and stuff. And the kids absolutely loved it. And so did I, for that matter. Yes, absolutely. And now that we're not the parents of small children, and we live on a homestead that we love, we don't really go to farms anymore because we're too busy on our own property to have time to go.
05:09A friend of mine had a puppy socialization event yesterday. She has nine little Australian shepherd pups that they breed, Australian shepherds, and she needed to get them familiar with new people and new sounds and new voices. And we would have gone, but we had too much going on here yesterday to attend. Our dog is a half sibling to these new puppies. Okay.
05:34So we just don't go to these things as much as we used to. So I think gearing it towards kids on your side is a brilliant idea because parents want stuff to take their kids to that teaches the kids, that gives the kids something to enjoy and basically to give the kids something fun to do so you're hitting all those marks. Correct. Which is amazing. So what...
06:03What continues to drive you to do this? Is it just how much fun it is? Um, yeah, I've heard from, um, directly from some children who have visited and then also from parents, many, many parents saying things like this is the first time, um, my child has been able to touch a bunny or has interacted with a goat, um, or seen a cow in real life. And for me,
06:33That's really special to be able to provide something like that for people who are coming from all over the place to be able to experience that for the first time. And then I have repeat customers or guests that come here to the farm and they come all of the time because they've fallen in love with the animals that we have here. One little girl, she can't wait until she's old enough to come and volunteer here.
07:03Their family comes to every event that we have and she just is in love with the piglets. And she spends so much time with them and just enjoys that so much that she wants to come and work here when she's old enough. So you know, that's the kind of thing that it feels good to be able to, you know, provide that for kids. It was something that I was immersed in when I was a kid growing up, so I didn't necessarily realize.
07:33Um, you know, how much kids would maybe miss out on something like that if it wasn't provided. Yes. So, um, okay. I had a thought and just, it just went by. Uh, damn it. Can't remember what I was going to ask you. Um, um, um, um, okay. I'll ask you something else. Okay. Do you have, do you have a another job or is this, is this what you consider to be your job?
08:04Yeah, so I do have another job. I work at a local restaurant. That kind of supplements my income. I have definitely made it a goal to work myself out of my other job. I really do want the farm to be my full-time gig, but it's a very slow and difficult process making the farm
08:33profitable. So I have to come up with new ideas all the time and, you know, just try to grow and expand as much as possible because it is very expensive to feed animals. And the more animals we have, the more it costs to, you know, maintain the property and care for the animals properly. So the answer is yes, I do have an outside job.
09:02Um, but I would like to not have that job eventually. Yeah. That's the answer I get from a lot of people I talked to on the podcast. They're like, I love what I do at home, but I can't quite afford to just be home doing the thing I love to do. Yeah. Um, okay. So I saw on your website that you do fluffy friends sleepovers. Tell me about that. Yeah. In addition to the mobile petting zoo, we have a lot of different offerings.
09:30One of them is the Fluffy Friend Sleepover, where people can have bottle baby goats, a couple bunnies, some piglets, chicks even. You know, they can bring them to their house for a sleepover essentially, and then I, you know, come back and get them the next day. It's a really nice addition to sleepover birthday parties for kids.
10:00I've, you know, a lot of people have really enjoyed that. Um, they don't have to commit to an animal full time. They can just borrow it for a night. Yes. And that leads me to my next questions because I'm always worried about the liabilities of things like this. Um, does Pennsylvania have like rules about you doing this or, or do they not care? Um, that particular, um,
10:29You know, the sleepovers, I don't believe so. You know, we have a liability waiver through the Department of Agriculture that we have everyone sign. And they receive a pretty in-depth care packet. And of course, I'm always available if anything would come up that they could, you know, reach out to me and say, hey, I have a question, can.
10:56the bunny have a carrot or whatever it might be, I try to make it as seamless as possible. Yeah, that's what I was wondering about because number one, you don't want the kids getting hurt. Correct. Number two, you don't want your animals getting hurt or killed. Right. I'm sure there's a whole lot of planning that goes into having your animals visit someone overnight. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I provide all of the setup required.
11:26you know, the playpen and the floor mat and their food and water and their bed, you know, where they sleep. All of that is provided by me. And then again, the care package, which kind of is, you know, a multi-page paper that goes over it's, you know, frequently asked questions and answers and, you know, just general type things that would help people get through the sleepover without much trouble. Okay.
11:55Then the next question I have about this is, do you have parents that surprise their kids with this particular event for their party? Oh, yes, absolutely. And do you have stories? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's always very well received by the kids. I do have parents who the next day they're like, yep, we can officially say we do not want to have a piglet. But the kids are always like, ecstatic and, you know, love the whole experience.
12:25Of course, mom and dad are the ones that are cleaning up after and things like that. But these surprise type sleepovers have always been very well received by the kids for sure. I bet the photos and videos that get taken at these parties are amazing. Oh yeah, definitely. And I love receiving them because, I mean, just the smiles and the...
12:54You know, the excitement from the kids is the whole reason for doing it. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I remembered my question from earlier when you were talking. When you have people come out to visit, do you teach them about the animals? Like do the kids that don't understand that milk comes from cows, do you explain this stuff to them? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't have...
13:22you know, a scripted lesson or anything like that. But when people come to visit, if they, you know, are looking at a particular animal and they have questions, I'm happy to, you know, let them know whatever I know. And I'm still learning too. But, you know, a lot of people ask things about goats. Oh, the boys have horns and the girls don't.
13:50So I'm able to say, actually, both male and female goats have horns. Some of my goats don't have horns, but that's because they are naturally pulled, which means they're born naturally without horns. So that's a genetic thing. And so that's the type of thing. It's kind of organic where if they ask questions, I try to answer as knowledgeably as possible.
14:18Like I said, I don't have a scripted lesson or anything like that. My favorite answer when people come here and ask us questions is I don't know the answer to that, but I know Google does. Yes, absolutely. And I'm a stickler about Google. I have to look at five or six different, quote unquote, reputable websites before I decide that there's an answer that I am comfortable giving to people.
14:46Sure. Yeah, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Yeah. And you've got to be careful. Like when my kids were in high school, not too long ago, I was in high school a long time ago. My kids, not so long ago, they were told they were not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source on papers they wrote because it was not, it was not reputable enough to use as a source. Sure. I suspect that that may not be the case now.
15:16But yeah, they were like, nope, you're not allowed to use Wikipedia. And there were some teachers who actually made them go to an actual library and have the librarian help them find information to put in their papers because librarians know what's reputable and what's not. Sure. Absolutely. Big shout out to librarians. They still have jobs. They still are experts in everything they do. I love libraries. So.
15:44I want to make sure that people know that you can actually still go to a building that has actual books in it. Yeah. It's not a thing of the past. No, and I hope it never is. I really hope that libraries are in existence well beyond my grandkids' lifetimes because libraries are a place of safety and peace, I think. Absolutely.
16:09So I don't usually talk about libraries and I thought I would throw it in there because they're hard. Okay, so how hard is this job that you have built for yourself? It is extremely hard, harder than I ever would have imagined. Well, just physically.
16:35You know, I'm a smaller person. I like to think that I'm strong. But this is a very, very physical job carrying feed bags and stacking hay bales and straw bales. And, you know, just in general, working around the farm is very physical. So that aspect of it is definitely hard. And even with the mobile petting zoo, you know, we load up. And when I say we,
17:03My family helps as much as they can, but my children are in school and my husband is a teacher. So I would say, you know, the majority of it does fall on me and that's fine because it's what I built and it's my job. But with the mobile petting zoo, you know, I load the trailer with all of the supplies and pens and everything that's needed.
17:29Then load the animals and head to the location and then unload and set everything up and unload the animals and do the multi-hour petting event whether it's Sometimes it's one hour, but mostly two to three to four hour long events And then load everything back up in the trailer Head back to the farm and then unload again. You know, that's a full day of physical labor, so anybody who thinks it's
17:59easy or you know cute. It is it is cute but it is it is not for the you know faint of heart. Yeah how many how many events do you do a week? Um I have mostly on the weekends it's mobile events um so I do try to fill my weekends with um you know two or three
18:26outside things and then during the week I have people come for visits. We do baby goat bottle feeding and baby goat snuggling and cow snuggling and piglet snuggling and so I do have people coming and going at the farm throughout the week but it just varies. The fall is a very busy time of year. This summer is very busy. Over the winter it slows down a lot because obviously it's cold so we don't want to have the animals outside.
18:56Um, so it varies. Yeah. All I can see is a calendar on your wall color coded for all the stuff you have going on in the summer and the fall. I absolutely have that. It's the full year calendar. It covers it's maybe, um, I don't know, two feet by three feet or so. And it's got my scribbling all over it. I'm probably the only one that would understand it or be able to read it, but everything's there. Yeah. And
19:25It's funny because all our cell phones and our computers have calendars in them. And I keep all the upcoming interviews that I have scheduled in my phone because it's the easiest way to do it. But I really get itchy to have an actual planner. I have not bought one yet. But I really want to buy like a big one and just set it on my desk open to the week that we're on.
19:52and have like little stickers that represent what each place does just because it's fun. Sure. I haven't done it, but I want to. Yeah, I use the digital calendars as well. I have the calendar on my phone and obviously the one that links to, you know, different apps that I use and things like that. But visually, I'm a very visual person. It's much easier for me to see the full scale.
20:19calendar where I can see from month to month to month and everything that's written in there. Just taking that glance at that calendar is much easier for me than going through my phone. So that's just personally how I am able to operate. Have you ever double booked yourself for an event? Yes, I have. Have you really? Yes. I would say probably not by accident.
20:47I do have a close friend, actually met her through the restaurant that I work at, but she has a very entrepreneurial spirit just like me. She's kind of willing to get down and dirty and dig in and do anything necessary to help out or gain a little bit of cash here on the side or whatever. So I have in the past had multiple requests.
21:17for the same day and time. And I'm able to make that happen with the help of people like her. That's amazing. I love that. I have double booked myself for interviews, like three times now in the year and a couple months I've been doing this. And I feel like an idiot every time I do it. I'm like, why do I keep doing this?
21:41And what it is is that I get so excited that people say yes, that I'm just like, oh, cool, I'll get that in the calendar. And then I look a week later, I'm like, ah, crap, I gotta change time. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I understand that. I actually have some scheduling issues with my outside job, where in a restaurant, it's a little bit different with scheduling. You don't have the same schedule every single day.
22:09week, you know, it's not nine to five every day. So I'll plan events and then I'll request off knowing that I have that event coming up. But they can't always honor a request based on what other people are doing and what you know, if there's a big party or they need extra workers or whatever it is, that has come up a few times where I've gotten scheduled to work and I've already been booked for an event and I'm like, now what do I do?
22:38So thankfully, I've never gotten stuck in a situation where I couldn't find someone to cover for me, but that would be bad. Yeah, that would not be great. Okay, so you have a couple events coming up here in the near future, yes, at the farm? Yes. Or not at the farm? Yeah. Well, our next big event here at the farm, open to the public, is our Halloween Spooktacular.
23:07So that's on October 26th and I'm so excited for this event. It's going to be so much fun. We're asking kids if they want to come in costume. It's going to be a very kid friendly Halloween. So with this event coming up, we're obviously going to have our petting zoo, all of our animals out for viewing and petting. We're also having a bounce house and a face painter.
23:37We have barrel carts that we've invested in for the events here on our farm. So we'll have our barrel carts out to give rides. That's super fun. We have a few food trucks coming. And I'll have a pumpkin patch set up with some pumpkin decorating activities. And I actually just last night had a friend of mine who's involved in a Jeep club ask if they could please.
24:05bring their Jeep club and do a trunker treat at the event. So that's a new addition. And so it's just, it's ever evolving and it's gonna be a really fun Halloween party for kids. Wow, that's a lot to keep track of. It definitely is, yes. Okay, and how do people get to be at this thing? So I am primarily on Facebook.
24:33So I have our farm Facebook page. We post events there, and then I share them out through my personal page and to different groups. I'm involved in a lot of different mom groups in our areas. So, you know, that's a great way to kind of let moms know, hey, this event is coming up. It's really great for the kids. And then they just, you know, kind of click the link and get all the information off of our farm page.
25:03So that's my main mode of, you know, kind of getting the word out at this point. I am the first one to admit I am terrible with technology. So I do have an Instagram. I don't understand it. I'm terrible at using it. I know that it's something that I need to invest time in and learn. I just haven't done it yet. So.
25:33That's one thing that I have, you know, that I struggle with a little bit, but I do plan to try to get better at. I also am trying to revamp the website because right now our website is specific to the mobile petting zoo. But there are so many other facets of our farm. So I really want to completely redo our website at some point and, you know, have different tabs.
26:03people who are interested in purchasing quality pasture raised meats because that is one thing that we do here. Another tab for the events here at the farm and then the mobile events, another tab. So that's all, it's in my head right now. Getting it to actually happen is, that's...
26:30It takes time and money and all of those things. So I'm sure you understand that, but. Oh yes, I do understand. So if people want to come to the Halloween event, how do they just show up and pay at the door? Is that how it works? Yeah, yeah. We try to make it super affordable. So we charge only $5 for adults and then $10 for children.
26:57Everything, every single activity is included in the cover, in that entrance fee. The only thing that is a separate payment is the food, if they wanted to purchase food from the food trucks. But, you know, for me, I have kids. So, I know going to an amusement park and spending the, I mean, what is it now, $60 to $80 for a ticket.
27:26To get into an amusement park is not necessarily doable for me Especially with my four-year-old because you know, there's activities that they can't even yeah Participate in being that age. So I try to make it you know Affordable for parents to bring a toddler. I feel like you know ten dollars is is doable and you do really get a lot of
27:53spend for your buck at these events, like I said, with all of the different activities that we're offering. And you can spend as much time, there's not a time limit. So you could stay for an hour, you could stay for three hours, whatever you want to do. And so yeah, you just show up at the door or the gate and pay and have a blast. That's amazing. So I have a question about weather.
28:21Does weather impact this, your events at the farm? Yeah, it does. We can't necessarily do rain or shine events. If it's a little sprinkling, it's not a big deal, but if there's rain, it does impact it. And we have field parking. So we have to be careful if there's a lot of rain about driving, you know, doing parking on the fields.
28:51And then just the activities are all outdoors. So you don't want to be on a bounce house in the pouring rain. You don't necessarily want to, you know, be petting animals in the pouring rain. Nobody wants to pet a soggy bunny. So we do have a rain date, which is the following day, the 27th. But that is something that, you know, has been an issue in the past with, you know,
29:20completely outdoor event. Yes, exactly. I was just wondering if you had a rain date scheduled because in Minnesota it's been known to snow on Halloween. Oh my goodness. I think it snowed a little bit last Halloween and there was a huge storm here back before I moved here. We moved just after the Halloween storm. Okay. It was 91, I think. Okay.
29:47And Minnesota got socked with like three feet of snow on Halloween. Wow. And so you're in Pennsylvania, you're a fairly Northern ish, your state. So it could snow, who knows? It could, who knows? I mean, it would be unfortunate. I would be sad to have to, you know, postpone or cancel the event, but, um, it is something that is on my radar. Yeah. Um, luckily I'm not pre-selling tickets for this event.
30:17So we wouldn't have to get involved in, you know, doing a bunch of refunds or anything like that. But I'm so looking forward to it. It's going to be so much fun. I would hate to cancel it. Yes, exactly. And I'm not trying to be a downer here. I'm just saying that sometimes you have the best intent and plans and hope.
30:41The universe goes, not today. Not today. But we're going to hope. We're going to cross our fingers and our toes and everything that you have beautiful, warmish weather for October for your spooktacular because I think that the kids are really going to enjoy it. It sounds really fun. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. We'll see what happens. All right, carry well. I tried to keep these to half an hour and we're at 30 minutes and 55 seconds. So I'm going to cut you loose.
31:09Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. This was really fun. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. All right, you have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Andy's Little Homestead

Today I'm talking with Andy at Andy's Little Homestead.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Andy at Andy's Little Homestead. Good morning, Andy. How are you? How's it going, Mary? It's going great. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. I don't know what it's like in Michigan. It's beautiful, but the cold's starting to get here.
00:27We were down about 29 degrees last night Yeah, we've had two mild frosts in the last two weeks and the the hard frost is probably coming next week So yeah, my wife was my wife was showing me on the weather report I guess next next week is our first chance of snow for the year, which is about average, you know middle of October Well, at least we're not in Florida today Yeah, yeah
00:56That was a big reason that we had kind of looked at Michigan initially coming from Eastern North Carolina was there's no hurricanes. Mm-hmm. Yes. I don't want to live where the creatures want to kill me and the weather wants to kill me too. Yep. I'll pass. I'm not into alligators and poisonous snakes and spiders. I like Minnesota because we have none of those here. So...
01:26Anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, um, I, uh, the short version of the long story is that, uh, at, um, at 30 years old, uh, my, my life hit a, hit a big restart. Um, it was all centered around, um, or more or less centered around when I, when I got sober, I was pretty bad alcoholic for a long time.
01:55and moved up to northern Michigan and from eastern North Carolina and lived in a camper and I started filming. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a little over 700,000 followers on Facebook, though I'm kind of trying to push everybody over to YouTube.
02:25on a piece of raw land that's got nothing here basically when we bought it and doing it on a pretty tight budget like many people are out there. Yeah, so that's what I do. I make videos. Fun, and a good way to make a living. I have no complaints about that. Yeah, exactly.
02:51As I've said on the podcast before, I do not love doing video unless it's just the quick little thing on my phone outside when the kittens are being cute. Because video does require setup and thinking through the shot and trying to find something that people will be interested in seeing. And it has to be watchable and I don't have the patience. So I don't do video. Oh yeah, no. There's a lot that goes into it. Every angle.
03:20every little change, you know, I um, so when the channel started to grow, I did a little bit of research, just like, I literally watch videos about making videos. Just to kind of figure it out. And, you know, one of those things that's not really thought about very much is that if you ever notice on my videos, I never have a single camera angle that lasts more than like six to 10 seconds.
03:49and that's intentional, that's to keep everything visually interesting. You know, a lot of people have short attention spans, so that's, I don't want to call it a trick, I mean they've been doing it in movies and TV shows for years. But it's one of those things that is extra, it makes the projects take longer, it definitely adds quite a bit. And then on the back end, I've got, you know,
04:16Each each individual video usually ends up with about 80 to 100 individual clips that have to get put together and the audio synced and You know putting what they call be roll footage over top of it That's you know, all of it has to kind of work together in a way that that makes sense one of the things that is you know,
04:41I started making videos partially because I always liked and respected the guys who took the time to put something together to teach other things and I try and embody that spirit with what I'm doing. But one of the problems with most of the videos that have like it's just a lot of hard information, a lot of times...
05:03you know, it's a guy who says, okay, now we've got to undo these four bolts from this manifold and he will keep the camera on and he's undoing four bolts from the manifold for the next two and a half minutes. So, you know, trying to make it all work in a way that flows is a challenge, but it's kind of fun.
05:23Yeah, and for me, I'm a writer. I really do love to write, and I actually have to get on an article here for Homestead Living soon because they want it by February, and if I don't get started on it, it's not going to get there. But writing takes a lot of thinking through and how is this going to come across and what is exactly the right word for what I'm trying to get across to people. And I would rather write than do videos. I'm sure that you would rather do videos than write.
05:53I've always wanted to write a novel and I sound like plenty of other people out there. I mean, for the number of people who like the idea of writing a novel versus the number who have actually done it, I mean, there's a big gap there. So like the much larger, rest of the much larger group, I've always liked that. I've actually, I started on one and...
06:21It's, you know, where motivation dies, discipline has to take over. Yes. And with so much going on in our day-to-day lives, I've only got so much discipline for so many things. So it just hasn't happened. But I enjoy, I enjoy spending words because I like reading. So you like to read, you like to write. I was going to say that's okay though. You have time. You have time before you died and maybe write your book. So it's okay.
06:51Yeah. So what else do you do besides doing videos? I mean, you're doing stuff that you're videoing. So what are you doing? Well, so, uh, we've got a we've got a 20 acre piece property up here. Um, Like I said, the only things that existed here when we bought it were an old house that is not Really salvageable for much um, and a shop, um, so when I say everything
07:21I mean, everything. I've personally I've punched two wells out here at the property. One of them is on a hand pump and one of them is on an electric pump down in a pit. I've run the water lines from the well to the camper that we're living in. I have ran power lines back from the camper to the well so that we can
07:48we can the the generator that we have is actually remote start so I can start the generator from inside the camper to cut the water pump on 400 feet away. Wow. Okay. And you know building the road that's to where we are so like our property I really like the setup of it because it's it's 20 acres it's fairly narrow it's only about 330 or 350 feet wide but it's half a mile deep. Okay.
08:17where we're building and where most of the things are happening is actually at the back of the property away from civilization. So it's not that there's much civilization at the front of the property. I mean, we're the closest Walmart does is about 45 minutes away. So nothing's close. But you know, so we're doing that. We're in the process of building our house out here.
08:44I've got a sawmill, an old circular rig from my best guess is sometimes in the 60s. Every scrap of lumber that's gone into building that house, when I got it, it was a log. So all the way down to doing that. We've got the house framed and we've got the siding on. I, we're really pushing to try and get.
09:12get everything finished up soon, but you know, especially up here, a lot is, excuse me, a lot is dictated by the seasons. So you know, the snow is coming. I've got plow trucks that got to be ready to go. Nobody's coming to plow my driveway. It's me. Yeah, winter is definitely coming. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a, that was a new experience for me. But when I, when I moved up here four years ago.
09:41But yeah, so everything, building fences, building pastures, trying our best to grow our own food with varying levels of success.
09:57We've got chickens and pigs and goats and taking care of them. And there's, there's always something new to build. And on top of all that, uh, everything that I own breaks, um, cause I use it. And, uh, so like all, all of, I've got a few tractors, they're all the saw mill. Like I said, it's from the sixties. I've got a backhoe from the seventies. My daily driver truck is from the eighties. So it's all, you know,
10:25stuff breaks and I fix it and generally I kind of you know I find the thing that week that I'm like alright well you know this could make a good video and teach somebody something and so I turn the camera on and start talking. Sounds like a great life to me. You were saying before we started recording that you guys are completely off-grid and that we would see how long this interview lasted because you use Starlink. Tell me about Starlink. So Starlink has been fantastic
10:54We have a solar setup, 400 watt panels, and then we've got four 80 amp hour deep cycle batteries. Not the fancy lithium phosphate ones, we got like the trolling motor boat batteries. But they've worked pretty well. The only problem that I've had with Starlink is the power draw. It's...
11:23There's a disconnect between what it seems to be drawing and what it's reported to draw. So it definitely uses quite a bit of juice. So being completely off grid, it's all just a balance. You know, I know like certain times of the day, I have a certain amount of sun on the panels I've got.
11:47you know enough to do this or that and other times of the day it's like okay well we're gonna have to run the generator for an hour or two but as far as connectivity I mean I can I can upload a you know 10-15 minute video in 10 or 15 minutes which is about three times faster than what it had been you know at other other points so it's really it's been great
12:14Well, I'm honored that you're using your solar power to take the time to talk to me because you're probably using it for something else. So I have a really dumb question because I don't know how this satellite thing works. I actually saw the Starlink satellites for the first time in the sky about two weeks ago. And I was like, oh, what is that? And I looked it up and I was like, oh, that's Starlink satellite, okay. I'm in Minnesota and it was dark so I could see them in the line. It was very cool.
12:44Um, so when the satellites are not on our side of the earth, cause they orbit the earth, does that mean you don't have signal? Nope. I've had, I've had signal every time I've turned it on. Okay. So it's not just one. Yeah, I don't know. It's not just one set of satellites. It's a huge. Nope. And it's all magic and I don't know how it works. And, uh, that's, that's about it. I'm kind of like.
13:13Yeah, my knowledge base is not very deep into that kind of stuff. You want to work on an old engine, I got you. But you want to know how we can bounce signals off of objects in the outer space and talk to each other. Yep, that's a good question. I have no idea. Well, Google knows everything. So if I really want to find out, I'll just look it up later today. It'll be fine. I was just curious. I had no idea how it works.
13:43just regular old internet connection here because we're not off grid. So okay so you said you have chickens and pigs and goats is that right? Yep and one horse. Oh my okay is the horse just for fun or does it have a job? No the horse was a rescue. No you know just a real expensive lawn ornament really. She's a she wasn't all that well taken care of and and we ended up acquiring her.
14:12She had a leg injury that we got fixed up and then, you know, she likes to injure herself again, because she's a horse. And that's what they do. But she's cool. She's got a great personality. She's a little sassy. I got the hat, but I'm not a cowboy. She's there. We've worked with her a little bit.
14:41Um, but, uh, with so much else going on, any, any sort of recreational activities are pretty much minimal. Okay. So do you have the chickens for eggs and meat and do you have the pigs for meat? And do you have the goats for milk? Uh, the goats are my wife's idea and they make her happy. So we have goats. Okay. That's the extent of their usefulness.
15:11Um, the, the pigs we've got, we've actually got a breeding pair. Um, they're, they're still little. Um, but we, uh, we plan on using them to breed and, and using the raisin, um, you know, whatever they have as for me. Yep. And then the, uh, the chickens are, are primarily layers. Yeah. Um, we did, uh, we've done meat birds, um, but to do that economically with the Cornish crosses.
15:41if you're if you're able to free range them you can offset the cost but i did the math backwards on it and raising um raising meat chickens almost costs as much as buying chicken uh now the obvious benefit of that is that you know exactly what they've eaten and the conditions that they're raised in but um but as far as as cost goes um you know buying the cornish crosses
16:09uh, and then raising them to, to, um, processing weight is, uh, it's almost a wash. So we're kind of looking into, uh, we're looking into that, but really the animal side of things, my wife is considerably more knowledgeable than me. Um, and she says, Hey, we need to do this. And I'm like, okay, yeah, we'll do that. And then I, yeah. So I build things and fix things.
16:35Well, you must really love her if you're like, okay, yeah, because I say, honey, I want to do this. And he goes, let's talk about that. Well, no, I mean, that conversation does happen, you know, for a minute before I ultimately kind of just go with it. We, the, the running joke is that we have a unofficial agreement that for every three animals she gets, I get a new piece of equipment. It's a really good way to stay poor on both sides. Um, it's not, uh,
17:04And it's not the exact agreement. But you know, we kind of just, we look at everything with, you know, from a view of like, okay, well, what does this provide? You know, what is it cost? What is its value? Sometimes the value is my wife is friends with the goats, so we have goats. Then sometimes the value is okay, you know, we're able to get this out of it.
17:32you know, ultimately makes sense. I like I like the useful animals, you know, chickens are useful. The amount of protein that you get from a cost perspective, especially with free ranging them to what you get out of it, you know, that makes economic sense. And the eggs are delicious. So it's a win across the board. The conversion rate of
18:02Excuse me. Sorry, I've got all kinds of drainage going on today. Uh-huh. It's that time of year. But the conversion rate with, you know, with pigs, the amount of feed you put in and the amount of protein that you get out and fat and everything else, it makes sense. Uh-huh. So it's kind of, you know, the conversation just happens. We talk about direction and, you know, the thing is we're really just making this up as we go.
18:32Neither of us are experts in any of this kind of stuff. We kind of learn as we go along. So mistakes get made along the way. I mean, in a perfect world, we would have had the land, put all the infrastructure in, build the house, moved on in, been nice and comfortable and gone on from there and then worried about building barns and pastures and clearing trees, all those things. So, you know, but.
19:01But sometimes excitement takes over and it's like, oh, I want pigs. And so the time and energy and resources will go towards that. But I think sometimes you have to do that. Like, otherwise it, like, it should be fun. You know, I mean, it's a lot of work doing this kind of thing is more work than I've ever done. And I owned a roofing company back in North Carolina. So, you know, 60, 70, 80 hours a week is not new.
19:31And I'm doing probably more work now, but all of that is going towards something. You know, it's not just making a living, it's building a life. Yes, and I liken it to renting a home versus owning a home. When you rent a home, all you're doing is giving someone else to build equity in that property. But if you own a home, you're building equity that you have access to. So if you can afford...
20:00If you can afford to own a home, you're building equity for you, not for somebody else. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and the other thing too, is where we're at is, and I'm never really all that specific with our location for privacy reasons, but we're northern part of the lower peninsula. So top of the men. Somewhere, you know how they in Michigan, they hold their hand up and point to a spot?
20:30So, you know, top section of the pointer finger, that's where we are. Okay, yeah. But we, oh no, excuse me, I held up the wrong hand. Top section of the ring finger. Yeah, that would have been good on video. It would have been, yeah. The, where we are is a pretty economically depressed area. And nothing's getting cheaper.
21:00things are difficult for a lot of people. And a lot of people, like especially up here, housing is a struggle. You know, when you've got people who are, you know, working in a factory or working in construction or something, you know, they're making 20, 25 bucks an hour, but your average like two bedroom home rental is like 12 to 1400 bucks a month. You know, that's just not sustainable. So there's, we're not the only ones around here who are
21:30staying in a camper, you know, and, and that kind of, we'll call it an alternative lifestyle is, is actually by necessity for a lot of people who live around here. You know, people are going to find a way they're going to find a place to live. And sometimes that means violating building codes. And sometimes that means modifying a shed that they were able to get no money down.
21:59no credit check financing on, those things are real. And people are going through that right now. So in a way, what we're doing, when I'm putting in a water line or I'm punching my own well on the property and showing like, yes, this can be done. This is not an impossible mountain to climb.
22:30you know, we've what we've been doing has been put out there publicly. And, and I feel blessed to be able to to share that because there's a lot of people who are struggling. Yeah, absolutely. They are. The inflation that's been going on for over a year now, the really bad inflation has been going on for over a year now is so
22:59I would use the F word but don't use the F word on my podcast, but I'm thinking it real loud offensive to me because we're fairly okay. Like my husband has a good job. We have a 3.1 acre property. We have a nice home. We have a dog. We have barn cats. We had chickens, but they were being lazy. So they have been dispatched and we're going to start with chickens again in the spring. We're okay. And I so worry about people who...
23:29aren't okay right now because they weren't okay five years ago and now they're really not okay. Well and they're being gaslit into being told that oh it's not that bad like dude I've been to the grocery store like I'm not that that to me is a problem too like it's not that it's not that bad bullshit I'll use bullshit on the podcast yeah I mean it is and
23:57and people are...
24:02People are needing to find alternatives, you know, is what it comes down to. So sometimes that alternative is, oh, you know, you can't afford rent on this place, but you know, you can get a $4,000 camper. That's what we paid for this. This is a 38-foot park model. We got it for four grand. Oh yeah. Only had one leak, fixed the leak, we're good. You know? Like, people are going to find a way. The...
24:31To me, it's tough because I have the ability to fall into a doom and gloom view of things. And I also try and keep a big picture perspective because there have been many other times where things looked a lot worse.
25:01Here's the best example that I could give. I just got done reading a book called Redneck or Rednecks. It's a fiction book, but it's based around the, in May-June West Virginia, the May-June Mine War, that I don't know if you're familiar at all with this, but essentially the large fight between the union, its private.
25:27detective agency that I hired that was essentially a private army. How the US Army actually got dispatched to break up this. It was a big riot. And essentially the coal company was they were kicking out people from their homes because the company owned the home and the money was fake. They were using script that could only be sent.
25:57at their spent at the company store. Yes, yes, yes. And people were being kicked out with nothing. Like literal nothing. No safety net, no backup plan, living in tent camps in the mountains.
26:16We're not there yet. Um, I think that, I think that mankind finds a way. And I think with a little bit of faith and a whole lot of work.
26:31our definition of what's comfortable, what is kind of the baseline for existence has gotten pretty soft. Yeah. Little things that are often...
26:51are often taken for granted. When that gets taken away by whatever circumstance, I think we look at it different. You know, when I moved up here, the camper that I was in, I mean, I had no power, I had no water. I was bringing water in in jugs, and I had a gas space heater.
27:12that in the worst parts of winter could maybe get the inside of the camper to 40 degrees and it put out so much condensation that the walls were sweating. It would drip on me in my sleep.
27:25but I was surviving. And...
27:30From there, the perspective changes. And it kind of hit me, not very long ago, I was washing dishes and just looking out the window at everything that we had kind of built up to this point. I'm like, holy crap, man, I have hot water. I turn on this faucet and hot water comes out. That is a damn miracle.
27:59Yeah, it's really funny how your perspective changes. It really is. Yeah, so I think that exposure to discomfort, whether voluntary or involuntary, has the ability to build character and to build resilience. It's not, we're all pretty soft, honestly.
28:29you know in a in a global perspective we're all pretty soft in a time in history perspective we're pretty soft.
28:45But, you know, circumstances change. My kind of underlying goal with all this stuff is essentially to build a life to where, should things get worse? Should whatever happens outside of my little piece of dirt that I'm not affected, you know? Yeah. I don't necessarily fear something terrible happening, and even less so because I am good to go.
29:15But I like having the peace of mind of knowing, hey, we've grown our own food. I can hunt. I can take care of these things. We've got what we need. I've got a hand pump out there that'll pull water out of the ground 365 days a year. It could be negative 30 outside. I can pull water out of the ground. That's amazing. You've got the basics covered and really that's the most important thing.
29:42Yeah. You know, and it's a process, you know, it's, it's all, it's something that we're, we're kind of working towards, which is, uh, it seems kind of strange to some people, you know, a lot of people like the comforts that exist and in normal day to day life. But you know, you, you match that up with the rates of depression and mental illness and suicide. And I, um,
30:13I don't need to take a pill to fall asleep at night. I'm exhausted. But I know that I was working towards something good that day, even if it was something frustrating, even if it was an unplanned repair on a piece of equipment. I worked towards it and we're moving forward. So I think, you know, everyone chooses how they wanna live and this is what we've chosen.
30:38Yeah, the best sleep ever is when you're exhausted and you're satisfied with the work you did that made you exhausted. Amen. Yup. All right, well on that note, Andy, we're at 30 minutes. I'll try to keep these at half to half an hour and we're there. So thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Awesome, yeah, it was great talking to you. You too, thanks again. Have a good day. All right, bye. Bye.
 

Females In Farming

Today I'm talking with Anthea at Females In Farming.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anthea in New Zealand at Females in Farming. Good evening, morning, whatever it is for you, morning. Anthea, how are you? Good, thank you. How about yourself? I'm good. Your today is my yesterday.
00:29Or your yesterday? My yesterday? My today? I can't do it. I had it straightened out earlier and I screwed it up. It is like 6 o'clock here and what time is it? Is it in New Zealand? It's 12 o'clock lunchtime, like on Friday. Yes. Thursday. Thursday, yes. I'm sorry. Again, it's like the TARDIS from Doctor Who.
00:58So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do at your place. Yeah. Well, I am a single homeschooling dairy farming mom, and we live in the North Island at the moment of New Zealand on a 400 cow dairy farm. We milk once a day. I've been part of the dairy farming industry for the past 16, 17 years now in various roles and areas all around New Zealand. So I love it.
01:27Can't get enough of it So it's not just you milking 400 head a day, is it? No, no, these are team. These are team. So yeah, there's three of us on this farm Okay, cool Alrighty, um, my daughter just messaged and said they're doing fine for anyone who doesn't know my daughter lives in st Petersburg, Florida and the hurricanes getting closer and closer. So that's why I had to check I
01:54Rarely check messages when I'm doing interviews, but this one was important. Okay. So how old is your little one? He's 11 now. Okay. He's already yeah, he's been on farm since the day he was born nearly And yeah, I mean we haven't been all the time on farm I said I step back a little bit for the first bit but at some point of Each season we've been out there doing stuff. So
02:22Pretty much since birth he's been on the farm and he also loves it which I'm so pleased about because some kids don't but this one definitely does. Yes, it would be really hard if he hated it. I can't imagine trying to do what you're doing and having your child despise it because that would make life really difficult. So tell me about the beginning because I read your about part on your Facebook page and you weren't always a country girl.
02:52No, no, I was brought up in the city in Auckland. And yeah, it was just a city girl through and through, I guess. I didn't even really know you could work on a farm until I was about 24 years old. So, it was quite a surprise to find myself working on a farm, but here we go. Fast forward, what, 17 years, and there's just no way I would ever live in a city again. So, it's amazing how life can change sometimes.
03:21Yeah, without any notice sometimes. Um, so, so here in the States, it, it was not easy for women to become accepted in farming for a long time. And there is a YouTube channel that my husband watches cause he's very into all the machinery and her name, her, her YouTube channel is Laura Farms and she's probably only in her early twenties. And.
03:50She works her ever loving heine off on her farm. And she drives all the big machinery and she has a barn cat that she loves. I can't remember its name. And she is so about proving herself. And I'm all for it. I really am. But I don't feel like women should have to prove themselves. I feel like they should just be able to do it if they wanna do it. So- I know.
04:18Yeah. My point in sharing the story is that, has it been accepted in New Zealand for women to step into farming or has there been pushback? I think there is still that it's a man's job kind of a feel. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I'd say that women definitely don't get the same opportunities as what men do. All the same recognition. You'll see one of my posts, I'm not sure how far back you've looked, but...
04:46One of my posts is about how women aren't just helpers on the farm. And a lot of my followers shared stories about their responsibilities and what they do on the farm and their frustrations at that issue of not really being seen for who they really are. So I don't think that we're fully accepted. I mean, we're accepted and it's okay to be there, but like we're not fully seen for what we do sometimes, I think. Yeah.
05:15And I always find it very interesting because women, I can't remember the exact wording, but men are strong until they're not. Like I feel like they gas out quicker than women do. Women tend to be, there's a word, I can't think of it. Women are better at long-term physical activity, I think, than men are. Oh, right.
05:42Yeah, more sort of like longer endurance, I guess. That's it. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Endurance. And and that makes sense to me having given birth to three children because it's it's it's hard work. And the first baby you have one. So you haven't had more yet. The first baby is scary and you have no idea what it's going to feel like. You have no idea what to expect. And and it hurts. You know.
06:10It hurts to whatever your pain tolerance is. When I had my third baby, I did it no drugs. I went into the hospital. I got there at 10 minutes to seven in the evening and he was born 22 minutes later. No drugs, no nothing, never screamed, never swore, never even growled. Wow. I was just like, I know how this goes. I'm gonna do it. It's gonna be fine. And then. Yeah.
06:39The nurse said, and the doctor didn't even get there in time. And the nurse said to me afterwards, she said, she said that was the most controlled violent birth I've ever seen. And it scared me when she said violent. And I said, what do you mean violent? And she said, it was so fast. She said it wasn't violent as in somebody died or got hurt, but it was just, you showed up, your water broke and there he was. She said, but you were so calm.
07:06And I said, well, I did all the hard part at home. I said, and I knew he would be coming shortly or too sweet. And he did. And that was it. And she said, I have never seen a birth like that before. She said, you were a, you were a tiger. And I said, well, thank you very much. So, yeah, I mean, it just goes to show how much of a mental game life is. So, isn't it? You know, like we, we do the work at home, like you say, like we get ourselves prepared. We think, right, this is what we've got to do. And we just.
07:35you know, you down tail up and we do it. Yeah, and I feel like women are incredibly strong. And I think that in the old days, we used to teach our little girls to like push that down and be softer and sweeter and nicer. And I think you can be soft and sweet and nice and strong at the same time. Oh, 100%, yeah, I completely agree with that. I couldn't say a bit of myself.
08:05Yeah, and so when I saw your Facebook page and the name of your Facebook page, I was like, oh, I need to talk to her. I think we share the same heart on this. My daughter is 35 and she has been in some iffy situations with people and by people I mean men. And she has dealt with it in the most, I don't know, matter of fact.
08:35way. She told me a story that she was at a concert. She was walking up the stairs into the venue and some guy grabbed her butt and she said she she turned around looked at him and said does that belong to you? And he on her he turned on his heel and walked the other direction. I was like who taught you that? She said you.
09:03Yeah, yeah, they get that from somewhere. So girls don't have to be victims. They don't have to be weak. They can hold their own and they can do almost anything a man can do. Oh, and more, I think, and more because we have to do sometimes. Yeah, I mean, half of the men, I don't know if I should really say, but half of the men that farm out there, they have somebody.
09:32to cook for them, to clean for them, to look after them, to take care of their house and their ad man and all the other bits and bobs that go along with farming and life. And then they just wake up and they just do what they have to. Like they do the easy part, whereas women have to, a lot of them have to do everything. They take care of the farms, they take care of the kids, they take care of the house. And I mean, that in itself is a full-time job, isn't it?
10:01get everyone's food ready, get the bills paid on time, get everything clean, and it can be really full on, but I don't know, women tend to just be able to handle more, I think, and fit more into their days. Yes, exactly, and I do not want this to be bashing men, I want this to be pro women. So we're doing this as pro women, women are amazing. I also think that when
10:31when you're coupled, whether you're male-male, male-female, female-female, I think when two people are running a household, it clearly makes it easier because there's two people bearing the burden of their lives. Absolutely. Everything's easier with more than one head. Yeah, I'm really lucky. My husband is fantastic. Actually, I told him I had this interview this evening and that I wanted to eat my dinner at like 3.30, which is really early.
11:01because I wanted my food to settle because I still get a little anxious about interviewing people. And he was like, well, you pulled out the burger, right? And I was like, yeah, it's in the fridge. He said, okay, I will make something with the burger for me and the kid, the kid that's 22 who still lives here, our son. And you can go do what you need to do to get ready for your interview. And I was like, thank you so much. You're being supportive. I love it. So yes, having a partner is amazing.
11:31That's so good though, but I mean, it's just about having a good support, like good support all around you. I mean, whether you're at work, at home, anything, you know, when you've got that good supportive, healthy individual around you, then all people team around you, then it does make life so much easier. Yes, exactly. Okay. So now we've been very pro women and couples make things easier and blah, blah, blah. Um, so you have, you have, I'm sorry, cattle, milk cows. Yes.
12:01Deer cows, yep. Okay. So do you, I don't know what the laws are in New Zealand. Do you have to sell it to a co-op like we do here because raw milk isn't exactly the most welcome thing in the United States? Yeah. So there are different places that they can sell their milk in New Zealand. The most common place is to sell it to a dairy company.
12:31There are a good handful or more of smaller farms that register with MPI, which is the Ministry of Primary Industries, and they sell their raw milk at the gate. So that's really cool because raw milk is accepted in New Zealand. I know that around the world, some places it's not, but we're very fortunate here. So we can buy it at the gate, but most farms sell it to a dairy company. So the tanker will come and pick up the milk daily.
13:01And can you get raw milk at a grocery store or is that roundupon? Uh, no, it's not that, um, no. So the ones that sell it, you have to go to the farm and they generally have a vending machine and you can purchase a glass bottle and you just, you know, just like a can of Coke, you just put your money in and put your bottle there and it fills it up and away you go. That's awesome. We don't have that here. Here we have.
13:29Here in Minnesota, raw milk is legal, but only if you go to the farm where the cow lives, where the cow has been milked, and the milk is in a tank, and the farmer has to be very careful about how he dispenses the milk into the container that you bring. That's how it works here. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds pretty similar. Yeah. I mean, I did buy some milk down in Tamarou a while ago. And yeah.
13:59Filling out my bottle there, I could look through the window and I could see the cows milking in the shed there. So it sounds similar. Yeah. In the state that I grew up in, which is Maine in the United States, you can actually buy raw milk at stores. And not every grocery store carries it. There's a general store, as it were, down the road from where my parents live, and they sell it bottled.
14:26And when we bought it from them, I was like, so what's the story here? Because it didn't used to be like this when I lived here. And the girl behind the counter said, where are you from? Cause you know, Maine's real, it's a very tourist state. And if you're not from Maine, you get treated slightly differently than if you're a native of Maynard. And I said, well, I live in Minnesota now, but I grew up in Maine until I was like 21 and she's like, oh, okay. So when was that? And I explained.
14:55And she said, Oh, it's been legal to sell in stores for a few years. She said, but you cannot advertise that you sell it. Oh, I was like, Oh, okay. So there's different, yeah, there's different laws for different states here because the United States has regulations on everything and they're not always the same from state to state. Yeah. Well, you're crap.
15:21over there, whereas we're just small down here. We just have one government that governs everything and one set of rules applies to everyone, so it makes it a bit easier. Yeah I was going to say it must be nice, but it also must be really weird. I would find that so bizarre because having grown up in the States and I'm 54, I think I would be very confused for the first year. Yeah, I don't know. It's okay.
15:48Years ago, I found one end of the country and then I moved a few years later down to Southland, which is right down the bottom. And my neighbor was my old employer from at the other end of the country. So it can be quite small here in New Zealand. They say there's only two degrees of separation between everyone, which rings very true sometimes, but it's okay. It's all I've known. So I couldn't imagine living in somewhere.
16:18I would love to visit one day, but yeah, the size of America is quite enormous, really. It's gargantuan, yes, compared to New Zealand for sure. Okay, so what kind of predators does New Zealand have that might hurt your cows? Nothing. Nothing, okay. Absolutely nothing. That's half of the reason why I love it and I stay here. Because I have seen... Excuse me.
16:48I have seen in some Facebook groups in years gone by that, you know, our farmers over in the States have to carry firearms because they have these creatures that come and attack the animals. And I'm like, I couldn't handle that. Having some cat or wild dog or I don't know, snakes, anything like that. Bears, yes, yeah, anything like that. I don't think I'd be able to leave the house in the dark if I knew something like that was lurking around.
17:17So you guys don't have poisonous snakes in New Zealand? No. Oh, okay. So is it Australia that has all the scary things? Yes, definitely Australia. Australia has a lot. I lived in Australia when I was young, around 20, for about four years. And yeah, there's lots of snakes and spiders and scorpions and all sorts over there. But we...
17:44Fortunately don't have that over here in New Zealand. So yeah Awesome. I'm coming to New Zealand Exactly, okay, well that shoots my my predator question all the hell Yeah, so if you have if you have dairy cattle, then you must breed them Yes, so we run a yearly system so most farms
18:13We carve once a year in spring. And that means that as our grass starts to grow and the animal needs to be fed, the grass is there, ready to be eaten. So we carve once a year and then after carving on usually the second or third cycle, like the cow cycle, we will start mating. So usually, well, we start mating here next Monday, so in a few days time.
18:44up to 12 weeks, every farm is really different. It depends on the system and their goals as well. So yeah, and then some farms also carve and mate twice a year. So in autumn, they will carve again and they're the winter milking farms. So they'll milk all year round. So they sort of carve a smaller amount during autumn just to keep the milk supply going through winter. Okay, and a cow is pregnant for a year, is that right?
19:13Nine months basically. Okay. Yeah, just like a human. And she cycles every 21 days. Okay. Cool. See, I don't know much about cows. I just know that I'm in love with the calves. I always have been. I know, they're so cute. Our calves are still being fed at the moment. So it's a good job getting to go and see the calves.
19:41Yes, my grandpa lived down the road from family friends that had a dairy farm and they had babies in the spring. My parents would have us stop in when the calves were two days old to a week and a half old. The guy would have us kids go out to see the calves. My fondest memory of the calves is he would be like, you can go in with them.
20:09and they weren't that big, you know, it was fine. Yeah. And they would suck on our fingers and it was just the cutest thing and the weirdest feeling and it was just adorable. I loved it. I wish, I wish that video cameras had been a real common thing when I was that age because I wish that my parents had gotten video of us kids in with the calves. Yeah, it's really cool. My son loves it. Even at a leave-in, he still loves going to see the calves.
20:39And he's always in there and they suck him and like his clothes and all sorts of stuff. He just loves it. They're so sweet. I mean, every spring when we're out running errands, we live in a countryish area. Clearly we're a tiny homestead. So we live in cornfields and soybean fields. And there's always somebody with cows. And I watched all April and May for the calves to show up.
21:07And the first one I see, I'm like, it's a grass puppy. And my husband's like, you have seen a billion of them. I'm like, it doesn't matter. It's a grass puppy. Exactly. No, it doesn't matter how many you see. They're always so cute. And it's always an exciting time of fun when you start carving. Yeah, absolutely. And people who don't understand the joy of the first grass puppy in the spring or the full moon every month or the smell of cut grass are missing out on life, I swear.
21:36Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you can't slow down and appreciate the simple things, then I think you're living life in the fast lane. And it's, yeah, that's not where I live. I like to take the time and smell the roses, so to speak. Yeah. One of the things that I had never seen that I saw this summer was the northern lights, because it was low enough in the state so I could see the northern lights. And that was so cool.
22:04That was probably the same time I saw the lights down here as well. It was a really strong display. Yeah. And yeah, it was, I'll bet you it was the same time. It was amazing. I was down south at that stage actually. And so they've got a dark sky reserve down in the Mackenzie district. And I went, I don't know, probably 40 minutes from home, up into the middle of nowhere. And
22:31It was just incredible. It was amazing. I think I cried at one stage. It was so amazing. It's always been on my to-do list and the display was just breathtaking. Yeah, the solar flares are not a great thing to have happen, but boy, they produce some really beautiful visuals. Yeah, yeah, they sure did. And anyone who was in the city couldn't see them. So I'm glad I live in the country and I'm glad that you are a country girl now because you got to see them too.
23:01No, yeah, it was amazing. Yup. Um, okay. So I don't know what else to ask you. Um, you love what you're doing. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I'll be doing this for the rest of my life, I think, or as long as I can anyway. What's your, what's your favorite part? I'm sure that's going to be like choosing a favorite child, but what's your favorite part?
23:29Um, oh, I don't know. Yeah, I couldn't really say. I just like all of it. You know, you just, at the start, I used to have bits that I didn't like and bits that I really liked. But I don't know, you just sort of get to the point where you just know that everything has to be done. And it just is what it is. So I just enjoy all of it. I just chose to just enjoy all of it, you know. Yeah, I feel like once you get into this, whether it's gardening or
23:58raising cattle or goats or sheep or whatever is your raising, it just becomes routine. It becomes the way you live your life. That's right. People say that dairy farming isn't a job, it's a lifestyle and that's so correct. You know, you can do this if you didn't enjoy getting up early and having the spontaneity during calving of not knowing what time you're going to get home.
24:25You just, you have to embrace it all, don't you? Yeah and I mean I've said this a few times, well maybe more than a few times on the podcast, but any kind of farming is hard work, but it's good work. It just takes a certain kind of person to embrace it.
24:43Yes, absolutely. And I think I wish that more people would sort of think about where their food came from and what went into their food, you know, the hard work, the dedication, you know, the knowledge and physically what goes into your food, you know, because not all food is created equally. Because it's really important. And we only seem to have sort of a small amount of the population these days that actually produces the food for all of us. So
25:12Yeah, it does take a special kind of person, but it would be good to see more people getting into it. Well, the good news is there's a huge movement of people in the world right now who are very interested and who are taking steps to get into it. So I'm doing all I can to encourage it by talking to people like you and other people on the podcast. And everybody's like, yes, it's hard work, but these are all the great things that come with it.
25:41Yeah, the rewards are so big, so huge, and it's so satisfying. Yeah, I, um, our, our, our garden, our farming this year has not been very satisfying. Um, we had a terrible growing season all over the United States. I don't know. I don't know what kind of news you follow regarding United States, but the weather has been freaking crazy here since April. Oh no, that's no good. For us.
26:10It rained for a month and a half in the time we were supposed to be planting the garden. Oh, oh no. Yeah, so our beautiful, gorgeous garden that has produced beyond measure for the last three summers did all summer long, it did nothing. Yeah, oh my gosh, imagine the farmers because they'll be facing the same things except on a much larger scale. Uh-huh, yeah, it's been...
26:39It's been rough. A lot of people have had a hard time. And then there's people like the guy who grows the cornfield around our property whose corn did great. They just harvested it yesterday. It looked fantastic. I'm like, why? Why did your cornfield do so great? But our garden just fell apart. Yeah. Oh, that's that's that's not really too fair, is it? But hopefully you get a bit of growing through the next year. I am.
27:07I'm not a praying girl, but I'm praying. I might have to hit my knees in February and be like, could we please have tomatoes and cucumbers this year, please? Yeah, exactly. So we'll see what happens. It's just been crazy. My husband will be putting the gardens to bed in the next week because there's some tomato plants out there that did produce and that's about it. It's a big humongous, humongous, can't talk.
27:35weed bed right now. So he's going to be doing all the getting things closed down for winter in about two weekends now. That's right. Because you're in autumn, aren't you? Or fall. Yep. We're just going to kiss this one goodbye and pray for a better one next year. Yeah. That's what you can do sometimes, isn't it? Yeah. It's been awful. I can't believe how crazy this has been, but it's okay.
28:04We're not dependent on it, so it's okay. But I'd really like to have my canned tomato sauce back next year, that would be great. Yeah, I always taste so much Bito when you make yourself. It sure does. All right, ma'am, I'm being silly because I am out of questions because I have already talked to people about cows, but I wanted to talk to you because women are amazing.
28:28And I don't know who says it to you, and they probably don't say it often enough, but I'm proud of you for being an accomplished young woman trying to take care of your cows and your kid and have a life. Thank you, thank you. That's very kind of me to say. It's hard, I know it's hard, and you need all the encouragement and I don't know what the word is. You need all the encouragement you can get, I think.
28:56Absolutely. It's always nice to hear because you do just kind of plod along in life and yeah people kind of forget what you do sometimes but that's okay. I'm not doing it for them so I'm doing it for me and my son. Well keep doing it because you're doing an important thing. Thank you. Yes I am. Thank you so much for your time and Thea I appreciate it. It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you. Have a great night. You too. Bye. Okay see ya.
 

The Home Grown Collective Update!

Today Hayden Caraway of the Homegrown Collective is catching me up on progress since we last talked. You can also follow on Facebook.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Hayden Carraway. I love his last name. At the Homegrown Collective. Good morning, Hayden. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing great. Hope you are. I am.
00:26I'm a little twitchy today because my daughter lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. And at the moment that we're, we are recording this, there is a huge hurricane called Hurricane Milton barreling its way toward Tampa Bay, which is right near St. Petersburg. So I am sending out prayers and positive energy to Florida right now, like you wouldn't believe. Well, we will, we will join you in that. I couldn't imagine what that feels like.
00:53It kind of sucks, but she's okay. She promised me she'll keep me updated as much as she can. So. Well, good. I will be contacting you later on, maybe tomorrow in a couple of days, just to check in on that. That would be great. Thank you. All right, so I have questions, Mr. Carraway. Tell me, tell me what you're doing first and then I'll ask the questions. Yeah, sure. So I, several years ago, I started a project.
01:22called the Homegrown Collective Nonprofit. It was started due to a lot of different factors. One, realizing how our food system was being operated and certain personal immune and digestive issues that I wanted to get worked out and cure, not just...
01:46not just deal with it. So I've been doing a lot of research and hoping to create a platform that allows people to come together and push for a locally produced, responsibly grown food system. Okay, cool. And last we talked, you were just getting it going, all the publicity and stuff. So,
02:15I think your answer to my first question answered the first question, which was what led you to start the nonprofit? Well, I've actually, it's a little different than that. I've been blessed to be able to travel with family and for work. So I've experienced how other countries ate and understanding their quality and processes. I realized that America's regulators had led us off a cliff regarding our food system. Then you combine that with the immune and digestive issues I spoke about.
02:44And it's almost too obvious to correlate the two. And that's what led me to help start this mission of personally eating naturally produced food. Okay, cool. And how does it help the people who grow the food and the people who consume the food? As busy as consumers and especially farmers are, we make it easy to connect.
03:09support and learn from the producers whose offerings you deem worthy of feeding your family and The tools that the producers have access to only help them save money on marketing You know ecommerce tools marketing tools and local pickup alerts allows them not to miss somebody coming by while they're working So it really helps them save money and gain new revenue streams Awesome so so have you I'm I'm
03:38I'm going off scripted hitch. Hayden and I have a thing here in emails back and forth about what we're gonna talk about. So what's happened with that? I mean, last I talked to you, you were working on getting the website up and I know that people have signed up because I've looked at the website since, since it's up and running. So what's new with that? So at the beginning, when we first spoke, it was only a mobile app.
04:06that was only accessible through your phone. And that was our mock trial. We wanted to launch that first to see if we got traction, if people were on board with this and if it would be a good decision to push forward. And so we went on with creating the web version. So now you can access it on your computer. We added new features and we paid to have anything that we discovered causing issues during the mobile app mock trials to be fixed. And
04:36much more user friendly moving forward. So do you have any, I don't know, stories from people who have talked to you about using it? Yes, we've actually had a lady who logged on. I think it was in Pennsylvania who was actually able within the first month, so the full platform launched this last month and we've already had people saying that they were able to find some things in their area. We have hundreds of you.
05:05producers logged on across the country and thousands of consumers have logged on just in the first month. And I know it is a little disappointing when it's not fully, I'm current, you know, it's difficult when it's not fully, we don't have all the producers up there in every community quite yet, but, uh, with this kind of growth in the first month, I feel really confident, uh, we'll have a great selection of options for many communities throughout the United States. Uh,
05:35very soon. Yes, and it takes a little while for people to get wind of what you're doing and sign up and want to be part of it. So I think you're doing great. Great, yeah. I think it's going to be mostly word of mouth. I'm making personal phone calls to small farms that either reached out to us or contacted us, or either I found them on a directory and was able to reach out to them. But I'm getting great responses from people
06:05with the business model that we've put together. Awesome. I'm so glad. I love that you're doing this. I think this is fabulous. Like we have a thing here, I told you last time, we have the Minnesota Grown website, and it's the same kind of idea where the growers list themselves and then people can find them on the website. And it is through the state, but they're very good about keeping track of it. They don't
06:34They don't just let anybody sign up, you know, they don't want bots or just people being dumb using it to try to do something bad. So we love our Minnesota grown community too. Right. And so that's the great thing about our platform is we have to approve the producers that get on there. And we have full control, being able to go in and have full control of that.
07:03Most of the state directories are listed up there. I do, but they don't give you that extra, they don't give you the e-commerce tool, they don't give you the marketing resources, and they don't give you the local pickup alerts tool. So I noticed a lot of those state platforms, they don't get you to that last final step. They don't make it easy. Hey, there's that person, that's where they are. That's how you can contact them. Anybody can do that on Google. I like to be able to do that and give them the option.
07:32you know, drive straight to them, call them right now, or buy from them directly immediately after asking them a few questions if you want to connect and get to know them better if you plan on making repeat purchases, which is what I think will help grow this idea of a food system is by continuing just to push people to these responsible growers. Yes, exactly. Okay.
08:02what stage are you currently at in the process of the startup? But I think maybe you've covered that. Yeah, we did great. Your question, you're a natural interviewer. That answered my- Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And the next one was, what are your goals for the platform? So is there more that you wanna do? Yeah, well, there's personal goals. So it's, I want people to understand what my thoughts behind it are. They know what the goal for the, for the,
08:31for the business and the company and the platform is, and that's the society goal, our goal is to show that people can provide food for our nation in a more nutritious way while still maintaining a variety of options regionally. Another current goal, which is more personal, is as our user base and revenue grows, is to hire someone in the head of operations positions with more agricultural experience than I have.
08:59So I can focus on user support, directly communicating with our users about the platform. And as the user base grows, the premier business program will grow and our sponsors will pay us more for the views and the traffic that we provide, leaving it free for producers and consumers in the future. Okay, cool. All right, so I have a couple of questions of my own before we get to the last one that we talked about. How old are you, Hayden?
09:29I turned 30 last January. Yeah, I thought you were young and I'm 54 coming up on 55 next month. And I couldn't tell from your voice last time how old you are because you have a timeless voice. And so I was like, I think he's young. And you are your young pup compared to me. I'm 30 but I you could you would think I was 20. Yeah, you could look at me and think I'm 20. Yeah. So is the Homegrown Collective your job or do you have a jobby job?
09:58I currently have not been able to draw any salary from the nonprofit. I've been working on it for three years. I've been living very minimally at my grandparents, have a modular home out very far east in North Carolina, so a kind of rural, cheap area. So I've been living minimally, trying to catch as much of my own fish as I can to eat, to eat healthy and locally. But I...
10:28I was fortunate enough when I didn't complete four years of college, but I was able to go get out pretty early and go work in construction. That was some of the way I was able to travel. When you travel outside of the country, I worked for a company that worked for the Navy, and we renovated some of the bases for them, the hotels and the bases. I was able to save up enough money to put down payments on two rental properties.
10:56in Greenville. And so I have two mortgages. I live for free at my grandparents modular home and I live off of the little bit of money I have extra after my mortgage is paid. Okay. The only reason I ask, I'm not usually like overly nosy, but I'm assuming that the Homegrown Collective has taken some of your time.
11:20like a good percentage of your time to get it going. That's all I do. I'm focusing on this until somebody call, until I have to fix something at a house to keep the renters in, which is very rarely. I sit here and I make phone calls. I try to connect with people. I try to learn what they're going through and how I can best serve them in the future as we grow. So I am fully dedicated to this and hopefully one of my future goals is to one day.
11:48gain some kind of salary that will allow me to work remotely for this nonprofit as the head of support under the head of operations position. Okay, cool. All right. So now I have questions that aren't really directly about the Homegrown Collective because you're in North Carolina. How did your area fare with the last remnants of the hurricane? The northeast did okay. I think we got some rain. Our outer banks and some of the outer islands got...
12:17flooding, but they're, I think they're used, they're kind of used to that out there. They, I mean, they're playing it for it every year, just to be sure. But it was the Western, my cousin's a power line worker up in the Western part of the state right now. And I think their team is just out there working on pro bono, whatever y'all need kind of stuff is I think, uh, some of the guys up West when they had issues East.
12:45came and helped for, you know, without expecting anything. So now they're returning the favor. But from what I've heard from him, it's, they're not getting much help outside of the locals that can get up there and people that can find a way to drive up there. And, uh, they're really, they're really doing a good job, I think, you know, starting out, but they got a lot of work ahead of them. We're hoping they'll be able to keep their land is the biggest, is the biggest thing.
13:15Yeah, because I talk to people who have farms and homesteads, duh, I was going to ask a place like a week ago if they wanted to be on the podcast. And I saw where they live and I had clicked on their Facebook page to contact them through Messenger and saw the first post about they don't have anything left because of the storm. And I'm hoping they, I don't know how insurance works, but I'm hoping.
13:45You know, like Florida, they don't got insurance. They don't have, you're not allowed to have hurricane insurance. I'm hoping up in the mountains, they let you have flood insurance. Yeah. I hope so. I bet there's just some weird stuff going on with insurance. I'm hoping people can. I'm hoping people had some things in place that would, you know, get them through these times. Yeah. I know, I know that Asheville and I don't know if that's North Carolina or South Carolina. I assume it's North Carolina. Um.
14:14They got pounded, they got ruined. And I can't ask anyone in that area to be on my podcast because they don't have any time for themselves right now, let alone to talk to me. But I just worry, I worry so much about these people. I have a buddy on the ground around Ashfield actually, and he has Starlink in his little camper. In his little camper, he like gets vans and renovates and lives in them and sells them, whatever.
14:42But he has Starlink in it, so I've been communicating to him through Facebook Messenger at this time and he's just running around backpacking, sleeping outside, going back to his van when he needs to, trying to help people. But if you want me to, when we get off this call, you send me an email of the area and I'll contact him and just see if I can get you any kind of word. Yeah, that would be fine. I'm just making the point that there are very...
15:12There are much more important things right now in North Carolina than my podcast. I agree. And I didn't even think about it. When they said that Helene was going to hit Florida, I was like, okay, I don't have anyone in Florida that I'm supposed to talk to soon, so that's good news. And then it went north and I was like, oh God, I hope none of the interviews I have scheduled for the next two weeks are in those areas because I probably won't be doing them because they're going to be too busy or won't have any connection.
15:40Well, I couldn't imagine the hurricane prep for a small farm. You know, for a house, it's still a lot of stuff you got to get done before it comes. I couldn't imagine having animals, uh, you know, just acres of, of food, uh, being just out and exposed in this or greenhouses. Yeah. I mean, there was, I can't imagine the amount of work there. They would have had to go through the prep for this thing. Yeah. And honestly.
16:09the thing that you're doing with your homegrown collective project is really important because people don't understand that things happen without any warning. Hurricanes you get some warning, but there are things that happen with no warning. And what your project does is allows people to connect with growers, which means that they can buy produce and preserve it for things that happen.
16:37God forbid the internet actually goes down. Our whole food system works on internet-driven stuff. You know? And so if they already have connected with a local grower and have bought produce and have canned it or frozen it, and hopefully they have a generator at their place, they have at least some food to get them through until things get figured out. Right. You can't...
17:03You can't rely on going to the store every day. I mean, I'm not saying don't go once a week, but going to the store every day to get the food you're going to eat that day is a bad plan. Right. I agree completely. I think you should always have at least a cupboard full of cans for, you know, every year, I think you should go get a cupboard full of cans just in case. I mean, especially in North Carolina or coastal areas that see these kind of
17:33acts of nature constantly or yearly. Just go ahead and have a safety bucket up in your attic full of canned foods, dehydrated stuff, beef jerky. I mean, a big part for me about starting this was the educational side of it. I wanted to learn as much as possible and you're hitting the nail on the head. That's brilliant.
17:58Yeah, and I'm in Minnesota where it gets very cold and it can be and it can blizzard like you literally can't see across your door yard. You cannot drive in that. And so we always buy two weeks worth of food at a time. And when we have the funds, if we haven't grown our own produce, the summer was terrible, by the way, for growing produce at our place. But we buy stuff from other people and we can, you know, we pressure can we water bath can and
18:27We have a whole thing of tomato sauce and jams and jellies and preserved fruit and stuff so that if we can't get out, we're not screwed. And honestly, I could imagine there are some people's houses you would be living like a king if you got snowed in there or stuck there for a few days. There's some people that would just pull out, you know, just amazing meals for this kind of food.
18:55for these kinds of situations and anybody could hopefully learn to do that for themselves. Yeah, and the thing is, it's not that hard. I was supposed to talk to a lady this morning, but I suspect something came up because we didn't get connected. And she is all about the homesteading, canning, baking your own bread stuff. And I'm hoping to reschedule it because I feel like she has a lot of good stuff to say and to teach. But
19:22I've looked at her Facebook page and she is all about canning and I'm like, I am, I so want to talk to her because there's stuff I don't even know about canning. She cans cream based soups. I assume she pressure cans them and she makes the soups herself from scratch and then cans them for the winter. You put them in the freezer or? No, no, no, no. Once you pressure can something, it's completely safe. The cream. I'm just wondering about the cream. If a factory...
19:52If a factory can do it, a person can do it with a pressure canter. I guess. Yeah, I guess I don't eat much canned cream, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I make a killer cream mushroom soup. So I want to know how she's doing it. I can do it. I love I love some good. I've been getting into lion's mane and some of those are very useful mushrooms. We recently made some lion's mane steaks that were really good. Yeah.
20:18Yeah, nobody realizes how good mushrooms are for you. Well, I shouldn't say that. Not, I shouldn't say nobody, but, but not as many people as you would think know how good mushrooms are for you. You're right. Indeed.
20:33Yup. So you mentioned a number back when you were talking about your producers that have gotten themselves listed on your site. How many now? 200. Last night when I looked at it, it was 230 something across the country. It jumped from around 100 to this last month. We've gotten on about 130 more. And I didn't start my personal phone calls until
21:03We had the full platform launched, but personal phone calls are really Helping people to gain confidence, you know in in the in the in homegrown collective and in the platform Yeah, and did you I I'm sorry. I'm so I was so distracted when you were talking so thinking about my kid Um, so it does it cost the producers money to be listed or do you say it's free? No, it's free. All they have to do is they send in a thing. It comes through approval
21:32We check them out online. We might give them a phone call if it looks a little, but we just make sure that they are who they say they are. They are a local food producer. And it's simple like that, but it's easy if somebody gets on, somehow gets through our filters that I can just take them, I can delete a producer immediately if someone says, oh, they said they were selling organic and it wasn't. They're buying grocery store stuff.
21:59and selling it to us or like whatever. And I haven't dealt with that yet in this process, but I've been able to speak to every single producer on the phone and make sure that they're in line with our goals and are okay with us serving them.
22:26Do they just go to your website or they have to like email you or call you to be cleared? You're right. They can just go on to the website. There's a create profile or login up on the top right and they can go in. They'll create the profile. It'll send the profile to me. I'll look it over. You know, like look up that if they put an address in, I'll look up the address to make sure that business is where they say it is. Just little things to make sure that.
22:54Nobody's trying to get on there and cause disruptions. Yep, you're vetting them and that's important. Right, right. Yep, okay, cool. So let me see, we have eight more minutes to go, which means I need to figure out a question that'll cover four because the last question is gonna cover four. Go ahead, tell me something. Hey, don't let me tell me. Do you still have my last question about where I see them? I do, yeah. Okay, well, I'll let you put that where you want to, but I trust you, what questions you got for me? I don't know.
23:26I don't know. What do you want to tell me besides the answer to the last question? Okay. I can tell you about, my cousin just recently started an oyster farm down here. So we've now got, we've gotten up to herbs, corn, okra, potatoes, and oysters now. So he's, my cousin with a Carraway Oyster Company is close to having his oysters out here freshly pulled out of the water.
23:56Nice. Very nice. I'm getting excited about that. I miss seafood so much in Minnesota. Seafood is not the same as on the coast by any stretch of the imagination. No, and having grown up on the East coast in Maine, I know what a pulled out of the ocean lobster tastes like the same day. I believe you. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, it's tough. I miss seafood so much and I'm actually not, I'm not a, an oyster.
24:25um clam, kind of girl. I don't really like those but I love shrimp, I love lobster, I will eat fried clams, they're not my favorite but I'll eat them. And the other thing that's been harder to find here is salmon, really good salmon at the store. Can't find it, it's not great. How do you feel about farm raised salmon? I'd rather not. Right, I agree. I've been doing a
24:55It's scary the way that companies can market now and say, oh, fresh wild-caught salmon, and it'd be the name of the company if they want it to be, and kind of be misleading. But I'm agreeing with you. I would much rather fresh-caught, wild-caught salmon. The way it used to be, yeah. Yeah, just regular salmon, how it used to be. We have one of the only caviar.
25:23farms in the country in North Carolina that pumps water out of the ocean and constantly pumps it out to keep it fresh. Really? That was something I recently looked in, looked, did some research on. Well, that's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, I think it helps clean, cleans the water and gives the, gives the fish nutrients and feeds the, all the vegetation around
25:52You know, the water pumps and stuff. So I hadn't found anything wrong with it yet. Oh, that is fantastic. All right. So now we can get to the last question. The last question is where do you see this platform in five years, sir? Well, thank you so much for asking my questions for me. I have information. I want to get out to people. Uh, but you're, you're great at, obviously you got most of my, you did it already for me. So, uh,
26:21But I have a few goals to make within five years. I hope we will have a much larger board of advisors across the country with many different unique and different perspectives so we can continue to serve the people who are a part of a sustainable and healthy food system. I think that's the knowledge of all these individuals guiding us is what's gonna help us go for a long time and be able to really serve a purpose.
26:50I hope our staff will also grow while maintaining a minimal operating cost. You know, keep everything remote. You know, salaries when you're working remote can't be too extravagant. We don't want to be, we don't want to be seeming like we're trying to get rid of off of this. It's really about getting the farmers and consumers recognition and changing our food system. So, and then last, hopefully we can, we'll be able to give back to local food operations
27:20few educational resources that are already currently doing good work across the country. Any nonprofit can get on our platform and say, hey, we're doing this in our state. And hopefully when we start gaining more revenue, we'll be able to just start donating and really fueling this movement by fueling the people that are already doing it, enhancing what we're doing and benefiting our users with more features and more.
27:50more beneficial resources. So full circle. Yes. Everybody, I'm hoping everybody can find a beneficial initiative to support this, this nonprofit. And, uh, I hope I've seen, I hope I seem humble being able to step down and allowing somebody with more experience than me, uh, being the head of operations. Uh, cause I really do want to focus on, uh, dealing directly with the, with the users.
28:20Yeah, and it's always better to have someone who wants to be doing the job doing the job. You know? I mean, yay that you're heading this up and doing this right now, but like you said, you'd rather be doing the in-person or contact with the users and the growers. And I think that you're really good at communicating what you're trying to accomplish. So that's what you should be doing. And having someone who's just in charge.
28:48of the operations seems like a better idea if they're more suited to that. Does that, did I say that right? Yeah, I understand it perfectly. You're exactly right. Okay, good. Sometimes I get on a roll and I'm like, where was I going with what I was saying? What always ends up being a very beneficial and informative for me. So I would never think of cutting you off or stopping you. Okay, good. All right, Hayden, this was fantastic. I'm glad that you came back to talk with me.
29:18Yeah, thank you for having me. I think what you're doing is great. Uh, spreading, spreading the word and, uh, helping people, uh, gain more resources on education in this field. Yeah. I'm going to keep doing it and keep kicking ass and taking names. Well, sweet. We'll do it again. Uh, when I get to some next stages. Yeah. Maybe in the spring. Cause I figured you're going to be real busy this winter. Well, we will have a sweet steaks coming up and we'll have some money to give away for, for a spring, uh,
29:47for farmers in the spring. That'll happen in November. We'll talk again. All right, awesome. All right, thank you Hayden for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, bye. Bye.
 

Hidden Brook Ranch LLC

Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. Good morning, Christine. How are you? I'm good, Mary. How are you? I'm great. You're in New Jersey? Yes, we are. We're in Blairstown, New Jersey, which is Warren County.
00:27Okay, I've said this before on the podcast, so I'm gonna say it again. I was born in New Jersey, but my parents moved to Maine when I was six months old. Oh, nice. What part of New Jersey? Um, I don't, I don't know for sure. It was the Fort Dix Air Force Base. Oh, okay. Got it. That's like South Jersey. So I think the town or the city is Burlington, but I'm not positive. Got it. Yeah.
00:58small little state, the garden state. But yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So my husband and I own an alpaca ranch. We produce fiber producing alpacas, as well as conduct a agro tourism business, where we get to educate people on alpacas and llamas, because we do have some llamas as well. About...
01:27their care and their habits and how we use the fiber to produce products. Yes. Okay. Do alpacas and llamas get along? Is that why people who have one usually have some of the other? Well, typically, yes, because alpacas and llamas are both part of the camel lid family. And I say that kind of, it's kind of odd.
01:56Most alpaca owners don't like llamas. Most llama owners don't like alpacas. So it's almost rare, actually, to find someone who has both. But we find that it's nice to have both, because we also use our llamas for protection. So our llamas guard the alpacas. Oh, OK. So I know that llamas and alpacas are different.
02:26Alpacas you can use their fur hair or whatever it's called for for fiber for yarn or I don't even know but llamas not so much, right?
02:40So alpacas, the fiber is definitely better than a llama's fiber, but llama's fiber can be utilized. It just tends to be a bit more coarse. So if you're making something to like a wearable, you would make something that is not going to be close to the skin.
03:08All right, that makes sense. So it's kind of the difference between wool and man-made yarn because wool tends to be itchy depending on the breed of sheep. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, definitely. Cool. So how did you get into this? So we started about 2019. We were looking for a piece of property where, you know, we could
03:38not necessarily farm because farming wasn't our thing, but raise some animals, you know, to produce something because New Jersey's very expensive. So having a farm and producing a product from your farm helps you tax for tax purpose. So we were looking for something that would be at least five acres.
04:07and have some ability or capability to raise some sort of animals. So we found this piece of property that right backs up to Jenny Jump State Park which is a really big park here in New Jersey and it fit all the check marks. The check marks were all checked off and they happen to have been already
04:37for alpaca. And we tried to learn as much as we could and we decided that we were going to keep the four alpaca that the previous owners had and our one llama at that time, Stella, and raise alpaca. So that was the plan. That's how we kind of started. And then COVID came.
05:06So COVID kind of gave us the opportunity to get to know our land and our animals more. And I always tell people alpaca are kind of like tattoos. Once you get one, you kind of end up getting more. So we kind of dove into learning as much as we could about their care and then decided that we wanted a couple of more. So
05:35We bred initially because we knew what the result of a previous breeding with those two alpacas would be. And now we're, you know, producing show quality fiber alpacas. Yeah, so it was almost a mishap, you know, well, maybe not a mishap, but definitely something unexpected.
06:05You know, initially, as far as animals, we would get a property we could have horses on. But we just kind of fell in love with the animals, the alpacas and the llamas. So that's how it started. So when you bred that that pair and you had that first alpaca baby and is there a name for a baby alpaca? Yeah. So baby alpacas are called creas. That's what I thought. Yeah, it's one.
06:33Pretty is names for a baby animal I've ever heard. Yeah. Were you just like in love with this new baby? Oh my God. Yes, she was adorable. So alpacas are very interesting animals and especially when the female is bred. You know, I think she knows you're watching to see when her baby's going to be born. So they tend to try to have a baby when no one else is around. And yeah, of course.
07:02my husband was home and I was the one with all the birthing and reproductive knowledge because I had Decided I was going to take a course from a very well-known vet on reproduction and birthing and I was not home. I missed the entire birth. Oh, but it was captured on a fantastic video for me and Yeah, she it was just it was amazing
07:32So the birds though tend to make me a little bit nervous, but generally we've been pretty successful at that now. So we have three currently who are gonna give birth next year. Fun, fun. Yeah, birth is always a scary time and it doesn't matter whether it's a human or an animal because things go wrong. Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of signs for them.
08:02But yeah, I can remember being pregnant with my last kid. And I waited a very long time to go in because I knew that if I went in too early, I was just gonna be stuck and I could do most of the laboring at home. And I got to the hospital at 10 minutes to seven in the evening and he was born at 712. So 22 minutes later. Wow, yeah, that's kinda close.
08:29Yeah, and I can remember saying to him on the drive up to the hospital that if anything went wrong and it was a choice between me and the baby, choose me because I already had three other kids that needed me. And he looked at me and he was like, are you sure? And I said, well, do you want to be raising three kids and a newborn by yourself? Right. And he said, not especially. And I said, okay, if the choice needs to be made, that's the smart choice.
08:58And he was like, you sound very sure. I said, I am very sure. And he said, okay. Luckily, Cameron, the youngest, was born really easily, like no epidural, no nothing. Everything was textbook and he was perfect. So it all went well. But when people tell me they're expecting, my first thought is that's exciting, congratulations. But in the back of my head, I'm like, I hope everything goes safely and well.
09:28Yes, very true. And it's true of animals too. We've had a barn cat have three sets of babies in the last year. And every time we realize she's pregnant, I'm like, huh, I wonder how many of these are going to make it.
09:42True, very true. Yeah. So I'm going to be a nervous wreck next May. Yeah. It's really hard because you want everything to be okay. You want mom to be okay. You want the babies to be okay. Speaking of babies, do they have just one or can they have twins? They typically just have one. So twin birds are successful twin birds of alpacas are becoming, I'd say maybe slightly more common.
10:11Um, that those are successful. Um, but you know, a few years ago, you know, none of them were surviving, you know, um, none of them were making it out. So, um, I think people, um, camelid special with camelid specialties, like veterinarians with camelid specialties, um, are a little bit more equipped now to handle those twin birds and, um.
10:40They seem to be more successful, so that's good. But for me, I'm just hoping for one good healthy. Yeah, I just didn't know if they were like goats, because goats have twins and triplets, and sometimes quadruplets. Oh, yeah, no, no, no. Thankfully, no. OK, good. I don't know if I could handle that. Yeah, so OK, so alpacas, they are camelids, which means they're related to camels. Yes.
11:08Are there other animals besides llamas and alpacas that are related to animals or is that it? So alpacas were domesticated by the Inca and they were domesticated from the Vaikuna. Okay. And the llamas were domesticated as working animals and they came from the Guanaco. So all of those are found in the
11:38the Andes, so mostly Peru, where they have like six billion. And Bolivia has alpacas and guanacos and vicuña. But yeah, that's what they came from. And they had similar purposes then than they do today. So it's very kind of interesting.
12:01Alrighty see I know nothing about alpacas when I realized that's what you did. I was like yay something I know nothing about I get to get educated today So I know that people will drink camel milk Is there anything that the alpaca milk is good for besides feeding the baby alpaca? No No, so they only Supply enough milk to feed their baby Okay
12:30Yeah, so unfortunately not. Yeah, you can't drink it. So you can't make soap with it. Can't do any of those things you could do with like goat milk. And it's the same for llamas. We have not bred llamas, though, because if you do use llamas for guarding purpose, it's best that they've not either, you know, been a mom or
13:00for males they need to be gilded. Yeah. Okay. So I don't want to ask an offensive or gross question, but people eat sheep's meat, they eat goat meat, do people eat alpaca meat? People do eat alpaca and llama.
13:24Some farms, I'd say in the US, have a meat component to their farming plan. Here we do not eat the meat. But yes, it is certainly in Peru acceptable to eat both alpaca and llama meat.
13:49Okay, like I said, I know nothing about this. I'm going to ask all the questions. Yeah. Okay, so how many alpacas do you have right now? So we have currently 20 alpacas, three separate herds. We have a female herd that all live together, and then we have two separate male herds. We have an adult male herd, and we have our juvenile male herd.
14:19Um, yeah. So the juvenile male herd, um, consists of our babies from last year. So, um, we had two males born last year and one female. So the males and the females have to be separated, um, from each other. Typically about eight months, really depending on their, their activities. Yes.
14:46Um, but yeah, our males were separated by eight months and they also need to be, uh, to be secure in a herd. Um, they need to be in groups of three. So we only had two males last year. So, um, we ended up getting two more juvenile males so that, uh, they could be more comfortable and less stressed because they stress a little bit. So you got them some buddies. Good.
15:15Yeah, they got some cute little buddies and it's nice because they are rotational sleepers. So alpacas are pretty much defenseless animals, which is why we have llamas, but they're rotational sleepers. So one is always up kind of keeping an eye on things while the others are sleeping. So if you have only two, they're not really well rested, right? Yeah.
15:45That's a good size, but they unfortunately cannot be co-mingled with the adult males. Yet, it might take a little while to get that situation worked out because, you know, the adult males have a hierarchy and the little males don't fit into that picture right now. So they would fight a lot. Yeah. So why are alpacas defenseless, but llamas are really good defense animals?
16:15So, the opacas, their defense really is just to flee. So they don't really have the ability to bite. They have a split upper lip with a palate, and then they have bottom teeth. So they can't really get a good grip in that kind of situation. They do have...
16:43toes with pads, but you know, they're not really strong. So their legs are very long and they're not really very muscular. So I don't know if they have the strength to defend, which is why they flee. But llamas are very big. So llamas tend to be upwards of 300 pounds, where your average alpaca is about 150. Oh. Yeah. And llamas, they're
17:13They say llamas defend to the death. So llamas instinctually just know that this is my job, especially if you get good llama guard stock. You want to look for llamas from proven guard stock. So what they do is they will charge a predator, they'll grab it with its front legs, and they'll pull it underneath its body, and then they'll pound it with the back legs.
17:43Um, and you ever get kicked by a llama, it's not fun. So, um, generally that's how they eliminate predators while alpacas are just going to run around screaming, you know, looking for a place to go. And obviously since, you know, they're here on our farm, they don't really have very many places that are not fenced to get away from a predator. Right. Yeah. So, so llamas are fighters and alpacas are lovers.
18:12Yes, uh-huh. Yes. Well, they might fight amongst themselves a little bit here and there, but generally they're very peaceful and calm animals. So, cool. So did I see something about alpaca yoga on your face? Tell me about that. That's a lot of fun. So, you know, goat yoga is a big thing. People love to go
18:42do goat yoga and I was like, why don't we do alpaca yoga? And it's nice because with goats, they go to the bathroom all over the place. They don't have a problem, you know, stopping right where you're sitting. Where alpacas are communal. So they all go in like generally the same area.
19:06So it's nice for yoga because we could keep them interacting as they're grazing or maybe eating a little bit of grain from your hand. But generally they just graze around you while you're doing the yoga. So there's no jumping on anybody's back. My llama actually really loves yoga. He will lie down and eat grass right next to you. It's very, very cute. And I think too, like alpacas...
19:35Like most animals are, um...
19:41They feed off your energy, right? So yoga is peaceful and calm generally, right? And you're in this mindset of peace and calmness that really the alpacas enjoy. So it's a nice combination and no one's jumping on your back, so that's good. Uh-huh, yeah, I can't imagine 150 pounds on my back when I'm trying to do a yoga pose. That would probably not be good. No.
20:09Okay, so I have two questions. They'll probably eat up the 10 minutes left of 30 minutes One of them is are alpacas an easy keeper animal the other question I want to know about your agritourism because that's a big deal for a lot of people right now. Yes. Okay, so We always tell people alpacas are like cats. In fact, I've kind of coined them as pasture cats where cats are kind of okay, you just
20:38clean up after them, give them some food and some water, and generally that's it. There is more to it depending on what area of the country you live in. So here we're in white tail deer area, so we have to worry about meningeal worm, so that adds a little bit of extra care for alpacas. So for us, daily care, we primarily feed them
21:07grains twice a day. So once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then we clean up their... my alpacas are on dry lot. I think that that helps to reduce their exposure to parasites. And then we only graze them for... well we rotational... rotationally graze them, but we only allow them to graze when the grass is dry.
21:36that helps also to reduce parasites. But once a month they all have to be weighed. So we have to harness everybody. We have to get them on a scale, which is a lot of fun. The more you do it regularly, they're more used to it. We weigh them and then we give them a shot of ivermectin. And ivermectin is to prevent parasites, right? Sweet.
22:01Basically, you're treating them all year long like they have parasites, even though they may or may not. But we like to keep things really clean. So because I'm a little crazy about that. That's okay. So yeah, my first, the fall season drives me nuts because of the little leaves.
22:27The leaves are just falling from the trees, they're wet, you never know, they might have a slug on the back of them. You know, one eats a slug and the next thing you know, they're sick. So we also do FAMACHA body scoring, which a lot of people with sheep or goat would be familiar with, but we're generally checking their, popping their eye to check the membrane.
22:53to check the color of the membrane, to see if there's any signs of illness. We also body score them, so we weigh them and then we get our hands on them. And we will check to see whether they're maybe eating too much, because we do have an agrotourism business. So people do come and they do get to feed the alpacas, and the llamas actually.
23:22So we'll check their body score to see if they're too heavy or maybe too thin. You know, because if they're thin, then we want to bulk them up a bit because the one thing about camel lids, especially alpacas, is that they do get sick and when they do get sick, they go down very quickly and they can lose weight very rapidly.
23:45So we like to be on top of that by maybe keeping a little bit of extra weight on them so that we do have a chance to get them back to a healthier weight sooner if they're not already skinny. The other thing is we're really careful about what we feed them because they are borderline diabetics by nature. So we don't.
24:13like to give them anything that's like molasses based. We also don't like to give them any cracked corn because a lot of people like to feed cracked corn. The cracked corn could cause dental issues for them. They don't do very well under anesthetic. So we wouldn't want to have to do any major dental work should they break a tooth or a molar.
24:43due to crack corn. So that's generally their
24:53their maintenance schedule, but we also have to shear them once a year. For us, we prefer to have a shearer come and do it rather than attempt to shear on our own. We prefer to let professional shearers handle that. At the time of shearing, they will trim the toenails. They'll check the teeth. They'll trim the teeth if need be.
25:23And the males, because Lord knows why, but the males have extra teeth in their mouth that the females don't have, which are called fighting teeth. So those fighting teeth, the points have to be taken off, but they can grow back. So we check them from time to time to make sure the males don't grow new fighting teeth. But that's pretty much their care in a nutshell. And then your other question, the agrotourism.
25:53Yeah. So we decided during COVID, since everybody was pretty cooped up and we're pretty close to the city, that we were going to provide an educational but fun experience for people to come to that was outdoors. Because you know, you couldn't really do anything at the time that was indoors.
26:22Yeah.
26:26We decided to start, well, I found Airbnb experience. Unfortunately, I don't think Airbnb is now hosting new experiences, but that was the platform we chose to book through initially. And what would happen is if somebody went on vacation and stayed at an Airbnb locally, they would be suggested to come here.
26:57as one of the things to do. And since there were very limited things to do, we were quite successful with Airbnb initially. And now we primarily generate visits on our own through our own marketing efforts and our own booking platform. So we've moved to that, but it's fun. So what we do is we have a few different types of visits. You know, you mentioned the alpaca yoga, that's...
27:25One of the things we do like an evening event where people come and we have a little campfire going and they get to see the alpacas in the dark, which is kind of cool, because they actually feel different at night than they do during the day. I don't know why. It's just very weird. We make s'mores and hang out and tell stories about the alpacas. And that's a lot of fun, but generally we do guided walking tours.
27:53where we are allowing people to come in, meet, greet, feed, and feel, learn about alpacas and llamas, and then we take them on a guided walk. You know, we're, we keep that to a minimum. We don't like to have too many people, and we don't like to have too many availability, because you know, we don't want them to.
28:22be stressed with visitors all the time too. So you have to balance the business side of it because that's what provides the funds to care for the animals properly. And not having them be overworked or having too many visitors because that could be detrimental to their health because they would be very stressed out.
28:50So we limit our groups to like 10 and we space it out so that the alpacas are getting a rest in between. And we don't really force the interaction. We know which ones will walk, which ones like to go on a little dotted walk and which ones are like, no, not me. We also don't force them to eat.
29:18It's totally up to them if they want to engage with the people while they're here then They'll come on over and if they don't then you know, we just let them hang out and observe So we try to keep it nice and calm for them too. So That's a nice vibe. So basically you don't want the alpacas to get overwhelmed is what you're saying Yes stresses them out. Okay. Yeah. All right, and then my last question
29:47because we're almost at 30 minutes, is do you ever get tired of talking about alpacas? Are you just so in love with what you're doing that you're like, I can talk about it 24 hours a day, seven days a week? I don't get tired of talking about alpacas. No, I don't. They are so cute. If you have alpacas...
30:14and you treat them well, they treat you well, and it is just such a joy. You know, we just, they know their names, they come when I call them, they give me little kisses on my chin. So, I mean, they're really cute. And I think for us specifically, like we don't mind talking about alpacas nonstop, especially if people have questions because...
30:41I think it's important for people who are considering alpacas to have the knowledge and not just like go buy one or go buy a bottle baby or you know, that kind of thing. So we'd like to educate people, I think so. I mean, that's primarily what we do when we're talking about alpacas is giving them information they didn't have.
31:11Very nice and part of the reason I started the podcast is because I was like there are so many people interested in starting homesteads or farms and there's so much to it that people don't know. And I thought, huh, maybe I can find some people to talk to me about what's actually involved. And, huh, talked to over a hundred, actually probably 200 people at this point. Wow, that's fantastic.
31:38Yes, and I've had people come up to me and my husband and say, I love the podcast. I have learned so many things from it. And every time somebody says that, I'm just like, yay, it's doing its job. Good. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Now it's nice to have that feeling. Yeah. People want to know. People are inherently curious about what other people are doing. It's just the human condition, I think. So.
32:04All right, so Christine, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and thank you for teaching me all about alpacas. Oh, thank you, Mary. You have a good day. You too. Bye. All right.
 

Harmony Mountain Farm

Today I'm talking with Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
 
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Doing well. So tell me all about yourselves and your story because I was looking at your website and it's a beautiful story. Well thank you.
00:29Well, our story goes way back because Sydney and I together go way back. Um, so I don't know how far back you want to go, but we met in the eighth grade. So we go back pretty far. Originally from, um, a suburb in, in Connecticut outside of Hartford and we lived a pretty traditional life. So Bill and I, suburban, sorry, suburban life, but Bill and I, um, we met when we were 19, we started dating, we started raising a family.
00:58um, built, you know, built a business and I was in education and we've done a lot of different things. And, um, when our resource allowed, we started skiing up here in Northern New Hampshire. And at the same time, um, my kids had grown and kind of left the house and, and we were just starting to, I think, examine where we wanted the next part of our life to go.
01:26And I was having some health problems and we were getting tired of the hustle and bustle of living in the area that we lived in. And we started talking about how food was impacting on our health and we just went down the rabbit hole. I was reading a bunch of books on leaving the suburbs or leaving the city to become a farmer and we started researching farmers.
01:54Joe Saladin and- Yeah, and largely for entertainment at the time because we're living vicariously through those folks, I think, and their stories. Yeah, and then, so this is a, we call it our midlife crisis farm. So we're city suburban people who did not grow up doing this, but we were attracted to the lifestyle for the health benefits and-
02:23And the more we learned, the more we educated ourselves, Cindy more formally in reading books. I'm a YouTube university guy, so I try, I can, you know, I spend a lot of time watching other people's stories and farms and things. I think we also need to mention we connected with a lot of other farmers, one of them being my cousin out in Missouri, who is, you know, had a generational cattle farm. So we would talk to people and, and
02:53how you think about what we wanted to do for the health of the animal, our environment, and for ourselves. We think that raising animals or doing what we do, it has many, I guess you've helped me with this. Yeah, well, it adds more meaning to life. Our lives were feeling meaningless in the traditional suburban American model
03:23you know, our free time was spent, you know, just trying to fill it with shopping or going to different events. And then it didn't seem to be a lot of meaning in that. So when we started down the road with animals, um, which then brought us into our diet and, uh, it just gave more meaning to our life. It was, we felt as though we were doing things that had a greater impact than, you know, Hey, what do you want to do? Let's go shopping or, you know,
03:50let's go see a movie or a show or yeah and it just seems so incredibly interesting for both of us. It wasn't like we can't, you know, we kind of were doing it at the same time kind of parallel doing research and then it just all kind of evolved on our long drives back and forth from New Hampshire to Connecticut how we wanted to proceed and that just continued to grow.
04:19And the beautiful thing about farming and living off our land and living sustainably is that we're never bored. I mean, and the work is never done. So there's always something to be done and to be learned. I think I am absolutely motivated to learn new things. I think that's big for me. I think for Bill, it's probably the same.
04:49Um, it's, it's definitely evolving. We've gone through different animals and, um, you know, trying to find that the right mix of animals for us. Right now we, we work beef cattle. We have a couple of our family dairy cows for ourselves. Um, we do pork and we do poultry, both layers and meat birds. It's pretty much the mainstay of what we're doing is the beef, the poultry and the pork.
05:17And then we have other animals just for enjoyment. We have three goats that are family pets, we have guarding dogs that are extremely valuable and dear to us. And I think that the main thing for us is like some of the things that I took away from some of the farmers that I had read about or he had watched on YouTube is that everybody has a job here. And so everybody fills a role, all the animals fill a role.
05:46And they do work for us. Our dog patches is probably, I mean, we don't know what we would do without him. The great Pyrenees and he exemplifies every positive trait you've ever read about a great Pyrenees we have found in our patches. Great discernment, big strong animal, great disposition. But he keeps all the predators off our property.
06:15When we first started, we had lost several birds. I had lost, you know, we put them in the chicken tractors and every couple of days we moved them so that they can forage on new grass and eat bugs and things like that. But we were losing chickens to bear, coyote, weasel. Weasel was the worst because the weasels, they just, I hope this isn't too gross, but they pull off the head and leave the rest of the body.
06:43And it was such, it felt like such a waste. But you did, Cindy did stumble one morning going out to feed the chickens. She stumbled on a bear that was sitting in our chicken tractor, who had just killed 75 birds. So she pretty much rolled up face to face on a bear. Eating on our. And we had electric wire around that. I mean, these are some of the lessons we had to learn the hard way. I think.
07:09There were a lot of tears for me in the beginning because I was so frustrated. It's not like any job you've ever had where you come in and you have your checklist and it all goes fairly well. You might think you're having a hard day until you've done farming because you have animals escape. You have predators. You have, you know, disease. You have parasites. How are you going to manage all those things? And the most ethical way you can. And and to.
07:39put everything in balance in terms of the way that everybody and everything works together and it's so imperfect. It's so beautifully imperfect. It's definitely imperfect. So I think, you know, we love telling our, you know, our early stories about some of the things that happened, like losing all those chickens, and that was the reason we brought patches on. And the minute we brought that dog on our property who had...
08:06Previously been with a goat farmer and knew his job. Yeah, he was about, he's just about a year old when we got him. He knew his job. You could see it in his face. The intelligence was visible. And we immediately saw the results. I wasn't losing birds anymore. It's that I don't even close my laying hens in the coop anymore. Yeah, we don't have to close our layers in at night because he keeps such a good watch on them.
08:35The other morning he had treed a bear, a big bear, and he had treated, I think it had been up in that tree for two hours because when I came out, Patches was in the woods and I had to coax him out. And as soon as I got him about 30 yards from that tree, the bear saw his opening and came screaming down the tree to get away. So these are, you know, when we've learned so many fabulous things about animals and how they contribute to our land, to our lives.
09:04That's a good point because we, and we tell, when we give our farm tours, we, we make it a point to tell people, you know, I think the conventional thought for example, is to look at a cow and think, oh, that's a, you know, a docile meandering animal. And when people hear that, no, they're super athletic. They can be very fast. Um, they can be very dangerous if you don't know how to handle, you know, beef cattle. Um, but for the most part, they're extremely social.
09:33very smart. So we've gotten to know the animals in such a different way. I don't think there's any other way we could have come to know the pigs and how smart they are and how fun they can be actually to handle and to have on the property. So yeah, getting to know the animals in just a completely different way. And their social dynamic to me is fascinating to watch them and how they
10:03communicate and how they work together. And every species has a different- Modality and way of operating. Right, and again, this comes from reading a lot of Temple Grandin. And I enjoy Temple Grandin. Her books, I think I've read them all. But especially animals and translation. And she puts things very simply. She's a-
10:30autistic woman who's done a lot for the autistic community, but she's also done a lot for the farming community in terms of the way that the animal is processed because she uses their natural inclinations to go through the processing facility without any stress. And there's a lower attrition rate when it's done properly. We do have one facility like this in New Hampshire that does this kind of humane.
10:59slaughtering. But there's also other places that, you know, do humane slaughtering. You just have to kind of we pecked through that some. That was probably the most challenging. That was eye-opening for us to work through the processing end of this business. Because we, you know, we spend a lot of time and energy and resources raising these animals in a very particular way. We don't want to just hand them off to an industrial processing model.
11:28So finding the right people and finding the right way to close the loop and bring the animal to market has been really challenging. We have gone through a dozen different processors and we have driven 250 miles at times to try and bring animals to a processor that's gonna, in our view, do the right thing.
11:57Did we answer your question? I kind of rambled on here. No, that's completely fine. But I have a couple of things to share along, well, from what you said sparked my thoughts. A farm is not a farm without a dog. I fully believe that. Our place is also our midlife crisis. So welcome to the club, I guess. There's no stopping a bear that's hungry without a big...
12:27Firearm. Right. And Temple Grandin is amazing. I've read a couple of her books and I just, I love her personality because she's so matter of fact. Yes. And she has always struck me as somebody who sees a problem, thinks about it and goes, well, duh, here's the answer. Right. It's so true. I love her. She's great.
12:56She is. She's absolutely amazing. My cousin had an opportunity to meet her. I have a signed copy that she has around autographed copy and she was struck by how matter of fact she was as well. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. And then you mentioned Joel Salatin.
13:18I don't know if you guys have listened to my podcast at all, but there's an episode where I interviewed Joel and he is fantastic. If you haven't listened to it, you should go listen to it. I haven't. I'll have to go back and read that. He was the first one that really got me going and I just stumbled on it. It was almost divine intervention. I was going down a YouTube rabbit hole and he's just so, he has such an educated approach and he's able to articulate that.
13:47so well that, yeah, I did a really deep dive on him in the beginning and a lot of what we've done has been modeled after his teachings. I would have to say though, I always tell people who come on our farm tours that those square paddocks that he can make where he is in the Shenandoah Valley that we have in New Hampshire. You're not making them in New Hampshire. They're crooked, they're like, they're all bent. We're the granite state because you can't go more
14:1710 inches. It's like 10 inches we could go down. So making fence for us is really, really tough. Yeah. We're in the heart of the white. We're actually just north of Mount Washington. So we're we're, you know, up in the mountains. It's very rocky. It's a very harsh climate. But we love the fact that it's a harsh climate because it's a challenge. Yeah, we have snow on the ground for six months. It's not unusual to get negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
14:46without a wind chill. Yeah, so it's but we embrace that challenge for sure and the ground is definitely part of that challenge to Like Cindy said you're not getting a straight fence line up here. Dealing with frozen water. I think that that's a challenge as well. Yes ice is terrible.
15:09Oh, you're in a cold climate too. Oh, and I grew up in one too. I grew up in Maine, so I completely understand harsh winters. And we got our first light frost this morning in Minnesota. Oh wow. Already? Yeah. It was 37 degrees at 630 this morning. I was like, oh, here we go. Yep. We've been lucky this year. We usually have our first frost by now, but... It's been a spectacular fall.
15:38Yeah, here too. It's been a blessing the last six weeks. Well we're really, it's okay. Like October 4th is a perfect day for the first light frost where we live. But we have like 50, I think, I can't remember what my husband planted. It might be San Marzano tomatoes, it might be Early Girl tomatoes, I can't remember.
16:03He planted them back in mid July because we had a really rough start to our growing season here with flooding. They all had green tomatoes set on them two weeks ago. We've been waiting for them to show some blush so we could pick them and bring them in to let them finish ripening. Well, I don't know if those plants are going to still be alive by this afternoon. I don't know if that light frost will actually take them out.
16:31We're going to be waiting to see this evening whether those plants are all black. Oh, I am sorry. Do you use hoop houses? We don't and we didn't know it was supposed to get, we didn't know. There was no frost warning for our area last night. So we couldn't even cover them if we'd wanted to because we didn't know we needed to. I'm sorry. That's okay. This is farming, you know.
17:00It's disappointing though. You know, I take things really hard sometimes when things don't work out. You know, when I lose an animal, it's very, I mean, it's hard enough for me to bring them to slaughter because we do develop a relationship with them and I go through a little bit of grief when I have to process an animal. But when you lose them, like I did with my birds,
17:31I'm not as much into the planting yet. We just started. The last few years, we've been getting into the gardening aspect. We put in a hoop house because in our climate, we can't really get tomatoes or peppers without the hoop house. Right. So we put in a sizable hoop house. We've been working on the soil. That's another thing I thought as a city kid or a suburban kid, you know, you throw some seeds in the ground, right? And something grows. And then I realized, yeah, no, that's not how that works.
18:01It's a way more involved. Developing the soil, I think, is something we're still working at. We're on year four, the fourth grunt. Yeah, I think it is. And I would say my soil is is OK now. It's not good. It's not great. It's OK. You know, fortunately, we have, you know, the manure of the farm and the chickens and everything to fortify and build the soil. But as you know, that's not overnight. That it takes years.
18:29We figure at some point, maybe 10 years from now, we'll have a really, really good time. I don't know. I think we did pretty well this year. My sister-in-law has been cutting things up, freezing it. We have things for the winter that we never had before. So I think we did better this year. We've definitely gotten better every year for sure. I should step back or go back a little bit and say that we've built a little bit of a compound here.
18:56in that Sydney and I started with the house and the farm on 264 acres. We have since added about 80, 85 acres. So we're up to a little over 320, 326 acres, something like that. But my daughter decided to join us in this venture. So she moved up. She lived with us for two years as we built a house for her on the property. So she's here with her husband, my son-in-law, and three of our grandchildren.
19:26nine, five, and three. So we have that second generational experience of essentially living together because their house is only a few hundred yards from ours. The boys, all three boys help us on the farm. And we tell people that our nine-year-old and I, he can drive a tractor. Yeah, you see this on the video shorts, little kids driving tractors. And I think a lot of people think that's horrible, right? They're like holding their breath, but.
19:54When they grow up in this environment, they mature faster. They become very capable and competent at a young age. So at nine years old, he can pretty much drive any tractor. I have three different sizes of tractors, a skid steer, 30,000 pound excavator. He's quite competent and capable. And the little ones are- We should probably mention he never does that by himself. No, with supervision for sure. Yes.
20:24But yeah, so having the opportunity to watch and participate in their development has been amazing. And then, as you probably know, not everyone wants to live next to a farm. And if someone buys property next to you, sometimes that turns into problems and issues. So we purchased a
20:54any of that, any of those controversies where people move in and they don't want to be next to a farm because they don't like the animals barking or they don't like the smells or they don't like, you know, tractors going up and down the road. So we purchased that house and my brother and his wife moved up from Connecticut as well. His wife happens to be a childhood friend of Cindy's as well. So we have, I have two of my brothers living on the property with us.
21:22I have my daughter and her family living here on the property. So we, and we didn't plan that. That was absolutely not planned. It just evolved into a little family compound. And I think a lot of people have migrated up to this area since COVID. So we've had the opportunity to kind of bond too with people who have, or they're refugees, I call them. Yeah, we're, we consider ourselves Connecticut refugees. We, we not, I don't know, I don't want to disparage.
21:52Connecticut, but it just wasn't for us. We're looking for a more free lifestyle. New Hampshire provides that. But we've been able to connect, because sometimes it's difficult when you move into a rural community, and there's generations of folks who've grown up together, and you come in as an outsider, that dynamic has to be worked through, right? You just don't show up and have all kinds of relationships and resources. But what's made it easier is that
22:22there's a lot of new people moving up and there's a lot of people exploring this lifestyle. So it does present the opportunity to connect with more people than I think would otherwise have happened. Right. Let me jump in just for a second. New Hampshire is the live free or die state. Yes? Yes. We're very proud of that. Yep. And you were mentioning when you move into a new place, it's hard to kind of get connected. When I moved to Minnesota.
22:52They always talk about Midwestern people being super nice. Yes. And they are super nice. And I'm not going to sit here after however long I've been here since 1992 and tell you that Midwestern people suck because they don't. There are a lot of people that I have met that have been wonderful, friendly, generous, helpful people. But.
23:17It's very hard in the Midwest to make friends because Minnesotans and Wisconsin people and Iowa people are very to themselves. And they assume if you're from the East coast, that you're flusk and direct and rude. And, and I'm not going to lie. I'm terribly direct. I was raised in the state of Maine. Of course I'm direct. But having grown up in Maine.
23:46and then lived here for 30 years now, I guess. The big difference in New England is that as long as you don't come in and act like you're better than. Yes. And you're willing to be like, hi, my name is, who are you? Tell me your story. New England people are very, very much storytellers and they really want to connect with people.
24:15but they don't wanna be looked down on. That's how I have learned to see it. I think that's accurate. I think that's very accurate. Yeah, that's very accurate. That's interesting. And we were very, very cautious and- And conscious. And conscious of we were moving into somebody else's home. Yeah. And we had no intention of changing anything here. And we made that pretty clear that we moved here because we like you. We like-
24:43Lancaster, New Hampshire. I love the area that I'm here for, but there is some, I think there was a little suspicion on behalf of some other people that they weren't quite sure of us. And we are in an area where people are like, oh yeah, I want to move here. And they make it through one winter and they're out. So that's...
25:07That kind of played into it. Yeah, I think they're cautious and standoff because they want to know who's going to stay, right? You're not just an interoper. Or if you both change things too. But we absolutely tried to integrate ourselves into this community. Yeah, in very practical ways. And I would say to people who are experiencing this or going down this journey, you've got to work at it. I made it a point, and Cindy made it a point, to
25:35When we go to the dump to stop and have a conversation, don't just be in and out, right? Yes. Go to the local bakery and the local coffee shop and the post office and the hardware store, um, to, to kind of slow down and be willing to, to have a, you know, a friendly conversation and then to make ourselves visible. Like we would, I had my rounds when we first came up every Saturday, I'm going to go to the post office, whether I need to or not, I'm going to go to the dump, whether I need to or not, I'm going to go to the hardware store, whether I need to or not.
26:05I'm gonna stop at the bakery whether I need to or not Just to you know, it's about the relationship right just to make ourselves We're not you know, and we we just try to Do I don't know what I'm saying integrate we just integrate we I feel I think you feel it has to be genuine and you have to take an active role to try to integrate You know and not just go to people when you need things
26:36I think we found that we have to be willing to help people. If we're driving down the road and we see someone's cow or goat out, we stop and we get out and we've brought people's horses back. We've chased pigs down the side of the road for people. But they do it for us too. So it's very interdependent. So and I love this about our community is that you have to work with each other and we're such a small town.
27:06This is the thing I like most. I love going to the grocery store and seeing 10 people I know. I mean, how great is that? When you come from an area like we come from and you don't know anybody, it was really uncomfortable for me. But I know people when I go to the grocery store or go out for coffee and you see a friendly face. I mean, this has taken time. This is our ninth, we're going into our 10th year, but our ninth year is...
27:34He's coming up soon. So these things, I wouldn't trade for the world. I just can't believe I lived any other way. Yeah, sometimes we'll go back to Connecticut to visit other family members. My son's still back there and we're like, oh my God, I can't believe we lived this way. We lived like that. No wonder, I'm like, no wonder I was miserable. You know, I wasn't quite.
28:01satisfied or fulfilled in some ways. I just. I can totally relate because when we moved to our homestead four years ago, we had been living in a very small town, like in town. And we still go up there. First off, the bank that we use is up there. So we drive up and we go by the old house. We drive through the old neighborhood because that's what you do when you still live within driving distance where you used to live. And.
28:30I get into the town that we lived in and, you know, driving the car off the main highway into the town. And I'm just like, I can't believe we lived here. And we lived there for 20 years. And now our nearest neighbor is like a quarter mile away. When we lived in that town, our nearest neighbor was 15 feet from us. That's how we lived as well. Yeah. Very similar experience and story for sure. Yeah.
28:58You guys are clearly storytellers. You have made this very easy for me, because all I've had to do is sit back and listen, and it's been amazing. But I do have a couple of questions. And if you can shorten your answers slightly, that'd be great. Yeah, we are long-winded. Well, you fit right in in New England, so you're good. So are you selling anything that you're producing on the farm? Yeah, we built a farm store on property.
29:27dedicated building, substantial building. It's my shop is one portion and then the store. So yeah, we sell everything we produce, we sell in addition to sweatshirts and t-shirts and coffee mugs and hats. That's kind of new for us. But yes, we sell beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk. And we do have a couple of like touristy type items, sweatshirts and
29:57some other like local producers. So my soaps that are in there are local people with local ingredients. So yeah, we do. It's a farm stand, but we call it our stores. Nice, okay. And then you guys have a festival tonight, right? Yes, we're really excited about it. Tell me about the festival. Well, you wanna? Well, um.
30:24So this summer we were at a festival and we met a band from New York through a neighbor of ours coincidentally. And we went to see them and we were impressed with them. We've built the farm to entertain, right? We built a party pavilion because we like throwing parties. So we have a party pavilion, 20 by 40 party pavilion. And upstairs of our barn, we have a fairly large barn.
30:53And naively, we thought we would have hay storage in that barn. So we built the barn to accommodate that. And then we learned through our insurance company that they're not going to insure the building if I put hay in it. Yeah. So this giant room that now I can't put hay in it. So we turned that into a party room. And, um, and that kind of involved. Yeah. So, yes, we, so we met the mammals. I met Mike and I am a musician by trade. So I heard him play and I thought.
31:23these people are fantastic and the kind of music that I like. So it's very folky, bluesy. And so we just got together and said, you know, let's have a fall harvest. And then I thought I could use my own food for the food truck. So we wanted to sell our own our own product. Yeah, so it'd be our beef, our pork today on the menu. And then bring awareness that we're here. I think a lot of things that a lot of I was finding that people didn't realize.
31:53that we were here. They're like, oh, I didn't know you had a firm. Oh, I didn't know you sell your meats. And it was my, so my customer base was very small. And now I feel like this kind of broadens things. It brings awareness to who we are, where we are, our practices. And again, this is all to make ourselves a little more visible to the community. Yeah. And it's fun. It is fun.
32:20Are you selling tickets to it or is it free? Yes, it is $20 per ticket and I do have a cap on it at 150 people. So far we're at about 100. I don't know what else to say. I think we're expecting about 150. We hope we don't have to turn anyone away. But yeah, it was to promote the farm, but Cindy's a musician so any excuse to have... Yeah, any excuse to have music on the property.
32:50Um, yeah. So, yeah. We toyed with the idea of doing weddings because we had a wedding here during COVID, uh, a close friend of ours, their venue canceled. Uh, so we hosted their wedding and that was hugely successful. So we have, um, built the farm as far as infrastructure so that we can do weddings, even though we haven't done any, we are capable of, you know, accommodating that type of an event. Okay. Cool.
33:20Um, so what's, what's the weather supposed to be like for your festival? Gorgeous. It's going to be about 60 to 65 degrees this afternoon with mix of clouds and sun, um, but dry and just a great temperature. Awesome. Clear. The mountains are, are. Oh yes. The color is stunning. We're at peak. Yeah, we're probably at peak right now with the leaves. So, so it's going to be a perfect day for a fall festival. I'm so happy for you guys.
33:48Yeah, we are pretty excited about it. I mean, we even use our own pumpkins for decoration. I mean, things are really coming together for us now where we have a little bit of everything and... Yeah, Cindy mentioned that, but that was hugely satisfying to take my three grandkids out into the pumpkin patch, be able to pick 30, 40 pumpkins and use that to decorate the farm. That was pretty fun. Reminds me of Charlie Brown and the great...
34:14pumpkin patch, right? Yes. I'm so jealous that you guys had such a decent growing season because we did not. But there's always next year because that's what farmers always say, right? Right. Yeah. All right, guys, I would love to keep talking to you, but I try to keep these to half an hour or so. I'm going to let you go, but I would love to have you back not, not like next week, but like in the spring. And I have other questions about
34:42the terrain and stuff that you're dealing with, because you're talking about the granite state. So let's try to talk again in like, I don't know, April. That would be great, because it is a challenging time for us. It's mud season and we're starting to get into the spring. It gets very busy and I think it's interesting. Yeah. All right, awesome. Well, let's do that then. Thank you so much for your time today and your storytelling. It was fantastic. You got it. Have a good day. Thank you. You too. Bye-bye.
 

The Kitchen Gardens

Today I'm talking with Jessica Kelly at The Kitchen Gardens. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to contact Jessica, you may email her at Jess@thekitchengardens.com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking to Jessica Kelly, cannot talk, at the Kitchen Gardens. Good morning, Jessica. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm so excited to speak with you today. I'm so excited you reached out because you...
00:29commented on a comment that I left on a Facebook post and I was like, oh, this could be fun. Absolutely, I saw your comment and just immediately I thought why haven't I thought about being on a podcast to get the word out? So I thought I'm gonna reach out to her right now and let her know that I would be interested in speaking more about that. So yes, and I need all kinds of people to reach out because honestly, October is almost booked.
00:58I didn't have five interviews scheduled two weeks ago. Oh, wow. Well, it's working. I dropped the ball. Whatever you're doing. Yeah, I dropped the ball and I was like, oh my God, I need to get October booked and I need to get booking for November because I have to stay on top of this.
01:16It's going to be the holiday season here soon. And I was like, I need to get stuff booked now. Absolutely. Yeah. And I bet it's not an easy task because it's like constant, right? You're always booking. So I can't imagine. Yeah. And people are really, really great about if they respond, they want to do it. So if someone actually responds to a request, I'm pretty much sure they're going to want to talk to me. So that helps.
01:42But anyway, let's talk about what you're doing to change the world in California. Well, I would love to think that I'm changing the world. That's my goal. I honestly, I'm so passionate about what I'm doing. So what my business is, is I help couples who are feeling overwhelmed by the urban life, go from feeling disconnected and stressed.
02:08to living a slower, more intentional life on a homestead where they can improve their physical, mental and emotional health and strengthen their family bonds. And my emphasis is really on the family by teaching their children valuable life skills like self-reliance and responsibility so that they can experience a more fulfilling and sustaining way of life and a healthier life. So I'm a bit-
02:37I'm very, very passionate about this. I have a background in nursing and so the health side of it is very important to me. Okay. So how are you helping families? So first of all, I'm actually in the middle of creating a course. In the past, I've done consulting work and I always knew that I wanted to create a course, but I wanted some time
03:07to interview families, get to know their needs in regards to how they could start a homestead, what are the obstacles that they're encountering with leaving their urban life or city life, even the suburbs. I came from living a suburban life my whole entire life. And five years ago, my husband and I made the decision to buy some land and raise our kids for the sole purpose of
03:36raising our kids on the land because we've had a lot of issues with some of our older children. And so what I've been doing is consulting work. I put the word out though, I'm really, really, really trying to just put the word out that this is a huge need in our current day. The children are suffering big time.
04:06You know, as parents, we're also suffering. My generation, like we're having problems, a lot of problems with depression, anxiety, and other things, but the children are really suffering. And it's getting a little bit scary. I wouldn't say a little bit, it's really getting scary. And it's important to put the word out. So I started an Instagram account over a year ago, but I was very slow to get it going.
04:32But the last six months have really hit it hard. I'm just getting this message out there. So that's what I'm doing. I'm putting the message out there. I'm very active on social media. I started a YouTube, but I'm actually not actively promoting anything on YouTube yet because I'm working on this curriculum. So I'm actually currently taking on conversations with couples who
05:01are in this situation and like I'm scheduling 30 minute Zoom calls and I have a goal of having 50 Zoom calls before my curriculum is finalized. So that's where I'm going. I'm creating a course to literally get hands on with these people and help them get out of the city and to the homesteads where they can raise their kids and make it work for them. So.
05:30That's what I'm doing in a nutshell. There's a lot more details, but.
05:35have a lot of passion around it. Yeah, I'll probably ask some more questions and you'll be like, I'm so glad you asked that because I wanted to mention this. So when you say that our kids are suffering, and I'm going to play devil's advocate here because some people who listen to this podcast might be like, well, how are they suffering? I have four grown children. My daughter will be 35 in November. My stepson just turned 33.
06:03My next son of my body is 27 and my youngest is 22 and he's a boy as well. They mostly were raised in a small Minnesota town of about, I think there were maybe 3,000, 4,000 people at the time in that town. We were in town, like our neighbors were right next to us and the library was within a block walking distance.
06:33The park was a mile away maybe by bike and there were all kinds of places to go and be in nature so that helped. But they still had some issues too and I'm not going to get into it because my kids would probably not appreciate me outing their teenage years on my podcast. But you know, there were the usual teenage angst things that went on. And it wasn't bad. Like none of them did drugs, drank.
07:02didn't go to those kind of behaviors to cope with what they perceived as their issues. But they definitely had attitudes sometimes and they definitely fought with each other. And when I needed them to not be at each other, I would be like, can you please go to the park? Can you please go to the library? Go find something productive to do that doesn't involve this sibling you're having beef with right now. So having said all that,
07:31I know that a lot of kids when COVID started, when the pandemic started, had some real issues with being isolated and not really feeling like they could be with their friends. But I don't think that's what you're getting at. So what are you getting at when you say that our kids are suffering? Absolutely. So a part of it was COVID for sure. But really it's all about statistics and trends over time.
08:00According to the CDC, the percentage of children ages 2 to 5 years with obesity is now 12%. 2 to 5. So this is like little kids and then the percentage of children ages 6 to 11 years with obesity is 20%, almost 21%. So that's an alarming statistic. If you look at the leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 9.
08:29The last 100 years, it's been like the first, the leading cause has been accidents or unintentional injuries like car accidents and things. But it's the second and the third cause of leading cause of death that's concerning. So for children ages five to nine, the second leading cause of death is cancer. That's way higher than it has been in the past. And then for children ages 10 to 14,
08:57the second highest is intentional self harm, so suicide. And that is the statistic that is really scary. They're 10 to 14 years old and that is the second leading cause of death. Also, if we compare to let's say 1950s, the leading cause of death was still childhood injury, but second came all these different things like heart disease, stroke, infant death,
09:27influenza, tuberculosis, all of those came before suicide. So the statistics are saying that suicide and homicide rates have increased twofold or threefold among children since 1968. I know a lot of people have been hearing this, but unless you have it happen in your family, it doesn't feel maybe as close to home. But some other
09:56really, really important statistics are mental health. So there's a study that was conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration that found that between 2016 and 2020, the number of children ages 3 to 17 years diagnosed with anxiety grew by 29% in four years and those with depression by 27%.
10:24So we just have, we're like getting into this really intense mental health crisis era for children. And so, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I just, that's a lot of numbers and I wanted to step in for a second and break it up. So my dog is losing her mind. I'm so sorry. I assume you can hear her barking in the background. It's okay. I know you have an Aussie. I have one too.
10:53There is no off switch, I swear to you. If there was, I would have found it by now. Okay, so having said all that, what... Okay, I catch a lot of news and I pay attention to the good news that the news stations try to put on as well as the bad ones. And I keep hearing a lot about how social media is really hurting our kids because our kids are...
11:22are viewing these images of perfection and comparing themselves, and they don't feel like they live up, and they just keep consuming it, and it messes with their self-esteem. Do you think that's one of the reasons? Absolutely. Social media, as well as just screen time itself. So screen time, they've done a lot of research, and I wish so bad I knew this, back when I was raising my 15-year-old.
11:51Because back then it was socially normal to be like, hey, just go turn on a TV, that, you know, turn on a show to calm your child down or bring, bring an iPad. And it was just very socially normal. Now, now things are changing, right? People are more aware of the detrimental effects of this, but, um, they say that the average amount of screen time that kids have right now between the ages of eight and 18 is seven and a half hours a day.
12:22It's crazy. And what they're also seeing is not only affecting their self-esteem comparing and things on social media, but their brains are actually getting affected because they're getting addicted. So they're starting to have these addictive behaviors. So then their brains are starting to function like an addict, which is not okay, right? I mean, that...
12:51sets you up for failure in life. But on top of that, so there was I saw this poll that was conducted by the Harris poll, I just thought this was crazy. So there were, it was it was on behalf of the Lego group. And they questioned nearly 3000 children in the US and the UK and China. And the results were quite eye opening, revealing that the majority of Chinese children wanted to grow up.
13:20in science, technology, engineering, doesn't surprise us, right? But then American children, the number one spot for them for what they wanted to be when they grew up was to be a vlogger or a YouTuber. And I just, that's just crazy, right? And there's this term that they call, that a lot of TikTokers, they're terming
13:46this brain, what it affects, how it affects their brain being on TikTok, even just creating content, they call it TikTok brain. And they're seeing how this TikTok brain is affecting these influencers themselves, by just being on there creating content and put posting it out and then thought watching, you know, their numbers go up or whatever the amount of time that they're putting on there.
14:13So it's just crazy because these kids want to be YouTubers and vloggers now, but really it's not healthy. It's not good for our brains. So there's problems. Yes. Okay. So I had another question that didn't have to do with social media and I was so engrossed in what you're saying. It of course went away because it's what happens to me.
14:39because all of you guys I talk to are so brilliant that you're actually answering my questions in a way that I have to think about it. So back when my daughter, my oldest child, was a toddler, so many years ago, obviously she'll be 35 soon, this stuff didn't exist. And I spent a lot of time as her mom keeping her entertained.
15:09One of the things that was crazy is she loved my keys on my key ring of all things. I think it was because I had some fun, like key ring things on there. There weren't keys that were brightly colored and she loved to chew on my keys. And I know that's probably gross, but that's what she did. She would chew on the little toys that were on there and then she'd chew on the keys. And my husband at the time worked at a coffee shop. So we would go and visit daddy at the coffee shop.
15:39And that sounds like a bad song, don't go there people. And so we'd be sitting there, I'd have my coffee, she'd have milk and she'd be playing with my key ring and watching the people come in and out. And she would ask me questions about people, which I thought was really interesting at a year and a half, two years old, that she was observing other people and what they were wearing and what they had for a bag or if they had a book. And...
16:05I really loved that she was so observant because she wasn't bored. She was always paying attention. She always had a question. And I grew up without any of these screens in front of me. I mean, yeah, we had a TV, but you had to go to the TV and change the channel. And there were very few channels, you know, back in the 70s and 80s. And
16:33I was not the most happiest child on the planet in my teens. I was teased in school. I had issues with my sister. I was kind of a sad girl, actually. And I kept it to myself. And I was definitely depressed looking back on it. I know I was. So I don't... I feel like teenagers go through...
17:00some depression as they're figuring out who they are. But I also feel like all of this screen time just exacerbates it. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. So I to kind of piggy tail on that off of that. So I grew up also in the
17:29And people talk about that now, right, is a great time to have a childhood. I did not have a lot of electronics around me there. We had movies, but you know, it was just very rare on the weekend or whatever. Um, but we get, I was the era of being out, you know, night games until 10 PM. No one's watching you. You're all out on the streets. You hang out until the street lights get turned off. Right. Yeah. Um, it was a great childhood.
18:00Um, I did have exposure to this lifestyle growing up because even though I lived in the suburbs, suburbs, both my parents grew up with on a homestead kind of my dad grew up on a ranch and, um, he was, he, he's the kid who was 10 in the snow with a rifle on a horse. That story. That's my dad. Uh huh.
18:30in the mountains, no one around for 40 miles and the nearest town had one stoplight. And it was a full hour drive away on a dirt road. So he grew up with this crazy remote lifestyle and he loved it. My mom grew up on hundreds of acres of land in the Uinta Mountains and 10 siblings, but they worked hard. They worked the land.
18:58And but growing up, I had exposure to both of these worlds through my grandparents and visiting and summers and my grandma grew a garden. My other grandma cooked the best pies in the world. My dad took us hunting regularly growing up. It's funny because I got the reputation of being the sleepy hunter because I would always like, of course, you leave the house at 3am to go hunting, you know.
19:27So I'm sleeping the whole drive to the mountain, wherever we're going hunting. And I like roll out of the truck. I'm just drowsy as I'll get out. We hike a little bit and then I shoot an animal and then I walk back down and I fall back to sleep in the truck. And so I got this reputation because I was a sharpshooter. Like I always got the animal like the first shot.
19:54So I had exposure to this lifestyle of being in nature, enjoying the time that I had, like these were bonding moments for me and my family, for my dad and I, for me and my siblings. We still talk about these crazy hunting trips and these trips. You know, of course too, I love the connection that I've had with my grandma.
20:23On the land, I go up to this property, even though she's passed. My grandpa passed before I was born, but we go up to this land and enjoy it every year and take our kids up there. My aunt runs a small homestead there. She has cows, she has horses and my, my kids play in the streams. They ride the horses. They do lots of chores, lots of chores.
20:51Um, but they love it. It's so amazing for them to get outdoors and play and play and play. And that's one reason why I saw this happening. And I saw my kids, my older girls were struggling about, well, COVID. It was 2020 when we said, that's enough. We are buying some land and we are getting our kids healthier, physically, emotionally, and mentally.
21:19And I had been working as a nurse in the NICU and I was just watching all these kids and family, dysfunctional families coming in and kids. And I would just go back to my childhood constantly to, to readdress this like feeling that I had about family and, and nature and the beauty of life that I developed growing up in this atmosphere. And it really grounded me.
21:49And the more that I researched homesteading, the more I saw that although kids still have these challenges, normal teenage challenges on a homestead, we live on a homestead now and my teenagers do not want to do the work. Trust me, it's not easy. But I'm also seeing, especially for the little ones, because I have a 15-year-old down to a three-year-old and I have five kids. Four girls and one boy.
22:18and he's my COVID baby. But a literal COVID baby, a real human being baby. Okay. Yeah. A really human being baby born during COVID. And I got a boy. I don't know how that happened after four girls, but I am just seeing, especially the little ones who are starting their lives on this homestead, how it's changing their, just their, our whole life.
22:47We have so much more time together. And trust me, it's not easy for the parents, but the work is different, but way more rewarding than the work of parenting kids with addiction and obesity and all of these challenges that parents are dealing with. I'm just dealing with complaining about chores and things like that, normal kid stuff, right? Yeah.
23:15But they're so much easier to deal with than addiction. Trust me. But this whole homestead has brought our family together. And I want to share that with other families, because I know that it works. I know that it works. OK, so I completely agree with you. I do. I wish that we had been able to do what we're doing now.
23:41when my kids were younger, but we weren't in a position to do that then. So I guess my biggest question for you, because anybody listening who's not in a position to move their whole life to land outside of a city or a town, is there stuff that parents can do with their kids and still be in the suburbs? Because we had to find places to take the kids on the weekends to get them.
24:11to a farm to understand that milk comes from cows and eggs come from chickens and that you can pick wild plums on state land in Minnesota on the trails that they have here because Minnesota is full of parks and hiking trails and we are the land of 10,000 lakes so that you can't throw a rock without hitting water here it seems like. So we would just find nature to go to and that's how we managed to do it. So what would you suggest?
24:40Absolutely. Well, first of all, I believe homesteading is a state of mind. Uh-huh. I absolutely, because some people are like, well, I, you know, have a few chickens in my backyard and I make sourdoughs at homesteading. And I say, absolutely. So this can be accomplished where your current situation is. And it is just a state of mind. So turn off the screens. Start.
25:08implementing some of these traditional values and routines into your daily life and you will see how it affects your family. So cooking from scratch, it's well known that it is so much healthier for you. Growing a garden is amazing and the nutrients that you get from your garden are incredible for your health and for your emotional health. I can't tell you how happy I am.
25:38a homemade basil pesto with basil for my garden and I threw in tomatoes and it was incredible. It tastes so much better. My emotional health is just way better when I'm eating from the garden. Chickens bring me so much joy. There's nothing like grabbing eggs from your own chickens. I can't even explain to you the joy that comes from that. Those things can happen on a small
26:08piece of land. The other thing that I would highly recommend or the other thing that I would say about that is sometimes if we don't have our eyes on our goal, we won't accomplish that goal because we're not focused in on it. I, five years ago, I should say seven years ago, if you would have asked me if we could afford to buy land in one or two years, I would have said absolutely not.
26:38We could not afford that. But my husband and I made this goal. We put literally the picture in front of our minds at all costs we were gonna do this. Yep. And it was like God just like, and we felt like a spiritual confirmation that this is what we were to do for our family. And it was like miracle after miracle after miracle happened.
27:03And here we are, we have two acres in California where land is super expensive. And we just never thought it could happen. And part of my course that I'm building, actually, I have, I actually have a real estate license, so I have some experience in real estate as well. Um, part of my course is I help people know what options are out there for them. Even if they feel like they have no options at all. Um.
27:33And I, and it's part of my passion is business side of a homestead, because you have to financially understand how you can make this work, right? Yep. And there are ways and there are steps that you can take and there are ways to make income, I mean, for us, ultimately, this move was all about how do we use the land to pay for itself? And so we're building an Airbnb.
28:01where I can do homesteading and gardening workshops, we're building a fruit stand, the orchard's getting set up. Like there's so many things that are happening that are gonna be bringing us more and more income to help pay for themselves. So that's a big part of it as well. Yes, and it takes time to build up your homestead and make it take care of itself. And
28:29I don't mean the cows are going to milk themselves. I mean support itself. And we've been on ours for four years now. And it definitely does not support itself yet. We planted apple trees. We have like 20 or 22 apple trees. And we got, I think, 40 small honey gold apples last fall.
28:54And I think we got maybe six this year because we had terrible weather here in Minnesota this spring and all the blooms got blown off the trees and they didn't get pollinated. So we didn't have remnant apples, but we have 20 freaking apple trees and we have a big garden did nothing this summer because of the weather. So there are things that happen that you can't foresee. And when those things happen, you're like, okay, how do we work around this next season?
29:24There's a lot of learning by hook and by crook on a homestead if you've never done it before. And the thing I was going to say back 20 minutes ago when I was like I forgot I was going to ask or say is the thing that I think homesteading gives kids is some self-worth, some understanding of compassion and responsibility and autonomy.
29:52If you're raising your kids on a homestead, you're teaching them that if they see a problem, here's how you, the kid, are capable of solving it. And if none of that works, then you go to mom and dad. I feel like. Absolutely. It's like a science experiment every day for kids. Yeah, and I just, I wanted to get that in there because I was thinking about it back 20 minutes ago and I got sidetracked and I was like, no, this is important and it just popped back in. And then the other thing. Absolutely.
30:21The other thing I was thinking about, because I knew I was going to be talking to you today, is there's a saying about being an example, not a warning. And I feel like you're being an example. Because if you're an example, people want to follow. They want to try the thing that you're doing. If you're a warning, it's don't do that.
30:47You know? And warnings are important. Warnings save us from doing something that could get us hurt or killed. Examples are fun things. They're like, Oh, look at that person doing that thing. I want to try that too. Yeah. Absolutely. I was thinking about that this morning as I was thinking about what I was going to talk to you about. I was like, you know, examples are way more fun than warnings anytime.
31:14Absolutely. And honestly, I have found such a passion around this, this lifestyle. And it's fun for me. I literally wake up. It's funny how I think I saw a quote the other day. You know, you're not doing the right thing when you can't wait for the weekend, right? But when I wake up, I'm actually so excited for Monday morning. Because
31:38I love what I'm doing. I love the homestead. I love the business I'm building around it. I love helping kids. When I was a nurse, honestly, I was so unhappy. I was unhappy going to work, even though I was doing something really worth doing. It was such a drag leaving my kids every day and seeing them suffer from my absence. And...
32:05Being on the homestead and seeing them and their excitement every day, especially the little ones, has been so fulfilling for me. And I love that you mentioned self-esteem because I just did a post a couple days ago about a 75-year study done by Harvard about kids who did chores, and they found that kids who did chores were more successful and happier.
32:34And the most surprising thing was the relationship with chores and self-esteem. So when you look at that 75 years of research and the most important thing for kids and success was chores. Did they do chores when they were little? I mean, here you go. Like the homestead lifestyle sets your kids up for the ability to have chores. All the time. I promise there's so much to do. There's no way they wouldn't have a chore.
33:03like five chores a day if you wanted to hand out that many to them. But it's just such a good confidence builder. And this this study also talked about confidence being linked with competence later on. So they're just better what they do later on. And it's just amazing to see how the kids of our day, you know, I see
33:32kindergarteners showing up not knowing how to put their shoes on, you know, at kindergarten. And it's, they, they, the parents are just saving their kids and we have to let our kids fail on the homestead and they learn and they get back up and they have scratches and bruises. And I saw this other thing that was talking about casts. Like when we were young,
33:56There were so many casts hanging out, you know, in the elementary school. Everyone had a cast. I mean, I can't tell you how many casts I signed growing up. There aren't casts anymore, you guys. There's like kids don't fall and break their limbs as much because they're not out being active and doing things that push themselves beyond their comfort zone. Well, our parents are just protecting them, right? Too much. Yep. So.
34:25Um, so yeah, I just, I love that correlation between chores and late and success later in life. Me too. And I did chores when I was growing up. I helped stack wood. I did dishes. I swept floors. I did all the things because we lived in, in Maine and it was an acre of land. And there was a swamp behind our house. There was like a bunch of trees and then a swamp and we heated our house with wood. So we were.
34:54We were all summer long dealing with wood to prepare for the following winter, not the one that was coming. Because you always want to be a season ahead on firewood because this is very important because wood has to dry or it doesn't burn right. And I know this because I did it. But the other thing that I was going to say is I feel like, and I'm probably going to catch some heat for this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I feel like if you're going to have kids.
35:22you have to be there for your kids. You have to be. Because if you're just gonna have kids and then take them to daycare at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. in the morning, pick them up at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. in the evening and have like two, maybe three hours a day with them during the week, it's not enough. It's not enough time with your kids. And I was lucky, my mom was a stay at home mom until I was like 16.
35:53I was a stay at home mom because I had four kids and the oldest was 12 and the youngest was a baby, like newborn. So I was home with my kids and when they left the house for school, I was there. When they got home from school, I was there. They had home cooked food. They had my attention. They had help if they had homework questions. I used to brush my daughter's hair even when she was 15, 16.
36:20You know, and my 15 year old, 16 year old daughter didn't need me to brush her hair, but she liked it. And I'm not saying that everyone has to be a one person stays home couple. I'm saying this really badly. But I feel like when one of the parents is home with the kids, the kids do better. Absolutely. I agree. And I, that's...
36:48I lived that right. I was working full time as a nurse and I could see and I think any other parent that's in this circumstance, you know, you can tell that your kids are suffering when you're gone and your household's falling apart. That's why people aren't having so many kids, right? Because they have two and they're like, holy crap, this is so much work. But it's so much work because we're trying to go work a full time job.
37:17and then be a good parent. And that's, I'm telling you, it's near impossible to do. I tried and I tried. I was a nurse for 10 years. I kept having babies and pulling back my schedule and then I'd have to go back to work full time again. And then I was just juggling this life of trying to, and I'm not saying that there are circumstances that people have to do this. There's single parent families. There's definitely circumstances, but...
37:47We are a materialistic society. And if we can cut back on that, so we can focus on our kids, if we just don't, if we feel like, well, we're working just for that extra trip or that extra thing, right. Or the big car, the nice car, whatever. If we can cut back and be able to be with our kids, that will bless us so much more than that extra money that you're making. Because you cannot replace.
38:17childhood, you can't live it over again either. And you cannot replace the parent in a family situation. And that goes for moms and dads, you know, every kid needs a male figure as well and a female figure. And so working together to create this lifestyle where you can have, you know, and that's and well, sorry, I interrupted my own thought that can have this lifestyle
38:47of raising your kids more on the land and trying to produce some of your own food and becoming self-sufficient and things, it's expensive. But there are ways to create a family economy around it where the kids are helping. You're selling eggs, you're building things or you're creating this productive environment.
39:14atmosphere where your kids are taking over some of those roles of feeding the chickens, you know, cleaning out the coop, whatever it is, right, even baking and cooking my my 15 and 12 year olds, they can make entire meals. And my even my 10 year old can now like I could leave her with some of my younger kids for a little bit and she could make dinner if she needed. And my three year old
39:41he's already emptying the dishwasher, you know, and he gets the eggs in the morning and he feeds the chickens. He knows the routine and our kids can do more than we realize. And there's this book called The Family Economy by Rory Groves. I absolutely love it because he talks about how the family, how it was designed to work. It was designed for us to actually spend most of our time together, providing
40:11for our family. And I'm not talking about child labor, I'm talking about working together, pacing the younger kids, giving them plenty of time to play, but also teaching them how to contribute to the family unit and the economy of the family, actually producing and setting them up with skills and things for later in life. It's a really fascinating book and I recommend it to anyone looking into this lifestyle, but...
40:40Um, but it's, but that's how it's been right for thousands of years. Families worked together and by doing that, they had stronger family relationships. Divorce was unheard of, right? Um, they were, they taught their kids in the home. They worshiped in the home together and they had a community that supported them as well. All of this is gone.
41:08The community is gone in our day and age. If it's not for you, you're a lucky few. If you have neighbors and other people watching out for you, you're lucky. Because most people don't care anymore. And it's really sad. Um, because we're not dependent on each other anymore. We, we just order Amazon, you know, to drop off. So it's easy to stay in our own homes, but, um, it's sad. It's sad, but there's something we're missing.
41:38in the human experience by going into this modern world of ours. And it's really sad to see it. And that is why I started this podcast, Jessica, because I was like, there's so many people who are doing cool old fashioned things that are building their communities back up. I need to talk to them. And I need to get them out in the world. And you're one of them. And I love you for doing it. Oh, I love you for doing what you're doing.
42:06I am like the least social person you will ever meet. And so this is perfect for me because it gives me a social outlet, but I don't have to be around lots of people at the same time. So it makes me really happy to be doing something I think is good and communicating with people, but I don't have to be in a room with 10 people at a time. So we're at like 42 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour. So I am going to let you go.
42:36But I suspect there's a book in your future. I think once you get this course worked out and you start having people take it and you see how that goes and how you help people, I suspect in 10 years, you're probably gonna have a book that you write. I love that. That's definitely on my list of dreams for sure. Yeah, and keep, I mean, you don't have to listen to me, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Keep doing what you're doing. I mean,
43:03I have talked to so many people over the last year who are just doing incredible things because they feel called to it. And not necessarily religiously called, but just like the world is calling them to do the thing they're doing. And if it feels like a calling, you might want to pick up the phone, you know? Absolutely. That's absolutely what this is. It was really scary to leave my nursing job. But I felt...
43:33this was absolutely a calling for me, not just for my own family, because for sure it is for my family. But it is something that continues to, I mean, I get the chills thinking about it, right? So I know God is like, okay, this is what you're supposed to be doing. And this is why I've given you all these experiences in your life. It's prepared you for this one thing. And I feel 100% that that's it. And I love that I'm,
44:02helping people because when I left nursing, that's what I miss, right? Is just helping people. And so actually right now I am putting the word out that I'm doing 30 minute Zoom calls with people, research only, not a sales call at all for my course. So if any, did I lose you? No, no, I'm still here. Oh good. I am, if you wanna take home sitting to the next level, I am
44:32taking 30 minute calls with people, know what strings attached, I am doing research. And then you can ask me any questions you have about gardening or home studying, but I am trying to get as much research done for my course as possible. So can people just contact you through Messenger on Facebook or do you wanna give out your email or how do you want them to get hold of you? Absolutely, so a couple things, I have a website and email, I'm heavy on Instagram.
45:01On my Instagram site, I have a link where you can actually click and sign up for a 30 minute call. But my, so my Instagram handle is at the kitchen gardens, but it's kitchen without an E and gardens without an E. So yeah, anyone can reach out and I would love to talk with them and schedule a 30 minute call. It'd be really helpful for my, for my course and my business. So
45:29Alrighty, then I will put all of that in the show notes for when I release this next week and that way people can get hold of you. So if they want to be part of the project, they can be part of the project. I love that. Thank you very much for putting the word out. And Mary, thank you again for having me on the podcast. I absolutely love listening to it and I love what you're doing and I'm going to continue to follow your path as well. Thank you.
45:55Every time you guys say thank you to me and say things like that, I get all blushy. It's like, oh, that's really sweet. All right, Jessica, thank you so much for your time today and good luck with everything you're doing. Thank you, Mary. You have a wonderful day. You too. Bye bye. Bye.
 

Turners Fresh Gourmet

Today I'm talking with Chuck and John at Turners Fresh Gourmet. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Chuck and John at Turner's Fresh Gourmet. Hi guys, how are you? Good. And you're in Wisconsin, right? We are. Okay, so you're neighbors. Yes. Yeah, we live...
00:28I don't know, less than five minutes apart, right, John? That's a true story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I meant neighbors to me because I'm in Minnesota. But hey, we're all neighbors. Oh, yes. Yes. No. So where in Wisconsin are you? So we're in Wapaka County and in the the closest town is Wapaka, whereby the beautiful chain of lakes area.
00:56I guess the only other way I would describe where we are is we're in the central sands farming area, which is where the glaciers dumped a huge amount of sand. That's interesting because as my grandfather used to say, it used to be before irrigation or modern irrigation, some of the most difficult land to farm on.
01:26And then with the advent of irrigation, which was something that really exploded during his generation, it became some of the best land to farm on because it has great drainage and you have more control over the water input. Awesome. So what's the biggest city near you?
01:54We're between Appleton and Stevens Point, almost midpoint, a little bit more toward point, but about 40 miles west of Appleton, west a little bit north. Okay. That gives me a dot on the map to picture in my head. Perfect. Thank you. All right. So tell me the story of how you guys got together and started the project here. I'll start out because I was sort of the instigating person on this. I was actually on vacation with my
02:24my wife in the Oregon area, Portland, we landed in Portland, and we were heading to the Willamette Valley to do some little wine tasting, do some hiking along the coast, et cetera. But first place we went to eat was a restaurant that had Portland ketchup on the table. And I've not been a particular foodie.
02:49necessarily, but I do, I've always noticed that sort of thing. If a restaurant says we've got house ketchup, I'm like, okay, I want something with that ketchup on it. And so I ordered a burger, whatever had the ketchup next restaurant, same thing, portly ketchup, and I'm kind of turning the bottle over and looking at it, looking up on the website, portly ketchup, I'm just curious, like this regional ketchup company. So long story short, I just kind of put that in the back of my
03:19marketing and healthcare consultant, very specific niche. That was my job. And we had just moved to Wapaka in this sort of retirement transition I had been doing, or we've been doing. And we knew the Turner family for years because we'd be coming up here. And at a historical society presentation about three months later, we see John, along with his father and his sister presenting all about Turner Farms.
03:47and the history of it, all that stuff. And the last people to get up were John and his sister, Tara. And they talk about, you know, here's some things we're looking to do to kind of expand and looking toward the future. And this idea resurfaced in my head. I went up to John, I said, what do you think about making a ketchup and having your own ketchup? And he said, that sounds interesting. And for reasons that he knew that I didn't, which was that they have a bunch of tomatoes left over every year, so why not?
04:17And so that was, I think, February right before the pandemic. In the ensuing, you know, couple of years, we'd been working on our recipe and just kind of making the ketchup from home and sharing some jars of John, but not really talking too much about it because there's a pandemic. And then about a year and a half later or about a year and a half ago, John and I met up and he said, you know, we've been talking. We'd love to have your ketchup on the shelf. And I said,
04:47John it's not my ketchup. This is this be Turner's fresh ketchup. It's it's the it's your brand your tomatoes your farm I'm almost a minority player in this thing because I think you guys have got the local farming Etc. So that's it. I'll let John fill in the rest of it, but Okay, that that became the idea Yeah it's funny because I had
05:12recently moved back to the farm after being away for a number of years. And, um, as Chuck said, like, uh, there was a presentation of mainly about the past and as I remember it, Chuck just was like, you know, what's next and how about ketchup and, uh, it all sounded good. Uh, but I, I really didn't know how serious Chuck was about, um, this project until, uh, he returned. And then we.
05:42We sort of talked about some of the elements that made this a good idea. One was he's hinted on, which was, was more personal to our farm, but on most years we have a high yield on our tomatoes. And, um, even though we sell, uh, tomatoes wholesale, we sell tomatoes through our market and often if we have too many, we will, uh, donate them.
06:10to local food pantries, we inevitably still have tomatoes. So, you know, when I brought this to my dad, he was like, no, that's a great idea. We need a place for these tomatoes to go. But the other thing that upon more research and definitely through Chuck's investigation was just that ketchup has been dominated by, you know, corn syrup.
06:40Um, for a long time, um, I don't know the full history, but you know, when people come and they buy our ketchup and I'll ask them like, have you ever had homemade ketchup before and if they say no, I'll say, well, it's sort of like going from log cabin maple syrup to real maple syrup. I mean, you're, you're, you're shedding, um, a massive amount of corn syrup.
07:07and you're getting the natural product. And what we found is that the natural product is much, much lower in sugar, which is one of the key things that we like to stress with this ketchup. And Chuck can say more about this, but there's just a huge amount of people who are looking to lower their sugar intake and have completely given up on ketchup
07:37most catch-ups are extremely high. You know, like I always used to joke there's reason why kids hate tomatoes but love ketchup. And so, you know, through, you know, multiple testings of recipes, we found that the natural ketchup can be sweet enough without being like sort of a health liability.
08:07or at least something you might want to steer away from. So we've seen real success in terms of the appeal, not only because of the flavor of the ketchup, but because of the fact that due to its all natural composition, it's lower in sugar and just generally good for you, which I don't think, at least in this age, most people would go, you know what I need to do to improve my diet?
08:37eat more ketchup. And we've really found that, I mean, you know, it's amazing how every, you know, from diabetics to just people who are generally trying to get preservatives out of their diet, the overall appeal of a low sugar, all natural ketchup. So that's really been also a big part of.
09:06us finding traction in our local area. Okay, so can people, can you ship it? Are you allowed to ship the ketchup? We are working on it. We have, we have our process thus far has been, we piloted it last last October, and we sold nearly 1000 jars in one month out of the market that John and
09:35his wife run Turner's Fresh Market in Wapaka. And so that was a pretty strong signal that we were onto something because it wasn't just people buying it. Well, we know the Turners will just buy a dryer and make them happy. They're coming back for cases saying, I need this over the winter. And so we then, this year we've gone from Wausau, Wisconsin down through Oshkosh, which is south of Appleton. And we were available there through...
10:05basically meat shops, cheese shops, co-ops, other specialty retailers. And so it's got retail distribution. We're now working on restaurant distribution so that in those markets people can taste it because when we do tastings, which we'll sometimes do, you know, it's just like people taste it and they're like, oh, this is really good. And so that has convinced us that, you know, if we can get into these restaurants, I'm sorry, restaurants,
10:34then people will be able to sample it in market. So that's our next step. And then this fall before Christmas, we will have some sort of online distribution option, but that'll be soon. And if people are interested, they just go to tern and keep an eye on their order Facebook page. Fantastic. It's funny how we get these little ideas of, oh, it'd be really cool to make a ketchup that doesn't have as much sugar in it.
11:03And then you find out that everybody else thinks it's cool too and you're like, oh my god, I need to make so much more. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead Chuck. Go ahead John. All I was going to say is, you know, this being the sort of gourmet shelf stable food product is something new for both Chuck and I. And one of the other things that's...
11:28unique about ketchup is just how much of America consumes ketchup. And so we had an interesting conversation with one producer who had a much more niche product. And so one of the things that has encouraged us is just realizing how much ketchup America consumes. Some areas more than others.
11:57But there was one article that I read, which was, you know, like, what is your state's favorite condiment? And outside of barbecue being favorite in certain southern places, you know, ketchup really dominates how we dress up our food. And so another thing, yeah, I'm just sort of stating that one of the
12:24The things that has excited us is that people are ready for ketchup. But when they find out there's a healthier alternative that also tastes really good, they jump on board pretty quickly. As Chuck said, the tastings, I mean, I don't know what the exact percentage of, but it feels like over 80% of the people who taste it, they take a step back. They're like, wow, this is pretty good. And then they go, yeah, I'm going to get a jar.
12:54So one of the things obviously that is different is the price point, but I also think that so many people, like I said, whether it's for health reasons, whether they want to support the local economy, or whether they see the environmental factors positives of shopping local. We've also seen that...
13:19outside of people liking ketchup, there's multiple reasons why they're drawn to locally made good for you ketchup. Mm-hmm. Well, you were mentioning the difference between the not real maple syrup and real maple syrup. When I was a kid, I grew up in Maine, so there was the Maine Maple Sunday thing every year. Oh, yeah. And my parents would get real maple syrup. And it was not inexpensive, but it was worth buying.
13:48And they loved it. I did not love it. I wanted the fake maple syrup because that's what you usually had. And then as an adult, like, I don't know, 20 years ago, my parents sent me a small bottle of the Maine maple syrup. And I was like, I don't even really like real maple syrup. And my dad was like, try it again. Try it again. And I did. And I was like, oh my God, this doesn't taste like I remember it tasting. This is really good.
14:16We haven't had fake maple syrup in the house in years. Like we have found the place to get it, the real stuff, and that's what we get. So once you convert, that's it. Right. Right. It's that way with a lot of things. It's a John, they sell a pasta that's sort of locally made that, you know, you taste that and say, oh, this just makes a huge difference. There's a lot of examples of that, particularly, I guess, as you get older.
14:45at least in my experience, he slowed down a little bit. You're not so concerned with just cramming food in your mouth to get to the next thing. You do tend to take a moment to be a little more choosy about what you're consuming. Yeah, I'm a slow eater. My husband makes fun of me because what takes him five minutes to eat takes me 20 because I actually chew my food and I actually really like tasting my food.
15:13It's not just shove it in my mouth and move on to the next thing. So I consider myself to be a little bit of a foodie. I love to cook. I love to try new foods I've never tried before. And then I like to try to make them myself. So my husband teases me all the time. He's like, you have been eating that, that burger for like 10 minutes. It should take two minutes. Eat a burger. I'm like, no, no, I'm actually tasting my food. Thank you. Yeah. You're just elongating the time in which you're enjoying.
15:43which is terrific. Yeah. Food, food should be an experience. Yeah. Well, one thing we see, and I know that is an interest in your, of your podcast is being at a, a fresh produce market. There are so many of our customers who are homesteaders, who are, have continued the tradition of putting up food themselves or making their own
16:13whether it's pasta sauces or you know what have you and it's really neat to see or learn it you know the again the number of reasons why people are doing this and I think that just one more thing along with you know for health reasons supporting the local economy or environmental reasons is the the wool gathering that goes on when
16:42people take time to put up their own food. A lot of the folks who come in and buy bulk items for them to process at home, usually do it with their family or they do it with friends. It's often an intergenerational activity. And it is so much fun to hear about the level of enjoyment they get out of partaking in these activities. And
17:11Which is all just to say that the more we slow down, the more there is time for time together. Yeah, I think that farmers bring together communities. It's just part and parcel of that profession. And when you bring communities together, people love to talk, they love to tell stories, and then everybody feels connected. And we need more connectedness right now. Oh yeah. Yeah, if you were to go to the...
17:41to the Turner's Market on a Saturday now, particularly this time of year, it's fall and pumpkins and whatever. You just see such a conglomeration. And I'll say Wapaka is generally a very community-minded place to be. We got a lot of different events and concerts and whatever that bring a lot of people together. But you see that every Saturday at Turner's Farm. And there are people who are just there because of their common love for food and
18:11the family atmosphere and for fresh produce and to support the local economy. And nothing else matters and it's a wonderful place to be. Josh, do you guys just grow one kind of tomato? One variety? No. Though I will say we grow, now that we're in the ketchup business, we grow more of a variety of Roma or paste tomatoes.
18:40the key tomato that we grow for our ketchup. But we also have some other varieties that we grow that show up a little bit earlier so we can extend the season. And tomato season, depending on the year, this was a tougher tomato season due to the excessive rain that we got in the spring and early part of summer.
19:08You're telling me, buddy. You know all about it, I'm sure. But you know, typically, I mean, even on a good year, I would say, it's still, you know, the season doesn't last forever. It's not like our sweet corn season, which goes on for months. You know, it has its window and we live, you know, in the Midwest, which...
19:35Uh, it's seasons are shorter than further south or, um, in California. And so, uh, you know, there's, there's a window in which you really have to be ready. I mean, we joked this season, especially because of some of the difficulties that, you know, this harvesting time was, was our Superbowl. It was, you know, it's the big time for this ketchup production to put up as much puree as possible.
20:02you know, that will last us, you know, up until the next season. Um, I will say we also, you know, beyond the, the, the Roma's and the paste tomatoes, we grow plenty of canning and slighter tomatoes. And, uh, we grow multiple varieties of those then heirloom tomatoes. And then also a lot of snacking tomatoes too. I mean, people love.
20:28fresh tomatoes and I mean fresh produce in general is is is such a different experience. But I feel like maybe more than other produce. I'm amazed at the people who we won't see for you know the rest of the season and then tomato season will show up and they're like yeah this is really important to me. I love fresh tomatoes and I'm you know I'm ready to make my pasta sauce or what have you.
20:58Um, my husband sells our produce at the farmer's market and this summer has been rough. We have not had a lot of produce to sell because of all the rain we got in the spring as you guys understand too. And we didn't think we were going to have a single tomato. My husband was smart and he planted three different times and the second planting actually started coming in like a month ago, month and a half ago. And we have the third planting has green tomatoes set.
21:27but they aren't turning yet. We're praying it doesn't frost for a couple weeks so we might be able to get more out of that third planting. My point to this story is there's a guy that shows up five minutes before the farmer's market opens since we started selling tomatoes a month and a half ago. And he buys my husband out of all the tomatoes that my husband has out on the table. And then he says, I'll be back at the end of the market to see what you have left. Wow. And...
21:56The reason I asked about the different varieties is because San Marzano tomatoes, I feel like are the most versatile one you can grow because they're good sliced in a salad. They really are. They're good for tomato paste. They're good for tomato sauce. They're good for tomato juice because the flavor of them is so delicious. So if anybody listening wants to start growing tomatoes next year, start with some early girls because they're super easy.
22:26And some San Marzano's because they're the ones you want to make paste out of. Yeah. And it's, go ahead, John. Oh, I was just going to add to that. There's something fun too about, uh, with the San Marzano's of, uh, of growing something, especially for, um, anything pasta or whatever related that has a long history as well and, uh, you know, San Marzano's have proven to be a really terrific tomato for
22:54quite a long time for a lot of different populations. Yeah. Yeah, and they don't taste like any other tomato either. No, and they're pretty darn durable. I will say that the tomato that turned out the best this year, the variety that did the best for us was the San Marzano. Aromas in general, I think again, because they have a lot less water content than the
23:22Slicers and canners, I mean, they just were, they held up to the, the excessive rainfall a whole lot better this year. Yeah, us too. Okay, Chuck, you were going to say? Sorry. I was just going to say the, there's a cute little picture on our website, Turner's Fresh Gourmet.com that has a picture of my granddaughter with John's father, Ross Turner. We went into the field when my, when my grandkids were visiting and
23:52he was explaining to her why they're growing San Marzano tomatoes and emphasizing it. And in the picture, I think it's the picture we captured, that one of the other things is that when you go to pick it, it comes off the vine easily. And you know, the little knob, and it just has all sorts of interesting facts about it. And my granddaughter's just intrigued. I've learned a lot because as I tell John, I go like, I don't really like dirt. I'm the oddball in this. I don't like touching it.
24:21I clean things that are dirty compulsively. Um, but it's been so fun to be part of something that is, you know, obviously involves soil and growing and all that sort of thing. Yeah. We, we actually have some San Marzano sliced tomatoes drying in our food dehydrator right now, and my husband sliced them with the mandolin thingy. That's Sunday. I think it was. And.
24:49He did not rinse it off right away. So guess who got to clean it after all that gook had dried? How would it be me? And I was like, this is gross. I hate this, but I could smell the tomatoes and the sure the hydrator. I was like, okay, I guess it's all right. I just got to make sure. And make sure I rinse this off right after he's done with it next time. Yeah. Uh, this is one of the things that your listeners might be interested in is the, we, uh, so last year.
25:18I was actually in the kitchen making the ketchup. And it was in the commercial kitchen locally called the Stephen, the farm shed, Central Rivers Farm Shed, which is a nonprofit sort of collaborative cooperative kitchen operation in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. And this year, they actually have staff that, you know, we bring the tomatoes in and the other ingredients we procure, peppers and onions and other ingredients.
25:47garlic, bring that stuff to them and they're basically making the ketchup. They're making the puree from the tomatoes. They're freezing it. They're taking that back out. They're making the ketchup on our behalf. And so it's what a wonder. It's a great example of why those places exist. We didn't have to buy commercial kitchen equipment. We don't have to lease the space really. I mean, they've got the staff to do hundreds of jars a day. Whereas, you know, I was doing
26:16At my top, I was doing maybe 100 jars a day by myself, but they've got the operation down. So it's been a wonderful collaboration and really helping us launch our business. Yes, I actually saved the post that has their name in it from your Facebook page so that I can contact them to talk to them. Terrific. Yes, because I really want to talk to people who are doing things that improve.
26:42the world in some way. And I feel like they probably are doing a lot to improve the world. They are. And they've got some clients that have got, they have one of their clients makes a shrub, which is a, like a drink mixer, vinegar based, that this year, this summer launched a pilot to be available in local roundies or, you know, safe pick and save.
27:07It's part of the Kroger brand. Okay. So a bunch of different program variations in our state. Okay. So they're doing it. They're basically you. They started the farm shed and now they are going, you could say big time, which is a wonderful story to see, you know, that's exactly why they exist. Well, I'm going to have to come in and have to email them or message them later tomorrow and be like, Hey, come talk to me. Yeah. So I was telling Chuck before John showed
27:37episode that one of the things that I use ketchup for is homemade cocktail sauce for shrimp because Anyone who doesn't know this all cocktail sauce is is ketchup minced garlic and some apple cider vinegar Whisk together that's cocktail sauce and I the reason I was thinking of this is because I every New Year's week Get one of the rounds of the cooked shrimp and always comes a little thing of cocktail sauce in it. Sure
28:07And I always eat it and it's gone, but I have shrimp left because I'm not gonna eat an entire circle of shrimp myself. And my husband and kid don't eat shrimp. They don't like it. So I make my own for the next day. So I feel like your ketchup would probably be perfect for that. I think it would be. It wouldn't be quite so sweet. Well, I appreciate you bringing that up because again, what we found is when you're using all natural ingredients, your product
28:36is more versatile. So we have customers who come in who have done exactly what you're talking about made cocktail sauce. We've had people make salad dressings. We've had people do sloppy joes, meatloaf, Bloody Mary mix. It's amazing. It's like just the suggestion of, hey, you can have an all natural ketchup.
29:06has gotten people to go like, yeah, well, I'm gonna make my own Bloody Mary mix with this now, or I'm gonna do this. And it's been really inspiring to see just how versatile the ketchup has ended up being, the recipe that we've settled on.
29:23Well, actually, I have one more question, and I'll let you guys go, because we're almost at half an hour. What is the difference between tomato sauce and ketchup? Because I feel like tomato sauce is ketchup is just tomato sauce with some sugar added to it sometimes. So what's the difference? Well, I could tell you what, based on our recipe, and it's funny because people taste our ketchup and they pause and some people say that's like a really an interesting marinara because...
29:51Ours is so tomatoey. It's tomato forward, I guess, from a, you know, if you're talking about it that way. We have over two pounds of tomatoes used to make a 16 ounce jar of ketchup. So it's pretty dense with that flavor. That's where the sweetness comes from. And then the second ingredient is apple cider vinegar. And so you get that acidic taste.
30:17along with the sweetness of those natural tomatoes and then I guess what you might call it an umami sort of flavor that comes from the tomatoes themselves. But and then we have just a little sugar. We have like half a gram of added sugar per serving, which is eight times less than you'll get in a national brand. And then spices. And so I think what just differentiates our ketchup from
30:43just other ketchups is that spice profile, the amount of tomatoes we're putting in. And I think if I were to go, and my wife actually last week was experimenting with like a marinara sauce, and we didn't put apple cider vinegar in it. That's one thing we definitely didn't put in. And then the spice profile is a little bit different, a little more of the savory spices than the sweeter spices. Okay.
31:07Yeah, and I would just add consistency too. You know, ketchups, you know, famously need to be thicker. And so that's also just a big difference between your typical tomato sauce recipe and a ketchup recipe. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Alright guys, well I have been schooled on ketchup today. I'm very excited about this. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thanks for having us.
31:35Have a great afternoon. You too. Thank you. All right, bye.
 

Get Bentz Farm

Today I'm talking with Theresa at Get Bentz Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Theresa Bentz at Get Bentz Farm. Good morning, Theresa. Good morning. I have to tell you, I love the name of your farm. One of the most entertaining things about this podcast over the last year.
00:27is all the names that people come up with for their places. So I'm assuming it's just a riff on your name. Yeah, it's a little bit of a riff on our name and also like we're in the Northfield area and there are so many beautiful little like vegetable farms or berry farms around here. And everybody has sweet names like singing hills and whispering meadows and stuff like that. And
00:54When we first started, we were one of the only ones who had sheep, really. And so we were like, well, we got these funky Icelandic sheep that have an edge to them. You know, they're not the kind of sheep that'll come up and let you pet them. Um, and so we were like, we don't want a soft name. We need a tough name. And then we're like, well, our last name is Bentz. So why don't people just get Bentz?
01:22Yes, I had never heard the phrase get bent until I met my current husband. And he said it one time and I was like, where, what is that? He said, you've never heard it before. I said, no, no, never heard it. And I can't explain on the podcast what it actually means. It's very insulting. So, but it's brilliant for your farm. So tell me, tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah. So, um, we, well.
01:51kind of a little bit about us. We were originally city folk and people who, like we lived, I lived and grew up in the cities and my husband grew up in the suburbs and for a while we lived in Savage together and we just, you know, we just kind of wanted to have more control over our food sources and how we get food and where the food comes from and just knowing that because that's
02:20Part of the biggest issue as a consumer is figuring out where your food is actually coming from. And so then in 2013, we, what we had decided many years before that, but in 2013, we finally found a farm that fit what we wanted, which took a long time. For any of those people out there looking for farms, it takes a really long time. So just be patient. And then, you know, we found the farm in 2013.
02:49We moved in in March and we just went full steam ahead and started, you know, raising some animals. We got our first sheep that summer. And then it's just kind of taken off from there. We've over the last, like I would say seven to eight years, we've really figured out our niche in the area, like what we do well, which is really the sheep and the wool.
03:18Um, so as we, as we learned about sheep and as we got better with raising sheep and producing wool, I got really into the processing of the wool and turning it into, um, yarns and rovings and stuff like that and building a community around local fiber. Um, and then I purchased a wool mill and that's kind of what I do primarily now is, uh, care for the sheep and make yarn. Okay.
03:48Isn't there a wool mill like a big factory in Northfield? No, that's Fairbow Woolen Mill. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it's so proud. A lot of people ask me that. And they're down in Fairbow, obviously. And they really just, they make like blankets. They're more of a weaving mill than a big, I mean, they don't take in customer wool. They don't take in wool from the local area.
04:18I don't think they do any scouring or washing of wool anymore. I think that facility or that part of their facility was damaged during some flooding. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had Faribault and Northfield mixed up. And in my defense, I grew up on the East Coast. I moved to Minnesota in, oh my God, let me think. My daughter was born in 89, so 91, 92.
04:47I haven't really traveled the state a whole lot. Like I've been to Northfield, but I went there for a specific reason and went home. And I've been to Faribault and went there for a specific reason and went home. So all these billions, it seems like of little towns in Minnesota confuse me. And Faribault is really not that far from Northfield and the grand scheme of things, but it is a totally different place. So. All right. So can you, number one.
05:18You have Icelandic sheep, but I think that you have another breed too, right? Yeah, we were primarily Icelandic and only Icelandic up until about four or five years ago. And then we started to cross in other sheep too. My philosophy on shepherding has changed over the years. And so initially I was very breed specific. And
05:45you know, really focusing on the breed and all of that. And then I, you know, had a couple of good mentors and looked back at how people have shepherded throughout history. And, you know, we really have developed different sheep breeds that matched our properties and landscapes. And so we started bringing in other sheep breeds to find something that would match what we're doing here on our farm.
06:13really well and be really successful. So we have a couple of, we brought in some Jacob sheep, which is a desert sheep, and we found that crossing them really helped fix some of the, you know, the cons of the Icelandics, and then the Icelandic fixed some of the cons of the Jacob. So we got this great crossbred sheep. And then we tried some cheviots, because they're supposed to be really good on hillsides, and
06:42move on from the cheviyets and we're going to try a different British breed this summer or this fall. It's not summer anymore. It's fall. So we're going to bring in a blue-faced luster ram and try crossing those and see what happens. So when you start to think about crossing breeds, do you look to see if other people have done it and kind of...
07:11decide off of that or are you just completely surprised when you're like, we're going to try this one and see what happens? Yeah, I've actually, I mean, I'm in a great place because my whole world right now is in wool. And since wool is worth really nothing in the market, I get my hands on some really fancy stuff that people would otherwise burn. So that's where I kind of figured out the cheviette piece.
07:40are really big, long-legged sheep. And part of the reason we're getting rid of them isn't because they're bad sheep, it's just because they outweigh me and I don't really like that. Mm-hmm. But the wool, the cross between the chevier and Iceland, it gives you this really lofty, strong, bouncy, soft wool. So kind of ideal for outerwear, like sweaters and stuff like that. Icelandic can be very,
08:09abrasive, it has a lot of bite to it, just because it has the dual coats. It doesn't have a lot of crimps, so it can, it can be really heavy and dense. But if you add a little bit of another breed into that genetic, what I find is that the lofty, fine undercoat of the Icelandic really comes out and you lose a lot of the hair, but you get the length that you want.
08:38So it's kind of, for me, it's been a journey of seeing what other local shepherds have done, because Icelandics are pretty popular in this state. So I get to see what other shepherds have done with, and then how the genetics play out in their fleeces, and then also, you know, how long those crosses last, or, you know, are you getting a higher yield on your carcass when you take those lambs to the butcher?
09:06you know, are they more parasite resistant? So that's like I'm just lucky because I live in wool. So I get to learn all the stuff before I make the mistakes. That's amazing. So do you like do it all? Are you like, OK, I've got a ram, I've got to you. We're going to mate them. They're going to have a baby. And then from baby upwards to shearing or butcher, do you do all the things? Yeah, yeah, we do all the things. So we.
09:36We are, Icelandics are seasonal breeders, and that's true for many sheep breeds, except for kind of your more domesticated sheep breeds or breeds that were bred to have multiple lambs each year, like the polypay. So they will start going into their seasonal breeding season, you know, at the end of October. I think with this heat, it might keep it off for a little bit longer.
10:04But like October, November, they'll start breeding. We'll bring in this new ram. He's a nice looking fella. And then we'll let the sheep do their thing. But also during this time is when we harvest last year's lambs. So the lambs are usually born in March and then they get to graze alongside mom and mom will naturally wean them in July. So I don't have to do any of that stuff. And then, you know, like.
10:30We just sheared this last weekend. So we run them up to shear and we kind of pick out, you know, which lambs are looking really good for the first butcher dates and which lambs, you know, will hold on to. So yeah, and then what we do after we shear is I take all the wool and I hoard it in my mill and turn it into lovely yarns. And for the ones that go off to butcher,
11:00We sell a lot direct to customer, but we also keep meat in the freezer so when people come out to visit the farm, if they're looking for some ground lamb or something, we have that available for them. And then we take their sheep skins. So if we didn't shear all the wool off or if they've had plenty of time to grow more wool, we'll take those skins and salt them and then tan them. And then sell those products as well. And if they have nice looking horns, we'll keep their skulls and
11:29sell those as well. Wow. How do you have, how do you prioritize all of this? Like, is there an order of operations to it? Yeah, yeah, there totally is. You have to find this like, this balance, you know, cause otherwise you could just drive yourself crazy spinning your wheels. So we, we have balance. We, you know, we always share around the same time each year.
11:58And then when the lambs go off to the butcher, we know like, okay, we're going to pick up our sheep skins and we're going to salt them. And then we're going to check on them. You know, it's kind of like, like you would at work. You have many different projects that you have to do and you just kind of prioritize which ones. In the mill, I have, I have a lot of stuff going on all the time in the mill. And so I have to keep myself on a pretty strict deadline to make sure that I'm fulfilling
12:28the orders that I need to get done. I do a lot of fiber CSAs, so kind of the same model as what you see at a vegetable farm in the summer and winter where you get like a weekly ration of fruits and vegetables, whatever is in season. I do that monthly with yarn and roving so people can see what's in season here in Minnesota and get a skein of yarn and a story about the yarn and the sheep.
12:57and where it came from each month. So I just have to make sure I get those things out. And, you know, it's like any job. You just kind of, you balance it and you shut yourself off at a certain time so that you can have some family and lifetime. Yeah, you mentioned the word roving. What is roving? Yeah, so roving is like, it's like cleaned, carded, or cleaned and brushed, I would say brushed wool.
13:27Sometimes I add in like alpaca. So it's just clean brushed wool alpaca fiber, whatever I put in that comes out of the machine through a certain deck that makes it into a long tube of you know brushed fiber I guess. So someone else can spin it? Yep. Okay. Yeah. And I also make bats
13:57Some spinners like to spin on bats. So it just depends on what you want, you know? So bats like a bat of insulation, that kind of usage of the word bat? Yeah, it's very similar to a bat of insulation. Okay, I just, I wanna make sure that I understand because if you're mentioning things that I don't understand, my listeners aren't gonna understand it either because we've never heard it before. So that's why I asked about roving and bats. And I, it's...
14:26When I talk to people like you who are so immersed in the thing they're doing, you talk and I have so many questions pop into my head and I'm like, how do I make this cohesive when I ask the next question? So the next question is I've talked to a few people about sheep and about wool and about meat and I keep hearing there's no real good market for wool. But apparently...
14:53there's actually a market that's a micro market in the area that you're in that will want to use the wool. Yeah. Yeah, so back, I would say before 2018, before the pandemic, and before the 80s, so there are two big shifts in the wool industry. So before the 80s, we used to have
15:22taxation on imported woolen grids from other countries. And that taxation would turn into a commodity payment to shepherds in the states. And so the shepherds would shear their sheep and send their wool off to the wool broker, or we called it the wool pool back then. And then the pool would class it, grade it. Classing is like giving it a classification of how fine it is, like what the quality of it is.
15:51and then grade it and then sell it on the larger market to be turned into garments or rugs. Rugs used to be, wool rugs used to be the thing back in the day. And then in the 80s, there was that huge farm bill or that huge farm, not a bill, but a, what is that? When the farm, yeah, like everything fell apart for farmers in the 80s. Yes.
16:21Yes. And so when that fell apart, the wool industry also fell apart because we lost our tariffs. So we, you know, the president at the time had changed a bunch of things and how we do business with other countries and took away those tariffs. And when those tariffs were gone, there wasn't a lot of incentive to grow wool because wool prices started to like drastically drop. Tank. You know. They started a tank. Yep.
16:51Yeah, super tank. And then with that, lamb prices started to tank because we had a big push for beef, you know, beef grazing. And we changed a lot of the ways that we raised animals. We went from, you know, grazing in paddocks and woodlands to feedlot grazing or feedlot management, you know. So we changed a lot of stuff. And then with this last change.
17:21before the pandemic and during the pandemic and the different political powers at that time. They really changed how we do business with China. And China used to be one of the biggest buyers of American wool. But when we started to add additional taxation and change those those trading
17:48rules with China, we lost our industry. In Australia, New Zealand, we're happy to come and snap that industry up. So we went from, you know, back in 2019, from having wool being priced at maybe $1.50 to $2 a pound to right now for fine grade wool. This is like next to skin, good textile wool. My
18:14My sheer friend who also works with the wool pool and the brokers, he said it's worth four cents a pound.
18:22Yeah. Yeah. So it's at this point wool is worth, wool is so devalued in the States that it's not worth the $15 burlap sack that the wool goes into. And the burlap sack usually holds about 200 to 250 pounds of wool. Wow. Okay. So you just made it very clear to me what I've been hearing because I've heard that that wool is hard to move. It's not worth anything, but it is literally not worth.
18:51anything. Yeah, it's not worth the sack. Yeah. Okay. So living in a Northern Tier State and I grew up in a Northern Tier State, I have had wool coats, full jackets, full sweaters and people, wool is worth something if you live in a Northern Tier State because it is so warm. I have, I have the most beautiful hip length jacket that I wear in like November and December here.
19:21and it's made from wool and cashmere and cotton. And I watched this thing at Kohl's for months over the winter when I got it and it started out at like $150. I did not have $150 at that point in time. I had like 40 tops for a new jacket and I really wanted this one because it was really beautiful. It was black, it was fitted and it was wool, cashmere and cotton.
19:50And I just basically said, universe, if I'm meant to have it, I will have it, but I have to wait. I ended up paying like $35 for this coat. I wear this thing all the time in November and December because it's just light enough to wear in the car, but it's really warm because it blocks the wind. Wool is fantastic as a sweater or a jacket. I can't handle wool blankets because they get too hot.
20:17And wool is great for mittens. I love wool mittens. Yeah, yeah, wool is fantastic. I think it's such a disservice to the industry that, you know, like, so when, in the 80s too, we had the uptick of polar fleece and the petroleum-based clothing industry really took off with its synthetics, like polyester and micro,
20:47fibers and stuff like that. And a lot of their marketing, you know, and if you were a kid of the 80s, like I am, a lot of the marketing around wool was that wool was scratchy. Wool was hard to take care of. Wool was really hard to clean. And so we were kind of spoon-fed this information about wool in order for us to want to go buy, you know, those polar fleece
21:17wool and they, you know, take, you can wash them in the washing machine, you can do this and that, but at the huge price of the microplastics that are now inside of our tissues, you know, because we've washed these things and they've ended up in our water systems. And a lot of that information about wool being scratchy and wool being difficult to care for are absolute lies. Like anybody who knows and loves wool.
21:44We'll tell you outright, it's incredibly easy to care for. You know, like a wool sweater. So some of the cool pro, I'll get nerdy on wool real quick. Please do, yes. Okay. If I get too nerdy, just be like, Trace, that's enough. Geek out all you want. So the cool thing about wool is that it is, so I'm gonna say some pretty amazing things that might make people's heads just explode. Wool is antimicrobial by nature. And that's not just like,
22:14The merino breed, it is every breed of wool. In like all wool types, all wool breeds, whatever it is, wool is anti-microbial. So that means when you sweat in wool, so if you're out there working in the garden in the fall, in the spring, when you're wearing a wool sweater and you start to sweat, and you take that wool sweater off, those, the bacteria from your sweat and your skin
22:44isn't able to live on the wool. So it's not going to retain the smell. It might retain like perfumes, but it's not going to retain the smell of your sweat. So you can just leave it out and it'll air out and be fresh like it was just washed. So you really don't have to wash wool very often. I usually will only wash my wool sweaters once a year, kind of at the end of the season just to get it ready for storage.
23:13But other than that, I don't wash it. I wear wool socks and I rotate. I've got three pairs of wool socks and I rotate them. I wear them about a week and a half each and then wash it and then wear the next pair for a week and a half. And I've had the same wool socks for probably three years now. Wool is also a fire retardant naturally. So...
23:38Think about that, those wool carpets. Everybody thinks, oh, wool carpets are gonna be really tough to take care of and they're super expensive. They're actually pretty reasonably priced these days and they're fire retardant. So if your house catches on fire, we have so many manmade items in our house that are super flammable. Anything polyester, that's plastic, that's oil, that's gonna go up in a heartbeat.
24:05But if you have wool, like wool carpets, that's gonna help stop the fire. It's gonna put it out. Wool garments, same. If you're out at a fire, you know, enjoying a campfire in the fall and you just happen to get a spark on your sweater, that spark is gonna, you know, go out. It's not gonna be able to ignite the sweater. The sweater isn't gonna melt to your skin like a polar fleece would melt to your skin.
24:33Same with pajamas, like if you had wool pajamas on the kiddos, you don't have to worry about those pajamas melting to their skin if you have a house fire. And if you're able to afford it, because wool's expensive in the end product, but we're gonna try to make that cheaper, I think, in our country in the next couple decades. But if you're able to purchase wool insulation, what a great...
25:00you know, upward expense, but in the end it pays off because if your house catches on fire, that insulation is going to help keep it from continuing from that fire being a complete loss of the house. So it's like a firewall, literally. Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is. I know. And then a really cool property of wool is that it is hydrophilic. So it pulls the moisture from
25:29fiber. And when you have moisture, I don't know if you've ever done this in the winter, but if you have warm moisture at the core of a garment or at the core of something, like think about wetsuits. When you put on a wetsuit, you put water into it and you let your body temperature warm up that water. And that water next to the skin creates a barrier from the colder water on the outside. So our bodies like to have that barrier of
25:58like a wet warm. Wool is the same. It likes to hold on to that moisture. So if you're wearing a wool sweater and it's nice and warm in the house and then you go outside it's kind of like a typical spring or fall day here in Minnesota where it's wet, it's very moist outside, you're not going to get as cold because even though the wool will kind of pull in some of that moisture.
26:25it's going to hold it right next to your skin and your body temperature, and it's going to keep your body temperature at the right degree. Cause like wool is really good at just regulating your body temperature by holding that in. So it also is really great for landscaping and for gardens because it likes to hold on to moisture. So if you have a garden that needs a little amendment in your soil, or if you have house plans that you don't want to water,
26:55Too often you can put a little bit of like waste wool or like wolf. If you know anybody who has sheep, you can ask them for a little bit of their garbage fleece and they'll just give it to you and you could put it right on the top of those potted plants. And that'll help hold that moisture. It does regulate your body temperature. So sometimes those wool blankets can be too, too hot. And that usually is because of how they're manufactured. They're very dense.
27:25If you had like a wool comforter where it's more batting, there's more air in between those fibers, that air will stay warm, but you won't be hot. It like just kind of regulates you perfectly. There are a lot of really great studies in Europe that touch on how wool reduces our respiratory rates while we're sleeping and while we wear it. So it kind of keeps us calmer.
27:56like it, you know, like calms your body down as you're wearing it versus other things which, you know, can, like some clothing has dyes in it that can be hormone disruptors and sometimes polyester and stuff like that can cause the respiratory, our respiratory rate to go up or our immune system to be heightened. Since wool is a natural fiber, it really calms those systems back down.
28:25And yeah, like wool comforters are great. Like wool blankets are great all year around. If you find one that doesn't make you hot, because in our humid Minnesota summers, the wool, since it likes to pull moisture to its core, will wick away that humidity away from your body and let you sleep better.
28:46I feel like wool is magical, who knew? I know, right? Right? It's such a cool fiber and it lasts forever. So you know, you look at these Norwegian sweaters that people knitted, you know, decades ago and they're still crisp and good and could get another couple decades out of them, if not more. And all you have to do is, is wash it once a year and wear it. That's it.
29:15Yeah, I have a wool trench coat that is, it comes to my mid calf on me. I'm five foot nine. That is probably 70 years old. I got it at a yard sale or a garage sale like 15 years ago and it still looks brand new. It's like my favorite dress up coat. If I'm going to, oh my God, wear a skirt, which I never do. But, but if it's cold, cold, like it was minus 20 in Minnesota and I have to go somewhere. I want that in the car because I'm going to be.
29:45warm no matter where I go. Like shoe insoles. Those wool shoe insoles are fantastic for that kind of stuff. But that trench coat looks, I mean it's in my closet right now. I just looked at it yesterday because I was like hmm, might be time to start thinking about what I've got for winter outerwear because you know it's going to be October. And saw that trench coat hanging there. I was like oh my god I forgot I have this. How did I forget I have it?
30:14pulled it out just to look at it again. I was like, my God, it's such a beautifully made garment and it looks brand new. And I know it's over 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I wish, I wish in the next, like one of my most sincere wishes is that in the next decade, consumers start to see how, how
30:41bad the fashion industry, how bad our textile industry is on our environment, how much they've contributed to a lot of the issues that we have with our environment currently, pollutants in our water system, you know, the amount of textile waste that we dump into other countries is mind-blowing. I wish people would see that, would open their eyes to that.
31:11And next time they wanted to purchase, you know, a new garment or something, they took a moment to look at the label and they, and before they purchased the item, they asked themselves, will this go back into the soil and feed it? Or will this become, you know, a forever thing that won't go away. So if it's polyester, it's there forever. It just breaks down into smaller particles.
31:39If it's wool, cotton, silk, cashmere, any of the wood fibers like bamboo and tinsel and stuff like that. If it's that stuff, it will break down and feed the soil. So that's my biggest wish. My biggest wish is that people looked at garments and thought, you know, can I wear this garment for many seasons? Is it classic? You know, is it a classic garment?
32:09Will it last me through my 30s and into my 40s and 50s? And it'll still drape well on my body and look good versus just a, yeah, I'm at Target and I'm consuming and I'm just gonna grab that polyester t-shirt or that new summer polyester dress that I might wear three times and then I'll donate it thinking that that's part of the...
32:35solution, you know, I donated it so it didn't go into the landfill, but not really following that a lot of our donated textiles end up in landfills in other countries. Yeah, yep, I am right there with you. Most of my clothing is either, I mean, my shoes are almost always leather because I happen to love calvaboot, so that's what I wear, and cotton jeans and cotton
33:04I hate blended material for t-shirts. It just grosses me out and I don't like how it feels. So it's not a cotton t-shirt. I'm probably not wearing it. Wool is great. I hate fleece. I hate micro fleece and polar fleece. It feels weird on my skin and I don't, I'm not autistic. I don't have any of the things that make me, you know, my socks rub wrong, that kind of thing. But fleece just makes me.
33:34feel gross. It's too hot. It feels weird on my skin. I don't love fleas. I love wool fleas but I don't love polar fleas. Yeah, it's plastic. Why would you want to put plastic on your biggest organ? Yeah and you're right. Cotton and wool and leather and all the things you mentioned. Number one, they are better for the environment but number two, they feel better.
34:03when you wear them. And I was going somewhere with this. And three, it's how it should be. Let's just go with that. That's how it should be. That's how it should be. It really should be. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the big things we do, because we kind of touched on this earlier, like micro niche markets for the wool industry. And that's really what we're a big part of is this niche market. It's hard.
34:32It's hard because it's very dependent on the shepherd and the farmer to be all the things. We're already all the things on our farm and now it's requested that we are all the things marketing wise. So you have to have your own website and be your own social media specialist and marketer and like inventory. Public relations and yes.
35:01Yeah, you have to do all of those things just to sell your yarn, just to be competitive in this very big industry that's very ignored. Like the yarn industry, since it's kind of seen as craft and women's work kind of stuff, it's very ignored by the larger industries. And it's, I could tell you, being in the middle of the...
35:29yarn and fiber industry, it is a, it's got to be a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, people just, it's a, it's a thing. It's a huge thing. But it's ignored because it's women's work. So, so as a small shepherd, you have to, you have to make yourself known. You have to fight in this larger industry just to get people to pay attention to you. You have to tell people why it's important to buy local.
35:59You know, the food industry did a great job with promoting locals and the fiber industry is just slowly making up, um, or catching up to that local food movement with the local fiber movement. Um, so it's, it's really not, it's not easy to exist in these small markets and niche markets, but we're there and I think, I think we're making, we're carving out a little bit. Um,
36:27Hopefully more in the next decade or so. Well, I think you're definitely making a mark in your area and you're so passionate about it. Like I'm so thrilled I got to talk with you today because I feel like I just listened to a TED Talk by Theresa about Get Bentz Farm. And honestly, it's funny, a lot of the people that I talk to on the episodes on the podcast, I get done with them and I'm like, wow, I just got to be
36:56a one person audience right in the moment for a TED Talk that TED Talk doesn't even know they did. Right, yeah. And we have to be experts in it. It's super cool. Yeah, I think it's great. I think you should contact TED Talks and be like, hi, I'm Theresa and I do this. And I would really love to talk about it at a TED Talk in wherever you're doing the next one.
37:18You'd be great. So anyway, I'm mostly being silly because I'm trying to wrap this up. We're at 37 minutes and I try to keep it to half an hour and I could have talked to you for three hours, but my platform, wow, platform won't allow for three hours. So I appreciate your time so much, Theresa. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely, I'd like to have you back next spring so I can talk to you about the baby. Oh yeah, totally. All right, let's do that then.
37:48Alright, you have a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy this cold, crisp, sunny Minnesota day. Yes, you too. Alright, bye.
 

Abundantly Blessed Farm

Today I'm talking with Scott and Lydia at Abundantly Blessed Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Lydia and Scott at Abundantly Blessed Farm. How are you guys? I'm good. Doing well. Thank you. It's a really pretty day in Minnesota. Where are you? We're in Ohio and it is rainy, which we are very thankful for.
00:29because it has been very dry this summer. Yeah, we had a really rainy spring, but it's been very dry for the last couple of weeks. So we're waiting on some rain here too. So tell me about yourselves and what you guys do.
00:45We started a lavender farm about two years ago. Um, we had visited Michigan and visited a lavender farm up there. We had an extra acre at our property and we weren't sure what to do with it other than just mow it. And so we came back and decided we'd plant some lavender and see where it went. So we have been growing lavender and then we started a farm stand and we sell some products out of that. And then we've also started selling some, um, that pasteurized milk.
01:14So we do pre-orders for milk that we sell on our farm stand as well. Nice, when I saw you guys are primarily lavender farmers, I was very excited because I haven't talked to anyone on this podcast about lavender yet. So what made you choose lavender? Yeah, so neither one of us have a true green thumb. So that was one of the things that attracted us to the plant. So when we went to Michigan, we took a tour, we were asking a lot of the interns there.
01:45we were to start growing this, how much of a green thumb do you need? Each one of them said, yeah, we're all going to kill our plants. It's totally fine. It was a little bit of some hope that we had some chance. Lavender is a Mediterranean herb. So it grows in honestly some really rocky, junky soil. As long as it has good drainage, it will just take off. It'll explode.
02:13And just thinking about the past two weeks, it's been severely dry here, brown grass everywhere. And the lavender loved it. Nothing else loved it, but the lavender certainly did. So kind of the main reason why we chose it is because either one of us have a green thumb and we've only killed off a few. So we're thankful for that. Yeah. And lavender has so many great properties. You can use it for, you can eat it.
02:42I don't love it, but you can put it in lemonade, I hear, and you can use it as a seasoning for cooking meats and stuff. It's really nice to have as a dried flour in a bouquet. It's really nice to have in a bouquet not dried because it smells amazing. And you can use it in soaps and balms and lotions and things, yes? Absolutely, yes. So we actually grow two main varieties. One is a culinary variety. It's called Munstead.
03:11England lavender. That's the one that we use for our lavender syrup kit. Our lavender sugar. We actually sell that we wholesale that a couple of bakers in the area who actually incorporated into a lavender lemon cookie lavender lemon scones. We've used it for a lavender lemonade made that fresh here on the farm and it's amazing. And then the other variety that we grow is something called phenomenal. It's a hybrid variety mostly for
03:39its flower production, also for its oil production, because like you said, the scent is truly to die for. Even once it's dried, the scent is still present. You just kind of have to rub the plant a little bit, and you get that wonderful lavender scent right back. So, it's truly versatile. We use that for some of our other products, our linen spray.
04:04Lydia makes a tallow bomb. It's so tallow, it's rendered beef fat. That's great as a lotion, as a cosmetic agent. So yeah, it's definitely a wide variety of uses. And we're very thankful that we can grow it here locally. Yeah, we grow it here every year, but we only grow a few plants because it doesn't do really well because our dirt is very black and really loamy and it isn't dry.
04:33So, and especially this year, it wasn't dry. We grew our lavender in the greenhouse in a pot and that's doing fantastic because it wasn't in the wet dirt. But my go-to for lavender is when anyone on the house has a headache, we have lavender oil in a bottle. And anytime anyone has a headache, the first thing we do is take a sniff off that bottle of lavender oil because it really does take the edge off. It truly does, yeah. It's got so many great properties, whether it's for migraine relief.
05:02We even have some individuals who claim that it's really helpful for just general pain control. It's fantastic for sleep. We know that. Great for anxiety. It's an all-around wonderful herb that can be used for many different things. Thinking about plantain, so we actually grow it in a limestone base. That's one thing that we have found that's been fairly successful because we've got a lot of dense clay in our area and it does not grow well in clay.
05:32But as long as you mound it up and you grow it in limestone, it does seems to do fairly well. We should try that. Hmm. See, again, this is why I love doing the podcast because I learn things all the time and Minnesota has tons of limestone. So why not try that? Yeah. So the other thing we do is we mix it in with a little bit of topsoil or potting soil so that you don't have some.
06:02You still have some nutrient properties there. We got that idea from a farmer down in Virginia. She's one of the largest lavender farms, this side of the Mississippi. She grows thousands of lavender plants every year. That's one of the things that she does is she uses a, they call it dirty limestone where she's from, an unwashed limestone. She can get it really cheap, but yeah, came up with that idea and it's done.
06:31Like I said, it's done pretty well. Well, we will have to add that to the arsenal of tricks that we are gaining from every episode I do of this freaking podcast that I started as a hobby. Who knew? So what else do you guys do besides lavender? Yes. That's pretty much the main crop we grow here on. You know, we only have a small farm. We've got two and a half acres that we have here on the property. So we do the lavender. We have sunflowers.
07:00We've done fairly well with the sunflower. We do have some other wildflowers here on the property. We've got chickens that we raise mostly for our own egg production. We've also done some meat chickens along the way where we sold off some of those. Yeah, honestly, it's been a lot of it has been turning our lavender into various products. That's really where we've seen kind of the most success from test for stuff. Okay, do you love it?
07:31Absolutely. Yeah. From a business standpoint, 100%. And even just from the plant standpoint, our kids, we have four children right now under the age of 10. And they love the scent of lavender. They love spraying on their pillows at night, being able to use that. And yeah, it's honestly been a great opportunity for us as a family to bond together. But we also see our farm as a ministry.
08:00being able to invest in the lives of others, and just truly being able to share the love of the woods with others. So we've been able to do that. Very thankful for that opportunity. Fantastic. I love it when people want to help the community. We do that too. We didn't have a lot of chance to do that this summer because the way we help our community is by giving some of our extra produce to the food shelf. However, our garden did terribly this year because of the wet.
08:30We haven't been able to donate anything to the food shelf because we haven't had anything. I'm very sad on many levels about this growing season this year. No, absolutely. It seems like across the US it's been kind of a hot year. Yes. Well, we got spoiled because the first three summers we were here, we moved here four years ago, were wonderful. We were swimming in everything. And selling and donating and sharing.
09:01And this spring, my husband was like, it's gonna be a rough gardening season. I was like, yep, that's okay. We were really lucky the first three, it's all right. You take what you're given. So that's what we were given. No, 100%. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, that's one thing that we have learned as, you know, kind of new to the area of farming, large gardening.
09:30That you know, you can't control the weather and you can't control the outcomes and you just roll with the punches Whatever is is given to you you you embrace Yes, and we're embracing tomatoes right now because my husband is a very smart man and He planted tomatoes before the rains and they did not do anything and then he planted again and they Started coming in about a month ago and those plants are almost done
10:00And then he planted again on the off chance that the second planting wouldn't do anything. And so the third planting is now set with green tomatoes and they're starting to get blush on them. And as long as the frost holds off, we might actually get some from the third planting as well. So we may yet be able to donate some food to the food shelf. We're not sure. So how many plants do you guys put in the ground as far as tomatoes? I think he put in 150 on the first planting.
10:30Benke put in 75 on the second planting and I think the third planting was 50. Yeah. God bless you guys. That's, that's awesome. Uh huh. Well, we also eat a lot of tomatoes in the winter. We like tomato sauce. We like spaghetti. We like lasagna. We like to put tomato sauce. We like our homemade tomato sauce on our homemade pizzas. We like tomato sauce in the stock for our.
10:57pot roast. So we use tomato sauce all winter long. How big is your garden? 150 feet by 100 feet. Wow. So yeah, it takes up a lot of room for the tomatoes and the cucumbers. And we do other stuff but usually the cucumbers and the tomatoes are the majority of the space in that garden. So, but anyway, this isn't about me,
11:28So how hard was it to get into the business mindset when you decided you were gonna start making and selling?
11:38I would say it's been a little challenging, just finding the time to get into it. And I can't say we're completely there yet either. I think it's a lifestyle change of just deciding what you're selling is worthwhile, that people want it. And we can be kind of frugal people. And so knowing that we might not spend the price that we charge, allowing ourselves to charge what is reasonable.
12:06And what we make a profit on has been probably the biggest challenge for us. Um, you know, just charging what we need to and not undercharging. So something else that, uh, you know, we've, we've, uh, I won't necessarily say struggled with, but something that we've learned to embrace a little bit has been not everybody is your customer. Right. And that's one thing that we have really had to kind of
12:35shift our mindset around that it's okay if people say no, it's okay if people walk in, look at your stuff, walk away or it's okay if your neighbor down the road doesn't even stop by to take a look at your stuff. That's okay. Because yeah, at the end of the day, you're not selling to everybody. Even if we've got produce, we've got extra produce.
13:03Yes, everybody needs to eat, but not everybody needs to eat our stuff. And that's been honestly, probably one of the biggest challenges that I have had has been kind of lifting my mind around that. Um, and like Lydia said, you know, we are very brutal people. And one of the things that we've really had to kind of embrace has been, you know, kind of getting over some of that mindset. So, yeah.
13:33I have been listening to a metric but ton of podcasts lately. And it's really funny because I was never a podcast listener until I started my own podcast, which is crazy. But I've been listening to podcasting podcasts and marketing podcasts and home setting podcasts because I need to learn about how to do this. And in the process, I've been learning a lot about mindset and about charging what your products are worth.
14:01There is a podcast that Charlotte Smith does, if you type in her name in Facebook. Three shell companies. Yeah, she's fantastic. And she talks a lot about charging what your products are worth, and she has a formula to figure that out. So I don't know, if you listened to her already, yay, but I just wanna put it out there for anybody that doesn't know about her, go check her podcast out too, because she really has been a big help.
14:31Yeah, I ended up coming across her one day on YouTube and started following along some of her content. And, you know, my, are we willing to pull the trigger on, on one of her courses? Not at this point. No, me either. Just to grow and continue to develop some different ideas. But yeah, I tell you, that's, that's one of the biggest struggles I think honestly, any new business person has, you know, as far as the selling aspect. And one of the other challenges, I was just thinking about this.
15:01as we were talking, but one of the other challenges that we have had has been, and when I say we, I mean more me than anything, not wasting your energy on social media. Is it important that people find you? Yes. Is it important that people hear about you and learn about you? Yes.
15:24but it doesn't always have to go through social media. It can go through word of mouth marketing. It can go through Google. It can go through your own website. It doesn't have to be an expensive website. Because yeah, that's one thing that I have found with even other farms in our area that have tried starting up, that they tend to fizzle out fairly quickly when you put out a few posts and no one comes and buys my stuff.
15:52Because yeah, you gotta get found first. So.
15:57Preach to my own self here because yeah, something we've been working through. I think it's a don't put all your eggs in one basket kind of thing, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And since we're talking about homesteading, don't put all the eggs in one basket. But yeah, I had no idea how much background there is in learning to run a business. And if you've never done it before,
16:25you can spend six months learning about all the ins and outs of running a business. And you'll never start a business if you do it that way because you will be afraid. You will get three months into learning how to start a business and be like, I don't know how to do this. Right. Well, and you think, I mean, a lot of, a lot of your new hobby farmers, I would say that we are a hobby farm, but obviously transitioning to a business, transitioning to a business. But, you know, in our
16:55normal everyday professional lives were not taught how to run a business. You get on Google, you get on YouTube and you start searching, how do I start a business? You learn a little bit, but then you start breaking into so many different avenues. Honestly, you can become overwhelmed so quickly. It's important to focus on doing one thing good at a time and do everything.
17:23at once and end up doing nothing well. Yes, absolutely. And the other thing we talk about a lot here is CYA cover your ass. Because there are so many things that you have to consider if you're going to sell a product, what if someone gets sick? What if God forbid you're selling candles and your candle catches someone someone's house on fire because that does happen. So.
17:51We talk a lot about contingencies and CYA here because we do not want to lose our livelihood because we didn't think through what could happen. Right. Yep. And it's, those are important things to consider and something that, uh, often goes unnoticed and overlooked. Yep. And I don't know what Ohio is like, but Minnesota.
18:18has a thing called cottage food law. And we occasionally sell granola at the farmer's market along with our produce. And we had to get, it's not a license, but it's a registration. And you basically have to study a form that explains what the laws are to be able to sell food that you make in your own home kitchen. And then you have to take a test. And if you fail a test, you're really not allowed to sell from your home kitchen.
18:48And when we decided we were going to do that and then decided we were going to have a farm stand on our property to sell produce, we talked to our insurance guy and said, is there anything we need to do regarding insurance? And he said, why, yes, yes, there is. And he said, you probably should switch from homeowners insurance to farm insurance because you're now going to be a farm with people coming on your property. And if someone gets hurt, you want to make sure you're covered.
19:19And then he said, you might want to look into LLC insurance. And I knew about LLC as a business designation, but I didn't know there was LLC insurance and he said that way, if God forbid something happens, you're, you don't lose your home. The business will be sued, but you're, you personally won't be sued. And I was like, I don't want to talk about being sued. And he said, well, let's not, let's hope that doesn't happen. I was like, yeah, that doesn't happen.
19:46But there's all these little detail things behind the scenes that if you don't ask people who know, you'll never know about it. Correct. Yeah, it's one thing that Olivia's definitely looked further into as far as the Ohio cottage laws. And what we've noticed is that every state's different. Some states allow you to sell raw milk under a cottage law, other states will not. And you've got, I mean, here in Ohio, we can, as an example, we can sell produce, but you
20:15wash your produce if you sell it. You can make certain kinds of baked goods, but you can't have cream in your pie, if you will. A lot of those little anomalies that really are dependent upon various states. Then yeah, the other thing we've got, and I know some states have this, Ohio is one that is kind of embracing it a little bit, but not quite there, is the idea of agritourism and how agritourism, if it's designated by the state,
20:45thankfully Ohio has this, it offers additional legal protections for the farms that when they are holding agritourism activities, whether that's an event on site, a you-pick event, a tour, some kind of an activity, that you have some additional liability protection in place automatically granted by the state of Ohio as long as you're not being stupid, not stepping across fines intentionally.
21:14that we have really learned about recently and trying to embrace that more. Yep, and agritourism is becoming a huge business. So, yeah, knowing about that helps too. The main reason we started really asking questions is because one of the people that came to our CSA the first summer that we had it had two little ones. She had a two and a half for three year old girl and a baby, like the eight month old baby boy.
21:43almost a year old baby boy. And she would bring the kids with her when she came to get her shares. And the little girl absolutely loved our chickens and our chickens were in a chicken run with the chicken wire. And she went over and reached her hand through the chicken wire to touch one of the chickens. And I was like, if she hurts herself, we are screwed. This is gonna be bad. And I asked the mom gently if she could get the little girl because they didn't wanna get hurt. And she totally understood.
22:13It was fine, but that was the day that we sat down and talked about calling our insurance agent and saying, how does this work? How do we protect everybody ourselves and the people come here? So that was the kicker for us. Cause she, Oh, this little girl's adorable. She's so cute. And I thought I'm going to hate myself forever if anything happens to her. Yeah. No, that's one thing that we've, uh, we had to look into as we started opening up for photography. So we all.
22:43we open up during the bloom of lavender for photography.
22:49where a photographer can come in and rent the field for an hour. And that's one thing that we really had to designate was, you know, you are in a very controlled area. You're not leaving this area. You're not interacting with the animals. Please know that there are animals on site. You're not bringing your, your pets, your dogs. Yeah. Because yeah, you started thinking through a lot of that liability and you've exponentially increased your risk when you start having to do your property. Yep.
23:18Absolutely. So do you guys? I'm sorry, say it again. No, I was just gonna say we love having people. But yeah, you definitely take on that risk when you invite people to your to your farm. Yes. And I don't ever want anyone to think that the only reason that we do our due diligence and try to take care of things is to protect just us. It's about protecting the other people as well. Because
23:45I care about the people that come here. I want to make sure that they are safe or they are taken care of if something does happen. Absolutely. So, you guys have animals. What do you have for animals? We just have chickens and too many cats right now. Oh, okay. You don't have a dog? No dog. We have one that's begging for a dog, but not right now. One child that's begging for a dog. No animals begging for dogs. So.
24:14Yeah. Is there a particular reason you don't have any dogs? The last one we had ran away, then the last one we had needed to be trained a little bit better and have the opportunity at another location, another farm to have that opportunity. The one before that, unfortunately, got hit by a car. So, yeah. Okay. So you're taking a break from dogs, huh?
24:40Taking a break right now and we have way too many cats that would probably not interact at all with the dog right now. It's so funny that you say that because our dog absolutely adores our cats. Our cats are all barn cats and the barn cats adore the dog. And we have baby barn cats in the barn right now. And they're almost three weeks old and they will be venturing out in a week or so into the world. And
25:07The mama cat has had two litters so far, this is the third litter. And our dog loves the kittens when they come out of the barn. She just, she sits and she waits for them to come introduce themselves and she grooms them and she puts her paw on them and she treats them like they're her babies. It's very cute. What breed is your dog? She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Okay. Yeah.
25:32and she thinks that she is the mama to the kittens. When they go back in the barn with the actual mom, she sits and pouts. So I have a very special place in my heart for dogs. And when people are like, we don't have a dog. I'm like, do you not like dogs or is there a reason? No, we love having animals around. We just know at this point in our life, we still enjoy being able to get away to go on vacation.
26:02Um, yeah, being able to go through and have somebody come over and watch a few animals is enough at this point. So sure. That makes all the sense in the world. We live in a place that we consider a vacation home, like our, our property on our home, we are so thrilled with it. We never want to leave it. So, so we live, we live where we vacation and we vacation where we live because we never go anywhere. There's nothing wrong with that.
26:32That was the whole point of finding this place. We wanted somewhere that we wanted to love so much we never wanted to leave it, and we were really lucky to find it.
26:42And I really feel like that's true of a lot of homesteaders and farmers and ranchers. They find their place and that's it. They're good. They don't really go anywhere. They're like, I'm so happy here. I'm never leaving. Exactly. It's always nice to be able, even if you do go away, it's always nice to be able to come back home because there's nothing, no place like home, honestly. There's nothing better. No, exactly. Every time I leave the house to go somewhere, which isn't very often.
27:11We come home one of two ways and we can see our house from a mile and a half down the road, both directions when we're coming back home. And I see our little house behind our trees and I'm like, I still can't believe we live there. Still cannot believe that's our place and we've been here for over four years now. That's cool. Yep, makes my heart too big for my chest and it's ridiculous. I shouldn't still be this enamored. We've been here too long, but it's fantastic. So anyway,
27:41Yeah. So lavender plants, what's the plan? I mean, are you going to keep doing this forever? Or do you have plans to grow or change?
27:53I don't think we have any major plans to change. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some more lavender to replace what we have lost and just keep growing what we have and work on promoting ourselves more so our products sell more. We'd like to start a blog to go along with it and maybe that will help generate some income as well. I think that's probably our biggest plan to grow at this point is just to provide information to people and
28:23work on that. Cool. People will tell you that blogging is dead, but it is not dead. Blogging is still a really good way to communicate with people and generate interest in what you're doing. No, it's very encouraging. Going back to what I was sharing back in the beginning, as far as throwing a lot of energy in different areas, one area that I've thrown a lot of energy has been in social media.
28:51Yeah, I think it's been helpful to be able to kind of get our name and our face out there, but we know that there's still opportunity to be able to branch out even more, to be able to see and connect with even more. One of the challenges you have with specifically Facebook is, I know it's like this for many of the social media platforms, but you don't engage for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden your traffic is just done. Whereas with a blog, it seems quite the opposite.
29:20We've almost got a never-ending supply of engagement opportunities. So one thing that we're looking at for the next go-around. Well if it makes you feel any better or any more secure in your take on blogging, I started a blog years ago, over 10 years ago, about writing and books and stuff. Have not put a new post on that thing in over six years and people still come and read it. So yeah.
29:49It's a long game and it works. So I have one more question for you about the lavender and then I will cut you loose because I know you're probably busy. The lavender flowers, do you dry the flowers and sell them for like putting on top of homemade soap or stuff like that? Yeah, we do a few different things with them depending on if they're culinary or not. So our culinary, we do dry and sell in bundles and then people can use them either.
30:18We have somebody buy some stems to put on top of cupcakes, or we will take them off that you can use as lavender buds. And that's what we use for our lavender syrup for lemonade. Or the person puts them in their cookies, she sprinkles them on top of her cookies. So we use the culinary in that way. And then for our other ones, we also, we sell bundles. So we have those drying in our shop right now. Well, they're dry, but they're hanging up in our shop that people can buy for decorations.
30:46or we will use those as well in different things that we make. And you can also, for the hybrid variety, the second one that Lydia was talking about, you can take those buds, and that's what you would stick into a sachet. They have such a strong oil production. And they're continuing to distill that scent. So lots of opportunity with those. Yeah, I bet your shop smells just amazing.
31:15You know, people come in all the time and they say, oh, it smells so good in here. We've been around it so much that we walk in there, we don't even smell it anymore. And we're like, oh, it smells in here. Yeah, your nose blind to it. Yes. Now it is wonderful when it's blooming. And I usually get the job of mowing between the lavender rows, because Scott mows with the tractor and I mow with the lawn mower. And when it's blooming and you mow, I'm like, oh, I could mow all the time in this smell. Yeah. And for me, I'm.
31:44We make candles with a lavender oil. I think it's lavender leaf oil, I think. And I can't handle it. My husband's like, we're gonna make lavender soap or we're gonna make lavender candles. And I'm like, okay, let me take Tylenol now. Because we're doing it in our house, typically in the wintertime, so not a lot of ventilation. And it gives me terrible headaches. Well, which is-
32:11Crazy, because when I have a headache, all I want to do is smell lavender.
32:17Okay, maybe it's just the intensity. I don't know what it is. Just out of curiosity, is that an essential oil or is that a fragrance oil? It's an essential oil. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I don't want any lavender fragrance oil. I would probably die. That would probably kill me. Yeah, it's one thing that we have really tried pushing away from in our business as well as we don't have any artificial scents, no fragrance oils. I mean, they're
32:46There is a business for everything. There's a business for every person. It's just not the business for us. And we try to stay as natural and clean as possible. Yeah, as you get a whiff of those fragrance oils, it can be overpowering. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lilac one that we've done. That's a fragrance oil. We've done it for candles. And it makes fabulous candles. But oh my god, my house smells awful when we're making them because it's just so overpowering.
33:17I told my husband, I said, I really, I love the candles, but I really don't love making them. Can we maybe not make candles anymore? And he was like, which ones don't bother you? I said, the coffee one, the lemon one, the peppermint one. He was like, okay, we'll make those instead. We won't make the ones that give you headache anymore. I'm like, thank you. So you can make it work. It's just working around things. So
33:45On that note, you make anything work as long as you know what you can handle, I think. Yeah. All right, guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today and good luck with all the lavender growing and I'm very excited for you. I think it's a great plan. Thank you very much. Thank you. You have a good day. You too.