A Tiny Homestead

Sunset Creek Farm LLC

Today I'm talking with Katie at Sunset Creek Farm LLC.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead is sponsored by the Homegrown Collective, the best option for organizing a responsible and regional food system for America.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Katie at Sunset Creek Farm LLC. Good,  well, I guess it's evening, Katie. How are you? I'm good. How are you?
00:27I am good. I usually record in the morning  and so I'm always saying good morning  and when I do them in the evening, I'm like, ah, it's not morning anymore.  Yes, it is a dreary afternoon here for sure. Yeah. And you're in Georgia, right? Yes, in Trine, Georgia. Yeah. It's not dreary here cause it's not raining, but it's been gray  all day. Yes. And I'm in Minnesota if you didn't know. So. Yes.  Okay.  So tell me all about yourself.
00:57and Sunset Creek Farm.  Okay,  so  like I said, we're located in Trine, Georgia.  We have been here about six years. So my family actually owns part of the land and then we took a little bit of it and then we had actually built a barn so that way we could get married in it. So it all started from there.
01:22And so then  last year, and we've always had, I rodeoed my whole life. And so I had, I've had horses and cows my whole life. But then whenever me and Caleb  got married, then of course we had planned to build here and everything.  And then last year we ended up getting Kiko goats. So that was really kind of how we got started.
01:47in having our own little farm.  It had always been a dream of ours to have our own farm.  And  luckily we had the acreage.  And so then from there,  of course, the goat supply just kept coming. So we ended up, we have about 13 nanny goats.  And so,  and we've got a couple of billies that we're keeping separate. That way we can keep the.
02:16the lines going and then  in December, I decided that I needed a milk cow.  So I  do a lot of research before I do anything. Me and my husband are both that way. And so I got to look in and you know, we didn't need a full size cow because we didn't need that much milk just for our family.
02:40And so I ended up doing a lot of research and discovered that the mini jersey was probably our best option. So we get anywhere from one to two gallons of milk a day,  just depending on how much I'm milker. So  I do have a full-time job. So this is our hobby on the side. And so  luckily we do have a bottle cap.
03:06that he helps me milk her during the week and then I milk on the weekends so that way we have enough milk to get us through the week and I like to you know make the different cheeses and I've made feta and mozzarella. I haven't tried hard cheeses yet.  I'm a little intimidated but I'm trying to build myself up to there but then we like to do butter and yogurt and you know different things that I can make with the milk.
03:34And so,  so that's one thing that, you know, the mini Jersey, we have loved having her. And so in the, the buttermilk or the, excuse me, the milk is very rich and has a lot of butterfat. And so that lets us that I don't have to have as much milk  or cream as I need to make the butter. So that makes it, it makes it easier for me to be able to produce butter when I want to.
04:04That's really enjoyed it. Yes, yes. you know, really, it's been nice to be able... So the main reason that we started... So I had breast cancer in 2023. So that made me start looking at what chemicals that are in our food, what chemicals are in the shampoo, the conditioner.
04:30the body washes, the even, you know, the different laundry detergents that you have, all the chemicals that are unnecessary to have and to put on your body. And so that was whenever we really started looking at what is the best way to be able to grow our own food  and to be able, you know, to have our own milk and, and take those chemicals that we can. Of course there's chemicals around us all the time, but to
05:00but to take what I could out of our lives for what I could.  Yeah, because your skin is your biggest organ. Not everyone knows that, but your skin is exposed to everything.  whatever you can  do to cut back on what you're putting on your skin that's going to get absorbed that's bad for you is a grand and glorious thing.  Yes. And that was one thing that got me started in the soap.
05:28making was because you know, I only have you know, five different ingredients in my soap. And if you look on the back of a body wash, I mean, there's all these ingredients, I can't pronounce. And so then that makes you think if I don't, if I can't pronounce it, I definitely don't know what it is. And so that's one  one thing that I started, you know, looking into making soap. And so I ended up taking a class.
05:53and she was actually doing goat milk soap. And I was like, oh, that is great because then I can incorporate our goats into making my soap. And of course  the goat milk soap has a lot of different  benefits to it. It's supposed to be good for your skin, good for people that have  different eczema and skin conditions.  And it's really soft. And one thing I love about the recipe that I
06:23do is it has a really good lather. I'm all about, you know, a good lather. If it just kind of like wipes on and wipes off, I don't feel like I'm clean. But if I get a good lather, then I love it. So that's one thing I've really enjoyed about being able to experiment with my own soap is what gives me the best feeling.  You know, and then I know it's just, you know, basic oils. So  I've really enjoyed it.  You are singing my song, lady.
06:51My husband makes  cold process soap and I've talked about this on the podcast a lot But  my question for you is do you use essential oils to make your soaps smell good?  Yes, so a lot of the soaps that I have  they don't have essential oils because I try to be very aware of people that  Can't handle smells and especially strong smells  because when I was going through chemo, I couldn't handle strong smells
07:20So I try to cater to that, but I do actually use essential oils. And I try to find the pure essential oils so then that way, I know that they are better for you than just the fragrance oils. If anybody had a request for a certain oil and I couldn't find it, then of course I would use what they wanted. But I try to use more of the pure oils so then that way,
07:47You know, you're not putting those harmful chemicals on you. Yeah, I really like using the pure essential oils because for that exact reason. And you're getting exactly what it is. Like my favorite one that we do is lemongrass. Yes, me too. And every time we put a new bar of soap in the shower, I want to eat the soap and obviously not going to eat the soap, but it smells just like a lemon bar. And
08:16I'm just so excited every time we put a new bar in the shower. like, oh my God, my bathroom is going to smell like lemon bars for a week.  Yes.  Yeah. And that's one thing I normally do before I put anything out there. Like we've used a bar of it to kind of see how it is, how it smells and make sure that, you know, it feels good. So I don't want to put anything out there that I wouldn't use for sure.  Yeah. And I'm telling you lemon.
08:43Lemon is the best thing in the morning to wake you up. I don't know what it is. I love lemon anything like lemon meringue pie. You put one in front of me. I want to eat the whole thing and I don't, but I really, really want to.  But there's something invigorating about that lemon scent first thing in the morning.  Yes. And actually,  I freeze dry things as well.  so  actually at Christmas we had an extra  lemon icebox pie.
09:13leftover. So I freeze dried it and  I actually had it at the meeting yesterday and people were tasting it and of course it tasted like I had just done it. So that's one way to get your  lemon, just a little bit of lemon hit and not have to eat a whole pie.  Well that's awesome and as an aside this whole thing about lemon.  I think everyone in my immediate family like my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother and I  all just love lemon.
09:43and come to find out both sets of my grandparents did too. So maybe there's a genetic coding thing in there. Maybe, maybe so because our family seems to like lemon as well. My grandmother, she actually would do a lemon icebox pie every Sunday when we would go eat dinner with her. And I always for  many, many years thought, oh my goodness, like she
10:09loves us so much. works around the clock and makes us these two lemon icebox pies. Years later, I was like, Mom, I would really like to make that recipe. She gave it to me and it took me five minutes to make it. And I thought,  Oh, now I see why she always made us two lemon icebox pies. They were simple and delicious.  I am so thrilled to be talking with you because you keep giving me all kinds of things to think about.  Cooking.
10:37You're saying that you thought that it took her all day to make those pies and it did not. It was simple. Very simple. funniest thing about cooking and people's perception of cooking is that it's hard and it takes a lot of time.  That may be true on some things, but I have an entire cookbook that I've put together like a binder.  I have printed out recipes that I love  and my husband works half an hour from home.
11:07And he'll call me and say I'm headed home and I will say  awesome drive safe I love you and then I start cooking right then  Usually dinner is ready within five minutes of him walking in the door. Yeah half an hour is  nothing it  You can spend half an hour staring at the TV and do nothing productive  Or you can spend half an hour whipping together dinner and having something wonderful. That's good for you.  Mm-hmm. Yes, so
11:37And I'm trying really hard not to be snarky about this because I don't expect everybody to be a fantastic  chef level cook. That's not necessarily what I'm saying.  But learning to cook some things that you really enjoy eating,  is satisfaction in cooking it, not just eating it. Right. Yes. And that's one thing going back to the freeze dryer  I have found is very
12:06beneficial is, you know, I have made a big batch of chicken enchiladas and it's just, you know, us three or four or five, ever how many is going to eat with us. And so I have a whole lot leftover. We're used to, we would eat on it a couple of days and then it would go bad where now I stick it in the freeze dryer. And then when that's done, I stick it in the Mylar bag and it's good for 25 years. So then whenever I'm ready to eat it again,
12:35Then we'll put out, put a little hot water in it, let it steam and it's back to what it was whenever you freeze dried it. So that's,  it has been a very well investment for us.  Awesome. I want one. I just can't afford one right now.  I did say, no, I don't work for harvest right at all, but I did say that they're having a big sale right now, starting in May. And that's actually how I ended up getting mine was they were having a big sale.
13:03And then tractor supply had a big sale. And so I managed to put everything together and  convince myself to get one. It took about a year  to decide. so  actually at the meeting yesterday, I was telling a lady that I was standing there, you I told my husband, let's go, let's look at one. I'm standing there just looking at it. I don't know what I expected to happen.
13:27But I was just staying in there and I had this lady walk up, I'd never seen her before and she said, are you looking at getting one? And I said, I am. And she said, oh, well we have one and we love it. And I said, well, can you tell me a little bit about it? So she was telling me about they mill prep and they do this and they do that.  And I said, do you love it? And she said, yes, I love it. The only thing I wished I would have done was gotten the bigger one.
13:52And I thought, okay, this lady was sent to me to tell me I need to do it. And so I took that as my sign.  And so that was, we made the investment that day just because I thought, okay, I can't just keep putting it  off  and keep saying, okay, well, maybe whenever I save up a little more, I save up a little more. And so there was the sale and there was the lady telling me to just do it.  Yep.  Awesome.
14:21Was a God thing. It was. It definitely was. Okay. I have one more question about that and then I want to get onto your meeting last night because I want to ask you questions about that too. Is the plug for the freeze dryer, is it just a normal plug into the wall plug? So the one that we ended up getting with the ladies advice, we ended up getting the large one instead of the medium. So the medium is the 110 plug and then the large one is the 220.
14:51So we did end up getting that one.  My husband actually works in construction. So  of course I get it and then realized that the plug was different. And so I was like, babe,  can you put me in a plug?  And of course he did his handiwork and got me a plug in within a  couple of days.  So,  but that is the only thing that the plug is different on the bigger one. What a great husband you have.
15:17Yes, he is very good. Anything I need, he makes happen. Well, that's fabulous. I have one of those too. For the most part, I keep saying, we get a mini cow? And he says, no, because we don't have any place to put it. And I'm like, okay, fine. Okay, so this meeting that you had last night, I saw on your Facebook page something about it, but tell me what that was about.
15:42Yeah, so we are actually members  of the Chattauka County Young Farmers  and we get together once a month or every two weeks and we have little programs.  A lot of times it'll be different people coming to sell, you know, different things like either software or we'll do classes. A lot of times they'll go to
16:06different places, know they have like a canon class and different things like that, that we  all get together and  it's a learning experience plus it's good fellowship and especially being able to connect with people that are in our community that do the same things we do.  And so usually everybody's running  in  different ways at all times, but it's nice to get together  every two weeks, once a month to be able to.
16:34you know, be together and we all have the same struggles and just to be able to see each other.  And so one of our really good friends is the vice president of it. And so he reached out to me in January and said, you know, you're doing all of these things and I would like for  you to host a meeting and be able to, you know, show what all you do.  And he said last night, it was nice to see that, you know,
17:02me and my husband were kind of doing things that the older generation had done, you know, with doing the canning and all of that and doing the garden. And he's helped me and gave me advice on the garden and, and really, really helped me. And so, so it was nice to be able to kind of show everybody what we've done and what we've been building the last few years and, and how we're trying to make the community, you know, make the community better with.
17:32you know, my soaps taking out the different chemicals and whatnot. So  it was, it was a really good meeting. was, it was funny because as it has rained today, it, was really nice yesterday. And then, um, as everybody was starting to get here at six o'clock, they, cooked hot dogs and hamburgers or they cook hot dogs and hamburgers out on the trailer.  And then as it started,  um, as everybody started to get here, it started to rain.
18:00So luckily we had somewhere to go. So we all got our food and went in  and  it stopped raining for a minute and then it would come and pour down. So  it did that off and on, you know, for a little bit. And then I was able, we started doing my presentation.  And so then by the end of it, it finally stopped raining and then everybody was able to get out and be able to visit with the goats and see them in New Jersey.
18:28and just be able to be around all the different animals and see the garden and the greenhouse and all that. And it was just nice to be able to  show them what we have been working  on and what we're working toward. So I did  talk about that  as well. So it was a lot of fun. It was.  And it's really nice because a lot since I grew up in Chattucket County.
18:55And so it's really nice to be able to, you know, see people I either grew up with or people's parents that I grew up with that we're all in the same community.  And,  you know, we're all,  it's really nice to see the support. felt so much support from  that community that just, you know, basically  helps lift me up that, you know, I'm, I'm doing, I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
19:25You're fitting in your skin and you're fitting in your world and that is the best feeling ever. Okay, so how many people showed up? Do you know? Oh goodness, it was probably, I would say probably 25 people. I didn't get an exact head count, but usually I would say probably 25 to 35 people maybe. Nice, very nice.
19:48Well, I think it's amazing that you did that because I have social anxiety. If 25 people showed up at our place, I would be like,  Yes. And by day, I'm an accountant. So I kind of sit in my office and I'm not very social. So it took me out of my element, but I think it's  a good thing because I'm trying to branch out and trying not to be such an introvert that I am.  Yeah.
20:17I love the podcast because I get to talk to people, but I don't have to be in the presence of people. Right. So I get my social needs met that way. And it's really fabulous because I learned so many new things from you guys. just, I love it so much.  okay. So tell me about the, uh, the mini Jersey cows because  I didn't realize until today that such a thing existed.  Yeah.
20:41Yeah, so that was one thing when we  got to research in about this mini Jersey, you know, of course my first instinct was,  how did the mini part of the Jersey come about?  And so I got to research in and had, you know, listened to a podcast and done some research and actually, so the Jersey was crossed with the Dexter cow  and the Dexter is a shorter black cow.  And so that is why our Clairebale,
21:10has more  black in her than she does the you know the typical brown with a little bit of black on her. She has more black  and so that's where  we believe the black came in was from the Dexter. So that's where they got the hot from and so it was really funny because our bull Darius,  we got him from Oklahoma
21:34And he actually, he has a little more black in him than a typical Jersey, but he does have the typical lighter brown and a little bit of black look. we're excited. So hopefully she is bred and hopefully we'll have a baby about August, September we're hoping. So I'm excited to see what the baby's going to look like, but they're, so sweet.  I've really, really enjoyed it. And she comes  up.
22:03I took out my hip. She's not very, she's not very tall. And when the lady that we had gotten her from, they didn't know if she had ever been milked before. She had had a calf on her and they had pulled the calf off and had sold it when it was time.  And so luckily she was still in milk when we got her.  And, um,  and so the first night we put her in the stall  and I chased her around for two hours cause she wouldn't stand still.
22:33So then, of course I've told you about my marvelous husband. So the next day I show up from work and he has me a cow stanchion built. And so then  I was like, okay, so we put her in there and it took me about an hour and a half to milk her. And I thought, oh goodness, I can't do an hour and a half every day just milking. So I got on and ordered an  automatic milker.
22:58And so that has really been a lifesaver. can, I can normally milk her in  30, 45 minutes, just from start to finish cleaning up and everything.  And it has been, it has been fabulous, but she is so  friendly and gentle. She follows me around. I get a bucket of feed and she'll come running.  Um, I think I've actually got a video on Facebook where I just barely shake the bucket and her and her bottlecafs come running.
23:29And they'll love all over you and they're just, really sweet. I've really enjoyed being able to, you know, have her join the farm and just the, like, and my daughter is out there with her and, you know, she doesn't, she doesn't bother us at all. And she just wants to be the love owner.  So she's like a dog.  She  is. She  is. And she's so sweet. Well,
23:55I think all that's fabulous, but God bless that man of yours.  You got a winner. Yes,  he is all about building something to make our lives a little easier. And so  he saw how bad I was struggling that first night, so he knew something had to happen.  Yeah.  Okay. So if the mini jersey came from across with a Dexter, does that mean that they're actually good  as meat as well?
24:23So I have heard that they are actually, the Jersey is a very tender meat. don't know of anybody personally that has processed Jersey cows, but I've heard that the meat is very good. Okay. I was just wondering, because a dual purpose animal is always good on the homestead. Yes. Yes. And that's also segue into our goats. That is actually one of the great things about our Kikos.
24:52is that they are actually mainly,  they're meat goats  and milk goats.  So they do really good on the production of  their milk. And so I'm able, of course, once the babies are big enough, I'm able to get some of their milk and be able to make my soap. But then also there is a big market for them as a meat goat as well. So yes, we try to do  things that are gonna be the most beneficial.
25:22Yeah, I mean, if you're going to be a farmer or a homesteader or a rancher, and those are all  different things, but they all kind of fall into the same umbrella, you want everything to work together for the greater good of the  place that you have. Yes.  And we kind of suck at that, actually. We're working on it. Oh, yeah.
25:48It's hard to try to make everything jive on people or things that you want to do and things you need to do. So  yeah, I mean, I, I  don't want to talk about my podcast a lot, but I started this podcast over 18 months ago and,  and I really needed to make some money from it. And I really didn't want to put ads on it. I loved it the first year because it was very clean. It was just the podcast. It was just,
26:18me introducing it and you guys talking to me and it was great.  I loved it.  And then I was like, I'm sinking some real time into this. I kind of need it to make money and I put  ads on it and I hated it for the first month. And then I was like, you know what? It's okay. It's okay because I'm doing something important here that I love to do that is helping other people.  It's okay to put ads on it. Yes. And my husband was like,
26:46How much time are you thinking of the podcast? And I said a lot. And I told him the hours and he said,  do not feel bad about trying to monetize it. He said, you are earning any penny that you make. Right. And I was like, okay, yes, I know. I still miss the first year, Katie, of no ads, no nothing. It was so  clean, you know?  Yes.  But I'm not giving up. want to promote.
27:13you guys who are doing the hard work and improving your communities and sharing and learning too. Yes. So I want to add a new thing at the end of the interviews. I'm going to start with you. If you had to describe your farm with one word, what would it be? Oh, goodness.
27:41would probably say a dream.  dream? Yes. I think that's a great word because it is a dream. Yes, because it is definitely  what we have dreamed  of and what we have, what we've been trying to work towards.  And then just to see it come together just feels like a dream. And especially since I guess too that it's on
28:11my family's land. And so just to know that, you know, there's way more history than just six years  right here.  So that's, that's one thing that is,  um,  that is, I guess what I'm trying to think of even how to put it, but a dream. That's really what it is to me.  I love that. I think that's wonderful.  And maybe your kids, you have kids, right?
28:40Yes, I have one. Yeah, maybe maybe 20 years from now this will what you're doing now will be part of her history and maybe she'll be running it. Yes,  I hope so. That's one thing we always try to  make sure that she's involved in in everything and she tries to help so so much on the farm and we've we really enjoyed it. Yeah, I'm gonna say this again. I've said it a bunch of times on the podcast in the last 18 months. I think that  people who are in a position
29:10to have land and have animals and grow things and they have kids is the best thing for those kids because there is real accomplishment that the kids feel even from the littlest age like a year and a half old when they go out and grab the egg out of the nesting box.  They didn't put that egg there but they just think it's the coolest thing. They got to pick out the egg from the nesting box and bring it to the house. Yes.  Oh yes.
29:40She is all about picking up those eggs too and inspecting them. There's actually a video on  our Facebook page of her  inspecting the eggs and it was so funny because I just handed them to her and said, hey Lila, just put them in there. And so  she started looking and she was inspecting and putting them back in the bucket if she didn't like them. I love it. How old is she?  She's four.  Oh, she's a little one. She is. She's tiny.
30:09She's a little, as I call any kid under five. Yes. And when people have more than one, they're littles. Yeah.  So  all right, Katie, we're at half an hour. That was fast. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Yes. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. Have a great night and a great weekend. Thank you. too. All right. Bye.
 

Guldan Family Farm

Today I'm talking with Tim at Guldan Family Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.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
00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Tim at I think it's Guldan Family Farm, but I could be pronouncing it wrong, and he's in Newall, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Tim. How are you?  Good afternoon. It's pretty close. We say golden like the golden color, but you know what? We don't know for sure. So as long as it's close to the term, hey you, I answer to it. And it's too and well.
01:23Yeah, you must be a dad. You must get hey you.  I've been a hey you for a long time.  Between there was a day at the farmers market a few years ago my wife was actually saying  Tim, Tim and then it went to Mr. Golden, Mr. Golden because I was a teacher at the time and then finally she said hey you and I noticed and turned around and I said what do you need? It was a it's a joke that doesn't die anymore.
01:45Oh, I know.  mean, I've had four kids and if they can't get my attention, they're like, hey, and if that doesn't work, say, hey, you. And I turn around and like, why are you being rude?  So yeah.  I always ask about the weather  at the beginning of the episodes, but I don't really need to ask because you're in New Ulm, which is not far from me. And Minnesota is having the first most glorious spring day we've had since last spring.
02:12It is looking finally like it's here. We had a couple of tease days earlier on, but yeah, today I'm sitting at a beautiful 77 and sunny on a nice calm,  maybe two mile an hour breeze day. So I have no complaints in my end.  My husband's been outside almost all day and he just put out the open  farm fresh eggs farm stand farm stand signs about half an hour ago. Oh, Yep.
02:38We're very excited. This is the earliest we've had the farm stand open and we've had the farm stand for this is the third year. So this is great. We have we have bedding plants for sale this year.  And  this is probably the first year since we moved here four and a half years ago that we're going to have asparagus for sale before the farmers market opens. Very nice.  Always a happy good day when you have asparagus.  Oh my God. This is
03:07This is the summer we have been waiting for. moved here in August of 2020. And with grand plans to have a farm to market garden and do all the things. And what we didn't take into account is that when you start from scratch, you have to build infrastructure. So that's what the last three years have been spent on. Yeah, there's that minor detail.  So this is the summer that we have been.
03:33working toward for three and a half years. We're so excited. Okay, so this podcast is not about me, but I just had to get that out or a joke on it. Tell me about yourself and what you guys do at your farm. Well, my name is Tim Golden and I'm, we, I am now the proud owner operator of Golden Family Farm. I'm actually the second generation running the vegetable version of this farm. Although the farm itself, excuse me, has been the family since the Homestead Act one way or another.
04:02And so we're pushing close to 170 years in the family.  And as it sits now, I'm operating 25 acres of fruits and vegetables.  Very nice.  Do you have the,  I don't know what it's called. It's a thing they give you when you buy a home that lists the original plot and who signed the paperwork for it. Do you have that for your place?  I have, I believe it's.
04:28I don't know if you'd say it's original, if it's reproduction, but it is a certificate, you know, that has the President of the time, President Buchanan's signature on it, dedicating this, you know, the portion to the owner at the time, which would have been a, I believe it was a Joseph Reinhart was his name. So it's kind of cool. We've got that hanging in the hallway. Nice. Yeah. Our thingy, whatever it's called, there's a specific name for it, but I can't think of it right now. President Lincoln was the one who signed ours.
04:59Oh, nice. Yeah, I was reading back through it I was like,  honey, did you see this? And it was the very first owner. And I showed it to my husband and he was like, as in President Abraham Lincoln, I said, Yep.  My parents found the certificate  actually buried in the wall of the original house that was here. They had hoped to salvage it, but it was beyond, beyond  repair.
05:26And so they were trying to find things out. found all sorts of weird knickknacks in the walls and whatnot. And  that was one of the specialty items. Yeah, it's I love history and knowing that President Lincoln was the one that signed that piece paper is really cool to me. So I'm always thrilled when people know the history of their property.  OK, so so what  I don't even have to ask the question correctly.
05:53Are you having the farm support the farm or do you have a job outside of the farm? The farm supports the farm. However, I do have another job in my off season that works out enough that I need something to do, of course,  actually.  I for quite a few years, I juggled.  I was also a full time teacher  and tried to do this at the same time. So the months of September, October, and obviously, you know, April and May were just the end of me. I could not continue doing that.
06:22And so finally had things squared away enough that I made the plunge, put it all on the farm end with just thoughts of, you know, getting my CDL and driving school bus in the off season like my dad did. Well, as it turned out, they ended up having some full-time seasonal work where they could use help in the shop. And so it works out really nicely right now. I have a sort of an open end agreement that when the farm season winds down, I just sort of pick up working full-time in the shop, working on maintenance on school buses.
06:48And when the farm ramps up, I just sort of casually start disappearing from the shop to go back and focus on the farm again.  Well, that's good work if you can get it. It  works well.  So what do you grow at the farm?  Oh, gosh, that is the money question.  As it sits, I'm at about 50 different crops with about 150 different varieties within that.  So as we see everything from asparagus to zucchini. Oh, from A to Z, yeah. Yep.
07:15Okay. Like fennel. mean, I'm not growing fennel. Sorry. No.  Well, we grow fennel. we'll get that covered.  Apparently people love it for the base of the plant for stir fries. Stir. I didn't know this because fennel tastes like licorice to me. So I don't really eat it. I'm the same way.
07:38Oh, in the background, my dog is losing her mind because we put the open sign for the farm stand out today and I think somebody just pulled in and she is a very good watchdog. So for anybody listening, that would be Maggie, the mascot of a tiny homestead. Well, that's a positive.  Our  quote unquote guard dog is the worst one on planet earth. If you show up in any random vehicle and he sees you, Boomer will just simply smile and say, hi, welcome, make yourself at home. And that's about the extent of it.
08:07Well, you don't have a watch dog. You have a welcome dog. Exactly. Yeah, we specifically wanted a watch dog for our place and we got her at a day shy of eight weeks old. She discovered her bark at about six months old and she has never lost it again.  Fair enough. So and that's okay. It's not too bad on the recording. So it's fine. She's doing her job. I appreciate her very much.
08:34Yeah, exactly. There's always weird noises when I talk to people on the podcast because everybody has a farm or a homestead. So they have dogs or they have donkeys or they have cows. You never know what you're going to hear. So who do you sell your produce to? Do you send it out to a broker or do you sell it at farmers markets or what do you do? We are still the main outlet for it. So we go to farmers markets in Mankato three days a week once it opens.
09:03and then also in New Ulm two days a week. And then we also have a CSA program with around 150 members, give or take, depending on the season.  And then every now and then I've got a few restaurants that I like to support where I can. So we have a couple of little deals where  I trade food for their cooked food. So that works out pretty well in the end too. That's amazing. We don't have a deal like that yet, although you just gave me an idea. I'm going to have to look into that. Just got to have a little credit on the  refrigerator somewhere and say, hey,
09:32I'm here for breakfast. What can you make for me?  Yeah, absolutely. That's brilliant. I'm going to lose my mind because she's not usually this loud and it's driving me crazy.  Okay. So do you guys have animals on the farm too or is it just plants? It was just plants for quite a while and then about,  I want to say about close to seven years ago now,  I had the harebrained idea to bring cattle back here like there had been for many, many years ago.
10:01And so I started a small scale beef cattle operation where I max out at about, you know, 11 or 12 animals and just try to keep that rotation going, selling direct to the consumers on that end by the quarter. And it's been a nice, you know, little sideline business. Any more and it would become an ordeal. I try to stay away from those. I like to keep it as just nice little, if I can keep that side job to 15 minutes a day or less on shores, that's fine with me. Awesome. You sound like you love what you're doing.
10:29I feel like you are just tickled at what you've chosen to do. definitely enjoy it. You know, I grew up doing this. Actually, my parents started the vegetable version of this operation back in, I believe, was 1987. And I was only a hair over two years old when we planted the first few strawberry plants. And there was a lot of learning the hard way of figuring out what can you do? What can't you do with various equipment pieces? What are the losing battles? What are the winning ones? And so I like to say
10:57When people say we must really know what we're doing, that's not the case. We've just gotten lucky many, many times and kept a record of when we've gotten lucky and find the patterns to what works and what doesn't. And so it's, it's been on my mind for a long time that I wanted to take this over. And so when I had the opportunity to do it, jumped at it and really haven't looked back since. And I think you told me when, but I forget you told me at the beginning. When did you take it over?  I officially took over the operation. Oh gosh, I would say close to now.
11:27About eight or nine years ago,  my oldest daughter Olivia had  been born the previous year when I took over and I was still living in town. And so the first year that I was officially running it on my own, I was still living in town, heading out to the farm back and forth several times to make everything work out. Then thankfully the next year my dad said, you know what, how about we just trade?  And so  thankfully I was able to be around the family a lot more by actually living on the farm as opposed to having to run back and forth.
11:56Yeah, that gets to be a real grind because you're on the road so much and then you're spending so much time at the farm that you get home and the kids are like, who are you? Where'd you come  from? And the perk is now I can just stop in the house for a quick bite or eat and see them playing around in the yard. They'll come out and visit me when I'm working in the nearby or they'll run up to the field with me. So it's nice to have them having those same opportunities to play around outside and see things happening and be around me as much as they want to that I had when I was a kid.
12:25Yeah, one of the things that I really appreciate about this lifestyle, whether it's homesteading or farming or ranching or whatever, is that dads are around so much more and you can be so much more hands on and in the presence of the kids because my dad worked as a person who repairs medical equipment at hospitals and he worked, he left the house at like 530 in the morning and he didn't get home till 530 at night and
12:54When we were little, we didn't really see him. And then when we were in school, we were doing homework and then hanging out with friends. So weekends were like prime time to hang out with dad, but he was always working on something. So I would have really liked to have spent more time with my dad when I was a kid. And I love him. He's fantastic. But it would have been really nice to know him better when I was growing up, if that makes sense. I'm  really.
13:22I'm very excited about the fact that men are now more in the child raising part than just moms. And I can't say I'm taking any credit here because my wife definitely does.  She's around the kids way more than I am on her schedule as things go. you know, it's nice that we're both able to work together to make things happen. She has supported me in making that transition from careers to doing this. She knew it was on something I had wanted to do.
13:51And when we were even dating, even for a warner said, here's what I'm already doing, you know, when my parents were still running it.  my plan is to take it over. So we  were able to work together and make this still  make this dream still happen. And she's still able to follow her career path. And I'm still keep mine going. And the farm's still standing to this day. So I call that a win. Well, one of the things in your story that's amazing to me is that you're doing.
14:17You're doing big scale farming, but you're doing it in a small scale way for selling it.  Cause most people who have as much acreage as you have are doing, you know,  field crops like corn or soybeans or whatever. Yep. And that's what it's not good for the, for the earth to do that as I've been told.  Well, we've
14:41There was a book actually, I'm trying to think of the name of it, that my dad had that he showed me when I was in high school. And it's called, How to Make $100,000 Off of 25 Acres. I believe it's what it's called. It came out, I want to say in the early eighties, like 1983 or something like that is the year on it. And I remember I bought, I found it online a couple, a few years back. I remembered that my dad had it and I bought a few copies, gave it to some of friends of mine who were also, you know, in sort of similar lines of work, if you will. And it really just outlines what
15:11Another person's vision was on how to use that amount and utilize it to the best of its potential with still catering to alternative style farming, if you will.  And as much as I'm not following a lot of what that book proposes,  because their  big focus there was actually not on farmers markets.  A big piece is being located near suburbs and getting people to come to the farm. And we're actually
15:35I'm almost 180 degrees off of that. I don't want people coming out here  except for custom orders.  Cause I mean, the big difference that the book mentions and it's absolutely accurate is the labor end on the way that we operate. And so I'm very grateful  that I'm able to hire, um, depending on the year, anywhere from 12 to about 20, um,  youth, whether they be middle or high school, or even sometimes young adults, that'll work for a few mornings a week.
16:02And there's a few more that stick around for a few more hours and help with cleaning and sorting  and helping at farmers markets. And so  the biggest reason that I can give that we're able to be successful doing this is because I am able to find the help and that without the help that I have, if any of them are ever listening, I could not do this without them. And so I always have to make sure that I am  constantly being very appreciative and grateful and taking care of my workers to  keep them happy, to keep them out here. You are a good man, Tim. Good job.
16:32Thanks. Okay. Your voice is getting rougher and rougher as we go. So I think we're just going to make this a short one so your voice doesn't give out completely, I do have one more question. started a new thing on the last episode that I recorded two days ago. At the end of every episode from now on, I'm going to ask the person I'm talking to, to tell me a word that describes your place. What word would you use to describe your farm?
17:00Oh,  one word.  Mm-hmm.
17:08I'm going to go with legacy. All right.  Big piece of that was that this whole idea was my mom's  background of how are we going to survive the 80s farm crisis? And she threw out the idea, let's try strawberries. And that turned into let's try kohlrabi.  And before we knew it, we were able to transition completely out of  your commercial grains and able to keep this farm going.
17:33and turn it into the success that has managed to stay up until today and hopefully will be into the near future. think legacy is a fantastic word and it is entirely appropriate here. And I love that you're carrying it on. That is wonderful. Tim, thank you so much for your time and I would love to have you back when you're not just coming off laryngitis and we can talk more. I'd love to be back. All right, cool. We'll set it up for fall when you're not as busy.
18:01Sounds wonderful. Well, thank you again for the invite and you take care. All right, you too. Thanks so much. Yep. Bye bye. Bye.
 

Higher Calling Homestead

Today I'm talking with Raquel at Higher Calling Homestead.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Raquel  at Higher Calling Homestead. Good afternoon, Raquel. How are you? Hey, how are you today?  I'm good. It's  gray and cloudy and rainy here and I'm kind  of in that very mellow, I could take a nap, but I can't take a nap space.
01:24I gotcha. It's the opposite here. It's warm and sunny. We were supposed to have storms today, but it turned out to be a beautiful day so far. So  I love you. I'm looking forward to the first really  moderate, beautiful spring day. I can understand that. Yeah, we've just started getting there. Really, really nice winds here in Tennessee within the last couple of weeks. It's heating up quick. I'm like, okay, it's not summer yet. So what's going on?
01:51Mother nature is absolutely insane and has been for about two and a half years now. That's what's going on. I'd have to agree. Okay. So you have a homestead, but you also have a rabbit tree. And usually I say, tell me about yourself and what you do, but I'm just going to dive in with my questions about rabbits because we tried a couple of years ago to raise rabbits for meat and we failed miserably. So.
02:20If I tell you what we did, can you tell me maybe an idea of where we went wrong? Yeah, I can definitely pray to help. I do want to preface this by saying that I started our rabbitry with the intention of  doing the meat rabbits.  We started back in, you know, like COVID times. And  that was the intention and do like chickens and rabbits for me because the world was shutting down. was like, want to become more self-sufficient just in case this happens. And I quickly realized
02:49that I loved raising rabbits, but I was not one of the people that was going to be able to do it for me.  Yeah. I, number one, I couldn't be part of the butchering.  I flat out told my husband and my son, said, if we do this,  I am, I am more than happy to help take care of them. I am more than happy to cook the meat once  it's just meat.  But I, but when you bring that rabbit to me, when it's dead, has to be footless, tailless.
03:18headless, skinless, because I'm going to fall in love with these things and it's going to kill me. It's hard, you know? it's like if I was in a position to have to feed my family, I definitely, definitely would be able to do it, but I'm not there. And I find it fascinating for people that can do that. And I follow some pages, you know, and I've watched the process and everything, and it's not like I shy away from seeing it, but it's just not for me. And I use the rabbits, you know,
03:47I use their manure for our gardens and I love them. They have a great life and I raise them for pets, but just the meat rabbit thing ended up not being my thing.  Yeah. And like I am just terrible about killing animals.  I,  I will stomp on a bug faster than you can say my name, but if it's fuzzy, I can't do it. It doesn't matter what the reason is. I can't do it.
04:14I can see that.  what ended up happening with your rabbitry? Like where did you think you went wrong with it? Well, we thought we were being smart. We got, we got two does and a buck proven buck. One of the does was proven. One of them was a new doe  and we bought them from people who were raising rabbits had had good luck with their rabbits  and brought them home and put them in the right size touches and gave them rabbit food. I can't remember what it was now, but you know,
04:43whatever it was that they needed, they got. the lady that we got the rabbits from said to give them Timothy hay.  And  I think Timothy hay is amazing. I love how it smells. And I was like, yay, Timothy hay. Okay, yes, that's great. And we put the doe with the buck, because you don't put the buck with the doe in her hutch, because she'll get mad and hurt him.  And they did the job  and that one got pregnant  and had babies.
05:13And those, there were nine, three of them died due to heat, because it was of course the hottest day at the very beginning of June and we didn't know that it was too hot. So ended up bringing the mama and the babies in the house. had, I think we ended up with five, two of them died that were left out of the nine. So I think we had five, four. And got to have baby rabbits in a container with mom in our house for like a month.
05:39That was amazing. Baby rabbits are very, very cute. And got to hold them every morning and talk to them and pet them. They loved being held because we did it every day.  Blah, blah, blah. Raised them. They were healthy. They did great. The other rabbit  never got pregnant.  I have no idea why  I really wanted her to. She looked like a wild rabbit, but she was not. She was a domestic rabbit.  She was very
06:09You know how  the wild rabbits are that  weird brown where they have like white and gold in their brown hair? Right. She was that color. was gorgeous and I really wanted babies from her and no babies. so we kept some of the babies and we actually got a couple more  males from a lady down the street who was also raising rabbits.  And we tried breeding  the new males with the two females.
06:39never got pregnant.  The only thing I can chalk this up to is that maybe the females were too fat because of the timid the hay because they ate a lot of it.  So we gave up, we butchered the rabbits that we had and they were meat and that was the end of us raising rabbits. So  that's my rabbit story. I'm sticking to it.  And  can you give me any idea what we could have done differently? Cause I'm like rabbits are supposed to um like bunnies.
07:08Right. Yeah, exactly. Like that's where the saying like rabbits come from what's going on here. So there could have been, you know, a couple things. So like in the heat of summer and things like that, you mentioned it was hot, the bucks can actually go sterile, but I know you got one litter from the other dough. So that's, you know, unlikely that if you bred them around the same time period, you would have been, you know, suddenly sterile.
07:33The weight, like you mentioned on the females, that can be an issue, but I don't think it would be from Timothy Hay because honestly,  we do,  excuse me, we do Timothy Hay from the time they're babies all through their life.  I'm not  one that likes to do the alfalfa because around four months of age,  the alfalfa is fine for them as babies, but it actually becomes to where it has too much calcium  and things for their body once they become adults. And it can actually be really bad for their kidneys.
08:03But the alfalfa is so sweet that a lot of times they get spoiled. And then when you need to take them off of that, they don't want to change and they don't want Timothy. So I do Timothy from the time, like I put it in their nest boxes so that when they start munching on hay, that's what they get a taste for. And I've never had any issues with Timothy hay.  Now, if you don't have a really complete feed, you know, if there's any kind of vitamin deficiency or anything like that going on,
08:30It could affect things, but maybe that one female just wasn't fertile or had something going on in her reproductive system or  something like that. I don't think it was a Timothy Hay issue. I heard your other podcast with that and I was thinking on that. I don't think that it would have been a Timothy Hay because I've never had any issues with that.
08:53Okay, so it probably wasn't the Timothy Hayes fault, which means it probably wasn't my fault, and I'm okay with that. I definitely wouldn't think it was anything that you were doing, for sure. mean, weather and environment and everything, you know, can come into play. And that's why it can be frustrating, because you hear like, oh, like rabbits, it's going to be easy. It's not always easy, you know?
09:13Yeah, a lot of this homesteading stuff seems like it's going to be easy. And then you're like, well, this is not as easy as I have been led to believe.  No, it's such a learning curve. Everything. It's just, you know, something else to learn all the time. Yeah. I just chalk it up to dumb bunnies, dumb bunnies. And we moved on to other things because I was like, I'm not spending  money on feed for these bunnies if they're not going to earn their keep. Yeah. Did you try a couple of times like to breed that same doe that didn't get pregnant? Yeah.
09:43Yeah. I don't know. It makes me think that something was just, you know, with her, maybe. Yeah. To the point that the second and I mean, sorry, third and fourth time we tried,  actually kind of stepped back and watched to see if they were even doing the deed as it were.  the black bunny, the male that got the white bunny that got pregnant, he
10:07He did what he was supposed to do and did the fall off and the whole thing. I'm like, well, he's clearly doing his job. Maybe he's broken. Yeah, it  very well could be, you know, something just with her that just, you know, she wasn't able to produce. Yeah. I work with him and sometimes, you know, that happens.  I was so sad because I really wanted to have bunnies out of those two that were like unusual looking because I figured with her, with her coloring and him being a black
10:36rabbit they would have some really pretty babies but it did not happen. That's too bad. Maybe try it again sometime when you  fill up to give it a shot again because I mean it is fun and rewarding and  it's really great  raising rabbits but it can be frustrating.  Well I don't regret trying it because I'm not going to lie it was pretty special having these little baby bunnies on my kitchen table in their container.
11:05every morning. Like I would get up, get my coffee, sit down and just watch them.  And the mom, the mom was used to us picking them up. So she'd come over and say hi too. And she was like, you're to pick me up and I don't pick up adult rabbits. They kick and they hurt. Yeah. A lot of people think, you know, like, the babies, the mom's going to eat them if I touch them. But you know, mama gets used to your scent  and taking care of her every day. So then when babies come along, it's usually not an issue to handle the babies.
11:34gets them, you know, tame and used to you. So yeah, and it's a lot easier to deal with them when it comes time to find them new homes or to turn them into freezer food.  If you can handle them. And that sounds really callous, but it's not  because the less you stress out an animal, the better it is for the animal and you.
11:57Absolutely. That's what it's all about, you know, giving them the best home while they're with you, whether you're raising them for food or for pets or whatever your goal is.  Yeah. Did you hear the part of the story about the fact that my dog wanted to meet one of the babies and I didn't even think about it and  baby, baby rabbits damn well know that dogs are prey animals. Yeah. Yeah. They, uh, they have that built in them very early. think. yeah. Yep. My dog is the sweetest, most gentle.
12:26loves it when the barn kittens come out of the barn for the first time is a mama to them while they're growing up. She wanted to see this baby rabbit so bad. And I didn't even think about it. put my hand down with the bunny cupped in my hand  and Maggie went to sniff it and that baby rabbit, it was probably three weeks old.  eee! And  I went, oh I was like, I'm an idiot.
12:50That's really dumb. I should not have done that. It didn't die. It didn't have a heart attack. But I was like, we're never doing that again, Mary Evelyn. That was a bad idea.  So anyway, I was just wondering if you had any idea what we did wrong. But I don't think we did anything wrong. just think that the rabbit didn't have the right biological makeup to reproduce. think that's what we're going to go with.  Wow, that was a lot. That was a lot of words.
13:19Okay, so now that I got that answered, let's get back to the original question.  Tell me about yourself and what you do, because I know you do stuff other than rabbits. Yeah, we do a little bit of everything. So we are a small hobby farm. are in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It's just right outside of Nashville.  And we moved from Orlando, Florida almost 10 years ago now.  And  we had that dream just to kind of have a simpler way of life.
13:47you know, live on some property. So we got five acres.  We're still actually in a neighborhood. So we have the best of both worlds. We have our neighbors and, but yet we have five acres so that we're able to do a little bit of our homestaying journey. So we raised several breeds of chickens. We have the rabbits, of course we do Welsh harlequin ducks  and we've started mealworms, you know, for the chickens. And then we also have a little farm standout front where we just sell different.
14:14things depending on what season it is. So that's been fun as well. Very nice.  I have to ask, are you originally from the South? Cause you have very little Southern accent. I lived in Florida most of my life. So  mom and dad were split up early, so he kind of moved around.  So I picked up little bits of accents, I think from everywhere. It's very, very clean. It's a very clean speaking voice.  then mom was always home base in Florida.
14:44So that was where I spent most of my time growing up. Okay. I am hyper aware of people's accents and tones of how they speak because of the podcast and because I always have been,  And so when somebody's like, when I see somebody from Mississippi, I'm like,  huh, they're either going to sound like  really Southern, you know, real Southern draw or they're not going to have anything at all.
15:09And I'm always amazed when the person starts talking. I'm like, I'll be damned. They don't sound anything like I thought they were going to sound. Yeah. And Tennessee is funny because different parts of Tennessee, you know, they talk so different. You know, over in East Tennessee, there's a lot of twang and my sister lives over there and she's grown up over there. And if I'm on the phone with her for 10 minutes, I do get a little bit of twang going on. Uh huh. Yup. Okay.
15:38So you said harlequin ducks. What  are they?  So,  well, harlequin ducks, they're a  pretty large sized duck  and, you know, people use them for, you know, multipurposes. You can have them as pets, you can use them for meat, and of course you can use them for eggs. So we sell their eggs at our farm stand and we hatch eggs, you know, for people to be able to have their own ducklings.
16:04Um, so they're pretty cool breed. just got started with them last year. A friend of mine, Jennifer Bryant with Brian's Roost was raising them. And so I, um, had got some from her and just absolutely fell in love with them. So they are, um, they're pretty cool. And I mean, some people, you know, need the duck eggs because they have a egg allergy for some reason, the duck eggs might not affect them like chicken eggs, I guess. So a lot of people, you know, want them for that reason. So it's pretty interesting.
16:34Yeah, I keep hearing all kinds of good things about duck eggs and  it's really great to have friends in your community who are raising different things than you are and you get the chance to maybe get some of that and bring it to your farm.  That's something that's been really, really cool.  It's just meeting other people that do different things and  getting tidbits from them and learning other things, whether you...
17:00end up taking that on yourself and try it, you what they're doing or just kind of soak it all in and think, oh, that's not for me. You know, it's just like always, you know, people in a homesteading type of stuff are always willing to share, you know, their knowledge. Yeah, I freaking love it. I think it's so amazing and such a great community to be part of. And I don't have a whole lot of homesteading friends right now. have  one.
17:27She lives about five miles away and they have O'Connor Family Acres. O'Connor is their last name.  And she texted me the other day and she said, she says, is there any chance that we could sell our duck eggs in your farm stand this summer? And I hadn't even thought of it. I don't know why I didn't think to ask her she wanted to.  I said, I think it's fine. Let me check with the husband. And I asked Kyle, my husband,  if it was okay.  And he was like,  yeah. He said, I don't.
17:55think there's any laws that say we can't. He said, you want to look into that? And I was like, yeah, but I don't think there's any law that says we can't sell her duck eggs in our farm stand five miles away.  So we're going to be doing that. And that gives me the chance to throw five bucks into the.
18:15the money thing and buy some of her duck eggs and actually use them in my cakes. I'm all good with It's supposed to be like a baker's secret, know, like the duck eggs. A lot of people swear that it makes their baked goods so much richer  and, you know, just taste so much better. So a lot of people buy the duck eggs just for that reason that are really, you know, into baking. Yeah, exactly. And I've never used duck eggs in my whole life. And so I'm very much looking forward to her ducks starting to lay.  They haven't yet.
18:44and getting some in the farm stand because it's also a way to get people more interested in coming to see what's in the farm stand.  So this is a win-win-win all the way around for everybody involved and that's one of things I love about this community of people.  So  there was something else I saw on your Facebook page. You're doing all kinds of stuff. What do you want to tell me about what you're doing?
19:12Yeah, so we're just always learning, know, trying to try little tidbits and to find out if, you know, they're for us or not. And so I try to have this like two seasons rule. And that's where like out of two seasons of the year, I'm going to either add something or I'm going to learn something or I'm going to share something with somebody else and teach them, you know, I'm going to do something to grow like my homestead, not to overwhelm myself to where I have so much going on that I can't handle it. Cause we have to keep that perspective of course, but
19:42You know, like this year I want to learn more about like beef tallow and we have a local farm here that we get beef and you know, the kidney fat from to be able to make the tallow. And I haven't really dived into that yet, but that's something I'm learning and kind of researching because there's all these like body products out of the beef tallow that are supposed to be really good.  um, you know, I'm interested in adding goats. So eventually I would like to do that. It has been things I've lost my mind, but  he would like to do that. So, you know, just.
20:10I'm trying to always add just a little something. Right now, you know, we just added the farm stand a few months ago. So, you we do like the fresh eggs and sourdough and beeswax wraps. I still am looking for a homemade dishwashing liquid and I've tried a couple different recipes and they always fail.
20:35And so I keep digging and I keep trying and I keep digging and I keep trying and I keep failing. And so I always come back to Dawn dish soap because it seems to be the  best  one I can find. And I did try, I tried making a dish soap  and it called for vinegar and it called for something else that was an oil. And I'm like, this is never going to work because vinegar and oil don't mix.
21:01You don't make salad dressing where it stays mixed all the time if you have vinegar and an oil in it. And I knew, I knew it wasn't gonna work. And I tried it anyway and I ended up tossing it because it was useless. So sometimes  you can Google the hell out of the thing you're looking for and you will never find the solution. Yeah, absolutely. I've never tried homemade dish liquid. That's definitely something I haven't tried but I can't see how, like you said,
21:29vinegar and oil would go together. So that's interesting. No. And I read it and I was like, I'm going to try it because maybe this is some magic formula I don't understand. And maybe it actually works. And no, it did not. And for the longest time, for like two years, I made my own laundry detergent with the Borax and the stuff. There's all kinds of recipes for it online. And it worked for a while.
21:58And  what happens is it tends to clog up your washing machine. Yeah, that's what I've wondered about. Because I thought about that too,  about trying that. But I was worried, know, with all the HE washers and everything and you have to have HE special soap, like is it going to end up clogging it up? Yeah. And what it does is it gets in there and it doesn't like, it doesn't make your washing machine fill up with water and pour all over the place, but it just gets gunked in there.
22:27And it starts to stink. So after a year and a half, my  washer smelled funny and my husband took it apart.  the part in the middle, it twists underneath that was all gook. And I  thought to myself, why can't any of this work sometimes?  Sometimes stuff works, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. And the thing is the clothes were fine.
22:56The clothes were clean, they didn't smell like perfume, they didn't smell stinky, they were fine. But after that year and a half, forget it, we had to clean the whole thing out and put it back together.  So that was unfortunate. And I don't mean to be a bummer, it's just that I want to make clear that sometimes solutions are not actually solutions, they are problems. Oh, absolutely. So we've definitely tried things that we ended up.
23:23you know, being like, this isn't for us, kind of like you with the rabbits, you know, like we tried quails and my friend, Rebecca Lynch, she raises amazing quail and I so badly want to get some from her and I see all the things you can do, you know, with the quail and it's just as it means for me, you know, sometimes you try things and it just doesn't work out. Like one could have heard. Yeah. And sometimes you really, really want to do something and you do the research and you think you got it covered.
23:52And then you look at how much it's going to cost you to start the new thing  and you go,  hmm, maybe not right now.  Yeah. Or time, know, so many things it's like,  you have to have the time to dedicate to it, you know, and like I work full time along with, you know, trying to do the whole homestead thing. So some things I really want to do and I just have to keep it in check and be like, you're not going to be able to do this.  Or at least not right now.  Exactly.
24:22And I always get frustrated with the not right now. And I have to remind myself that not right now doesn't mean never. Very true. And that keeps me sane because for a while there, I really wanted to get two goats. I wanted to two goat kids. I really did. When we were talking about buying this place five years ago, well, almost five years ago.
24:49I was like, and we can't get baby goats and we can get this and we can get that. And my husband went,  your excitement is overruling your sense. It's definitely  easy to do to get all excited and gung-ho about something. And  sometimes our husbands have to tell us no.  Yes. And sometimes he gets a little bit out of control and I'm like, are you sure you want to put 5,000 tomato plants in the garden this year?
25:18So yeah,  it's a give and take and it's a check and balance system in the best relationships and thank God it is. But when I said we can get baby goats and we can get a mini cow and we can get, we can get, said,  no, what we can do  is we can give our 10 or five chickens  more room to move and we can get more chickens. Let's start there.  So chicken math hasn't gotten you yet, then you've kept.
25:47five chickens and been able to stay with five chickens because we were starting with five. You're funny. You're very, very amusing. No, no, we had 30 chickens  at this time last year. Oh, wow.  And some of them, we  got to replace other chickens and we just hadn't gotten rid of the old chickens yet. So that's part of the reason we had 30 chickens.  And then some of them got sick and not from bird flu, but just
26:16chickens get sick and keel over and die for no apparent reason. This happens. I've heard from lots of people.  And so we ended up culling the last 10 last fall because they weren't giving us any eggs because they were just not. And it wasn't because of the change in light. They just were not laying.  And we were like, I don't want to feed chickens that aren't giving us eggs through the winter time. That's crazy.
26:40And then we got 12 more back a month and a half ago. Brand new chickens got the first eggs from these chickens ever.  And so thankful for them because as I keep saying in the last, I don't know,  25 episodes,  chicken eggs from the store suck lemons.  Yeah, they do. Once you've had the fresh eggs,  it's hard to go back to store bought eggs for sure.
27:05Yeah, and when you're paying $8 a dozen, I would rather feed my chickens and have yummy eggs than pay $8 a dozen for eggs that taste like nothing. with the egg prices have just been crazy lately. Uh-huh. And I talk about this ad nauseum like I just should, I should ban talking about chickens for the next month. But yeah, it's when you go from and
27:34850 square foot house on a tenth of an acre  to  a little over 1500 square foot house on 3.1 acres.  Your brain and your heart don't necessarily communicate well. And that's what happened with us. So. I completely understand that. And we moved from Orlando. That was the big thing is I was like, I want to have chickens. I've always had a fascination with them. I always  had a fascination with.
28:00farming and homesteading and I just I wanted my own chickens. And so we would look at houses and that was the one rule I told my realtor is if you know they have a HOA or you know they're in the city limits where I can't chickens I don't want to see the house and my husband you know would see this amazing house and I'm like I don't want to go look at it I can't chickens there I'm not gonna sell down there you know and so he's like really we're gonna give up this house because you can't chickens on my absolutely so we ended up finding
28:31you know, the perfect spot and five acres. And I went out and got my first four chickens, you know, from Tractor Supply and,  um, and it just, you know, grew and grew and my love for them grew. And now I have, you know, you want to know how many chickens I have. And I raised five different breeds and  shipped them all over the U S and so it's just become a whole thing.  um, but I can understand like all of a sudden you get overexcited about something. I have the space, I have, you know, the means to do it. And it's easy to kind of.
29:01just dive in head first.  Yeah, luckily my husband grabbed me by my feet and said, Whoa, there baby.  The thing about chickens that just, I don't know, I'm going to say it grosses me out is they look so soft and so nice. And then you get to their legs and their legs look like snakeskin and it just freaks me the hell out.  It's funny. It's not my favorite thing.
29:30and I have been very honest about this on the podcast with people I know, with little kids who want to see the chickens when they come. They will ask about it. They notice it. They're like, why are their legs like snakes? And I'm like, because that's how God made them. And I don't actually know the answer, so I can't tell them.
29:54Little bullies want to actually touch their legs because they think they're going to feel like a snake. And I've been told that they do. I don't want to touch chicken legs. think it's gross.  So there's, there's really silly things on the homestead that you never really think about until you're up close and personal with the thing that you thought you wanted.  Cause we got chickens back when we lived in the old house, the small house with the 10th of an acre.
30:24And I never even thought about like  really what chickens are  made up of, how they're built. Cause I would just go out and open the coop and grab eggs and come back in. And my husband and my sons would do the chores and that was all cool.  And then we had to move them here, which meant we had to bring them here and put them in a temporary fenced in area, move the coop, get it set up, put chickens back in. And I got to help with that.
30:52And I ended up brushing my hand against their legs. And I was like, that is gross. And my husband's like, you're so weird. I said,  well, yes, what was your first clue?  And he said, he said, you have been cooking your whole life. He said, you touch carcasses  all the time. A chicken, you touch steak, you touch, touch ground burger.  He said, chicken legs, like literally alive chickens legs are the thing that grosses you out.
31:23Like, yeah.  That's stunning. Yeah. He was like, I do not understand. said, well, you're the one who has ADD. I don't understand half the stuff you do.  And we just had a giggle fest over the whole thing. And he said, you like  running your hand down their back. I said, well, yeah, because the feathers are really soft. That's fine. But their legs just skeeve me out. And he was like,
31:52can understand. Conversations you never thought you would have with anyone, you know? Right.  So  anyway, I'm trying, we try,  we try, uh-huh.  I try  to keep the podcast a half an hour. We're there.  Thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Have a great evening, Raquel. I appreciate it. You too. Thank you.  Bye.
 

Shades of Green Permaculture

Today I'm talking with Brandy at Shades of Green Permaculture.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Brandy Hall at Shades of Green Permaculture. Good morning, Brandy. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Georgia? Yeah, I'm in the Atlanta area. Okay. And is Shades of Green Permaculture based there? Yes, ma'am. We are based in the side of Atlanta.
01:24in the metro area indicator, which is to reduce the sun. Okay, cool. Is it nice there this morning? Oh, it's gorgeous. We had a nice rain and now the sun is shining. It's about 70 degrees. Thank goodness. Cause we had a bout of like 95 degree weather in the beginning of April. So I was excited about summer coming early. Yeah, that's a little much for April. And we had a really warm day in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago and I was like, this is so wrong.
01:54Yeah, there's something, it's like a cognitive dissonance because on one hand you're like, this feels so nice, the sun, and then you're like, wait, but it's too early.  Exactly. And  for the second morning in a row, we've got rain showers happening here. yeah, I'm just hoping that this remains a pattern of just a day or two of a light rain showers and then three or four days of sunshine. Cause I can't face another spring like last year where we got six weeks of rain in a row.  Oh my goodness.
02:24Yeah. And there comes a point where it's like, if you have the rain and then you've got the intermittent sun, the plants just love it so much versus just getting sun. Yeah. I really wondered if I had teleported to Washington state or Oregon last May and June, because I swear to you, I thought everything was going to mold. It was terrible.  So tell me about yourself  and Shades of Green permaculture.  So my name's Brandy Hall and I'm the founder and CEO of Shades of Green.
02:54firmaculture. I started the company in 2008. So we just celebrated our 17 year anniversary and we are a regenerative design, installation, maintenance and education firm based here in the Atlanta area. offer processes for our clients going everything from consultation through design and implementation and ongoing maintenance services, both
03:23horticulture services like bed maintenance and perennial plantings and organic all-electric solar powered lawn care. Really encouraging people to move toward polyculture lawns. And then we also offer digital education. So we've got a few thousand students located around the country and some international students that participate in our online design program called the regenerative backyard blueprint.
03:53Okay, so I have a few questions for you.  Number one, how did you get into this? What prompted you to start this business? I think there were a few things, know, some like early childhood experiences definitely set the course for me on this. And then, you know, when I started the company, I was looking for  work in this  arena.
04:19And there wasn't anything available. So I sort of just started my own thing so that I could do what I loved to do. But as a child, I grew up part-time in South Florida and part-time in Western North Carolina. My parents divorced when I was really young. And my mom and my stepdad had a nursery in South Florida, an ornamental plant nursery and a seed farm. And over the course of
04:45maybe 10 years or so in the nursery business, they became really, really allergic to and chemically sensitive to the kind of quote unquote, innocuous pesticides and pesticides that were spraying on the farm to the point where my stepdad was in a wheelchair, you know, swollen joints  for  a good part of maybe two years and having nosebleeds that were inexplicable that would last for an hour to two hours.
05:14He put up walks, my mom took over the nursery business and she had sort of escalating allergic reactions to  the  pesticides and herbicides that were sprayed. We lived in an agricultural area of South Florida.  So even though they stopped spraying, you long before their reactions started getting terrible,  it was just ambient, you know, it was environmental. So  Palm Beach County is where we lived in South Florida. They would do aerial spraying of the mosquitoes.
05:44all of the neighbors, you know, spraying for termites, all the neighboring farms spraying, you know,  crop dusting basically with herbicides and pesticides. And so, one of the final straws, my mom was, she had done a delivery of a neighboring farm and they had recently, you know, sprayed  the houses and she got out of the car, smelled it immediately, got back in, took Benadryl, went home, they,
06:13came to get me from school on the way to the hospital. And by the time we got to the hospital, she was convulsing so hard that she shook the door panel off of the inside of the car. Her hands were drawing up like she's in a stroke. So  very quickly, we moved to North Florida. They went through long detents, all organic, everything, no nail polish in the house, kind of level of  detent.
06:41and chemicals and we're able to recover, it kind of set the course of just seeing how toxic our environment and our landscape practices, our environmental practices in the US and then kind of juxtapose with growing up part-time in the Western North Carolina and spending so much time in the woods and on wagon trains and eating from the garden and drinking from the springs right around and one of the most biodiverse terrarium forests in the planet.
07:11set this early inquiry in motion of there's got to be a. That'll that situation with your mom and your stepdad will definitely wake you up. Holy cow. In ways that I didn't even realize as like a seven year old, eight year old teenager, you know, it wasn't until later on as I, as I started to get into this work in my twenties. I realized, this is, this is kind of the early.
07:41exposure that I had to when it doesn't go well really set it all in motion for me.  Wow. Wow. Well,  I'm  blown away by that story. That is not what I expected to hear.  Okay, so I was looking at your website and it says that your company is a B corporation. What is a B corporation? Letter B.
08:05letter B. So it means beneficial corporation and it's a third party designation, which like an organic certification, that's super rigorous. It's a global designation and companies like Patagonia and, and Jerry's, are notable ones. think there's a few thousand B corps, maybe 10,000 B corps registered internationally. And the premise behind the B corp is that it's not just about outfits. It's about
08:35you know, impact on the community, impact on employees, impact on the environment and those positive pieces are baked into both corporate laws and practices of perpetuity. So it's really about people and planet over profit. really, you know, kind of building on that besides people and planet over profit, seeing how profit is really impacted positively.
09:05by valuing people and community.  Okay. Thank you.  I did not have time to dig for what a B Corp was. So that was a perfect explanation  for those of us who have no idea what any of that means.  Okay. So, so do you  work for  like  cities that need your services or do you work for just the average person who wants to
09:35clean up and beautify their yard? We have a wide range of projects. So the bulk of our work is residential, I would say, but we also work with a lot of developers for new construction type projects. work with schools and nonprofits. We definitely have municipal clients. We've worked with several municipalities in the metro area  implementing productive urban landscapes.
10:02Yeah, so I would say it  runs the gamut for sure. A lot of farm clients, homesteaders.
10:10Basically, we're always looking for ways that we can say yes, because our goal is to empower people with the tools that they need to steward their land in good way. So I can look a lot of different ways.  Great. Productive urban landscape. Define that for me, for your own definition. What does that mean? Yeah. So when you think about just  our standard green spaces that we see within the city, you know, a lot of times they have ornamental plants, have,  you know, sod.
10:39They require that kind of maintenance from public works departments,  know, just mowing and blowing basically in a productive urban landscape is really about rethinking public spaces to produce food and medicine and pollinator.  You know, so those can look like orchards. We've done a lot of public orchards. We've done a lot of human scale, stormwater projects where we're sinking the water into the soil and then using that water that is larger than the soils to grow.
11:09native communities. So it's really just thinking about our green spaces beyond just ornamental, you know, the aesthetic,  mow and blow kind of approach that we tend to take.  Okay, great.  The small town that we used to live in, they used to have these big planters that they would put out in the springtime full of annual flowers, know, pansies or whatever.
11:40And every time I would walk by one, I would think, man, I wish that they would load those things up with herbs because people could just grab a sprig if they wanted to, you know?  And I kept meaning to say something to our neighbor who was on the city council. And every time I saw her, something else came up and I never mentioned it. But all I could see in my head  were these big old planters full of thyme and basil and
12:06rosemary and stuff that people could just grab some, you know? Right. And then those are perennial too. So rather than spending the budget on, you know, materials and labor year after year to plant annuals, you know, do it one time and then oregano and the thyme and the chives and all of it just comes down. I was, I was going to say I'm in Minnesota. Yes, chives are perennial here. And thyme is a,
12:32You never know whether it's going to come back  or not. We've had good luck with it, but  it gets freaking cold in January in Minnesota. Not everything survives. And rosemary does not overwinter here at all. Yeah. Rosemary even, you know, it will overwinter here until we get a hard winter.  Like a couple of years ago, was  seven degrees, which for us is insanely cold.  All the rosemary everywhere. But you know, the decade before that, was sliding.
13:02Yeah, back this, I think it was in January, we had one night that actually hit minus 25 degrees real temperature. And I was like, I live in the wrong state.  mean, I mean, there's a big thing here in Minnesota about we suffer through the winters to enjoy spring, summer and fall because it's so gorgeous here.
13:24That night I was like, thank God for my cozy, well insulated home because we would be freezing right now if we didn't have that. Yeah, it came with the Southern American, even memory, I don't know what it feels like. Yeah, and I've never been further south than Arlington. I think it's maybe Virginia. Yeah. So I don't have any experience with any...
13:51I've never been below the Mason Dixon line, really. Yeah, it's really weird. My  parents live in Maine, so I grew up in Maine.  And my  grandparents from my mom  lived in Illinois,  and my grandparents from my dad lived in Maine. So, of course, family vacations were every other summer.
14:16we'd go to Illinois and the grandparents in Illinois would come to Maine. So there was never any reason to go south of the Mason-Dixon line.  yeah,  I hear the South is beautiful.  I don't know that I would fit in very well because having been raised in Maine, I was brought up to be very, very direct and look people in the eye and do the firm handshake thing. And I don't think I would ever be very good at being a Southern belle. I think that I would probably suck at it.
14:47That's good. Yes. So, okay. I don't want to get too far off track because I do that all the time. And I'm like, I talked way too much on that one. So when you go and help residential folks get their stuff together, do you, is it a thing where you can go and get them started and then they can take it from there? Or are there people who are just like, come and do this every week or whatever, and I don't have to do it.
15:17are both? It's both. It's definitely both. So, you know, we take our clients through a pretty comprehensive design and installation  process. And then  at that point, they become sometimes they become caretaking clients, not always. So caretaking is our version of maintenance and that  covers both of our horticulture services and the lawn care.  And then within caretaking, offer
15:47We have a wide variety. We have some clients that want us to come weekly. They have higher need landscapes. We have some clients that want us to monthly or seasonally. So we try to accommodate the whole range. And the end goal, we always celebrate when we've, quote unquote, graduated or clients. We've done work to train them in how to interact with their landscape. have an understanding of to read it, to move plants around, what to look
16:17for, you know, and the types of landscapes that we do, are higher maintenance on the front end, you know, as plants are getting established for sure, than your typical just like mow and blow. But then once things are established and you really have an understanding of what you're looking for in the landscape and how to kind of interact with it on a seasonal basis, the maintenance needs really drop pretty significantly. So in terms of, you know, need for
16:44fertilizing and irrigation  and  regular pruning and cutting things back and mowing and all of those things. So we have a lot of clients that choose to work with us during our caretaking visits. It's part of like a garden coaching, just  an addendum to the service that we offer. You know, because I would say most of the people that engage  in permaculture firm are excited about growing food and they want to  know about the plants that they've put into their yards.
17:14Yeah, education was really a huge component.  Good.  Have you ever had someone call you or email you or however they contacted you  and say, just need somebody to do something with my property? And they have at the beginning, they have no interest in learning. And then they get converted over the course of the project. would say most of the time when people call us, they have a sense of what it is that we do and they're drawn to that.
17:44A lot of times, you know, when you have like a married couple, one might be more interested in the other is sort of like, well, I don't know, they my spouse wants to do it. So  just kind of  going along with it. And we've definitely seen some like major conversions happen in space where, you know, the, maybe the husband starts out, I don't know, I just like, she wants to be a great wife.  You know, and then by the end they've taken up the lawn and they're growing corn everywhere.
18:12And how does, how does it make you feel when that happens? I mean, are you, are you at the point where it's like, yeah, I knew that was going to happen. Or do you still get that little bubble of happy in your chest? I mean, it's so exciting when people just  start understanding possibilities that our landscapes hold in terms of feeding ourselves and feeding, you know, the non-human stakeholders as well.  Um, yeah, it's super exciting. You know, I think that there's, there's something to be said about, you know, as you're
18:42as you're interacting with your landscape  from an  ecological stewardship  perspective and see, oh, wow, the first time somebody harvests a strawberry or eats a fresh blueberry, there's these little micro moments that happen where  I think it opens up a whole world of possibility of what your landscape can do.  It can be a good steward, people get really excited.
19:12It's meaning, I would say, especially for folks that, know, that name is a major metropolis, know, 7 million people in the metro area. So, you know, the  urban,  the challenge that we're having in like urban and suburban.
19:32Lifestyle, I would say, is a lot of people would site, you know, 40 plus hours a week away from the landscape or garden, bringing kids and getting stuck in traffic and commuting and all of the things that kind of pull us out of our gardens. But I think there's something that's really helpful for people to find a reason to be in the area, to eat this food and to, you know, see a certain type of bird for the first time or.
19:59you know, notice that your moment is covered with like 20 different kinds of pollinators and those little, those little moments of like, Oh, I don't have to just escape to the middle of nowhere in order to like, you know, be immersed in nature. know, nature can be in Yes, nature should be in our own backyards. you're the gateway drug person to food scaping is what you are.  Yeah, we, you we don't usually refer to it.
20:29but  it's always part of it.  Permaculture can look very different depending on the goals of the particular client, but there's really three pillars that we talk about in the system. It's managing water as a resource,  building soil fertility by closing loops, waste streams on our site, and building communities that feed humans and wildlife.
20:57work together to increase the soil fertility. So whether the planting palette that you craft is really about food production or it's pollinator habitat or sunbird habitat or we have herbalists that have  engaged us before where their entire yard is just  an account for their herbal business. So the plants can really,  they can emerge.
21:25pillars of the regenerative landscape and they can really be crafted  in a that almost every landscape is going to have  some combination of producing food, medicine, beauty.  I absolutely love your enthusiasm for what you do. I mean, there's a saying that if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And I know that you work.  I know.  But  it's, I'm guessing that sometimes it doesn't feel like work for you. Oh, I'm...
21:55Absolutely. Yeah. And it's really fun. You know, when I got into this, was really because I wanted to do it and it wasn't really an option. And it's, you know, to like go out and get a job. So we're just gonna start referring this to clients and  we're company of 27 people, think. So it's really, you know, it's  really, to  just say, the company has grown and how other people get to do this.
22:25Our staff is amazing. I'm really ashamed of the work that we do. There's just so many people out there, know, spreading the good word.  Getting people hooked on growing good things without using bad things to grow them.  Exactly.  Well, I could have used you like 25 years ago when we decided to take our little tiny tenth of an acre lot and turn it into food.
22:54You're in Georgia and we were still in Minnesota, so that never would have happened. But we had to learn it on our own. And you might get a kick out of this. I've told the story a few times already on the podcast, but I will tell it again because I love it.  My husband's mom was going to be moving out of her house that she lived in for a very long time.  And she had gotten irises, these little, they're short irises. I don't think that the leaves get any more than six inches tall. And they put out these, these dark,
23:22purple or lavendery blue purple blossoms. She was going to dig those out and she was going to dig out lilies for her to take where she was going and she wanted to know if we wanted any. And we hadn't really done anything with plants at our place. We had a crappy lawn and that was about it. And we had a, I don't know what they're called, a little pine tree that was
23:49I called it the scrappy tree because it wasn't doing very well. was in front of our bedroom windows  outside.  And so we got these hand-me-down plants from her and put them in and they did really, really well. And I said to my husband, said, how do you feel about digging up the backyard and we grow food instead of crab grass?  And he was totally fine with it. And he discovered his love for  growing food  to the point that now where we live, have a
24:16I still don't have the exact numbers, but I think it's a hundred foot by 150 foot market garden every summer.  And so  my son just went to his girlfriend's grandma's house yesterday to help her dig up some plants and move them around because she wanted them switched.  And he came home with yellow and orange daylily roots for me.  And so I keep thinking that I am, we are the hand me down  farm.
24:45Cause we keep getting stuff from people cause they're like, I got all this stuff. don't want to throw it in the trash. I'm like, we'll put it in. Totally. Yeah. It's like the what? We always talk about how we have like an orphanage for all the lost plants in our, in our green space here. We're always constantly taking in plants. So yeah. We should have named, we should have named our place sanctuary farm and it would have been for plants, not for animals. Totally.
25:15But at least half of my peony plants that I have are hand-me-down peonies that we got from the old house, from neighbors,  from friends, from complete strangers on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.  And this is our fourth spring here. And we put in  the first of the plants from the old house. First, that was all we had. So we put those in that first fall we were here. And this is the fourth spring.
25:44So we're going to have more peonies than we've ever had here in our new place  this year. I  am so excited because we have not, I'm going to jinx it, we have not had cold weather  and they haven't actually come up yet because we didn't take the stuff off of them. waiting so that when they do come up through, we're past the last frost date so they don't get tipped. Because for anyone who doesn't know,  if those little tiny bulbs get,  but not bulbs, buds.
26:14get bitten by frost they don't continue to grow so you get no flowers on that plant.  So I'm just keeping everything I have crossed that every freaking bud on all the peony plants blooms this year because I want it to be a sea of blooms.  I have white and coral and yellow and pink and burgundy.
26:39I'm so  excited, like I can't stand it. I hadn't really thought about it until we started talking. I'm like, oh my God, it's going to be a sea of beautiful flowers out there in June.  I will have to get out there and take pictures because they don't last long. It'll be a month.  It'll be a rolling month of different colors.
26:59I'm so excited. I can't stand it.  So anyway, my point being back 10 minutes ago, well, maybe, maybe two days ago, who knows?  Um, I was very excited to see my son show up with this bucket of lily roots because I can always use more lilies. That's  Always anything, anything that will we put in the ground  once and we just have to water it and pray it gets sun and it just takes care of itself.
27:29love the quality of plants that want to live. don't need a lot of food. Uh-huh. Yeah. We have some red Stelladora, I think is the name of the lily that we got from somebody and we threw them in over by the ditch. And they're not ditch lilies, but they're by a ditch. And we don't do anything with them. We don't even water them. And they have survived three years just through what nature has given them. They're beautiful.
27:59That's wild. Yep. Love it.  Absolutely love low maintenance, high beauty production plants. makes me so happy. I'm sure, I'm sure you are tickled when somebody's like, I would really like perennials. And you're like, let me tell you about what perennials grow in Georgia.  She's amazing woman.
28:28But you know, just like fruit trees, everything from hazelnut and tapioca, raspberry, fig, and cranberry, and bananas.  Avocados?  Yeah.  Oh, okay. Give it 10 years. I would like,  low-pot grows here, persimmons, Asian persimmons, and they're just so different from fruit, say. Fruit and nut trees, and then...
28:57know, you start getting into perennials. It's, you know, just a variety of native plants and, you know, perennial medges, kinds of things.  Can you, can you grow black raspberries in Georgia? Yeah, okay.
29:19any rubes seems to do.  Okay,  my mom in Illinois grew up picking black raspberries, wild ones. And we have them growing in our tree line on our property. And she lives in Maine. Black raspberries don't do very well in the area of Maine that she lives in.  And I brought her  black raspberries from our property. They were frozen.  And she made a black raspberry  pie.
29:47like a couple of weeks after we'd come back to Minnesota. And she called and she was like, thank you so much for bringing me black raspberries. I forgot how much I love them.
30:08Yeah, well, she'd been,  I don't know when I moved to Minnesota in, I don't even know now when it was over 30 years ago. I mentioned that there were black raspberries here on the hiking trails. And she was like, Oh, black raspberries are great. Da da da da da. And I said, they're really tart. And she's like, yeah, but if you make them into jam, they're no longer really tart. And I said, okay, well, I don't can and I don't make jam. So that doesn't help me.  And
30:36When we realized we had black raspberries here, we were so excited because they make a killer pie. Just really yummy pie. So I had to bring her black raspberries. There was no way I wasn't taking a cooler with frozen black raspberries home to visit.
30:54Yeah, and we're trying to start a  food forest in our tree line.  We just discovered that we have emerald ash borers in our trees for the first time  to the point that they're not leafing out. These trees are probably damn close to dead.  We have over 20 trees that are going to have to come out and some of them have been there for years and it's going to be expensive.  So.
31:22My husband has decided that he's going to accept any  fruit tree or plant that he can get and we're going to make the tree line for trees and  shrubs. Great. They have a to make lemonade out of lemons, right?  Yeah.  He was walking the tree line two weeks ago  and he saw a bunch of little holes in the trunks of the trees and only the  ash trees,  aspen, whatever, that family.
31:53And he took a closer look and the next morning he said, we have an expensive problem coming at us. And I was like, oh no, we are broke. We can't handle an expensive problem. He said, we have emerald ash forest. And I said, how do you know? And he said, because all those little holes are where the woodpeckers are using the trees for a food source. I was like, oh, that's fabulous. And I used a bad word in front of fabulous.
32:22And he said, nope, this is an opportunity. He said, you know those peach trees we put in two falls ago? I said, yes. He said, you know how we got peaches off of them the first fall after we put them in the previous fall? I said, yes, the one that equaled or were equal to Georgia peaches. He said, yes.  He said, we're going to put in more peaches.  He said, we're going to put in plums that are cold hardy.  He said, we're going to put in more apple trees.
32:51He said, our tree line is going to be an orchard. I said,  Oh,  okay.  He said, so if you see anybody giving away seedlings anywhere, say yes. So pray for me that we can, we can fill in our tree line to the point where it does what it's supposed to do, because we are surrounded by corn fields and soybean fields and alfalfa fields. We need that tree line for the break.  Yeah. I'm just introducing some diversity.
33:21Yes, and food because I really do like eating. Eating is a good thing.  Yes, it is.  So hopefully that'll all work and we already are lucky enough to have some elderberry.  I  call them bushes, but I guess they're trees. We have elderberry, we have black raspberry, we have apple trees, we have peach trees, we have wild plum and now cultivated plum.
33:51And we have honey berry plants that someone sent me.  So we're on our way, but it's going to be five years before it's really established.  Yeah. I mean, I think that's the downside. It's not a downside, but that's definitely, think, sometimes why people go for annual product balance because it's unstable. You know, he set it up in a good way, waiting for years to come.
34:17Yes, and whichever child inherits this place will be eating like a king 25, 30 years from now.
34:26So just thought I'd share that because you are a  permaculture person and that's what we're trying to do too. So.  All right, Brandy, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're there. So thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Mary. This was a wonderful conversation. Good luck with your orchard. Trying to see the sea of phoenix.  Trying really, really, really trying every day.
34:54All right, Brandy, you have a fantastic day. Oh, you too. Thanks. Bye.
 

The Giving Garden Farm Stand

Today I'm talking with Tamber at The Giving Garden Farm Stand.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Tamber at the Giving Garden Farm stand. Good morning, Tamber. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Colorado? You're going to be surprised. It's actually quite sunny today.  So we're very excited for this nice weather.
01:23Yeah, is Colorado rainy? I don't know anything about Colorado. Yesterday we woke up to a complete fog storm and it was misty and nasty out. So  you just never know what it's going to be. It's super bipolar.  Okay. All right. Well,  Minnesota's been a little bipolar lately too, as we were saying before I hit record.  It's not raining right now, but we had a thunderstorm roll through around 7, 7.30.
01:51and it's supposed to clear out and get hot and then we're supposed to have really nasty storms later today. So I'm like, okay.  Bracing yourself.  I'm just keeping everything crossed that it doesn't do anything bad because  our high tunnel is full of seedlings, our greenhouse is full of plants,  and my husband actually planted cabbage and lettuces and stuff this weekend in the garden.
02:17Keep everything you got crossed so we don't get hail because that will ruin what's in the garden. We got a little hail storm this last week as well. We got about, I would say, eight minutes of pea-sized hail.  it's unfortunate, you know, to watch it come through. It always makes your heart sink a little bit, especially growing up on the farm. But hopefully  our first cutting of hay will bounce back and we'll see what the good Lord does for us.
02:44Yeah, exactly. You just never know. And I said to my husband after he planted the stuff  on,  I think it was Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, I said, did you happen to notice that we have rough weather coming in on Monday? And he was like, no.  Yeah, we do. And he said, well, they're all little tiny plants. Maybe they'll be able to be in between the hail. I'm like, okay, we'll go with that.
03:11Well, hope for the best. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Giving Garden Farm Stand. Yeah. So my name is Tambor, as we already went over.  My family and I  run the Giving Garden Farm Stand, and we just recently opened.  So in our little 7 by 7, 10 shed that we bought off of Facebook and revamped,  you can find our Fresh Farm Eggs.
03:39You can find always a bread product, whether it be a flat bread, a sourdough loaf, a regular loaf of bread, bread crumbs, something like that. And then always something to satisfy the sweet tooth. So this morning I made fresh raspberry crumble bars and they are to die for. I hate to do my own harm, but they're really good. I do too, it's fine. Yeah. This weekend we did a lot of cookies and that went very well too. So.
04:09Just testing it out, seeing what people are liking, and that's been a lot of fun, meeting people, hearing what they like as well. And then alongside with all that, I always have my canning items. So I do some food preservation and have my pickled vegetables and pickles out there along with some fresh jams. We have actually quite a big variety of those.
04:35It seems to all be going well. There's a lot of interest and  it's been a lot of fun.  Okay. I want to know how you came to do this, but first I want to know about the, we call them cottage food laws here in Minnesota. Is that what they're called in Colorado? Yes, that is correct.  So what's,  what are your parameters for that? So the biggest one that causes a lot of heartache for me is we love our chickens.
05:05But I have to buy brand new egg cartons to be able to put them out on the stand and sell them. And they cost me about a dollar a piece. So it's a little frustrating because we only charge $5 a dozen. And so then I had to my prices because it cost me a lot of money to put them in a fresh egg carton as one of the cottage food laws. Yeah.
05:30I'm like, don't understand why, but you know, I'm going to follow it because we want it to be open. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out why  egg cartons are so expensive because  all they are is paper. I  would love to know that as well. I have no idea. I've done a lot of research trying to find a better price and unfortunately that's just what it is. And so.
05:59I don't know. We're going to stick with it for now.  And I hate to be a smart ass, but I really hope that egg cartons are made in America. I really do. I would totally agree with you on that one.  Yeah. I think we're under the same requirement that we have to have clean egg cartons, like brand new egg cartons if we're going to sell them out of the farm standard at the farmer's market.
06:23And then another one  that I learned,  I do fresh cinnamon rolls and I can make a really good cream cheese frosting, but we cannot have  dairy products as such out on the farm stand, unfortunately.  But I can  go to our local food store and I can purchase it and I can resell it because it's made in a commercial kitchen, but I cannot make my own frosting and sell it.  So.
06:52That's been kind of a hurdle because if you're purchasing, a lot of people want the homemade aspect of food. So it's also been educating a lot of people on that as well as I'm doing the best I can, but I also have to abide by these cottage food acts.  Yeah, here it's anything that's not shelf stable. We're not allowed to sell under the cottage food. Yeah, we could do fruit pies. We cannot do dairy, like  cream pies at all.
07:22trying to think what else  comes to mind quickly. are the main.  no buttercream. No butter, no homemade butter.  My husband's family makes a really good cheese.  Unfortunately, although we enjoy it, we cannot  sell it. It's a little unfortunate as well. Because a lot of people want that. A lot of people want the  freshness, but I can only offer
07:50what I can offer by the state. Yup. We're under the same kind of rules here. But having said all that, you having said all that and me chiming in, I'm really thankful for the cottage food laws because otherwise we be able to sell anything. I would totally agree. And to be honest, sometimes they're okay. know, rules are rules for a reason because you would not want to eat out of everybody's kitchen. So I also am thankful for laws as well.
08:20Me too, and right now I wouldn't want to eat out of my kitchen. It needs a really good deep cleaning.  I love the honesty.  Well, it's been real busy here with the gardening season starting and  my kitchen table and the card table we put up in front of my kitchen table were covered with plants until yesterday.  Yes. So I have to get that straightened out today and  the card table put away and the table washed off and swept  over there.
08:50And then I might feel safe cooking in my kitchen again. And then we'll bring back the cooking. Yeah. I mean, I'll cook for us. We're fine. I wouldn't want anybody to walk into my kitchen right now and have cookies sitting out on the island across from the table that is covered in potting soil from the plants.
09:12It's only a sight for your eyes.  Yes, exactly. Let's just pretend it's gorgeous and pristine and shiny like it was the first time I saw it four and a five years ago.  Okay, so how  did you get to where you are? It's an interesting question.  It's a loaded question. Okay. I have been very active in the 4-H and FFA community since I could remember  my parents.
09:41ran our local 4-H club for many many years. And so of course I got to join at a young age and grow up in that. So we always raised our own pork. I got to show all of the swine and I even did lambs one year. I did goats one year. And I also did some of the home ec projects which included shotgun. I did
10:09food preservation and quilting to name a couple.  But I fell in love with food preservation.  There's many different levels if you don't know anything about 4-H. So as you do it year by year, it's a different challenge. So  I competed every year and you age out when you turn 18.  So  as I aged out when I turned 18, I won Wilde County, which is our local county fair.
10:38And then when you win your county fair, you get to compete at state. So I got to take my food preservation up there. got to compete up to state. I won the state of Colorado.  And then I  got asked to go to nationals.  You don't compete with your project up there. You just get to say hello to a lot of people. So that was fun.  But I didn't know that that was a skill that not a lot of people know.  So it sparked a lot of interest.
11:08Although I was only 16, 18 at the time, a lot of people wanted to learn from me, my skills that I had for food preservation. So I started to teach people what I had learned from the people that I loved the most on how to do that. And as I got older and had my own family, we have our own garden. And last year, we just had a garden that kept giving.
11:35Like it would not stop giving us stuff. could not, I couldn't can it fast enough. We couldn't consume it fast enough.  And so I have this huge basket  and I would send it with my mom that owns a local consignment store in town. And I'd fill it every single day.  And  I  would put  anything fresh in there or if we had leftover baked goods, I'd throw a couple in there too to give to our friends and we would just give it away. And people just loved it.
12:05But  I thought, hmm, I could do a little farm stand and I could do maybe something that I love. I could grow a bigger garden.  I could open a farm stand and my mom wouldn't have to haul my fresh vegetables to her store every day.  So  here came the giving garden.  We named it the giving garden because the garden that just kept giving last year.  So that was really fun.
12:34We have a two and a half year old little baby and he just is the coop manager. He runs the chickens. He makes sure everything's good. He collects the eggs and counts them every day. So that's his little project that  as we sell the eggs, it goes into his savings. So that's kind of the story on where it all begun.
13:00That is so sweet and congratulations on being a 4-H superstar. Well, thank you. It's  something that I'm very proud of and it truly made me who I am today.  Yeah, I hear wonderful, phenomenal, fantastic, I could go on  things about 4-H and what it does for kids and I didn't have the opportunity to be in it when I was a kid because it just wasn't offered where I lived.
13:26Yeah, and  it's just incredible. A lot of people see it as you have to show livestock because  that's what a lot of us kids out here do.  And it's a great opportunity to show livestock.  But there's a lot of things that you can do in the home ecside too. Here in Colorado, they even offer a program called the horseless horse.  So you can still learn about horses, you can still fill out a record book.
13:51You can still submit it to the state and compete even if you don't have a horse. You could do robotics. There's so many  opportunities in 4-H.  It's phenomenal. I cannot  applaud it more.  You know, I have been trying to find somebody from 4-H to talk to me on the podcast and since you did it, I'm just going to ask you the questions I would have asked them. Yeah. Does it cost money to be part of 4-H?  There is a small  like county fee that they do charge.
14:21I think it's under $100. I don't think it's too expensive. It's been a little while since I've done the registration side of things, unfortunately. But yes, it's a very small fee to be able to compete. I also think that they charge that fee to hold people accountable because a lot of it is ran off of volunteers. So to get a bunch of volunteers together, it also takes a little bit of accountability for the people that are signing up.
14:51Yeah, and with all the things that the kids get to do,  that must cost money too. And the building,  and the ribbons, and  there's truly a lot that goes on behind the scenes that not a lot of people see. And that's the point, right? It's supposed to be fun for the kids, and it's supposed to be learning, and  that's what I love about the program. Okay, and  is 4-H a nonprofit organization?
15:22Hmm. If you don't know, it's fine. I can always go dig. I am not 100 % sure what it would be classified as. I know that there is some profit made, but I know that it is nonprofit to an extent. I just don't know what it's technically classified. Well, I'm typing into Google right now because I brought it up, so I should probably find out.
15:49I'm like, I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I was just wondering how 4-H is funded. a lot of love, a lot of love and a lot of volunteers that put a lot of time and years and effort into growing such a strong community. Okay. Yep.
16:10What I'm seeing really quick is I see about National 4-H Council, 4-H is the youth development program of our nation's Cooperative Extension System and USDA.  So that doesn't tell me if it's nonprofit, but it does tell me that it's through the USDA.  that helps.  Yes. I'm like, I don't know, but I could ask my mom and Shirley get back to you.  She's a really good resource for that.  Okay, cool.  So  I
16:38I think I talked to somebody from Colorado a week or so ago and I think I asked them about their growing season, but I don't remember what I asked or what I got for an answer. So I asked you again, when can you guys get plants in the ground safely after the last frost date? I live by the farmer's almanac or Mother's Day. I never plant before Mother's Day just because one year we got really excited, planted
17:08And right  before Mother's Day, there was a huge frost. And so that's the rule of thumb that I go by.  And I truly just watch our bigger farmers in the community  see when they're starting to plant corn. I really try and watch and watch their example and try and follow to that extent as well. Okay.  Yeah. When my husband put stuff in this weekend.
17:35or he said Friday night, he told me he was going to start putting stuff in the garden this weekend. And I said, it's not May 15th.  And he said, I know. Yes. Got a little excited. And I said, what are you putting in? And he said the cold hardy stuff. And I said, OK, fine.  I said, please, please, please don't put the tomatoes in the basil end because you know sure as hell  if you do, it's going to frost. Every time.  He was like, he said, you always say I'm in the gardener. And I said, you are the gardener.
18:05I said, but you're also impulsive and excited and you want to get the garden going because last year sucked.  So  please trust me, don't put tomatoes and basil in. He said, I will not. That was a good one.  Yeah. The other reason that I, he's so  bent on getting things into the garden right now is because our both of our greenhouses, we have a hard sided greenhouse and we have a high tunnel.  They are to the point of bursting with plants and need to go out.
18:34I love that for you. It's so exciting. It just makes your heart happy when you see it.  Oh my god.  If you had seen the craziness we went through last year, you would know why he's so excited.  Our garden was terrible last year because we had six weeks of rain and so  it took forever for the garden to dry out.  And  in that, we had put up a hard-sided greenhouse that can be heated.
19:03So he had that going on to distract him from his misery of not being able to get stuff in the garden.  And that hard-sided greenhouse, what a freaking godsend.  Yes,  yes. My son brought in a handful of strawberries from the strawberry plants that wintered over in the greenhouse this year. Oh my gosh. Uh-huh.  Yep. And they weren't quite ripe enough yet, so they were kind of neutral, but they were strawberries in April.  Hey.
19:32I'll take it any day of the week. That's awesome.  Yep. I took pictures and posted them on Facebook to memorialize the moment.  Absolutely.  I would too.  Uh-huh.  And the  greenhouse is heated with IBC totes filled with water and the IBC totes are painted black so they absorb the sun.  I like it.  And it did pretty well. We had a week in January where it was
20:01super cold and it barely maintained but it maintained just enough so that the stuff that was cold hardy survived and We were so excited tamber. I I'm  You would have thought we were five years old being handed our first lollipop.  Yes I know the feeling though like it's so satisfying when you finally did it, you
20:27Yeah, and we didn't know if those IBC totes full of water would work. was just something we'd seen and we were like, well, it's the least expensive option right now. Let's try that first.  love it. I love those little, I don't know, like little nooks, know, that work that might be the cheaper option, but it worked. And I'm here for the cheaper option  anytime.
20:52Well, I was excited about the strawberries, but what I was more excited about is the fact that our rosemary plant that we put in there last fall overwintered.  my husband says it's huge.  I would totally love it. Rosemary is so in right now, whether you're decorating with it or cooking with it or drying it, it's huge, especially here in Colorado.  Rosemary, I love it.
21:19Yeah, and it will not overwinter outside here in Minnesota. No. Nope.  So that was that was the thing I was more excited about because every every spring we either plant rosemary seeds, which you can actually do. We did it a couple of years ago. You can plant rosemary from seed and it will become  a beautiful plant by fall.  Nice. Or we buy seedlings because I love how it smells. I don't necessarily love to cook with it. I have some on hand for like, you know, putting in a  roast or something. Yes.
21:49but I just love how the plant itself smells when you run your hands through it. Yes, I agree. it's like, sometimes I'll wrap my sourdough bread in it and then I'll put like a little sprig on it to kind of give it, I don't know, more like a natural look. Then when you buy the bread, you can smell it and you can see the rosemary and you can use it again. I love rosemary for so many reasons.
22:16I also love thyme and thyme is a cold hardy plant so it will grow underneath the snow. I did not know that. If you don't have six feet of snow, I mean if you have like a couple feet of snow, there's probably some little green sprigs trying to hang on underneath the snow. But we have a whole bunch of thyme in the heated greenhouse right now. And would you believe four days ago my husband said if I cut thyme and bring it in, will you dry it? And I was like absolutely.
22:44And he never cut it because he got sidetracked by everything else this weekend.  That's how it goes.  I love dill.  I absolutely love dill. If I could have one thing in my garden forever, it would be dill.  I love dill.  The dill weed, not the actual flowers of the seeds, but the leaves of the dill plant. And they're not really leaves, they're like little spikes.  But anyway, I love drying that.
23:14and putting it in sour cream with some onion powder and some garlic powder. Perfect. a little bit of buttermilk or buttermilk powder, dried buttermilk.  And  some salt. And a little bit black pepper. And that is the most fabulous dip I've ever made in my life. Oh yeah. Fresh dill and anything with cream cheese, count me in.  Yep.
23:38Yes.  Hey, I picked the right person to talk to you this morning because we're talking plants and I really needed to talk plants because it is so gray outside.  So you have chickens. Do you have other animals?  As of right now, we do have a couple of other animals.  We of course have two dogs. We have two cats. My husband has a horse named Bellagio. He is a team roper  and we just love him  and so does our little son.
24:08We just got some guenies.  We have 20 of those little birds out in the broiler right now.  They are little and so they're different than baby chicks because they require a higher protein and they're very fast.  So  we got those because actually the ticks are really bad this year.
24:36We've already been pulling them off of our dogs, unfortunately. And guineas,  they obviously keep away snakes, but they also love to eat ticks. So I ordered a bunch of them and I'm like, please take care of our tick problem. So we have that going  for us.  It's actual, we just got rid of our goats, but my parents have two alpacas that are pretty cool too. Okay. Yep.
25:06Awesome. Well,  I'm gonna do the thing I shouldn't do. What kind of dogs do you have?  Oh We have a miniature dachshund. Her name is Ro. She's a dapple She  is full of energy sass and whatever else you want to call her.  She rules the roost Then we have a little miniature schnauzer. His name is Dexter He's the quieter one, but he  They both just roam and love the farm
25:36Nice.  I was hoping you weren't going to say like a Pyrenees or an Australian Shepherd because  we have an Australian Shepherd and some of our friends who live nearby have two Pyrenees.  And I shouldn't say this. I talk about our dog all the time on the podcast and I always feel we're doing it again. But  Maggie is our Australian Shepherd and  she was not feeling great last week. She was kind of...
26:03loafing around, she wasn't eating her food, and I was like,  this is not good. And come to find out, my husband has been giving her extra food  at night after I go to bed because she's being a brat.  And  I had noticed she was getting chunky again. And I've had this conversation a bunch of times and I finally looked at him and I said,  do you want this dog to live a long happy life? Yes.
26:29And he said,  said, yeah, I love her. I said, then stop overfeeding her.  Yes, I know. I know. But treats are good. Treats are great. Let's give her some green beans. Yes, or carrots. are huge carrots. Ice cubes are a really good one too.  She is a fiend for ice in the wintertime.  The icicles fall off the side of the house and she,  she steps on them to break them and then she eats them.
26:59She's smart. She's very smart. She's scary.  anyway, I basically put my foot down and said, you've got to stop eating her because if she dies, I will be a disaster. Oh, yeah.  And he was like, OK.  And so he started putting her food bowl up where she can't see it as soon as she finishes her dinner.
27:22Uh-huh. And has not been giving her food. And amazingly, she's already starting to slim back down and her energy level is back up and she's been eating her breakfast right away in the morning. And she's rocking and rolling. I love it.  So yeah, it's hard when you have pets because you want to give your pets everything including freaking chocolate cake and don't do that with a dog. It will kill them. Right.  But you want to show them that you love them in the way that you would show your child that you love them.
27:52Oh, 100%. And I love that you use the dogs, but we have the chickens and we have we have 32 Lang hens right now and then we have probably 40 that are about 12 weeks. And so my little son takes mealworms, the dried mealworms, scatters them out so that he can walk to the car because now that they
28:20know that he has treats, they come up to him every single time like, come on, come on, we need more treats. So he, he's the king of treat giving.  I love that. That's adorable.  The worst part about having chickens is that chickens do not know how to self regulate when they eat.  A hundred percent.  We go through feed like it's water.  Uh huh. Yeah.
28:49Yeah, if we fill our chicken feeder, they will eat and eat and eat all day. Yes. It's ridiculous. And we let them free range in the spring and the fall before the garden goes in and once the garden is put to bed so that we're not going through so much chicken feed because otherwise we would be broke. Yes, we actually just bought a huge tote that is 2000 pounds of
29:17like a mixed feed with their layer and crumble and all that stuff because we were going to the feed store every week and like we've got to figure out how we can cut the cost a little bit.  So, God bless my husband, he went and got totes for us and it's cut down cost quite a bit luckily.  Good because  eggs from your own chickens should not cost $20 an egg. I totally agree with that. They'd be golden, which they are. They're very good.
29:47Yeah, especially right now.  Yes,  yes. You are not wrong. Supposedly egg prices are coming down, but I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I have not seen it yet. I know that there was supposed to be a huge import  coming in on them, but  I don't want to eat eggs from another country that have been on a plane for...
30:13three days and you don't know what the temperature was. So we'll just stick to our own.  yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We had gotten rid of our chickens last fall because they were old and not giving us any more eggs.  And we were going to get eggs in May, like this coming three days from now May. And a couple of months ago, I said to my husband, said,  we have got to get chickens again. I said, cannot.
30:40I cannot believe how much they're selling eggs for at the store.  No.  And they're terrible. I want our own chickens again. And he was like, but we weren't going to do it till May.  I said, I said, I will charge it on my credit card if you will go pick them up.  Yes, please. Right now.  I'm starting to a hold of our chicken dealer, as I call her, chicken broker.
31:04And she had some and I was like, we need 12 and she's like, I will get you hooked up. And I said, why does this sound like a drug deal? And she said, well, right now it might be. I'm like, uh-huh. It is. Depends how you look at it.  Yep. So we were very happy to get 20, I think they were 18 or 20 week old chickens when we picked them up.  So we got the first eggs from those chickens ever laid. I love it. I absolutely love it. It's so satisfying.
31:30It's so fun  when you get that first little egg.  Yes. You're like, thank you. Thank you so much.  Oh, it was a lot bigger and louder. Thank you this time than it's ever been.  Yes. So they're  very loved chickens right now.  I could only imagine. That's how ours are every day. We just, love them so much  and they're great.  We actually have some Brahmas and that's our preferred ones.
32:00They're pretty big. I don't know if you know about Brahmas, but they're really  docile  and we had a couple and then that's what we actually grew or flock with  as I ordered  a bunch of them.  they are just the most docile, kind, loving. They follow you. They talk to you. I'm like, I never thought I would be a crazy chicken lady, but here I am and I'm fine with it. I'm totally fine with it.
32:29Yeah, somebody else referred to themselves as a crazy something late either day regarding livestock.  I made a big stink on the podcast talking to her saying, I really want to get rid of that crazy word in front of this because it's not crazy. It's smart.  Yeah. Well, I would totally agree with you, but  a lot of people don't.  Yes, exactly. people think that we are totally crazy and I'm fine with it. I'm totally fine with it.
32:57Yeah, I'm trying to change it to smart chicken lady, but I don't think it's going to work.  We'll do our best. Yes, exactly. I figure if I say it enough, people will do it just to make me happy. I doubt it. I  doubt it, but I'm going to try.  And I also have been trying to work into every single episode of the podcast for the last month and a half at least.  If you live in America today, get to know your local growers, your local producers. And as my son pointed out yesterday,  you're a local crafters and repair people.
33:27Because number one, you're supporting your community of people who do the work. And number two, you're getting less expensive, better services. I could not agree more. There's been a couple of instances just lately that we've realized that.  being the local egg dealer, it's been really cool because a lot of people, when egg prices spiked, they started to rely on us. And I was talking to my dad  the other day about it.
33:57I told them, you know what, I'm actually kind of thankful because if things ever took a turn, we could have neighbors that we could rely on for other things as well. You know, so people can rely on us for eggs and, you know, some garden stuff. But we also have friends that offer different services to us. And so maybe the whole egg price thing in the grand scheme of things happened for a reason so that we start to rely on our local capabilities  again.
34:24Yes, and the tariff situation too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it'd be really nice if we get back to a smaller, closer economy. Yeah, we'll have to see what happens. We will see. Yeah, and then the other thing I did. Oh, do you have something else to add? Oh, no, I was just thinking of other instances. Like yesterday, I put on a huge preservation food class.
34:51And  one of the gals that was in there is,  she works right next to my mom and we didn't even know that she owned an upholstery business.  And she was right next to my mom and upholstery is huge and finding a good upholstery person is very hard in the community. And so it's not what you know all the time, it's who you know. And so how funny that we put on this food preservation class, we meet our neighbors and we find out that
35:19I cannot wait for her to redo our tractor seats, you know?  Yeah. Yeah. So  it's just wild. Yeah. I say all the time, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Yep. It totally is. Yep. And  I meant to ask you about your classes, but we're going to run out of time. So  for anybody in Tambor's area, she does classes on food preservation and I'm guessing probably some other stuff too. So  the list goes on, huh?  Okay, good.
35:49And I wanted to add in because I need to start marketing myself too, besides marketing you guys.  Our farm stand and our high tunnel are going to be open on Mother's Day weekend for people to come buy bedding plants for their own gardens.  And we're going to have some of our homemade soaps and lip balms and candles out in the farm stand itself. So congratulations. That's so awesome. I hope it goes fantastic.
36:15Well, we'll see, but I know that we have way, way too many plants to plant in our garden. So I would love it if people would come and buy plants from us to put in their gardens, because that's the other thing.  If you have room in your yard for a raised bed, or if you have room  to dig a spot in  the actual ground to put in plants, you should probably be doing that right now too. Not right now,  but in this growing season. A couple of weeks. Yes.  I totally agree with that.
36:44Yep. And that's not just to sell my plants. mean, if you want to buy plants from somebody else,  go ahead. I just think that everybody should have some kind of a little kitchen garden going this year. I totally agree. And it gets a huge reward.  Oh,  absolutely. It does.  Nothing better than fresh herbs to use in your cooking or a sun warmed garden  ripe tomato.
37:11that you eat right off the vine. I'm telling you, if you don't like them, you don't like tomatoes. I  did not agree more with that statement.  All right, Tamber, I'm going to let you go because I try to keep this to half an hour. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Sounds great. Thank you.  Have a great day. You too.
 

Wild Ones Homestead

Today I'm talking with Michelle at Wild Ones Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Michelle at Wild Ones Homestead and Michelle is in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Michelle. How are you? I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. Has the sun come out there yet? A little bit. We had thunderstorms earlier, but the sun peaked out and I was able to clean up some of my garden beds with the kiddos, which was nice. They don't have school today, so.  Uh-huh.
01:25Yeah, the sun just came out  maybe 45 minutes ago here in Minnesota where I live. And  I didn't think my husband had any time off because of Easter. And he texted when I was doing an interview at 10 o'clock this morning  and it said, I'll I'll be home. I'll be leaving at noon. And I was like, Oh no, did you get fired? And,  and I said, Oh, question mark. And went on to do other stuff. And he texted me back and he was like, it's good Friday.
01:54the company closes at noon.  was like,  Oh, okay. So of course I was busy with stuff, not thinking and didn't tell him I had an interview at one.  And he got home and he was like, so do you want to do lunch or you just want to wait till dinner? And I said, I have an interview at one. He was like,  Oh yeah, no, we're not doing food right now. said, no, I mean you can make food, but I can't, I can't eat right now.  So, so big surprises around here today after 10 30 in the morning. That was very weird.  Um,
02:23Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Wild Wands Homestead.  Oh gosh. It might be more of a question of what don't we do.  But so we have,  it's about 63 acres here  and we raise beef cows. I actually just started  milking one of them. They're  Angus Holstein Cross. So they do have a little bit of that dairy genetics in them. And I really wanted to attempt to milk a cow. I'm actually not.
02:52a cow person. My background is in horses. But it's like, we have cows here. We have bred them to have babies. Why would I not milk the cow? Like this? Well, yes. So my husband thought I was crazy. He grew up with cows and he worked on dairy farms a lot when he was younger. But he was like, you're nuts. That cow's never going to let you milk her. And ha ha.
03:16I actually got almost a full gallon today and her calf has 24 seven access to her and I'm doing it loose in the pasture, which is really fun. But so on top of the cows, we also raise chickens, which I always joke that I have a chicken retirement farm because we have about 50 chickens, but  probably 20 of them are really old hens that are pushing 10 and don't even really lay anymore, but I get attached. they just kind of out.
03:44We do multiple gardens.  We do a really big garden where we plant like corn and hot peppers and  potatoes and melons and squashes and anything that we want on term. We actually did two years ago, we had so much corn. We had a bunch of friends come over and help us process it all. And we had enough corn for us and three other families to last two years. So  we do a lot of corn.
04:13And then I've got my smaller like potage style garden behind the house where I've got, you know, like my tomatoes  and  my garlic is my favorite thing to grow.  And, you know, asparagus and strawberries and zucchini and my herbs, the things I like closer. We planted an orchard a couple years ago, but those trees are not big enough to start producing yet. We collect maple syrup and I turn a lot of that into sugar. So I almost exclusively use maple sugar in my baking.
04:43Um, what else do we do? We forage and we love mushroom hunting and wild berries and any of that.  We do hunt and fish  and we both have our trapping license. I don't  use mine.  Mine is mostly so that I can legally check my husband's traps if he were to get injured or something,  but he does all like trapping of nuisance critters. And then I tan the hides, which is really fun. So  we just kind of stay busy year round jumping from.
05:12One thing to the next, you know, he grows and harvests most of the hay for he feeding the animals. And obviously we've got the horses here too.  That was my lifelong passion. Even when I was in  high school and riding and training horses, I said, you know, one day I want to move out West to like Montana and just have a little homestead where I have my horse and some chickens and a cow and raise as much food as I can.
05:39I kind of took a roundabout way to get here and obviously I'm in Wisconsin still, not Montana, but I did live out West in Washington for 10 years. So  I had my out West experience and I'm kind of doing what I always wanted to do, which is fun. And my husband definitely is more of the farmer side where he wants, you know, let's make a profit on it. And I'm like, I don't care about money. I just want to do it cause it's fun.
06:05I kind of wish that we could not care about money. Wouldn't that be wonderful to really not care about money? We,  you know, we barter a lot, which is handy. We've got the sawmill here too. So he's a logger by trade and then people know that. So they'll be like, oh, we have this tree or this, you know, giant log. Do you want it? And he's like, oh, of course. So he'll bring it here. And then if we're having a slow day of something else, we're spending it in the sawmill.
06:32milling all this lumber and we trade it for people or we use it in our various projects like with the house we're building right now.  And  it's great to trade off to people if they need lumber for projects and be like, Hey, you want to come help us fence  or you want to help us rake hay in the summer or harvest this giant  field of corn by hand. So that, that definitely works out knowing the right people. And he's lived here in this area his whole life. So he knows.
07:02Literally everyone and they're all the same kind of balloon collar tradesmen that all have different skills that are all really handy. So it's like, it takes a village to do it all and we all love helping each other and it's great.  We, just have a lot of fun. mean, it's not all fun all the time, but I'd say overall, I couldn't imagine doing anything else really. Yeah. There's a lot of truth to the saying about it's not what you know, it's who you know.  Yes, absolutely.
07:32I hang on that a lot because  I definitely don't know everything. I know just enough to be dangerous,  but I always say I know a lot about a little and a little about a lot. And that way if I can help, I do. And if I need help, I can reach out and ask. Right. Anytime I'm sharing like what I'm doing  online on all the platforms, I'm always like, this is how I'm doing it because it works for me. It might not be the correct way to do it, but you know what?
08:00This is how I'm doing it and it works. And I really like winging it and just seeing, and if it doesn't work, oh well, try something new next year. Uh-huh. Your mileage may vary is the other one that I say a lot.  Um, so I saw that you just had a new calf like six days ago.  Yes. So we've got three that were all born within the last two weeks. These are our first babies born here. We've done bottle calves for several years, but.
08:30I don't know if you've seen the price of bottle caps right now.  I hear they're really spendy. It is so high. And then by the time you get them off of the milk replacer, and we always also give ours  grain while they're little,  at least the bottle caps that we're buying just to help, you know, supplement, make sure they're growing strong and everything. By the time they're done with that, and then let alone feeding them and caring for them for two years, the profit is just,  it's not there.  So.
08:58It was like, we've got these heifers. We might as well try to breed them because we are going to end up getting priced out of buying bottle caps was what was going to happen. So  yeah, the first babies that were actually born here. So I'm not having to bottle feed them, which Dan's like, that must be nice. You don't have to bottle feed. I'm like, well, I actually really like bottle feeding the babies. Even when we had like 12 at once, I thought it was great because they're just so cute.  But.
09:24Now I have less to do in terms of taking care of them, but that also means they're not as friendly. So I'm trying to like butter them up and be like, look, this one like scratches and this one lets me milk her and she gets cookies. Don't you guys want that too? But there's still a little squirrely about everything at this point.  Well, keep trying. They'll probably love you eventually. I hope so. One, of course we have one cow that's just not friendly  and she's
09:52one that dropped a heifer this year, the other two are bull calves. So I'm like, I really need to try and make her baby friendly because I do not need two crazy fence jumping cows. Yeah, no, no, that would not be great.  So I have a question about this because  I have never owned  a cow and I certainly have never been part of the breeding process or the birthing process or anything else.  When
10:20When I was watching the video of the baby be born, vicariously through you, I'm watching this beautiful animal give birth to a beautiful baby. And in my brain, I'm like, it's all going to be good. Mama's going to what she's supposed to do. Baby's going to be healthy. It's all going to go fine. In my little nervous system and in my heart, I'm like, God, I hope everything goes okay. So when you're in the middle of that,
10:50Do you have like  opposite emotions warring in you because number one, it's exciting, but number two, it's scary? Absolutely. Especially when it was my favorite cow giving birth, because I'm like,  I don't want anything to go wrong. if it would go wrong, it's always the favorite that something goes wrong with. And it's her first time calving. So you really have no idea.  But  you know, they all did such a good job. I was really impressed. And we do have like the chain.
11:19the chains on hand that you wrap around their legs to help pull if something goes wrong. And again, we have all those friends that have cow experience as well and live close. So Dan was actually at work when my favorite cow was giving birth and he was like, you got it under control? And I was like, I think so, because she's so friendly. If something were to happen, I'm pretty sure I could. She'd let me pull it on my own. No problem. But we also have all of these wonderful, knowledgeable neighbors and friends that live close by that could have helped. But yeah, it's.
11:49It's nerve wracking. want, you know, healthy mama and healthy baby at the end of the day. as everybody that has livestock knows, if you have livestock, you have dead stock. it's,  it's gone good so far, but it's always, you're waiting for when your time to experience that is going to come. Yeah, exactly.  And the reason I even ask is because there's a lot of people who are starting to get into homesteading. They're starting to lean toward the idea of it.
12:18And I never want people to think that it's all sunshine and roses and candy. It's not, it's work.  And I don't want to discourage anybody, but I also don't want to be like,  oh, if you do it, your life is going to be perfect for the rest of the time you're on the earth, because it's not. There's things that you have to learn. There's  experiences you have to have.  Right. And I say, if anybody is really wanting to get into homesetting, start with plants.
12:47start with something that if you kill it accidentally, it's not a creature that's suffering for lack of knowledge or experience. A plant is easy to restart and you really don't have to feel bad about it. Is it a bummer still? Absolutely. But an animal is a lot bigger deal to lose whether it was just to lack of knowledge or just fate made it happen that way. That's, it's a big deal. And I've always been really anal about
13:16any animal that I want to bring in. I do so much research online and really make sure that we have the good facility set up for them. I know a lot of the home setting way is to kind of work with things where you're at, but in terms of animals, you really have to have the proper setup. Do you need 20 acres to have a cow?  No, but you also shouldn't be putting them in a 20 by 20 pen and thinking they're going to live in it under a tarp shelter for five years.
13:46There needs to be a little bit of preparedness when it comes into taking care of another living creature.  There sure does.  We have, we have 12 chickens here. They're like,  I don't know, they're like 30 weeks old now. So they're new laying hens.  And yesterday it poured. And of course the chickens were out in the run and some of them were actually out in the yard because they figured out how to fly out of the run. Cause that's what chickens do.
14:16And my son went out to put them back in the coop because it was really windy after it rained. And he said, I could only find 11 of the 12. And my son's an adult. It's not like he's a five-year-old going to camp, find a chicken.  And I said, well, she's probably sheltering in  the tree line because it was really raining. And he's like, well, okay. I said, look, I said, she's either sheltering in the tree line or something picked her off. We know this is how it goes.
14:45Last night when my husband went out  to try to find her,  she was over by the shed. And I asked him this morning, said, was she soaked? And he said, oh yeah. And so I'm waiting to see if she gets sick because chickens can actually get sick from being wet and cold. So we'll see if that one survives. They're pretty hardy. know, as fragile as chickens are, I've seen them survive some  absolutely.
15:14gnarly things. I've actually got one I'm nursing back to health right now.  She's I could probably turn her back out. I'm just babying her because she's old. were babysitting my in-laws dog who's been here all the time.  And for some reason she decided she wanted to attack some of my chickens. And I thought it was dead when I found it. But she like blinked at me and I was like, Oh, you're alive. Okay, now we get to do chicken emergency care. But
15:43It's been three weeks since that happened and she's doing good. just got her hanging out in what I call my baby coop. It's where I put any broody hens to hatch out the babies.  Mostly so that the roosters are not harassing her  while she heals. But  I really didn't think she was going to make it, but here we are. She's not laying eggs, but like I said, chicken retirement farm.  I love it.
16:09Okay, so do you do like baking or any of that stuff too?  Oh yeah, I mean I have a huge sweet tooth especially and the kids love  any type of homemade bread that I make. I don't do like a ton of sour bread. I know a lot of homestead people like sour bread, sour dough bread. We're just not, it's kind of hit or miss. Sometimes we like it and we'll eat a bunch of it and then we'll go for you know, six to eight months without eating sour dough. So my starter is currently in the freezer.
16:38for whenever I feel like it's a good sourdough time again. But yeah, we love to do as much homemade cooking as we can.  And  all the snacks and stuff are things that I make. I don't like buying junk food from the stores. One, because I'll eat it all. Like  there's no stopping me. If I get Oreos, I'm gonna eat all the Oreos. So it's better to just not buy them.  And then I think homemade stuff tastes better too. we really, we like.
17:07snacking on all the homemade things. I made some cheddar biscuits to go with our eggs for breakfast this morning and the kids devoured those.  how many kids? Two. Okay.
17:20All right, and how old are they? My daughter will be 10 this summer and my son will be eight. Oh, so they're the perfect age to be learning all this stuff and helping out. Yes, and the school that they go to is really fun because they do a lot of hands-on like gardening and they've got farm animals and stuff there and they've actually tapped trees and done syrup at the school and the teachers are always talking to me. They're like, your kids know so much of this stuff already. And I'm like, yes, because we do it at home. you're just
17:49Engraining it in them even more because it's stuff they already do which is fun  I bet that when they when when the school introduces a new thing to the kids your kids are like  hold my beer I got this  pretty much  there's not there's not too much that they haven't tried They're really excited to try and milk the cow with me this weekend They wanted to try it this morning, but I was like I need to run out there between thunderstorms So why don't we pick a different day  for you guys?
18:18because I just need to hustle today. Yeah. Isn't it amazing how the weather predicts what you can and can't do on a homestead? Oh, absolutely.  With the animals, you're doing it  no matter what the weather is. So that's again why plants are easier. Cause if it's now, Oh, I don't have to go out and take care of that plant today. You do with the cow.  Yeah. Cause they get really cranky when they don't get milked.
18:47and loud, they get really loud. Today  was day five and she already sees me coming with my bucket and I just have, I put little horse cookie treats in my pocket and that's how I'm getting her to stay still. I give her a cookie to start and then halfway through I give her another cookie and then when we're done she gets her third cookie and then she just wanders off. She wiggles a little bit because we're doing it loose so the other cows will distract her and she'll get up and walk a few feet and I'm following her on like, come on Tula.
19:15sit in one spot so I can finish, but she's actually just a really, really sweet cow, so it's gone well. That helps a lot.  The reason I was being kind of snarky about the weather, my husband is trying to get our high tunnel ready to go to move  seedlings from our greenhouse into the high tunnel, because  our greenhouse is an actual hard-sided greenhouse.  And he and my kid have been, our kid, I keep saying my kid, our kid, have been getting all the framing in and all the
19:46the cattle panel arches on it and all that. And the next step is to get the plastic on it. And every time he's like, I want to get the plastic on it at this point in time, it's raining or it's really windy. And so he was looking at the weather for this weekend. He's like, keep everything you have crossed that it's not windy Saturday.  Yeah, I've got all of my plants are actually up in the office where I'm sitting right now  because
20:16It's easier to keep this heated. It's inside of our shop than my greenhouse. So, but I'm looking at how the weather is going to be at night over the next week. And I'm like, Ooh, maybe it's going to be warm enough that I'm not spending a million dollars on electricity, keeping my greenhouse warm because my tomatoes really need to be up potted. I'm like, this is a ticking time bomb. don't have space  in the office for this stuff anymore.  Yep.  I'm right there with you. The greenhouse is packed.
20:45full. Like he sent me photos and I thought,  um, you are  out of room.  And he said, yeah, he said, that's why I need to get  the plastic on the high tunnel so I can move stuff over. And I said, is it going to be warm enough? And he said, I think so.  Okay, good.  But, uh, did you plant extra plants this year so that you can sell seedlings? Cause that's what we did.  I did  last year and I did.
21:14Pretty good, I ended up making like 600 bucks, which basically paid for what I put into the garden for the year.  But we're so busy with trying to get the new house,  I call it a cabin or a new house depending on the moment. It's going to be our new house, but we're making it look like a cabin, so either one. But we're just a busy with that right now. I'm like, I don't know that I want to take the extra time  to.
21:41do extra plants. I've got a bunch of like dahlias because those sold really well last year and you know, the tubers multiply every year. So I'll go off my extra tubers. And then I took some elderberry clippings because people love to buy elderberry and those are so easy to take a clipping and root them and sell them for five bucks at a pop. Yeah. Okay, I'll do dahlias and I'll do my elderberry and then everything else I'll just do for myself. So. Yep. That's a really good idea.
22:11And this is one of the things that I love about homesteaders and gardeners and farmers and people who raise animals and they all kind of fall under that homesteading umbrella.  We are, if nothing else,  ingenious because we will find stuff that's that's easier, not easy, but easier to make our lives easier. Yep.  And  he was planting.
22:38basil seeds like a month and a half ago in the kitchen in the little tiny cells that you start seeds in on my kitchen table. And I said, how many seeds are you planting? Cause it was a lot. And he said, Oh, there will probably be at least 150 basil plants. Nice.  And I said,  um,  what are we going to do if people don't buy them? He said, we're going to plant them.
23:04and we're going to sell cut basil at the farmer's market. He said, and we will be drying basil every day from the point that we can cut it until it's time to put it to bed.  So and stick it in the freezer. I do with mine. If I get hordes of it, I just make pesto and pop it in the freezer. And then I've got an easy pesto for  whatever when I need it. And I have some in there that's like three years old and it still takes. Yeah.
23:32Yep. I just didn't realize he was going to plant that many. mean, the tomato plants will sell, the squash plants will sell, the cucumber plants will sell. But most people think that basil is just for spaghetti sauce and it's not. I love basil. That's one of my favorite things to grow. And I end up with a lot of pesto because I grow a lot of garlic. I think that's probably my very favorite thing to grow. Last year I planted
24:03600 and some garlic cloves in the fall. So I will have a lot of garlic to play with here. I do all the hardneck varieties. So they should up the garlic scapes, which are edible. Yeah. Do you find the right market? You can sell those for like $16 a pound. Wow. Yeah. So I'm like, I think I might have to sell some garlic scapes this year. Usually I keep them all for myself because they're so delicious. But I'm like,
24:29You know, 600 plants, I can probably  sell some of them. I'm glad you brought up the scapes because I've never eaten them. Are they a milder flavor of garlic than the actual garlic bulb? Yes. So it's like a slightly garlicky, maybe a little bit oniony flavored,  kind of crunchy, like a raw green bean. I like to just saute them with like
24:55some butter and salt and pepper or put them on like an Alfredo pizza. But I've seen people make pesto with them. I've done garlic  scape butter. You can do salt. Like there's a million uses for it. it's  basically you're getting a bonus crop from the same plant. So why not? I may have to pick up some from the co-op because they sell it. They sell scapes when it's that time of year.
25:23I want to dice it up or slice it up and put it in Alfredo sauce. Yep.  Do it. I think that would be great.  I really love to cook, but I really love to cook things that are like half an hour from beginning  to eating  because my husband has a half an hour commute home and that way I just have to start cooking the minute he calls me and then food's ready when he gets here.  Right. That's what I try to make sure dinner's done about when my husband gets home from work.
25:49because that's nice we can eat and then we can go do whatever projects we're doing because he does not sit still ever.  So it's like, okay, we can eat quick and then go do whatever we need to do next. So it worked. Are you a fan of the one pot meal because then you're not busy trying to do dishes after dinner?  It depends because sometimes my husband can be a picky eater. He says he's not,  but he can be.
26:18I'd say the biggest thing we run into is, we've got a freezer full of beef and then we butcher hogs. We've got, he's got a buddy that raises pigs and we can buy them from him for, I think last year we got them for like $180 a hog and then butcher them here at home. So when you have a freezer full of beef and pork, you're mainly just eating beef and pork because why would you buy meat from the store? So.
26:41Things get a little old sometimes of eating the same thing over and over and over again. But yeah, if I can get away with one pot meals, definitely, especially  when the kids are here, it's like pot roast, casserole, perfect.  Yep. My husband  is like meat and potatoes dude.  And I am not meat and potatoes girl.  I really am kind of over the meat with every meal thing.
27:09Oh yeah, I take a for a week without eating meat and it wouldn't bother me at all. Uh huh. And I was going to make spaghetti sauce last week for having spaghetti. And he was like, do you want to pull out some burger to cook up and throw in there? And I was like, no, I do not. And he looked at me and I said, I need a meal without meat in it tonight. I said, can you just have marinara sauce?
27:35He was like, wow, you are really over it. said, I am really over it. said, I am so sick of meat and starch that I could just die.  I said, so can we just have marinara sauce and pasta? And he's like, yes, we can. And I said, oh, you caught the tone of voice. He's like, yes, I did. I said, I'm sorry. said, me too.  So  resolved. Right. Yeah. There was definitely nights where I'll just have like a bite of meat or whatever. And I'm like, eh.
28:02I love that about having the garden right behind the house in the summer. I'm out there snacking on fresh putties all day. like,  don't need to eat anything else. I'm just going to snack on whatever is growing right now.  I do not want to wish away May, June, and July, but I'm not kidding you. am so  looking forward to having a cucumber a day with my dinner because we don't let the cucumbers get huge if we're just going to eat them.
28:31I can't wait. That too. My husband gets so sick of it because we'll eat zucchini and like a garlic scapes every meal for so long that he's just like, I don't want to see another one. But it's so good. It is. And honest to God, I didn't even know that you could saute zucchini until maybe 15 years ago. And every summer, as soon as that first perfect zucchini comes in,
29:00And it's usually like when the husband is at work and he won't eat zucchini. He does not love green veggies, which is crazy because he loves to grow them. But every summer that first really nice zucchini comes in the house and my son and I chop it up in really thin slices and we put olive oil in the pan, a little bit of garlic powder or actual garlic diced up and just fry it up. And it does that caramelization thing. And that is our lunch. And it is the most lovely
29:30zucchini we will eat the whole summer, the first one. Yep, I like to do that. And I put a little bit of red pepper flakes on mine too to give them like a little bit of a spicy pop. So good. A little bit of a zing. Yep. I really want it to be gardening season and we still have a month and a half. Well, we have a month before we can get anything in the garden. Right. I normally like my tomatoes and peppers and I not until June.
29:57And sometimes it's a week or two into June, depending on how the forecast looks, because I've done it where I'm running out there trying to find buckets or pots to cover everything. Cause there's a frost warning and that's just not fun. So I'd rather wait a little bit longer.  Where are you in Wisconsin? Like mid state, like the driftless region, I guess.  Oh, okay. Cause we plant  basically we don't plant before May 15th because of the frost risk. Okay.
30:27And then we do, and if they die, we just replant them. We just put more in.  Yeah, know June has been pretty consistent for me forever,  and that's what my mom does as well. She's like,  she lives like an hour from me, but she's like, yeah, no, just wait.  Yeah, give it time.  And this year we probably could get away with waiting until June 1st because of the greenhouse, because the tomatoes are already growing and they're going to continue to grow, whether they go out.
30:55gardener this day in the greenhouse.  Right, yeah, we just got my greenhouse last year. That was the new addition. So that was really nice. And filled it up and was like, okay, now I need one twice as big.  Yeah, that's the problem with this stuff. You get the thing you want and then you're like, oh, I could have gone a size up or I could have gotten two, you know.  We  go through that every year. There's always something or like,
31:24Wonder how we could make this new idea happen. Right. It's all about figuring out what's going to make your time management better and everything run more efficiently. And what can you, how do you get more of this or the other thing? And like, we're in the middle of building this new house. And once that's done and we're moved out, we're like, okay, once that's done, we want to tear out the trailer house and build a summer kitchen there because  why not? We need another project immediately.
31:53One thing after another, projects never end, but it keeps us busy, I guess. I'd rather be all these random physical labor projects than watching TV all day. So. Yeah, I'm always saying on the podcast that it takes a special kind of person to be a homesteader.  And I don't mean that in a negative way, but it really does. It takes a very specific kind of personality to handle  this, this life.
32:22of,  so we got this project done and you take a breath and you're like, okay, what's the next thing? Yep. Always looking ahead.  How many more things can we accomplish this year before winter is back?  Yeah, I just got my renewal form in the mail for the cottage food registration here in Minnesota. And I have to sit down and get that started because this is the year.
32:48Michelle that I'm actually going to bake cookies and things for the farmers market and  I have to have that registration or I can't sell them. See, I would bake them and eat them all because  I love my sweets.  Yeah, I'm  I'm at the point in my life where I eat a cookie and I'm like, that's good because sugar really does kind of make me feel yucky. Try it with the maple sugar. Get your hands on some maple sugar. That's why I if I eat any sweets with like a
33:18white cane sugar, I almost instantly get a headache. I love maple sugar. I do not get that problem. And I seriously cut back the sugar amount from any traditional recipe. We are so ingrained to eat so much sugar. It's insane.  And if you just slowly cut back over time, you'll realize, oh, this is still really good without two cups of sugar. Like I can have a cup or half a cup, but it's still sweet.  Yeah.
33:45I don't know, like a year ago, I started just putting a tablespoon of sugar in my coffee to start my day because at that point in the day, I don't care. I don't care if it gives me the buzz. I need the buzz.  And then I don't put any more sugar as I keep adding coffee to my cup over the next two hours. And by the time I'm done with that first cup of coffee, quote unquote, cup of coffee,  it's just black coffee. So that's, that's my sugar.
34:12Basically for the day, I figure a tablespoon of sugar is probably not going to kill me. It's okay. And I mean, you're buying stuff from the grocery store, which I mean, we all have to they put sugar in everything. So  another tablespoon is not going to hurt you whatsoever. Yeah, I wish I could drink it black, but I just I don't love it enough to drink it black. It's got to be really expensive, really fancy coffee for me to drink it black. Yeah. When I was drinking coffee as maple sugar,
34:42and cream, but in like the last six months, my body has decided that it really does not like caffeine anymore. Oh no. I will get like nauseous and dizzy and be down feeling sick for half the day. So no more coffee for me.  Oh, sad. I'm sorry.  And I love the taste  to drink it in the morning and come and give me a kiss. And I'm like, my taste of coffee on you and I smell it and I want it and I can't have it.
35:13Yeah, you're probably going to laugh, but I don't drink alcohol because I don't love it. It's not because I can't. It's not like I have a problem with it. I just don't love it. But I love the smell of whiskey. I hate the taste of whiskey, but I love the smell of it. And my husband will have a snort on the weekend, you know, just a little bit. And he'll kiss me and I'm like, Oh my God, you smell like booze. And he's like, I'm sorry. I'm like, no, no, no, don't be sorry. It's That's same thing how I am with the coffee. So I get it.
35:44Yeah, it's weird. I don't want to drink it, but just the smell of it. like, oh, that's so,  I think there's something comforting about it, which is weird. I don't know.  I'm not a big  beer drinker  or really any alcohol drinker. just, if I can taste the alcohol in it, I don't like it. So if I drink anything with alcohol, it's gotta be sweet. Cause otherwise I'm like, Yeah.
36:12But one of the people that really likes to be like in control and aware at all times so like alcohol that's just not my jam. It was doing the exact opposite of what I want.  Yeah, I think what happened is the last time I had anything to drink that had alcohol in it.  I thought I was being smart and I was drinking some  bourbon,  real sweet bourbon, and I would have like a little bit and then I would drink a 12 ounce glass of water  and then I would drink a little bit more bourbon and drink a little
36:41to drink a glass of water because supposedly the dehydration is the thing that kicks your ass.  And I was trying to be so careful because I hadn't had any alcohol in a couple of years.  And I woke up the next morning with the most horrible headache and I was so angry about it because I was like, I was being smart. What happened here?  And I just haven't had any inclination to want to have any alcohol since. So I'm over it. I'm done.
37:11Also, when you live on a homestead, you probably don't want to be snuckered because, know, if an emergency happens, you got to be on it. Exactly. There's no time to be hungover. You know, you've got stuff to do. I lived in Washington. I used to joke to all my friends out there that I got kicked out of Wisconsin because I was like, well, I don't drink beer and I don't really like cheese. So they actually kicked me out.
37:37Yeah, I don't drink alcohol, but I definitely like cheese. So I guess I would be okay in Wisconsin. I got older, I think I appreciate cheese more, but I'm not one of those people who can just sit down and slice a piece of cheese and eat it and be like, this is delicious. I'm like, no, I'll pass on. So maybe charcuterie? Charcuterie? How ever you say that, boards are not your jam? No, I would go for like the sausage and crackers.
38:06Yeah, me too.  All right. So now we have we have  devolved into small talk and silliness because it's past 30 minutes and I try to keep you to half an hour.  Michelle, I really did enjoy this conversation. Thank you for your time.  And  I really wish you luck in getting your calves to love you because  that one who's a heifer is going to need to be milked.  Oh, I know.
38:33I will keep everything. I've got a lot cross for a lot of people right now. I'm amazed I can walk straight.  All right. So you have a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend.  right. You too. Thank you.  Bye. Bye. If you like this podcast, you would probably love Amy Fagan's grounded in Maine podcast.  You can find her on  all the platforms grounded in maine.com.
 

Still Farms VA

Today I'm talking with Sofia at Still Farms VA.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Sofia at Still Farms VA, which I assume stands for Virginia. Is that right, Sofia? That's right. All right. Where are you in Virginia? I am in Wakefield, Virginia. It's this itty bitty town right between Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia Beach area.
01:23Okay, awesome. I can find you on a map now. That's good.  How's the weather there?  Beautiful, sunny,  80s, lovely. I'm so happy.  Oh my god, it is gray and it's actually muggy here. I think it's 69 degrees in Minnesota right now. Yeah, no, we are finally with the sun out and my seasonal depression has lifted and it is lovely.
01:48It is spring and you, I assume, grow things. So you have to be beside yourself.  I do. I try to grow things more than I actually grow things. But yeah,  we are very happy to have the sun out again. All right. Well, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at Still Farms Virginia.  Sure. So I am very new to homesteading, farming, agriculture,  any of this sort of life. I grew up in Boston.
02:17I was actually a makeup artist for most of my life.  I wore red bottom shoes and that's all that mattered to me.  And  then COVID happened and I was bored and I tried to think of a hobby and  I went to Home Depot and I bought some tomato plants and killed them.  And I bought one bean plant and realized that I couldn't feed my family off of one bean plant  and became addicted. So  we started doing a small garden when I was living in Norfolk at the time.
02:44We started doing a small garden and year after year, I really started to just love the connection to the earth, connection to my food, learning how broken our food system is,  trying to make small changes in my life that I can feel really good about inspiring the people around me.  Then about, just about a year and a half ago, my husband and I decided to take the plunge. sold our business and we bought 11 acres here and have slowly  been trying to
03:14grow food and become the people, do the things that the people we want to be do. So we've got some chickens, we just got some dairy goats, we've got some livestock dogs and we're building high tunnels and greenhouses and really trying to do the thing.  That sounds very familiar except we have three acres not 11.  And my husband and son just,  I hesitate to say the word
03:41finished our high tunnel because the door needs to be hung. Okay.  other than the door being hung correctly because the  hinges that we had were too flimsy and they bent.  as soon as he gets the correct hinges, it will be finished this weekend. Well, you're a little more ahead than me. I've still got to the whole top on.  we're waiting for a not windy day to be able to tackle that project. We get horrible wind here.
04:07I understand they had to wait two weeks to get the plastic on because every time they were ready to go out and do it, the wind was picking up. Yeah. And like I said, I hesitated to say the word finished because God only knows if it's actually finished. He might have another idea for it. That's what I'm learning. Things are never finished. They're just, you hit one stepping stone and then you get to the next one. Yes. And you're not alone, Sophia. Does that make you feel better? It does. It makes me feel so much better. Good.
04:37Good. It's so funny because I mean, I've been talking to people for over a year and a half in the homesteading realm and  the song or the tune is the same, but the words are different  because not everybody's doing the same things, but they're definitely humming the same tune. Sure. We're all feeling each other's pain. And joy. And joy. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah.
05:03Yeah, we have to make sure this sounds like fun because we people to be interested in it. It's fun and it is so rewarding and it's honestly the best thing that I do every day that I question  every day, but it is the best thing I've done every day. Oh, we've had moments of saying, I'm questioning my life choices. Yep.  Every week, I think it's said at least three times.  You know, I look in the mirror and it's almost like five years ago, Sophia would not
05:32recognize who I am today and I'm so  grateful for that but also  it's shocking. know, like just before you called my cat, dropped a skink at my feet and I'm like, oh, thank you.  Thank you for that gift. Where, you know, years ago I would have cried and screamed running away. So  it's definitely been such a  transforming thing in my life, which has just been really wonderful. I am so glad and
06:01your story about the, the, what was it? A sphynx? sphynx? A sphynx. So it's like a little lizard. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I said it wrong.  Um, that reminds me of the saying that, uh, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.  Um,  20 years ago, that was funny. Now it's true. Yes. Yes.  For sure. Yep.
06:26My  husband and my son have both managed to injure themselves here and it hasn't killed them. So it has made them stronger.
06:38Well,  thank goodness for that blessing.
06:42Uh-huh. Absolutely.  they come in the house and I say is everything good every time they come in the house.  That's right. Cause how many fingers do we all have? Yeah. The one time I don't ask, I'm going to hear, I need a bandage or I need you to call 911  or so. Right. So I'm always, I'm always asking and checking in with them. Cause I'm like, um, you guys are doing the hard work out there. Did anybody get hurt?  So, so you said you have chickens and you have goats.
07:12Right. Okay.  How many how many chickens do you have? Sure. So when we bought the property, it came with 21 hens.  We lost a few and then last spring I introduced another 14. So I think we're down to I think we're at 32 right now, including two roosters.  And then for goats, I got two mama goats last
07:41March, I believe it was, March of 24. And then we just had babies in January and I retained five of them. So we're up to seven goats now.  Nice.  Very nice. Do you have babies now this spring?  They were just born this past January. So they're about four months old now.  Oh, okay. All right. Cool.  how did that go? Was that a new experience for you? Totally new experience.  I was really
08:11lucky.  I found myself  along the way just these incredible blessings where things just fall into place amazingly.  And I'm so grateful for that. And I was posting online  in one of the homesteading groups and I just mentioned that I was looking for some opinions on which breed of goat, if anyone had any ideas for beginners because I like to overthink and overthink and overthink before I jump into things.  And someone had commented mentioning how
08:40they breed goats and that,  you know, one of the things to look for in a breeder is to make sure there's somebody that wants to mentor and really be a part of helping you be the best goat owner you can be. And it turns out she's only an hour from me.  So I went and I visited her  and  she's absolutely amazing. She's from Rockville Ridge Farms, if anyone's  interested. Her name's Tara and she's such a wealth of knowledge and she answers my questions at 2 a.m. when I'm like, why is my goat making the sound?
09:09Really, she's great.  But so she, I went out there a few times and I actually got two of her,  we were discussing if I was gonna get babies or adults.  So I got one of her does that was already had been milked before and  had done the whole mom thing. And then one that was a yearling. So that'll be her first time kidding. And  I had them about a year. We got them pregnant in August and then they kidded in January and.
09:37We almost lost one of the babies. My very good friend was here with me and she's living the farm life with me. She's still in Norfolk in the city, but she's here every weekend. She's  mucking the stalls with me. She's raising these babies and  she actually brought that baby back to life. He was born less than two pounds. He was itty bitty, so cold. It was the coldest night in January.  And now he, his name's Francis and now he's everybody's favorite.
10:04He goes to school, if he was a kindergarten teacher, she'd bring him to school to bottle feed him and all the kids were taking care of him and it was just such an amazing thing. Sanefrancisco is famous and he's everyone's favorite.  Less than two pounds. Oh my God. He must have been about the size of your hand. He was like a brand new kitten.  was, he was so small.  Wow. You are really lucky that he survived. That's amazing. We really are. And,
10:33He is definitely just such a joy and he's so sweet and I'm looking at him right now eating dandelions and letting the puff go out in the air.  He's just such a good boy. Do you know how much he weighs now? I don't. I would estimate probably  maybe 20 pounds give or take. I'm really bad at estimating so that may be way off but I think about 20 pounds. Do you think he'll always be small?  I definitely think he'll be smaller when I look at him compared to the other.
11:02babies in that  that kidding.  His mom had four, so he was the littlest of the four.  And he still is he's still much smaller than his siblings. The one  the other mama only had two and her babies are  almost the size of her now they're enormous. Yeah. Well, congratulations on saving the very runt of the lid  of the litter litter.  Yeah, yeah, kidding litter. I'm not sure.
11:30I'm not good with terminology. you know, just say the words that sound right at the moment. Yeah. I don't know what a group of baby goats is called. I have no idea. know cats and dogs, but beyond that, I don't know. We can go with litter. I'll go with that. Yeah. And did you know actually that it's not a litter of kittens. It's a kindle of kittens. I did not know that, but that sounds adorable. Isn't that cute? Yeah. I learned that like a couple years ago. But it is a litter of puppies for sure. So. Okay.
12:00Well, good, then we're good on that. Uh-huh, I love Kindle of Kittens. It's so perfect. The one thing that I haven't brought up yet on the podcast with anybody about research and stuff is that it's really great to have all this stuff available to us online to research and study, but it's also really good to have real books in your home. 100%.
12:26We have probably six or seven books on farming, homesteading, gardening. And that way, if God forbid the internet goes out like it did here yesterday, all day, we still have our books if we need to refresh our memory on how to do something. I 100 % agree. I print out every recipe I can think of. I've got binders for any medical information I need, how to, you know, which mushrooms are edible. And, you know, I think you're absolutely right. Having those tangible items.
12:56You know, God forbid if anything happens that you're able to access is so important Yeah, and actually learning the skills and practicing them for real is really important too because  you can watch somebody on a YouTube video Whittle the most adorable gnome out of a piece of wood. That doesn't mean you can do it Yes,  I 100 % agree with that. Absolutely do do as much as you can  with whatever you can, you know, even if
13:24you're living in an apartment building, there's no reason you can't grow a tomato plant. There's no reason you can't can that tomato, make some sauce,  learn to bake bread, grow from seed. There's no reason you can't do  what you can do in the place that you're at. I 100 % agree. Yes, just do it to scale.  Absolutely. And I love that you said that because part of the reason I started the podcast is because I wanted people to know that you can do this stuff.  Whether you live in a
13:53I don't know, 100 square foot tiny home in  somebody's backyard  or if you live on  250 acres.  doesn't really matter.  could just, ugh, can't talk.  You just have to do it to the size that you're at. The size that you're at and also building that community also.  Everyone doesn't have to be great at everything and building  actual tangible resources  with people that are like-minded and have the same similar goals and have...
14:22understanding of your area or your culture or whatever it is,  it's so important to have those people because this is a hard life  and you know things do get tricky and you know when you've got a chicken that's dying in your arms or if you're trying to deliver the scope baby and you don't know what you're doing it's so important to be able to  really reach out to somebody that's a real person and not a YouTube video that isn't able to interact with you. Right, because the YouTube channel can't.
14:51can't hug you when you're crying. Sure. And that's really important too because if that baby goat had died you would have been crying.  I was crying when he was living.  We were crying no matter what. We were crying  from the sun up to sun down that night. was a night filled with tears and  it was stop and go for a while, know, touch and go for a while. were  worried about it but luckily we had Tara. We were Skyping with her. I think it was about two in the morning.
15:19And she was walking us through all the different options, what to look out for, what to know, what's viable, what needs more  attention to address.  it's so amazing to have those sort of mentors and people that have been there and done that in your life.  I agree. And I  have tried to be a mentor to people when they ask me things about what we're doing here.
15:46And some of them appreciate it and some of them their eyes glaze over and they go,  oh, okay.  I get a lot of that too. A lot of my family gets the glazed over eyes when I talk and just, oh, that is lovely. I'm so glad that that excites you so much. I am excited, know, type of thing.  Yeah, it's actually really amusing to me. My parents own 14 acres in Maine. Okay. And they have chickens and they have a backyard garden there in their, well.
16:14My mom is 78, my dad is 81,  and my dad is talking about not doing a garden this year for the first time in forever. And my  mom is really hoping that he changes his mind. And I'm like,  give the dude a break. He's getting older. But when we bought our place, they were thrilled for us that we were getting off the 10th of an acre lot in town and moving to the three acre lot out in the cornfields. They were thrilled for us.
16:42And then we started talking about our plans for it  and all the things we were going to do.  I swear I could hear their eyes glazing over over the phone. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's not what they're doing with their place. Their place is just their home. It just happens to be 14 acres. Right.  So even your parents will get like,  duh about what you're telling them if you tell them too much.  Of course. mean, I think anyone,  you know, I  think it's that way with any sort of
17:13passionate thing. My niece is a ballerina and as much as I love hearing her talk, there's times that she's saying words that I'm just like, don't know what any of this means or how this relates to anything.  I think that that's just kind of the nature  of conversation. But  yeah, most of the people in my life are pretty good sports.
17:33Although there are some people that are like, just don't need to hear about how, know, grass fed beef is so much better for the world. And I'm like, no, you do need to hear it. It's important. We all need to know it. It's very important. There is a video out right now. I have not had a chance to look at it with somebody and Joel Salatin talking about how cows aren't bad for the earth. And they're not wrong. Cows aren't bad for the earth. It's okay. Really. It's fine.
18:02Right. But I'm really curious to see what that's going to be. I have to sit down and watch it tomorrow. I did not have time today, but I'm so curious to see what they have to say about this. Okay. what's... I don't even know how to ask the question. Do you have plans for your little piece of heaven? I do. So my main goal was I really wanted to...
18:31farm and grow food in a regenerative way. can never say that word right.  I really wanted to make sure that my husband and I, don't have children. So my contribution to this world, that my legacy that I'm leaving behind is that the land that I'm on is going to be better when I'm gone than it was when  I got here.  So where I am, I'm in a very, you know, conventionally farmed spray.
18:59pesticides and actually they just sprayed the fields next to my house two days ago and so all the beautiful hay that was  growing and looked nice and lush and green everything's dead now.  And so there's been a lot of spray there's been a lot of chemicals here and I really wanted to do what I can to build the land back  and grow food and support my family and do it in a way that the earth is is better off for doing it this way.
19:26So we started with the chickens and really starting to get them in place and we've got the goats and goat manure is just super good for gardens and everything.  And then our goal  is probably two years from now because I like to overestimate so then I can surprise myself if we get done earlier.  I'd love to get some beef cows. That's my long-term goal is to get a couple beef cows,  maybe raise one or two calves a year  for meat.
19:56use the rest of them  to rotationally graze and build the pasture back up.  Nice. That's a wonderful plan.  Are you thinking like full-size cows or are you thinking mini cows? That I have to see. We  seeded our pasture. We've only got about maybe seven and a half acres that would be available to the cow. So depending on what we can get  on pasture, how
20:26good we can get the grass because I would like them to be grass-fed as much as possible and only supplement hay in the real cold season.  So because of that, I've just got to kind of see what our land will be able to support. I don't want to put too many animals on it where it just has the opposite effect of what I'm looking for. So there's a scientific balance that I don't fully understand. So I've got to read a few more books and talk to a few more people and get things in place before I really know. But I would love a full size.
20:55That's just what's in my mind, but I don't know yet what that would be. Okay.  Cool.  just,  I know that you can have, I think it's two mini cows,  might be three mini cows per acre.  But the bigger ones, the bigger cows are a little bit more. we've got a pretty long growing season. So we do get grass most of the year.
21:23our pasture is really trying to get any grass.  We can grow it, I should say as a caveat, we should be able to grow it, but to grow it organically without spraying  has proven to be a little difficult without tilling and all that.  So depending on what we can get going and when, will depend on what we'll be able to support, you know,  off the pasture.  Uh huh, okay.
21:46And I'm looking at your Instagram page right now  and you have the most beautiful cat or you did the white one with the gold and black.  Oh yeah.  So she's a story of a friend of ours. So it's a long story. we, when we first moved here, I'm not a cat person. I am a dog person. When we first moved here,  we got two puppies. I got my great Pyrenees Gus  and a great Pyrenees German Shepherd, McSam.  And one day I was in the yard.
22:14and Gus jumped the fence, which was completely unlike him. He's a good boy and he stays in the yard. And he, sorry, we've got helicopters overhead.  And he jumped the fence and found a clutch, or no, was it? Kindle? Kindle. A Kindle of three baby kittens. So he nursed them. They ended up being his babies. He was raising them as his own. He loved them every day. They'd come out and see him in the yard and he'd play with them. Sam adopted one of them. Gus adopted the other.
22:44We got, we had, we ended up getting a home for one. We kept a boy and a girl. We got the boy neutered, I don't know, a few months ago.  He came back and then we had scheduled the female to get spayed about a month ago. And it was at one of the mobile clinics. Long story short, she got out of the cage. She got lost. We caught her. We brought her back, but then she got scared and ran away. And I was devastated. So that cat is my husband's friend  knew that story, heard that story.
23:13and said, well, I've got a cat for you and brought us her,  brought us their cat,  which was an indoor cat, which of course wouldn't work out because we needed an outdoor barn cat. So we found her a lovely home. She's not with us anymore.  Her name's Pepper and she's with a lovely family with a little boy and two other cats and she's very happy. But we had her for about a week.  okay. Well, she's really pretty. I love cats.  I love cats. We have two right now that are barn cats. Okay.  And we have
23:42to at my friend's house that were just born on  Easter day, think. Oh, brand new, okay.  And she's gonna, she doesn't know whether they're boys or girls yet because they're tiny.  And so once she knows, she's gonna bring us a male and a female when they're eight weeks old, because we need more barn cats because we have,  have  foals, V-O-L-E-S-es. Oh yeah, uh-huh. Here and we have mice.
24:09And we have a big old pole barn and the two cats are barely keeping up with the mice. we,  shortage of feral cats is not  an issue that I experienced here. We've seems like every other day I'm like, who are you now at my yard? another cat. really? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a lot in the area.  Um,  as we're saying this, my,  the one kitten that stays, that is still here, Nacho, he's rubbing up on me and he's just the world's best cat. And even my husband who's severely allergic and
24:38never liked cats is obsessed with him and he follows us around to do chores and  he's a good boy. He's the one that dropped the skink at my foot. Oh, nice. Very good job kitty cat.  Yeah. It'll be fun to have kittens on the farm again because we had,  we had three litters of kittens over a year and a half from our mama cat and then she flaked off. We don't know if she  got taken by a coyote or she got hit by a car,  but her kittens were luckily eight weeks old when she disappeared. So.
25:08She just had enough and said, I'm done.  I actually said that to my husband. was like, I wonder if she was just finished. Three litters was enough. She's on her next adventure. Yeah, yeah. She's retiring.  But she was so pretty. She was a calico and she was friendly and she was the longest haired cat I've ever seen. She was gorgeous. goodness.  Oh, nice. So we kind of miss her. So having  a new couple of kittens on the farm for the year will be nice because I've...
25:36Our dog actually loves the kittens. Yeah.  And she's been kind of looking at the pole barn like, why are no kittens coming out of the pole barn? It's April.  yeah, we'll have new kittens I think in about seven and a half weeks at this point.  kittens are always fun. Yeah. And I had asked my husband, you know, he was saying we needed more barn cats. And I said, well, do you want two more males? And he said, no. He said, I actually want an unfixed female.
26:06And I said, why? said, because we can find homes for the kittens.  But if we have to buy cats to be barn cats, that's a lot of money.  Yeah. Get the cats working for you. Yeah. I was like, are you sure? He's like, yep.  I said, you know that every time the mom and cat has babies, I spend eight weeks worrying about them, right? And he's like, yes. And it always works out. like, okay,  Fine. We can do that.
26:36So how happy are you that you had chickens when Alice Craisen has started with the cost of eggs? It's one of those things that I'm swimming in eggs. And when we first moved here, I was so psyched because I was getting a dozen, a dozen and a half a day. Now I'm getting two dozen a day. My husband doesn't eat eggs. My dogs are now allergic to eggs. So I am swimming in eggs. I can't sell them and give them away fast enough, it seems. I'm just...
27:03So I eat quiche every day and we're just doing everything we can trying to make pasta and doing everything we can to go through these eggs because I'm the only one in the house that seems to. The cats can get an egg, the chickens get eggs. I feed them back to the chickens a lot. But yeah, so we've just been absolutely swimming and a few of my friends, this is the first year that I've had people hatch out any of my eggs. So we had, I think we've had five clutches that have hatched so far.
27:32So that's been exciting to see. I'm like, I'm a grandma now. Yeah, exactly. You said you're fairly new to this. So did you know that you can actually crack the eggs into the bigger size ice cube trays and freeze them and they're perfectly fine for baking with? I have done that and I've tried that, but I have so many fresh that I end up never even using them. So I find that if I just feed them back to the chickens, I just use less feed that day.
28:01Okay. Yeah, I've tried storing them a few times then they just sit in the freezer because then I just use whatever's fresh so true. Yeah, yeah Yeah, was a better one. realized my dogs couldn't eat it because I'm like come on guys They eat so much that you know an egg or two a day was a a nice dip in the grocery bill, but not anymore Yep You this is the other thing about this lifestyle. You think you figure out a solution and then something new pops up
28:30100 % 100 % now we've been getting the goat milk. So I've at least been able to give them some of that nice  So are you just using the goat milk for drinking it or do you make soaps or anything out of it?  I've made cheese with it. So I've only started milking  pretty consistently  Maybe the last month or so because prior to that any milk that I was getting was going straight back to the babies So we've made butter a few times  We've made cheese
29:00I do use it  in my coffee and I'm not a big milk drinker, but any place I would use milk, I use it. And then I'm excited to try some ice cream this weekend. We're actually gonna try to make some goat milk ice cream. So that'll be fun. Is the goat milk butter, does it taste different than cow's milk butter?  It definitely,  I find goat milk actually tastes better. I have  Nigerian dwarfs  and  I know when I've gotten goat milk at the grocery store, it's been quite goaty and I'm not a fan of it.
29:30Yeah. And I think there's a few reasons to it. One is that Nigerian dwarfs, even though they produce less  milk than, you know, a full-sized goat, its butter fat is way higher. So it's a much sweeter milk. It does on day five, six and seven,  it can start tasting a bit goaty,  but fresh.  It's so sweet and it's so creamy. And it's really,  there's no,  there's no  aftertaste or anything until, until it's, you know, aged a few days.
30:00Okay, I was just wondering because they're different animals.  they are different. Yeah, for sure. Okay, cool.  Um, so we're at 29 minutes and six seconds. I try to keep these 30 minutes and honestly, I'm sleepy. So I'm going to cut you loose. I'm so glad you came to talk to me, Sophia. I appreciate it. for having me. I really appreciate it as well. Thank you for teaching me some stuff. didn't know.  Well, you have an awesome day and thank you again for having me. I hope that, uh, that somebody got some value out of this.
30:28I think they probably will.  All right. Thank you, Sofia. Have a good night. You as well.
 

Wisconsin Mineral Solutions

Today I'm talking with Gregg at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I needed something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Greg Forster  at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions and he's in Wisconsin. Good morning, Greg. How are you? Good morning. How about you, Mary?  I'm good.  I am your neighbor in Minnesota and the weather here is relatively warm for April and sunny. What is it like in Wisconsin this morning? Right, about 37 degrees and  bright and sunny.
01:26Mm-hmm.  Yeah, we're moving slowly incrementally towards spring. I'm very excited about this and I'm sure you are too. Yes. So tell me about yourself and what you do because I know that you are a genius.  Yeah, like  beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is genius.  Oh, yeah. Well,  over here in Wisconsin I have
01:55on a 19 acre hobby farm, Homestead, where we've got probably about 30 baby goats born this spring. So that's, that's exciting. And most of those are twins, I guess. Yeah, twins and a fair number of triplets born this year. So that's always fun. And kind of kicks off the spring season with a lot of excitement here around the Homestead.
02:24And, um, well, we raise  quite a, I guess you could say kind of like a rainbow of fruits and vegetables here. We've got,  um,  a couple of acres actually of elderberries, and then we grow Aronia and blackcurrant and some red, white and pink currants.  And have a small greenhouse that, um, helps us kind of keep things going a little later into the season and also a little bit early.
02:53So yeah, home setting has been good. We've been  working with Dairy Goats for about 30 years now  and learning a lot.  And my personal background is  I have a degree in physics  and I utilized that for about 20 years  in the world of software engineering and it wasn't until
03:212012 that I turned  that education towards the world of agriculture. And now  I have a business called Wisconsin Mineral Solutions, as you mentioned. And I help  produce growers and dairy farmers  more profitably produce  and more sustainably produce nutritious foods. Okay. And that's where the genius part comes in.
03:46I listened to your podcast with Jill Winger today. I think her podcast is amazing. Like I want to be Jill Winger when I grow up  and I'm trying really hard to grow up fast because that would be great.  Yeah, she does. Awesome.  She's great. She's a lovely human being.  But what I found really interesting is all the science behind  the  making soil work better for you to grow better plants. And
04:13So  did you go back to school to learn this stuff or what, how did that happen? Well, I did not go back to school.  Um, but a lot of the principles that I've been learning and research that I've  come across,  um, my physics background kind of helps evaluate that and understand more how it,  when the rubber hits the road, what's actually happening down there in the soil and then what's happening in the plants themselves. And
04:42I've  encountered quite a few really, really knowledgeable people  over the last decade or so that have been instrumental in my learning and growing. And then of course, there are plenty of good opportunities like Acres USA and the Moses Conference and La Crosse, not too far from here.  So yeah, there are lots of ways to increase your knowledge and become more proficient in
05:12your understanding of how the natural environment works. Okay. I think that you suffer from the same thing that my dad and I suffer from. My dad calls it got to know it is  because for you to learn all of that stuff on your own, to be self-taught  using your physics background, that's got to know it is on a large scale.  Well, I liked the old adage when you're done learning, you're done.
05:42Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think I've heard that out of my dad too. He's 81. I'm pretty sure I've heard every old adage out of my dad at this point. But either way, so Jill was asking you all kinds of questions and she's far more educated than I am on how to ask questions about this because I'm not really the gardener my husband is and he has by hook and by crook been teaching himself how to garden and not use
06:11pesticides or man-made fertilizers and how to till in a smart way and how to add things to the garden because of what he sees happening with the plants. But it's not a science-based thing for him.  So  for those of us who don't know anything about the science behind good soil, is there an ABC to it or is it far more complex than that?  Well,  it is complex.
06:41but it doesn't have to be complicated.  We can approach things with kind of common sense and  I think it does help to get a little bit of science going on  our behalf, like doing soil testing and understanding what's going on there.  But you don't have to exactly understand the nuances that the soil test may imply.
07:09You just have to have some guidance on how to take what shows up in the test and do something  good with that data. So  a large part of my business is working with produce growers  and  quite a few of them market their produce.  Some do directly to grocery stores and  things like that, but  ones that are going through  auctions,
07:38produce auctions  are able to really see the difference if they change their behavior on their farms, the behavior of the buyers at the auctions changes.  we're able to help produce growers to have,  well, from the buyer's perspective, they just notice that the shelf life is longer and that the flavor is better and that the aroma is better. But what's actually happening is we're helping those
08:08vegetables become more nutrient dense  and when they're more nutrient dense all of those minerals and flavonoids and everything are just  Allowing the produce to be more sellable and the buyers like them better so we can definitely affect what's going on in the plants by Managing better what's going on in the soil?  Mm-hmm,  okay
08:34Here in Minnesota, we have a water and soil conservation district thing. And  I interviewed the lady for the county next to ours. I couldn't get hold of somebody in my county. And she was saying that they do soil testing and they will come out and kind of direct you on what the results mean and what you should do.  Does Wisconsin have something like that or are you that?  Wisconsin has that too.
09:04In my experience,  a lot of that,  and this isn't necessarily true for  Minnesota,  but a lot of that is based on or is focused on how to manage manure. And so it's looking at  how much manure can you put on the land before you end up with runoff problems and things like that.
09:31To do that, you don't really need a whole lot of detail in a soil test. But when I look at a soil test, I want to see where the trace minerals are at and how they're balanced relative to each other. So you can get a really cheap soil test that gives you some guidance, or you can get a medium-priced soil test, like around, let's say, $30 to $40.
09:59That gives you a lot more information and can help you  take more strategic action  with your soil.  All right. So I'm trying to drill down to the same thing Jill was trying to drill down with you on.  For those of us who know  nothing, we're just trying to grow a decent tomato that has some nutrient value in our garden.
10:28The first thing you think that we should do is get a soil test and find out what the soil needs.  Is that kind of step one? That is correct. Yes, that would be the first step. Okay.  And then  once you do that test and you get the results,  is there anywhere online that  will help you figure out what those test results actually mean?
10:55I don't know of any place online that would give you any kind of personalized help in doing that, but whoever you do your test through, they probably would have the skills and knowledge to get you in the right direction. Okay. Yep. That's what I was wondering because I can, we did a soil test the day after we moved into our place four and a half years ago, cause we bought a 3.1 acre lot and we had high hopes of growing a garden.
11:24And we did  the soil test for like pH and that stuff but not necessarily I think more in depth like you're talking about and We bought the place without testing the soil. We were kind of dumb. We could have brought the test with us  But we just wanted to make sure that it was a seven point zero because we knew what we wanted to grow which is you know, the usual suspects cucumbers and tomatoes and  onions and things And we were really lucky
11:53because it's perfect. have grown a gorgeous garden three out of the four summers we've been here. Last summer sucked because it rained and rained and rained. And as you know, wet soil is not plantable  and it's not walkable either because then you squish all the air pockets and everything doesn't work under there right.  So last year was not great and  we've got everything crossed this year that it's not going to rain for six weeks straight and that we will have a beautiful garden again.
12:22So,  what else can I ask you?
12:30What really prompted you to get into this? Because I mean you gave me  the rundown before, but what really pushed you on learning about this? Right, well,  in my neighborhood, let's see, this would be probably about 20 years ago  now,  a few of the farmers got together  and were started
12:58started thinking about how they could do a little more like collaborative type of work  and not have to have all the equipment to do everything, able to share some equipment. And we  formed a little sustainability group together.  And  one of the men that  started that, he  happened to be very, very knowledgeable about soil health and  human health and a lot of correlations between the two. And
13:27Um, he told me at one point that if I was going to get,  um, the same amount of nutrition as my great, great grandparents did from eating broccoli, that I would have to eat about 12 servings to their one serving.  And so that was kind of like one of the things that triggered my thinking about this and wondering,  um, you know, how could that be that drastic?  And.
13:53I mentioned just a few statistics when I talked to Jill about a few different things. think I might have mentioned  snap beans,  like tomatoes is one thing that when we look at tests  of tomatoes that are grown,  the most common way like that maybe a university would recommend. And then we look at how Dr. William Albrecht recommended that people manage the soil.  And in his testing,
14:23You know, he went out, he sent students out all over the world collecting soil samples, and then they spun out the humus and they looked at how the trace minerals were balanced in that humus.  And it turns out it's balanced an awful lot like in a  human body is.  And  we're always trying to improve organic matter in the soil. We know that that helps the soil hold its nutrients and everything.
14:54Dr. Albrecht thought, well, what if we  tried to balance soil so that it's mineral-wise balanced like the humus is?  And so he started doing some tests and other people have done some experiments too and looked at what impact does that have on the vegetables that are being produced?  it's just staggering.  for like iron is one that we notice a huge difference in.
15:23tomatoes grown the way Dr. Albrecht recommend have a iron unit of 1,938. If you grow it to a conventional way, you get one. 1,938 to one. That's like crazy difference. also looking at tomatoes, the amount of potassium goes from 148 down to 58.
15:53and magnesium goes from 59 to  about four and half. So these aren't just like a little bit worse today.  It's like off the charts  crazy.  And in some of the,  so some of these things are like a thousand times worse today. And so when I started noticing that,  that just really piqued my interest that we're
16:21We're doing a huge disservice to the whole world when we produce food that just can't really support life like it's designed to.  And  that just kind of fueled my interest and my excitement in learning more about the soil and how all of that works.  Because usually if somebody's this deep into something, something really kicked them into it. And I just was curious what it was. So thank you for telling me all that.
16:50So I, when you say that tomatoes are far less nutrient than they used to be, and sounds like they are, is part of that also that we have created hybrid kinds of tomatoes, they're not heirloom tomatoes, they're not exactly the same as they were in your great grandpa's day? Yes, that is partly true, yes.
17:19I don't know to what extent it is, but I do know when we look at  tomato greenhouses, some produce growers in the same greenhouse are growing heirloom tomatoes and they're also growing some hybrid tomatoes.  you know, the heirloom tomatoes have a much more gnarly kind of look, know, knobby and  they split a little bit more easily and things like that.
17:49Um,  we noticed that the  modern heirloom or not  the modern  hybrid types of tomatoes will grow pretty well  on not very good soil, but the heirloom tomatoes, they need you to do a really good job in managing the soil for them to turn out well. And the reason is because they need more nutrients. They're pulling more nutrients up into them. And so just naturally you're going to have.
18:18a much  richer  product than  with the  hybrids.  Flavor even. Like if you just grab a tomato that's been bred in order to be able to  be transported all across the country and banged around  and still look pretty good.  It doesn't taste the same as a fresh tomato that's  of an heirloom variety.
18:47No, no, it does not taste the same.  It's really interesting. talk a lot about tomatoes with a lot of people on this podcast, Greg. No, no joke.  But when we grow tomatoes here,  we will grow a couple heirloom varieties and we will grow early girls because early girls grow really well and people want to eat them because that's what they think they're supposed to taste like. Okay.  We grew Brandywine, heirloom Brandywine tomatoes one year.
19:16and they were as big as a softball and they were really pulpy but they were also really juicy and they were sweet. I don't think that people realize that tomatoes can have a sweetness to them.  The early girls  never have a sweetness to them and I'm assuming that's because they're a hybrid.
19:36Right. Yeah. The sweetness is,  um, pretty reflective  of the mineral content in them.  And,  um, have you ever eaten a, um,  a black currant before? Yes. I don't love them actually.  No,  you, a lot of people don't, but as soon as you put it in your mouth,
20:00There's just all kinds of things going on.  And your body is like, whoa, what is this?  And there are so many nutrients in there and complex,  uh, complex flavors there.  And  I think you're going to find that  there are some varieties of plants that, uh,  just  are much better at pulling up nutrients and need really rich soil and others you can kind of get away with, uh, less good soil,  but.
20:29what you're going to eat is also less good,  less tasty  and less healthy for you too.  had  a tomato grower  that had some friend from the city come out and visit,  a  young teenage kid,  and he was offered some tomatoes, cherry tomatoes by the farmer and the kid said, oh no, I don't like tomatoes.  And the farmer was like, what? You don't like tomatoes?
20:59No, we'll just try one. And so  the kid just ate one and didn't really say anything. And then a little bit later he reached in and grabbed another one and  pretty soon the whole bowl was gone.  And the farmer was really shocked at how much this person that had only had, I won't call them garbage tomatoes, but you know,  tomatoes that don't really taste like they're designed to.  And once he actually got to taste what a real tomato tastes like,
21:29Wow, he just loved them.
21:33Yep, that sounds about right.  We grew kohlrabis. You know what kohlrabis are? Yes.  Yeah, we grew those at our old house in our crappy backyard that was maybe, the garden was maybe 50 by 60 feet.  And it was not great soil. We had to bring in a whole bunch of dirt. We'll call it dirt because I don't know where we got it from.  you know, the stuff you plant plants in.
21:58And we grew kohlrabi and the neighbor girl had never had a kohlrabi before. And she saw them growing and she said, what's that? And my husband said, that's a kohlrabi. And she said, a kohlrabi It's a kohlrabi. It tastes sort of like a cabbage and a radish had a baby. And she's like, I like cabbage and I like radishes. And he said, well, here, take it. And she, you know, he broke the bulb off for her. He the roots off and the stems off.
22:28or the leaves off. And she looked at it and she said, how do I eat it? And he said, well, if you want to, you can just bite into it. He said, but how we eat it is we take it in and we cut it in slices like you would a radish. And we just eat it like that with a little bit of salt and pepper, very little salt. And she was like, okay. And she ran in the house. I she was like 10 at the time. And she didn't come out for five minutes and she came back out and she said, how many did you plant? My husband's at 20. She said,
22:58She said, if I give you 50 cents, can I get another one?  And kohlrabis are really weird. You know, they're not, they don't look like they should be edible. They're a weird looking  vegetable.  And so we converted her on the spot to that. And she asked us the following year if we were going to grow any. And my husband had already planned for this.  And he said, yes, but it's surprise. Come back in a month. I have a surprise for you.  So she came back in a month and there were purple kohlrabis.
23:28And she said, why are they purple? And he said, I don't know. He said, I just saw purple colorado and thought you might like them. And she took that one home, came back like 10 minutes later  and she said, they don't taste the same.  And I said,  hang on. And we still had the package of seeds in the house. And I looked at it and it's a hybrid.  So I think that she could tell that it was not the original plant.
23:56just from the way it tastes. She didn't hate it. She was like, the green one's better.  so yeah, humans are capable of discerning things without even knowing that they're doing it.  Yeah. And the animals  are, seem to be even more attuned to that.  We have  done experiments where we set out  GMO corn  and you set out  just conventional non GMO corn and even organic corn.  That's
24:26grown  with different practices. And you'll see the  pigs or goats  mostly  come up and kind of check out the different piles and they'll eat the good ones. They will leave the GMO stuff unless they're just really hungry and they've eaten up all of the good  organic corn. yeah, sometimes animals are a little more smart than we are, but
24:54we can  take  these nice brains that we have  and  apply them to our situation and make wise choices. So  I do  really encourage people to do the soil testing.  And sometimes there are just like little nuances going on in the soil that if you can get those turned around,  a  lot of things just start working well in the soil because there is kind of a classic
25:22tool, well not tool I guess,  an image that people use in the world of agronomy that show the interdependencies of the different minerals in the soil  and it's very, very rich.  And  if you have like just a little bit too little of copper in your soil, sometimes you can have potassium deficiencies in the plant.  And if you don't have enough zinc,
25:50Maybe you're going to have phosphorus deficiencies in the plant. Or if you don't have enough boron, then all of a sudden the calcium can't do the job that it's supposed to do. And so we just tweak a few things to get them in the right balance. And all of a sudden things start to change. and I've told quite a few people in the past that I really respect homesteaders for getting out there and doing the best they can to produce at least some amount of their own food.
26:20But I also want them to realize that sometimes they can produce stuff that's not a whole lot better than what they could buy  in the grocery store. And it doesn't have to be that way. They can make changes. Like you were saying, not getting out in the garden when it's too wet and you're squishing out all the air space for the good microbes and getting that soil in balance. And then the food that we're producing is food that's going to be supporting our physical and emotional
26:49and even spiritual well-being too.
26:53Yes, exactly. And that's why junk food is so bad for us. Junk food will actually make you depressed, make you not be able to sleep.  And if you're depressed and you can't sleep,  you're cranky and you're mean.  And so I am a big believer in good, healthy, nutritious food because it literally helps you be a better human being. Not that it makes you a healthy, I mean, it does. It makes you a healthier human being.
27:23But because you're healthier,  you act nicer, you act better, you make better choices because your brain is working better. Right. Right.  So I'm a big believer in growing your own stuff and the more you learn about how to pack it full of the nutrients your body needs because you're taking care of the soil, the better off we're all going to be. Right.  Absolutely.
27:46All right. So tell me, tell me about your goats. Cause if you've listened to the podcast at all, which I'm guessing you probably haven't, I freaking love baby goats. said you have 30 baby goats this spring.  Yeah. We have miniature Nubians  and so they have the big long floppy ears and the Roman nose  and they bounce around so energetically. It's it just gets you in the mood for spring.
28:14I've been in the mood for spring since October.  I'm ready. It's time.  So do you,  are you a goat dairy? Do you sell the goat milk? No, we don't.  Most of what we do with the goats, mean, obviously we use the milk ourselves and we're making yogurt and  a lot  of the summer. We pretty much just eat goat milk blended with berries and
28:43A little bit of maple syrup or honey. We call it utter delight. But the baby goats are used for breeding stock. there's a lot of demand for third, fourth, fifth generation miniature Nubians with strong milking traits. Nice. And they're fun. Admit it, they're fun. They are.
29:12Mm-hmm.  Yep.  I always try to get the fact that raising animals or growing produce is fun in because for people who  aren't doing this yet, there's a lot of hard work in homesteading and growing things, but there's such fun in it  at points in time. I don't want to say it's fun all the time because it's not,  but those moments of joy when you see those baby goats being crazy.
29:41or the moments of joy when you bite into that perfectly grown tomato are so worth it.  all  right, Greg, I tried to keep these for half an hour and we're at like almost 29 minutes and I'm not going to lie, I've been up since 3 a.m. and it is now 1029.  So I'm going to let you go because I'm going to really try hard to get some sleep recouped here shortly.  But  thank you for your time. I really appreciate it and keep doing the good work.
30:11All right. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Thank you, Mary. If you like this podcast, you would probably love Amy Fagan's Grounded in Maine podcast.  You can find her on  all the platforms, groundedinmaine.com.
 

Harvest Of Joy Homestead

Today I'm talking with Joy at Harvest Of Joy Homestead.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Joy at Harvest of Joy Homestead. Good morning, Joy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. You said you're in Mississippi when we were talking before I hit record. So  what's the weather like there today? It's very cold today. Really?  Yes.
01:23Like how cold? Because like I said, I'm in Minnesota. I know what cold is. See,  we don't really know what cold is. Like y'all, it's like 60 here. So it's cold to us.  Oh, you would not be enjoying this morning.  I don't think it's freezing yet. I think we're still below freezing here. Oh, wow. Yeah, we don't know what cold is here.  Yeah, I absolutely know what cold is here.
01:48People assume that I don't know what really hot is, but I can tell you from first-hand experience, two summers ago, we had a day that hit 101 degrees and the humidity was at the tropical level. So I do understand heat too. Yeah. we can be anywhere from minus 30 real temperature in January to 101 and tropical humidity in July. So. Wow. That's insane.
02:18It kind of is. That's why we all have lots of clothes here.  We have, I don't do this. My mom lives in Maine. I grew up in Maine and it's cold there too in the winter.  She actually has summer clothes and winter clothes and she packs away the summer clothes  in  November and she pulls out the winter clothes and then she packs away the winter clothes in April and she pulls out the summer clothes. I don't even bother. I just have all my clothes available and that way if I need 17 layers, I have them. Yeah.
02:49So,  I always start the podcast with the weather, well, almost always because it's just a good way to break the ice and it's nice to know what's going on in the world on the day I talk to people.  tell me about yourself and your homestead, please. Okay. So, my name is Joy. I go by Joy. I'm a homeschooling mom  and  I'm an  urban homesteader in...
03:13I run a Facebook of  Harvest of Joy Homestead for our homestead that we just started this year.  And I also run a Facebook group for Journey to Joy, Faith Family and Life Lessons for moms out there like me that has kids and just started homeschooling. And we just need a little compassion and upliftment and encouragement from each other. That's awesome. I love that.
03:40And I'm so glad that you just started your homestead this year because I don't usually talk to brand new homesteaders who are just building it. So tell me about that. I actually have a license in veterinary technology and so I've always loved animals. Well, I have four kids. I had twins in 2021. One of them ended up having Dandy Walker and they thought I was going to lose both of them. So I ended up having to quit my job to
04:10care for them. And so  the journey kind of started then where God was putting it on my heart to, you know, get your chickens, get what you can. Even though you live in city limits, you can do what you can.  And I kind of just like brushed it off, brushed it off. And last year  I started just getting little things and putting it as a hobby and part of our home school. So now we have  Brahma chickens.
04:38We have  just regular egg layer, barnyard mixes. We have rabbits for meat.  And we also have quail and just got into ducks.  Oh, I have a question real quick about all of that.  If you're in city limits, are there regulations about what you can and can't have, or is it just a complaint-based thing where if somebody complains, then they're like, what are you doing? So for here, it's a complaint thing.  But  we have a fenced-in backyard.
05:08And also  we are very kind with our eggs, so I think that helps.  Yes, yes. Kindness goes a long way. Yes.  Okay. So the Brahma chickens, are those the ones that are small? No, those are bantams that are small, which we also have those. I forgot to add them. But Brahmas are kind of like an uppity breed around here. They have the feathered feet and kind of grow big.
05:35Okay, I'm not familiar with the breeds, I thought I would ask.  So you said you have a fenced in backyard, so I'm guessing your chickens don't fly the coop as it were, or maybe they do and people bring them back to you.  I've actually  ordered like a metal coop off  of Amazon and I just use it. I secured it with hardwood cloth and I put
06:02wood on the bottom and use it as tractor so they never get out but they move daily. Nice.  Awesome.  How big is  your lot? It's about an acre.  Oh, so it's a good size city lot. Yes, ma'am.  Nice.  The reason I ask is we  now live on three acres. We used to live on a tenth of an acre in town, in a small town in Jordan. And we had four chickens and we had a coop for them.
06:32And they never got to get out because there was just no place for them to get out.  So we put in like a screen door and  like screen windows for the chickens. So we'd open the coop doors and then the light would pour in so they would have some fresh air and some sunlight. Because I felt terrible at the idea of just having them be in a big box,  know, with no fresh air and no sunlight. Because I wouldn't want to live like that. Yeah. Okay.  And you said you have rabbits for meat.
07:02And I know you have baby rabbits, because I looked at your Facebook page yesterday. I was like, oh, I'm so jealous she has baby rabbits.  Yes, ma'am. And I'm loving it. I'm loving it so much.  Aren't they the sweetest thing ever? are. They run to the gate.  When they see me coming, all of them run to the gate, because I always have some treat for the day. Yeah, they're very food motivated.  think all baby things are food motivated. They're like, hey, that's new. Let's go try that.
07:31Couple, well maybe three summers ago, we had gotten rabbits with the plan of  having them for meat.  And  I've told the story a billion times on the podcast, but I haven't told it to you. They did not get the memo that they were supposed to make more rabbits.  And we got  one  litter out  of a year of having meat rabbits, and I was like, I'm done, this is dumb. We're feeding these guys and they're not earning their keep.  But the one litter,
08:01ended up coming into my house in  a clear bin with mama because it got so hot for about four days in June that we lost some of the babies to heat. And  I was not going to let the other six die, you know, from being outside  in the hut. So I got to have baby rabbits in my house for like three weeks on my table in this bin and it had holes drilled in it so they had good air.
08:30And every morning I got to go and say hello to these baby rabbits and pick them up and hold them and talk to them. And it was so fun. Yeah.  My dog really wanted to be friends with them. But  what I discovered is  obviously rabbits are a prey  animal. Yes. And my dog, who's an Australian shepherd, is a predator animal.
08:55And I didn't think anything about it until I was holding one of the babies and my dog wanted to see it. And I put my hand down and my dog was just very gentle and trying to sniff the bunny. The bunny screeched like, oh, that's a bad thing. Get that away from me. Yeah. So you don't want to introduce baby rabbits to predator animals because they just know. Yeah, it definitely has to be slow. Like my dog is always around, so they kind of know him. But at first they was like, oh,
09:25Yeah, it's crazy how they know what's a danger to them and what isn't. Because they didn't scream when we would pick them up. They were fine. But the minute that baby rabbit smelled my dog on the air, she was like, no, they know. Yeah, it's crazy.  I'm so impressed with the way that Mother Nature designed everything because  it's it's literally  a dog eat dog world.
09:53And the animals that are not capable of defending themselves  know how to keep themselves safe. Yes, ma'am, you're right.  So it's just amazing.  OK, so you said you have chickens, have rabbits, you have kids. Yes, ma'am, I do. Yeah, twins and then two more. Yes, ma'am, have an  older son, the twins, and then I have a daughter.  OK, cool.
10:22And you said that one of your twins had something and I didn't catch what it was when they were babies. He was born with dandewalking and hydrocephalus. Oh, okay. I don't know what that first thing is. It's actually something that you really don't hear. we had to go to a specialist because doctors didn't even, like half of them didn't even know what it was.
10:43It's something like a missing part of the brain. And so it's a part where fluid's supposed to pump through, like your brain pumps the fluid through and out.  And here's this missing,  and just a little side note here. They actually told me that he wasn't gonna make it and that if he did, he would be a vegetable. He went to the doctor last year and they said if they didn't have his chart, they would never even know anything was wrong.
11:13I am so glad. That's amazing. Wow. anybody I talk to and they ask me about him, I always tell his testimony.  Uh huh. Yeah. And that's a good thing because you're giving hope to other parents who might be going through the same thing. Yes, ma'am. Wow. Okay. So do your kids, are your kids in on the raising the animals too? Or is it just your, your bag mom?
11:38Um, my daughter isn't cause she's just too young right now, but the boys they love it and they actually just got some chicks the other day that they're, um, that they're helping raise up.  Nice. Nice. And they know all about being gentle and sweet with the babies. Yes, ma'am.  Uh huh. Yeah. It always scares me when I see a toddler grab a baby animal because I'm like, either it's going to bite it  or
12:05the toddler is gonna squeeze too hard and it's gonna hurt the baby animal. And honestly, toddlers understand gentle. We have been gentle with our babies all along, so they do know what it means. It's just about teaching them. Yeah, yep, exactly. I can remember when my youngest son was probably two. He was outside and I went out to check on him and he had a toad, know, not a frog, a toad, in his hands.
12:35And I was like, be careful, because he was holding it real tight.  And apparently he had just started holding it really tight because it peed on his hand and he dropped the toe.  And I said, OK.  I said, from now on, if you're going to pick up something smaller than your hand, you have to be soft. And I took his hand and I put it in my hand and I pressed on his hand and I said, does that hurt? And he said, no.
12:59and I squeezed a little harder and I said, does that hurt? And he said, no, but it's not as good as the first one. I said, the first one is gentle touch. And from then on, he's been  so gentle with every little tiny thing  and he's 23 now. So. Wow. That  was a pretty good lesson. I could use that.  Yeah. He did not appreciate a frog or a toad peeing on his hand though.  He jumped as it did it and dropped the toad. I was like, oh no, here we go.
13:28So yeah, you can teach your kids all kinds of things like that that seem really  abstract, but there are ways to illustrate it for them so they can understand what you're saying.
13:41So,  okay, so do you grow a garden on your acre or not?  This is my first year actually trying.  So I pretty much just only growing what the rabbits like,  like radish and  I did do spinach for us and the rabbits kale. Yeah. And I also dabbled in  onions this year and they're growing pretty good. So I'm surprised.  I'm not.
14:08Onions really, really don't like having their feet wet. And I'm assuming that Mississippi  is warm all year round. I mean, you said it's cold there, but 60 degrees.  So I'm not surprised that they're doing well. Good job. Thank you.  Yeah. I don't know. Do you like tomatoes or cucumbers?  I do. I plan on... So  we're doing buckets right now because...
14:35We're planning on expanding and growing from here. Yeah. So we're not really digging in the ground or tilling anything. So I'm doing a bucket method. And so I'm planning on doing tomatoes and  cucumbers and the bush beans. Yep. Okay. Good. Cause really if you're going to be a homesteader, ma'am,  gardening is really important. Plus  not only are you feeding the chickens, you're feeding you  and you need to be fed too.
15:05Yeah. So, okay.  So, you sort of touched on why you started doing this at the beginning, but  can you tell me whether you were brought up around people who did this or if it was just something you got interested in?  I wouldn't say I really grew up around it.  My granddad had cows and things, but I was never old enough to
15:33By the time I got old enough to know about farming and stuff, they didn't do it anymore.  My daddy would raise pigs and butcher them, but it was never like we had our own pigs. He would go buy a pig, raise it a little bit more. So it was kind of, for my family, it was kind of unheard of. So I'm kind of like the crazy chicken and animal lady in my family. No, you're the smart chicken and animal lady in your family. Yeah.
16:01I want to take that crazy word off the front of things like that because  it's not crazy. It's smart. Yeah. It's not crazy, but it seems like around here, everybody is like, wow, you're doing that. Like, yeah, it's feeding my family and we know our food, their love. I know it sounds weird to other people, but their love, we take care of them, but we know where they're coming from. We know what they're eating. Yeah.
16:29Yep. And that's why I want to take that crazy word off the front because I want people to understand that just because they don't raise their own food doesn't mean it's crazy to raise your own food.  It bothers me, you know, I've heard it forever. I've heard it mostly with crazy cat lady or for people who have lots of cats. And yes, there can be mental illness associated with people who have too many cats or dogs or I don't know, whatever pets, but
16:58When you are doing something that is positive and it is improving your life, I don't think it's crazy in the least.  So that's what I'm saying. I don't want crazy associated with Homestead anymore. I want it to be smart because I think it's smart to Homestead. And you know what? I really needed to hear that. I really did.  Yeah. It's really hard when people don't, they don't understand or they don't appreciate what you're doing. And
17:26Like you said, you said you're giving your neighbors eggs  and so people are okay with you having the chickens. And it  takes people like us to do what we're doing.  Share the rewards of what we're doing with the people who aren't doing it for them to realize that it's a good thing. Yeah, I agree. We did that back when we lived in town.  We dug up our whole backyard and put in food we could eat. We grew food we could eat.
17:55And of course we grew more than we needed. So we took bags of tomatoes and cucumbers around the neighborhood and asked our neighbors if they would like some. And then we didn't seem quite so quote unquote crazy because everybody loved it. So  if you can, if you can share the bounty,  it really does bring people on board with what you're doing and they don't think that you're nuts anymore. Yeah, I call it abundance of blessings. That's what I call it. Yes, exactly.
18:24When we have an abundance of blessings here now on our three acres, we take lots of stuff to the local food shelf because  we want people who can't buy good stuff at the grocery store and can't find it sometimes to be able to have  good homegrown produce from our garden.
18:44And the guy that runs it is a friend of ours. And  when we asked him if he wanted tomatoes for the food shelf, he said, sure, how many you got? And my husband said,  boxes  of them. Wow. His face lit up. He was like, bring all you got. Everybody wants tomatoes right now. And it was so fun, Joy. Like, your name is Joy. There was so much joy in bringing this stuff to the food shelf because we were like, we have had to use food from the food shelf before we know.
19:14that when you're in a hard place, it's important to be able to get good food at the food shelf, not just macaroni and cheese from a box.  It is.  I believe everybody's been there.  And I think it takes having to be there to know how to help others and like what's needed. So that the end of the day, money is not important. It's the help and the love and the brother and sisterhood that's important in that.
19:44pushes you through.  Yeah, um, speaking of that,  one of the times, well, my husband volunteered at the food shelf in the town that we used to live in.  And there were times when we needed help too, cause people go through that.  And some of the ladies who were part of the board for the, the food shelf had put together the blankets that are like fleece and you just put two pieces together and tie them, you know, they have like a fringe all around the edge.
20:13When I went down to pick up my husband from the food shelf when he was volunteering,  one of the ladies who happens to be our neighbor said, do you want one these blankets?  We made too many. We have like a hundred of them. And she had one that no one wanted and it was sage green on one side. And it had like these button designs on the other side against a black background.  And I said, I would love to take that one if nobody's, you know, said anything about wanting it.
20:40She said, it's so funny. Nobody wants that one. They think it's ugly. And I was like, I think it's beautiful. I'm gonna take it home with me. I still have that blanket. I use it every winter here. Wow. Yeah. And just because nobody liked it, nobody wanted it. So I guess the point of my story, cause we're talking about food shelf stuff, is sometimes you find things that you don't expect and it really is a gift that you did not know you were going to get. Yes. Yes.
21:10So,  okay, so are you enjoying your foray into urban home setting? I'm loving it. I'm really loving it. It's like my quiet place, like  life getting too hectic or it's a hard homeschool day. It's just good to know I have my own oasis to go to. Yeah, yep, exactly.  And  when you do...
21:39when you go to that oasis after a hard homeschool day,  do you just like stand and look around and think, wow, look what I'm building? Or do you just listen to the chickens talk to each other and just breathe in and out?  It depends on the day. Some days I'm out there and I'm like, wow, like  I  see growth, even though we just started, I'm already seeing growth of what we didn't have and where we at. then some days it is like,
22:07Let me go hold a rabbit and breathe.  huh. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure that you have days where you enjoy homeschooling your kids, but I'm also positive you have days where you're like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Anybody with kids on the stage.  Uh huh. Yeah. I, I have a lot of respect for moms who homeschool their kids because I did it with my two youngest boys.
22:33And I was lucky I used the online platform so I didn't have to develop curriculum.  And even that was hard because my oldest was a senior in high school of the two. And he was doing pre-calculus.  Wow, yes.  I took pre-calculus in high school. Do you think I remember any of it? No, I do not.  I also think it's a useless math.
22:58class to teach a senior in high school who's not going to go on to become a mathematician, but that's just my opinion. And he would get so frustrated and I would look at what he was doing and I didn't know how to do it. Like I did not have the background to help him.  One of the most frustrating things of my life was that class with him. And so when  we moms take on the education of our kids, even if it's through an  online platform for homeschooling,
23:26It's a lot of time and it's a lot of patience trying to help your kids through it. Yes, you definitely have to pray and grow in patience.  Yes, you do.  And the  mantra in my house was, your grades do not define you.  Amen.  That's what I tell my son. Because in public school, I've been there. That's where I went. It's kind of like you get it or you don't.
23:54and we don't have time to stop on you.  At home school, it's tough and you might not remember how to do it, but it's always some way,  some always shows that whether that's a person or a YouTube video or something that helps you help your child.  Yep, exactly. And  like I said, my oldest with the pre-cal, he was really getting depressed about it. Yeah. And I emailed the advisor or whoever it was that was
24:24you know, the boss or whatever of the class.  And I said, he's really struggling, like he's not sleeping. And the guy was like, I don't know what to tell you.  I can't  give him a pass. And I was like, I'm not saying give him a pass. I'm saying help him.  He says, I need to talk to you during office hours.  Don't just be like, read the book. He needs help.  And he never got it. He never got help with that.
24:54And it made me crazy.  anyway, I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole on homeschooling, but I respect what you're doing, Joy, because I've done it and it is hard work.  so  are you going to continue doing the urban home setting or do you have hopes of getting out of the urban setting and more into the rural setting? I'm hoping to get more into the rural because I just, I want a lot of things.  I want goats. want
25:24Maybe. So I want our own little beef cow, maybe even a beef and milk cross. Nice. That would be great. Is there, this doesn't sound like a stupid question, but here in Minnesota right now, well for the last couple of years, there haven't been a lot of small acreages available for sale because during COVID everybody moved to the country who could.
25:52And so a lot of the small acreages got bought up and everybody is kind of sticking there. So is, is there, are there small acreages around you at all? What do you count as small?  Like under 10 acres. Oh, so it is a lot of like,  um, country, we call it country land around here.  It is a lot of country land for sale, but it's kind of like the prices are like crazy. Cause I guess they know people are looking for that.
26:21So we're just trying to wait it out and build and we're telling and speaking into each other that God gonna give us exactly what we need when we need it.  Speaking it into existence, yes. Yep, exactly.  And in the meantime, you can be honing your home setting skills where you are and then you're ready when you make the jump. Yes, ma'am. And  one of the things I would suggest if you don't already do it, I'm making an assumption here.
26:50is if you don't cook from scratch, learn how to. I've actually started baking. Good. it's pretty fun. It depends on how the kids are feeling,  if it's fun or not, because I try to incorporate them on things like that. So they're already learning without realizing they're even learning.  And so that's also one of reasons I got the duck eggs, like the ducks for eggs, because I heard with bacon, it's amazing. Yeah.
27:20I keep hearing that too. I haven't done it. But I keep hearing that duck eggs are richer and they're better for baked goods.  A friend of mine has ducks and she keeps saying next time she comes over and we haven't set up a time yet that she's going to bring me some duck eggs so I can bake with duck eggs and see what everybody's talking about.  It's good to have friends who have things that I haven't done before who want to help. is. It is because it's like I have  a friend that
27:48I actually got my first rabbits from her and  she has chickens and pretty much everything that we want to one day have, she's already had.  We had a fox attack  last week, like literally last week. And I was just, I was battling flies and maggots and trying to figure out what is going on. And she really helped me. So it's always good to have a friend that's an elder in the game of homesteading.
28:18I'm so glad you said that. I'm glad you shared that story because it really is good to have people who are doing it, who are willing to help. And I call them Homestead mentors. You know how you would have a mentor in school?  I didn't really have a Homestead mentor when  my husband and I started this back 20 years ago, learning about this stuff. I just watched YouTube videos or  went to blogs and read things. And I was like, I can try that and I can probably do it. And then I would do the one thing.
28:48and I would figure it out and I would master it and I'd be like, what's next? What else can I learn? So there are ways to do it, but having a person to show you the ropes really is  fantastic in a way that  reading about it or watching a video is not. It's very different. Yep, I agree. I'm so excited for you. You're at the very beginning, Joy. You have so many cool things coming down the road for you.
29:15Yes, ma'am. And it's just fun. The reason I created the Facebook for the homestead is not even to like  make money or anything, but it's just to show like you don't need what you see on a lot on YouTube. It's like the big beauty and everything. It doesn't have to be perfect. You do what you can with what you have. I love it. I say that all the time. Do what you can with what you have where you are.
29:42I am so glad you came to talk to me today, Joy. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for inviting me. I was so nervous, but you are very welcoming. I really have enjoyed myself.  I'm glad. you have, you have absolutely illustrated my point that you can do this,  even if you live on a little tiny lot of property. If you can put in raised beds or bucket gardens or  have a space for a chicken coop, you can do it and you're doing it. So thank you for sharing.
30:13Thank you. All right. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

The Punk Rock Farmer - Part 2

Today I'm talking with Jonathan Lawler at The Punk Rock Farmer. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. That doesn't work here. mean, I said number one, said, when you have 12,000 tomato plants planted per acre, the pheromones that we're releasing to the hawk moths and the gypsy moths, everything that wants to come a beat on these, that's going out. Huge, huge signals.
01:26And I said, we try to use, I mean,  I do integrated pest management where I try to incorporate insect predators and,  I encourage hawks here.  love the fact that I have hawks. My wife doesn't like it because of her chickens, but I like having hawks here because mice are such a problem for us as produce farmers. They are just the bane of our existence.
01:54we're getting ready to install 27 miles of drip irrigation just here at this location. And when we install that, the mice in the middle of summer when it's dry will actually chew on that drip irrigation. To get to the water. To get to the water. so,  you know,  I've always told people, like, I'll have guys who work for me and they'll see a snake and they'll go to kill it. said, that's fine. But you kill a snake, you got to do his job for two weeks for free.
02:22You know, because he's eaten the things I don't want him. We have bees and we're able to educate people. They're like, well, how can you use chemicals  and have bees? Well, because number one, the stuff I'm using, bees aren't chewing on the plants.  And these insects have to chew on the plants in order to ingest it. Number two,  we also spray in accordance with how the bees
02:52Whether they're, you know, we don't like to, we really don't like to spray plants late in the evening, but, uh, we will, we won't spray before a big bloom, like a big bloom of watermelons. We don't spray. mean, there's, there's things that we actively do that there's nuanced conversations that we can have with the people that are all or nothing. When it comes to there's people that are like, no chemicals all the way. That's the way we should do it. And then there's people like, absolutely don't use chemicals. And I see myself as.
03:22I'm the dude in the middle saying if I don't have to spray, I'm not going to. But at the same time, don't take the tool tools away from me that I need to help feed people.  And that's that's  that's  that's a hard part for me sometimes  is  what people tell me now.  The funny part about those those ladies that came, they were awesome.  They were like you guys, you know, she said she wanted to know how we  manage rabbits. And I said, Well, we throw lead at him.
03:511300 feet per second. Us too. Yes. And I could tell it took her a second to understand what I was saying. And I was like, all these, all these cute German shepherds that are your best friends right now that are, are, you know, circling you for, for their next pet. These guys also do it. They see a rabbit, they kill it, you know, and that's kind of, kind of how we've trained them to be. And they're like, yeah, we,
04:18But I'm like, you guys are also in urban environments. So discharging a firearm would probably be frowned upon. you  know, the things that you can do, I mean, I didn't really have an answer for him because I've always been able to manage pests the way we saw fit. Yeah.
04:40Yeah, I'm going to jump in for a second.  I think that what  everybody needs  regarding  these stories you're telling is number one,  listening. Number two, critical thinking. And number three, understanding what you heard and realizing that  it doesn't have to be  one way or another. It can be a blend of a bunch of things. Correct. I mean, I've always said in my mind,
05:07I've always said that the, the pinnacle of agriculture at some point is we're going to take the best of conventional and the best of organic. And we're going to be able to, to kind of merge them together, which I already kind of do on my farm. There's organic products.  I, I,  I, I, some of the truth telling that I, that I think has gotten me in trouble before is I was an organic farm. We were conventional. I switched to organic. I switched back.
05:37And so there were certain crops I just I could not grow them well organically.  Not without  a  huge reduction in yield as well as a lot of loss. Other crops though, especially now with the organic inputs that are out there. I don't know why an organic tomato cost more. Than a conventionally grown tomato.  I don't know why an organically grown bell pepper.
06:07cost more because the only difference in the growing methods, at least from what I can tell is the inputs and the inputs really aren't that much more expensive anymore, especially when you're buying them. If you're growing at scale, that you know, you're you're you're buying them in bulk. So the cost isn't really that much more. I think that like the Corteva product, I think it's $30 more a pint if it's organic.
06:37But that pint mind you is 700 bucks conventional,  but it makes a lot of product. I mean it makes a ton of product. So  yeah,  I see a lot of things in food that that I'm super critical of that nobody wants to talk about.  You know we could be growing organically or people can be growing organically. They have the tools now to to  to.  Really?
07:06Be able to compete with it, compete with a conventional farmer. But if I go to a farmer's market, I still see $7 pound tomatoes  and people  say, there's $7 a pound because you know, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. They have a checklist of things. Well, no, there's $7 a pound because you can't take advantage of economy of scale. That's why.
07:35And I don't have a problem with that. buy those seven dollar tomatoes sometimes just see what they taste like or if they grow a variety that I don't.  I'm happy to pay that to the farmer. Where I get up where I have a problem is is when farmers markets are utilized as things that can address food access, especially if we're talking about affordable food access here in Indianapolis, they put a farmers market in the city's largest food desert.
08:04And I went to it  and they had number one, had stuff that nobody wanted.  Um, you know, the, the, it was the kale or the, you know, these, these different, you know, the varieties weren't great. And  what they did have that the community looked at was  not affordable to them. They, they, you know, they did that. The tomatoes were  not one vendor was selling them for less than $5.
08:34They were all organic. The requirement of this particular market and this deal that they had made with this, with the center they were doing it with was that everything had to be organic and everything. And I remember I was speaking to the person that had put it together  and she was basically, I was there, we had some of the kids there and she's like, the very fact that none of you have tasted.
09:05and organic strawberry picked  right from the field is just, I just can't believe it. You guys have no idea what you're missing out on. And that's why this is important. And I just, wanted to like, just get in her face and be like, listen, you know, these kids, they're going to school with no food. They didn't eat breakfast. They're, they're, they're on the lunch programs.  And on top of that,
09:34They have no idea  where to go to get those organic strawberries that you're talking about pick straight from the field. They're lucky if they get a conventional strawberry from plant city, Florida, let alone what you're talking about. And your strawberries are very expensive. They're out of their price range. Even their snap dollars that they're all given to spend there. Just do not go very far when the prices of the food is so expensive. And we kind of looked at that.
10:02We started doing farmers markets just to address food insecurity. And we had this lofty goal of, well, if we're going into an area where there's a poverty level, everybody's on SNAP, everybody's on this or that, we're just going to provide, we're subsidized basically by our private funders. So we're going to just give the food away for free. You know, we hear something crazy. Nobody take it. Really?
10:30Nobody, they all insisted on purchasing it. So we made the tomatoes a dollar a pound. And when we made them a dollar a pound, they loaded up  on them. They, know, cucumbers, you know, our cucumbers were a quarter or you, or you could get, you could get five for a dollar, you know? And,  and so, I mean, we had, we had, you know, especially a lot of grandmothers.
10:59a lot of African American grandmothers that were saying they're going to show their granddaughters how to make pickles.  And what surprised me was as, you know, some people go out and look for pickling cucumbers. My grandmother never used pickling cucumbers. She always used a different type of cucumber.  never  I I always preferred those over the pickling ones.  And I think so today. But.
11:26I realized then that it was also about dignity that they could, they could buy this fresh produce. They could go home, make a meal for their family and be able to say, look what I got for you. you know, not every farm can do that. And that, wasn't an expectation, but that's why when people say small local only small local only like, okay, fine. But how do we feed people?
11:56You know,  the demographic that you're thinking of in your mind of that suburban soccer mom or suburban baseball dad that will come and drop a hundred bucks at your farmer's market without blinking an eye. That is only a percentage of what the American public is. The  folks in the urban areas and even rural areas that are living at the poverty line. There needs to be a place for them. Number one, to participate.
12:27And that means being able to buy. They should be able to buy it. But participate in such a way that.
12:35they can afford it and it doesn't like, doesn't like rock their bank account or they don't feel guilty.  I  had the pleasure of being at a dinner with Joel Salatin  and  Joel Salatin said, I don't want the single mom living in a food desert to be my client. That's low hanging fruit. That's what he said, it low hanging fruit. And I just thought, wow.
13:04Any respect that I had for that dude went out the window when he said that because as a farmer, my job's to. My civil  service is to make sure that my community is fed. That's my job.  And.  The greed and there's nothing wrong with somebody making money. You should be able to. Sustainability is also financial. But to kind of throw my clients.
13:32under the bus as if they're not important or they shouldn't be what somebody is striving to have as clientele, that just rubbed me the wrong way. And I was just like, okay, well, I'm going to try to do even more now. I outproduced his farm big time. Granted, he's only meat. I'm 99 % produce, but pound for pound, we
14:01What I do  is,  is I care more about making sure that people have this access.  Um, and if I want, if I wanted the money, I could have, I even as running the nonprofit, I could have just,  I know so many nonprofit leaders that,  know, they're rolling in cash. You know, they take these gigantic grants and they use them for everything other than the service that they're supposed to provide.
14:3010 % of it  is used for the service and everything else goes over. We actually got to where we were providing  one pound of food and that pound would, a serving,  to where it had the servings of three vegetables and protein for  almost  right at a dollar.  Now we were non-profit, so what I always tell people is you can't, because we were non-profit, we're subsidized by private.
15:00Private entities we actually never took any taxpayer dollars.  Subsidized by. By private entities we were able to do that.  So now that I've kind of closed my nonprofit we we we've we've you know we've got with the board and we said we don't want to do this anymore.  We feel like there's other ways to be more impactful.
15:28I can still, can't get close to that number, but I can still get to where it's affordable and my farm makes money.  You know, and that's because then that's how I feel. Everybody has a different path.  I do get a little bit hung up and that's what I'll call it. know, niche growers,  the pasture raise folks, those folks, the holistic farmers. When they,
15:57go as far  as saying things like,  isn't,  know,  if you're not buying this chicken, or if you're not buying this beef, or if it's not grass fed, or whatever it might be, you know,  it's almost a form of food bullying. And I don't like it, you know, because I know plenty of holistic growers,  holistic producers, they don't do that. They're like, this is what I have.
16:27This is what I, this is what I produce. If you want it, I have it. And they are providing such a valuable service for, for those folks that seek out that type of food. It's just when I,  when I see some farms and I just, there's one, I just talked about this. There's a farm on Facebook I used to follow. I had to stop following them because they're, they're number one, crashing farmers like me, you know, that, that, that, that's.
16:57here and over there, I can see that a lot. But they were trashing anyone who was making a decision based on the price  of the food. again, that's because I've worked in this, I've worked in this sector  of the hunger. I know  the sacrifices people make on food.  We're not  talking about people that are sitting on welfare at home. We're talking about
17:26People that some of them have two jobs and they're still in the poverty level.  mean,  it's just a very odd thing or there's a mental health issue.  Um, lot of, a lot of addiction issues that, that lead to hunger. But we always used our food as kind of a bridge to say, Hey, we can help you with if it's the mental health thing or it's the addiction thing, we can help you. You know, here's the, here's the bridge that we're building the food come across.
17:57And then with other people, was just about things. Healthy eating was not affordable to them.  And,  uh, you know, I, I met him,  uh, uh, a mother who we actually owned a grocery store in Indianapolis that our farm provided stuff for and multiple other farms did.  And,  uh, she was, she could not afford the organic eggs that were in the store.  And.
18:26There were some, couple other things, cause we offer both organic and conventional. And I told her the conventional stuff actually, I showed her the stuff that we were talking about. And she had three boxes of Annie's organic macaroni and cheese in her cart. And I was like, do you really think because that says organic on it, that processed cheese junk, whatever it is, is better than a conventional tomato?
18:54or a salad that you can make for your kids  or  that conventional watermelon that your kids would absolutely love. Do you think that's better?  And she said, I don't know.  said,  I kind of went through, she asked me a lot of questions about how we farm and I was able to answer. She loaded her cart up with my produce,  which I was happy about.  those are the nuanced conversations.
19:23And I do, I see that right now. I see a lot of barbs being thrown from like the holistic grower side of, you know, cattle that never, that never, uh, never are on pasture. I don't know. I mean, I raised cattle for market. I've never had them a hundred percent on a feedlot. They're two thirds of their life was spent on my pastures. And then, you know, when they go to finish, that's somebody else doing it, but
19:52That's where they're going. I don't know that. I don't know.
20:01why that's happening right now, why it's such a push  to trash every type of farming operation without actually knowing how it works.  I do think it's not understanding the complexities of the American food system that, you know, I don't believe that a whole list, if we went back to a holistic method, like say how Salatin is maybe telling us to grow or these other people are telling us to grow.
20:31I don't see that being able to feed our population. just don't know how it could. Not without like every fourth person having to go back to an agrarian lifestyle. And I also don't see the American public wanting to do that. I don't think it would be a bad thing. just don't see them wanting to do it.
20:56Yeah, I mean, it's work. It's hard work. It's good work. I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in real quick cause we're coming up on like 55 minutes now.  You are a storyteller. I love that. I love everything that you're doing and keep doing it.  But I think that part of the reason that people are so quick to jump on each other, whether it's  egg  or I don't know anything right now is right now people are so stressed.
21:24And so worried and so  unsure of what tomorrow looks like that everyone is kind of on edge and it's coming out sideways. Now, I don't know how long you've been seeing this behavior that you're talking about. I I'll be honest. I think you're right because you know, Joel Salatin and folks like him have been around for a long time.  Um, it becoming mainstream in the sense of and again,
21:55Joel Salatin is one of those guys that I love that he gets people interested in agriculture. I just don't love how people will hang on to a sound bite, he said, and think that that's the gospel truth.  Or that what he just said will apply across the board, because it just doesn't. But  I think what you're saying is absolutely right, because it's just been recently where I've seen so many...
22:24And again, I've seen in the past where farmers like me or a skilled farmer will throw barbs at a small farm  or a conventional farmer will throw barbs at the organic folks.
22:39But the amount  of people just saying, know,  if it's not grass fed, if it's not pasture raised, if it's not X, Y, and Z, if it's not organic, if it's not, you know, it's It's bad. bad.  And that is to me probably what you're saying.  think, you know, a lot of these small farm operations, operate from
23:09Market to market.  It's, you know, almost like a paycheck to paycheck kind of thing. So I'm sure it's stressful. And if they can try to convince somebody to buy their product, you know, because they're worried about the economy or worried about whatever. And also, I mean, the political climate, everybody needs a bandwagon chip on right now. I mean, that's that's  something I see. You know, I'm not a fan of RFK. I'm not.
23:35You know,  and I'm in very red Indiana  and you say you're not a fan of RFK, then they're like, well, you must be like a Pico liberal. And I'm just like,  I have very cruel values, but I also understand what RFK  is and what he has done to farmers in the past.  And,  you know, that doesn't mean that I disagree with everything, you know, that he says, but there are some things that I just, I'm not.
24:06It's kind of a weird thing that people will take what their political party, somebody from a political party is saying about agriculture and then the accountant that lives in the suburbs all of a sudden becomes an ag expert and is going to tell me what I'm doing wrong because he just happens to be in line with that party. That's not quite how that's supposed to work. Right. You know, I mean,
24:33So yeah, but you're absolutely right. think it's just everybody is so uncertain of everything. Yeah,  it puts people on edge. And that's why I think it's better than ever right now is if you have  like these holistic farms and then like conventional farmers kind of locking arms, because ag's a big tent and there's room for everybody. Everybody has a place at the table. If we did that, it would just be such a better
25:03a better outcome, understanding that, you know, I'm not going to grow all the tomatoes for the city of Indianapolis, even though I grow a lot of tomatoes, you know, I'm not going,  you and, and, and same thing for this pasture raise operation over here. They're not going to be able to grow  all the pasture raise stuff that somebody needs, but if it's marketed correctly, they'll do well. This farm over here will do well. And if everybody's kind of working together  and
25:32And we're a unified front. It'll, it'll bring the Americans public's trust back to  agriculture  and it'll make us all stronger for it.  A, a rising tide raises all ships, so to speak. use that phrase all the time, Jonathan. Yes, it does.  Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wrap this up because I try to keep my podcast to half an hour, but this one I'm just going to put on the show notes. It's a long one guys, but it's worth it.  Um,
26:01Thank you so much for your time and thank you for ending on that note because  if we all just take a collective breath, step back, look at what we're doing and maybe try to build community around us,  things could be better. Oh, absolutely. So thank you so much for your time. appreciate it. Perfectly. I was I'm glad you had me on.  Oh, I'm glad you could be here. Have a great day. Yep.
26:26Thank you.