A Tiny Homestead

KayLeo Urban Farm

Today I'm talking with Scott and Marilyn at KayLeo Urban Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Scott and Marilyn at KayLeo Urban Farm in Indiana. Good morning guys. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good.  What's your weather like? Cause ours is gray and it's raining. It's gray, but not raining. It's to rain the rest of the week though.  Yeah. I'm in, I'm in Minnesota. We got like an inch of really wet, fluffy, gross snow last night. got up this morning. I was like, what? No.
01:00No more. It really nice weather until this week basically. Yeah, this spring or what amounts to spring, it's been spring for two weeks really, has been really chaotic here. Like last Friday it was 80 degrees here and then was 35 on Saturday. I'm like, what are you doing? Yes, that is chaotic. So yeah. You guys have the tornadoes as well.
01:29You have? Well, not here. We're at our place, but in Indiana. Yup. I think it's going to be another crazy growing season. And I was really crossing everything I have that it was going to be a moderate season.  Oh, no guys. It's going to be interesting to see how the summer goes.  Okay. So.
01:50I am so excited to have you as guests because you guys are doing something really important in Indiana and you're actually in Indianapolis or near Indianapolis. Yeah, we're right in the city  on the northwest side of the city. Okay. Tell me about what you're doing. Cause I looked at your website and I was like, Oh my God, you guys are special. Like you're really, really doing something good.  Well, thank you. So we are a nonprofit urban farm.
02:17We bought the property about 10 years ago and have been a nonprofit for the last five years. We kind of focus on three areas. So growing  healthy food for people.  And then we get that food to people through, we started a farmer's market. This will be our fourth season starting  later this,  well, in June we'll start that. And we also do a matching donation  to either local food pantry or specific families.
02:47as well. We  try to do education related to growing the environment,  how to be sustainable. We do that through field trips,  working with different groups, classes, opening our farm to people,  and we focus on environmental stewardship. So growing in ways that are going to benefit the environment and leave this place better than we found it, and then helping people learn how to do that as well. Fantastic. Scott, do you have anything to add? Because I have lots of questions.
03:17I mean, she said it well, that's pretty much it. All right. So how did you guys get into this? How did this start?  Well, like Marilyn said, we bought the property about 10 years ago. We've been kind of wanting some property for a while.  We talked about  options of living out in the country and  looking for more property out there. But Marilyn really felt called to stay in this within the city limits here.
03:45And that kind of limits it a little bit, but we've happened to find this place, is nine acres within the city limits. I don't know if you're familiar with Indianapolis. It's fairly spread out. There's actually, you can find three to five, maybe even 10 acres of places here and there in the city. Less and less, of course, as time goes by, but it's kind of rare, not totally unheard of, but it's rare to find a this big, especially in our part of town where we are. It's pretty developed.
04:14This had been a farm for a decade before this, then this place, we're the third owners of this place. But we found this place and got it in June of 2015. And then we weren't sure what we wanted to do with it exactly. We knew we wanted some property and some more as a space, and then talked about doing some sort of animal rescue here, kind of a...
04:40sanctuary for animals and we do that a little bit still sort of. But then we kind of started getting just into growing. So we had some raised beds and some things and kind of just started enjoying that. And we're fairly near to some food deserts. Not exactly one, but kind of around us. And even in our area specifically, we saw some of the grocery stores closing and.
05:06people have to walk a lot or go places to go to Walmart and that kind of thing. So we started thinking more about food, how we could provide food for people. over the course of the years, the years we just kind of kept growing more and more and getting bigger and bigger in that sense. And that's kind of our main thing we do on the property here now. Nice. Okay. So my next question is, food has been getting more and more expensive over the last two years, as we all know.
05:35So with what you're doing, are you seeing people who need food now that didn't need it two years ago? You know, I think we saw our first year as a nonprofit was actually 2020. So the year of the pandemic and that year  we just gave like 98 % of the food away. We worked with a food pantry at the local high school. They were seeing like a dramatic increase in the number of people visiting that food pantry.
06:02I'm also a teacher and I work in that district as well. So  I was staying connected with them. And then  what we have seen  is people more interested, I would say, in finding things locally.  And I think as food prices increase,  local food is becoming more affordable as well. think people have an interest in where their food comes from, what the process is and how it's being grown. And so we have a lot of people who are
06:31specifically looking for things that are local  and also wanting to know how to grow  some things in their own backyard, even if they can't produce all that they need, but  they have a desire to just grow a little bit at their home as well. Okay.  And do you get to interact with the people that come to your place or at  the pantry or wherever you're at?  Do you get stories from people? So this
06:58You know, we interact all the time with people at the farmers market and our farmers market accepts  like some assistance, SNAP  and some of those assistive programs that are specifically helping people who are  financially insecure buy fresh produce.  And so we interact regularly with those customers.  Last year we worked with another nonprofit in the city  called MyGross Indie.
07:25And they work with the refugee and  immigrant population. so instead of  working directly with the food pantry last season, we had specific families that we would create kind of like a CSA box for, and we would deliver  that to  those families. So we did have more interaction last year with families than we did, we have in the past. A lot of times at the food pantries, it was more just dropping it off.  And then the people who worked at the food pantry would distribute it.
07:56Okay. So do you have any like, I don't know, adorable stories or tragic stories or just stories from the people that you have talked to who you're helping?  I would say, you know,  we've been working specifically at one apartment complex and it's almost a hundred percent immigrants and refugees that live there. And they are so excited to have fresh food.  A lot of those communities have not grown up with processed food. And so having fresh food to cook is
08:26It's very joyful to hand those boxes of fresh produce off. We  have some other farms that we work with who also donate  or we provide  their like chicken and those kinds of things in there as well. So it's just been a joy to meet people who  are excited to cook.  Sometimes getting all the produce and food that they need is not accessible  because of the expense. And so it's nice to be able to  see people who really enjoy and want to use the food.
08:55Yeah, I'm guessing when you guys show up, there's some really big smiles on people's faces. There are even from the kids, they're excited about it. Sometimes a little confusion. Sometimes there's a language barrier. We figured out pretty quick how to just basically let them know we're here to help them when I provide food for them and they get to just have it pretty quick. Okay, so you guys grow a lot of the food, I'm guessing. so how...
09:23I know it's really hard to quantify produce, but do you know on average how much food you are growing and supplying? Oh, gosh. You know, we used to weigh everything. The first couple of years, we wanted to keep really strict records and we weighed everything we sold and everything we donated. And what we just found was that taking the time to do that just really slowed things down. We know it's thousands and thousands of pounds every year. We don't know exactly how much though. We can't really say anymore.
09:50We have, we grow an overall about the size of almost an acre, I'd three quarters of an acre to an acre, which doesn't sound like a whole lot, but he actually, can grow quite a bit in small space. We have two and soon to be three high tunnels or hoop houses, whatever you want to call them. We have raised beds all over the place. We have some fruit trees and other things. it's, but it's hard to wait. We're not keeping super specific records of that anymore, just cause it's taken up lot of our time. Yeah.
10:20but thousands of pounds is  fantastic.  So is it just you two running it or do you have help? So it is mostly us.  Over the summer, we typically hire a summer farm person to help out. And then we have  a friend who also grows  cup seasonal flowers on our property. And so she does the flower gardening part, but also will help out. And we also have volunteers.
10:49different groups that come in and help individual people that come in and help. And it's Scott's full-time job. So he does this full-time. Okay. That's what's that. That was going to be my next question was, um, how are you doing anything else but this? And I'm a teacher, so I have the summers off. I'm June and July. And I'm pretty much here as well. You guys must be the happiest, healthiest people in Indianapolis. I mean, we, we are very fortunate to live here. feels like.
11:18And to do this, feels like a blessing on most days. You know, there are some days when it's 95 degrees and very humid that we're like, what are we doing again? But most days we feel very happy to be able to do this. Full disclosure though, I'm not that world's healthiest eater. You think having so many vegetables around I would eat better, but I try. makes me eat more than I want to. Good, keep doing that, Marilyn. We need Scott to stay in the world with us here.
11:49Okay.  Um, what else? Oh,  you have a bed and breakfast, well, not bed and breakfast, but you have a farm stay situation at your place too. Can you talk about that? Yeah, we have a, an attached, what is now anyway, an attached apartment on our house.  Uh, we're not exactly sure what it was used for by the previous owners, but it has its own entrance, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room. Um,  and when we first moved in, we had a friend live there for about first three years we were here just.
12:19monthly printer.  And then she got married and we thought, let's try the Airbnb route. So we have done that. It's been pretty interesting. We meet a lot of interesting people from all over the world, like China, Germany,  Portugal, mean, all kinds of places.  And of course, lot of local people as well.  come in for you wouldn't think Indianapolis would have that many  visitors all year round, but we have a lot of conventions.
12:47our convention center downtown, lot of sports events and  things. it's fairly busy. We actually had to dial it back a little bit because we were so busy doing that, especially in the summer, but it's pretty consistently booked.  Okay. So the people that come to stay with you, did they have free rein to explore the property and  check things out? Within reason.
13:12We don't want them to go into our barn, but they can go walk to the gardens and the property in the woods and visit the goats and chickens.  yeah, we want them to enjoy the experience of being on our little small farm here as well.  Yeah. And as it says on your website listing or your website information about this,  Indianapolis has a lot of things to offer and you're not far. So people can come have this  bucolic, beautiful
13:41farms day experience, but they can also go catch a game or go see a show or whatever they want to do. That's the comment we get a lot is that people, feels isolated because we are, our property is surrounded by woods as well. I mean, we have condos right next to us, to the north, and then a housing addition right behind our property. But you, don't feel that way, especially when everything's in bloom, because we're surrounded by probably four acres of woods as well.
14:12It sounds so pretty. I just, love what you guys are doing. So you were saying that you are, are you teaching people too? We have, so we have open farm nights during the summer. Sometimes we've extended it a little bit other months as well. But so every, I think it's the second and fourth Tuesday, Tuesday from six to eight, we have sort of just events on the farm. And it could be like how to build everybody's bed.
14:42chickens 101 or how to, you know, trans, how to pot up tomatoes. So we do things like that. And, we've had some other things like yoga. We have some yoga classes going on and it's free for most of our people to come and just participate and just learn how to do different things. Um, we think, you know, our, we like our place to be used not just for us, but for other people, our community is well, um, so we offer some, guess we call them educational opportunities. Fantastic.
15:11I can't say it enough, I love what you're doing.  So I don't want to be nosy. I always feel weird asking questions about funding.  how are you funding this place? Because if everything is basically for free, how  are you making it go?  So we have  donations.  We try to raise money  and get donors.  We have a partnership with a local church that helps.
15:40Do our funding we've gotten some grants as well and then  the farmers selling at the farmers market  Not only our produce but also the flowers  the flowers are a big moneymaker. They help  fund a lot of what we do Okay, so  that's not necessarily though our farmer our flower farmers mission is to bring beauty to the world  and so It's important that the part of the flowers on the farm are gorgeous
16:06I mean, they really add to the atmosphere here, but they also are a great way to fund some of the other things we're doing. And we do,  we've done, we do fundraisers, different fundraising things throughout the year. We've had dinners,  we've had concerts on our porch, know, different things like that.  We have some  field trips and some schools, depending on their financial ability, they will pay to come as well.  Some schools,  the schools closest to us can't really afford to do.
16:35pay field trip. So we try to offer some of those for free as well.  Nice. Okay.  And like I said, I always feel really weird asking about money because I was brought up that you don't talk about money and I get really weird about it. So I try to very gently ask. It's hard. We've gotten grants as well. One of our high tunnels, we had an equip grant  through the USDA, the NRCS. and they've, we've gotten grants through them for cover cropping and mulching and
17:05native prairie areas. So we've tried to work with some of that funding as well.  Nice.  Grants are great. The problem is right now, a lot of grants are dead stopped through the government. We don't have any of those right now, though. We have a friend who runs a farm on the north side and they are out of funding, basically. So  yeah, they're great, but there's a problematic time right now.
17:32It sure is. So I'm going to say this again. I've said it a few times in the last month and a half. If you're looking for grants,  go small, you know, to the local level or the regional level, not federal level, because if you're looking for grants from the federal government right now,  may not be there.  Yeah, we've done some grants from some larger,  one of our board members is on it works for a larger company in the in the city. And so we've gotten
18:00grants from them a couple of times as well. They their like policies that if their employees are volunteering with an organization, you can apply for grants. So that's been really helpful as well.  Awesome. Good.  Cause  I want you guys to keep doing what you're doing. You are,  you are helping  so many people on so many levels that it's really important that you keep up your enthusiasm for this. We're trying.  Yeah.
18:30I just, I really,  I'm a mom of four, okay? They're all adults and they're all doing fine. But I just, as a mom, I worry about all these young people who are going to be graduating college in the next  month or so, if they haven't already. And they're like 22 years old  and everything is crazy right now.  And things are expensive and rent is expensive.
18:58car prices are going to be going up, thank you to the tariffs.  it's just, I can't imagine if my kids were that age having to step into this world right now as,  you know, fully fledged quote unquote adults trying to make a go of it. Yeah, we were just talking about this this morning about we have,  yeah, it's just, it's a funny time because growing up we were basically, made the assumption you'd be able to afford a house and a car and get a good job.
19:26that is really necessarily the deal anymore. can't just assume that for everybody anymore. My youngest is 23  and he still lives with us. He helps out on our homestead  and his friends are just struggling right now. The ones who are around his age, not all of them, but a good percentage of them because they just  don't have the resources to live a  comfortable is the wrong word.
19:56reasonably comfortable life right now. You know, the one thing I've noticed is that this place draws people, I would say, of that age to it. They want to be here. They want to like learn how to do the things that maybe their families never did or they heard that their grandparents did. So the person who's going to work for us this summer, she's 23. She's
20:23You know, she has another job, what she sees her future as growing things and incorporating that into her lifestyle. And so, you know, she wants to learn how to do it. Uh, so it's exciting to see people of like, I think that's one thing about farming,  um, gardening. kind of draws people from  all age groups, all lifestyles.  Uh, they, they want to learn how to do it and be a part of that community.  Yes. As I'm, I'm sure you guys know the trades are suffering.
20:53for people to come up into them too.  And  honestly, a lot of ag is trade,  is a trade job. And the more young people you get to come into what you're doing and experience it, the more likely they are to pursue it. So even that's great that you're doing this. It's pretty great. Our local high school, which is a huge urban high school has an ag department. Nice. And so  we, one of the,
21:22one of the teachers in the Ag department has his own small farm and he is part of our farmers market as well, but he teaches animal husbandry classes. So they're like hatching ducks and chicks and quail and they have rabbit and they're learning to grow. So there are kids in this urban population that are learning those  Ag skills that they could then take on to,  you know, maybe not a  major or maybe not a career, but at least have those skills for themselves. Yeah, exactly.  I
21:52I wish we had had ag classes in my high school when I was growing up in Maine. We didn't have them. They didn't offer them. Yeah. And I lived in a  country-ish setting and we still didn't have those options. You either, your family was farmers or you just, if you didn't grow up in that, you didn't learn how to do it.  Yeah. I mean, there was 4-H,  but that wasn't through the school. So, and  I- It's unfortunate that the circumstances are leading to it, but one of the benefits, I think,
22:22or silver linings of the current situation in the world and country is that people are have to learn how to grow their own food and how to fix things and how to weld  and fix cars and  do things like that. Trades that we didn't necessarily, weren't passed on to us that hadn't been passed on, we're have to kind of relearn. So hopefully we can,  one benefit of all these things going on is that we can learn the stuff again. Yeah, and the good news on that is that a lot of the trades
22:51are being able to use your hands, directions, and try doing the thing. Other than maybe car repair, the newest cars, that's going to be tricky for people. Especially newer cars because there's so many electronics and stuff. Yeah, but I I've told the story once on the podcast, so I can tell it again. I've been doing this podcast for 18 months.
23:18My husband, I really wanted some cabinets for my laundry room in the old house. We've lived in the new house for four and a half years now. And the laundry room was really small. So we had to make cabinets ourselves because there were no stock cabinets that would fit. And he put this off for like six months. And I said, honey, why, why are we not building cabinets? And he was like, because I'm afraid I'm not going to do it right. And I said, okay.
23:47I said, do you have the instructions? And he's like, yes. I said, have you read through them? He said, yes. I said, you pretty much know how to do this. He said, yes. I said, all right, I'm going to help you. How can I help?  And he said, I just need you to like hold the corners so that I get them square.  was like, I can do that. That's no big deal.  He made the most beautiful small cabinets. They were all completely square. Got them hung in the room. I loved them.
24:17I just stood there with him and I was like, gaze upon your success.  And it wasn't, it wasn't hard. That's a lot of what growing is. It's a lot of trying something out. And then if there's a mistake, you learn from that, but sometimes it goes well. So, you know, neither one of us grew up in farms. We grew up in farming communities, but you know, we've learned a lot. took classes through Purdue and then.
24:45You know, have just learned along the way things that work and things that don't work and just trying it out. Like you're saying you just try it. even things that aren't necessarily growing food, you know, just owning a farm. You learn how to build things and you learn how to fix things and you just, you know, we can't hire somebody to it. It's about a chicken coop or to fix a fence or we have to just do it ourselves. And so you like neither one of us was very handy when you first moved in here, but we're much handier now than we used to be just to experience and trial and error.
25:15Yeah, I think it's one of the beautiful things about farming and homesteading and all that because you really do have to be a certain kind of person  to be willing to even attempt it. And that certain kind of person is someone who's curious and not afraid to try things. And that's the joy of life, I think.  The other thing I've said a lot on the podcast is that you really have to be a person who can feel your feelings and then move through them.
25:45and step out of them.  that's true.  You know, when we first bought this place,  the home wasn't livable.  So we had to do a lot of work and then  the land had been overgrown. So we had to you know, clear a bunch of stuff.  it was really hard, especially the first four years. And a lot of times we were like, what did we do? You know, why would we have done this?
26:14And so it was a lot of like regret, sometimes regret or just being very unsure about what was happening. feeling in over our heads. Yes. Feeling in over our heads a lot. We've gotten through, I mean, there's still moments of course, but it's not like one thing after another so much anymore. But it's funny just the things that would have upset us back then, you know, when something breaks or we can't figure something else out, you know, now when that happens, like, well, it'll work itself out. That'd be fine. People figure it out eventually.
26:44you learn to rely on the fact that you'll get there. If it needs to be done, you'll get it taken care of. I agree because  I used to, when we first moved here, get really upset about things.  And now,  four and a half years later, I'm like, oh, that thing broke. I guess we either fix it. If we can't fix it, we find somebody to fix it. And if they can't fix it, then we have to buy a new one.  Or you just realize, I don't need to live with this and just not worry about Yes, absolutely.
27:12And I am a firm believer in the primal scream or the good cry. Even things with like our chickens, our animals, if a chicken would have, when our first chicken died, we were sad, we were broke about it. And we're not, not that we don't care now, but it's just like, that's part of why chickens die, or crops fail, or things you build fall apart. it's part of the deal.
27:41dealing with it and learning how to handle it in a mature way is part of the whole process. I love it. It's a beautiful thing to learn that. And that's the other part here is that with you guys having younger people come in, they're learning some of these coping skills ahead of time. I hope so. And that's really important, I think. I had one more thing I was going to say about all of this.
28:09I think it's gone. hate it when I do this. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. It was just one of my things that I'm like, and. So what's the future look like for you guys? Well, I mean, we're not planning on going anywhere. We kind of figured when we bought this place, we're tied to Indianapolis for as long as we can. I always joked with own that I wanted to
28:36bury me up in front of our yard under the magnolia tree there. But, you know, just as like we've been talking about a little bit, things are kind of crazy right now on the road. And I just see places like this, you know, people growing and their own food and doing their own thing, home setting, if you will, or farming as more and more necessary. And I think we're just going keep doing this and keep providing for our community and teaching others to do the same as much as we can. Awesome.
29:06I feel like your place is an oasis of  beauty and good things.  mean, people have definitely said that we feel like that for sure.  We live, the farm is off a pretty significantly busy road,  but  it's got a long driveway. So, and there's a bridge that goes over a creek and it feels like you're in a different space once you cross that bridge.  You know, it just feels, it's quieter.
29:33And open openness, know, in cities, there's not a lot of open spaces. Uh, and so, um, that openness is something is one reason we don't grow on every inch  of our property. Um, just so that there is some openness. feels sort of like,  uh, space to breathe.  would say. Uh-huh. Yes, absolutely. Um,  my last, my last question for you guys is we're rolling into 30 minutes here. Um,
30:02Do you still, if you leave, like if you have to go somewhere to get something and when you're driving back, do you get within like sight of your property and still have that moment of, can't believe that's home? Yes. Yeah. All the time. Apparently regularly. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, there's times where in the winter when it's a little, you know, Indianapolis is kind of bleak in the winter. You know, it's this cold. It can be pretty even when the snow is, but especially in the spring and summer and even in the fall.
30:32because partially because all the trees around us, it's just you pull in and you're like, I can't believe I get to live here. You know, it's such a privilege. And especially for me, I had some kind of terrible little apartments I used to live in, you know, in four areas and it was kind of a rough feeling. But this is just, yeah, it's just, it's so nice to come home to this. Yeah, I, the reason I ask is I get that feeling every single time and we've been here four and a half years. And I
31:01I really wish that everybody would have the chance to experience that feeling of real homecoming.  For sure.  But not everybody does. I think it's sad.  But I'm glad you guys get to experience it because I mention it to people all the time and they're like, you've been there over like almost five years.  You're still madly in love with it. Like the money moving phase is never going to end. I love that place so much. Yeah. And it goes quick, doesn't it? Yeah.
31:30Yeah, I can't believe we'll have been here five years on August  7th. think it is. Yeah, it goes fast. It does because we're so busy living it that you turn around and a month's gone by and then six months have gone by and then five years have gone by. You're like, what happened here? Yeah.  So, all right, guys, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today and
31:58Keep doing the good work. I mean, you are so important to your community. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Oh, for sure. This was great. Thank you. Have a good day.
 

The House and Homestead (and surprise! a bit about Homestead Living Magazine)

Today I'm talking with Anna at the The House and Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anna at the House and Homestead. Good morning Anna, or afternoon Anna. It's one o'clock in the afternoon here. I  screw up the intro all the time.  Good afternoon Anna. How are you?  I'm good.  sorry Mary, where are you located?  I'm in Minnesota. You're in Minnesota. Okay. So I'm a West on Vancouver Island. So it is actually morning here for me still.
00:57Okay, well, it's one o'clock in the afternoon here, sort of. Fair enough.  Yeah, Vancouver Island, right? Yeah, that's right. In Canada? Yes.  Yes. I looked at your Facebook page this morning or your website or something and I saw Vancouver and I was like,  I swear there's a Vancouver in Washington state, but I think she's in Canada. So now we know.  Yes, yes, there is a Vancouver in Washington state as well, not too far from us as the crow flies, I guess, but we're out on the island now, which is...
01:26Lovely. Yes. And would you believe that I scheduled two interviews on the same day for two women in Canada? I talked to somebody in Canada this morning as well. Oh, no way. Cool. I was like, wow, that was weird. Who knew? And Canada is a great place. have been to visit once. We took the Northern route from  Illinois back to Maine. So drove up to Canada and then across and back down to the Maine because I grew up in Maine.
01:53Oh, cool. You've probably seen more of Canada than I have then. I've been only to Quebec once and I've never even been to like Toronto or anywhere back east. I've traveled way more extensively in the US than I have across the rest of Canada because it's actually quite expensive to get back and forth across Canada using our airlines. Yeah, there's not a ton of competition here. So the prices tend to be high. I used to actually work as a travel agent funnily enough in another life and it was
02:20often cheaper to, I kind of joked it was often cheaper to go to London, England than to London, Ontario. So, you know, if I was going to book a trip, I'm like, well, I may as well go somewhere, somewhere else, you know. Expand your horizons. Yeah. I think I was a teenager when we did that and I actually got wet from the Niagara Falls spray. we stopped in Niagara Falls too. Yeah, it was pretty neat. Okay. So tell me about yourself and the house in Homestead, please. Well, I
02:51grew up with zero homesteading background. I did a little bit of gardening when I was a kid. remember with my grandpa, that was about as close as I ever got to growing food or anything. I remember he had a little backyard garden in the city where we live. I grew up in Vancouver in the city or in a suburb of Vancouver. And yeah, when I was a kid, I remember my grandpa had a little garden in the backyard and he would grow
03:15beans and peas and tomatoes and a few things like that. And that was always a novelty to get them fresh from my grandpa's garden in the summer. And then I would help them out there. But other than that,  I really had no experience growing food or doing any type of like food preservation or even like cooking. didn't like get into cooking for myself until I moved out in my twenties  and, kind of had to figure some of that out.  So I, you know, didn't come from any type of
03:44home setting background.  in  about my mid twenties,  my husband and I, we were engaged at that point, but we were kind of trying to determine what our future would be and where are going to stay in the city? Where are we going to look elsewhere? And  I was just feeling very  disenchanted  with city life. was like that typical kind of stuck caught in the rat race and like, is this how it's going to be forever? And I was struggling with anxiety and  depression and mental health issues at that time.
04:12I'd always noticed that like when we got out into nature and just kind of got away from the traffic noises in the city and the hustle and bustle, I just felt at ease. I felt calm.  And I wanted to, I knew at that point I wanted to get out of the city, but I didn't know what that looked like. And around the same time,  we started watching a lot of documentaries on  Netflix and whatnot at the time. And it was right when
04:37all those big food documentaries were coming out like Food Inc and Farmageddon and all those big kind of food expose, I guess, documentaries. And we started watching those and we're just horrified. I think I knew at the time like industrial meat production and farming and all that stuff was bad, but I didn't really know the ins and outs of it. it started to really open our eyes to that and A, how unhealthy it was, but
05:06be how unsustainable it was as well. And we were just like, you know, this is not going to last forever. And, you know, there's got to be other solutions to this, right? So at the same time, as we were kind of looking at moving out of the city, we were kind of getting it,  the seeds started being planted, that, you know, maybe there was another way to live. And in these documentaries is the first time that I heard the term homesteader come up, at least in the modern sense.
05:31because, you know, they would kind of do these exposés on big egg and whatever. And then they would introduce you to people who were doing things differently and who had chosen to go back to the land and start growing their own food. And it just opened my eyes to this lifestyle as even a possibility. I had never even considered it before. And so, you we kind of put two and two together and we're like, well, if we move out of the city,  maybe we can start doing some of this. Right. And, and, and that really appealed to me at the time because I wanted to be out in nature. I knew I wanted to get back.
06:01the land in some way just for my own mental health.  And so that then kind of became my obsession and I started taking out every book I could, you from the library on homesteading and small scale farming. And,  and then, know, one thing always leads to another.  You inevitably then find, you know, resources on preserving food and on, you know, herbs and making herbal medicine and all these things that kind of fit in with this lifestyle. And so at that point, I was just really learning about it, but I was set on
06:29that wanted to do this and luckily my husband was on board. So after we got married and I finished school, we decided to move out to Vancouver Island. So that's where we are now. So we are in a place called the Comox Valley,  which is about midway up the island. So  a couple hours from the biggest, like the next large city,  but we are growing here as well, but we're kind of just on the outskirts. So we've got kind of a
06:54town, it's still I guess would be considered the you kind of a town, not a big city, but it is growing but we're kind of on the outskirts with I like to say kind of one foot in  rural living and one foot still in suburbia. We are on a quarter acre on a cul-de-sac that kind of backs onto a green belt. So from the front, it looks like we're a pretty average, you know, suburban lot.
07:19And then in the back, backs onto this green space. But out front, we have a large garden.  That's our south facing area. we  just on our quarter acre alone, we grow hundreds of pounds of food every year. We have some backyard chickens.  We're expanding the gardens this year. We're building a greenhouse. do a ton of preserving now. You  know,  the sourdough bread, all the things.  And so in between that, basically to backtrack a bit, I'm getting a little bit off course, but
07:48We had moved out to Vancouver Island and rented at first and we were on, um,  we were on a little bit larger lot,  um, close to an acre, but we had, uh, we were able to put in some raised beds. The owners let us put in some raised beds there and they had a big old apple tree and an old cherry tree. And so that is where I actually started to learn how to garden and how to preserve food and all that. then, so when we bought our place here, um, I had some of those skills and we've just continued to expand ever since.
08:18I love it. I love it when the people I talk to are like, I was a city girl and then I was like, I need more. I'm going crazy living in the city. And then I moved to this lot where we had a little bit of room. We put in some raised beds. We started growing things and wham, I decided I needed to be a homesteader because that's a lot of the stories that I get, it is.
08:42I also get the stories from the people who are like, my grandpa was a farmer, my other grandpa was a farmer, I grew up steeped in growing things and I just had to keep doing it. So  yeah, definitely those are the two ends of the spectrum. I think what I  am trying to lean into right now, because sometimes I feel like because I do this in the space, I write the blog, I help teach others how to do this. I'm the editor of Homestead Living Magazine and I have people reach out sometimes and they're like,
09:07Oh, you know, we're going to be in the area. Can we come see your farm or do you do farm stays? And I'm almost embarrassed sometimes that like to say, well, I don't actually have a farm and it's actually not, you know, I don't think it's what people expect, but where I'm trying to really lean into that is a lot of people are in this situation where they are on a quarter acre or less on a suburban lot. And so what I can show you and tell you for sure is that it is possible to do it on a smaller lot. You don't need to have.
09:36you know, 10 acres and a milk cow, as I like to say, you know, sprawling property in order to, you know, start growing some of your own food.  No, you do not. And I've told the story a billion times in the podcast, but I'm going fill you in really quick.  Before we moved to our three acre lot, we lived on a 10th of an acre lot  in a little town, like a block and a half off Main Street through that little town. And we grew hundreds of pounds of food in our tiny backyard.
10:05just like you're doing.  when we dug out the backyard to get it ready to grow stuff, our neighbors were like, what are you doing? And we told them and they were like, oh, okay. And they seemed very,  very perplexed. And then that fall, when we went around and gave them bags of cucumbers and tomatoes and fresh herbs,  they were like, oh, we get it now. Yeah, totally. Well, I think our neighbors totally think we're crazy, but.
10:31You know, the one good thing is the area that we chose to move to one of the reasons we chose this area Comox Valley  is because there is a very  strong  regenerative farming, organic farming and gardening community here. So  there's a lot of that a lot of local farms that sort of thing, which is great for us because it helps supplement us with whatever we can't produce. you know, we don't have a lot of enough space to be doing a lot of meat production, that sort of thing.
10:55but there's a lot of local farms in the area and a lot of people who are very on board with what we're doing from a sustainability and food security standpoint and you know, all that sort of thing.  But there's a lot of gardeners in the area too. It's just kind of baked in the culture here. So it's not like we're doing anything out of the ordinary.  But you know, I think our neighbors, because everything is in the front and we are still on a cul-de-sac,  do look over at us sometimes and like, oh, what now? So right now, for example, I'm looking at my office window and there's a giant pile of mulch in the driveway that we got.
11:24dropped off from a local arborist  and we have been collecting  cardboard for the past year and we are expanding. have a large fenced front garden, which is what I call the market garden because that's where we have our rows, our in-ground rows.  And then we had, you know, another few hundred square feet of grassy front lawn where we have two septic tanks. So we couldn't put in-ground beds, but
11:47We're now building raised beds. So we are, we've been saving cardboard for the past year. We have now cardboarded over all of the grass and we're putting all this mulch on top. And I said to my husband yesterday, as we were out there, I'm like, I'm sure the neighbors are probably just like, what  are they doing now?  Covering the entire front yard and we're putting gardens in there. So, but there, where there is a will, there is a way. And it sounds really impressive to say, you know, we grow hundreds of pounds of our own food, but when you start doing it, it actually isn't that hard to do that on a fairly small lot.
12:17No, because a good size tomato weighs a pound. Well, exactly. It adds up really quickly. And if you employ, you know, things like vertical gardening and that sort of thing, you know, a lot of the things that we grow, we trellis up and that allows us to grow more in a small space or we, know, prune ruthlessly, we do companion planting. We can get into that if you want, but, you know, we do things that allow us to produce a lot and make the most out of what we got. So have you trellised squash, winter squash yet? I have.
12:46kind of accidentally, had pumpkins naturally climb our fence a couple years ago and I kind of just let it happen. And it seemed to work really well. So I know that sometimes they, I've heard they can get heavy and they can fall off and that sort of thing. think there can be some trickiness to doing heavier, you know, fruits like that when you're chelusing, but we didn't have any issue with it and we grew. I can't remember if that was the same year that we grew. We had a,
13:12some pumpkins. They weren't volunteers. We had planted them, but we planted them right beside our compost bin. And I think it was just great soil. I don't know what the conditions were, but we got 20 pumpkins off one vine that year. We are so I didn't even bother planting them last year. We're still eating through all of the period pumpkin in the freezer and canned pumpkin on our shelves. So.  Fabulous.  The reason I asked about trellising the winter squash is we did it on purpose two summers in a row at the old house because the backyard was not big.
13:40And  we had a couple like 10 to 12 pound squashes grow. the stems on these guys were huge because  the plant should grow a stem big enough to support the growing fruit.  And  it was really funny because when I told my dad we were going to do this that first year, he's  grown a garden for years. He knows about gardening.  And he was like,  your squashes are going to fall off. And I was like, not true.
14:10And he said, okay. I think the trick is maybe that  it's maybe if you let them grow and then you try to trellis them, that's maybe where people have the issue.  Then they're not used to supporting that way. But if you let them actually grow  on the trellis, then they kind of it's almost like flexing a muscle, right? They develop that thicker stem and vine to support that fruit as it grows slowly. Yeah. Well, we took pictures as they develop so I could send them to my dad so he could see the process.
14:39And when we harvested the  squashes, I laid them on my kitchen counter and I measured that. put the ruler  along it  so that he could see how long the squashes were and how wide they were at the bottom. were butternut squashed. And I said, these are the squashes that did not fall off the vines. And he was like, I will be damned. had no idea. Yeah. So  he was very impressed with our gardening skills for never really having garden before. Yeah, no kidding. Oh, grateful.
15:07Yeah, it was great. And I keep asking my husband if he's going to do it here. And he's like, no, because we have the room for them spread out into the yard. I'm like, yeah, OK. But then we could do something else with that space. That's what I'm always thinking. As we're expanding our gardens now, I'm trying to set it up so that we can have cattle panels set up so that we can. Because the one thing with our garden where it is, the way the rows run north to south,
15:36or sorry, yeah, if not, that's not true, east to west. And so where the sun comes up,  if we put archways over the rows, right, connecting the rows, then the the whatever's growing at the back would get shaded out. Yeah, if that makes sense. but the way that we're going to set up our new beds, hopefully we'll have them running  north to south, so that then we can put  more
15:58trellises up, more archways up between the beds and then grow more vertically. So, but these are all things too that we've learned and that we're still experimenting with. You know, we're about 10 years into  actively gardening now.  And you you learn new things every day, as you know, you're kind of never done. There's something always that is, you know, new to learn or experiment with. So we'll see how this goes for us. Something new for us. Yeah, I compare gardening to writing a book.
16:26because yeah, you'll eventually reach the end of writing the book. But I have talked to a lot of people who have written books and they're like, I'm always thinking of ways I could have done it differently. Yeah, or like editing, you know? And I said that the other day, we just dug up our blueberries and strawberries and replanted them for the third time because as we do expand, then, you know, it makes sense to like reconfigure a bit. like, actually, they should go here and we should do the bed this way and then we can fit this in. And  right. And I'm like, I feel like everything that we ever, this is why I do like.
16:55I love perennials because in theory you plant them once and then never have to do it again.  But it seems like with all of our perennial plants, whether they are edibles or I'm getting more into flower gardening and ornamentals and stuff, it doesn't matter what I do. I always end up digging everything up at least once and putting it somewhere else because I'm a very visual person too. So when you plant
17:16a seed or root stock or a bulb, I need to see it  in full bloom and like in its full glory before I know if that's the right spot for it, right? So that's where annual gardening is actually really nice is because if you do something wrong or you don't like it one year, like just restart and do it all over again the next year and do it differently, you know?  Absolutely.  And speaking of  perennials,  I love peonies.
17:41Like anyone who's listening to podcast knows I freaking adore peonies. And we  have a bunch we put in when we moved here.  And the problem with peonies is you can't see them in full bloom for three years.  So when we started putting peonies in, my husband was like, where do you want them? And I'm like, I don't care. I just want them in the ground because I want flowers three years from now.  And he was like, OK. He said, here's what I'm thinking. And he showed me what he was thinking. He wanted to line the driveway on the house side.
18:10And he wanted to do like a circle of peonies where the driveway rounds out.  And I was like, that's fine.  And I trust him. He's the gardener. He loves gardening. And  last year was the first year where everything really bloomed heavy for the first time, because it was the third spring.  And it's gorgeous and I'm in love with it. And I remembered him saying, how do you want me to do this? And me being like, I don't care. Get them in the ground.
18:39So one morning it was just pinks and corals and yellows and burgundies and whites and I came in and I was like, I love you so much. He had no idea what I was saying.  And he said, what happened? And I said, have you looked at the peonies spread out there?  He was like, well, yeah. I said, you did it exactly the way I said. I said, get it in the ground so I'll have flowers in three years. with those.
19:06Yeah, I was gonna say that's my philosophy too. I'm like, as long as I get in the ground, if I do have to move something, like whatever, but at least I've got it now, you know? Yeah, exactly. So anything that takes three years to bloom, I think not being me, being somebody else, anyone else would want to maybe think about where they want to put stuff. Me, I was just like, I don't care, just put them in. Yeah. So totally. Well, it's good to know on the peonies because I actually want to get at least one peony bush, I guess it would be.
19:34in the ground this year. I tried roses last year. Do you grow roses?  Not here, no. Okay, yeah, because I tried.  We planted some bare root roses last year and they just died right away. Yeah. And I think we didn't soak them first. that this is, want to get into roses necessarily here,  you know, I am, it's funny because now we've been doing the vegetable and even fruit gardening for a number of years, edible gardening, but flowers is something new for me. And there are little things that they, and especially each variety that
20:02needs that is different. I'm, you know, I've already had my share of struggles with flowers. Some of them have done really well, but the roses, of course, the most expensive things I purchased, bare root roses, and they both like died right away last year. So I think we didn't soak them properly. But I also think we probably planted them in the wrong area. So we'll see. I'm going to try them again this year. Luckily, they're going to send me some replacements this year. So I better get it right.  Can I, can I give you a couple hints or suggestions? Yes.
20:31We grew William Baffin climbing roses at the old house and they went up a trellis because they were climbing roses.  They are one of the closest to wild roses you can get. They did fantastic and they do like three blushes of blooms a summer. do the spring, midsummer and then you might get a third one in like September. They're  not the roses that you would ever cut and put in a vase. They're more like a bush.
21:01They're beautiful and they're pretty forgiving to grow.  nice. Well, I do have some David Austin roses on order.  got them, my order in nice and early this year because there's,  you can't get them as easily here in Canada.  So there is one local supplier, but they sell out of most of the varieties pretty quick. So they're shipping in a month or so, but  I have looked at the wild, the more like closely related to wild roses as well.
21:28Simply because I would imagine, I if you know this, but  I would imagine those have similar medicinal properties then to wild roses. The rose hips, Yeah, with the rose hips and that sort of thing. Because we do that, actually, we have a lot of wild roses that grow around where we live.  So we will often go gather rose hips in the fall  and make medicines and syrups and things out of them. But yeah, so I've thought about adding some wild type roses to our property as well for that. But we have a lot of that stuff that we can forage as well.
21:58Uh-huh. Yeah. The farther away you get from the wild rose, the less the roses smell good. The William Baffins, every time they bloomed, we'd have the windows open. You could just smell them. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, they were so pretty. I don't have roses here because roses are a favorite of  the black beetles. I can't think of the names. Not Asian beetles. Japanese beetles. Mm-hmm.
22:22And  we don't have any Japanese beetles on our property. I don't want to give them a smorgasbord. Yeah, no kidding. can't eat. So we just haven't done it.  Well, we'll see. Our garden that we're expanding this year, so we're doing, so like I say, we have our large,  what I call the market garden just because the way we grow is in like market rows.  And we do a lot of companion planting where we're planting certain vegetables with others that do well and support each other.  But we do tend to just because of the way my brain likes to organize things.
22:50plant everything together in one row, right? So it'll be like all the broccoli and onions together and some nasturtiums, but they're all in like one row together.  Just that makes it easy for me too, as far as then I know where it was, then I can rotate it.  But the way that we're expanding our new garden, this year we're doing it more of like a cottage garden. So my hope for it  is that it's gonna be just kind of a mix of like ornamental flowers. My daughter is eight years old and she's really into like making little.
23:17flower bouquets and I'm really trying to bring her into the gardening world, but she's not as into like weeding  the garden and growing the vegetables as I am, but she's into the flowers. I'm really trying to support that. So we're cut flowers. We're doing kind of ornamental flowers in the garden.  Lots of like herbs and medicinal herbs and that sort of thing. And then I want to be able to kind of throw in the odd food plant. So it's going to be much more organic feeling, I guess. Nice.  All plants breathe out  oxygen. So grow all the plants.
23:46Doesn't matter what kind.  Exactly.  OK, can we  can we chat about Homestead Living for a minute or you not? Yes. No, no, Let's go for it.  OK, so you're the editor in chief. How did that happen?  Yeah, funny story. So Homestead Living just  briefly for anybody who doesn't know, we are a  monthly print  and digital magazine.  started up  the company itself, started up, I believe it was twenty twenty two.
24:16and launched with a  digital quarterly magazine and basically  included articles on everything related to homesteading. So gardening and preserving and herbal medicine and  raising livestock and all that stuff. And had people from all across the homesteading world, at least people who are in kind of the online world and publishing and that sort of thing as well, submit articles for
24:44the digital magazine and it gained a lot of traction pretty quickly. And over the course of two years, they put out four or four digital issues per year.  And then comb that culminated in an annual issue, which they offered as print and the response was really great to print. think homesteaders in specific, while a lot of other print publications are dying out and going to digital, we're doing the opposite because homesteaders really like tangible things they can actually hold in their hands and keep on their shelves and refer back to over and over again.
25:14So by the end of 2023, they had decided that they wanted to go full on with a monthly print magazine.  And so  one of the co-founders is Melissa K. Norris, who runs  the Pioneering Today podcast  and her website, melissakenorris.com. And so  she had kind of been acting as editor until then, but she also runs the Modern Homesitting Conference and  has a bunch of businesses and things that she does.
25:42I don't know how she does it.  Yeah, me neither. I  honestly don't.  Yeah, she's got a lot of things going on. And so she just couldn't take on the role of full-time editor,  especially for a monthly print magazine. So they were looking for an editor. And at the very same time, serendipitously, I had actually been running my own digital magazine for the past four years prior to that.  So I had a magazine called Modern Homesteading Magazine.
26:08which had gone from being a monthly digital to a quarterly digital  as production costs got higher.  And people again, really wanted print and me being in Canada  made it, and most of my readers being in the US made it very difficult just as far as the logistics and the cost of printing and shipping. didn't matter how many times I crunched the numbers or tried to make it work.  There was no way it was gonna be sustainable.
26:34I would have had to charge an arm and a leg to even break even, let alone make a profit. And so I just, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this. so I decided to end it  and actually put out my own print magazine just as a thank you to anybody who wanted to order and support that.  And it was kind of a culmination of everything I had put out for the past few years. So as I was advertising this and saying, hey, we're shutting it down, but as a thank you, if you would like to order this commemorative print issue, here it is.
27:01Melissa saw that and it just happened to be the right timing that as I was shutting that down, they were looking for an editor. So they asked me to meet with them and I was offered the role of editor in chief, which was just amazing because  I love doing this. I actually have a background in journalism. went in my first degree. went to school for journalism. I've always loved writing and creating content.  I have a magazine that I made when I was six years old, like, you know, handmade for a class project that I still have saved. just, I loved, I don't know why.
27:30It's always been a passion of mine to create content and share my own passions with the world. And that's what first led me to writing my blog. But so I basically came on with Homestead Living in January of 2024, and I have been the editor ever since. So I now kind of run both things. technically my day job is with Homestead Living. And then I also run the house in Homestead on the side.
27:57you know, have some courses in a membership program  and that sort of thing through there.  you becoming editor in chief, Homestead Living was kismet. That's what It really was. And I said, you know, call it God or whatever you want to call it. But I felt like that whole year as I was trying to, you know, work out the logistics and what do I do? And I don't  want to shut this down, but because I kept saying, you know, if I could just do the editing part, not worry about all the logistics, right?  And I just, something kept saying, you need to let it go.
28:27You need to let it go. And so I listened to that voice.  And when they, had the meeting with them, they said, well, what, what, what are you going to do next? I'm like, you know, I don't know. Maybe I'll do a podcast. Maybe I'll do you too. I'm not, I'm not really sure. And then this was offered.  And so it really was as one door closed, another one open. And it was exactly what I was looking for. I had said this to my husband. like, I, I could just be the editor  and not worrying about, you know, the marketing and the shipping and that's exactly the role I'm in now. So it really, really was  meant to be, I feel like.
28:55Well, congratulations, however many years later, because that's a great story. Yeah. For the listeners who haven't actually subscribed to Homestead Living, I have a subscription to it and it is a beautiful magazine.  really is. you. And you have like people like Joel Salatin, but you also have like everyday people too, who write. Yeah. And that's really great.
29:21Yeah, really,  we're so lucky to have Joel. He's a regular contributor. So he's in every issue and he's so great. He's so funny. I always, he's just says, you know, feed me, feed me what you want me to write about. So  for any listeners out there who are subscribers, if there is anything you would like Mr. Joel Saliton to write about ever,  please write in and let us know. But I'm always just feeding him ideas and he's like, great. Yeah, I'm on it. And he'll write about whatever we want him to share information on. Of course, he's a wealth of information and knowledge on home setting.
29:50But you know, I also like to showcase people from maybe that either aren't as well known or are different points in their journey or are homesteading in different areas or, you know, kind of specialize in different things because there are a lot of beginners out there too. And sometimes a Joel can make it feel like, well, this is great, but I'll never be Joel Saliton, right? Or this is way, even sometimes with some of the things he writes is beyond where I'm at.
30:16right? And I'm like, okay, I'm to take your word for it because I'm not this far into, you know, certainly farming and raising livestock and all that sort of thing. So I really like to have a blend of all sorts of different people doing this homesteading thing, you know, at different points in the journey and in different areas and that sort of thing. Yes. My son is living in Nebraska right now. They moved in two winters ago and he had been living in Phoenix, Arizona, where it's hot.
30:46and you can't really grow anything.  So this is their first summer where they're really gonna get into putting in a garden.  And I asked him, said, will you and your wife please come on the podcast and talk to me about the beginning of what you're doing?  And he was like, we don't know anything. And I said, that's the point. You don't know anything. Tell me about your plans. Tell me what you're thinking.  And I asked him this last year and he was like, I don't want to. And I was like, okay, fine.
31:14So then it came for Thanksgiving this past year and I said, so you ready to talk to me on the podcast yet? And he's like, let me find a time. Yes, we're ready.  So that will be fun because they are, they are pretty new. mean, he grew up watching his dad garden, but they're new at doing it themselves. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm very excited about this. I wonder what they're going to tell me and what they're going to tell me we did wrong.  Well, and the fact is too, like most people are new to this. You know, if you just look at like,
31:43everybody who's  been getting into this homesteading movement, especially over the past few years, ever since COVID especially, right?  There's been a big movement to like try to produce some of our own food and obviously sourdough took off  when COVID first hit and like there's been a renewed interest in this  once again.  And so I'd say still like the vast majority of people are still in the beginning stages of this, right?  Even the feedback that we get from people when we say, know, what do wanna learn about? Most of it  is how do I get started?
32:13How do I start a garden? How do I start with, you know, baby chicks? Like, what do, what is the first thing I do, right? But then we do have people that are much further along as well. So again, from a content perspective, I try to kind of appeal to all of that and include something in every issue that is going to be good for, you know, a beginner and intermediate and somebody that's more advanced. Yes. And the first thing I would say to anybody who is asking about how I get started with chickens is make sure you tell them that first egg is going to be worth about a
32:41thousand dollars of their money. Right? Oh my goodness. you know, now, yeah, nowadays, I feel like it's definitely worth it. It's funny because my family being in the city, a lot of them still, I think a lot of them still think it's like a phase we're going through, like, yeah, okay, your little homesteading thing and you'll come around one day, right? But my dad called the other day and he was like, you guys still got those chickens? I said, yeah. He goes, okay, good thing because, you know, I hear they're going to be going to like $11 a dozen or something up here soon.
33:09And my stepmom actually, he probably got that info from her because she is very high up in one of our national grocery chains here. So we get all the kind of advanced info on what food prices are going to do. But yeah, all of a sudden we don't look so crazy, right? So it is a big investment at first for some of these things. But I have definitely seen a payoff in the long run, for sure.
33:32Yeah, us too.  We have chickens too. Again, we have new chickens and they're giving us these beautiful eggs.  We've gotten like three double yokers in the last three weeks. Oh, nice.  And it's always so...  I was gonna say we've got some actually ready to hatch. think possibly today we're waiting. It looks like one's  starting to break through their shell and incubator. So that's another first for us. We've had chickens for a number of years, but this is the first time we're hatching our own. So that's really exciting.
33:59fun. Your kids are going to be so excited to watch it. Yeah. Totally.  Okay. I want go back to Joel real quick. Um, I don't want to fangirl about Joel because I'm not that kind of girl, but he said yes to being on the podcast months, months ago, months ago. And he came on the episode was released months ago.  He is one of the most generous souls with his information and his time.
34:25Yes. And I just, like him so much. I've never met him. I probably never will,  but he is just so kind and so helpful. He is. And it's so funny you say that I try not to fangirl out too much either, but Joel really was pivotal in our journey as he is in so many people's journeys. Because I mean, well, think about it. was saying that  we kind of got into this when we started watching some of those food documentaries and he was in a lot of those. Right?  So that was, you know, one of the first.
34:53faces that we ever put to this homesteading movement.  And I have been so blessed throughout my  career, both as a blogger and doing my own magazine and then now doing Homestead Living,  to have got to meet sometimes virtually, sometimes in person, so many incredible homesteaders across the space.  I got to for the January issue of Homestead Living  interview Ivan and Eve Kilcher, who are on Alaska, The Last Frontier. that was, we used to watch that show when we still lived in our like city condo.
35:21And so that was a full circle moment for me. And same thing, like we were on Zoom, but they were just on their couch and  so down to earth. We could have chatted all day.  So it's just, yeah, I totally understand where you're coming from. And you never know, I got to meet Joel in person twice last year at the Homestead Festival down in Tennessee, and then the Modern Homesteading Conference in  Idaho. And I'll be at the Modern Homesteading Conference again this year in June. So if you ever make it out there.
35:48Lots of cool people that get to meet in person and just having that kind of in-person camaraderie with other people who are all into this lifestyle and doing the homesteading thing is very cool. Yeah, and these conferences that are popping up all over the place.  To the listeners, if you're interested in homesteading  and you want to find out how to get started,  if you can swing it, go to one of these conferences because  I've talked to so many people.
36:17over the last eight months who have either been doing a small little get together  or a huge conference  and  they're everything they're teaching is is stuff you want to learn to get started in this.  So go, go do it if you want to. And a lot of it you can learn online again, right? That's the beauty of the online world, but there is something different about being in person. Like the energy is just different, you know?  And then there's some things like Joel often teaches,  you know,
36:47like a master class basically on chicken butchering, which is something that's a lot harder to find online. I think there are paid courses and that sort of thing that you can get that sort of information through. typically YouTube's not letting you post all the graphic details of that. And if you're wanting to learn how to do it,  you need to be able to see it close up and hands on and everything, right? So there are some things that I think just being in person for you can't, there's no real substitute for it. So.  Exactly.
37:14All right, well, Anna, we're at like 36 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour, but I definitely wanted to talk to you about the magazine and I wanted to talk to you about what you're doing.  And anyone listening, if you want to see what a homesteader does in their spare time, quote unquote, spare time,  go check out Anna's  Facebook page for the house and homestead because she's got so much stuff on there. I learned something today when I looked at it.
37:39That's so funny that you said that. soon as you said that, like, what's, I have, there's no spare time. Every spare time, every spare minute we're, you know, building, we're doing something, but it is really what we love to do. And  yeah, for sure. I'd say,  check out, just go straight to the blog even. I'm not, I don't do as much on Facebook as I probably should.  But yeah, if you head to the house and homestead.com, I've got tons of resources on there.  If you're just getting into this too.
38:04I developed an ebook for,  I presented at the Modern Homesteading Conference last year and had an ebook to go along with that presentation that I've got on my website now. So it's called Homestead Wherever You Are. And I basically just walk you through like, here are the different things that you can do as far as growing food, preparing, preserving food, making your own medicine, making your own personal care products, all that stuff.
38:26here's what you can do at an apartment level. Here's what you can do at, you know,  a small suburb on a small suburban lot. Here's what you can do on a larger scale. So that no matter where you are or where you're starting at with this,  there's an entry point for you.  Yeah. And I would say that you are swimming in the deep end of homesteading. So you're the one to go to.  We're definitely, we're definitely in deep for sure. And it's funny because I would love to have more.
38:53land one day, but at the same time, I'm like, I'm perfectly happy where we are.  I don't think I could almost handle taking on more than we're doing right now.  So like I say, we're growing a lot, we're doing a lot here. And then we  go to our local farmers for everything else, right? We get our side of beef that we put in the freezer in the fall from a local farm. And,  you know, and so that's been really, you know, great for us too. And something that I always recommend to other people is if you're not able to do it yourself, find somebody close to you that is doing it. And then, you know,
39:23connect with them, right? Because a lot of this is about finding community with others that value, you know, food security and sustainability as well.  Certainly.  Anna, it has been a joy to talk with you today. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me. All right. You have a great day. You too.
 

The Homestead Farm

Today I'm talking with Jesse at the The Homestead Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jessie at the Homestead Farm. I love the name of your place, Jessie. Good afternoon. How are you?  I am great. How are you doing? And thank you by the way. Oh, you're welcome. I'm great. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. You're in Washington state and you said it's raining.  It's actually dry right now, but it's very wet outside. The mud goes up to your knees down in the cow pasture.
00:54Gross. That's no fun. We're excited for a sun tomorrow. 74 it says. We'll see what happens. Well, maybe you'll get a couple of days and we'll dry it out some. It'd be nice. It'd be nice. And then we've got thunderstorms and rain coming up after that. But hey, spring is here, but summer, guess, is slowly approaching. So we'll have dry soon. Yeah. Let's not wish spring away because here in Minnesota, winters are long and cold. Yes. Yes, absolutely.
01:23We have to eke out every piece of beauty and an amazingness from the point that spring hits until winter arrives.  Okay. Nice to see all the green things popping up everywhere. I love that part of spring. The baby's being born on the farm and everything else. It's awesome seeing all the new life.  Yeah. If I, if I actually lived on an actual farm, I would never be inside. Yeah.  Ever.  So.
01:53All right, so tell me about yourself and the Homestead Farm. So I am Jessie. Hello everybody.  And I started the actual business, the Homestead Farm,  just over three years ago.  I bought this place nine or 10 years ago  with a dream of having a hobby farm and living off the land. It's only nine acres here, but we are using  every square inch  of  it.
02:19So yeah, I moved in nine years ago, 10 years ago, and  I owned a cleaning business. I went to college before that for graphic design and just it wasn't my thing sitting at a computer.  I worked my butt off and  met an amazing man who made help to make all this possible. And I actually am now a stay at home farm girl, which has really been my dream for a long, time.
02:45So yeah, we've got cows, goats, chickens, turkeys, some guinea hens, and a bunch of dogs. How many dogs?  Right now we have nine, but  five of those are puppies that are going to their new homes very soon. We've got some great Pyrenees puppies that are just awesome and they're in training right now to be livestock guardian dogs.  Well, if anybody's in Washington state and looking for a great Pyrenees puppy, you know who to contact now.
03:13Yes, I love it. We've got three three left available. So, okay good  Yeah, only have one dog. I talk it talk about her all the time I probably should not even bring her up, but I'm going to anyway  Her her name is Maggie and she is a mini Australian Shepherd and she is  the love of my life Even though I have four adult grown children.  I  Love dogs. I think they're just the best thing on this planet. So I have I had kids though. So there's that
03:43Yeah,  our oldest son came to visit just like a week or so after we got Maggie, so she must have been nine or 10 weeks old.  And  I have never had a puppy.  I was  as anxious about a puppy as I was about my newborn babies. And he was like, she's a dog. I'm like, no, she's the baby.
04:08And he was like, oh god, you're going to be so in love. I said, I'm already so in love. I can't stand it. This is making me insane. He said, this is why we never got a dog when we were kids, because you wouldn't have been able to raise us. You've been too busy raising the dog. I sense a bit of jealousy there. He's giving me hard time, because I don't think he remembers seeing me that in love with anything. And his youngest brother is, I think.
04:3810 years younger than him. So he sort of remembers when we brought the youngest home. But it's a whole different kind of love, you know?  You don't hold a baby and pet it and kiss its nose and tell it it's a good girl. You know,  it's a whole different thing.  So  anyway, that's my thing about Maggie today. Maggie was  not feeling well last night, so I've been a little concerned about her this morning. Poor Maggie. Well, we'll be thinking about her from over here.
05:07Yeah, but she ate her breakfast and she hasn't been sick yet. I think something just messed with her tummy last night. So let's keep our fingers crossed. It's nothing major because major is bad when it comes to dog  doctors. we're not... Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. That's a real hard thing to come by out here, it feels like.  Yeah, we have a great vet, but  veterinary care is extremely expensive.
05:30So I would just assume not have to drop like, you know, $2,000 in this dog right now. you're lucky. Come on, think you got this, girl. Yeah, she's fine. Oh, good. She's fine until I realize she isn't fine and then we do everything we can for her. So we're good. Okay. So I saw that you have some big event coming up on the 27th. Is that correct? I do.
05:55actually going to be teaching our very first workshop at the Woodland Corner Store, which is our local little  corner store. We  sold vegetables there last year.  They sell all of our,  we make goat milk soap and tallow and a bunch of  all natural skincare that I source what I can locally and it's all made right here on the farm by me.  I do have a couple other helpers too.  But yes, we will be doing a workshop. And that was kind of one of the things when I started this
06:25quote unquote business was  we wanted to share the knowledge that we have with our community on the lost arts, if you will,  just the old ways of doing things that people just don't even  know anymore. And of course, there's a lot of things we don't know that we would love to learn from our community. I really had just really huge dreams and goals of creating this kind of communal space of sharing, which this is kind of the first step.
06:53towards that and who knows what it will end up looking like in the long run.  yes, very excited. We're going to be doing a, we call it the homestead kitchen.  So it will be based on kind of tips and hacks in the kitchen ways to avoid using  chemical things like living the toxin free life,  zero waste  situation. We  try to put everything to use on the farm. So
07:22If we  harvest an animal, know, the dogs get anything that the people don't eat and  we use the bones in the garden  if the dogs don't eat them.  So just things, you know, trying to  share with people ways to save money, save time,  and just kind of get everyone back to their roots. It's just something we've just become really disconnected with a lot of things in today's society. So really excited to share with some people.
07:49Yep, you're speaking my language, Jessie.  When I think of  trying to clean things without using any store-bought cleaners,  the first thing that comes into my head is vinegar. Yes, that's one of the stars of the show.  And it works. It actually works.  and you know, the thing I often hear from people is, I hate the smell of vinegar. And I myself don't, you know, I'm not a big fan either, but...
08:16We're actually going to be doing infused vinegar cleaner. So you can, you know, infuse it as long as you'd like until it does not smell so bad if that's your thing. You know, a lot of people don't mind the smell of vinegar, but there are ways around a lot of the things, you know, reasons why people don't want to use these things. There are ways around it and other options. And that's another thing was I'm going to be sending everyone home with a workbook on ways to kind of make it work for you and your household if, you know,
08:44the mainstream thing isn't working. So,  and then just ways to use natural products like beeswax is another huge one. mean,  we just sealed my guys boots with it last night.  And then we're gonna be making the beeswax food wraps and baking soda is a huge one. It's just a lot of simple things that a lot of people have in their house. If not in their house, they've got them available to buy in their community that's made, you know, in their location.  And they're just very valuable.
09:14Yeah, baking soda is fantastic for unclogging drains.  Yes,  and kind of fun too.  Yes, yes, volcano cleaner. huh. thing about vinegar though is that people think that if you use vinegar to clean with your house is going to smell like vinegar all day.  It doesn't, it dissipates really fast. Yeah.  Yes, it does. You've got it. Absolutely. And especially using, you know, we have a lot of trees around here.
09:42You can find, you know, we save tree  branches from our Christmas tree and that's one of the things I love infusing in my vinegar and it smells like pine or fur, whatever you choose, cedar.  That's another really awesome one. Yeah, and you can put, I  hear, I haven't done it, you can put lemon peel in vinegar. Lemon peels, orange peels, lime peels. I actually have some grapefruit peels for our class on Thursday.
10:09So if you really hate the smell of vinegar, you can make it not so bad. honestly, okay, we're going back to Maggie for a minute. When Maggie was a puppy, she chewed on everything. She was a puppy and she was teething. And I found out about this spray called Bitter Apple and all it is, is apple cider vinegar and white vinegar mixed together, half and half. And most dogs hate the smell, the fume smell.
10:39of it when you spray it.  And  we would spray that on our furniture because she was trying to chew holes in our futon mattresses. And if we sprayed it on there, she would not go near it. However,  if you dripped any vinegar on the floor, she loved the taste of vinegar. like, what are you doing?
11:01So we sprayed this bitter apple stuff at least three times daily if she was chewing something she should not have been chewing. And our house didn't smell like vinegar. It did right then, but half an hour later, you'd never know we'd used it. Yeah, yeah. So  I can attest to the fact that it goes away really fast.  Yes, it does.  And for anybody with a puppy, try that bitter apple mix because  it works.
11:30She does not chew on anything she's not supposed to chew on. Good, she learned it. Yeah, she'll be five this August and  she doesn't chew on anything. And if she's being crazy for no reason, like if she's just bouncy and we need her to calm down, we just spray that in the air once, one pull on  the spray bottle trigger. The minute she smells it, she just lays down looks at us like, okay, I get it.
11:59It works.  It really, really works. Yeah.  That's a really good tip for new dog owners too.  Yeah. And it doesn't hurt them.  does not hurt them at all. Yeah. You're not yelling at them. You're not swatting them with a rolled up magazine. You're just putting something in the air that they do not like. you,  you obviously you don't just spray it for the hell of it.  If they're doing something they're not supposed to do like chewing on your mattress, you spray it and you say,  no.
12:29You don't yell, just say no. And they start to associate no with they're not supposed to do it because they don't like the smell.  Yep. Easy peasy.  It's fantastic. I'm so glad I read about it. I found it on Google. I was like, how do get my dog to stop eating everything? anyway, good hint for the people who are going to adopt your three leftover puppies. Right? There we go. Just tell them.
12:59Tell them and explain it and make them believe it because it'll make their puppy such a good dog. Okay, wow, I didn't know I was gonna be talking about Maggie this much today. I've been trying... I love dogs so I am more than happy to talk about Maggie. Yeah, I've been trying to avoid talking about her because honest to God, the first six months of the podcast, Maggie comes up in almost every single episode.
13:22I'm like, dude, I am sickening with my love for this dog. No, you're not. Other dog owners and dog lovers totally get it. Uh-huh. And those who can't stand dogs are like, I wish you'd stop talking about that damn dog.  So anyway,  all right. So  you said you have critters. now that I talked about Maggie, I can't remember all the critters you have. know you have dogs. Yeah.
13:50Yeah, we've got,  so I'd say the biggest,  we have a lot of chickens. I don't even know how many, I think last time we really kind of did a count, had about 200. Oh wow. Of course, we live  out in big cat country and  there were a lot of coyotes before we got  our, Whiskey is our main lifestyle guardian dog.  She's amazing.
14:13We've actually had neighbors all up and down the mountainside thank us because there's a few coyotes left everywhere. She's around about a town but we free range our birds. We have no fences and we do have a lot of open area on our property. So we do lose some birds here and there. I it happens.
14:35But for the most part, they just kind of, we don't buy chicks. They repopulate on their own by going off into the bushes and coming back with, I think 16 was our biggest clutch of chicks that a hen showed up with last spring. So that was pretty impressive. So yeah, we stay right around 200 or so. We tried to do turkeys a few years ago.
15:01big snowfall overnight snowfall. I mean, you probably  wouldn't blink an eye at this, but I think we got like eight or nine inches overnight when they said it wasn't going to snow and it collapsed our  netted in turkey, big turkey run. And we've had free range turkeys ever since then. So  they also did the same last year they went out and tried to have babies  off in the woods  and never came back. So we have very few turkeys now they're more just pets at this point.
15:30They're such nice birds, but my gosh, they're a lot,  you know, they like to travel a lot more than the chickens do. So  it's hard.  And then we've got goats. We breed  dairy goats that I use the milk in our soaps. And then  we have cows,  just meat cows and just four of them.  And we're not sure where that's gonna go. The cattle prices right now are just insane.  So we'll see how that goes.
15:59We're talking about adding pigs again. We've had pigs before,  but they just,  I don't know, we didn't have the best pig experience. So let's hope this go around. We, you know, bring our knowledge with us and make more better choices.  How many you looking at getting?  Probably just a few. We have about two acres that are, it's brush and trees and we kind of want to get that cleared out. So we thought we'd fence it in and let the pigs do the work for us. Every animal has a job. So.  Yeah.
16:29Okay. You said that one of your chickens brought in 16 or 17 chicks. have a question about that because I haven't talked to anybody who just lets their chickens do what nature does. Do the mama chickens actually like take care of the chicks? Do they teach them anything or? They take care of them until they go off and start mating with and doing their own thing. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Awesome to watch these mama hens protect their babies. I mean,
16:58They are, if our dogs go anywhere near him, she's chasing our dogs off.  It's really impressive. Chickens are amazing moms. However, we do have one chicken. She was born with one eye. We don't know if maybe she got pecked when she was really little, but I think it's more of a, or she's deformed, I guess. don't know.  she was, she's,  she's never sat on eggs. So it was kind of weird. My boyfriend was down in our neighbor's pasture helping them with something and.
17:26He comes up to the house, Jessica, go get the car, get the car. Henny had babies down in the neighbor's pasture. I'm like, what? This chicken's five years old, okay? So the fact she's even still laying is cool, but go get her babies and we get them set up in a tent here up by the house in the yard. And she literally, the first chance she could get, she took off. It was like, okay, mom, dad's got the babies, bye. Oh wow.
17:52I don't know. She's never been one to be broody or sit on a clutch of eggs. So I don't know what tickled her to do that, but she did and just trusted us enough to take care of them.  Well, congratulations. You're now the parents of chickens.  Right. All the time. Let me tell you. Oh my goodness. yes, there's a reason why most people don't just let natural chicken things happen. I mean, I will tell you they, it's,  I laugh.
18:20Because it's I can laugh at it now, but it's like you said spring is upon us. But for us, spring means, oh my word, the chickens, the chickens are going to start doing their thing. We've had babies born in places that you wouldn't even know. And it's like, oh my gosh.  we find that our eggs are just spectacular without having  fences. I mean, our eggs are just amazing.  Not to mention we have very little issues with chicken health because they're not stuck in a pen.
18:49And I know this isn't an option for everyone, so no judgment of course, this is just what works for us. And when I say works,  it's a gray area.  They're definitely a lot healthier because I mean, they're out eating whatever they want. They can forage anywhere on nine acres  and our neighbor's house, if I'm being honest. Their kids love it. So,  but yeah, they get to eat their natural diet, you know,  and then whatever we feed is just supplemental really. Yeah, we have...
19:1712 chickens right now and my husband's been letting them have the property to roam, is three acres. Perfect. That's awesome. That's a big space for 12 chickens. Yeah. And those chickens are going to be some angry come May because we try to get our garden planted the last two weeks of May. And my husband doesn't want to put a fence up because he mows around the garden. The garden's 100 feet by 150 feet.
19:43And if he puts the fence up, he can't get the edges.  like all the weeds grow up along the fence.  the chickens are going to be relegated to their run come mid May. And the run is pretty big. You know, it's, not like a little tiny tunnel. It's a big fenced in area around the coop. So they'll be fine. And they definitely enjoy being able to be outside and scratch and dig for bugs and  worms and stuffs.
20:13But my husband also, when he's getting ready to plant the garden, he digs, know, he tills a little bit. And if he finds any worms, he puts them in a can and he takes the can over and he throws the worms into the run one at a time. And the chickens lose their minds. So there's ways around not having them free range, but having them have some room to play. Yep, yep. And fodder too, that's something that...
20:41I tried because it was all over the internet there a couple years back and I was like, okay, I'll grow some fodder for my chickens that sprouted seeds and trays and they could care less. I was so disappointed because they did a big thing on our social media like, oh, watch us grow fodder for our chickens and they literally looked at that and walked away and I was like, okay, I guess they do free range but I was so disappointed. I'm like, do you guys realize how hard it worked for this?
21:09They did not, but good job trying. I swear my husband grows kale for the chickens. Yes, we grow it for the goats. Yep. I mean, he'll take some of the farmers market and people who want it for those smoothies will buy it, but a lot of kale goes to the chickens over the summer. Well, it just grows so prolific. I mean, out here anyway, it grows amazingly. And last year we even had it survive the winter, which was the first, because I didn't pull it up.
21:36And it was flowering in the spring, so the bees had some early  flowers to hit and it was pretty cool. Yeah, the other thing that chickens like, and we didn't know this until we found out by accident, is they like basil plants. Oh really? Yeah, in Minnesota, once the temperature gets down to 40, the basil plants get like black spots on the leaves and they're basically done.
22:02And so my husband was like, I'm going to throw one of the plants in the chicken run and see if the chickens will eat it. And they like the basil almost as much as they like the kale. So they ended up eating basil for like two weeks last fall. Oh, that's awesome. And no, the eggs did not taste like spaghetti sauce, so was fine.
22:23It me, we salted our sidewalk because it was super icy here and I just, had some rock salt. So was like, I'll see what this does. And my goodness, if all the chickens and turkeys didn't come up and start eating this salt off the sidewalk, I was like, no, we don't need salted eggs.  We don't use salt anymore. So were the eggs salty? No. No. Thank goodness. Oh my gosh. My boyfriend's like, go sprinkle some pepper out there, hurry.
22:52Already seasoned eggs right in the shell. Pre-seasoned.  I love it.  Maybe it's sad that that doesn't work that way. I don't know. I mean, in a way, it could go either way. mean, if you have full control over what they're eating, it might be good. That's too funny.  Okay. So you said you have four beef cows.
23:21Yes, so we've got two steers, a bull and a heifer.  So  really we wanted cows for a long time and  just hadn't  done it yet.  And I found a cow,  the dairy farms  were selling off their little boy cows for  pretty darn cheap  a few years ago.
23:45Um, so we found a cal for, think he was 50 bucks out in Tillamook. And so we're like, let's go get him. Let's go get him. And my gosh, if we didn't put that calf in the car, that's two and a half or so hours from here. And they, he took a big old dump in the back of the truck. Okay. Excursion. So it's like a big SUV.  As soon as we pulled out of there driving, I'm like, Ollie, you're going to be special. you?  So we've got him.
24:12We found another one that was on death's doorstep. I think we got him for the same amount, 50 bucks. And  we're like, well, I guess we're starting our cows, know, however we need to do it. And then we found  our heifer. She's actually black Angus. So we're hoping to bring her with our bull. I'm not sure what happened, but nature didn't take its course just yet. So we're hoping, hoping soon that'll work out so  we can replenish our cows.
24:40So yeah, the steers will just be harvested and then the bull and heifer hopefully will fall in love. hope so. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed for you because baby cows are the best thing ever. They are. We just drove by some yesterday and oh my gosh, was stinking little and cute they are. They're just amazing. Yeah, where we used to live, we used to go for a drive to get to a place to hike and there was a big, I don't know if they were dairy cows or
25:08cows, but every year they had babies. And the field that we would drive by would just be full of mama and baby cows.  And they were very curious about the cars going by. So we would very slowly pull over  mid-fence,  midway between where the fence started and where the fence ended for the field.  And we would roll the windows down and I would go,  and the mamas would pick their heads up and the babies would follow suit.
25:38And the babies would moo at me. And I'm like, oh my God, they're actually talking to me. This is cool. My husband's like, you're so dumb.  It's the little things, man.  It's the little things. That's awesome.  Yeah. First time he heard me do the mer noise. It was better than that because I do a pretty good cow call.  And he was like, where did you learn that? And I said from my grandpa's friends down the road in Maine when I was growing up.  And he's like,
26:08He said you sounded just like a cow. I said, yep, I'm a cow. That's what I'm gonna stick with right now  But So fun and these babies would come right up the fence I mean if I didn't think the farmer would have been mad I would have gotten out of the car and gone over and petted their noses  I don't recommend anyone do that unless they know the property owner.  Yes and the cows Because mama cows can be quite  quite ugly sometimes. Uh-huh
26:37Exactly. I mean,  if I'd known the owner,  I definitely would have gotten out of the car and gone over to the mama and the baby that were right at the fence. And I would have talked to the mama first  and scritched her nose and then waited for her to get comfy and then scritch the baby's nose. Cute.  Oh  my goodness. Yeah. I love it. And honestly, I'm 55 years old and we don't have room here for cows. So we don't have cows.
27:06Three acres is not enough for cows, not the way we're doing it.  But if I had been 25 when we got our place, we probably would have had many cows.  Yes, oh, I love those. Because you can have like two mini cows on an acre and they do just fine.  And they stay little and cute. Oh my goodness, we have a farm down the road here that has the highland cows and oh my gosh, I could just park and watch them. They're so adorable.
27:35Yeah, and little is a relative term because a full grown mini cow can be 500 pounds. Yes, yes, you are right about that. So it's not like they're the size of a dog when they're done growing because they're bigger than that typically. It's not a goat, it's not a goat. No, it's not a goat. But that's fine. It's not supposed to be a goat, it's supposed to be a mini goat. Very different attitudes on both of those animals. We'll just throw that out there.
28:05Yeah, most goats really do like people. They  act like a dog more than a cow will ever act like a dog. They are spicy though. Oh my gosh. And that's one of the reasons.  That was the very first thing I got moving in here were goats.  I used to work on a farm, helping manage a farm  when I was in college.
28:27They had dairy goats and I just fell in love. So as soon as I got up here, I got my first two goats, Rip and Tear were their names.  And it all just went from there. So I think we had as many as 21 goats  a couple of years back and I had to kind of lighten my load as the skincare side of the business was really taking off and things  here were just getting too much.
28:51We definitely lightened our load  on the livestock end  within the last couple years to kind of free up a little bit of my time.  Just too widespread. Okay, so before we run out of time, because I can do like 10, 12 more minutes.  The skincare line, tell me about that. Yeah, so I started, you know the first thing you say to yourself when you're like, I'm going to be a full-time homesteader is, well, how are you going to pay your bills? Right? That's something we all have to do.
29:20So from day one, was like, well, I learned how to make soap from the lady that owned that farm I worked on. And I actually learned cold process soap, and I now make hot process soap, which is different than most anyone else does. I like to do things very differently than anybody else. That's one of the things about me. So it kind of all just started with soap. And I made my own little farm stand down in a neighboring town.
29:46And the soap just really was huge and I made some balms and things and then tallow kind of hit tick tock and all the  social media stuff.  I kept getting requests for tallow. So I bought some tallow or some fat from a farm  and it just went from there. And now our tallow is in like seven different locations locally. And we have a website now and sell online and
30:10The tallow is just amazing.  We use it for cooking. We put it in our dog's food when they aren't wanting to eat their kibbles.  You know, we use it  all the time. Again, it works well with the beeswax to seal wood or boots or anything else. So tallow is another one of those key factors in,  you know, community resources that you can use in your life all the time for a lot of different things. So,  yeah. Isn't it weird how tallow got such a
30:39bad reputation for a long time. Yep. And now look at it, star of the show.  Finally. It's great for you though. mean, I'm just happy people are  finally, you know, kind of  opening their eyes and seeing the other side of things, I guess, if you will, the  other way of life, the other way you can do things, you don't have to be reliant on the system.  You can step outside the box and
31:09I just, can't wait for it to take the world by storm even more than it already is. So it's, it's coming.  We're going to do anything we can to help it on its way. That's for sure. Yeah.  And, and I feel kind of weird about saying it that way, but  this stuff that we do is so  good for us.  It's, it's not like we're trying to take over the world so we can blow it up. We're taking over the world to make it better.
31:37Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it's not just strengthening us, our bodies,  our communities, you know, relying upon each other to get these things.  But it's also  good for the earth, for the animals, it's good, you know, stewards to the land. I mean, it all works in a cohesive circle. Everything gets along with each other when you start to rely on plants and animals. it's just crazy how everything works together. There isn't a lot of backlash, whereas if you
32:06live life the other way, there's always some price you have to pay for something. But when you kind of look at the way things were done back in the day, everything kind of helped each other out in a way. So I'm hoping to get back to that.  That would be awesome. sound like me. I say stuff like that all the time.  I would love to end the podcast there, but I'm not going to because I have a thing to say about Talo, which led me to bacon grease.
32:34A lot of people think that number one, bacon's bad for you and bacon is bad for you if you eat an entire pound by yourself. Probably not going to be good for you.  But you know, a couple pieces with your eggs once in a while is not terrible or with your French toast. And when you cook bacon, you get leftover bacon grease. That's how it works. And  I tend to have about a half of a jelly jar of bacon grease in my fridge at any given time. Because if you make bacon potato soup,
33:04You can put a little bit of that bacon grease in the soup and it makes it even more  flavorful.  And  I don't know what we were thinking, but like last year I was making, I was going to make French toast and my husband had fried up the bacon and he poured the bacon grease off and left the pan on the stove. And he went to get me a clean pan so we could cook the French toast in butter. And I was like, no, I don't know. We're going to cook it in the bacon grease that's in the pan.
33:33He's like, but that's terrible for you. I said, it's not any worse than butter.  And he was like, okay. So I cooked the French toast with the little layer of bacon grease that was left in the pan.  And it was really good. So good. And no one died.  So now,  now when we have French toast, like once every couple of months, if we have bacon, we fry up some bacon and I pour the...
34:02the most of the bacon grease off. And then I fry up my French toast and the bacon grease and that's how I like it. That is brilliant. You know, we, I've gotten into the sourdough kick. So I actually made my own sourdough starter about a year, year and a half ago. And, you know, I was too busy to actually learn and start making sourdough. So I had all kinds of discards. So
34:25We started making sourdough picklets. If anybody hasn't heard of that, look it up. Oh my gosh, they're so delicious if you have sourdough discard. But I am going to use what you just said and I'm going to make these sourdough picklets with bacon grease. Cause usually we use butter and that is brilliant. That sounds so good.  So what is a sourdough picklet?  So it's, don't even know where it's from. Maybe it's French. I'm not really sure. I haven't looked into the history, but it's basically you have your, cup of sourdough discard.
34:54And then I think it's like  a half a teaspoon of baking soda, a little bit of sugar, a little bit of salt. And the baking soda reacts with your  sourdough starter and it kind of expands and kind of foams up, if you will. It's really fun to watch it. And then you drop it into,  it says to use hot butter,  but how about let's try bacon grease next time.  And you just drop it in there. It's kind of doughy.  And we usually do it in like a three or four pieces.
35:22and you fry them, flip them over and they're just amazing. They're just delicious. It's like a take on a pancake, but they're crispy, crunchy on the outside. They're so good. Nice. I, yeah, I, I told someone a month and a half ago, I was going to start Sourdough Starter and I haven't done it yet, but I need to just to make that. Yes. Yes. That's pretty much all we, all we made for the first year of the Ciclids.
35:48The reason I keep saying I want to start a sourdough starter, which sounds really funny to say in that order that way, but it's because someone was telling me that you can make sourdough crackers and I really do like crackers, but I don't like store-bought crackers. Yeah. So you can make crackers. My sister actually just did a recipe that was homemade Cheez-Its. So you spread the starter out on  a baking sheet and you sprinkle cheese on top and you bake it. And she said they were amazing. So I'm definitely going to add that to my to-do list.
36:19Because I'm sure you don't have enough to do as it is, right? Right, but hey, you gotta make room for the little things that make you happy and cheese is one of those things for me. uh-huh.  Absolutely.  We're making  sausage, gravy and biscuits tonight for dinner.  Oh, stop it. Can I come over?  It's a long haul for sausage, gravy and biscuits. but it'd worth it.  Yep.
36:44Yeah, we had one pound left of ground pork and I was like I can make sausage gravy and biscuits if you guys want it. My husband and my son were like, yes, please.  Oh my  god. Well, good. You'll enjoy that.  Yeah. And the reason I say that, well, the reason I even bring it up is because I feel like it's a very homestead meal to make homemade biscuits  and homemade sausage gravy.
37:11Yes,  yes, yum. Oh my gosh, I don't know anyone who turn that down.  Well,  I have heard that there are people who don't like sausage gravy, so they're going to turn it down. But anybody who likes it, they're always going to try it.  All right. I have yet to meet those people. So  more for us then, right? Yeah, absolutely.  All right, Jesse. Well, I wish you a lot of luck with your workshop because that should be fun.
37:38for you, but it should really help a lot of people too. Thank you so much. Hopefully it's the beginning of something awesome. Anything to kind of help people on their way to realizing that they can do it themselves. Yes. All the encouragement in the world to everyone that you talk to because  we need to, we need to know how to take care of ourselves.  got it sister.  All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Jessie. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. You too.
 

Home Grown Collective - Third time's the charm

Today I'm talking with Hayden at the Home Grown Collective. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Hayden from Homegrown Collective for the third time. Hi Hayden, how are you? Great Mary, I hope you are. I'm good. It's a really beautiful day here in Minnesota. The sun is shining and it's cold. It's like, I don't think it's above freezing yet. Oh man, I got nice 67 degree weather down here in North Carolina. Well, yeah, because you're in the south and I'm in the north. So go fig.
00:58Spring so far has been pretty good, so we're really looking forward to the temperatures keeping climbing here. it really is.  I'm ready. I'm ready for it to be May 15th so we can start planting plants.  Okay, so just to catch people up, Hayden and I have talked a couple times already.  Hayden has the most wonderful directory for people who want to get found if they sell stuff. And by stuff I mean produce or...
01:28Homegrown meats or  I don't know what else but Hayden's gonna tell you so Hayden. Tell me more. Tell me where you're at. What's going on? So we created a it's it's it's a what a directory an online store and it's a hub with tools for  producers and consumers to organize a local  Supported food system in their communities so you can create educational groups. You can create barter groups you can
01:58share which  which farmers markets you're going to be at if you want to if you don't want to sell online and you want to keep everything local.  The point of the online market is to give those smaller  producers access to that revenue. And you're still supporting you know, local and when I say a local food producer,  mean somebody who  grows their own food,  and most of it goes back to a 50 mile radius of consumers.
02:26is what I consider a local food producer.  people ask,  where are you located? And it's not about where our company is located. It's about where they're located and who they can find that has the same mindset. So our Homegrown Collective isn't just a collective of people selling food. It's a collective mindset of people who want a different food system in America. And it gives you the tools to help organize that.
02:54all in one place and  you're able to support and organize  local food production and offerings  with restaurants, household consumers,  backyard gardeners, to small family farms. And it brings everybody with that same goal in mind for our food system  together in one place.  You could compare it to like a Facebook with a good cause and our
03:23Our thought was with the revenue that social media brings in, you could really make some real change in a country with that kind of revenue. And if we can do it under a nonprofit business model and get that money back directly to the responsible food producers and grow new  operations of  food production, then  by directly funding those efforts,  I think we can change the food system in our country.  Probably communities out of time, but it can be done.
03:54Very nice. And I'm really excited to hear that the Homegrown Collective  model has grown since we last talked. Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was just going to be a directory, but it sounds like  it's much more than that this time. So that's great.  Before we continue,  it's national, right? It's not just... Yeah, international. You can  access it anywhere in the United States.  We can't operate outside of the United States based on our...
04:23a nonprofit status,  you can't  take in funds and direct them outside of the country, which I totally understand  and wouldn't want to do anyways. we are  steadily growing and I know it'll be a long,  with all the information being pushed out onto people, it's kind of hard to get it out there. So we really appreciate everything you do for us, Mary.
04:50Well, I am a huge proponent for what you're doing because I have been saying on every episode for the last two weeks, I think if you live in America right now, find your local growers because it's really important. It's always been important, but it's even more important now. I agree. I agree. And we are, our board members are growing. So we got a new lady in, uh, in Georgia that's come on and a man in New Hampshire. we're our board.
05:20of advisors is growing outside of North Carolina and Virginia. And so  we're getting more and more knowledge and taking in more and more  data. So as we grow, our board members will provide us with more information and help us maintain the  right direction. And sometimes we're just not knowledgeable about the area and the ecosystem of other places. So it's better to have  local knowledge.
05:50helping us direct funds and get everybody on board.  Yeah, absolutely.  Knowing people who know things you don't know is really, really important.  And  I've said this before, I'm going to say it again. When I  make friends, I just hope that they're smarter than I am because I want to learn from them. And so basically you're making business friends who know more than you do. Right. That's exactly what I'm doing. You are right.
06:20And I think it'll, it'll add to our, uh, you know, people will hopefully trust it more if they know that there are people involved in their state, you know, across, uh, not just one man show, but, uh, so we're, as we grow, I hope we, uh, you know, gain more people's confidence. Yeah. And I don't see why you wouldn't. I mean, you seem very genuine. You seem very passionate about this, which I love. And
06:46And on that note, how excited are you that you just started this? a year and a half ago?  we'll developing started  three, two or three years ago, but we fully launched  within this year. So yeah, we, it's really exciting. I  know marketing, it's fun talking and making all the connections on the way there, but  I'll get excited when it's a household name and everybody knows how to buy, you know, the best place to buy their local.
07:15local grown food. Yeah, yes, I understand that. But you have been, this is your baby. This is this was your idea, right? Well, I'm the goal. No, no, I think this idea had been has I think others have had this idea. I think I organized it and put the best business model behind it to create real change. But I want to still I don't want to take everybody I think kind of has that idea of, you know, it's better to buy local and
07:44And I hopefully, and you people have created their own tools for it and stuff, but I've looked at all those and I really feel like we got  the best way to create change in our country, not just  create a successful business. So I'm hoping  one day when I find somebody more knowledgeable who  is driven like I am to be  in the head of operations, I think it'll show people how committed I am.
08:12that when I stepped down to be the head of support is that my goal is to deal directly with the users and  directly work with the platform's development. And I would like somebody with more experience to be the head of operations for the nonprofit. And I think once people see that I'm willing to hand off recognition and control that they'll realize how serious I am about getting the goals met. Yeah. Well, while you're the head of
08:41of everything basically.  I'm really impressed with you Hayden. You  did not have to do this. This was something that you felt called to do. And so I say this to everybody I'm genuinely proud of because I'm a mom and I'm always saying to my kids I'm proud of them.  I'm really proud of you. This took a lot  to get off the ground and get as far as you have. Yeah. Well I've been flying dark so I'm learning on the way.
09:10but definitely out of my comfort zone.  Yeah, kind of like I was when I started the podcast.  Yeah, baby, very comparable. Yep. And the podcast is doing really well and it sounds like  Homegrown Collective is doing really well. So I guess we're on the right track.  And before I say anything else, I want to make it clear that the Homegrown Collective is the only sponsor.
09:35of a tiny homestead podcast right now. So thank you Hayden. I appreciate that. Yes. We were very happy to do it. I, uh, I like the people that follow your podcast and I've looked through your profiles and seeing you got the, you got good kind of people listening to you. So  I'm thankful for every single listener I have because without them,  I wouldn't be doing this. So, but just thank you so much for sponsoring the podcast. I appreciate it.  Okay. So you were telling me that
10:04that you wanted to clarify how people can use Homegrown Collective or by computer or by their own. Right, so  it's a platform just like Facebook or Instagram or something.  So if you're using the computer, you'll go on the web app and use it through the website. And if you're accessing it through your cell phone, then you'll just download the app on your phone and access it through that way. But we've had some people logging on.
10:33on their cell phone to the website.  that can just,  creates a, it's not the best user  experience. It's just not designed to be used on a cell phone and the mobile app's not designed to be used on a computer. Okay. But so it's, it's a, think people find it, figure it out, but we, that is the biggest confusion we have so far. And I think maybe the people keep asking,  you know, where are you located?
11:02We're located in North Carolina in America and our platform is available all throughout the US. So it tracks your location. It's local to your location, not local to us.  Yep.  And when people want to go find the app for their smartphone, what do they  type in? it just homegrown collective  app? Right in their app store. Okay. All right. Cool. Because sometimes
11:31sometimes you look for an app and you're like, I don't know if it's under the name or if it's under something else. So yeah, yeah. So yeah, there is, there's  just a little bit of confusion, but we don't, we're getting mostly good feedback from people that get on and start using it.  So  we got a new updates coming too. So there'll be a  CSA tool and a delivery tool added.  And for those that are able to,
11:59have a producer profile and a consumer profile, they'll be able to switch between those easier than logging off and logging back on. we've had, we've gotten a lot of feedback from  some loyal users and we really appreciate it. And those changes will be made as soon as possible.  Nice. You,  I don't want you to like spill all your secrets about this, but who does all your, your  computer and app stuff?
12:27It's a company that most of their, they all work remote, but most of them want the lady that was it's a  app company, a software company. And they, their name is band of coders, but they, uh,  uh, they were my second company I used. had some issues with the first one, but, uh,  I found a good team. I think they're good guys.  Uh, they really liked what I'm doing, but, uh, and the,  the, lady that I spoke to directly was in Georgia. So she was right. One stayed over from me.
12:57I know that's not local or anything, but it just, it made it nice to know that there was somebody on my time zone that I could talk to during development. Yeah. Okay.  It just seems like, it just seems like all the pieces have really been coming together for this. amazing. There's been some things that I wasn't expecting to happen that really, really pushed us forward a little bit when I needed it the most.  And so this, I know it's going to be a slow, slow long road, but I'm in it for the long haul and I'm excited.
13:27Yeah. Yeah. I think you would sound more excited if you weren't just getting over a bug. So  yeah, that's right. I'm  drained of a little drained of energy, but uh, I, uh, I'm either going to have to be excited for several years or wait till, uh, or wait till we can get to enough cell phones and enough people  wanting the same change that we want for the, for the food system. And, uh, I'm sure there, we just, it's just a matter of getting the word out. Yeah, it is. Um,
13:57Okay. So for people to, to be listed on Homegrown Collective, it's free. that correct? Yeah. anybody, any producer or supporting business, any services can list their, their offerings on the website for free. We do go through an approval where we make sure they're an actual business or, you know, who they say they are, you know, very brief 24 hour.
14:25We just check out your information and see if you're who you set, you know, your business is where and what it is. And then once you're approved, you're good to, you're good to sell and operate using the tools. Okay.  Trust, but verify is what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we just don't, can't have like if you have all the other social medias have bots and, you know, stuff that are being put on there to influence how many followers people have or
14:55stuff like that. I  don't want it to get as messy  and diluted as Facebook and Instagram.  You know, I want it to be goal driven,  you know, with a purpose in mind.  hopefully, hopefully we can keep only, you know,  noble operators on there. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.  So do you have any idea how many members you have right now? Yeah, we got close to 200 falls across the country.
15:25There's thousands of consumers that have logged on. You  got some producers logging on in some areas that no consumers have logged on and some consumers log on in areas where no producers have logged on yet.  And so  there's a few communities that have gotten it to where they're set up and using it. And  the biggest thing is the producers were offering a free resource and we hope that they'll promote our  services.
15:54the way that we promote  their business on our platform. And so by benefiting each other and  getting everybody on one organized hub for this mission,  I think if we all work together,  my only goal is to end up with a remote salary. So I'm not looking to become a Martin Zuckerberg or anything, but it would be nice to have  one place with one voice speaking for our food.
16:23that isn't  funded by  big corporations or government. Yes. Yep. That makes sense. Okay. So you said you had some notes you wrote down that you wanted to touch on. Have you hit all of them or do you have more?  Just to know, got to be, our goals are the same. We're growing our board members. If anybody would like to apply, you can, there's a form on the website.  We got some events we're attending this year. We'll be at the North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee state fair.
16:53We'll be at the Homesteaders of America convention  this week. Tomorrow I'll be at the small week, small farm week here in North Carolina. And so we're going on a couple more podcasts this year and we'll be in Progressive Farmer magazine,  the Farm and Ranch magazine. And  so we're getting, we're just hoping to gain exposure and gain as many producers as possible to help us.
17:25share our information and hopefully people will schedule phone calls with me if they're skeptical. You can do that through my email support at homegrowncollective.org. I'd love to clear up any confusion for  any users. So. Nice. Okay.  And  I'm,  is a weird question because I'm not sure you're there yet, but have you gotten feedback from people who are using the.  Yeah, that's where some of our, uh,
17:54The biggest thing was,  you know, make it easier to sign up. we made it so we're working on getting it so it auto populates like every, whenever you go to any other website, can like auto populate your information from your Google wallet or  somebody. So to get people signed up to their information, we're making it auto populate  from their information.  The other thing that people brought up the most was the, was being, they were like, I want to be a consumer too and a producer.
18:22And so we're making it easier to switch back and forth between those profiles. And that's really the only  negative feedback I've gotten besides somebody saying,  there's no producers in our, in our area yet. And I just have to kindly explain relaunched this year. Uh, we are still spreading. If you could just help us spread the word, maybe share a post in your community,  uh, or you can  send anybody, if you can ask anybody's permission to send me their contact information.
18:51and I'll happily reach out to them myself.  So that we are at the place where we are getting users and starting to get feedback. And I'm trying to go ahead and get ahead of it and make any changes I can now instead of letting them all build  up. I just spoke with the developers at Band of Coders last Friday, it was Friday right before the weekend started and talked to them about the new updates and.
19:20what we see coming this year. Nice. I feel like it's like building a library, Hayden.  You're building a library of people who are producing good food. And  once the library hits a certain point, people will be like, oh yeah, I know where to go. I need to go to Homegrown Collective because  that's the library of producers I need to look in to find what I need.
19:50Yeah, I love that metaphor. hadn't thought about it like that, but that's, it is a hub of resources and information. And I guess there's like a snack bar in this library too. So. exactly.  Wouldn't it, wouldn't it have been great if a library's had little coffee shops in them back when you were a kid? Well, I go to Barnes and Nobles a lot. So I,  when they started putting Starbucks in there, they, somebody, somebody up in that corporate office had a great idea.
20:21Apparently, our Barnes and Nobles has a huge Starbucks in it in Greenville, North Carolina. it, for as long as I can remember, they had something in there. I guess not the public libraries. They should have maybe handed out some food. Yeah, that would have been really cool. I spent a lot of time in the library from the time I was 12 till I was 18. So I would have been happy to drop pocket money at the library. That would have been fine.
20:49The first chocolate covered cherry mocha I ever had was at the first Barnes and Noble that I went to that had a coffee shop in it. And I have  not been able to find a chocolate covered cherry mocha anywhere since. And I've tried to replicate it and I came close, but it wasn't the same. That does sound delicious. It really was. I was like, Oh my God, I need to get the ingredients and make this myself. And I tried. I really tried, but you know,
21:17You know, you can't make the thing the same as at the place you got it. It's just never going to live up to it or the memory. No, no. Next, but not the first time.  Nope. So,  um, so you were saying back when we talked last time that you really aren't a grower, a producer. So I started,  I have started growing my own food this last two years. I tomatoes, okra and corn.  Awesome.
21:44Good. Cause you were- my favorite side. So I try to grow enough to  freeze.  you know, I try to, it would be nice to one day be able, I don't have the room for it now, but I'm,  I'm at the point  of finding  some,  if I can find a little bit of land that I could, you know, put a, put  like a double wide on or, or a RV on or something so I can grow my own food, uh, and have my own little property. I'm a-
22:14I'm looking to set up to be able to grow for the rest of my life.  I gotta find the right property to do that if, if, uh, if it comes to pass in the near future.  so yeah, we got a little homegrown collective garden. do herbs.  got rose. I got all the herbs you can think of. And then I got, uh, I do potatoes, ochre and corn throughout the year and try to freeze as much as I can.  Cause I swear when we talked the first time.
22:42You were saying that you were no expert and that you were trying to grow some things  and you really wanted to get into  it. still a novice, but that was one reason to start something like this and not just make it an online market is because I was a consumer that caught on to how food processing industry and how that is going for our country. And so I really, really wanted to start growing my own food, but didn't have the knowledge to do it. And so I was like, well,
23:11some, want to buy my own food and I want to learn how to grow it. is there any, and there wasn't a resource for all of that,  uh, with the set with one goal to, and I couldn't find it anywhere to buy food and learn,  uh, in the same place. hopefully,  hopefully this tool will help me buy  local food and, and, uh, learn how to grow it as well.  Yep.  Exactly. You have, was, that was  one big reason why I started it.
23:39Yeah, I hate to keep relating this back to books, but basically you've written the book you wanted to read. So we're back to libraries and books. Yeah, no, I've got a whole list of books that I've read this last two years to help me prepare.  And so I haven't written a book. Did you say I wrote a book?  No, no, no. I'm making the analogy that you have written the book that you wanted to  we are still writing it. We are still writing it. So there will.
24:08There'll be some new chapters coming for sure. Yeah. mean, since we last talked, there's new chapters that I didn't even know were going on. So  it's, really exciting.  Um, last time you and I had talked, I think that I had told you that we'd gotten a grant to build a hard-sided greenhouse. think I told you.  must have forgotten about that, but that's awesome. I'm what  are you planning on growing? Uh-huh. We're already growing stuff in it. It went up in May. Okay. Last May.
24:38So almost a year ago.  And the first year is the experiment because we live in Minnesota. It's cold, you know, six months out of the year  and it extended our growing season by two months. So instead of the garden, anything growing past September or October, we're now in December, which has been amazing.  And,  um, my husband put the first seeds in a month ago out there for cold, hardy stuff.
25:05And he just moved some of our peppers and tomato plants, seedlings out there this weekend. So  basically the only months we can't really grow anything out there is January and February. That's awesome.  If you can do it in Minnesota, means, mean, you should have, my goal is to have  a, a greenhouse too, one day, maybe you'll know enough by the time I get my greenhouse to teach me something.
25:33Well, you're lucky because you live in a much warmer climate than I do.  he put a space heater out there this weekend because it was going to get cold overnight last night. And  most of the plants that aren't cold hardy, that aren't winter growing plants, as it were, they're up high. So the heat rises. So it stayed above 40 degrees last night in the greenhouse. Gotcha. Yeah.  I got a book that I'm learning.
26:03the different techniques of growing. I'll pick which one I think I'll be most capable of.  Yep. We've tried.  We've done so much research Hayden on how to heat this thing for the whole winter so that we could actually grow tomatoes in there in January.  It's not going to happen. So I saw one thing you like dig, I don't know if y'all would want to do this, but you dig down like three feet and the warmer ground.
26:31You you dig past the cold frozen ground. frost line, yeah. The frost line and then you build your greenhouse around that and all the heat that's not getting trapped by the frozen ground grows, is trapped in the greenhouse from the earth. Yeah, we had talked about that and it's a 40 foot by 20 foot greenhouse. Oh, yeah. And we don't have a bobcat to dig.
26:56and  we didn't have the money to get somebody to come dig it out for us. So, And you saw one technique too that you can just drill, instead of like excavating it all out, you can drill holes every, you know, certain amount of feet and get those down past the frost line and those let up enough heat  to thaw out the frosted surface too. So you would just need, you would just need like a, like a one hole digger.
27:25to go straight down and then you cover it with like a, you know, put like a PVC pipe down there and then I've been learning a lot of techniques to do stuff like that. it would take some work and 40 by 20 is quite a bit of square footage there, but that's an awesome sized greenhouse, I bet. Yeah. My husband and son actually built it themselves. They had a little bit of help from one of our friends and
27:50The day it was finished, I went outside and I went inside of it and I was just like, this is freaking amazing. Good job, you guys. And my husband was like, well, you're the one that applied for the grant and got the money for us to be able to build it. So without you, it wouldn't be here. And I just thought that was so sweet that they'd done all the grunt work and all I did was answer a couple of questions. Hey, that sometimes that's how it works when you're ahead of the podcast. Yup, exactly.
28:20So anyway,  I would say what's the future for Homegrown Collective, but I think you've actually told me the answer to that already. We're just trying to spread to as many communities  in America as we can and get as many supporting users as possible. It's free and easy. You can delete your account at any time.  So I hope they'll at least give it a chance. We're not here to scam anybody.  Yeah, and scams are a big thing right now.
28:49I'm going to vouch for Hayden. I mean, it's my podcast and  he clearly... would love to speak with anybody. I will get on the phone with anybody. And if it's possible, meet him in person  if there's any skepticism. Yes. And the other thing I would say is Hayden's right. Always do your research. If you have questions, make sure you ask them.
29:14I agree. That's the best thing you can do. Hopefully we can start doing that with local farmers. Yeah. Yep. Exactly.  Have you been able, have you had time to go visit anybody local to you? Oh gosh. Yeah. I spend all my time every day. Like when I go out shopping every week, I go to, you know, a different local market. got one called Acre Station. That's a local meat  farm and butcher shop. And they got, they got a stand for local produce. So I go there a lot. then
29:43Griffin's Farm Market. go to the local, I go there and then I go to a farmers markets all over North Carolina. So I got friends in the mountains in Raleigh. And so I go and I do in-person stuff and go meet, you know, hand out cards at farmers markets.  it's a, that is honestly the most effective way. But when I look at my funds and how many people I reach when I drive that far to go do that.
30:11It makes more sense for me to reach like a podcast  or a magazine and they reach, you know, a hundred thousand people in the magazine or, or whatever, whatever they're, I can reach more people by marketing like that. But when I do get the opportunity to go to farmer's market, I always shop there once I had a new one once a week or different one once a week. So I, uh,  it's really easy to do it when you, when you eat the way that you're trying to get other people to eat and promote this, then it's.
30:41I'm really just shopping for my food and working a little bit at the same time. So it's not, it's very easy to do. Nice. You're just, you're so personable that I can't imagine that somebody is like, why are you talking to me? You sometimes people have their walls up, it takes, yeah, I do get that. I do get that look on their face a lot. Like, why did he just come up to me and start talking? But, uh, I can really, I could talk to a wall if, uh, that was the only thing they're listening. So, yeah.
31:11All right, Hayden, we're at 30 minutes. I'm going to cut you loose. Thank you so much for coming back. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And thank you for letting us sponsor and reach your users.  Oh, absolutely. I appreciate it. Bye. Bye.
 

Fun Farm Studios

Today I'm talking with Troy, author of Fun Farm Studios. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Troy at Fun Farm Studios and I don't know where you are Troy. What state are you in? We are in New Haven, Indiana. Okay, well in New Haven, Indiana. What's the weather like there today? Oh, it's beautiful. I love Northeast Indiana. We get all the seasons. We have nine seasons in this part of the state. Oh really? Yeah, the joke is if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.
00:57Yeah, my dad used to say that I grew up in Maine and it would be beautiful and then it be boring. We'd come run in the house and be like, what happened? He'd be like, if you don't like it, wait five minutes. That's right. It lives true here. So I'm used to that. I'm in Minnesota and it is incredibly gray and windy. And yesterday they were saying we're going to get six inches of snow. And then when I got up this morning, the storm had taken us
01:25of more southerly tracks, so we're probably going see some flurries and that's it.  Oh no.  It's fine.  I really wasn't looking forward to six inches of snow on the day before the first day of spring, so  we're good. Minnesota only has two seasons, right? Winter's near and winter's here. Minnesota has two seasons and winter and allergy. That's great.
01:55Yeah, no, we have spring, summer, fall and winter. And the joke here is that we suffer through the winters because the spring, summer and fall are so beautiful. That's true. So, OK, so we've talked about the weather because I try to talk about the weather at beginning of every single episode because it's a good way to keep track of it. So tell me about yourself and what you do.  My my inner child is on the outside. I am what I wanted to be when I grew up.
02:24and I've known since I was seven. And it's  been art. They are an artist and entertainer has been the wonderful evolution  of the dream since I was in second grade. And it has come to fruition in a big way with this beautiful homestead that we purchased about 11 years ago in New Haven. It's a historical property, although it doesn't quite.
02:48Meet the standards of the registry.  You can't paint that. You can't change that window. The windows 143 here, so we gotta change the window so  but it's rich with history on this property. There are Johnny Apple seed trees on our property. We have everything Indiana has on our property except a cave, so it's just beautiful everywhere you look. There's something to see.  And it's been a wonderful fruition.  We started our company tag our company  on the.
03:17turn of the millennium, Y2K, when we realized the computers weren't taking over. Three, two, one, okay, we're fine, all right, all right, so let's start a business. 26th year in business now. And it has just grown organically from customer needs with a focus on making good memories and family-friendly fun. And the property that we are stewarding now that we've been delivered to is just a huge blessing that has the fruition of
03:47offering people an option to come to us. We always have gone to them, but they've never been able to come to us. So we have a village that we have built on the property that represents the variety, the versatility of services that we possess and can provide. And we call it the fun farm. So the fun farm is kind of a cart before the horse because we have a TV show on YouTube now, Fun Farm Studios,  which  is
04:13I guess  the Disney movie and then we built Disneyland or he built Disneyland. We've built Disneyland and now we built the show. So  it's just whatever, it's all happening. And  the, village is inspired by playhouse design. So we have a giant UFO and castle and pirate ship and,  uh, an A-frame for the dinosaurs. And it's just a, like we bought a park and it doesn't disrupt the land. It's a wonderful flow. So people can, can look it up and see it.
04:41Google Earth is just an amazing aerial view of the property from what the previous owners did and what we have continued to enhance it with never destroying anything that we that wasn't a dangerous thing I mean some things fall over some things rot but whatever we could preserve we have so it's been a wonderful blend from their efforts which were primarily history and horticulture they wanted to build an arboretum out here and then ours was the entertainment  so
05:10It was like meeting ourselves 30 years into the future. They just loved meeting us. It was kindred.  so he was, we, well, I should restart. We are the first non-family to ever own this place since it was plotted in the 1800s. So his great grandfather bought it from the guy who sells the land for the government and blah, blah. So he was born on the porch. And so just amazing stories out here.  And it just declared him call of stewardship.
05:41which it's surreal. I wake up to my life. I joke that if there was a movie made to tell my story, it would be the opposite of it's a wonderful life. It would be a reverse Clarence. I wouldn't need someone to tell me what the world, love things. Everything's great. It's fine. I'd have a demon Clarence, know, like, no, every time a baby cries, the devil gets its horns. Like, no Clarence, I'm fine, stop it. So it's, it's a beautiful existence. So get busy living.
06:08and  it's just a real purpose-driven life, and it is infectious in a good way, the things that their passions have infected us. So to date, we have planted over 9,000 trees on the property, and so continuing their arboretum focus, we are well past the halfway point of every state tree here, which some...
06:32It might be a real uphill battle like ash trees, know, the  emerald ash borer some just get in the stock getting it started and getting them growing  It might be a never so I don't know that we'll ever achieve that arboretum, but it's real impressive  the things that are prevalent here and then what the land does and what it shows you and the topography the  The whirlings were the family that we bought it from and his relative is Jen's Jensen
07:00Who was a landscape architect, famous landscape architect. So his influence on what has done out here.  It's just a wonderful hybrid Jordan with the club.  wonderful hybrid  of. All these focus points and all these homages to history and horticulture and stewardship and family and  and now entertainment. So.
07:27It is really something I love to share. There's an arresting peace out here everywhere. You look, there's something to see, including the stars in the sky. We don't even have light pollution. It's awesome. It's  all the vastness of space. It calls me up to prayer. It is just  awesome. And we overuse that word, don't we? Yeah, know, this oatmeal is awesome. No, it's not.  This is awesome. So  awe inspiring. Yes, that's
07:54That's a really good distinction right there. You are so passionate about what you're doing that you would talk for two hours straight. Awesome is there's two awesomes. That's awesome or that's full of awe. So you're talking about full of awesome. Indeed, indeed. We love to share. We've had people come out and have date nights out here and just wander around. Let the peace overwhelm you, overcome you.
08:22and decompress. is what life was meant to be. Slow down, observe, enjoy, savor, like good cooking.  Good food takes time. It simmers, it stews, and  you really bring out the flavors and you enjoy the process. And everybody wants bigger, faster, stronger, but some things need to be slower, more purposeful, more intimate.
08:45Our relationships, they need to be a little bit more purposeful and get to know each other and let things evolve and take time. We can't speed date and speed friendship everybody, you know? It's not, hey, I like you, let's meet, no, no, no. You can't, it just doesn't work that way. And with our efforts, with our show, with our cause, our mission, all of these things are being the change that we wanna see in the world, which it goes back to our primal nature. We're a herd, we're a pack animal, we're a social creature.
09:14the opinions, the vastness, the speed, the overwhelming, the overstimulating trends that are happening right now. They're just making us dumber.  It's against our grain. So, yeah, put up or shut up. So I'm  fighting, I'm fighting. Uh-huh, and I agree with everything you just said because  one of the things I love about this podcast is that I get to just sit down and ask questions and really listen.
09:43to what people are saying when they answer them. I love it. I really do. Okay. So  after that, I don't know, 10 minute introduction, which was great. Thank you.  So tell me about this kids show because I've watched like five minutes, if it was five minutes of one of them,  it's very cute. And it's certainly better than the freaking Teletubbies. Oh my gosh. Yeah.  I have.
10:10watching like what just happened? Why is the baby a son? What's that robot thing? What just it is a rerun in the same show. Yeah, my my youngest is 23 and Teletubbies was one of his favorite things to watch when he was a toddler and I was just like, okay, it keeps you focused for 20 minutes so I can get dishes done really quick. So it's probably harmless. It's not really gonna do any damage. I don't think you can watch it.
10:37but I couldn't sit and watch it with him, it drove me crazy. So having said that, your show, I could probably sit down and watch with a toddler grand kid if I had any toddler grand kids. So tell me about how that came to be because that's what I'm really interested in. Well, thank you and I appreciate your interest. And it's another be the change you wanna see in the world. I enjoy relaxing and watching something and go on and whatever streaming service. And I'm sorry, but half of it is just
11:07And you're wondering who made this. I mean, there were people in a room who had lots of money and thought it was a brilliant idea and push forward and created this.  And then there's a bunch of this  and you can insert whatever position you have. But if I want to sit and be entertained, I don't want to be preached to. I don't want to be told my opinion. I don't want something force fed. It's like the awkward relative at Thanksgiving who says the stuff like, can we just eat and be relaxed and just be friendly?
11:36And so  I  see that there's this  very sad lack of a human role model  for kids. I mean, you tell me who is the human role model for kids. And we think about people who formulated our  examples. You got Fred, Mr. Rogers and Walt Disney and Steve Irwin and Bob Ross and Jim Henson. They're all dead.  They were standing on the shoulders of giants. Who's doing it now? There's cartoons.
12:04And the cartoons keep getting bigger, faster, stronger, more intense, bright colors and fast moving and shouting. And it's like Vegas. And  kids are developing psychological issues. They're getting ADHD, their brain drain, their gray matter issues.  There's articles written on it and they're naming names. I'm not trying to disparage, but there are people who are only perpetuating this escalation  of just shove it in your face and babysit the kids. And what did I learn?
12:33Maybe one, two, three, maybe ABC with some public domain content that we, if I hear the wheels on the bus go round and round in some iteration again,  eh. So  yeah, please know. I know Mary had a little lamb. I know jingle bells. Thank you. We don't need another version of this with some CGI mass produce  nonsense  that does nothing for the kids. They're getting that in schools. They're going to learn their ABCs and one, two, threes, but who's talking about emotional.
13:03boundaries and and emotional strength and growth and getting along with each other and being friends and the things that we enjoyed you and I when we were young watching PBS and  and people just sitting and having a conversational conversation not hey what what  oh ha fast moving but what just happened here there was no lesson and so the show is all of the things that we wanted to see it's conversational in pace it's muted colors
13:32It's quieter, it's gentler. TJ the turtle is the perpetual child. He's 85, but in turtle years, that's more like 8.5. And Mr. G is the caretaker. He's not TJ's dad. TJ has a family. He's just another good role model. And they discuss things and TJ will have an issue,  a concern, a problem, a question. And Mr. G is more of a mentor. And so between the two of them, they do have things and they instill certain values that are folded in and not overt.
14:02such as  do a good job, or we've got to do some things, some work, some chores, some efforts, some responsibilities. There still can be fun, very Mary Poppins, know, spoonful of sugar. And there are original concepts as well as some things that we're taking an homage to  that I think a lot of people say they want, but  I don't see a lot of people giving that option. You know, it's nice to know, and we hope to really get on people's screens.
14:32and tell, hey, here's exactly what you're talking about. Please support us.  And  I know it is something that we are bootstrapping. We have put our money where our mouth is. We have spent a lot of money on having these things produced. And we  do have a lot of things  to share, season two, three, four, et cetera. So the impetus is, I want to be Mr. Rogers. We cannot have too many  good, kind, scandal-free.
15:00You know, I grew up with Bill Cosby thought he was America's dad. Bill Cosby did what?  And how sad, how sad. And Mr. Rogers is a great, he is exactly what you saw. He was a great father, a great husband. There was no scandals. He didn't have tattoos. He wasn't a secret sniper.  He was just Mr. Rogers and he was unapologetic, but it wasn't that he had delusions of grandeur either. And these are all things that I tried to instill in my character when we're doing the show.
15:29This is not the me show. This is not me having a secret delusion of grandeur or my ego or I want to be on Broadway or the red carpet. I don't care. This is a mission that we are called to do. And I really want to see what God can create. I want to stand back, do our best, then let just, just go with it. Just show us what you got planned for us. Spirit led.  And so we can, we have enormous potential. And and I love that
15:59We are consistently getting feedback such as yours and nobody is doing the oh, that's nice You know that that placating kind of response like your mom might go. Oh, that's nice and just to get you.  Okay?  They're wow that is really good and kids are following along and they're enjoying it and they they like the kazoo part and they are interested in seeing more and you don't have this look on their face afterwards like what the overwhelmed look like their eyes wide open and just the
16:29their brain freeze. So we're checking the boxes. We're having conversations. We want to partner with other organizations with like minds and kindred spirits and like values and like missions.  So  again, no egos. It's a humble effort. And there's a lot of room for potential.  There's a lot of room for growth.  So  it's enormous.  I'm excited. We're excited about it. We have some good talented people involved.
16:58from Michael the puppeteer for TJ to Rod the producer director to Jesse the animator. We're small and mighty,  but look at what we're creating.  Uh-huh. Absolutely.  So  the thing that I noticed when I watched  the couple minutes is that  most of it is animation, but you're not an animation. You're a human being in it. Right? Yes. Correct. Are you the only non animation in it?  So far.
17:28So far,  there's, yes, there's a little, and it is kind of fighting fire with fire. Like, okay, kids, you're going to go online. get it. You're going to scroll or you're going to search. But if we can do a shepherd hook and like, but come over and look at this. Yes, you want to be entertained. We've got the, the, the entertainment aspect and the educational aspect. And maybe we start to call the impact and call the direction and break some habits. So.
17:53Sure, a little bit of puppetry, a little bit of role model, human role model, a little bit of animation, not denying it, not trying to be like, clowns are cool. Well, yeah, maybe in the seventies, they have their place, but we've got to embrace change. We've got to evolve with the technologies. We've got to kind of compromise a bit. And it's just like anything, I suppose, where you're not trying to proselytize. You're not trying to force a mission or a voice or a perspective. It's a...
18:22a friendship. It's establishing friendships with the viewers. And  as you establish those friendships, as you provide that role model and that mentorship, then people want to learn more about you. And  just like you wouldn't force feed anybody,  as they discover more about you, maybe it becomes a greater impact, a deeper impact. And then that ripples into their impacts on their friends and those that they mentor and disciple and steward. And  it's beautiful. It really can be.
18:51But the way it should be, if you're gonna share something, you're gonna make change. You can't just shout it and yell at somebody and be angry and hit them over the head with stuff.  It's gotta be kind. It's gotta be human.  It's gotta be special.  So,  yeah,  you're building the no like trust bond. Yes. Yes. So our why is big and deep and rich and driven and purposeful and overdue  and  so much.
19:22so much example of why what we need. There's a show here that was from the 80s in Fort Wayne. It's called Happy's Place, Happy the Hobo. People still talk about that. I wasn't, I grew up in South Bend, but  there were three Happys. The original Happy went down to Indy, had a fortune cookie factory. He's long since passed, but people want that. People,  we need more of that. We need more of the real, the in your face in a good way, the special, the kind, the human.
19:52That's what we need. We're just not getting it. Yes, absolutely. You also have the perfect voice for this kind of thing. Thank you. Your voice is so... I don't know, if I was a little kid and you were saying something, it would get my attention. Well, thank you. And maybe that's that background in education. I mean, you don't want to be the guy from Ferris Bureau like, Fry...
20:20Yeah,  was one of the things that we taught early on in classes like vary your tone a little bit because if you talk like this and nobody's gonna realize what you just said and then what is that two plus two? you listening? Yeah, you can't you can't be flat monotone.  My my dad  is My dad has the most beautiful voice and he also sings and he's a tenor and he hasn't saying you know He doesn't sing for money or anything. He just has a really pretty voice and he loves to sing  and he
20:50would listen to certain singers in country music back in the day and I'm not going to mention them because I don't want to disparage them.  But he would be like, I can't listen to them. They're monotone. They don't have any feeling or inflection in their voice. They're singing the right notes. There's just nothing there. Right. So I think that's what you're talking about.  Exactly. It's almost painful. Like the feeling. That's  a brilliant observation that there's no heart, there's no soul. just
21:21phoning it in.  Exactly.  Okay.  So  what's the future look like for for the show? Well, we're going to keep spreading the word and promoting it and looking for people who want to be involved and making it not a best kept secret. And the goal is to do this. This could be my opus, if you will, if I look back on my life and I want to be able to say, I can't believe I did that instead of I wish I would have done that.
21:51So my life is regret free.  It's just been fantastic. And I credit that seven year old version where you know and you're wired that way and you just keep going forward.  And for anybody listening, there's nothing superhuman or alien or trust fund baby about me. All of this has been bootstrapped from absolute nothing with no basis for  comparison. This is pre internet. There were no YouTube tutorials that taught us any of this stuff.
22:21And so  I hope to  role model, guess, any anybody who has a dream, a drive, the entrepreneurial seed in them that you can achieve things. You just got to keep moving forward. And I think that's a Disney quote too,  but it can be done. You can't achieve it. And you're to have people who tell you, nah, I've had people tell me I'm not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, talented enough.
22:46I guess in the end, kind of all loved those stories, right? Where they overcame great odds and they became the Spice Girls or I don't know, but. The underdog story. The underdog story. We love the underdog story. You don't want it to be a Rocky movie and Rocky throws one punch in the end, but that's it. That's all you got to do. I mean, we a little bit of struggle. So there is struggle, but it's good. It's good work. It's good, hard work like going to the gym afterwards. You're glad you did that. Yeah, you suffered, but it's good suffering. So.
23:16There are the fleas that come with the dog and I even have a t-shirt on right now that says that. Nice. Yeah, and it's not always a money struggle or an equipment struggle. It can just be your own struggle inside your head about, I have what it takes to do the thing that I'm dreaming of doing? Absolutely. Because I've told this story a couple of times now on the podcast. I did not like
23:46Number one, I do not like being on video. I barely like being in front, you know, having my picture taken. And when I was a kid, I learned to sing before I could talk and I sang all the time. And I got told to be quiet in not so not such a nice way for, you know, quite a few times. And it wasn't that I was off key. It's just that I was always singing the last thing I heard. And so I felt like my voice wasn't good and that I didn't really need to be.
24:15heard. when I decided to do this podcast thing, I was like, well, I'm going to give it a shot, but we'll see. And a year and a half, I, and the thing is, I am starting to believe that because you're not the first person to say that since I started the podcast, but I figured I would give it a shot and it would probably go nowhere. And a year and a half later, this is where I am and I really enjoy it. And I'm, I'm now
24:42able to sit down and listen to the episodes back and not cringe every time I hear  my voice. So this podcast had a really good chance of never having been started. I just had to get over that that block. So it can just be your own mental block. Oh, you're so you're so right. And I would liken your voice in the same category as Delilah, the radio show host. I mean, it's very soothing and comforting. And people respond to that. I don't know who Delilah is.
25:11I think she's got an evening program. I imagine you could Google her, but she has a little bit of a here's your your dedication to your friend and here's a little help helpful and Landers kind of advice. OK, yeah, so it's it's an evening program, but it's not like you know Venus flytrap on WKRP. Children and this is the evening hour, but it's it's a soothing voice.
25:39And so it's a  warm motherly kind of a voice. You could check it out. You might find like, ah, all right. I'll have to go find her, yes. Yeah. So good for you for not listening to that. Because I think if it's meant to pull you forward and  achieve more, it's from God. And if it's the other one, it's the devil.  wonderful, great examples, not necessarily from celebrities. But  I have never met somebody who was successful by their own definition.
26:06who did not have great adversity, who had those dark nights of the souls.  But there are great examples. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for not being creative enough. Walt Disney?  Clint Eastwood's girlfriend dragged him into acting.  Elvis Presley, I mean, he could go on. are people who, Van Damme made it as an actor because the guy missed out on Schwarzenegger and he's like, you don't want to be the next, you know.
26:31And so that's how he got his break. This guy's got an accent. He's got muscles. Let's give him a shot.  So it's funny, just the things that people are like, I'm going to do this  and you're going to find your audience. Yeah. Funnily enough, that's what happens.  And I'm so glad that we do because otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you today because I wouldn't have a podcast to be talking to  you  on. I think that you and I have kind of the same,  I don't know,
27:01passion and it's it's to make the world a better place. Amen. And I have been trying so hard to find people like you and people like everybody else I've talked to over the last year and a half who are doing good things with their talents to either help their community or teach or share things that are really important right now. Well, those people are quiet.
27:27And they're focused on their they're minding their own business. They're doing their job and the world gets out of the way for the person who knows where they're going. But they're also focused on others. They're not the me me me. Look at me. Look what I'm doing. I need my praise and my accolades and stuff. They just aren't the reward is in what they're doing that  it's a German thing where the work is its own reward.  There are other cultures, of course, but you may have a dirt hovel, but it will be the neatest.
27:55cleanest dirt hovel you've ever seen. And so there's that ethic where it doesn't matter what other people thinking you're doing right because it's right.  so that you might have trouble finding them because they're too busy doing the thing just as  so many other species on this planet are just growing and sharing and living and we're the only species on the planet that is burdened with this crippling self doubt. And what will my mother think of me and am I my best tiger self?
28:24The only species that pays to live on the planet. mean, what's our problem?  We have free will and we can plan for the future. That's our problem. Right. Well, I'm not having I'm not having trouble finding people. It's just certain seasons of the year are very busy for people who are growing things or raising animals. Right. So right now,  I believe this coming week I have to get on it and find some crafters and some people who bake.
28:52to talk to you because everybody who's planting things or birthing  goats and calves right now are busy. That's  right. It's all good. I mean, I'm tickled that I found you. I saw I found you on Facebook and I was like, oh, I have to talk to this guy. He's doing great things. And it's a pleasure and I'd be happy to come back. Yeah. Let's  get together like in  November. Good.
29:20That's a time. Yeah. Busy season is May through October. Yeah. When it's not so crazy and then we can see where you're at. And Troy, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and keep doing the good work because we need it. Absolutely. Will do. And I'm enjoying it. I'm loving it. And it's exciting to see what the future will bring. And I really appreciate your support.
29:45Oh yeah, I want parents everywhere to have their kids watch your show. think that the I think it would be good for the parents and the kids. Right on, yes. And I joke with the parents like you won't feel you won't feel dumber after watching and I promise you and there's there's no hidden agenda. You're not gonna be like, oh, now I have some parenting to do. What does that mean, Mommy? I don't know. Google it. Why? That's too many syllables.
30:13All right, Troy, you have a fantastic day and I look forward to talking with you again. Thank you. You too. Thanks. Bye.
 

Turn Here, Sweet Corn - Atina Diffley

Today I'm talking with Atina Diffley, author of Turn Here, Sweet Corn. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Atina Diffley, the author of Turn Here Sweet Corn. Good afternoon, Atina. How are you? Hello. It's really a treat to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, I'm so thrilled you had time. I reviewed Turn Here Sweet Corn on my book blog years ago and I haven't read it since and it's been a while, but I remember just being smitten with your writing.
00:57Thank you. was really fun to write it and really healing. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine it would be. was so  like, it was so comforting to read it and know that I'm not crazy to love everything about the lifestyle. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. The good, the bad, the ugly, the aberrant, the fantastic. It's all there.  Exactly.  So because not everybody knows about the book.
01:25Asina, will you tell me about yourself and what the book and what you're doing now? Sure. The book is a memoir. And when I started writing it, really all I knew is that I wanted to write a memoir about my experience as a farmer. our farm started in 1972. My husband, Martin, started it in Eagan, Minnesota. So for those of you who are familiar with Minnesota, Eagan is now 100 % developed as a suburban.
01:53area, it's 20 minutes downtown Minneapolis. So he grew up there at Fifth Generation Family Farm and saw all that change happen. And that in and of itself is so much what this book is about because  he knew that land through his ancestors and their experience as settlers, as Fifth Generation on land that had been in that family since it was taken from the Indians.
02:23And that was rolling land.  It was diverse. It was never farmed industrial style because of the topography of the land. wasn't  flat and possible to put big equipment in it. So it was small fields settled into a diverse landscape that still had an intact biological system from pre-colonial days.
02:53fields that he grew there were small vegetable plots, settled into this extreme diversity. And as a certified organic vegetable farmer, before anyone knew what organic was, he was really utilizing that diversity of that land.  So that right there is a great place to pause and to really just sort of celebrate this word biological diversity that has now become somewhat of a
03:20buzzword and a catchword and it's now being greenwashed, but it really is that the essence of all life on the planet. Well, yeah, because  different is good and same is not good. It's boring. And from a health perspective, the more diverse any system is, whether it's a living natural ecosystem or a relationship,  and you talk about any system, diversity is healthy.
03:50and creates  reduced disease transmission, reduced disease issues.  When you think about it from an agricultural perspective, as long as we had a diverse landscape around our fields, we really didn't have disease or pest issues.  And I was really naive when I joined Martin in the  80s. I was young and
04:17There wasn't really a lot of science and research and conversation at that point in time yet about this and how it works. And so really, I organic farming was really easy. I mean, it was hard physically. We worked our butts off. But the management of our fertility and our pest-centered disease and our water needs was done through the diversity of the landscape and didn't take a lot of effort. But I didn't know that at the time.
04:46I just was doing the task of planting and harvesting and I didn't really understand the impact that diversity had on it until the sky fell out and that land was developed.  Yeah. It's,  I, okay,  I'm sitting here thinking about how to say this next.  We lived in Jordan for 20 years, Jordan, Minnesota, and we moved to our little piece of heaven like a little over four years ago.
05:14Our little piece of heaven is in the middle of the corn fields right now. And it's a 3.1 acre lot and our nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away. And part of the reason that we chose to leave Jordan is because stuff was starting to get built up. There were a whole bunch of housing developments that went in. And when housing developments go in, population expands and then big box stores come in and they want to
05:43They want to buy up land to put their stores in. And I didn't want to watch this town that I had lived in for 20 years become  what Egan has become. You know, it's really hard because I'm all for progress, but I'm not all for destruction, if that makes any sense at all. No, it's really complex societal issue and there are positive ways to go about it.  And I think one thing that's really critical to point out here,
06:12is that the destruction that happens when a suburban development happens, it's really obvious because they come in and American style, they take every tree, every bush, every blade of grass, they scrape off the living soil and they sell it. And then they build the houses. But it is not development that is a leading cost of ecosystem loss and species extinction and diversity habitat loss. It's actually agriculture.  Agriculture uses 70 %
06:42of the planet's water. It is the leading impact on natural diversity habitat.  creating dense urban settings actually is a smart way to deal with housing. And the fact that we have a lot of humans that do need housing and do need, you know, don't want to have to buy everything on Amazon, at least I don't.  So it's a human need that we have to work with and we can do it in a way that's concentrated.
07:11and that incorporates diversity into it. Once those developments happen, there actually is a lot of diversity that can happen in a housing development. And it can be a diversity reservoir. But when we get into America's agricultural systems, which  are monocultures, the whole system is based on, we don't want anything but one plant species in that field.
07:37you know, the cash crop that we're aiming after, whether it's corn or soybeans or whatever it is, we want that one species. We don't want any other plants. We don't want any animals. We don't want any insects. We don't want any diseases. We don't want any funguses. And so it is a vast monoculture and that is an absolute biological diversity desert. Yep, it is because there's nothing else. And
08:04And I'm telling you, I hope that the people that farm the fields around us switch back to alfalfa in a couple of years, because this cornfield thing is driving me insane. Hey, refresh me. Do we have an hour or half an hour? Um, half an hour, 40 minutes. Okay. So, you know, going back to my book and how that relates to all this,  when that farm was developed,  we experienced an ecological collapse.  We were renting land.
08:32from the developer actually, because they developed over a three year period. the fields, the land around our fields that we were still running were bulldozed and we couldn't pull a crop out of those fields. We were overrun by pests and disease. And that's when I started to really understand how much biological diversity is doing for us was as I experienced that extreme loss. And it's a really powerful part of my book because
09:02The reader experiences it through my children's loss. young. And children at that age, they just connect with nature. It doesn't have to be a big environment. They can connect with one rock or a little tree or a bush or sitting under a plant.  And it's really quite spiritual for them. And when that was bulldozed, they really went through the loss of innocence.  They experienced it as a rape victim would, that their parents
09:30these caretakers that are supposed to keep them safe cannot protect them from everything.  And they're really not supposed to figure that out till they're, you know, teenagers, rebellious teenagers.  So that was a profound moment in my life and in my book. The reader really goes through that process and has the opportunity to really grieve whatever losses they have had in their own life, whether it's land or relationships or people, it doesn't really matter.
10:00The emotion is the same. It's grieving those losses and recognizing  how complex and valuable they are. And then we bought a new farm  just south of Lakeville. It had been conventionally farmed. was 100 acres. They plowed it from one end to the other. And the first thing we did was walk that land in a heavy rainstorm and understand how the water was moving. We staked that out and we planted those to waterways so that  we wouldn't have so much erosion.
10:30And then we laid out fields to the contour of the land, 45 smaller fields on a hundred acre farm. And between the fields, we planted biological diversity habitat, diverse flowers,  plants, bushes, bunch grasses for dung beetles and various beneficial insects.  And we had to restore a diverse habitat on land that had been destroyed. And that was a lot of work.
10:59You know, we just had that need because it hadn't yet been destroyed  from how it had been  colonial. And here it had been destroyed at our new farm, but we had to create that.  that's another really great part of the book is the reader starts to realize, yeah, destruction has happened.  You're experiencing that with your cornfields, but it can be recovered. And life is inherently resilient. Every time people make an effort to
11:29do biological diversity recovery or water cleanup. They're always astonished at how quickly  systems can recover. That happened big time with the river when they cleaned up the river and how quickly fish returned in a river that was dead on the Mississippi. Yeah, I have a question. How long did it take you with your new land to  get it healthy again? Well, we were certified organic and in a certified organic process,
11:58you cannot use prohibited substances for 36 months.  So we couldn't take a cash crop off of our new farm for 36 months. So we didn't try to, we just spent 30.
12:15through soil building crops  and getting these systems in place. So was very intensive and not everybody can do it that way.
12:25We were ready.
12:28that were certifiable. They hadn't had chemicals on it. We were renting 18 different properties with a 32 mile radius to grow our cash crops at the same time that we were rebuilding this hundred acre farm. So it was a very intense  period of our lives to be managing cash crops  on so many different properties and build this farm up.  But we got through it. I would say it took
12:57three to five years for things to start really being solid systems at our new farm. You were saying that your kids went through grieving the loss.  The only story I really have about that kind of thing is  my husband and my son and I used to really love and go hike and check out the public land in Minnesota. And  if my listeners don't know, in Minnesota,
13:22You can harvest things on public land. You just can't dig anything up. So if there are wild plums growing, you can pick the wild plums. It's totally fine and take them out of the state lands. there was an old  like homestead out in towards St. Patrick and  it became public land. State bought the land.
13:48And there were two absolutely gorgeous ancient apple trees on that land.  No one has touched these trees in forever.  And we happened to find them just before it was apple picking season.  And we checked out the apples and they were not buggy. They looked like they had been taken care of and no one had been taken care of these trees, I guarantee you. So when we knew it was time,
14:14We enlisted a friend and her daughter and we went and picked apples till we couldn't pick apples anymore.  That was amazing. Did it two years in a row. Third year went back, trees had been cut.  And I cried,  I'm not kidding you. I sobbed.  That was like our special secret trees and they were gone.  And I cried. sat in my car with my husband and I cried like
14:42big ugly tears. And he was like, they weren't our trees. And I said, no, I said, no, they felt like my trees and now they're gone. And he just, he was so like, he felt for me, but I think he was more amused at how destroyed I was that they cut those trees.
15:05Oh, that's actually how I met Martin.  I see my book, but  I,  had been an orange and apple picker professionally as a young person, as a migrant. And  I lived in Minneapolis and I was so  missing the country. I was a real person at heart and dying in the city. I knew he had a cider press. Someone had told me,  I'm, you're not there. What it take to get you back?
15:36Oh, there you are. My phone said you weren't.  Somebody told me he had a press and I called him up and asked him if I could borrow it. And I just drove from Minneapolis to Eagan and stopped any time I saw a fruit tree and asked if I could pick it and arrived at his place at  like 20 bushels. And he accused me of stealing them.  So we started to have a little spat,  which fits for us.  That was how we met. But that that relationship is so critical and
16:04We all want that. And it's a beautiful thing for people that are homesteading or, you know, even if you live in a city, you can plant a tree in your yard. You can plant a garden in a pot on your apartment building patio deck. You know, it doesn't have to be a lot of space, but just having something growing in our lives  is huge  and really a  spiritual healing process.
16:29I always think of growing plants as being responsible for something. And I think it's why, I think it's why people have pets if they don't have plants,  because there's something really good for the soul in taking care of something else.
16:47Yeah, I'm pretty attached to my house plants.  To finish the story on my book, after we got our new farm put together and became the  main supplier of organic produce to the Twin Cities co-ops, and we're pretty well known as a farm. In 2006, we got a letter from a crude oil pipeline owned by  the Koch brothers.
17:16And Boya Hearts just stopped. They wanted to eminent domain our new farm for crude oil pumping station and a pipeline. And we already knew what that meant as far as development. We knew that it would be the end of our farm, that we wouldn't continue here. And it was just heartbroken. So I decided to start learning about the legal process. And what really caught me was as I...
17:44reading the court documents, there was a document called an agricultural mitigation impact plan. And what it is is the agreement that the pipeline company has to fulfill when they cross a farmer's land, basically says they're going to put this pipeline through there and then put everything back the same way it was. So it's the detail of how they're going to do that. And it said that they would not knowingly allow more than 12 inches of topsoil erosion.
18:15Not knowingly.  And that was the moment I got mad. I got really mad. Because that is not putting things back the way they found it. And do they know how long it took for that 12 inches of top-celled abortion to be created? So we intervened in the legal proceeding. And this was an absolutely brilliant move on the part of my attorney, Paula McAbee, because it meant that we were part of the actual routing permit process.
18:41They couldn't get their route permit. They could not build anything on their pipeline until the three parties, the Gardens of Eagan,  was our intervention, the Pipeline Company and the Department of Commerce, which represents all people impacted by the pipeline. We all had to stay at the table. So,  you know, in a lot of these cases, if it's just a one-on-one lawsuit, you could win the lawsuit, but then the company appeals it and the person ends up losing because they can't afford the appeals.
19:10It goes on and on forever. But in our case,  they couldn't just keep appealing it because then it would have held up their pipeline process.  So we intervened in the legal proceeding and our goal was to establish that organic farms are a valuable natural resource like a wetland that should be avoided when feasible and when they cannot be avoided to be protected through specific mitigations.
19:39And we wrote a specific mitigation plan that addressed all of these issues on an organic farm.  Went through the legal process  and  we accomplished that goal of writing a mitigation plan, an organic mitigation plan that is now standard procedure for any public utility in the state of Minnesota. A number of other states have copied it and a number of  utility companies have just taken it on on their own because they see it's
20:09it's going to make life better for them. And I don't want to go into a great deal of detail on that simply because we don't have the time. But I think what's really critical here and what the reader really gets in the book is to  kind of get a grasp on how as citizens we can really engage in lawmaking and in things that are going that are not good. In this particular case,  when
20:36I had this problem facing me. felt like I don't know anything about public utilities. How in the world could I fight this? But I realized that what I do know about is organic farming. was an expert on organic farming. It's what I'd done my whole life and I was good at it. So that is really what I had to speak to.  And as we were a direct market farm, we went to our customers and we said to people, would you write a letter to the judge and tell them how you will be differently impacted by this?
21:06pipeline because it's not just us the farmer that would be impacted.  It's our customers. And that's how we differed from a corn and soybean field. And you can just go up there all commodity crops. You can buy a hundred bushes of corn. doesn't matter if it's from Bill's farm or Mary's farm, but we were not a commodity crop. so 4,600 people wrote a letter to the judge. was really astonishing to read these letters. They were so personal  and they talked about
21:35how they would be impacted. They too did not have to understand anything about pipeline law to write this letter or pipeline issues. They really just had to say how they would be impacted. And people talked about the fact that they were chemically sensitive and that they really counted on food from this particular farm for their health. Other people said every single year we have our family reunion in the middle of August when the garden's vegan sweet corn is ripe and the watermelon.
22:03people talked about having eaten from this farm for four generations. They were really phenomenal letters. And I really want people to know that they don't have to feel voiceless. There's so much stuff going on in the world that  may be of concern to people, certainly is to me. And I know that I'm not voiceless, that it's really important for me to engage as a citizen and that we do have an impact.  And I think it's what
22:32people really get when they close that book. And when you read the last page is really understanding that role as a citizen to be engaged. You don't agree with what is going on in the world. You have the right to say so. You have the right to contact your senators or your representatives or your congresspeople or whoever by letter or by email or by phone and say, this is how I feel about this thing that's happening. And
23:01It's their job to listen and to try to try to do something about it.
23:09And I encourage people when they write those letters to go beyond feelings and talk about how they're impacted. Because a lot of our laws are actually based on impact.  Ecuador passed a law that gave nature a right in court as an entity. It's the only country in the world to my knowledge that has a law like this. In the United States, we have to prove how humans will be affected if the river is damaged or the land is damaged.
23:39in Ecuador, that river itself has a right to exist. That sounds very,  very much like the Native American beliefs.
23:49Well, that is why it passed because they have a majority of native voters there.  How they passed that law there. Um, I doubt that we will ever pass that law in my lifetime in the United States. Um, but that's why I tell people, if you write a letter or talk to a Senator to talk about impact to you, to the human being, because that's what our laws are based on is impact to the human being. And a lot of times  my attorney said a great thing to me at the start of our case.
24:17Because I wanted to do all these great things and I wanted to get at the things that were unjust. And she said, Atina, right  now, if you want to change those laws, that's really great. But right now, you don't have time to do that before you deal with the issue at hand. So you deal with the issue at hand. And then if you want, you can come back and change the law, work on changing the law.  And I thought that was just a really valuable thing for her to have said to me that.
24:44Sometimes you have to pick your battle. It's like raising children. You pick your battle, right? And that was a really important lesson that I got from her. I have a question about those 4,600 letters. Did you read every single one of them?
25:00It was great in middle of the night when I couldn't read, when I couldn't sleep. did, but I also felt really supported. I would have had to have read every single one no matter whether my face was completely swollen for a week because I cried so much. Because that's really important. And as you were telling your story in my brain, all I could see was a full auditorium of people stomping their feet and applauding you.
25:32because that's a big thing that you did. That's a huge thing.
25:38You know, I would have never been able to accomplish it. Well, not only without the support of the community that wrote those letters, but without having had the experience of the loss in Egan, that that was just so educational to me on a spiritual level and on a scientific level of really understanding the loss of biodiversity. So to bring this, kind of home, I think you told me you're, you're a lot of your audience are homesteaders.
26:09And it's such a beautiful thing to realize that in a sense what they're creating is biological reservoirs.
26:19And we see the loss you can look out your field your windows and you said you have cornfields out there and that breaks your heart And the fact that even if your land is just a little three acre plot You can make us such a diverse little three acre plot and that is keeping those species safe there so research on what insects are on your
26:43your little three kerplot and the birds and the animals that come in there and the plant species, it's actually making a difference.  When we were, we're not running our farm as a vegetable farm anymore. We retired from that and now it's  got pasture and animals on it. But when we were running a vegetable farm, the University of Minnesota would often come out and do research here.  And they came out one time  and they just went into a field and they were looking for a pie.
27:12My new pirate beetles. It's an insect that parasites,  um, cabbage lopers.
27:22And they came in, I couldn't even see them. I'd never heard of them, I'd never seen one on the farm. When they first asked if they could come, they asked me if I'd ever seen one. I didn't know what they were and I said I never saw one. And then they showed me one and you needed a mag to find glass to see them. Our fields were full of them. We didn't bring them in there. They weren't in the neighboring fields. They asked our neighbor who had a corn soybean field.
27:47if they could go in there and look, they went in 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet into them, there was none. They were on our farm and they'd come there because the plant species that they needed to survive and that  habitat was there for them to survive.  And the researchers were blown away by this as I was, because they thought they had to be brought in. And they really walked away from that day on our farm, understanding that when the habitat is created,
28:17If there's a reservoir of the species within a reasonable distance, they can come in and  settle in there. So to homesteaders who, you know, just really look at your little plot, you might wish you had bigger land or feel like has to be bigger. Every little bit really does matter and it's a reservoir that's really critical. On that subject, we have so many butterflies, different kinds of butterflies and moths here in the spring and the summer.
28:46There are these little light blue tiny moths or butterflies. do not know what they are, but they are, they look like little,  very pale blue fairies when they're flying. And I don't know what they are, but I  love them.  I, I, something here, they, really like it because I have not seen these guys anywhere else.  And
29:11We have all kinds of dragonflies all summer long, all different colors, all different sizes.  So  I think that our little homestead gives a lot of creatures a place to be.
29:26I think so too. isn't everywhere. Have you ever read descriptions  written by the earliest Europeans  to come into Minnesota? They are mind blowing. They're describing like these hordes of various birds and butterflies and all these insects and there's so many of them and they're talking about how many of them there are. And I often have dreams where I'm in that period of time and
29:56it's phenomenal to actually be immersed in that kind of an intact ecosystem all at one time that you know is going beyond that three acre plot you're on. know, like imagine if that was 100 acres what you're seeing on your little three acres or imagine if it was a thousand acres imagine was the entire state of Minnesota. That would be fantastic. The other thing that grows here is yarrow. Y-A-R-R-O-W. It's a plant.
30:26And I didn't know what Yara was until we moved here. And we have  like a yellow and we have a white that's tinged with pink. And they are so beautiful. And I have not figured out yet how to actually use them.  But where they grow, my husband does not cut any grass or any weeds or anything. And he was like, should I cut those? And I was like, no, leave that alone.
30:55Yarrow is really a favorite of pollinator species and it's a very strong medicinal plant. It actually is a  fever inducer to bring on fever as a burning off of disease.  It's a plant that I think should be used by skilled and I am not a skilled herbalist. So I will have to do my research and find someone who is a skilled herbalist before I do anything with it.
31:20Either way, it's really beautiful and I want to leave it alone because I really love it.
31:27When I was young, I was very idealistic.  I still am, hopefully, but I was also very ignorant and I would, you I was just in love with plants and I thought of them as all these great healers and I would just sort of plunge into like utilizing them for medicine and I've had a number of pretty funny stories now. Like  one time I slept in a poison ivy patch and had poison ivy all over my body and I looked in an herb book and it said to use sumac and
31:57So I went out and picked sumac leaves and put them through a champion juicer and painted that on my whole body. I used poisonous sumac. Yeah, like I was bad before the coca. I was really a mess after that.  And I could tell you about 50 stories like that. I was not as quick learner before I realized how powerful these plants are.  They're very powerful and that's really beautiful. So I'm a much wiser plant user now.
32:25We've had a few experiences. So I have two things. Number one, is Martin still with us?
32:33Yep, Martin is alive and well and happy man down in his fix-it-all shop. He likes to fix things. Good. what are you doing now? What's your life now?
32:48We actually spent our summers now in Glacier Park. And what attracted us there is that it is the most intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states. So I do feel like, you know, as I was saying earlier, imagine if you could walk into Minnesota, pre-colonial, and really experience the ecosystem here. I feel like that's what I'm experiencing in Glacier Park. And we volunteer as citizen scientists. So we get to like go to the back country and
33:18count how many loons there are on a lake or  lose binoculars and count how many rams there are, how intact a system is. Sometimes we get to collect seeds because when they do  biodiversity rehabilitation in areas, they use seeds that are within 10 feet of the area that they're inhabiting with plants. They're really specific because you could get echinacea from the park, but if it's from
33:47The side of the rocky, you know, the, the divide or, you know, even a mile away, it's a big park. It's  not quite the same. So that's just really where to be immersed in that. I still write. Okay, Where is glacier park? Cause I'm blinking.
34:06It's in Montana and it's the Northern Rockies. just, it's right next to Canada. In fact, it crosses the border into Canada. It's an international park. you said you're still writing. Are you writing articles? Are you working on another book or what's up?
34:26I work on a couple books, but I don't have the same need to get a published book out of it. So whether I will or not is not my driving source. the good news is it doesn't have to be. You just have to express how you feel in words and that's what you want to do.
34:46I find it  helps me stay very  balanced to have writing in my life on regular You are a beautiful writer, so keep doing that.
34:58And it helps me be a better talker. I find when I write about things I access words that I wouldn't normally access in language and speaking.
35:10and then it ends up becoming, it comes into my articulation. It's like transfers over.  It's so interesting that you say that because I have friends, I've had friends, have friends in my life  where I talk with them and I pull words out of my brain that I haven't thought about in years. And I use them correctly. And they're like, where'd that one come from? And don't know. It was just  inspired.
35:38My theory on that is that I learned those words when I was reading and that's why they come out when I'm writing. And when I was writing Turn Here Sweetcorn, I'd often use a word and then I'd stop and go, I don't even know what that word means. And I'd look it up and I every time had used it correctly.  So that was really fun. We are almost out of time, ma'am, but I really did love Turn Here Sweetcorn. Like I said, it's been years since I've read it.  Anybody who hasn't read it and loves to read,
36:07should go buy a copy. came out when? How long ago? Yeah, so it's been a bit. A 2012. But it's beautifully written and it's really, really educational.  educational seems really boring. It is not boring. It's beautiful.
36:26That was my goal. wanted someone who didn't care about organic farming to read it as a story. it reads like a novel. But yes, I freaking love it, which is why I asked you to come talk to me today. So, um, I appreciate your time and thank you and you have a wonderful afternoon. Thank you. And thanks to all your readers for me listeners. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
 

Rural Route Bulbs

Today I'm talking with Jodi at Rural Route Bulbs.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. This Homestead Holler Shoutout is to our friends over at Freedom Reign Farm in Buffalo, Minnesota.  Their new little farm shop is the perfect spot for seasonal fresh goat milk products if you're local to the Buffalo area.  While their online shop makes it super easy to order shippable items right to your door.  From natural handcrafted goat milk and tallow soaps to grass-fed tallow skin care and beautifully arranged gift boxes.  Each product is crafted with care and love.  Check them out at freedomreignfarm.com or follow their Facebook page to stay in the loop.
00:58Let freedom reign. Today I'm talking with Jody at Rural Route Bulbs in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Jodi. How are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm great. How's the weather in Wisconsin? Well, it's probably about the same as Le Sueur. It's windy. It's warm, which is nice. It's like 62, but we have a pretty good south wind. think we're gusting to like 40.
01:21Oh, it's not too bad here, actually. They were saying this morning that it was going to be windy and it was, but I think it's died down and it's sunny and I think it's 50 degrees maybe. Yeah, it's beautiful. And I was just telling someone else this morning that I interviewed at 10 a.m. that they are predicting real measurable heavy snow for Wednesday. And I'm like, of course they are because it's the day before spring. Yep. We were supposed to get that same snow.
01:48So we'll see how much we get. We're kind of on the line between rain and snow, which we ride the line like all winter between rain and snow, it seems like.  are you in Wisconsin? Uh, we're by Eau Claire. So we're just east of Eau Claire. So about an hour and a half east of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yeah. Eau Claire is really pretty. I have been through there. So.  It is. Go ahead. It is. It is. It's, it's so pretty in the fall. Um, I'm from Southern Minnesota.
02:18by where you're from. And I've been combining in some areas with previous jobs. And sometimes I just stop and I'm like, it's so beautiful here when the leaves are changing. And so yes, you're right. It's, it's wonderful area.  town are you from in Minnesota?  Janesville, Minnesota. Yes. Yes. I've heard of Janesville. My, my husband actually has family in Janesville, Wisconsin. So, okay. Yeah. I get confused.
02:46A lot of clinking things going on here this morning or this afternoon. Sorry. keep thinking it's morning. It's not. It's one o'clock. Okay.  So anyway,  I'm very excited to talk with you because I've been talking a lot on the podcast with people about eggs,  chickens, cows and pigs. And I really do love flowers. So tell me about yourself and rural route. I can't say it rural route bulbs. Yeah. So, um,
03:15Roll route bulbs was just  an idea that,  well, my husband and I, we were trying to think of a crop to diversify into that was local. So we farm,  we're pretty conventional farmers. know, we have a combine, we do corn, soybeans, rye.  We're trying to rotate into a couple of different things right now, but we were really looking for a local market  that we could diversify into.
03:44We happened to be on a trip in Washington state for baptism for my sister and my husband was like, we should think about tulips. So we looked into them. We planted 5,000 one year just to see if they would grow well. And they did. then planting, I planted 5,000 tulips with COVID when it was new and I got very sick afterwards. And then we planted another 12,000, I think the next year and I.
04:14planted those when I was pregnant. So I would like to plant tulips when I'm not in an otherly state.  Your property must be gorgeous in what, May, June? May, yep. It is.  16,000 tulips didn't take up quite as much space as I thought it was going to, but yes, I often find myself, I go out to  the garden just to
04:42to take notes on my tulips, which ones are coming back, you know, but sometimes it's kind of a lie. I'm just out there because it's just so nice.  Yeah. I feel like people who grow flowers do it partly because it's a good thing to grow, but because there's such joy when they bloom. Yeah. So my trade is in agronomy. So I generally work with crops.  Um, but I've
05:09I've had flowers for a long time and  while it was something local to diversify into,  it's just,  it's a totally different aesthetic than, you know, what your corn and your soybeans and your alfalfa are. So it's really been, it's been a fun thing to diversify into. Yeah, absolutely.  I've tried growing tulips here at our place and they do not do well. I don't know why. I don't know enough about it to know why.
05:38We grow peonies and they're my favorite flower and they're basically a bulb flower too. Oh, go  ahead. Sorry. Yeah. We don't grow them  to sell. We don't grow thousands. We grow maybe,  I think we have 40 plants right now. Oh.  And so we mostly grow them because I love them and they're pretty and we do sell stems when they're blooming at the farmer's market, but that's about it. I bet they are pretty.
06:07I bet they're very pretty.  so for the tulip thing that you mentioned, they're hard to grow.  There's a couple things. Some tulip varieties don't do very well this far north,  which I think you're probably in,  I think you're probably in like zone five. I'm zone four B.  We're right between the two. yeah. Okay.  So I have noticed that some, I've planted a whole bunch of varieties just to see what was going to work here and what wasn't going to work here.
06:35Um, and some varieties do a lot better than other varieties. Surprisingly, some of the tulip pair pair, some of the tool parrot tulips,  um, they're a little bit more irregular shaped in the leaves.  They do fairly well here. Um, but some of them, like the triumphs that are just like completely gone.  Um, so I think the Darwin's do really well here. I have some really good luck with some of the late doubles. Um, so you kind of have to find ones that.
07:05to some degree are regionally appropriate. Okay. I have no idea what the varieties were. We just bought some bulbs and put them in and we're like, grow. And  they did okay the first spring and they did less than okay the second spring.  And then this past spring, and it might've been weather related too because it just rained and rained and rained here last spring.  But  they didn't do very well that third spring.
07:33I really love the double bloom ones, the double, I don't what they're called, the ones where it's not just the outside petals, but there's like petals in the middle too. Yeah, they call those doubles. Yeah, that's all those doubles. Yep. Love those. I didn't even know they existed until about 10 years ago. Our neighbor had some coming up by his front step and I was like, those are not peonies. And I went and looked, I was like, I'll be damned. Those are tulips. I didn't know they made them, made them that way.
08:03Yep. They do look like peonies. I agree. They're so pretty. And I do know what your weather conditions were like last year. I was out looking at some crops with my mom and you guys got so socked with weather. Tulips need a lot of drainage and you guys have heavier soils. And so I bet they just practically rotted in the ground. mean, you were so excessively wet. Yeah, it was bad. Like
08:29I have talked about this so much. shouldn't even say it again, but our garden, our hundred  foot by 150 foot garden  was soup. Like  my husband had to plant tomatoes three times last year just for us to can like,  I think 20 pint jars of tomato sauce. Yeah. In our area, you could not find tomatoes that people grew on their farms.
08:56We have a huge Hmong community in the area and a lot of them grow vegetables. And  when you would ask, we have some people right next to us.  Our farm is in town  and we have a park in front of our house and I usually get my vegetables from there in the summer. they were like, nobody has tomatoes because they just all drowned out.  Every tomato that we took to the farmer's market sold out in the first half an hour.
09:25gone. And my husband came home from the first farmers market. We had tomatoes in August, not July, August. And he said, I sold out of the, I think he took maybe 50 tomatoes. He said they were gone in the first 10 minutes they were open.  Well, I'm glad somebody else can relate to how wet the weather was in the Midwest last year, because it was just deplorable.
09:53It was freaking miserable. And that's the F word I have to use on the podcast. Yeah, that's okay. In 2023, it so dry. In 2024, it was so wet. And we saw so many crop issues and we saw issues with soil microbial populations and we had slugs and they wouldn't go away because it didn't get warm. The last two years have just been the most crazy growing conditions. I think I've
10:22almost ever experienced like back to back. Yeah, it was insanity. And honestly, the summer before 2024, we  had the most beautiful garden. did great. So  yeah, we were very, very sad last summer.  And then I applied for a grant and got it and we put up  a hard sided greenhouse in May of 2024.
10:53Yeah, May of 2024. And didn't do a lot with it that  last summer because it was hot. So, you know, a hard side of greenhouse doesn't do you a lot of good when it's really hot out.  But we did manage to get some stuff put in there last fall.  And  we have actually managed to overwinter rosemary in that greenhouse this year or this winter. Oh, that's cool. Is rosemary a hard one to overwinter?
11:22It does not overwinter outside. Okay.  It will not. It dies. So excited that the greenhouse stayed warm enough that we could overwinter rosemary in it.  And we also had strawberry plants in pots, hanging pots out there.  They survived the winter too.  well that's cool. So the one saving grace of last year is that I applied for this grant and we got that greenhouse built.
11:49and extended our growing season by about two months in the fall. And growing season can now start like  now in the greenhouse. without the greenhouse, we can't do anything.  That's so nice because in the upper Midwest, if you don't have a greenhouse,  the weather's getting nice in Tennessee  and we're just sitting here like waiting. Like I have some crocuses I found that were coming up  this weekend.  otherwise.
12:17That's kind of it, maybe a little bit of grass greening up, but we were 77 degrees last Friday, which I think was pretty helpful.  But okay, so I'll get a little bit back to tulips.  I  have a master's degree that I just finished in agronomy and I'm somebody who just likes to know.  I like to learn.  So  I dug up some, I meant to dig up crocuses.
12:44two weeks ago and I ended up in my daffodil row and I dug up some daffodils and the ground was still frozen. Like I had to go get a real shovel and stand on it to get it into the ground. Yeah. And I had daffodil shoots that were pushing up through the frozen ground. So,  um, from somebody who goes grows usual, usually annual crops, it was pretty excited to see like how hardy  daffodils are in the area. And when we planted them,
13:13So we bought a trencher to plant with.  so I crawl on the ground and I just pop the bulbs in the trench. And then my father-in-law, who is very, very nice, he, he fills the trenches in and walks on them for me.  So I just planted one daffodil, you know, one bulb. And when I put the shovel in, I had like four or five  bulbs that had daughter bulbs that had grown there. So that was pretty exciting to see that in this area, like my crop was.
13:43flourishing  and that they can push out through  conditions that  not plant great. That's been really fun. I dug some crocus bulbs up the other day too and I just planted one of those and man, I had a little cluster of them.  The first year I had them, thought, these aren't that great. I just have one flower and now I have a whole bunch of flowers to  one little clump.
14:11That's been really fun to see the expansion of some of the naturalizing bulbs that I've grown.  Yes, that's the joy of bulb plants because  when somebody says to me, have peonies, I need split. Will your husband come over and split them for me? You can take half of them home.  I'm  on my phone texting him immediately.  Can you make time on this day, on this weekend to go split peony plants? And he's like, yes.
14:41Because the more  more times you do that  They do the same thing they spread as well So you start with like one clump of peony roots and they're not bulb there. I think they're a rhizome Yep, but either way rhizomes and bulbs propagate on their own and so we'll get one clump of a special peony that somebody has in their yard  and Three years later. There's like a hedge  Yep
15:11Yeah, yeah. mean, plants are just... The more I look into plants, the more I am amazed by  the things that they can do. So this is just a little off topic, but I was looking into  the nitrogen fixing process  for  legumes, so alfalfa, peas,  soybeans.  And in those nodules, the step before they make  usable nitrogen for the plant, they actually make rocket fuel.
15:41And I just thought it was like the most amazing thing. And I'm really a plant nerd, but I was like, those tiny little nodules with some  iron, malignum, and sulfur make rocket fuel. And it just blew my mind. So,  had no idea. I learned something incredibly new today.  Yep. Yep. It's I've told a lot of people and  they look at me like,
16:10whatever, Jodi. And I'm like, that's amazing.  It's just amazing that bacteria with some nutrients can do that. So it's very exciting.  if we get back to tulips, so this year is our first year in the you pick.  We're going to do some you pick with the tulips we have growing right now.  I haven't really done anything with them for the last
16:36five years because I've been trying to finish my degree and I was having babies and got to be a little bit too much. So this year will be our first spring with you pick. So I'm really excited about that. And then next year we're going to do an actual tulip display garden.  because I don't have a big stock yet,  I just ordered like 50,000 bulbs to put my display garden together.  I am actually really excited about that because how many people  get to
17:05just have like a  huge garden. It's going to be a lot of work. I'm not super excited about all the hand planting, but I think the results will just be  stunning.  Hopefully. I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell everybody else who's like, I'm going to do this huge project and it's going to suck at the beginning, but it's going to be amazing when it's doing the thing.  I always say that big projects suck when you're beginning it.
17:34but it will be so worth it in the end. Yes, yes, yes. I'm very excited to see the product  next spring. should be,  mean,  it's a lot of flowers. It should be really, really pretty.  So I don't know if my husband's gonna be able to get me to do my normal job next spring.  Oh no, whatever will he do? He'll be fine.
18:03I'll have to just get it done real early. So all my other farmers have their fertilizer plans ready to go before May. exactly. So do you sell tulips? Like the cut flowers? Yeah, so we're just starting this year. I feel like I'm a little bit of like a plant purist sometimes. I know that if I don't cut my flowers and bring them in the house, they're going to last longer.
18:31Yep. In the ground than they are in my house. So  I  haven't picked a lot. I let a couple people last year come pick them,  but I usually don't pick them. And I've had a couple people stop and I think they've picked them, but we're  pretty close to a highway so people can see them. And they're like, what are you going to do with all those tulips? So it's been really good advertising. So  all the years before I didn't do much, I deadheaded them.
19:01pretty much. And so this year we're going to do a you pick where we sell the cut flowers and in the future we might do some bulb sales this year, but in the future it'll be a you pick. We'll sell bulbs. I have some potted plants and you know, so it'll be more of an agritourism type thing where we have some food, you know, maybe some music on the weekends. We'll kind of see how everything shakes out. So it is like an incredibly
19:30new  business.  Do you have any idea how to make tulips last once you cut them and put them in a vase with water?  Well, now I don't know the particulars on that right this second. I have them in a notebook, but I do have a friend who also has a flower farm in Fall Creek  and she gave me some tips on that.
19:55but I would have to look through my notebook to find what they were since I haven't been cutting them. Okay, well,  do me a favor. When you do find out, send me a message and let me know just the basics because  I had some really pretty double tulip flowers come up two or three springs ago, like I was talking about.  And I cut some of them because they were so pretty and I put them in a  mason jar with water and they were good for about three days.
20:24and then they started to wilt.  I thought three days was great. So one of the things with tulips is if you harvest them, longer they've been bloomed,  they won't last as long. So the best thing you can do is cut them before they bloom. However, that's kind of a double-edged sword I found because the tulips seem to get taller and bigger. The actual flowers do. The longer they've been bloomed.
20:53Um, so like some of the store ones you see in the store, they're smaller, but they've been picked  pre bloom. Um, so the earlier you can pick them, the longer they last in the vase. And I think like daffodils, you have to let the goop come out of them  before you put them in  the vase with the other flowers or the goop will kill the other flowers faster. All right.  And you, you grow daffodils too. Yes.
21:23Yes, I, and I had daffodils. So our farm is on the edge of a town  and I have just terrible trouble with deer.  Um, so I do,  I, I did grow daffodils as well because I heard they naturalize in Wisconsin a lot better than tulips will, which,  um, is pretty much the truth. All my daffodils come back and the deer don't touch them, which is really nice. I spray this stuff on my tulips called liquid fence and it kind of smells like.
21:53It smells like hog manure and pee,  just for a little while. then humans can't smell it later, but the deer really just stay away after that because they like to eat them like right before they bloom.  so I'm always like  really excited to see the blooms. And if I forget to spray them,  they're all eaten off the next day.  Yep.  Damn those deer.
22:22We have a doe that showed up here  two years ago. Two springs ago. I don't think she's still alive. I think she got hit by a car.  But  the first year she showed up by herself  and she nibbled a bunch of stuff that was growing in the garden. She didn't tear it down, but she definitely took some, some snacks.  And my husband was like,  um, we have a deer.  I said, He said she's, she's helping herself. And I was like, okay.
22:51So like two days later, I was up early and I had my coffee and my husband came out on the porch  and he happened to look out the door and he was like, stand up really slowly and look to your left.  And I could see her out in the garden. I was like, oh my God, she's so beautiful. And he's like, yeah, and she's a thief. And I said,  Last year she showed up in May when there was really nothing in the garden and she had a fawn with her. So we get to see her and the fawn.
23:21And then my husband was driving to work about a week later and there was a dead doe on the side of the road, no fawn to be seen. And he said, I think our deer is done. And I said, okay, well then  your garden might be okay if we actually get it in. And then it rained all summer basically, so it didn't matter.  So I'm really torn about  do I want to see a deer or do I want the deer to not show up and not eat my stuff?
23:49So it's a double edged sword, know? It's beautiful to know that she's around, but it's also going to cut into our production.  Yep. Yep. That's exactly how I feel about it. My husband got a picture of them  like last  spring  and they actually paw through the snow to eat my tulip vegetation if it knows after they emerge. they're...
24:15Well, I mean, we live in the upper Midwest, so there's just not a lot of food at the end of spring, or, you know, at the beginning of spring. So I feel for them,  but I wish they would go for just somewhere else.  And my friend in the country, she's like, oh, I don't have trouble with  tulips with my, or deer with my tulips. And I'm like, oh, you're so lucky. Cause I spend a lot of time  spraying stinky stuff on my tulips. So the deer don't eat them.  I think that the deer just know.
24:44when it's just tulips that somebody put in because they're pretty and there's only a few. And then there's people like you who are trying to make a business out of it and they're like, let's eat the business place first because there's so many more of them. maybe they just taste better. It's a fancier restaurant. They just know, yeah. It's slightly far afield, but I don't care. We put in peach trees two falls ago now and we actually had peaches last fall. Really?
25:13There were 12 peaches on one tree and my husband brought in  six.  And I had one and my husband and my son ate the rest of the six.  And he was going to go out the next day and pick the other six.  They were gone. We think that a deer got the last six peaches, which is really sad because it was the first year we've ever had peaches and ever had put in peach trees.
25:39And he said that he's going to try to put up some cattle panels like around the trees so that the deer can't get to them.  that,  oh, go ahead. Sorry. What most people don't know is that deer will jump a fence as long as they can see how much distance they have. So if you put like a small fence around a tree and then another fence around that fence, it confuses the deer. don't know how much clearance they have, so they won't jump the fence.
26:09Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. Yeah. So he's going to do that this year and see if maybe we can actually eat our own peaches and not feed them to the deer. Yeah. Well, I've actually done some research on fences for, um, fields, uh, cause  we're in Wisconsin and there's a lot of deer.  Um, and fencing does help protect yield when it comes to deer feeding. So I think.
26:34I think you're on a really good path. And also, I guess I didn't realize you could grow peach trees in southern Minnesota. They're a winter hardy tree. And I don't remember the variety and I don't have the tag that was on them when we bought them. all you have to do is go to Google because Google knows everything and type in winter hardy peach. And I think they were developed in Canada, if that makes any sense at all. Yeah, no, that's cool.
27:03So yeah, and oh my, these peaches were like softball sized peaches. They were so good. Oh, well maybe we'll have to try some. Maybe it'll have to be a peach  tulip garden that we put in. Well, if you love peaches, I would suggest getting this variety because they're really good. Okay, I'll have to Google it. My husband loves them.
27:28So you said crocuses, tulips, and daffodils. there any other bulb flowers that you grow?  Are there any other bulb flowers?  I have some hyacinths in there  and then I have some allium and  allium is kind of okay. I think it's varietal. I have some Everest ones  and I think I only have two or three of the six  that I planted that came back. And then I have  an ornamental purple one.
27:57And those tend to come back pretty well.  The hyacinths are okay. They smell really nice, but the longer that they grow, so the first  year after I planted them, the first spring,  they came back really nicely and they looked like hyacinths. And then since then they have less flowers on them every time that they come up.  hyacinths are okay.  They're definitely something that you have to plant every year.
28:28You know, I feel kind of  meh about the hyacinths,  but  I didn't think I'd like crocuses as much as I do, but they're just, they're just such a wind, a little winter hardy  bulb that I just, I really love their fortitude because they're not planted very deep.  So they freeze hard and they're like the first guys out of the ground. So  they have antifreeze in their bulbs.  They do. They're just.
28:58It's amazing. so the longer I've been,  as I've been looking into  bulb physiology and what happens when it's cold and what initiates like flower formation in the bulbs,  it's really interesting. And I know  even some companies in the Netherlands, they'll MRI their bulbs to see  if they have  flower that's been initiated in the bulbs.
29:26I can't remember if it's MRI or ultrasound. They take some picture of them. I think it's MRI where they could see if there's going to be a flower that comes out of the bulb. Wow. Okay. They really have it down to a science.  All right. Well, I have a couple of things about things you just said  and then we'll probably be at 30 minutes.  The hyacinths. When I was little, I used to call them the grape plants.
29:54the purple hyacinths because they looked like grape Kool-Aid to me.  That makes sense.  And the crocuses.  We put in crocus bulbs the first fall we were here, so  four falls ago. And I'd never grown crocuses. I just thought that they were very pretty. seen pictures and I was like, let's try and see what happens.  I had no idea the bulbs, the blooms were so tiny. Yeah.
30:23My husband came in and he said, there's these little yellow and purple flowers out there.  And I said, did you take a picture with your phone? And he said, I knew you'd asked. So I did.  And I looked and I said, those are crocuses. said, how big are they? And he used his thumb and his finger to show me how big the bloom was.  I was like, are you kidding? He said, no, they're tiny. He said, they're gorgeous, but they're small.  I was like, oh no.
30:52He said, did you think they were like a lily size? I said, yeah. He said, no, they're tiny. I said, oh, okay. So  we still, we left them and they've come up every spring since we put them in. There's not very many, there's maybe 20. Okay. And they haven't really naturalized. So there's not a whole lot of spread, but he comes in that part of the driveway where they're planted on the right-hand side. pulls them driveway. You can see them when they come up.  And
31:20As soon as he sees the yellow or the purple, when he gets home from work, he comes in the door and he's like, you're going to be happy. The crocuses are blooming. And he's not wrong. I'm very happy because it means spring is officially here. first vestiges of spring is what I think every year when they start blooming. Yep, absolutely. And I don't know if you are a nature watcher beyond plants, but I saw a big flock of geese flying north the other day.
31:49I heard my first red wing blackbird this past weekend. think it was Saturday.  And our maple tree  is sending out the little flower thingies right now.  Oh, okay. I don't know what they're called.  I'm not a plant person by science. I'm just a plant person by, oh, that's pretty.  But you know how the maple trees send out the little spiky flowery looking things that they're happening now. Yes. Well, that's exciting. Hopefully they don't get froze off on Wednesday.
32:19Which is not,  it's not going to be that cold. It's going to be not cold enough to snow, but I don't think it's going to be bad. So,  Whatever the, the maple tree is going to do what it does. Cause it's been there for at least 50 years. I'm sure it'll probably be okay. Yes. Yes. They nature does what nature does, no matter what the weather does or what we try and make it do. Yeah. It started budding back.  Um,
32:49I don't know, a month and a half ago when we had some really warm days. And I was like, go back to sleep. It is not time to wake up yet. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's the tricky part about the Midwest is those real warm days early, everybody and all the plants, everything gets excited for spring. Yeah, and so do we. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be through this second really weird winter in a row.
33:18And I said this the other day to somebody on one of the other episodes. said I have looked at the long-range forecast. I have looked at the old farmers almanac  Forecast and it doesn't look like we're gonna need to build an arc this year. So that's good news Yeah, yeah, I guess all we can do is wait and see uh-huh. I I am I've got everything crossed I I'm gonna braid every piece of my hair to keep that cross too cuz
33:45I can't live through another summer like last year. My husband will be so upset.  So we're going to just hope that it's all going to be good this year.  Normal amounts of rain. Healthy amounts of rain. Yes.  And in our case, even if we do have a drought here,  the thing we learned last year is it's a lot easier to deal with a drought because we have a well and we can water.  But you can't suck water back out of the ground.
34:14Nope. not where it rains like that. So it's easier for us if there's too little rain, if that makes sense. You guys have such beautiful soil down there, but you got a lot of water holding capacity and they don't always go well together. No, no. And the worst part for our garden is that we have like 12 inches of really good black dirt. And then you get down after that 12 inches and we've got clay.
34:44So when it rains real bad, it just holds that water even more because it's got nowhere to go. Yeah, you  something with a real long penetrating root to punch some root holes through that clay. Yeah, well, it was a hay field and weed field for 40 years because no one had grown anything on it for that long. it still is just,  it's clay under there.
35:15I hope it doesn't rain that much this year.  I'm praying. I'm not a praying girl, but I am sending up every message to the universe to maybe not cry so much this year. That would be great.  anyway, Jodi, I really appreciate your time and I actually learned some stuff about bulb flower plants that I didn't know about. So I'm very excited. I got a chance to talk with you. Oh, great. Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
35:44Yeah, thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. Alright, bye.
 
 

Minnesota Farm Living

Today I'm talking with Wanda at Minnesota Farm Living. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Wanda at Minnesota Farm Living and by the name of the farm, you know it's Minnesota. So good afternoon, Wanda. How are you? Good, good. I'm glad to be here. I'm happy to have you. And I'm really glad you're in Minnesota because when I ask you about the weather, we can just grin because it's sunny and it's warm.  Oh, know. It's crazy. And it sounds like this next week. I mean, the next like seven days is going to be like a roller coaster. And I mean that literally almost.
00:58Highs near 70 and it will be down to lows in about the 30s by the end of the weekend and probably snow again. Yeah, but not much not much snow and will melt next week.  Yeah, exactly.  can't Considering the winter we've had and how little snow we've had I would be very happy to not have three feet dumped on us. That would be great. I'm in Lasur. Where are you? I am in Welcome, Minnesota. So I'm actually right along the I-90
01:25In fact, I can actually see I-90 from my house and yeah, just south central Minnesota. Okay. I have no idea how far away that is from me in Lesor, like an hour. I'm going to guess an hour and a half. Okay. Cause I think St. Peter for us is like an hour and 15 minutes. So you're a little bit north of that. So yeah, we're about 10 minutes due north of St. Peter. Yep. We go to St. Peter all the time. It is such a cute town. Oh my city, I guess. I think it's a town.
01:52But I think every town is a town other than Minneapolis. So  yes, I had a daughter that actually went to school there for a year. So it gets Davis. So familiar with that. So  yeah, my son and I, a couple of springs ago went down to the campus and there's this really pretty like park area and they have some walking trails and it's really, really gorgeous. So we, we enjoyed that cause we moved to Lusore.
02:18little over four years ago and we really busy getting things set up in our new home  and getting a garden plotted out and getting a chicken coop set up and you know things you do when you buy 3.1 acres in the middle of cornfields  and so there's hadn't been a lot of time to go familiarize familiarize there we go  ourselves with the area and we went down to St. Peter and I was like  I want to live in St. Peter this is so pretty and then I got home
02:46Then I got home and went, no, I want to live in the middle of  I hear you.  So anyway, yeah, the weather is going to be a little nutty  starting Friday and be nutty into Sunday. And then I think we might be through the worst of this winter. think we might be on our way to spring. I would be okay with that for sure.  Me too. So Wanda does a whole bunch of stuff, but I think the biggest thing is, that you guys grow.
03:16pigs to supply Hormel, is that correct? That is correct. we've been- Okay, tell me about that. Yeah. So we've been raising pigs for 47 years. So that's how long we've been living on our home site. And so we've always raised pigs. We started off with actually having sows and boars and they would feral, which is another name for giving birth. had 24 farrowing stalls.
03:44And so we could have 24 cells actually giving birth at the same time.  And so then at first we just started raising them up just a feeder pig weight, which is about 40 or 50 pounds, because we didn't have any room for them to grow up to like 280 pounds, which is what we do now. And then we would sell them, we'd go to Windom, Minnesota, and we sold them on a feeder pig auction.  So that was how it started. And then eventually we got into,  we actually,
04:12built what we call gestation barn, which is where our cells actually were housed.  And the reason we did that, if anybody really knows much about pigs, they can be pretty aggressive towards each other because what they have to do is they have to figure out their pecking order, you know, who is going to be king sow. And so the way they do that is they can kind of fight with each other. And that was kind of hard to see at times. I mean, we actually had a sow die because another sow attacked it because they were just trying to figure out
04:41Who's going to be King Sal? So we built a gestation barn so they could all have their own individual areas. And I tell you, was like night and day difference. They were awesome. They were calm, you know? And so we could take much better care of them. So we brought them indoors and then eventually we built some barns that we could fill them, you know, to actually grow them out to market weight. And we have always sold to Hormel. So Hormel is located in Austin, Minnesota.
05:08It's about an hour and 15 minutes from where we live. yeah, I sometimes I call myself a grocery store farmer  because if you go into the grocery store and you go to the meat counter and if you see the Hormel label, those pigs could have came from our farm. So. All right. Well, the next time I buy Hormel pepperonis, I'll know where maybe some of that came from. Absolutely. Because we do occasionally buy those for making homemade pizza.
05:37And honestly, we actually  take our pigs locally to a locker. I have three freezers in my basement and it's just my husband and I here. But we have three freezers, but we have three daughters too that are grown, but we have lots of pork and beef on hand.  And the pork is from the pigs that we raise. Nice. It's really funny we're talking about pork because guess what's on the menu for dinner tonight?
06:00Ooh, hopefully pork, huh? Pork chops and tater tots and green beans. That's dinner tonight.  lunch, we had pork patties.  yep. So we eat a lot of pork.  Yeah.  I was never really a pork fan until I got sick of beef.  bought a couple halves a  while back. Like we bought a half. We ate most of that, bought another half of beef.  And  I've said this a bunch of times, my husband and my son would eat beef
06:30breakfast, lunch and dinner if they could. And I'm just over it. I'm so over it. And I was like, okay, I kind of like pork chops. I guess we could put that in the lineup.  And then my  other son, all my kids are grown. They're all adults.  One of my adult sons who doesn't live here came to visit and I said this not three episodes ago, but he made  sausage, gravy and biscuits for us.
06:58Okay. And he made it super black peppery. You know, he put a lot of black pepper in it and it was so peppery. I couldn't eat it. And so I was like, I think I actually would like it if it just wasn't so peppery. So I made some last winter, not this one, but last year. And I put the smokehouse maple seasoning that we get at the store. don't know what brand it is.
07:24And I put that in the, in the gravy and some salt and a little bit of black pepper.  And it was fabulous. So right now the only pork stuff I really, really like is pork chops and sausage and gravy biscuits. I'm, I'm good with those things.  And honestly, if I could get away with it, I would probably be vegetarian because I'm just so sick of every dinner having, having to have meat with it. My husband is a big meat and potatoes kind of guy,  but
07:50I do like what I just said, so I'm glad that you provide pork to people. Okay. So can I give you a hint? Sure.  Um, so we actually use the seasoning. It's very popular in our County kind of South central Minnesota. In fact, I think they even use some of the seasoning up at the twin stadium.  Um, so it's called Martin County magic seasoning  and everybody just raves about it. So that's what we use when we grill pork chops or do anything with pork.
08:19again, Martin County  Magic Seasoning and you can guess where I'm from, Martin County.  So yeah, so it's a very, very popular seasoning. People can get it into their local grocery stores.  You can order it online. I think it's like martincountypork.com.  So yeah, so that's very popular around here.  I will have to look that up and see if I can find it because that might help my case about meat.  I just, didn't grow up having meat at every dinner.
08:49And so for me, it's weird. I'm just like, aren't you sick of meat yet? And my husband's like, I will never  not want a steak. And I'm  like, okay, babe, that's fine. okay. So I do not want to put you on the spot, but I do want to talk about  factory farming  because I've talked to one lady,  she's a rancher in Nebraska.
09:18I've interviewed her, love her, she's fantastic.  And  she had kind of  a not great reaction when I used the term factory farms.  And  she was telling me that they have many, many, many cattle steers  and that they take really good care of their steers. They love their steers. They're not best buddies with their steers because steers aren't friends like that.
09:46I'm paraphrasing badly. Please Leah. Don't be mad at me.  Um, but basically that factory farms have gotten a bad reputation  and that  That factory farms are not evil. Yeah, and I believe I believe her. So what is your take on that? Okay. All right. So let me just let me go back a little ways here So I started my blog over 12 years ago
10:11and the in Minnesota farm living. And the reason I started it was because I was so frustrated as being a farmer, but all the misinformation that was out there in the media, you know, and one of the terms of course was factory farming. And I'm like, and to this day, I don't even know what a factory farm is. And the reason I say that is because  when I think about factory farm, I'm thinking about  massive producing, you know, whether it's,
10:38crops or specifically livestock and that you don't have that connection with them, that you don't care about them, I can tell you that that is the exact opposite.  So we have one employee, so between my husband and our employee, they're out in those barns multiple times a day checking on those pigs, making sure that everything is working fine, making sure they've got water, making sure they have feed, making sure no one is sick, no one is injured.
11:06They're constantly monitoring them. Yes, there's quite a few  in a barn,  but there's really not part of the factory part of it.  And I'll just give another example of how  we're so connected to our animals.  This was a number of years ago, and not in a personal sense, but just knowing that this is our job to take care of these animals. This happened quite a few years ago.
11:33And this was when we had the sows and the sows would feral give birth. Well, there was a virus that was going around. It's called TGE. Nowadays we don't have it. They have eradicated it. But at the time, what would happen is  when the pigs were born, they were healthy, but then they would have this virus and they would almost immediately die for about three weeks,  100 % pig mortality. Nothing to do.
11:59what would happen is that the salus would build up a natural immunity to it and then actually pass it down to the pigs. So after three weeks, then the pigs were fine. So  anyway, it happened to be Thanksgiving  and had the girls, we were all going to go to my mom and dad's for Thanksgiving because this is what we do. And he said to me, he said, you know what? He said, I'm going to stay back because I am bound to determine that I'm going to keep these pigs alive. And I said, okay.
12:27For one thing, this isn't something you do. My mom and dad is like,  no, you come to our house for Thanksgiving. This is a holiday, you know? And I said, okay, you do your thing. So he stayed back. You know, the girls and I went to my mom and dad's had Thanksgiving dinner. But like I said, he was bound to determine, I'm going to prove the veterinarian wrong. I'm going to stay with those pigs and I'm going to keep them alive. Do you know what happened?  You know what I mean? I mean, that just shows you just the connection that we have as farmers to our animals.
12:57Yes, we don't have a personal name for them because there's too many, but we are completely 100 % committed.  Our animals are actually, you know, have a higher priority a lot of times than what our family is, unfortunately. But, you know, we just are just so committed to, you know, to raising those healthy animals. So. Thank you so much for answering my question because I get real twitchy when I ask questions like that because I'm afraid I'm going to make people angry.  And I feel like I gave you an open door.
13:27to talk about it. Yes, yes.  And that's one of the reasons, like I said, that I decided to blog because what I want to do is I want to create that connection  between agriculture and consumers. And hopefully if they have any questions or, like, why do you do this? And why are you doing this? And what about this?  I can just have that open line of communication to explain, OK, here's what we do. And this is why we do what we do. Another example, just to kind of, you know, not the factory farm, but
13:55We have volunteered at the Minnesota State Fair a number of times in the swine barn.  And if you've ever been there, you go in there and there's a sow  in a fair ring stall with the baby piglets. So we, my husband and I, we would get in the crate with them.  And then  people would come and take a look at the  sow and see how big the sow was and how little  the pigs were. And then they could ask us questions. I love that because the questions were wonderful.
14:23What I found is that, for example, someone might say, why do you cut their tails? They kind of say it really kind of a negative aspect, like, why are you doing this? But once you explain why you do what you do, 90 plus percent of the people go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. It's just that they don't know. So I love that kind of communication. Yes, absolutely. since you brought up cutting their tails,
14:52We have an Australian shepherd dog and she's been really well behaved lately. She has been barking in the background,  but she has a docked tail. Okay. And  I, because I didn't know anything about this breed, didn't know that they aren't born with docked tails.  I thought she was just a naturally short tailed dog.  Okay. And then I was talking with our friends that have the mom and dad dog and they were like, Oh no, no.
15:22No, she hurt, she had a tail, but we dock their tails when they're like a day or two old. Yup. Yup. And I said, but why?  And I wasn't mad. I just didn't know.  Yeah. And she said, because most of our puppies are going to be adopted out to be working farm dogs. Okay. And they really like to wag their tails. And if they wag their tail too hard, they can smack it on something in the barn or in the barnyard.  Okay. They can break their tail.
15:50She said, and she said they are the dogs that get up real close and personal with the  livestock  and they can get their tails stepped on and broken. It's just a thing that's in the way. So we dock all the puppies' tails unless we're asked not to by the potential new owner. Okay. And I didn't know we were getting Maggie until she was like,  oh man, I think I met her when she was two weeks old.
16:19It was way too far past to not have her tail dock.  So my lovely, beautiful, classic Australian shepherd girl  has a nubbin  and we call her a nubbin wagger because when dad gets home, she is wagging that tail,  that non-existent tail like it's a full length tail.  So there are reasons for the way that things are done with animals. And if you don't ask, you don't know.
16:47Exactly, that is absolutely correct. So again,  the reason that I do the advocacy work I do for agriculture is just really to open that communication and answer people's questions. So, yeah.  When I started doing this podcast, I really thought that it was going to be more of,  okay, so tell me about pigs, tell me the lifestyle, life cycle of pigs, tell me about how many babies they have, na na.  It's really not. It's become this overview of what you do.
17:16And then all these philosophies and lifestyle things that come up and I really love it because  if it was just about a life cycle of a pig, it would be one episode about pigs because why would I do more?  So it's great that I get to talk to people like you and find out your take on how you do things and your perspective out into the world on how other people do things.  Uh huh. Yes.  Okay.
17:44So I was looking at your website literally when you signed on to talk to me. Okay. And you have recipes on your website and  you have gorgeous photos to go with those recipes. So  I didn't have a chance to really dig into it. Is it just one recipe per photo or is it like if you click on that, there's a bunch of recipes under it?  There should be a bunch there.  I put recipes on there even though it's probably not my main focus.
18:14of my website, but I do put some out there. And again, pork related, you know, recipes and you know, when people, for example, I know one that I've got out there is like, well, what happens if you go into the grocery store and you buy this 13, you know, 10, what, 11 to 13 pound pork loin? What do I do with it? You know, I mean, you know, unless you're going to have a huge crowd at your home, what do you, what do you do with it? And just kind of give some suggestions. Here's how you cut it up. And then you can.
18:41actually freeze it up and use it for pork chops or, you know, just other, you know, things in your recipes. And, you know, that's just one example of something I have out there because I was in the same situation. What do I do with this big, long piece of pork loin? You know, so,  And  we do that. We buy a pork loin from Sam's like once a month and we, and we cut it up and we use it for pork chops.  We used to do pork roast, but we're kind of not.
19:09into that right now so we haven't done one in a while.  And the end pieces where they're not the same thickness, we will chop those up and do pork stir fry with them. Oh sure, that'd be perfect. Yes. And it's way less money if you do it that way. You know, if you're trying to save a buck on groceries, it's a really good way to do it. Yeah.  And some of the other recipes I have out there are just family favorites. I mean, these are things that my mom's recipes,  they'll go pretty special to me.
19:38I actually have, she had the best handwriting. I have the worst handwriting. I will tell you straight up, that is nothing I inherited from her, but she had the most beautiful handwriting. So I have all of these recipe cards with her handwriting. And of course, a lot of things were made from scratch. And so I like to duplicate that and follow her recipes. And I still make a lot of the food that she used to make when I was young. So, and those are some things I shared on there too.  Nice. I love that.
20:07Did you happen to put a photo of one of her recipe cards up so we can see her handwriting? That's actually a good question. I'm not sure if I have one out there or not, but I definitely have them in my house.  I think you should take a photo of one of them and put it on there because handwriting is so distinct. Oh, it is. And when you have really beautiful handwriting, people really love seeing that.  Yes, yes. It's good idea. I'm going to take your suggestion and do that.
20:35Yes. Yeah. My grandmother on my mom's side had the most beautiful loopy handwriting, but it was small. So, know, consistently rounded, beautiful handwriting. And I was digging through my, my keepsake box when we moved here four and a half years ago. I'd go through stuff and rearrange and I found a card from her and it said, it said, love you, Mary Evelyn, grandma on it. Okay. Oh, and I'm going to tear up. didn't think I was going do that. Um,
21:04Anyway, I was looking at it I was like, I need to take a photo of that. Yes. need to get a necklace made  with that on it. Fantastic idea. I  haven't done it yet, but I still have the card and I keep saving it thinking that I'm going to do it.  Yes, absolutely. Yes. Those things are very special. Yeah. And her, her grandma, you know, her written grandma is just so pretty.  Okay, sure.  So yeah.
21:33handwriting is really special and it is absolutely a representation of the person that wrote it. Yeah, part of my side interest that I have right now that I really want to start getting into is the genealogy. So when you mention that story, those are the stories that you need to keep, you know what I mean? In saying those for future for other family members or just for yourself, you know? And so, you know, we talked about the recipes that my mom did.
22:01that will definitely go into my family history and I will definitely share those. But I think those are very special because,  you know, if we don't share them or save them, they're just gonna go by, you know, gonna go away, you know, and I don't think that should happen. Yeah, and it's so easy to just  not see how important it is. I  live like five miles from this really beautiful cemetery.  it's one of
22:30the two oldest cemeteries in Minnesota, supposedly. Oh, really? Okay. There are Civil War soldiers buried there. Oh my, yes. And it's up a hill and it's in  an oak grove, basically, and it's just beautiful. And  some of those gravestones are super duper old.  Oh.  And there's kids, you know, there's kid gravestones up there from 1800s.
22:55And I went up there and I wandered around because I'm weird. love cemeteries. They're quiet. They're usually very pretty. They're calming. And I was looking at these headstones and I was like, man, I wonder what their story was. I know. That's exactly what I was just thinking. I mean, each one of those has a story and you wonder what is that story? Yeah. And unless they were famous, nobody knows about what they did. Yes. Yes. So yeah, history is really important. you know, I mean,
23:25There's a saying about if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it.  And it's a terrible saying. mean, it's true, but it's very negative. But history is also full of life and brilliance and fun.  Oh, yeah. And you just, don't know, I just feel like people are so focused on moving forward. Yes. That they don't entertain what came before. Yes. No, I agree completely. I love history. Actually, I might
23:55My  college degree is in secondary education social studies. So history falls underneath that.  And so I hear exactly what you're saying. There's so many great stories that I would just love to write about all of them, you know, so.  Yeah, exactly. OK, so  agritourism, you were telling me something about you're starting a new blog or you did start a new blog. Yeah, I have a new blog. It's not been out a real long time. It's called the Minnesota Traveler.
24:25Basically kind of focusing on Minnesota travel, road trips, solo trips, that sort of thing. But I also go  beyond  Minnesota if there's some things in the Upper Midwest. That's really what I'm going to focus on.  And I love agritourism  because again, that connection with the farm. I think it makes a lot of sense.  So I will write about that and share those stories. I guess the first one that comes up to my mind is like the Spam Museum that's in Austin.
24:53And I love that because this Hormel and that's where I sell our pigs, you know, so there's a special connection there,  you know, and just kind of  kind of really just really focusing on some of the small towns  right along the I-90 like Fairmont. So if you're into pigs, if you ever go to Fairmont, Minnesota, they have over 100 pig statues placed around town and around the community. Please stop and check them out.  You know, so I've got that, you know.
25:21best things to do in Fairmont, Minnesota. It's a town of 10,000 people, but there's five lakes and it's just, you know, it's kind of these places that nobody thinks about, you know, like, why would I go there? But there's a lot of really cool things there. I did one on Blue Earth and one did one on Albert Lee in Austin and you know, working my way to the West and doing something with Jackson. On my bucket list is Laverne, Minnesota, because I guess they have a Nutcracker Museum there and I want to check that out.
25:49So yeah, so just small towns, agritourism.  In Iowa, there's actually going to be a, I don't know, celebration in Clear Lake,  Iowa. It's called Evolution of the Heartland, and they really focus on agritourism and really what's, you know, how these small towns were created based on the, you know, farming backgrounds of the area. So that interests me. so,  so. Fine, you should come to Lasur.
26:17And I will tell you why  the Jolly Green Giant  thing got started here.  Oh, yes. Yes. And you can see that in Blue Earth, right? To the statue or no, that's the Jolly Green Giant. Yes. But yes, yes. Uh huh. Yeah. We have a big billboard coming into town that has a Jolly Green Giant and Sprout. Sprout. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They just repaired it like last summer or the summer before, like it was torn apart and then they redid it because it was  falling apart. So.
26:47I need one. There's a brand new billboard up for that.  Yep. And, the Mayo M A Y O house is here and it's, I have not been in it. I have not figured out a time to get down there, but they have tours that they do. You can go in that little house and see where the guy that started the clinic stuff live. Okay. Way back when. Yes. That'd be very interesting.
27:15And I live like four miles out of town. So if you decide you're going to visit LaSalle, we'll have to set up a coffee date. All right. That sounds like a deal. That would be fun. Yeah. It's really kind of fun because I grew up in New England. I grew up in Maine. Okay. And moved to Minnesota back over 30 years ago, kicking and screaming. Did not want to go. And it took me probably 15 years to realize that I actually love Minnesota.
27:44It's not that different from Maine.  Okay. Okay. It is and it's not.  I call it a lateral move. Okay.  And  I  saw like a baby when I realized that I actually loved Minnesota because I had been fighting it for 15 years. I felt like  a traitor if I embraced where I lived, you know?  Minnesota has so much going for it. It's so beautiful.
28:14And there are so many different quirky little things about every single city in town.  Yes.  It seems like every town, no matter how small, has some kind of little festival they do every year.  Absolutely. Yep. They do. They're all different.  I haven't spent hardly any time up north. I think the furthest north I've been is Duluth. Okay. Yeah. So I know nothing about  northern Minnesota.
28:41I keep being told that I should take a road trip. Oh, yes. That is one of my favorite, favorite places to go  is Duluth and up to harbors and Grand Marais.  We go up there fairly often or when we can kind of get away because that is one of our favorite. I love Lake Superior. So  yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful area. Yes. The one thing I can say is I had never seen a lake that
29:09big in my entire life in Maine.  Yes,  that's for sure.  There are some beautiful lakes in the state of Maine and there are some beautiful rivers, but I don't think any of them are as big as Lake Superior.  it's taken me a while to embrace my situation of living in Minnesota, but  we had the choice four and a half years ago to move,  to leave our house in Jordan and move.
29:39And we debated moving back to Maine. And  Maine is expensive because of the tourist state.  sure. Sure. And they have really good lobster, right?  Yeah. Yeah. Much better than what we can get here. Yes.  The problem is  land and houses are fairly, or they were at the time, fairly reasonable. Uh-huh. But the cost of living is really expensive.  Ah, okay.
30:07All right. And so for about a month,  I was convinced that we were going to move back. And then I looked into it and I was like, no, we're staying in Minnesota. The cost of living here is way less money.  Okay. So I made a choice when I had the choice to stay in Minnesota. That's how much I have decided that I love it. Okay.  It's a hard choice, but that's where I'm at. Yes. Well, I think it's a good choice. So  I do too.
30:35I really do. It's a lovely place to live. Yeah. Yeah.  I have no story to compare that to. I've only lived in Minnesota. In fact, I tell people and I know this sounds very unusual, but I've only lived in two houses my entire life.  Wow. I was born and raised in Fairmont and I stayed in that house until I was 18 after I graduated. Shortly after I graduated, I got married.
31:00And we moved out to the farm about eight miles northwest of Fairmont and I have been here ever since. So I have a pretty boring life. you're happy. can hear that. Yes. Absolutely. So I've got one more thing because I was thinking the other day that I needed to find someone who was older than me. Not old, but older. I'm 55. Yep. And talk to them about what it was like when they were teenagers because I was a teenager in the eighties.
31:30Yep. And the 80s was a really silly time. No, no one's going to argue with me about that. Uh huh. When, what, what decade were you a teenager in? Yeah. So I would have been in the seventies. Yep. So I'm about 10 years older than you are. Um, so yeah, I mean, the things that we, I don't know, trying to think you're in, that's like a long time ago. Um, but I know that we had definitely, whether this is good or bad, but we had a lot more freedom. mean,
32:00Like parents weren't worried about where you were at. I mean, you would have to have a curfew. You would need to be home at a certain time. Um, but there was no, course, definitely no cell phones, nothing like that. You know, it's just, you just said, well, I think I'm going here to  one friend's house and okay, sounds good. But they would never, you know, they would never know if you changed your mind or not, you know?  Um, but one, one story when I think about when I was young, you know, especially with the farm and everything. So, um,
32:29And I laugh about this yet today. So my best friend actually lived on a farm right outside of Fairmont and they had pigs. They had a few pigs on the farm. And so like best friends do, we would stay overnight at each other's house. And so this one night, Friday night, I stayed overnight at her house. Saturday morning came and her dad said, you need to go out and clean the pig pens. You've to go do pig chores. So I told her, I said, you know, I said, I'll come out, I'll watch.
32:56I'm not going to help. I'll come watch you."  So we went out and did that. So she did her chores. And when she got done, I looked at her and I said, I will never marry a hog farmer.  So we laugh and we laugh. it's like, I bet you God was just rolling on the floor when he heard me say that. like, you have no idea, Wanda.  So we laugh about it. So this is kind of funny how that was. But  a lot of time we spent  as a teenager,
33:26We did have like a place that we would have dances that we would go to. We would do a lot of just driving. know, that was back when you had that kind of the hot rods. My husband to be at the time had a 1969 yellow Roadrunner. You know, the back end was jacked up and you'd go up and down the main street of Fairmont and hang out at the mall parking lot. And that's kind of where you would talk with friends and other people. And you know, that was kind of what we did. You know, it wasn't.
33:54Drive-in theater was in Fairmont. We could go there.  So yeah, was nothing too exciting beyond that.  But it seemed exciting at the time. Oh, definitely.  definitely. Yep,  absolutely.  I wonder if hanging out at the mall is still a thing for teenagers. Yeah, I don't know. know in Fairmont it's not. I don't even know where they even hang out, be honest with you. They just go to...
34:20each other's homes and kind of hang out there, but it's not like it used to be, you know? So yeah, that's actually good question. But I know I have been at the mall like on a Friday or Saturday night and it's not a thing locally, but maybe some other places it is. I'm not sure. Yeah. I have no idea. My kids, my youngest is 23 and my oldest 35, so they don't know either. Yep. And you wouldn't catch me dead in a mall these days. I haven't been to a mall in years.
34:49years and years.  I see no reason to go.  They're a dying breed. mean,  it makes me sad because  the Fair Mall was like, it was the place to go when I was young. mean, they had restaurants, had grocery stores, all the  stores were full. And now you go in there and there's maybe two retail stores left. I mean, it's so sad. You you go in there, it's like, this is not what it used to be, you know? So it's just kind of a change in times, you know?
35:20Yes, it is astounding to me how things have changed since my dad was a teenager. I mean, he's 81. Uh-huh.  And he's so like with it. He's so up to date on stuff and he's in great health. He's in great shape. He's smart. Oh my God, this man is so smart.  Awesome.  And I asked him what it was like when he was a teenager.  And  he has this story about his foster mother because his mother died when he was two.
35:50Okay. And his dad, his dad worked for the state of Maine fixing roads. That was his job. Okay.  And, uh, my dad tells this story. He can't stand corn. My dad will not eat corn to save his life.  Okay. Part of it is that when he was growing up and spending his time with the foster mom, when dad was, was working,  she made a lot of corn recipes because they grew corn. Oh, sure. Yep.  And,
36:19He can't handle it. And I'm not a big fan of corn either, but that's just, I don't like it. I don't like too much of it. And I'm like, there's gotta be other stories. And he's like, well, he said, I spent a lot of time fishing in the creek behind the house and watching the eagles come in and lay their eggs. You know, they had nests in the trees and in the, um, the rock walls, going up the side of the creek. And he said, I just spent a lot of time out in the woods doing boy stuff.
36:49He said, and if a girl wanted to hang out with me, she had to like do him buy it boy stuff too. Sure. Yes.  And I just he's so far removed from that that talking about it is  weird for him, think.  Uh huh. What a great life, though. What a great life.  You mentioned that. And I think about back when I was young, too, I used to climb a lot of trees. I mean, that's what we did as kids. You know, you'd go to the neighbors or friends or whatever. Let's go crime. Climb a tree.
37:18I don't even see that happen anymore, you know, but you know, we don't have phones in front of our faces and that sort of thing. So that's what you did. But that just sounds like a wonderful life of your dad. Yeah. And us kids kind of followed in his footsteps because we lived  quite, I mean, we lived a good half an hour away from a lot of our good friends.  So we spent a lot of time playing in the woods that were behind our house when we were growing up  and going out.
37:46the creek and catching brook trout and  I don't know, just the stuff you do hanging out in the woods as a kid.  I don't know that a lot of kids have that experience right now. Yes, I know.  It kind of makes you sad really when you think about it.  Yes. But I was just curious, I'm trying to find somebody who's like  90, who is still in good health and still capable of having this kind of conversation with me.
38:13Just have a nostalgic conversation about what it was like when they were growing up So if you know anybody, let me know I will definitely do that. Yes,  because a lot of what we farmers and homesteaders and ranchers are doing  It's based on what those people did too. Uh-huh. Yep So that's of where I'm trying to go with that But  either way I grew up in the 80s the 80s all I can think of is Madonna and Prince I listen to a ton of music
38:43And back in the eighties, that's when MTV came around. Sure. Sure. And if I wasn't out in the woods screwing around or riding my bike, I was in front of the TV watching MTV and  all the lyrics to music. That's what I was doing. Yeah. I'm a huge music fan too, especially live music.  Sticks is my favorite band. So anytime I get a chance to go see them, I love that. So classic rock, that's kind of, that's my thing. So  that makes sense for the seventies. Yep.
39:12Absolutely. Yeah. And I grew up on all the weird overtly sexual strange music.  The stuff you couldn't get away with in the seventies, you could get away with in the eighties. So,  all right. Thank you for entertaining me on that question. It's really not necessarily homesteading, but it's sort of within the realm of history. So  thank you so much for your time today, Wanda. I really appreciate it.
39:40Absolutely, I loved it. So thank you for asking me.  Oh, absolutely. And you'll have to come back and visit me in a year and we'll see what you're doing and where you're at. good. Thank you.  Thank you. Have a good afternoon. Yep, you too. Bye.
 

The Cottage Foodie

Today I'm talking with Matt at The Cottage Foodie. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Matt Rosen, also known as Sergeant Shortbread at the Cottage Foodie, because he has a new thing going on. Good afternoon, Matt. How are you? I'm doing fantastic, Mary. Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Just  to catch people up, Matt and I talked quite a while ago about his business, Sergeant Shortbread. He makes fabulous shortbread, I have heard.
00:54And then he decided he wanted to do this new thing called the cottage foodie. So this is kind of a catch up and to talk about that. So tell me about yourself  and what you're doing now.  Yeah. So like you said, I started out in the cottage food  community or the cottage food industry as Sergeant Shortbread.  I still am a cottage food producer here in Minnesota. Yeah,  I love it. I don't know if I'll ever quit.
01:23Physically, that might be the only way that I stop, but we'll have to see. Only time will tell, I guess. But  yeah, I've been a cottage food producer here in Minnesota for,  seven years now. Yeah, seven years in April 2018 I started. yeah,  like I said, been a cottage food producer since then and about a year and a half ago or so  just had a...
01:50I don't know, a revelation if you want to call it. I'm not sure  what exactly you'd call it, but  I just felt like there was a need for a  directory  of cottage food producers.  for those of us who remember  the yellow pages,  maybe I'm dating myself here a bit, but. I remember them. Yeah. There's no digital yellow pages for cottage food producers. look for.
02:19for this and I saw there are some out there but it didn't look like they were really being  managed or maintained and I wasn't sure if they were still being used and so I thought well I'm gonna do a  new upgraded version of this and  so  yeah, joined up with a social media, a digital marketing company  and we created a platform for cottage food producers to  become members and have profiles on
02:48the cottage foodie  and  then  in return, what I do is I do some of their digital marketing forum. I don't take over their digital marketing and so I tell them, keep doing what you're doing. This is just gonna be  in addition to what you're doing.  So  I run Facebook ads  for them. Anywhere we have members, I  run paid advertising in their areas. So for example, I think
03:17in Minnesota here alone, we're close to 70 members. so essentially I just run it in the entire state of Minnesota, just because I'm not going to pick and choose little communities. Once I do that, I'm going to be covering the whole state practically anyway.  But take for example, California, I think we have four or five in California.  Two or three of them are in kind of the Los Angeles area and that surrounding area. And then two or three of them are up in like the San Jose Sacramento area. So
03:47So I just run specific ads within those areas. I'm not running in the entire state of California.  I mainly just want to highlight the cottage food producers  within their areas.  So for example, I might put San Jose in the Facebook when I'm doing a targeted  audience, I'll put San Jose plus 20 miles. And so it'll be San Jose and then 20 miles from downtown San Jose, it'll cover that.
04:16So yeah, that's what the cottage foodie is all about.  I  grew my business, my cottage food business from  being a cottage food producer to moving into a commercial kitchen. So I do have a  wholesale food manufacturing license on top of my cottage food producer registration. So  I just wanted to help other cottage food producers  grow their businesses if that's what they wanna do.  If their goal is to...
04:46move into a commercial kitchen and sell in grocery stores and coffee shops and things like that, then I just want to be able to help them achieve that.  And I know that one of the hardest things that we as cottage food producers  will run into is,  and I hear it all the time,  how do I get my name out there? Nobody knows I exist. I can't hire somebody to do my marketing and I can't afford.
05:14all this paid advertising on Facebook and social media. And so,  so that's where the cottage foodie steps in is I just want to be,  I want to help out in that way. If  as much as I can. Next step should be starting a podcast, Matt.  Oh gosh, don't even get me started by my wife. She will not be happy that you mentioned that because  she's  she, she had, matter of fact, she told me once I started the cottage foodie, she's like,
05:44please promise me no more businesses. Please don't start any more businesses.  So,  you never know,  who knows? Maybe you and I can team up to do a podcast together. We could be co-hosts or something. That would be really fun. I have not done a co-hosting thing. The closest I've come is guests, because you guys are basically my co-hosts for each episode.  Yeah. So a different co-host every day. It's amazing.  Yeah. When I started the podcast, it was about
06:13exactly what you're talking about. was about getting people a platform to be able to talk about what they do. And it's worked really, really well, actually.  So I love it. And I keep saying that I'm sure people are sick of hearing me say I love my podcast, but I do.  Well, yeah. And I know you love what you're doing. So it's it's kind of great when you find something that  I don't know, get you up out of bed in the morning with a smile, I guess. Yeah. And and the thing is that
06:40people like your listeners and the people who buy my cookies,  they can feel that when someone like you and I are passionate about what we do and we're excited about what we do, people feel that and they just, they gravitate to that. So it's just a lot of fun to  be within that community where people are just as excited as you are about what you're doing and what they're doing. And so  it's just, it's a lot of fun. And so it's just fun to be part of. Yeah. Who knew good vibes were attractive.
07:10Weird, right?  Okay, so  I thought that the cottage foodie was just from Minnesota, but it's not. It's nationwide. It is. Yeah.  So, funny story.  It,  my whole goal when I thought of it and when I started it was I wanted this to be a nationwide  platform or a  nationwide directory.
07:35But the initial thought was, okay, let's start in Minnesota because obviously that's where I'm from. And  this is where I have my roots and this is where I know like a lot of the cottage food producers in the state. And so it was just natural, let's start in Minnesota. Let's just see if this works. Let's just see if people are even interested in, know, cottage food producers are interested in joining.  Will consumers come and actually know that this exists? Will they come and search? You know, can we get traffic to the site?  And...
08:04Yeah, so I went live May 1st of last year, so 2024. And in August, I happened to have a conversation with a national business platform for cottage food producers. I don't want to, it's not mainly in the sugar cookie, the decorated sugar cookie community, but predominantly that's who a lot of their customers are. It's called My Custom Bakes.
08:32And they are,  it's an online business platform for cottage food producers to when consumers come, they can, it's a great way for them to customize their order so they can do very specific. Like for me, there's no customization. You're going to order a dozen blueberry lemon shortbread cookies or you're not. I mean, it's not going to be, I'm going to have like three blueberry lemon and then I'll have seven dark chocolate sea salt.  You know,  you can't customize that  through, you know, the
09:01the platform that I'm on, but with My Custom Bakes,  it's very detailed about what a consumer is ordering. so  the person who  founded My Custom Bakes also founded Borderlands Bakery, which is an online bakery supply store. So  any kind of bakery supplies.  And I had a conversation with them  and they actually said,
09:29We'd literally have been talking about this for months about wanting to create something exactly what you've done. And now you did it and we don't have to. So what do you say we partner up and how can we like join forces? And so, yeah, from that point on, that was August of 2024, I said, well, I guess we're going national a little quicker than I anticipated. And so just because they have a...
09:58I think, you know, they're in the thousands of members in their, in their My Custom Bakes platform and, and then Borderlands Bakery, uh, just on Instagram alone, they have, gosh, I think it's 180,000 Instagram followers. And so, so I thought this is just a great way to, um, get our name out there, um, on a national, on a national scale. And so I don't want to miss this opportunity to just really grow.
10:28the cottage foodie nationwide. so we jumped right in. We said, okay, let's do it. It's a little quicker than we wanted to, but let's go. And as of today, we have, I believe, about 120, a little over 120 members and 110 of them have actual profiles in the directory. And we are in 22 different states covering 22 states.
10:58with our cottage food producer membership. That's amazing. And I'm actually one of your members, but I just haven't done anything with it yet.  When, when ingredients went up in price sharply was about the time I was like, I am not getting into this right now. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah, it is. And the other thing I wanted  to bring up is I got an email the other day from somebody.
11:26who wanted to know if I was available for a cookie pickup on March 27th, because supposedly there's a big corporate event that's gonna happen in LaSore, Minnesota. And I read this and I was like, I don't think there's a big corporate event happening in LaSore, Minnesota on March 27th. That sounds like bullshit to me. So I wrote back and I said, have a couple of questions. How many cookies are you looking for?
11:54And something else, I remember what the other question was.  And  the person wrote back and said something like, like, I just need to know if you're available and then we can talk details. And I thought, yeah, that's got scam written all over it. And so  the reason I bring this up is if you are a new cottage food producer,  do your research when people approach you about making something for them, because  that, would have been a really weird
12:24thing, you know, and I didn't say yes when they asked if I was available because when you say yes to something on the phone or in an email,  you might be saying something, saying yes to something you aren't actually prepared to say yes to. Yeah. So be careful people.  And the other question I have for you, because you were a college food producer  is like, God forbid this happens, but let's say somebody says I need
12:5250 shortbread cookies two months from now  and you know, they pay half upfront. And then for some reason when you make them last minute, because lots of people do that,  they burn and you don't have time to make the rest of them. You don't have time to redo it.  Do you like consider that that payment that half down a deposit and if something goes wrong?
13:18you refund them that money and pray they don't bad mouth you or how does that work?  You know, if I ever ran into a situation like that,  I would refund it all. I would give it back.  And that's just who I am.  I would feel right.  I would just have to eat the cost  of my time, my ingredients. I'm the one who burned them. It's not their fault.  And so,  you know, think about it from their standpoint. Okay, so I burned these cookies and I
13:48email them the night before, oh, by the way, you're not going to have your 50 cookies for your event tomorrow. Yeah. You know, know, look at, look at the, the position you're putting them in. And then for me to say, Oh, by the way, that half down, I'm keeping that because that was just your deposit and that's non-refundable.  So,  um,  yeah, I, I just, I would not, I would not feel right. Yeah. Hanging onto that deposit. I would just have to say, I have to own it. I, I messed up.
14:18I'm not gonna be able to fulfill the order that  they requested. So here's your money back. I'm so sorry this happened.  I sincerely hope that you'll give me another chance.  Exactly, yeah. No, it's just, I know things go wrong with businesses and it could be as simple as burning the cookies  or as bad as your house burning down. And that definitely burned the cookies.  It's just one of those things.
14:46When we used to do a CSA, people would pay us for the season ahead of time to the tune of 500 bucks for the biggest share we had. And we would put that money in the bank and we would leave it until the end of June because that way the people that were coming to get their stuff during June,  if they weren't happy,  we could return their money.  If they didn't say anything by the end of June, that
15:11then they were out of luck. were getting what they were getting for the rest of the season and that was in the contract for the CSA. So, yeah, I was just curious about how people handle that because I have not really sold anything  yet.  Well, I've sold granola at the farmer's market with my cottage food registration, but other than that, I haven't really done a whole lot with it yet. Yeah, yeah, that's  and you know, I guess  each
15:38to each his own,  everyone can run their business how they want, but  I just, I wouldn't feel right.  I'm the one who messed it up. Now, if the consumer comes and says, you know, I've already made the cookies and they come back and say, oh, you know what, nevermind, cancel the order.  Then in that case, like, okay, that's fine. know,  good luck finding somebody else and that your deposit, I've already made the cookies, so your deposit is.
16:06is non-refundable. I would definitely not refund it then. Yep. And then what you do is you turn around and find somebody who wants those cookies and you sell them.  Yep.  Yep. You sell them. And if you're  feeling generous, just take them to,  you donate them to a local shelter or a hospital or take them down to the police station or  somewhere. You donate them to  somebody.  That's what I would do. mean, normally what I would do is
16:34If I have extra cookies from an event or something, I go on Facebook on, I live at Eden Prairie, so on the local Eden Prairie Facebook groups and I say flash sale.  I couldn't sell these cookies yesterday. They're half price. so  rarely, I don't think I've ever  not sold them when I put them on  Facebook for half price. They go pretty quick. Oh yeah. I also hear that assisted living facilities really like donated cookies.
17:04Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I didn't even think about that.  I will keep that in mind for sure. That's an amazing idea.  Yep.  They,  it's really funny because a lot of the older folks, I don't want to say old, just older than me,  certain cookies really bring back memories for them.  And shortbread, I would bet would do that. So. Yeah. Oh, I would guess the same thing.
17:33Food is such an amazing thing. mean,  again, food can be really hard for people who have issues with it. But for people who don't have issues with food, food is one of the best things in life. And it's about the sense, it's about texture, it's about the memories it brings back.  And baked goods for sure are a huge trigger. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, okay, the cottage foodie thing. It is  only for people that
18:04do cottage food, is that right? That's correct. Okay, so like canned goods are okay, baked goods are okay. I know in Minnesota we can't use  cream cheese, frosting, and  there's water restrictions in the food, things like that. But basically anything shelf stable, right? Correct. Okay. All right, cool.  And  we still can't ship in Minnesota.
18:34Still can't do it. You can ship pet treats, but,  and this is funny, I've had numerous conversations with the cottage, Minnesota Cottage Food Association, and we chuckle about this when we think about it.  Pet treats,  and I don't make pet treats, but I  think that they have to be  essentially for human consumption. They've got to be made with ingredients that are for human consumption. Yes. So we can ship.
19:03these dog treats that we could eat,  but we can't ship cookies that we could eat  because it's not a pet treat. So maybe we just need to label everything dog treats.  Only for doggos. But if  you take a bite to make sure it's okay, that's cool.  I actually had a brain thing, I don't know what you call it, inspiration, talking with someone months ago on one of the podcast episodes.
19:32And it occurred to me that if we're going to ship, you know, baked goods,  we're going to make the stuff in our kitchen. We're going to package it, package it up in our kitchen.  We're going to hike our cute little butts down the post office and get a tracking number when we ship the treats. And then they end up exactly where they were meant to go to the person that ordered them.  Where is the problem with this? It is tracked.
20:01all the way through. Yeah.  Yeah. I do not understand. Oh, this is a passion project of mine too, because like I mentioned, I've got a wholesale food manufacturing license and a cottage food registration. So I make these my cookies in the commercial kitchen. Okay. I take them to the post office. I ship them because then from a commercial kitchen, as long as they're made there, I can ship all I want. Yeah.
20:31I'm taking these cookies to the exact same, the exact same people would be handling these cookies, my boxes,  whether it's coming from my home kitchen  or from a commercial kitchen.  And the reason, from what I understand, the reason that the legislature is not approving us shipping is because they're worried about food safety and us not handing it direct to the consumer.  Well, I mean, that just doesn't make any sense to me. The same people are handling it, whether I make it in my home kitchen.
21:00or in a commercial kitchen.  And if the box is opened, when it gets to the consumer, they're probably not going to eat it. They're like, they're going to send it back to me they're going to call me and say, Matt, this is damaged. It was opened.  it just,  there's just, I just don't see the, the food safety, quote unquote, scare  of shipping something in the mail.  There, there isn't one. And the only thing I can think of is that the people, the powers that be as it were,
21:30Don't quite understand this. Yeah, that's that's all I can think of and
21:39I'm not going to say what company, because I do not want to start a flame war on my podcast, but we, we ordered some tomato seeds from a company,  um, a month ago. Um, there would, we ordered four packages of 125 seeds each and they came in the mail and my husband was planting them. And because he has ADD,  he counted each seed as he planted it.  One pack was like,
22:0780 seeds, one was 91 seeds, so far short of 125 each. Oh yeah. And I emailed the company and I was like, um, just so you know, there's not 125 seeds in these packages. And the person that wrote me back was super nice. And they were like, um, would you like us to replace the two that you've opened or would you, know, how do you want to make this right? And I said, well, ideally I'd like four new packages because the other two are probably short as well. They were totally cool with that.
22:36We're going to put former packages in the mail. Should you marry? Here you go. It'll be here. It'll be there in a week or so. What they didn't know is that once those packages got mailed out in the little paper mailer that they sent it in, it got mangled in one of the machines at the post office. We got two packages out of the four. And my husband was like, you've got to be kidding me. And I said, it's not the company's fault. It's the mail.
23:04And I said, I am not emailing them and being like,  so this time this is what happened.  he says, yeah, he said, we're going to save seeds from our tomatoes this year and that way we'll just have them for next spring. said, that's a great plan. Let's do that.  so yeah, there's no accounting for what happens when it goes into the mail system. And  if you ship a box of cookies and they get, the box gets ruined in the mail, that is not your fault. It's the mail's fault.
23:35Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. Unless that, you know, unless they open up the box and they see that I didn't like package it at all.  Just like  random cookies laying around in a box that then it's, yeah, then it would 100 % be my fault. But the way that it, when I'm shipping from the commercial kitchen, the way that I, the way that I package those, it's like, unless the post office is using my boxes for a football or a basketball,
24:03There should be no reason why the cookies don't get to where they need to go unharmed. And knock on wood, had one person say that the cookies didn't arrive in perfect shape, but they also in the same breath, were like, yeah, but the box was not, it was intact, but they could see that it was mishandled. was not, they could tell that it wasn't my fault. So they didn't ask for a refund. They're just like,
24:33Just want to let you know that this is what happened.  So if you hear anything else, you might want to check with the post office to see what's going on. Yeah, for sure.  Back  to the powers that be that won't let us ship our goods.  The other thing that I wonder about is if maybe our people in our local government have bigger fish to fry.
24:57Yeah, yeah, it,  who knows, I just,  I do, agree with you that I think it's just a lack of knowledge.  And,  you know, that's, that's a big thing. And so they don't,  if they don't really know a lot about it, yes, they're going to move on to like you put it, the bigger fish to fry, we have other things to worry about. I don't really know exactly what this is. So let's just
25:24you know, let's just move on from that because I don't know exactly what that is. So let's just move on to, yeah, as you put it, you know, bigger fish to fry with budgets and things like that. So yeah, I would agree. Yeah. And the other thing that I laugh about is most cookies have so much sugar in them, their half life is forever. Like they wouldn't be rotten even 150 years from now. They'd be hard as a rock, but they wouldn't poison you. Yep. Yeah.
25:54Yeah, like my shortbread cookies. I will,  I've like  date tested them or I don't know what the actual term is, but you know, I just,  I'll have them sit  and they'll actually be sitting out on my counter. I won't even have them in anything.  And even sitting like that, I'll come back to it. You know, I'll keep  testing them and like two weeks after they have  been made and they're still good. They're still good. They're
26:21They're  drier, of course.  You can taste the difference. They're not fresh. But yeah, they're still good. Nothing in a shortbread cookie or any other cookie, a chocolate chip cookie or sugar cookie, nothing in those cookies is going to be harmful to you if you ate a cookie six months from now that you found in your freezer or  on a shelf somewhere. In the cabinet because you put them there thinking you'd get to them and didn't. Yeah.  Yeah.
26:50Because truth be told, you can forget about cookies in the cabinet and  not remember them for a year. Oh, it  is definitely possible. I had some in my freezer, some frozen cookie dough,  and  kind of forgot about it. It just kind of gets pushed to the back.  yeah, was in there for, gosh, it was in there for,  I hate to say it, but almost two years.  Pulled it out, made it, baked it. It was delicious.
27:18Yeah, it's still just fine. Yeah. And if you live at my parents' house in Maine,  they have a border collie who will not let them forget that they have snickerdoodles for her.  My mom  makes snickerdoodle cookies. She does them as a bar. So she just spreads the batter in a pan and bakes it.  And they give it to their dog as a treat.  I keep trying to tell them that giving dogs sugar and cinnamon probably isn't the best plan.
27:48Every time I tell them my dad says well Mary Evelyn and I hear that and I'm like, uh-huh This dog  runs like ten miles a day on the property. She's just burning that sugar. So it's okay. I'm like, all right  Okay  So that dog gets the best treats on the planet as far as I'm concerned. Oh, yeah
28:12I would agree 100 % with that.  Yeah. Our Australian shepherd does not get snickerdoodles because I want the snickerdoodles.  Well, that's the other thing.  And  I don't know how many people really know what a snickerdoodle cookie is supposed to be because there are stores in Minnesota that sell them and they're weird.  they don't  even compare to a homemade snickerdoodle.
28:42Oh yeah. Yeah, I don't make snickerdoodles, but  I should make that into a shortbread now that you mention that. I should see if I can get that flavor into a shortbread cookie somehow.  It's just butter and cinnamon and sugar. I'm guessing you probably could do it super easy. Yeah, yeah. But  yeah, I don't, so I don't know exactly what goes into a snickerdoodle, but yeah, I mean, a homemade is
29:12is always, it's not even gonna compare to,  or a store bought cookie is not even gonna compare to a homemade cookie. There's just no way. Yeah,  I found the recipe for those cookies you get. I don't even know what they're called. They're like a sour cream cookie that all of Minnesota stores sell. And they're the ones that are just a white cookie  that have like a buttercream frosting on top with sprinkles.  Oh yeah.
29:40And I don't love those. They're super dry and I won't buy them because I'm not going to eat them.  I found a recipe for them. I'm going to try making them and see if they're better than the ones you can buy.  I will be shocked if they're not.  And I swear to you, my husband made huge, God, they must've been five inches across, maybe six inches across  chocolate cookies a couple of weeks ago.
30:09He just wanted to make them. I was like, okay.  And they came out really flat and they were crispy on the outside and really like gooey, chewy on the inside. It's the recipe that his mom used to make. And I bit into one of these cookies and I was like, you didn't really use the recipe that I have. You made them the way your mom made them. And he said, I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, these are exactly like my mom's. And I was like, I'll TV proud.
30:37And he passed away like five years ago.  And I'm telling you, I bit into that cookie and all I could see was his mom handing me one of these cookies. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you mentioned earlier, that's what food does.  You know,  it brings you back. It  reminds you of something,  especially baked goods, you know, like a cookie or a loaf of bread or, you know, anything like that.
31:07It takes us back to  memories of growing up nine times out of ten. Yeah, my kids are always going to be reminded of me when they get a really good brownie, because I make a killer brownie.  And they would ask for them for their birthday instead of birthday cake.  Yeah.  So I can just imagine when I'm gone, my kids are going to be like, oh my God, this is just like the brownies mom used to make, you know?  Yeah.  So.
31:37Anyway,  the cottage foodie thing,  what's in the works? Is there anything happening with that or just keep growing it?  Yeah, just keep growing.  Ideally, we get to all 50 states because,  well, take that back. I wonder.
31:59Don't have to spot check me on my facts here, but we might only have cottage food laws in 48 out of the 50 states. But yeah, just keep growing. That's my ultimate goal is just to keep growing and keep helping cottage food producers quote unquote, get their name out there. So, and we'll see where it takes us. You know what I think would be super fun? I mean, you don't have to do it, but I was just thinking about it.
32:29You need merch, you need like baseball caps and t-shirts and stuff.  Oh,  again, I go back to my wife is not going to appreciate that we had  this call right now.  So I think that's a great idea. Like, I'm  and for me, the very first thing I would do,  and it's probably more for me than an apron.  No,  no quarter zips.  I'm like pull over.
32:58quarter zip.  Not really a switcher, but yeah,  I'm addicted to quarter zips. I've got a closet.  My closet is half full of just different quarter zip.  So if I could throw some logos on there, I'd be in seventh heaven. But I think an apron would be great.  That would be cool. That would be cool. And  I'm forgetting, do you have an actual logo for the cottage foodie? You do, right? I do. Yeah. Yep. It's
33:29It's basically like the shape of a house and then almost like a stamp of approval in the middle and it has the word homemade and then there's a check mark in the middle of the stamp of approval. Yeah, I want an apron with that logo on it right now. Well, I mean, now that you've mentioned it, I'm thinking that, you know, the logo right smack dab in the middle of the apron. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, it'd be really fun. But your wife said no more businesses, so you got to figure out a way to loop it underneath the cottage foodie business.
33:58Yeah, see, well, yeah, this is I'm not starting a new business. I'm just expanding the current one.  It's just promotion, honey. That's all. Yes, exactly.  This podcast is actually under our A Tiny Homestead LLC business. And I got paid for something the other day and my husband was like, I'm going to need that number.  And I said, what number? And he said, the number of dollars that you received. And I was like, for what? And he's like,
34:27taxes. And I went, ah crap.  Yep, okay fine, I will get you that number.  And I was so excited when this happened because I was like, I made money finally off the podcast. And then I was like, I gotta pay Uncle Sam some of that money.  Yeah, that's definitely the downside to making money.  Yep, it's There's always a handout.
34:51It's not much but it's just kind of sad when you have a number in your head and then you're like Oh, I only get to keep this much of it. Yeah But still very excited because I really was working on this for a while and I'm like I just needed to make some money to show that it's worth it. That's Yeah,  well, that's awesome.  So  anyway
35:12I can't think of any more questions. I'm really glad you took the time to catch up with me today and very excited about the Cottage Foodie Directory. I think it's brilliant. Oh, well, thank you. And thank you so much for having me back on again. was  thrilled that you messaged me a couple of days ago and say, hey, want to come back on? Well, yes. When do you want to talk? I'm ready.  So  thank you so much for having me back on. It's just blast  to be able to chit chat with you. So I had a lot of fun. Well, you're welcome.
35:42And I wanted to wait a while before I had you back so that we could talk about what was happening with it. Yeah, perfect timing. Good. All right. So you have a great weekend. It's Friday. Who knew? And enjoy it. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow and then kind of not nice Sunday, I think. So enjoy tomorrow. That's what I hear. That's what I hear. So, yep, you have a great weekend, too. All right. Thank you so much, Matt.
36:11Thanks, Mary. Bye. Bye.
 

Cotton Cupcakes, LLC

Today I'm talking with Nikki at Cotton Cupcakes, LLC. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Nikki at Cotton Cupcakes LLC. Good afternoon, Nikki. How are you? Good afternoon, Maryam. Great, thank you. Good. I always, I swear like one out of three intros that I do, I screw it up somehow and I'm like, ah, it's all right. It's okay. We got it covered. Those are the ones people remember, so that's good. I'm sorry, say it again.
00:54And those, think those maybe help people remember the names. So it's good if you mess it up, then maybe someone will remember the name more so than not. Or they just giggle and go, yeah, that's Mary again.  Okay. So you're in, where are you in New Hampshire? So I'm in a small, very rural town called Alexandria, New Hampshire. What's it near? So we're near Newfound Lake, which is a stunning, gorgeous, pristine lake. We're very, very fortunate to be beside it.
01:23And  we're also close to Plymouth. So we're close to PSU, which is the university up there, Plymouth State University. Okay, that doesn't actually help me because when I think of Plymouth, I think Massachusetts. So what's the next biggest town or city? We have Laconia, which is pretty close. We do a huge  annual pumpkin festival at Laconia Pumpkin Festival.  you know, I probably haven't heard of that. Maybe you have, I don't know. I actually grew up in Maine, so I do know where Laconia is.
01:53fantastic. All of my family's from Maine. Yeah,  and now I live in Minnesota of all places. Oh my goodness, that's quite a ways away.  Yes, yes, I've told the story a few times. I'm not gonna repeat it. It's just sickening to keep saying it over and over again. If you really want to know, I'll explain when we're done recording.  So  your business name is Cotton Cupcakes LLC, but you don't do cupcakes, right? I do not make, I mean, I make cupcakes for
02:20for joy, you know, for my family and for neighbors and whatnot. But cupcakes, I do not produce cupcakes as a business, no. No.  So tell me about yourself and what you do do at Cupcakes, LLC. Okay, so Cotton Cupcakes came about  because I have wanted to own my own t-shirt company for about 20 years.  So 20 years ago, my husband and I said, we're going to do this thing, we're going to start a t-shirt company. Then we went down to our state house and we applied for our name.
02:49And one thing led to another and we never got to do it. So 20 years later, my children, I've been a homeschool parent for forever. And about a year ago, about a year and a half ago, my littlest said, I've decided that I don't want to be homeschooled anymore. I want to go to public school. And I was devastated. I went, I was just almost in mourning for a little while, but I've always told my children that if they wanted to go in public school, they could, the option was there that we're homeschooling.
03:19because we have the pleasure of being able to do so. So I said, okay. So she went in and then my eldest who's going to be starting high school,  just after a year, I said, you you should take some courses so that you can get ready for high school. So I went through a bit of a little emptiness syndrome with one in school full time and one starting to take courses. And I started to freak out like,  oh no, I've got to be something because I've been a homeschool parent for years.  And  I made a picture.
03:47I was painting a picture and I put it between two pieces of plastic and I pressed on it. And then I pulled the plastic off and I looked at it it was a squished cupcake. And I was like, oh my gosh, I love this squished cupcake.  I want to do something like this because I went to school for design and I've used it in various  elements of my life, but I haven't really been able to do anything for quite a few years with it. And I sent it to my husband, I took a picture and I sent it over the phone and I said,
04:15you know, do  you think  if I start my t-shirt business now?" And he just responded, that's it. That's it. He just said, that's it, as the words. And I went, I knew it. I was like, okay, because he and I are very in sync and  we believe in a lot of the same things and feel a lot of the same ways. And he said, this is it. This is what you're supposed to do. So I took my squished cupcake.  I call it pressed art. Some of my art is called pressed art. I'll  paint a picture.
04:43and  I'll either leave it as is or I take like a plastic covering and I press it and then pull it off and see what I have. And if I love it,  I send it away to a digital transfer company and they put it on a gang sheet for me and send it back in duplicate. And then we  have pressing machines and I press all of my own stuff. So it's all original artwork  and  it's right out of my home for now. Our goal is to hopefully
05:13be able to have an open shop someday.  But yeah, so that's how Cotton Cupcakes came about. That is such a fun story. I love that. So you're one of the few people that I've had on the podcast who is actually a crafter because the painting part is the craft. Yes.  And I do all of it. do.
05:3899 % of it is all just painting. And then when I do download it onto the computer, I'll digitally enhance some of it or do some of the work with it. But for the most part, it's all just painting. It's all just paintings. some of them are  actually some of them are really, really old pictures that I had done 20 and 30 years ago. used to, when I went to college, I was very, very homesick and I used to paint little pictures for my mother all the time and send them in the mail.
06:06and she saved every single one of them. She had them all and she passed away a few years ago and  she always would save ephemera. She had all of her papers everywhere. And I started to go through them and I found all of these illustrations that I had done for years. So I'm doing a line of little  characters  that are in my mom's memory  of all of these little things that I had sent over the years and she had every single one of them. So  it's fun. Some of my stuff is sentimental  and
06:37It's just,  it's definitely from the heart, that's for sure.
06:42That's really special, Nikki. That's amazing.  Okay, so I have a question about the transfers. These t-shirts aren't silkscreen. They're like the sticky plastic kind that goes on a t-shirt, yes? So  that's like a vinyl. So there's vinyl and there's silkscreen and there's digital, it's called DTF,  digital to film transfers. So that's kind of a relatively  new technology. I mean, I wouldn't say it's totally new. It's been around for a few years, but.
07:13It's getting very, very popular. In fact, it'll make the t-shirt company industry supposedly go up by 11 % from now until 2030. So t-shirts will boom a lot more simply because people who do artwork now can do their artwork, take a picture of it, send it to these companies, and then you get your artwork literally back and compress it within moments. So it's not...
07:38Like when I go to press something,  simply cut it off of the plastic gang sheet. set it on my shirt and I press away and there you go. 25 seconds later, you have your first press and then you tear off the plastic sheet. You do another 25 second press and you have  a viable item for sale, which is so cool. It just opens up a whole world to people. You know, so that's, that's one of the reasons I was intrigued by it is because I did a lot of studying on it before I did it.  And, um,
08:09I was most impressed with this because it would allow me the most flexibility with my artwork.
08:16Okay, so I'm not trying to be  nitpicky, but  the vinyl ones, after like a year or so of wearing and washing, that vinyl starts to lift up off the t-shirt material. Does the way that you're doing it not do that? So what they say is, and I have to go by obviously the company, the digital transfer film company, supposedly the digital transfer film that's on your shirt will outlast the life of your shirt. Okay, cool. So that's how they sell it.
08:44Now I'm not a digital transfer film company and I've only been in this company myself for nine months. I started nine months ago. So,  so far in the nine months that  I've been doing it with the shirts that I've been using, we've seen fantastic success. I mean, you press and it's just like a silk screen. It's like a vinyl. It's the  same concept,  it's you still have to press them.
09:10at like 325 degrees or whatever degree you need for wherever you're living because sometimes it can range from  environment to environment. But for the most part, it's exactly the same thing. It's kind of the same like if you go to Old Navy or if you go to some of those commercial based  t-shirt companies, they have a lot of DTF transfers as well. That's what a lot of those shirts are. So  it's just it's a mainstream item, but it's very, very popular. And now it's kind of it's an industry that's open to the general public now.
09:40So that's why it's so accessible whereas before I don't think it was very  accessible and it is still  newer than Vinyl Transfers, Sublimation and what was the other one we were talking about? Can you remember? But anyway, it's relatively  newer  but it has been around for a few years.  Okay, the reason that I asked is my youngest son had a t-shirt that he loved and it was the vinyl kind.
10:09you know, picture on the t-shirt was the vinyl kind. And after a couple years of wearing that over and over again,  the design started to peel off and he was little and he was heartbroken. And I didn't think to buy two of them because he was going to grow.  know what size to get for a second one. So I just didn't.  I should have. He grieved that t-shirt. I'm not kidding you. You know what's sad is he probably could have had that
10:38Because vinyl is the same thing. They're pressing vinyl onto fabric. It could have been repressed. I bet you anything that could have been brought to a press shop and pressed and you probably would have, it might have had minor cracks in it where the vinyl cracked, but I bet you it could have been pressed again. Yeah. Well, it's way too late now. He's 23 now.
11:05That's the thing with like with DTF transfers. Yeah. Yeah. You probably could have had it repressed. I mean, even these in the future, I'm sure that if you overdry a DTF transfer, if you put it in the dryer and you leave it for extended periods, like maybe you overdry your clothes after hundreds of drying cycles, you will see cracking and peeling just like any shirt, you know, after wear and tear. But the interesting thing about these DTF transfers is you can put them right back on your platen.
11:35on your pressing unit and you can repress and  it  looks exactly the same as it did when you first pressed it,  which is pretty crazy. So it's really neat.  It's a very intriguing world. Like when I started into it, I knew very little  and it's just fascinating to me. It's fascinating to me that I can paint something on a piece of paper. I can take a picture of it. And then three days later, cause I work with a company that does like rush orders.
12:02Three days later, it's on a shirt and I'm looking at my daughter run across the lawn with it. It's crazy.  So I saw on your Facebook page that you have little Easter egg t-shirts right now and they're very, very cute.  I do. The question I have is if somebody, I don't know, if somebody had like a favorite pet who passed away or  a signature from someone they loved who's passed away,
12:31Could you do a custom t-shirt for them? Is that something you would consider? Well,  it's kind of like,  so a few people have actually, not a few people,  many people have asked me, many people have said, you know,  can you do something for my  kids soccer team? you do, so primarily I'm kind of like life is good t-shirts. Like I'm starting my own brand. So I'm trying to brand my own style.
13:00And my style, sadly, because a lot of people have asked me this, does not include words. People have said, oh, well, you put words on it. I specifically say that's not  the style of my brand because when I started out with it,  you have to differentiate yourself because I'm up against millions of t-shirt companies. There's so many t-shirt companies out there. And a lot of people starting just like I am because of DTF transfers  that you have to, they say, don't even bother getting into it unless you can think about how to be different.
13:30So originally I said, okay, first of all, it's my own original artwork, so that's different. It's not like computer generated, it's paint. Like you can actually see the strokes on my shirt. It's my artwork. So I said, all right, I'll do that. And then if I put words on it, unfortunately, you can't really dress up the t-shirt. And one of the main things about my shirts that I try to impress on people is you can actually wear one of my shirts with like a tool skirt, a blazer, slacks.
13:59and you can actually dress it up because it doesn't have any words on it. So it was fun. went down to TD Bank, which is our local bank down here, and they're wonderful to businesses and TD Bank said,  you know, you can come into our lobby for a month and we'll put a whole display of your business because I have  a check-in account with them. And they said, we'll help advertise you for the month, which they do for all local businesses. And I said, oh, this is fantastic. So I brought my stuff down and I explained to the women,
14:28that were the tellers that my shirts could be worn dressy or they could be worn with a pair of jeans. It's whatever you choose. So the bank manager said, I would never have thought, I don't think that you can wear a t-shirt and dress up. And I said, Barbara, try it. Go try it. Go home and put on something and wear the shirt that's a pop of color and see how it turns out for you. And she did it. She went out and bought a pair of slacks and she got a blazer and she came in with,  you know, all the ladies got one of my t-shirts.
14:55And she came in and she looked, she goes, I never would have thought about this. Like I never would have thought that I could wear a t-shirt and feel like I could pull this off. And I said, well, that's the difference between my shirt and somebody else's. I don't have way to go underneath my words. I don't have something to try to enhance the painting. The painting itself  enhances itself. So I don't try to add anything on to umph it up. I just say, this is it. And  it's pretty funny. I did a whole blog about it.
15:25and  saying how you can feel elegant in a t-shirt. And it's amazing how many people resonated with that blog. Like they said, oh my gosh, like this is me. Like I want to wear a t-shirt and a skirt and feel dressy. And I said, well, that's me. I don't like to dress up. I don't like to feel like something that I'm not. And I can wear one of these t-shirts and I can wear a dress and I can wear a nice pair of flats or even a pair of heels if I have to. And I feel like myself,  but a little classier, a little dressier and it works.
15:55That's why I don't often put words on. So if people say, oh, I want my kid's name or whatnot, said, well, that's not really my brand. That's not really how I go.  Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And  the other thing is that people are wearing art if they're wearing your shirt. That's right. Yeah, they're wearing original artwork, which is totally fun.  And some of them are wearing artwork from 20 years ago.  one that you saw with the Easter eggs.
16:20On my Facebook page, I explained that when they get those, they're going to see cracks in the Easter eggs.  And I said, don't be alarmed. That's not your DTF transfer. I painted those little eggs 20 years ago for my husband when we first got married on barrel slats.  And the beauty of a DTF transfer is I took a picture of my artwork on the barrel slats. And when you delete the background and you have just the eggs left,  have eggs painted on wooden barrel slats.
16:47So it's neat, it gives you a textural feel. It just allows you to do so many things.  You can paint on anything, remove the background, and put it on a t-shirt. Yeah, and what you're talking about is the wood grain showing through the paint on the eggs. It absolutely does. It's so cool. So it gives an antiquey feel to a painting that I did 20 years ago, and now  people are wearing it. And actually, that little series of Easter shirts,  inside the shirt, I've hidden a teeny, teeny, tiny Easter egg.
17:16They have to go find it. It's either pressed inside the shirt or under the arm or some random place and it's tiny. It's like the size of like the eraser at the top of your pencil. And they have to go find it. And when they find it, they go into my Facebook page and say, I found it. And then I enter them into a Easter package surprise that they can win before Easter. So it's really fun. they get to go on an Easter egg hunt with us when I go send out their shirts. It's a virtual Easter egg hunt. I love it. That's the whole point.
17:44Fantastic. You're brilliant. You are very good at this. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm still fairly new to it, but I'm trying.  And it's a full family affair. And one of the reasons that we did the business was to  not only  it wasn't only just to start a new business, we actually sold our business of 12 years  last fall. And then it was my turn. You know, my husband said, it's your turn. Let's do it. Let's do what you've wanted to do. But I also wanted to make it completely.
18:12completely interactive for my children and my family. I wanted it to be a full family affair. And it truly is a full family affair. Like my kids have been the models for me. My husband has helped me try to market it. Like all four of us are involved. it really is, it's been creating a future for my family and we're doing it together, which is just, it's a blessing. It's awesome.  It is a blessing when you can work with your family.  I'm gonna  tell a story. My dad,
18:41worked in the medical field. He wasn't a doctor or anything. He actually repaired  like the EKG machines and the ventilators and things like that. So he was a bio med tech is the term. And when we were younger, he worked a lot. And so when he was home,  it was an event. If dad was home, we wanted to be with dad. And when I had my kids with my husband,  when dad walked through the door, my husband,
19:10The kids were like, daddy and run and jump and just be all over him all evening until they went to bed. And he was like, why do they love me so much? I said, because you're gone five days a week for 12 hours a day. And he was like, oh, and I said, I said, now you could be on the flip side. You could be the mom who's home with them all day and they want nothing to do with me. He was like, no, I like my role better. I said, good.
19:38You be the good time dad, I'll be the kiss the hours and help with homework mom. He's like, okay, good. So it's really great when you guys can all be together and be working. I know it's a really amazing. mean, for 12 years we've dreamed about this. Like we've really dreamed about being able to spend more time with my husband because the business that we created was, it got extremely busy and he was on the road all the time. And, and
20:07We just seldom get to see him. So when he finally retired from that job, he's not retired, obviously, because we're going to do this business. But when he retired  from his business,  was like the kids were like, they were shocked. They get up in the morning and dad said,  I'm taking you to school today. And the kids were going, oh my gosh, dad's taking us to school. Because even my homeschooler has a couple of classes in the morning. And obviously, my little one is full time now.
20:34He just,  was, it's the coolest thing. now, and then he comes home and we press together, you know, he's pressing the neck presses and I'm pressing the front press. And,  it's so we've just always worked very well together. I know that doesn't happen with all spouses, but for us,  we started out as EMTs together on an ambulance and we just loved working together.  And over the years, you know, altered and we started this business instead. And  we really wanted to get back to being able to spend time together. And I can't believe that.
21:03you know, it's happening that he's here and we're doing a whole new venture and we're going for it. And the girls are included too. So it's really, really fantastic. I'm so happy for you. You sound so tickled with this. I am. I'm shocked actually. Like I get up every morning and I'm like, I'm so excited for the day. Like I'm so excited. And I think,  you know what?  I'm going to tell a story and it's,  I'll tell it quick,  but I was in a grocery store.
21:32I was in a grocery store yesterday and this is, I would say like my seventh experience that I've had  in the past two weeks. And I'm not kidding. Like it's gone over and over again. having the same experience. Went into the grocery store. There's a woman who is a cashier, known her forever, known her since my little kids were little. And I could tell something was off and I said, what's going on with you today? And she just kind of mumbled and I'm like, you're not yourself. And come to find out as we were speaking, I said, how many...
21:59How many years have you been here?" And she said, I've been here 23 years. And she looks all of 23. So I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. And she said, no, I'm 39 years old and I've been here for 23 years. And I said, oh my gosh, you're not happy. You don't want to be here. And all of a sudden she looked at me and she started to sob. And thank goodness there was no one behind us. So she came out from around the counter and I'm holding her and I'm rubbing her back and I'm saying, oh my gosh. I said, what was happening? And she basically ended up saying,
22:28I really want to do something else. want to go be a nurse, but I don't feel like I have a support network to help me. And this is what I want to do. And she's the seventh person within a two week period that I've spoken to that is absolutely  miserable.  you know what, the only thing I can say, Mary, is we have one life that we're going to remember. We have this life and  it's so sad to waste it. And I know life can be daunting and I know it can be intimidating.
22:58But if you stay in a job that you do not like and you lose all those years of your life, there has got to be something more. It's just, it's not the right choice for you. It's not the right choice for your family members. And if you don't have that support network, you've got to find it. You've got to find the people that would support you. And it's just devastating because, you know, I want to teach my children that
23:21they can't be complacent about the job that they have in their life, that they've got to be in love with it. Yeah, they'll have some jobs that are kind of like a means to an end, but it's the end that matters. You know, like, are you happy? Are you gratified? Are you excited? Because it just makes life so rich and otherwise, what are we doing?  Like literally, what are we doing? Yeah, exactly. And  I'm gonna say something about my podcast yet again. I had no idea that I would love
23:50doing this podcast as much as I do. If you had asked me five years ago if I would be good doing a podcast, I would have been like, no, I hate being on video.  I hate listening to my own voice recorded. No, I don't want to do a podcast. And then I was like, but people keep telling me I have a voice or a face for radio. They joke because I'm not ugly or anything, but you know, they're like, you have a face or voice for radio. And I never did anything with it because I was raising kids.
24:20And when I started thinking about what I wanted to do when the youngest moved out and that was short lived, he's back. I was like, what am I going to do? And I thought and thought and thought, and I was like, I'm going to do a podcast. It's like the most out of character thing I can think of. It's a challenge. I'm going to do it. And I thought I'd do a couple of episodes and it would fail. would just be like, nobody listened. Oh, well, whatever. tried it and I freaking love it.
24:49I love the people I talk to. Some of them become friends. Some of them become acquaintances. I'm okay with either. It doesn't matter to me. People are people.  And I just, get up in the morning when I know I have interviews to do and I get my coffee and I go look at the pages that I found the people on and I'm like,  oh, they do this thing. Oh, they do this thing. And I'm just so energized when I sit down to talk to you guys.  I'm so happy with it. So I get it.
25:18But the one thing I will say is that it's a privilege. know, a lot of people are not in a position to go after the thing that they love. Number one, because they may not have the support system. Number two, they may not have the seed money to get it going. And number three, they just may not have the confidence to jump off the cliff. Yeah. I know. And it's devastating. So I get what you're saying. And yes, I wish that everybody could go do
25:48the thing that they love and make money from it and support themselves. But not everybody can and it's a huge bummer. Yeah, it is. truly is. That's all I have to say on that part. I agree. I agree. But I'm very excited for you that you are having a ball and you're putting out some really cool, uplifting things for people. Thank you. I'm trying. mean, I think the really
26:18wonderful thing is  your t-shirts are adorable. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, the people that have been following the Facebook page. I said to my husband, I never expected to  get to know some of these folks.  And it's amazing how they have become part of our world. You know, like we'll put something like now I'll ask opinions. Now I'll say, what do you guys think? Which design do you like the most? need to know.
26:46or I'll show them a line of sweatshirts. Like this week I found sweatshirts for kiddos. And I said, what do you guys think? Do you like these? Do you think this is something I should add on to the website? Because every article of clothing that I choose to add on is a financial investment. So I like their thoughts.  If they're into it and they think it's great, then I know it's something I should do. And they respond, which is amazing. I can put something on and there'll be 22 or 23 comments within an hour. And I'll go, oh my gosh.
27:16So I can really get  my finger on the pulse of what  a much larger mass of people is thinking.  And they know that I value their opinion. And some of them I genuinely  hope to meet someday, which is kind of crazy. Like some of them have become friends and it's a gift. It's really cool.
27:39So our hope for Cotton Cupcakes is, mean, primarily we're an online store right now  and we've started to go into some different retail shops locally. But the goal is actually to have our own storefronts  and you know how far we go.  I don't know. I'm excited about just my first one.  In June we're going to be opening up just a small shop that's off of our barn.
28:02where people can come in and they can actually choose the transfers that they want pressed on the shirts. They can even choose the location where they want the transfers put. If they don't want to them squarely in the middle of the chest, can choose where they want them to go so we can give them a more personalized experience. But  the goal is to have some shops and  to have people be able to walk in the door and try those shirts on because
28:25As much as I really appreciate things that are online, I'm also a tactile person. I want to touch things. I want to feel things. I want to see what they look like on me. And I'd like to give those experiences to the people that are enjoying our designs. It reminds me of a tattoo shop, but there's no needles involved. There's no needles. Yeah. It's much friendlier. Less painful. Yeah, absolutely. My daughter has tattoos.
28:51She sends me photos because she lives in Florida and I live in Minnesota and she sends me photos of her newest tattoos and  I'm a really cool mom. I'm like, that's gorgeous. What inspired that one? And I get the story and yay. But man, every time I think about that body that I grew covering the tattoos,  it kind of hurts my heart a little bit. My husband is a big tattoo guy. He loves the tattoos. I have none.
29:16And I don't know what direction my children will go because they have one versus the other, which is pretty funny. And we just say, whatever you're going to do, you're going to do. So we'll be prepared for anything.  Yeah. just, when she got her first one, I don't even remember what it was now. It was,  it was important to her. It was lovely. It looks good on her. And she was like, so what do you think? And I was like, do you want the cool mom answer or do you want the heartfelt mom answer? And she said both. And I said, the cool mom answer is it's gorgeous. I love it.
29:45and I'm really glad that you can handle the owie of that.  I said,  the genuine mom answer is,  I grew you. I grew that perfect skin and you just had needles with ink poked into it.  And she's like, yeah, but, and I'm like, I'm not telling you not to get tattoos. It's fine. It's your body. It's your choice with what you do with it.  But it hurts my heart just a little bit.
30:11that that skin is not the skin I grew. And she's like, well, honestly, body cells regenerate every however many years and it's not the same skin you grew anyway. And I'm like, enough, yes. Oh man, that's a very intelligent response. Yeah, well, she's a smart ass and she's smart. So I had to accept it. And she's 35 now. I mean, she got her first tattoo in her early 20s, I think. But either way.
30:38I don't know how we got on tattoos. Oh, because  you're letting people choose where they have the design on the t-shirt.  yeah, definitely.  But yeah, being a mom's hard. I'm just going to leave it at that.  It's one of the most wonderful and thankless jobs on earth. I think we all know that if we have kids. So absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Nikki, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're at 31 minutes and 26 seconds. So I'm going to cut you loose.  Thank you for being like the third.
31:05Genuine crafter I've talked to you in over a year and half on the podcast. I'm like, thank you for having me It was wonderful. Yeah, it was really fun and keep keep making those t-shirts are awful. I'm gonna do it I'm gonna do it. Thank you, Mary. All right