A Tiny Homestead

modernhomestead95

Today I'm talking with Westen and Taylor at modernhomestead95. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Taylor and Westen at Modern Homestead 95, and I'm sure we'll find out what the 95 is about.  In Arkansas, did you say, Westen? Yes, we are. We're  in Northern Central Arkansas.  Awesome.
00:28I told you to shut your video off because it uploads better without the video. But from what I saw before you shut the video off, it looks beautiful in Arkansas. Is it gorgeous there today? It is. Yeah, it's a 55 degrees and it's spring's starting to show itself. So we got all the trees blooming and the grass is turning green and starting to grow. things are all coming alive. All the bugs are coming out. Yeah. favorite part. Homesteaders.
00:57Favorite time of year, I swear, is March and April. Yeah, it's a good time. Get everything going and just life seems to be waking back up. So yes, the long,  horrible winter is almost over.  I'm in Minnesota. It is sunny. is windy as hell this morning  and uh it's only about 35 degrees. So  I was going to say probably still cool up there.
01:22Yeah, we had a 90, not 90. I think it got to 81 last weekend. Okay. And then it cooled right back down. I was like, okay, that's the second fall spring. Maybe the next one will be the real one. You know, we've done that a couple of times down here too. We kind of warmed up. What was it the other day? 89? Yeah. Yeah, I think we might've even hit 90 and then it's, it was 35 last night. So. Yeah. 90 in March is just gross.
01:51Yeah, it's like we're not ready for summer yet. No, no, you cannot go from winter to summer overnight. We have to have spring. Yes, yeah, much nicer with them intermittent gradual incline. Yes. So the name of your place is Modern Homestead, Modern Homestead or 95. What's the 95 about? So my wife and I were both born in 1995. Okay.
02:19So, yeah, we... It's a good year. Yeah, it's a good year and Modern Homestead was taken and so this is Modern Homestead 95. Well, that is a brilliant thing to call it. My kids are 36 and 34 and 28 and 24. So my older two are
02:48are right around you guys' ages. yeah, yeah, it's perfect. Yep, it's so funny because I used to think that 30 was old. No, 30 is not old. Right. Yeah, I just realized that a little while ago. Yep. turning 30, we're like, no, we're still some spring chickens. Yes, and even at 56, you can be a spring chicken. Just make sure you take care of your health until you get there. I remember that. Yeah.
03:17Tim McGraw has a song called in my, I don't know the name of the song, but the chorus is in, or the verses start within my next 30 years. And in my next 30 years, I want to be 25 again. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So what do you guys do at the Homestead? And did I read that it's, you've been, the Homestead has been a hundred year in the family? Yeah. Well, it's not in the family. we bought,
03:46our property and house two years ago in 2023 and we moved out here to Arkansas from California. Oh wow. Yeah, so we were just just tired of all the the nonsense that California has going on with it. Just we don't need to get into politics and everything but we don't agree with a lot that the state has going on and the way they handled
04:15COVID and  everything, we just didn't feel like it was the right way to go about it. um we've been looking  for a place to move for already a year when  COVID started going on.  And we had traveled around a couple of different states and  looked. I've lived in Texas and Mississippi and driven from coast to coast and back.
04:45And we took a trip out to Florida and looked  and it was just getting pricey  and we couldn't really afford what we wanted.  And  one day we were sitting  in our apartment at the time. We had a little 600 square foot apartment or something.  And  my wife Taylor was like, have  you thought about Arkansas? And I was like, I don't know anything about Arkansas.
05:12We started just looking it up  and  researching and it's just kind of checking the boxes.  And we had a pretty good list of stuff we were looking for, wanted and needed and things like that. And  so we just kind of went down the list  and it seemed to align pretty well. And we were like, let's take a trip out there and see what it's all about. And we did. We spent two weeks  or a week,  one week driving around in the car.
05:42and just sleeping in the car and  fell in love with it. Trying to find where we wanted to be in the state. But yeah, we did. We  really liked just the landscape and the people are laid back and just down to earth.  you know, we'll help you if you need it.  just lots of God fearing people and beautiful country. And  the price was right. We found a spot. um
06:11not too far out of town and we  bought a house with seven acres  and we've just been... uh The house is what was 100 years old and just needed everything. um I mean, we've... Gosh, we've done so much in the last couple of years since we've been here. Gotten dropped by our homeowners insurance a couple of times for things and, you know, had to rush to fix stuff to get...
06:40our insurance back and yeah, actually last week we just got kind of to a stage where we're going to call it in quotes, let's say done. We've replumbed the whole house, redone all the sheetrock and texture and paint inside and move some walls around and tore down some walls and
07:07We completely redid the whole kitchen, reframed the floor in it and everything, new cabinets, all new appliances. Went through the outside of the house. We got a new roof. Just sealed everything up, painted the whole house. So it's been a journey. And along with all that, I work full time and we were pregnant when we moved out here.
07:38with our first kid  and had her  and then  got pregnant again and we just had our little boy, our second kid. um in the middle of all that, we decided  we,  you know, wanted to  do what we came out here for  and that was  just kind of be a little more, I don't want to say self-sufficient because self-sufficient is such a uh big encompassing uh umbrella.
08:08But I think we just wanted to be a little more, I guess, stable kind of in our own environment where  we know where our food's coming from a little bit and it doesn't have all  the chemicals and pesticides and everything that are on it from the store  and, you know, good,  healthy meat that's been  treated right and just free-ranged and um
08:37grass-fed and  and so we  built a chicken coop. I went down to the mill here in town. We have a redwood  cedar mill  and bought a bunch of first cuts which is just the like a half round log with one flat side and so I bought like four big bundles of those hauled them on our flatbed here and  and
09:06pressure wash them and ripped them all down and built this chicken coop we have out of red cedar.  And that was a really fun project that uh kind of got the  online presence started. I was just doing all this work and I was like, you know, I
09:27I  want our homestead  to  not only  generate good food and good things for our family, but I also,  if it can, you know, provide a little bit of, uh you know, monetary money for our family. uh The whole goal for me is to
09:55not be working full time  and  being able to have some more time with my kids as they grow  and my wife and just just
10:07That was another one of the reasons we moved out here is the cost of living is a little  less  than most places.  And  in the goal of all that, was hoping to set up the homestead so it can provide for our family in a way where we spend less money. And so we have to generate less money  and I can have more time. So the whole  goal in this thing is really freedom. um
10:36Good healthy food and freedom, I guess. That sounds like a lot of the people that I talk to on a weekly basis.  Very impressed that you guys managed to do this young, because not everybody who's young has what it takes to do it. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to just take that compliment and say thank you, because yeah, it's not easy. um
11:05just got up and worked hard every day to be here. Before my career has, I've been an elevator mechanic. so, and before that I was in the Air Force. And so, I did my Air Force career and then I jumped into the elevator mechanic thing, did that for about 10, 11 years.
11:36And then I actually broke my back in a motorcycle accident  and  got laid off and  got hired with another company and just kind of set the wheels in motion ah for this all to happen, I think. um
11:56So it can be done at any age. Like we were talking earlier, age is just a number on paper. And you just get up and make it happen.
12:14pray, pray  to God that His will be done in your life because it's really not up to us. We can do everything right, everything wrong, it doesn't matter. It's really what it comes down to is God's will in our life.  Yes.  So, number one, thank you for your service. Number two, congratulations on achieving the dream and
12:42I know that the dream isn't done because if you're a homesteader, you always have new ideas you want to try, right?  And congratulations on the new baby  and the fact that you guys are raising a little girl and a little boy. Kids are great. I miss my babies so much. Like I love that they are functioning adults. are good people, but man, there are days where I'm like, you know,
13:11They were very sweet when they were babies. I know. feel like we're already going through that because our daughter, she seems light years bigger and older now that we have this little baby. Oh yeah. we're just trying to soak up every moment we have because it does go quick. Yes. The minute you bring a newborn into the house, if you have an older child, that older child seems like they're already full grown to you. I swear. It's so weird.
13:41Okay, so I could hear your chickens squawking in the background. How many chickens you guys have? So we have 11 right now, which is the lowest number we've had in a while. We started with like 22 or something. And just nature kind of took its course. Chickens are good food for everything. And we have some neighbor dogs that were out roaming around. They got a couple. We had a
14:09a couple hawk attacks  and then  we had a couple guineas that were just  being mean. They were rooster uh guineas  and  so I actually processed them along with another  rooster  and so yeah, now we're down to 11. And then we had another two hawk attacks or something after that  down to 11.  But  I do have an incubator in the mail right now.
14:39and we're gonna put 20 eggs in there when it shows up.  Good plan.  Have you ever done that before? uh We have not. No, it'll be our first time hatching.  Okay. um I haven't done it before, but I watch a lot of videos about chickens and quail. We're looking into quail right now because my husband was like, we should look into quail. was like, okay.
15:09Yeah, the thing that I have been seeing a lot of is it's the humidity in the incubator that can be the problem. So be sure you watch that. Gotcha. Okay. Good to know.  And I guess that sometimes when the eggs hatch,  the chicks don't come out quick enough and the membrane in the egg can get wrapped around them and dry out. And there are two schools of thought.
15:39You either give them a little time to see if they figure it out and get out of the egg  or  you don't and use tweezers and you try to pull the egg off of them.  And I guess there's an amniotic sack that is attached to the chick when it first is hatching.  If you rip that amniotic sack, the chick will die. So you got to be really careful if you're going to try to heal m the membrane.  Help them. Yeah. So I hope that helps you.
16:09I don't know, I haven't done it.  And this is another thing that's kind of like on my mind  when  we  do this.  So we have uh a really mixed flock. I mean, we've got a couple of... I don't want to say everything, but... We've golden comets, blue sapphires,  cinnamon queens, a silky rooster,  and guinea hens. And some guineas. And so  it's...
16:38I don't even know if the guinea hens  eggs are fertilized. ah I'm going to have to crack a couple and see, but pretty much everyone else is it seems like, but they're all fertilized from our silky splash silky rooster. Uh huh. So is it good to  mix  silkies with all the other breeds? mean, is that, are we going to have like issues?
17:04or like  mutation issues or is it just gonna be fine? I wish I could tell you because I don't know the answer but what I can tell you is that people have been cross breeding creatures forever so  the worst thing you find out is that you shouldn't do it.
17:24You know? Yeah, that's kind of where we were at and we  just figured we'd give it a try, see what happens. Yep. And Google supposedly knows everything, so you could always Google it. Right. Yeah.  And at this point, it's like, you know, once you have chickens  and you look at the price chicks cost, it's, you know, five to eight dollars for one of them.  Nowadays, yeah. It's like, this is crazy.
17:54I have chickens, I have eggs. em You know, I'll just hatch my own. That's kind of where we're at. Yep. Try it. See what happens. I mean, again, the worst thing that happens is that you can't cross those, but you could probably find somebody who's got a rooster that would make sense. Yeah, exactly. So the next step in our kind of homestead journey, I think, is this year we're going to work on getting the garden going. em We had a couple planters on the porch last year.
18:24And we got some tomatoes and jalapenos and bell peppers and a lot of strawberries and some spinach and stuff like that. But  just want to expand and get some in-ground stuff going. I have an avocado tree that I need to transplant  that we started from seed and.
18:45Get a little, I'd love to get a little orchard going.  Probably gonna just start some stuff from seed and then obviously get some root cuttings.  So that'll be fun.  Yeah, that's kind of where we're at now. um And just sharing our  journey with everyone.
19:09Yeah, I saw that you started a YouTube channel in 2025 and you have a ton of videos already up. Yeah, so I was trying to do a couple a week there and I did for a good while. And I've tapered off recently just because of life and if I don't make any excuses, I just need to...
19:38start doing it again. But we have been busy just with the house and and the new baby and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Suck that baby up because it doesn't last long as we were saying. Just spend as much time with him as you possibly can. Yeah. That's what we've been doing whenever he's not in the wife's arms. I usually got him. So. Uh huh. So speaking of well two things. If you're going to plant are you going to plant apple trees?
20:09I do have some apple seeds and I was going to plant those and hopefully some root cuttings. Apple trees take at least three years from sapling stage to produce apples. And I know this because we put in saplings and it took almost four years for us to get apples. So don't count on apples the first year because there probably won't be any. Yeah, I was telling
20:38Telling Taylor, just don't count  on anything from  the orchard really.  Cause it's just gonna be  a long game. is. It's a long tail game and it's hard to wait. We just got our first really good harvest of  honey gold apples this past fall. Well, congratulations. That's great. That was fabulous, except I don't like them. They're like golden delicious apples.
21:08And I don't like Golden Delicious because they're kind of grainy. don't like them.  However, my husband loves them. So he was eating an apple a day until they were gone. Oh, that's great. Good. Yep. I'm waiting for our honey crisps to actually produce because I love those. Gotcha. Gotcha.  OK, so not that you aren't wonderful to talk to, Weston, but I would love to hear from Taylor about how she feels about  the experience that you've been going through for the last year. Absolutely.
21:37Absolutely. So Taylor, tell me what you're thinking. Yeah, I know it's been great. It's been such a fun journey to embark on with my husband and starting a family out here in Arkansas has truly just been,  it's been amazing. It's been filled with um a lot of growth as well.  I think that it was a  a very bold move  to do what we did,  especially in the midst of finding out that I was pregnant.
22:06But so so happy that we did because looking back we're just two people that  have really  grown so much and have accomplished so much together So it's been a really cool cool journey to go through I'm glad to hear that my second question for you Taylor is do you have a community of other women who help you because  I? Did not really have a community of women when my kids were babies, and I wish that I had so do you have one?
22:34So yeah, mean,  to be honest, that's actually been kind of hard to cultivate. I am proud to say that uh now that we're a couple years in, because I think we've been here for almost two and a half years,  I think over the last about eight months, I've really been able to kind of find my tribe  of other moms who have kids ah of similar ages um in the community and have really kind of bonded with several uh women.
23:04and moms. And so that's been really great because as you know, we moved from California. So we actually, we don't have any family out here. So it has been, it has been difficult. But yeah, I am, that's kind of the next phase now that the house is done and we have some more free time and  you know, cultivating friendships as an adult is, is a lot harder than it is when you're a child, just cause you don't have the time that it takes. So um
23:33I am starting to get that and I'm so thankful for the friendships I've made. Good, because I've said this a couple of times to a few people in the last month or so, especially brand new moms or brand new moms, but they also have older kids. You have to have other women to tell you stuff. Because no one hands you a freaking guidebook when you have a baby. I know. And what's funny is...
24:01You know, we talked to like our moms and it's been, you know, 30 something years since they've had babies. And so it's even hard for them to recall certain like, you know, nuances of what it's like and how they did this and things like that when the babies are young. So it's definitely important to have some, some other women to bounce some stuff off of. Yes. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if they did give you a guidebook when you went home with the new baby? I'm telling you. Yeah, it would be.
24:30The other thing that is hard is that things have changed so much since our mothers had babies. Right. I mean, funny is things have changed even from our first born. uh Like in the hospital, you know, they kind of go over a few things and there's even some guidelines that have changed just from two years ago.  Yeah, it's nuts. And the one guideline that is always a constant is just love them through everything.  Yep.
25:00If you can do that, you've got it beat by a mile. And Weston, I hope you have dad friends because men need friends that have kids too. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I'm going to start putting some more energy towards. Plus, you miss out on all the dad jokes you need to learn if you don't have dad friends. He's pretty good at those, I have to say. Good. He's a natural. All right.
25:28A question for both of you and I want two different answers because I want  both of your perspectives. What is your favorite thing that has happened since you moved to the homestead?
25:41Well, for me, I mean, I don't know if I'm biased, but I mean our babies, our babies and having chickens. Having chickens has always been something that I've really wanted. And so just going through that and having them out in the yard and holding my babies and soaking up the sun, it's been like the most fulfilling experience. Okay. Weston, what about you? I think.
26:11just watching  Taylor and I's marriage grow  and  just become what it is because we've been out here um by ourselves. We've just kind of had to rely on each other. And I think that just cultivated a strong bond that we have that just can propel us through.
26:41trials  and  just showed us how much each of each other really care about one another and we're willing to  you know sacrifice  and and take care of each other no matter what's going on so  spoken like a man who adores his wife awesome ah okay so I know you guys have chickens do you have other animals too
27:10We don't right now. We used to have a little  dog when we moved out here and we sadly had to  put him down for some health reasons.  yeah. Thinking about sheep. oh Sheep is  potentially sheep or goats. We haven't really decided because both are fun, but both come with their own stuff. um I got to the yard fenced. Yeah. Yes.
27:37Yes, but good fences make good neighbors and that doesn't just apply to human neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep those dogs out.  Yeah. For sure.  And yeah, go ahead. We're right now,  the  incubator is coming and we're working  on,  I got a clear a bunch of trees for the garden area and I think we're just going to
28:08plant in the ground this year and just try and get something  and then next year  work on maybe some raised beds  and then probably getting the fence in and stuff like that. So.  Very nice. You guys have so  much to look forward to in the future.  I had another question and I forgot it because that's what happens when you get over 50. You forget things really easy. um
28:37Or just when you're pregnant. feel like my brain never recovered from the first child and then now having the second, it's like compounded. So I'm constantly like, what was I doing? What was I about to say? Maybe that's what it is. that maybe having all those kids just screwed up my brain forever. Who knows? So I don't know. don't know if I have any more questions for you. I am very
29:06excited for you both.  I  love it when young people get into this and I just remember my question. I knew as soon as I started making small talk it would happen. um Have you guys gotten into the food side of homesteading like preserving or canning or sourdough or any of that? Not yet. That's definitely going to be something we do get into though. Once I think the babies get a little older and I have some helpers,  that's definitely going to be um
29:35We're gonna be doing a lot of stuff in the kitchen  from scratch. Yes, and I just, have another podcast that I do with a co-host and we just recorded an episode about cooking from scratch and if you'd like I can send you the link when it's released. Yeah, that would be great. Okay, cool. The other podcast is called Grit and Grace in the Heartland and we have been having such a good time with it since January. We just started it in January.
30:04So other than that, I don't think I have any other questions and I try to keep these at 30 minutes and we just rolled to 30 minutes. That was perfect timing. Where can people find you guys? They can find us at Modern Homestead 95 on Facebook and Modern Homestead 95 on YouTube. That is the only two platforms we're on right now and we are just so thankful.
30:30that we were able to talk with you today and having us on. And hopefully we can do this again soon and maybe after we have a little bit more growth here. yeah, we just appreciate your time and hope you have a great rest of your Saturday. I would love to have you guys back. And as always, you can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com.
30:54You guys, so proud of you. Keep doing the good work and bring those babies up in the Homestead Life cell. You're doing them a huge favor if you do.  Thank you so much. All right. Have a great Saturday. You too. Thank you. God bless you.
 

Redwood Seeds

Today I'm talking with Kalan at Redwood Seeds. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Kalan at Redwood Seeds in  California. Good morning, Kalan, because you're not in California right now.  Good morning. Yeah, it's 10 a.m. here  where I am in New Zealand. Tomorrow, for me, right? Yes. It's Tuesday for you.
00:28Yeah, that's right.  Yeah, I've interviewed a couple of people in Australia and New Zealand and  it's so confusing because for me it is  4.03 in the afternoon on  Monday.  Yeah, definitely. It's confusing for me as you've seen trying to um set up meetings with people, especially the states just went through the time change.
00:52Now it's a four hour difference for me. then when New Zealand goes through its time change in about another month, then it becomes a five hour difference the next day. Uh-huh. I, every time I talk to somebody who's that far away, I say that it's, it's actual time travel because it might as well be. Yeah. feels like it. Whenever we travel down here, we basically miss a day.  It's crazy. You lose an entire day. oh
01:19Okay, so I want to talk about redwood seeds, but I also would love to know why you're in Austria in New Zealand.  Yeah, definitely. Well, I married a man from New Zealand 20 years ago. So we come down here  a couple of months every year during our off season  and spend time with family. Well, that is a hardship to have to go to New Zealand, boy. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it's different. We come down here or not really tourists, so we don't like.
01:49You know, it's less of a vacation and more just like my kids, go into the public school system when we're here and we  sort of just live normal life, you know, but we get to stay on the farm with em my in-laws. And that's really, really wonderful. That's really interesting. What do they farm?  They're both retired now, but my husband grew up on like a mixed em sheep  and cattle ranch. oh
02:17the kind with like 2000 sheep, they're shearing for wool and that kind of thing. Okay, cool. That you are a very interesting lady. I'm very glad that I asked to talk to you. so tell me all about Redwood Seeds and what you do. Okay, well, we are based in Northern California. We're about three or four hours north of San Francisco up in the foothills of Lassen Volcanic National Park, actually. So if you're looking at
02:47California, we are in the eastern slopes, the eastern foothills at about 2,500 feet. And we have a organic seed farm. We grow organic vegetable, herb, flower seeds, and sell them in packets, essentially. We started doing this in 2009. And then...
03:11have  now we're expanded into like about 70 different retail stores. So we have seed racks in those stores and send seeds to the stores, you know, a few times a year for customers. And then we also have a website where we sell our seeds.  It's redwoodseeds.net.  And  sometimes I sell at like different festivals and markets and things like that.  I would say that I call us a farm based seed seed company.
03:40grow the majority of the seed that we sell. I do  purchase some  extra seed  from other organic seed farms, mostly in the western states.
03:54Yeah, we usually offer about 150 different varieties. um All of our varieties are open pollinated, which means that you can, they're not hybrids, essentially is what that means. And you can  use traditional seed saving techniques  and uh save the seeds  and you'll get trutatite results. Most of, many of them are heirlooms,  which means that the variety is like pre 1950.
04:22but we also have a lot of really great varieties that have been bred using traditional plant breeding techniques  since 1950. Okay. So since you do this for a living, I have a question.  I bought a 60 day watermelon seed from, I want to say it was burpee, but I could be wrong  and I'm pretty sure it's a hybrid. Okay. So,
04:51If we were to save, if we get any melons out of it, I bought 12 seeds, we're praying we get watermelons out of it this year.  If we get watermelons, which means we get seeds, and we plant those seeds, if we save those seeds and plant them, is there any chance that  we'll get seeds producing 60 day watermelons  next summer? There's a chance, yeah.
05:15The way that it goes is that hybrid, it's called the F1 generation. Sometimes you see hybrids referred to as F1s. That's the first generation after the cross has been made.  That watermelon had two different parents that were crossed together to make the hybrid. Then when you save seeds  from the hybrid, the next generation is called the F2 generation.  That's when you start to see the genetic diversity come out. Seed breeders do this on purpose. A seed breeder
05:45would make the cross, get the F1, then save the seeds from it, and then plant them. You might plant 100 seeds from it, and you might see 20 or 30 different types of melons pop up, or however many, but you'll start to see genetic diversity. So you could theoretically plant out a lot of that F2 generation and look for the 60, whatever is closest
06:14to the 60 day melon that you loved and save seeds from that one and then do that again for like seven more years. And you might be able to stabilize that hybrid into an open pollinated variety. That's like backwards breeding, right? Yeah, that sounds like a really fun science project. may have to try that. Yeah, that's what seed breeders do. Okay. I just, knew there was something about hybrid seeds that it may not come back true.
06:44That's the thing. That's why when you're saving seeds, um that's just to start with open pollinated varieties. And so that's what we do. We only grow open pollinated varieties um so that we can save seeds from them and we know that they're going to be true to type. Okay. Thank you for  humoring me in my question because  I wanted to ask somebody who really, really knew and I figured you would really, really know.
07:12No, it's kind of a common question actually, or like people have this thought that you can only grow heirloom seeds if you want to save seeds, but it's really the term is open pollinated. Open pollinated means that basically it's not a hybrid. Okay. Thank you so much.  As I sit here with a big smile on my face, because now when my husband asks, I can be like,  yes, we can save the seeds. Yes, you can plant them, but,  but is the key word there.
07:41Okay, so do you have a background in this  or  how did you get into savings? Yeah. uh No, I don't. I mean, if you had asked me when I was a teenager,  if I thought I was going be a farmer, it would have been like the last thing on my mind. um And  I didn't really know what I was going to do. did go, um I went to UC Santa Cruz  and was a language studies major. So I learned to speak Spanish really well. um
08:11but and studied like linguistics and journalism. um But it was during  that time, like in my early  20s, I also became garden curious  and started taking, like I took a garden class in college. And then I um met my husband and he was traveling through Santa Cruz,  doing like a rock climbing tour of the Western States. um And  I went and visited him in New Zealand on my spring break.
08:40And he had a big garden going over there. so I remember we, we just sort of started gardening together really.  Um, and then we lived in New Zealand for nine months and  his parents let us  put in a garden, like, you know, in the back, couple acres of their property.  And, um, I don't know, we just, got really into it and we traveled back and forth between New Zealand and us for a few years. And then we ended up.
09:11buying some land in Northern California where we didn't really know what we were going to do, but we knew that we wanted a rural lifestyle. We ended up starting to grow seeds on contract for larger seed companies like Seeds of Change and Fedco Seeds. And we did that for a few years from like 2006, 2007. And it kind of quickly became obvious that
09:38to really make a living doing it, we needed to get our own label and start packaging seeds in packets rather than selling like a pound of seeds um for a relatively low price. um So we did that in 2009. We just kind of got some coin envelopes from Office Depot and had a stamp made and started stamping packets. And my husband started making wooden seed racks and we  literally like showed up at Chico Natural Foods
10:07with a seed rack and seeds in the back of our car and asked them if they wanted to  start carrying our seeds in their store. And  luckily somebody was in a good mood that day and they said yes. em And we're still in that store today. So. so that leads me to my next question. Are there regulations from the state of California about selling the seeds that  you produce?  Yeah, definitely. I mean, you have to register with the CDFA. em
10:37California Department of Food and Agriculture.  And we are registered seed sellers.  As a registered seed seller, you have to like adhere to their packaging requirements and their germination standards and all of that. And they have, you know, like the local county ag inspectors who can and do sometimes do inspections.
11:00So, okay. I figured the government would have their fingers in it. Yeah, definitely. It's not, it's not onerous. I mean, the, the  more difficult standard is the organic certification. You know, we are certified organic by CCOF California certified organic farmers and have been since 2007,  I think.  Um,  so that's a yearly inspection where an inspector comes out and they mostly want to look at our
11:29paperwork uh and then they tour around the farm as well. So how hard was it to get your certification because I keep hearing that getting certified organic is an utter pain in the ass with paperwork and it's expensive. It is expensive.  It's about a thousand dollars a year. uh California has, ah oh they did have, I mean I'm not sure how much of  a cost share they're gonna have this year. It's been kind of
11:57decreasing, but it used to be a 75 % cost share where  you would get reimbursed that much by the state of California for becoming organic. um Now that I know what to do for the certification, it's not that difficult. um when you start out and you just don't really know what they're looking for, and maybe you don't really know how to keep records, ah it can be much more difficult.
12:26I became certified organic when I had to like fill out a paper form, but now it's all digitized, you know.  So I don't know, I have a friend who's, who's signing up on it right now. And honestly, if you, if you know how to fill out applications and tick the boxes, then  it's not too, too difficult. If you're on a piece of land that has previously been farmed conventionally,  then it becomes more difficult um for sure.
12:55Okay. And then  since, since you're someone who sells seeds that you produce yourself,  um,  I assume that every state is different, but if you were,  if you  grew,  I don't know, some tomato variety and you save the seeds and you wanted to give some to a friend in California,  that's fine. Right? That's fine. Yeah. But
13:23If you wanted to sell it to a friend, can you do that on a small scale and not have to do all the bureaucratic stuff or is that a no-no?  Oh, I'm sure you can do it. Yeah. I mean, and I think that like you don't have to become a licensed seed seller in every single state to, my business is based out of California. I'm selling the seed from California. So that's where I have my seed selling license from. I mean, that would be.
13:52really a lot of paperwork if I needed to become a seed seller in every state. We definitely ship seeds all around the country. Yeah, it's so funny since I started the podcast over two and a half years ago, I have talked to people all over the country and many, many of them, I'm guessing at least 85%, maybe 90 % have started a business.
14:19around their homestead or the craft that they make or the food that they produce. And every single state has different laws regarding that kind of business. Yeah. And I'm like, could we maybe find a standard here for everybody? That would be cool. definitely. Yeah, know that. Yeah, definitely. There are also many different standards. It's true. It's true. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's
14:47That end of things, mean, there's always,  for me as a farmer, and I'm sure a lot of other farmers, it's like, we started because we just want to farm and we want to do agriculture, want to grow things or um work with animals. But the business side is always a steep learning curve.  And definitely for me too. mean,  if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have probably studied like plant biology and business or something, you know, or
15:16Kind of business major and when I had the chance to be in university, um I back in those days, I looked at business majors and I thought they were like selling out to the man or something. uh,  but now it's like, those are the skills that farmers also need to succeed in having your own business. So, um, I've had to like belatedly learn all of that.  And in fact, I'm, taking an accounting one-on-one class at my community college right now.
15:46Um, so. Well, that's good. mean, I, I  say that I have got to know itis, which means that I have an overactive need to know.  And I'm always taking some kind of course, whether it's a lady just sent me a course on raising quail.  Interesting.  Cause we're, looking into doing that on our place. Cool.
16:13I haven't had a chance to sit down look at it yet because I've been busy with podcast stuff and oh yeah, dishes. There's always washing dishes to do here. Definitely. And so I'm hoping to get a chance to sit down tomorrow afternoon and look at the course and see if it's videos or if it's written or how it works. But very excited about this. I don't need to know how to raise quail. I could probably just go get some quail. My husband will build the coop and we'll figure it out from there.
16:43But because it's interesting and because I have got to know it is I have to the course. There you go. Okay. have, I have questions about number one,  what kind of produce do you grow to save seeds from? And then number two, what's the process that you go through to save the seeds? Yeah. Um, you know, we really  save seeds from just about most crops.  Um, everything from corn and beans to lettuce and tomatoes and squash and onions and.
17:14Um, most of the major vegetable types we save seeds from and increasingly more and more, um, flowers too. Like I would say that flowers are, I don't know, 30 % of our seed sales now are 40%. Like it's more and more. When we first started, really, I don't know that I was anti flower, but I was definitely like, if I'm going to grow it, has to be something to eat, you know,
17:43But as we've progressed, I see more more uh value in growing things for pollinators and just for beauty.  so we have more flowers now  and a lot of herbs too,  medicinal herbs like yarrow and milkweed and  things like that.  I'm so happy to hear  milkweed because we need the monarchs to keep coming back. Yeah, definitely.  We have a really big patch of milkweed now. uh
18:13And the thing is, like, I never see monarchs. Like, rarely do we ever see a monarch.  Instead, we get that milkweed beetle that loves the milkweed, that red beetle. um But it's there in case they want to find us. So,  you know, we grow all the produce, but uh and my family eats from our gardens, but  we don't sell any produce. So it's really different than
18:40a regular mixed veg market garden operation. Our process is that we plant our main summer gardens usually about May 20th through June 15th. It takes me about three weeks to plant everything. And because we're up in the foothills, like our growing season, I don't bother getting things in the ground before then because we can have frost in mid-May.
19:07I will have all my spring crops in like lettuces and things that can take a light frost. um But that's our main planting season is the end of May.  And we basically like plant these really big gardens,  which  it really is like some like we're farming, but we're also like garden scale. Like we have five gardens spread out on our 40 acres.  So each plot is about, uh,
19:3860 feet by 60 feet or they're not huge. Like I did the calculations last year and we actually like grow all of our crops, like 60 to 80 seed crops a year on about only a half an acre. Like not a really big space. It's really intensive, like mixed production. You know, like I'll have like 30 tomato plants and maybe 200 lettuces and
20:08like 100 squash plants  of a variety. And so we plant everything and then we can basically just let it grow all summer  and do the weeding, but we're not like continuously harvesting the vegetables like you would for  a market garden. Instead, we just let everything ripen and go to seed. And then our main seed harvest  starts like kind of the end of August.
20:34through the end of October. So we like two or three months of intensive  seed harvesting and cleaning. the process for each variety is really different.  Okay, yeah. So what's the most difficult seed to save? ah
20:55They're all just really different. um Like for example, know, tomatoes, I'd go out and I pick tomatoes into five gallon buckets. And then we smash the tomatoes  up into like this pulp. And then you let them sit and ferment in the buckets for three or four days  and stir them daily. And that actually like um breaks down the enzyme coating around the seed to that inhibits germination. um And it also kind of
21:25breaks down all the tomato pulp um and then you add water to those buckets and pour off all the pulp and you're left with the seeds at the bottom of the bucket using water to clean them. So  that's not extremely difficult, but it's like a process, you know? um And um so there's the things that you  harvest and you process wet, like tomatoes and squashes or melons or cucumbers.
21:52Those,  all, there's a degree of like cutting open the fruit, scooping out the seeds.  And then you have to figure out how to separate all the pulp and the gunk from the seeds. And usually that involves water. It's kind of like gold panning, actually.  Often, often the good seed will sink to the bottom of your vessel and then you pour off everything else with water and then put it on a screen  and let it dry.  I would label the ones that you have to do wet as squick.
22:22That would be the squick,  squick, squack process. Yeah, definitely.  Um, yeah, I mean, it's kind of fun. It's,  it's really hands on.  Um,  and then everything that you process dry, uh, that's like most of your flower seeds, your lettuce seed, all the brassicas,  like kale or cabbage,  um, radishes, carrot seed, radishes. Radishes are actually very difficult because it.
22:51I don't know, have you seen a radish going to seed? Makes those like kind  of... Yeah, it's like, well, each of those pods only has like four seeds in it. They're not very,  and the pods are really difficult to shatter. It's different than like kale pods. Kale pods or arugula, they just shatter right away. But the radish, man,  you really have to bash them. And we don't have  really fancy threshing equipment.
23:18I have some equipment for winnowing, the threshing part, um so there's a lot of stomping and stuff that goes into radish seed. um But basically it's like you harvest the dry seeds and you have to thresh them. So you like break open the pods. um Same with beans.  And we often like
23:43just throw all the seed on like an old bed sheet and then literally stomp things with our feet  or  things like that. And then you have to winnow it. So you use air to blow away all of the chafe. And so we do have some equipment for that. We have this really cool  machine called a winnow wizard that was created by Mark Lutera up in Oregon.
24:08and it has a huge hopper that you can pour the seed into and a fan and an agitation tray. And so it's cool because I can like turn it on and get it set right and then walk away from it for a half an hour while it just continues to winnow the seed and the good seed falls into a bucket. yeah, I mean, there's a lot of like harvesting seeds, piling them up in bags.
24:36where they continue to kind of dry for a couple months and then cleaning them as we, as we get to it. So my house definitely like  in  this time period of two or three months, there's a corner of it that just gets like stacked full of bags of drying seeds. Well, I was going to ask you what kind, I mean, I don't want you to tell me exact numbers, but  what kind of space do you end up needing and  what's your inventory like? I mean, are we talking?
25:06hundreds of thousands of seed packets?  Yeah, well, I would say that  we maybe sell about 50,000 seed packets a year, but we have an office space. yeah, we used to have this whole thing would be in our house and then it moved to a back shed and it's moved around a lot over the years. uh There's definitely like now there's the farm production part of it and then we have an office uh at our
25:33It's our old elementary school was closed and now it's our community center. And so I rent the old teacher's lounge as my office space. So  all of our like cleaned seeds that are just in bags  live there in the office and we do all of our seed packaging in the office, um not in my home anymore. So um I don't, we don't like pack everything into hundreds of thousands of packets. Instead we pack.
26:02more like as we need. So we'll pack like 50 to 100 packets of a variety at a time and then sell through those or send those to stores  and then pack more as we need it. So the majority of our inventory is stored as bulk. um like on-demand printing? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like that. Cool. Yeah. So, but we pack it all by hand.  We basically know how many
26:31Seeds are in these little spoons that we have. We have like these little teeny spoons, some like from tablespoon size down to like 1 64th of a teaspoon size. Maybe we even have a smaller one than that. And so we've counted, you know, over the years several times and we have that recorded. So we know that like a quarter teaspoon is about 25 cucumber seeds. So we pack, pack the packets like that.
27:00Nice. Okay. I try to keep these to half an hour or at like 27 minutes. So I want to say for the listener, anybody can save seeds. We do it with basil seeds every year and we haven't had to buy basil seeds in four or five years now. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody should try to seeds. Yeah. And they come back beautifully.
27:28Yeah, I will say that if people want to hop on my website, I do have a pretty robust section about seed saving on there. So uh there's a lot of information  and I have a YouTube channel that has like two videos on it. But one of the videos is like an hour long seed saving uh Zoom class that I taught a couple of years ago that gives good info to. That's super to know. Thank you.
27:56And  I mean, if people don't want to save their own seeds, I'm sure that if you want to buy seeds that have been saved, Kaylyn  would be happy to sell them to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.  But there are things that everybody can do for themselves on a small scale that are really simple. And I feel like if I'm in Minnesota and I can save basil seeds from the basil we grow,
28:22probably smarter than buying it from Kaylin in California for me to do. Yeah, absolutely. The more people who are saving the seeds, the more secure our seed supply is. Yep. And with all the crazy that's going on in the world right now, I'm going to say it again. I say it almost every episode. If you don't know how to cook from scratch, learn. If you have any place to grow any kind of food, grow it. Learn how to do it and grow it.
28:51And if you don't know your local grower, your local producer, get to know them because shopping locally, supporting your local growers and producers will save your butt 100 % of the time.
29:06Absolutely. I will die on that freaking hill.  All right, Kaylin, where can people find you?  At redwoodseeds.net  and at redwoodseeds on Instagram. Okay. Are you on Facebook at all? I am on Facebook. Yep. Redwood seeds on Facebook. Okay. So if anybody has questions or if they want to go see the video about saving seeds that Kaylin put out,  that's where you find her. oh
29:36Thank you so much for your time, Kalen. I really appreciate it. Nice to chat, Mary. Thank you. As always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Kalen, I hope you have a great rest of the day because you have a whole day in front of you. Yeah, I do. Yeah, it's awesome.  Yep. Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye.
 

Tryna Homestead

Today I'm talking with Kendra at Tryna Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Kendra at Tryna Homestead in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Kendra, how are you? Good, how are you?  I'm good, and I'm not gonna lie.  When I looked at who I was talking to today, because I have it in my calendar,  I saw Tryna Homestead and I was like, you know,
00:28I hope that's trying to, you know, a play on trying to. if your name is Trina and I've been thinking it's Trina, I'm going to sound really dumb. How is the weather in Wisconsin? Did you guys get all the snow that we got on Sunday? We were supposed to get 12 to 18 inches, but we're right up against the river. And so it kind of buffered us and...
00:53I think we only got about eight. It's hard to tell though, because we had the blowing snow and the blizzard conditions. So we have spots where it's fair and then other spots where we have two feet there. we  definitely got snow.  Did it start for you Monday night? No, we, started Saturday night while we were actually outside boiling sap.  Oh. sitting in it as it started. And then  it went, it was still snowing through Sunday night. And then
01:23uh Yesterday and today have just been cold and sunny but cold. Okay. Where are you in Wisconsin? We're in Western Wisconsin,  Northwestern. We're right on the border with Minnesota.  Okay, because I'm in Minnesota and  it started for us about nine o'clock Saturday night. Yeah, think it ended about, it really ended about seven Sunday night. But
01:54The wind was so bad that you couldn't see anything. All day. insane. Yeah. Yeah. It was so loud. Like all Saturday night and Sunday night. was so loud. The wind was just whipping. Oh yeah. My Australian shepherd, she sleeps downstairs and my husband and I sleep upstairs. And about every couple hours Saturday night, I would hear, Arf! Just one Arf every couple of hours. She was barking at the wind.
02:23I believe it. I was just like, there's nothing you can do about it sweetie, go to sleep. It's all good really. The house is not going to collapse, I promise. So yeah, it was some wild weather and I don't know about you, but it's the first real snowstorm we've had all winter. Yeah, it's the first we've really had in the last three years, be honest. Yeah, it's been so bizarre and
02:49when I talk to people who don't live in the general Minnesota, Wisconsin area, they're like, oh, it's, been a real winter for you. I'm like, we're having a real winter at least five years. Right. Yeah. I,  I love winter. It's actually my favorite season  and I love the snow, but March snows are actually my favorite because at that point I'm done with winter. I'm focusing on spring.
03:15But when we get snow, I know it's not going to last, it covers the brown for a little bit. uh Saturday morning before the storm hit, we had green grass showing. Yeah. I was like,  we don't need a foot of snow. This is ridiculous.  So the reason I open the podcast every time with how is the weather or did you get the same weather we got is because weather is a big freaking deal for people who grow things.
03:46and you have a homestead. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah. So we,  my husband and I, we've been homesteading in a rental for seven years and we just bought our property last fall  in like middle of August and we're just on four acres. And so this is our first year really getting to do the things that we've done on a really small scale  in our apartment for the last
04:15seven years. um We raised chickens down at my parents place, but I'd have to drive 45 minutes to go take care of them. And I would garden in containers and fill our tiny little patio. And now I'm actually getting to have chickens right in our backyard and a large in-ground garden. So we're really excited.  And all the things that we have dreamed about  doing,  we're finally able to start putting those plans into action.
04:44now that we have our own space. You sound like me  five and a half years ago when we moved from our tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it to a 3.1 acre property. That's about we are just shy of four acre. We have 3.98. They couldn't give us the point oh two.  Yes, exactly. em
05:09So I have a question. When you moved and you actually realized that you've done it, did you step outside and look around and go, oh my God, we did it? Oh, we walked around this property so many times and we're just looking at each other going, is this really ours?  Someone needs to pinch us. Is this real? we actually do this? Because with the way the housing market was every year,
05:37Our five-year plan turned into a six-year plan, turned into a seven-year plan and it was feeling less and less likely. And the day that we closed, we just stood in the backyard looking at everything going, is this really ours? Like, is it really, really what we have been dreaming of is actually here and happening. And it was such a surreal moment to realize that all those years of hoping and praying for this property is actually happening.
06:06Yep. I love it when I talk to somebody like you, who is like me five and a half years ago,  because  I,  my son and I had to come down and spend the first night in the new place by ourselves because my husband had to work. And where we lived at the time was an hour drive for him. And if he had had to stay here with us, it would have been an hour and a half drive for him to work.
06:33So he stayed up at the old house and we stayed at the new house. We had to be here overnight because early morning they were gonna be a brand new gas stove for cooking, because the house didn't have a stove. And we had to be here for the internet to get hooked up because Lord knows you need internet.  I made it a point to get up before sunrise, it was August of 2020.
06:59And I made it a point to get up before sunrise because there's a beautiful, huge window above the kitchen sink.  I did not have a window above the kitchen sink in the old house. And it looks out over, it was an alfalfa field and it's all wide open sky out that window. And I was like, I have to see the first sunrise the first morning I'm here. And I stood there and cried, Kendra, I cried. I believe it.  And I was like, oh my God, I have.
07:27hot coffee because the first thing you put in a new house is the coffee maker if you're a coffee drinker. And the sun is all cotton candy pink and coral orange. Beautiful. And I'm just standing there tears dripping off the end of my nose and I'm like, I'm so freaking happy. Yeah, it was ridiculous. And it was the best happy cry I think I've ever had except when my kids were born. Yeah, it it was such an overwhelming feeling. And it's funny because you mentioned having a
07:57big window over your sink. Yeah, we did not have one in our rental either. And that was one thing I always wanted.  And we have one now and it looks out over it has an eastern view.  And so I get to see the sunrise every morning from the kitchen as well. And it like, to this day, we've been here eight months now, almost nine.  And still every day, we just were like, is this really ours? And it's
08:25so overwhelming to know that what you've worked so hard for, what you've dreamed for, for so long is finally here.  Yes,  it's so hard to explain the feeling to someone who hasn't achieved a dream like that. I mean, you can say it a billion different ways, but until the person has something they want so badly come true, they don't understand  that big feeling in your chest and in your heart.
08:56Absolutely. know that  once we actually got everything moved in and we were done with the old house because we sold the  old house after we bought this place.  And I remember the last time being in the old house and it was just empty and I raised four kids in that house.
09:17And I was a little sad about, you know, leaving the place that I raised my kids.  But drove back here and there were boxes everywhere. And I just looked around and I was like, okay, I'm over it. I don't ever want to go back to the other house. I'm done.  Yeah. And I also remember  once we were completely moved in, sitting  on the bench that we had refinished to have on the patio, because we have a little cement pad  outside the front door.
09:45and sitting on that bench and looking around and looking at my husband and going, what do we do now? Yeah, it's kind of it's almost that feeling like when you get married and you're like, okay, now what? Like that's how I felt with like we purchased the place and then we still lived in our
10:13apartment for three more weeks because of when we could actually get our stuff up here. Yeah, because it's about 40 minutes or so. And so we were just I every day I was making two or three trips a day coming up here bringing stuff, unpacking coming up bringing stuff unpacking like for two weeks and or like two and half weeks until our big move. And then once we were all moved in, and you know, we got everything here, we were done with the apartment. I can't look at my husband. was like, now what?
10:42Like, you almost are like, this is really it. But now what do we do? Like we did the whole go through the move thing. It's like, okay. Yeah. And moving is exhausting. Oh, I don't ever want to do it again. I say that every time. I don't either. There are days where my husband and I are like, well, now we're nasty, nasty, uh-huh. Empty nesters.
11:11Do we really want to stay? You know, is this where we want to die basically? Yeah. And some days we're like, I need to sleep on it. And then other days we're like, nah, we would be nuts to move again. Yeah. I'm, I'm okay staying here for a very, very, very long time. It's not a curse. Yep. Well, it became real to us when we ended up buying, I think we had 40 chickens at one point and I was like, so are we chicken farmers now?
11:41And my husband was like,  no,  there. are a farm to market gardeners. And I was like, but we have 40 chickens. And he was like,  yeah, and that's probably the highest number we're going to have. I was like, don't say that out loud outside. You're going to jinx it. We're going to have 300 chickens.  Oh, but no, it's so lovely. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to say the whole 40 chickens thing is making me laugh over here because
12:10uh We  tracked, I ordered 20 chickens or baby chicks that are coming in through April. Yeah, yeah. But Tractor Supply got us and we ended up with six turkeys. And then the next Wednesday Tractor Supply got us again and we ended up with six more chicks. uh And then the next day we went to a different feed store and we ended up with six more chicks. So we currently have six baby turkey poults and 12 chicks in our basement with 20 more chicks coming.
12:38Chicken math is real and they multiply before you even realize.  I think in your case, it's poultry math.  Right?  For sure.  That's okay. Those turkeys will come in real handy. Yes. We were hoping that we have a hen and a tom  in at least, we have two different breeds, three of each. And we're hoping we have a hen and a tom  in at least  one of those breeds, if not  both, so that we can
13:08have some  for meat this year, but then have longevity with our trippies. So that's the goal with those.  Yes, it's really nice when the livestock reproduce because it's basically free food. For sure. Very expensive free food, but it is definitely free food.  Well, to start with, but there are dividends. So.  But my husband and I, he's like, you know, we should put a lot of money into these  free eggs that we're going to get.  So we always joke that.
13:38It's very expensive free food because we didn't have go to the store to buy it, but we had to, you know, feed it and water it and care for it and it's expensive and all the other things. Uh-huh.  I asked my husband  if the chickens are paying for themselves because we sell eggs. Sure. And he said yes.  But there was kind of a  weird note to the yes. And I said, okay, what are you not saying? And he said,
14:08They're keeping us in milk and butter because we don't have a cow to make, you know, to have drinking milk and to make butter.  And I said, okay, I can, I can live with that.  He said, and he said, we are never without eggs for ourselves. And I said, I can absolutely live with that. So it works out great.  So when I was looking at your Facebook page and you were telling your story at the beginning of this,
14:33You were doing homesteading in an apartment. We were doing homesteading in an 800 square foot house and a tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it. And the thing that I love when I talk to people who are doing homesteading, not on homesteads as people think of it, is it proves my point that homesteading is a state of mind. It is a way of being. It is not owning property. Totally.
15:02One of our big things is we always say a home setting is a mindset, not a location. Yeah. That I have it written on many shirts, actually, because it's so true. It's not about where you are. It's about what you're doing with what you currently have.  And when we were in the rental, we like I mentioned before, we raised chickens somewhere else and we had small little  container gardens everywhere we could put them. But we learned
15:31canning  and preserving  and we worked with other farmers and local gardeners to get the things that we didn't have and to make those relationships and we had we have met so many great people in our community that they were like hey I have a ton of apples on my apple tree and I don't have time to pick them or I've picked all I want does anyone else want them and we were able to go get them for free  and make applesauce with them and then I would give them some applesauce as a
16:01thank you and then year after year they would contact me first, hey, would you like apples this year? And we made so many  great connections with people,  just looking for other people that were like-minded and  trying to achieve the same thing or maybe had more than what they could handle with those things. Yeah,  absolutely. And there's a joke about chickens are the gateway to homesteading.
16:26But I beg to differ. I think that if you start learning to cook from scratch, that's the gateway to homesteading. For sure.  mean, when you start realizing, I mean, it's all connected in one big rabbit hole. But when you start looking at what's in the food, in the stores and on the shelves and all the preservatives and the things that are in there and you start realizing, I can make something fairly quick that tastes way better.
16:55that doesn't have all these extra things added to it that's much better for my health and my family's health. And you start doing that and then you start looking at all the other areas of things that you can do and okay, well now let's get chickens and now let's, you know, have a really large garden so I don't have to go buy the things that we eat. I can just make it all from scratch here as much as we can. We'll never be a hundred percent able to grow everything, but  we do what we can. Every little bit helps, yeah.
17:24For sure. Yep. We're trying to be really aware about what we spend for money at the grocery store right now, because we have food in the house. There's no need to go buy food that's already made. And we had a few containers of homemade sloppy Joe and homemade taco meat in the freezers. And we, Sunday, we're like, what do you want to eat? And my husband was like, I don't really want pot roast. That's what I was supposed to make.
17:54I said, I'll make the pot roast tomorrow. What do we have in the freezer? And he pulled out what he thought was the taco meat.
18:03I ate a sloppy Joe taco with taco sauce on it.  I don't recommend anyone do this. It really wasn't great. It was food and it was edible, but it was not great. And I looked at my husband afterwards and I was like, I must be taking this not buying already made food thing really seriously. And he said, why? I said, cause that was the most unsatisfactory filling meal I've ever had in my entire life. And I don't want to do it again. Oh, that's funny.
18:32It was not great. And luckily,  luckily he knew because I told him that one of the containers was sloppy. Joe me and he had already he had uh him. can't talk.  He had thought out an actual taco meat one as well. So he had a sloppy Joe in a rolled up tortilla and he had a taco in a rolled up tortilla. I was like,  I'm so mad. I wish I had known because I would have had you eat the sloppy Joe tacos and I would have had the taco taco.
19:03He's like, you're a good wife. I was like, yes, I am. Don't you forget it.  Oh, that's so funny. But point being is that even if it doesn't turn out the way you thought it was going to, it's probably still going to be okay. For sure. There's always things I feel like that you can, like you learn, like, okay, maybe we need a better label or organize things or.
19:32you learn of like, maybe if I, instead of adding taco sauce, if I added something else, maybe it would have been better.  And who knows? You can always change things around.  was hoping the taco sauce would make it taste like taco,  but a sweet taco is not a great thing. promise you. was about to say the sweetness of that poppy joke was probably a little much.  It was very funny and I did not vomit. So we're okay.
20:00But  I don't want to do it again. I just thought it was a funny story because sometimes we might take things a little too far.  And  if I had been sick on it, that would have been a little too far, but it was fine. So you have chickens, you have turkeys. What else do you have? So that's well, we have a golden retriever, but that's we have for right now. But we have  we have plans for adding some Gloucestershire old spot pigs at some point. Not sure if that'll be this year or next.
20:30year. I'm kind of hoping for this year but budget-wise it's probably going to be next year. So  there's so many things that we want to do but we're not in a hurry to  do it all right now. We want to thoughtfully plan it out and make sure that we're doing the best that we can with what we have  and doing the best for the animals. We don't want to get them and then risk them getting out because we didn't plan their structures out well enough.
21:00you know, any other scenario like that.  we're  my husband is going slow and plant thoughtfully planning things out. And I'm thinking of all the things that we should do.  So he balances me out in that way, thankfully.  Yes, that's what spouses are for.  I'm always saying start small, dream big. Yeah, that's actually our tagline, which is really funny.  So we say at the end of almost all of our videos.  Yep. Because if you dive in, m
21:28head-first, you better pray there's a lot of water or a lot of money in the bottom of that pool.  Right? oh And it's usually not money. No,  and if there's no water, you're gonna break your neck. yeah, starting small,  looking before you leap, thinking it through is all really good advice. But the worst advice  is don't dream.  Everybody needs a dream.
21:58Absolutely.  And the other thing is that a lot of people,  they're researching, they're planning, they're dreaming, but they don't ever take that first step.  we always say,  you just have to start at some point. Just do it, just try it.  This year, so this property that we moved on had five silver maple trees. And this spring, we're like, we've never tapped maple syrup or maple trees before.
22:26and made our own maple syrup, let's just try it. Let's just see how it goes. It is a lot of work. We spent the last two weekends, both Saturday and Sunday, each weekend, 12 to 14 hour days making maple syrup. Like it is a lot of work, but we have this beautiful golden maple syrup that tastes phenomenal that we made and we did it. And we wouldn't have had that if we hadn't done it and just tried it. Now there's a lot of things that we're going to
22:56change and do differently for next year knowing what we know now but we wouldn't have learned those things if we hadn't just done it. We did do  a little bit of research before but and I grew up around ah maple tapping and sugar bushes. The farm that I grew up on we own half of the woods and the other half is owned by a sugar bush that they tap they've always tapped my family's trees and so I grew up around all this but I've never actually done it and
23:26It was such a good learning process. But if we had just said, you know what, let's just hold off until we know everything. So you have to find that balance of don't just rush in  and do it all at once. Pick one thing. But at some point you do have to just start.  Yes. And sometimes your friends help you along the way. My friend brought me some sourdough starter that was very well established and beautiful. And she was like,
23:53Here's what you do. I wrote out the instructions, blah, blah. And I kept it alive for about a week and I went to move the jar and it hit the floor and shattered.  Oh no.  Yes, I was very sad.  And then I got over my sad and I was like, I can  make a new one. And I did the flower and water thing in another jar. And I actually made two loaves of sourdough bread out of that sourdough starter that I started. They both kind of turned out.
24:23um bagel-y like bagel texture. Yeah. They were good  and then it got the dreaded pink mold. I've talked about this a few times in the last  two it had to go in trash and I cried over that because that is not okay. That's not fun. Especially when you start it from yourself that is so hard to do. ah Yeah so I waited until about a month and a half ago to start a new one.
24:51They got the pink mold back in September, I think it was. So I started new one about a month and a half ago. And it's now at the point where I might actually be able to make some sourdough bread again. And it's got all the little bubbles on the side of the jar. And I'm like, oh my God, it's alive and it's working. That will never not make me giddy. When I wake up in the morning and I see those bubbles on the jar, I get so excited. Over bubbles.
25:21It's so dumb, but it's so smart at the same time. It's such a rewarding thing because it doesn't take much. It takes five, six minutes to feed your starter. And then it's just time. You're just waiting. You're not doing anything. And then you come back and check and it's alive and happy.  It's just, it brings me such joy.  I think the reason homesteaders like sourdough,  you know, the process is because it's keeping another thing alive. Right.
25:52There's lots of chaos in our life. Let's just keep something else alive.  I was gonna say it's not enough to grow plants and animals. We need to grow bacteria too. Right.  Well, let's grow it all.  But I'll tell you there is something  really special when you make your first loaf of sourdough bread. Out of sourdough starter,  you start it because it is literally all on you.  100%.
26:20I was so thrilled when I pulled the first loaf out and it was bagel-ish, bagel-y, however you say that, because I love bagels and I happened to have a brick of cream cheese that we had just bought in the fridge. I was like, I can't make a bagel to save my life, but I can make bagel sourdough bread. I love it.  Oh, I bet that was so good. Especially, like you said, when it's your first loaf that you did all of it from start to finish, there's,  it just...
26:46adds to the flavor. Like it'll taste good regardless because you did it all.  Yes and I feel like it's a true homesteading skill which probably sounds really dumb because all of it is homesteading skills but  I feel like it's what people associate homesteading with.  For sure there's a there's a few bigger things like there's like three or four things right we have sourdough, chicken,
27:13canning and gardening, those are the things that people really associate with.  Home setting.  There's so much more to it than that, but those seem to be the big things that people recognize as home setting. Yes, one of the first things that we did when we kind of got into this, and it was more me than my husband because he was the breadwinner. He was gone all the time.  We're raising four kids on one income and I was like,  the kids need scarves. I can learn to crochet. So I learned to crochet scars for the kids.
27:43And I was trying to be really  aware of our food expenses because kids eat a lot.  so  I to make oatmeal raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies and any kind of cookie or banana bread kept them very happy and snacks. none of them were fat. They were always running around doing stuff. So they were like, can I have a cookie? Yes, please. Before you're too skinny to live, you know.
28:12And it was just all things that I was like, okay, if I make cookies, it's going to cost me less than buying cookies.  Absolutely.  So for us,  was a way, frugality was our gateway to homesteading. I know a lot of people that that's how they start because they don't have the option to  buy  the extras at the grocery store. They can buy the necessities and that's about it.
28:41flour, sugar, milk, bread, right? Those kinds of things. And then they start realizing, well, if I can buy those things, I can make the bread and then I can make the cookies and I can make all the other things. And it is a way for them to save money in the long run.  Yes. And I felt like I had to because
29:05I love my husband and I loved my kids. I still love my kids, but they're adults now. They make their own cookies.  And I felt like if I was going to be home with the kids, because I wanted to raise them myself, whatever I could do to save us money was making us money.  Oh, for sure. So it was a big deal. And my husband would get asked at his job, they'd like, they'd say, what does your wife do? And he would say, well, she is at home with the kids.
29:36And they would say, isn't she bored?  And he would just laugh. He was belly laugh.  He was like, okay, you understand that my kids are 13, 11, um six and one. And they're like, well, yeah, but three of them are in school. And my husband would be like, yes. And one of them is one year old. She's got four more years to go for the last one in school. No, she's not bored. And she's smart.
30:06she saves us more money than I make. And every time he would tell me this story, I would just feel such a sense of pride because I was like, I am earning  my keep and not that I was ever told I had to. Right. But I am, I am so lucky to be able to have my kids leave my house and I'm home. They come home, I'm home and I get to be here for them. Yeah, it's such a great feeling knowing that
30:35these short 18 years that you get to spend with them because those years, it's the smallest part of your life is when you're under 18.  So  bidding to have your kids in your home with you  and spending the life together and doing every single day in and day out together for those short 18 years  is, in my opinion, worth the sacrifice. um
31:05And then it takes because living on one income is hard. And we have so we homeschool our son. He's 13 and my husband works full time out of well, he works from home quite often, but he has to go in on surveys and things like that. But. I work two part time jobs that I get to work from home, so we're still able to homeschool and do I. I'm still able to be home with him and still make
31:34some money for the family and things like that. we made the sacrifices and the things that we gave up so that we could have that time with him because it goes so fast. It doesn't last very long. No, it does not. And that's all I have to say or I will cry. Also, every human being
32:04has the opportunity to make a choice about how they live their life. And some of us come  at it from a privileged place, some of us do not. I'm not saying that the homeless person in Minneapolis has a lot of choice right now, so don't get me wrong. But if you happen to be lucky enough to make choices about what you want to do with your life, you're one of the luckiest people on earth. And not everybody has to be a homesteader.
32:34I get that there are some people who want to be in an office building  as a CEO of a big company and that is totally fine. You do you. But  I love that we get to make these choices. I love that my husband and I are thinking about getting into raising quail, have not actually decided yet,  but it's a choice we get to make this year. I love it. My husband wants to raise quail.
33:03Yeah, we've been looking into that too. They're so cool. I've been diving deep on this for  a couple of weeks and hopefully  we can make a decision this weekend about what whether we're going to buy an incubator or not. That's that's the next thing on the list is to decide that. So  exciting.  It is. It's really fun. And  I just I looked up the little quail scissors that you use to clip the eggs open.
33:30I was like, oh my God,  I'm actually looking up quail scissors on Amazon. I've got to be out of my freaking mind. I love it.  A friend of mine raises them. And so she gave me some eggs, some quail eggs and eggs and the quail egg scissors uh in exchange. We were bartering. don't remember what  I had and we exchanged. And I love a good barter and trade, by the way.  Oh, yes, my favorite thing. And so
34:00my friend who raises quails, she loves to barter and trade as well. So we're constantly finding things that the other one wants or needs.  We're exchanging things and she keeps telling me, she's like, hey,  I'm going to have eggs  if you want to have quail. And I'm like, we do, but we might need to wait a year for that.  But oh, it's so tempting to do it this year because they're so cute. I love them.
34:29I'm,  I,  I am going to have a hard time spitting this out. I am very excited at the idea. I am very concerned about the actual doing it because where we live, I'm not sure there's a market for quail meat or quail eggs.  And they don't want to get deep into this until we know that we can move a quail meat and quail eggs.  So we're going to start small.
34:58we're only gonna get like 12 or 14. And that way if we can't move them, we just don't do it past butchering the quail that we have and having them in our freezer for ourselves. That's a good place to start when you're trying to figure out if this is something that's doable and starting with just a few because and that's kind of what we did with the turkeys. We have six and so we're like if this goes the way we want to go.
35:26and we get the breeding pair and things like that, then we do potentially have a future. If not, we have six that are going to our freezer. Yeah. And again, start small, dream big. 100%. Yup, exactly. I'm so excited to start a new project with the husband because like I said, empty nesters. And when we get snippy with each other, it's time to get aligned on a project again.
35:57But I'm like, okay, so we have chickens, have a dog, we have barn cats, and you're gonna be getting  into the gardens again this year.  Do we have time for a new project?
36:11That's the hard part.  Because like I see all these different things that we want to do. But each one of those will take a certain amount of time. It's like, how much do you want to put towards one thing? Because that's how much you're taking away from something else. So it's definitely a balancing act to try to figure out how much you actually want to do each year.  And it's okay to try something one year and then realize, hey, it wasn't worth the time and the effort.
36:40next year or you know we're kind of with that with the maple syrup because of all the time into it we were looking at each other as the snow was flying on saturday night and we're still not done  and we're like is this really what we're doing is this worth it and we're like do we really want to do this again next year but then you boil it down and you look at it and  we're like okay this was this is a short season it's
37:08on a great year, it's a month  from start to finish. Yeah. And there are some years where you're lucky if you get a run for three days because things warm up too fast  and the trees butt out. And so we're like,  what we get from it, the time spent outside,  we literally every day, every Saturday and Sunday for the last two weeks, my husband and I have spent outside together or in the house finishing it off.  And like,
37:37Just spending time outside together, just us around the fire while we're boiling saps. It was so fun.  those special moments, like, that makes it worth it for us, even though it's  really long hours and it's a lot of work, but it's only for a short time where there's other things that, you know, it's every day for a year, you're feeding an animal.
38:06two, sometimes three times a year, or a day for an entire year, and that might not be worth it depending on your schedule and other things you have going on. And it's okay to change from year to year what you put your focus and your time into.
38:26Certainly, absolutely. And again,  if you guys don't want a maple syrup next spring, you don't have to because  those trees don't care whether you get the sap out of them or not.  Right. We definitely will be.  But  there was a moment as we're sitting in the start of the snowstorm looking at each other going,  is this really worth it? But  it is. It really is worth it for us. Just the time we get to spend together and then the syrup.
38:56we go through because it's really the only sugar source that we use except for a tiny bit of raw cane sugar. And so for us, it was worth it because we go through two to three gallons a year. And that's a we have right now just over two gallons. So it's almost a year's worth of syrup in essentially two weekends worth of work. So for us, it was worth it at least.
39:21this year.  Another year if it only runs for three days and we only get you know a half a gallon it might not feel worth it. So it's okay to change from year to year. Exactly that's what I love about this particular life choice is that again you get to choose what you want to put your time into. And the other thing is that I feel like the halfway mark on anything is the hardest part.
39:47The beginning is exciting and fun and the end is satisfying. But the middle is the part where you're like, why did we start this? It drags on. It's just like when you decide to clean your closet and it feels like a really great idea in the beginning and you get everything pulled out and you look around and you're like, oh, I have to put it back. I like that feeling. Yep, exactly. It's new energy is amazing.
40:15Finished energy is amazing. Middle energy sucks.  100 % on almost every project I feel like it. m Yep, that's how it always is. I'll be feeling that way tomorrow or Saturday when I make my next sourdough loaf because anyone who's ever made a sourdough loaf knows  that it's not the actual making of it that's the pain in the ass, it's the waiting time.  100%. That's what takes forever.  Yep.
40:45I was like, you're kidding me. I do the pull, the stretch and pull four times and then I have to wait half an hour until I can do anything else. A lot  of it's very, it's very needy. Like  every 30 minutes you're doing something, but then you need to wait.  Like, can I just do it all and be done and move on?  Yeah. My husband is the, uh, the yeast bread maker. He's very good at it.
41:12And he was like, I can't believe you're going to do sourdough when you could just do yeast breads.  The issue is, that every time I try to make yeast bread, I kill the yeast. We cannot figure out how I do this. And he's really good at making yeast bread. And I was like, I just need to be able to say that I finally made a freaking loaf of bread from scratch. Give me the sourdough.  Yeah. I did sourdough for years and I did gluten-free sourdough for many years. then
41:41we found a flower that my son could tolerate. And so then I do regular sourdough and it wasn't until about, think it was January of this year, maybe early February that  I  tried yeast bread for the first time in probably 20 years.  And I don't know why I had never really made sandwich bread and I decided to try my sourdough sandwich bread. I didn't like how many holes were in it.
42:11It wasn't great for sandwich for me. And so decided to try yeast bread and now I'm hooked. And now I actually haven't been doing sourdough for a while because I've been making every week, I've been making two loaves of yeast bread and then pizza dough. I'm in my yeast era at the moment.  My husband is always in the yeast bread era. He's been making, he's been making four loaves of bread every other weekend.
42:41because he really likes bread with his eggs in the morning for toast.  the least expensive bread at the local grocery stores is terrible. The only really good tasting bread is like $7 a loaf right now.  At the least he was like, I'm just going to start making bread. I said, okay, how's the smell amazing every other weekend? And he was like, yes, will.
43:08So we've been reminded that frugality has lots of benefits. Oh, for sure. When you start looking at well, and so my son can't have gluten or dairy. so when we would go to the store and I'm looking and I'm gluten free, anything is a minimum of eight dollars, if not 15 for a tiny little package of this thing. I just like it.
43:37It's so expensive. Now  there are occasions, right, where we'll get it as a treat and then it's something I don't have to make for that week. But  I have started making so many things and it does come out of necessity because if I bought  everything that we eat just pre-made from the store that's organic and gluten-free and dairy-free, oh my goodness, I cannot imagine my grocery bill. It's already high enough that is it it?
44:04as it is just eating organic. It's maddening how expensive things have gotten. Yeah. And that's all I have to say on that too, because boy, we don't want that soap box coming out either right now. All right. This has been so much fun, Kendra. And I am not saying that everyone should become a homesteader.
44:29but I would be remiss if I didn't say this again. This is my public service announcement for every episode. You ready?  If you don't know how to cook from scratch,  learn. And please get to know your local growers and producers because  it's so important to have a local source because supply chains do  have problems  and things just keep getting more expensive. Please learn how to take care of yourself. Absolutely.
44:58Where can people find you? So we are on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram as Trina Homestead.  Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Kendra, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. All right. Have a great day. You too.
 
 

Three Birch Homestead

Today I'm talking with Andrea at Three Birch Homestead.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Andrea at Three Birch Homestead in Canada. Good morning, Andrea. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Canada this morning? um It's a little bit cold. We had like a really warm spell and now it's kind of freezing again.
00:30Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and we've had a couple of really beautiful days  and they're saying we're going to get snow tomorrow, a little bit of snow Thursday, and then they're kind of hyping up a bigger storm over the weekend. And I'm like,  it's March. Could we please put it to bed now? Please.  Yeah,  I'm ready for spring. There was actually a really like  heavy windstorm here the last couple of days and the power's been out, I guess, like all over the place.
01:00um But because we're off grid, we like don't even notice. We just hear about it from other people.  Uh-huh. It's one of the benefits of living off grid. You've got that covered.  All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself, please. um We live in northern BC, Canada,  off grid um on a property, like a rural property.  We're about 45 minutes from the closest town.
01:30an hour and a half from like a bigger center. So it's a bit of a drive. There is like a small community about  half an hour from here. um But there's just like a general store and a post office. It's not, there's not a whole lot going on there. Yeah.  So  and  we raise animals for  meat  and we um have kids and
01:59homeschool and yeah, just sort of try to do as much as we can on our own and provide as much food as we can for ourselves.
02:11Okay, I have a question. You have kids. How many kids do you have? um I have five kids. Two of them are adults, so they don't live with me anymore. And then I have  a  14 year old son and then a two year old and an eight month old.
02:29Okay, having raised four kids without a whole lot of family around, because my family lives in Maine, uh how has it been for you? Do you have family at all in the area that can help out or is it just you? um When my other kids were little, I lived in a different area and I did have family around, so that was very helpful.  Here, we didn't have much family around, but my husband's parents recently moved to the area.
02:59They live uh here half the time and then in Ontario half the time because they wanted to be closer to their grandkids.  So, um because the  two boys are their only grandchildren, so they wanted to be close. And so that's been really helpful.
03:16good because when I hear moms having more than a couple of kids and I don't hear anything about extended family being able to kind of help out here and there, I worry because I did a lot of the raising of my four kids myself and it is a lot of stress and a lot of energy and I loved every minute of it but it would have been helpful to have extended family to step in. Yeah, it's definitely nice to have somebody. So I thought I
03:48Yeah, I thought I would ask because  I don't recommend anyone do  homesteading or off-grid living or anything else like that if you don't have some form of community to  call on if you do need help. It's definitely nice. Yeah. you you disagree? Yeah,  I agree. It can be really isolating. When I first moved out here,
04:12Like where I had lived before, I did live out of town, but I only lived a couple minutes out of town and I had lots of friends around. And so when I moved out here to live with my husband, like my now husband, I didn't really have that anymore. it definitely, I didn't realize how much it was going to affect me until I got out here. And then I was like, wow, like I don't have anybody. And so I was pretty lonely. And then my son joined Taekwondo.
04:42which helped us to meet people. And so now I do have some friends around, but they're definitely not as close. they're, you know, a good 45 minute to an hour drive away. So I don't get to see people as often as I used to, but I've kind of learned to adapt. It's given me a lot more time to do stuff at home, which is nice. I spend less time socializing and more time making bread and doing other things that I wanted to do before too, but didn't have time for because I would be out and about.
05:17Absolutely. I am an extreme introvert and I spend most of my weekdays from about 730 in the morning until about 430.  Just me. And I love it because I get so much done and I can pursue the things that I'm interested in without anyone being like, why are you watching about chickens?  Why are you reading a book about cows? know? Yeah.
05:43So, all right, so tell me, tell me your, your living situation. Are you in a home? Are you in a cabin? Are you in a trailer? How does that work?  Um, we're in like a cabin, I guess it's,  it's not huge. It's  maybe like, there's probably 700 square feet in the main space.  And then there's a bit of an upstairs with the bedroom. It's pretty small. Uh, like I came from a house that was like,
06:112500 square feet.  it's definitely like been a transition, especially once we added two more kids to the mix. My teenage son has his own little cabin, which is nice. um And so  but then he's got to like run his own fire as well. So we've got two wood stoves that we have to maintain. But yeah, so it's it's a nice little like, long cabin. But we need more space. We're definitely planning on adding
06:40some more space in the future. This summer we actually want to, we have a deck  and it's a really nice deck.  It faces a mountain and it's  a lovely view but we're actually going to enclose it and turn it into part of the house  and forego having a deck because we need the space more than we need a deck.
06:59Yep, yep, understand. And that's the joy of being off-grid. You can probably add whatever you would like to add as long as you have the fundage or the bartering skills to get it done. Yes, well, and like where we live, there's not like building codes. Like we don't have to get a permit or anything. We can just kind of do what we want. And Will's parents are really good about helping us with that stuff. So they're going to help us build.  They've helped us build like all of our additions. My bedroom is actually
07:28like upstairs and it used to just be like a loft and then there was like a big open like high ceiling and we basically closed that in so  we don't have the nice expansive high ceiling anymore, but we have like a whole bedroom up here now, which  we really needed because there was only one bedroom in the whole house and so  Sweet awesome. That's fantastic uh
07:54Okay, and so do  you just heat with the wood stoves or do you have another source? Just the wood stoves, yeah. Okay. And do you have a... I assume you do not have a well, so how do you get your water?  There's a creek on the property that runs through and it's  basically glacial-fed water, like it comes off of the mountain. So we drink from that. It must be amazing water.
08:23It's pretty good. Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, pretty pristine.  It's very cold.  I love that. My parents, when they built their first house when I was like six, we had moved from a suburb and the water was terrible to taste to drink. And when we moved into that house, the new house, they had an artesian well dug for it. And I can
08:50vividly remember getting the first glass of cold water from the faucet and it tasted like heaven. It was so  clean and so cold and so sweet. And I was like, this isn't water.  My mom said, yes, it is. And I was like, it tastes really good. I could drink this all day. She's like, please do. It definitely makes a difference. Water is very important.
09:16Yeah, where we live now,  my favorite glass of water is when it's minus 20 degrees outside because the water from the faucet gets so cold because again, it's a well. And  I really love my water  almost ice when I'm drinking it.  I understand the whole  glacial water is really, really good compared to just regular water.
09:40Okay, so you have animals, what do you have for animals? We have um two milk cows  and a bull and then we have a steer that we're raising for meat. We have chickens, turkeys, pigs.  We have goats, but we're actually getting out of goats. We're going to sell the goats off. We use them to  clear land, like clear brush, to  create more pasture land for cows.
10:08and they've done the job well  and  we really love having them like that when they have their babies. It's just like such a wonderful time, but  it's just a lot of work to move them around the pasture. So we're just, yeah, we're going to sell them off  and  focus on the cows. We got goats originally because  we wanted, well for pasture clearing, but also  we wanted to start with a  smaller animal for milking.
10:34And so we did that, but we don't really enjoy drinking the goat's milk. We like, like I made cheese with it and the cheese was really good.  But so we, got a milk cow and we definitely like prefer the milk cow.
10:50Okay, so as I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm assuming that you use the animals to feed yourselves. And so when you make cheese, how do you store it? Because obviously cheese needs to be refrigerated. So do you have like solar energy or how do you power your appliances? Yeah, we have solar power. We also have a generator. And yeah, so
11:18The cheese gets stored in a fridge.  I vacuum seal it and then store it in the fridge. So a lot of our fridge is taken up by cheese and milk.  We don't have a lot of room for other things.  So we have to be careful about what we put in our fridge and we have to use up our leftovers like fairly quickly. uh But I haven't had to buy cheese at the grocery store in like a few years now, which has been lovely.
11:47I was going to say, isn't that a great feeling just knowing that you are set because you did it? Yeah, I don't have to like really spend any time in the dairy section of the grocery store.  Okay, so now I'm going to ask an uncomfortable question because it makes me uncomfortable to ask it. But do you have a job because even if you are off grid and living quote unquote self-sufficiently,
12:13money still does buy things that you can't make. So do you guys have a job or are you doing this all without jobs?  Yeah, for sure. It's definitely like a big question that people ask is like, how do you pay for this? And it was something that I asked too before,  you know, living like this. mean, I've always been interested in homesteading and I've always done a little bit here and there. But yeah, so I work online.
12:42And then my husband has a glass studio. So he does some glass work. He makes jewelry and stuff. So that  funds like quite a bit of what we do. And then, you know, we have, we don't have a mortgage.  We don't pay an electric bill. Like, so we don't,  costs are low,  but we do, yeah, still need money. You could never not need money. I think it's.
13:10silly to think that you could live without money.  Yeah, the reason I said now for the uncomfortable question is because I always feel weird asking people stuff about their  income or their finances or how they fund things. But people need to know that  even if you're going to be a homesteader, you're probably still going to have to have some kind of jobby job to fund it.
13:36Yes, for sure. need to bring in an income. I get real twitchy when I have to ask that question. And I always preface it so that you guys brace for it, you know? Yeah, I don't like asking people how they make money either. I'm sorry, say it again. Oh, I don't like asking people how they make money either. Like it's one of those questions that's sort of like, it's like not really any of your business. But then I also totally understand why people ask it, you know?
14:13Yeah, it's kind of like asking a mom these days whether their newborn son was circumcised or not.  It's a really slippery slope for a conversation.
14:27Okay, what else can I ask you? um You're in Canada, it gets really,  really cold in Canada in the winter. So  when you have to get up  at, I don't know, 5, 6 a.m. and go milk the cows or feed the animals, how  many layers are you putting on in the morning? Because I know it gets really cold. Yeah, we live in like...
14:57sort of a coastal area so  it's not quite as cold here as some places in Canada but we do still get like cold snaps where it's quite cold  and I actually don't go outside and do the chores I'm inside with the kids and I make the food and  stuff like that and then my husband and my son my teenage son go out and so  usually they're wearing
15:22you boots and snow pants  and a jacket. If it's really cold, they're putting on like Bella clavas and,  you know, heavier wool underneath their jackets and stuff like that. But yeah, this year we haven't had any like really cold weather. It's actually been like quite mild this year. So that's been nice. If I go out, like if I'm milking the cow that I was milking the cow before I had my ah my last baby.
15:51And  yeah, I would wear, you know, a sweater over top of like, I've got a lot of like merino wool base layer stuff.  And so, you know, leggings and pants and snow pants and wool socks and boots and wool hats. And yeah, you're definitely covering up everywhere.  Yeah, it's  interesting because my  mom used to pack away the summer clothes in October.
16:20and pull out the winter clothes from the attic. And then in the spring, she'd pack away the winter clothes and unpack summer clothes again.  And I'm like, I don't even understand this concept anymore because in Minnesota,  you can have a 60 degree day in December. And I don't want to be without a tank top if it's 60 degrees outside because I'm going be outside and it's going be warm. And so my mom mentioned this to me that she had packed away
16:49the summer clothes this past fall. And I said, you know, you don't really have to do that. You can wear the clothes all year round. And she laughed and she said,  you do your outfits the way you want to. I'm gonna do mine the way I want to. And it's funny because we all have our systems and our habits and the way we do things. And she said, seriously, you don't pack away your winter clothes in springtime? I said, no, because  it can be
17:18in June in Minnesota and I want my sweater. And she just giggled and she lives in Maine. It's not that different.
17:28Yeah, I do usually put away the  big winter gear  because  it doesn't get cold enough in the summer for us to need  snow pants and heavy woolies and stuff like that. But I will keep out some of the warmer clothes because at night, in the evenings if we're out, it gets chilly. um
17:51Yeah, and actually, like I do keep a lot of  summer stuff out now because our house gets so warm because it's so small and we have like a big wood stove like right in the center of it.  It'll be 30 degrees in here at 30 Celsius. I'm not sure what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's it's warm.
18:17Yeah. Okay. So what led you to wanting to live off grid? Um, I mean, I've wanted to live off grid for a long time. I, I've always been interested in gardening and wanted to have like my own animals and a milk cow. A lot of it is for health benefits and just having control over my own food source. But like my ex husband,
18:46was not, he was sort of into that stuff, but not really. And so we never really like, actually were able to pursue it. I would do some like, I would dabble, you know, I'd do some canning and I did some wild harvesting and we had chickens and I had a garden and stuff like that. And then I got divorced and so I, I was, you know, on the market again and sort of was looking for, you know, someone to spend my life with and
19:16that was definitely like something that I was looking for was somebody who was into those things, know, into self-sufficient living and stuff like that. It wasn't like it had to be somebody off grid necessarily, but just somebody who was living, you know,  on the land and gardening and  growing food and  raising animals and such.  And so when I met my husband, he was into all those things. So we hit it off pretty...
19:42pretty quickly and he lived off grid, which was lovely. It was like, oh, that's cool. know,  I mean, we had a long distance relationship for like three or four years before I actually moved out here because where I lived, like my kids were attending the high school and  you know, I wasn't really able to move. Plus when I met him, he lived in just like a tiny shack. was just, it was like a non-insulated building.  The cabin that we're in now wasn't here at the time.
20:11So it wasn't really like practical for me to move out here. ah But  yeah, like I definitely was attracted to the off-grid lifestyle, mostly just for self-sufficiency because you're not connected to, you know, main power grid. You're not paying a big corporation for your power and,  you know, they can hike up the prices at any moment and  stuff like that.  So.
20:37Yeah, exactly. um We keep talking about looking into solar panels again. We have a big pole barn and it would be great for solar panels.  And every time I even dip my toe in the water to research it, I see big, big numbers to get solar panels installed. And I'm like, yeah, we don't have it right now. I want to real bad, but it's going to have to wait. Yeah, it's.
21:03not a cheap thing, but I guess supposedly the prices have gone down significantly from when they first came out.  So the technology is getting better and  that's what we were told by someone that we know who installs solar panels. He was saying that  the prices have gone down significantly from what they used to be. em Well, maybe this fall I'll revisit it.  Yeah.
21:31They now have like these bifacial ones too that capture sunlight on both sides,  which then you can kind of have them standing up. Like they maybe wouldn't work as well like  on a roof, know, like  mounted to a roof. But if they're standing up, then  you can get the sun from both sides, makes them more efficient. Very nice. That would be very cool. ah So  are your
21:57I guess your younger kids don't know any different than living off-grid, right?  Yeah.  I mean, they're still young, like, so they don't really know  even what off-grid is, but  yeah, they won't know any different. Like, we have a composting toilet and we kind of joke about how our son is going to be like,  know, weirded out by like regular toilets when we go to town.
22:26Yeah, the noise will scare him. Yeah, and like there's no water in our toilet and  you don't flush it.  But I mean, he has seen toilets in town, so I don't know if he'll actually be like so weirded out by it. But I'm sure at some point he'll ask us a question like, why,  why is our toilet not like this? Uh  huh.  Yeah, it's stuff you don't think about like that,  that when it comes up, you're like, oh, wow, I hadn't even thought of that.
22:55Yeah, the craziest thing to me about like living off grid versus like living on It's like here. We...  Oh,  sorry. Yeah, just the  biggest thing that I've noticed with living like off grid versus living on grid is like when I go visit my friends who live on grid.
23:13Like they're running, know, they've got their coffee machine on, they've got their microwave going, they've got their vacuum going, they've got like all these things running at the same time. And I just like, I can't live like that anymore. Like we can't do that.  You know, if  we're running the vacuum, it's like, that's the only thing that we're running. You know, we're not, can't use the toaster at the same time as the water pump.  you have to be really like.
23:39careful about like what you're using when and so that'll be something that my kids  will  be used to and so you know maybe when we go visit other people they might be like why are they doing all these things at once like that's so crazy
23:59Yeah, I feel like homesteading and living off grid makes you far more intentional about what you do and when you do it. For sure.
24:17I lose you? No. Oh, sorry. I was really quiet there for a was like, Oh, sorry. for sure. then I paused. Yeah. I need to ask a couple of questions because it's three birch homestead and you're off grid. So
24:37Yeah, no, that's okay. So again, three words.
24:48Sorry, think we have a delay going on here. So, okay. No, we just have a delay. I can, I can tell. There you go. Okay. So your three birch homestead and your off-grid. So have you learned how to make your own soaps or your own lotions or do you do sourdough bread or any of the things that people usually think of when they think of homestead and off-grid?
25:15um I don't make soap or lotion.  I buy those at the store from one of my friends makes soap. But I do  make bread and I make cheese and  cook most of my food from scratch. ah I have made sourdough, but  I haven't in a while. I recently got  a mixer for my birthday and so I've been making more bread. So I want to get back into sourdough.
25:42I found that like hand kneading stuff just, it took too much time. So I just didn't bother. em But now that I have a mixer,  I am on a  major baking spree.
25:57Yeah, my husband is the yeast bread maker. I've said this before, I kill the yeast every time I try to get it to bloom. I don't know why, it just dies on me.  And when  he wants to relax and  zen out, he will hand knead the bread dough. But when he just wants to get it done, he uses the KitchenAid mixer. And I always know when he's really thinking about something, because he's like, I'm going to make bread. And he gets everything ready and he gets the dough together.
26:26And he slaps it on the island top and starts to hand knead it. And I'm like,  are you considering an idea or are you upset? Because the only time you need dough is when that's going on. And it's always a hint to me that he's in a state of mind about something.  could see that being like a therapeutic thing for sure. Yeah.  And the thing that I love most about cooking from scratch is that the house always smells good. Always. Yes.
26:59My favorite thing that he makes is cinnamon rolls from scratch. And he makes the cinnamon rolls and I make the frosting and I always try to have lemon juice on hand so I can make a lemon frosting because lemon frosting on cinnamon rolls is amazing. That sounds really good. I've been making cinnamon buns too, actually. I  do like a sticky topping. So I cook like  that, right? I make butter and sugar and then cook it in that. um But yeah, lemon frosting. That sounds really yummy.
27:30It's a drizzle. shouldn't say frosting because people are probably thinking of the buttercream frosting and I try to make it a drizzle  because if you try to put buttercream frosting on a warm cinnamon roll, it just slides off.  doesn't do any good. That's true. em
27:46So,  all right, well, I try to keep these to half an hour.  I appreciate your time so much. I know you guys are all busy and you take time out of your busy days to just  basically entertain me and by default, entertain anybody who listens to the conversation. So,  where can people find you, Andrea?  I'm on Instagram at 3birchhomestead.com.
28:12pool,  I will make sure I put that in the show notes so people can go look at your pictures because I did and I was like, wow, that's awesome. I  want to come back in my next life as an off-grid homesteader because right now on-grid homesteading is good enough. um As always, people can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com. Thank you again for your time, Andrea. I hope you have a great day. You too. Thanks.
 

Greenbush Twins & Company

Today I'm talking with Sidney at Greenbush Twins & Company. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Sydney Greenbush at Greenbush Twins and Company in California.  And  is it 11 o'clock there? Yes. We just had daylight savings times,  you know, so that it would normally be 10, but now it's 11.
00:25Yeah, so I would say, well, I'm in Minnesota, so I'm two hours ahead of you. So good morning to you and good afternoon to me. Good morning.  I am so happy to have you as a guest. I saw you on Facebook, your page, and I was like, hmm,  there's a story there. I've got to talk to her.  But before we get into it, I always say, how is the weather wherever my guest is? So how's the weather in California today?  Oh, it's really windy today, but the winds are supposed to...
00:54die down. So we have the Santa Ana winds, which are the winds that come from the inland and blow out to the ocean. And they get very strong. You get gassed up to, you know, 60 to 100 miles an hour. So  we're all like  really ready for them to die down today.  I feel like 50 to 60 miles our mile hour and a winds. I can't say it.  I feel like 50 to 60 mile per hour winds.
01:23are a weekly occurrence where we live in Minnesota. So  I'm used to it.  Yeah. We,  and for us, the winds aren't  the bad part of it. The bad part of it is when we have obviously the wildfires on top of it. So everybody kind of gets a little anxious because you never know when  one's going to pop up or where. Um, and so you're always kind of like got that little bit of guard going.  Yeah. Especially after last year, I'm sure you guys are on a swivel.
01:52Yeah, and so for us that live in this area, we've had a few  really bad fires.  The last one was obviously the Palisades and the Altadena fire.  But years before that, we had the Woolsey and we've had um really bad fires in the  80s and stuff. One year,  actually burnt down part of  Johnny Carson's home.  So  it almost becomes a way of life here on the coastline around by Los Angeles because
02:20It's not if you're going to have a fire, it's when are you going to have another fire? Because it's just the way that eh the vegetation and the habitat  kind of the ecosystem is. Well,  I'm always astounded at people who want to live in California. My daughter lived there for a few years and she loved it. She loved everything about it. And then she fell in love and moved to New York and now she's in Florida with her husband. So. uh
02:49Yeah, it's amazing where you'll move for the person you love.  So let's just address the elephant in the room. If Sydney's name sounds familiar, it's because she played along with her sister, Carrie on Little House on  the Prairie. Right.  And Sydney  is  way more than just that. She has started a new project  and I think it's fairly recent, like in the last year. Yeah.
03:18Well, the, really started in December was the official launch of the website and the ramp up for the book, the seven sisters, lantern of humanity.  And so it's all just very fresh for, for me. And it's been an amazing trip so far and I can only imagine what the future holds, you know. Yeah. Are you still riding the new energy high of a new project?
03:46I am because I keep thinking at some point, you you try and build your audience and I keep thinking at some point, okay, it's going to taper down because it's not quite so new anymore.  And it's been about six months that we've been, we've been talking about it. But every day I'm so surprised because I, I log in and then the number has increased and sometimes it's not like a major increase, but it's still that momentum going forward and it hasn't tapered off yet.
04:16And then I start to get excited and I start thinking, oh, I could do this and I could do that and I could do that. And I'm like, OK, slow down. You got to focus like one one thing at a time. Let's get through the first one first. You know, so. Oh, yes, I woke up this morning and I know I was going to be talking with you. I knew I had to get two podcasts ready to go out for tomorrow. I also have a course that I'm supposed to be taking that someone gifted me about raising quail that I need to sit down and look at.
04:44And I was like, I can't do all three of these things at the same time this morning. So one thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. And if I don't get them all done, it's OK. Right. Yeah. And  see, I'm, you know,  I'm easily excited about things that I want to do.  And so that's where I really have to manage my focus, because it's easy for me to start something. Right.  But the hard part is.
05:11Seeing it through to completion, right? So  I have to remind myself before I get off on another tangent like I really need to do this especially when it comes to like housework because I Really don't like it. So I have to go. Okay. Yeah, you need to really do like your laundry or clean the kitchen You know that kind of stuff that we all have a tendency to put off a little bit but em But it's all good once you know those things about yourself and your personality
05:39and you acknowledge it, it's much easier to manage it, you know? Absolutely. And housework never ends. So you just do it as it comes up. um So tell me, tell me about, tell me about um Greenbush Twins and Company. Well,  Greenbush Twins and Company,  the and company really refers to other artists, other collaborators and our  our followers, right?
06:08an idea that none of us can do something completely on our own, that we do need each other and together our differences and our experiences, they  make us  stronger. Because I might have experience in one area, but when I decided to do like the children's book, that's an area that I didn't have any experience in. But I was willing to,  you know, try and take that adventure.
06:37but you need somebody really that has the experience to help to guide you, to show you  the ins and the outs and the dos and the don'ts.  And so that's really what Greenbush Twins is meant for. And it's also meant to help support the small batch makers, the smaller artists, people that  may not get the...
07:02notoriety because  the marketing may not be in their budget or uh they just haven't  got to a platform where they can really, really shine  and uh sustainable living and all that stuff. So it's really a platform  made to be a hub where, say, if you're looking for a hair product or you're looking for a piece of artwork or something that's uh special, that's handcrafted,
07:31You can look through the directory that we have,  the products that we represent, and you can see if you can uh find what you're looking for.  And if you can't, there's a few of the  collaborators and artisians that do  custom work. So you can reach out to them or we can facilitate reaching out.  And uh that's really what it's meant to be. uh Corporate America really doesn't...
07:57care about people. They don't care really what they're putting in their products. And this has really uh been  shown by like, for example, everybody thought it was so great when we got non-stick pans that were coated in Teflon, right? But then they found that Teflon caused cancer and they knew about it, but they didn't take it off of the market. So it's really an aim at  bringing products that don't have those
08:26conservatives, those toxins, those things that you may not see them affect you today, but down the road, it will have an impact on your health um and try and come back to the more  natural holistic living like you saw, you know, even in little house, you know, a lot of things were handmade.  And I think that  as a community, we will be stronger because we'll be able to
08:54do things that  are more sustainable in the long run.  there's,  Los Angeles is known for having a huge um garment district. But now you're seeing that there's garment companies that take in, they recycle clothing so that it stays out of the landfills.  And there's companies that go to like the fashion district and they um buy all the fabric from the previous year from the fashion shows that didn't get used.
09:23And they repurpose it, break it down and sell it out to  people that sew and create  and upcycle.  And so that we're not always just making the planet toxic  by shoving all this stuff in the landfill that takes so long to break down.  Absolutely.  I haven't bought new jeans in over five years.  I have three pairs of jeans that don't have any holes in them at this point. oh
09:53And  I  patch my jeans with the old jeans that do have holes in them that I can't wear anymore. So I know what you're talking about. Right. And it's so stylish now to take those holes and put like  patterned fabric underneath it and let it peek through. then that um what normally would be  considered like  a uh flaw in that actual pair of pants. Now you've actually made it into a fashion statement that, you know,
10:22can go forward on its own, its own design.  So it's really incredible a lot of what the people that are um doing the upcycling and stuff um are doing with  fabric. And there's people taking old lamps and making them into  plant stands and different things. And I'm  always amazed at the creativity of how people repurpose something into something else. I've
10:48I would be like, I never would have even thought of that, but it works so perfectly the way that they've done it, you know? And so  that's the really fun part of the journey  is sharing the creativity with other creative individuals.  Yes,  there is nothing more beautiful than seeing somebody's light shine. Right, yeah, exactly. And  I love, you know, trying to help people  get their light to shine because
11:17A lot of people will say that they're not creative, but creativity isn't something you're born with. It's actually a muscle that you exercise. And I think John Cleese one time uh explained it the best that it's like it's a mode of operating. It's like a perspective that you have. It's not anything that you can't learn or do. It takes practice like any other art form, but it's something that is available to everyone. Thank God.
11:46Otherwise it would be a really boring world.  you said  back a few minutes ago, kind of like on Little House. So that leads me to a question that I feel comfortable asking you about Little House on the Prairie.  Did it inform who you became as an adult  in acting as Carrie in that particular timeframe? Did it color who you became?
12:11Well, I believe that all our experiences kind of color who we are,  even if we don't, you know,  directly recognize that they did, they even subconsciously have  an influence. But yes, it did because  we started so young.  And when we started Little House, we actually had come off of another movie called Sunshine with  Cliff DeYoung and Christina Reigns.
12:39And having a father that was an actor and a mother that was in  a model, a successful model,  it kind of gave us an open door that a lot of other people don't have.  But we started so young that we really didn't know anything different. We thought everybody did this, that this was like the normal way that you grow up. So when I think back on childhood or I talk to people about their childhood, there are
13:08certain things that  are missing, like there's gaps, because we spent so much time on the studio set or there was  birthday parties that we couldn't go to because we were working or my mom used to trade out,  because we went to public school when we weren't uh working.  so  certain years, my sister is in the school photo and certain years it's me because my mom used to take one of us to work and then one of them would stay back for the  annual.
13:37you know, class photo and such. So yeah, directly it shapes a lot of  who you are. And then  when you're a kid, you see how other people treat other people. And that is a guideline for you too. And the messages in the themes of Little House as we got older and we started reading the books, they resonated  also because then you understand, you have a better understanding of the purpose of the whole bigger picture of the show. Yeah.
14:07Absolutely.  I grew up on the East Coast. I grew up in Maine. And I think the fifth or sixth  novel book I read when I was seven years old was the first book in the Little House series. And I ended up reading all of them and had no idea that I would end up living in Minnesota.  And so when I moved here, I was like, oh, man.
14:34I live in the state where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family spent some time. Do you think I've been to any of the places that  commemorate that? No, I have not yet.  I live half an hour from Mankato, Minnesota.  Well, we'll have to change that one time when I'm in,  next time I'm in Minnesota.  yeah, I would love that. That would be so fun.
14:58Walnut Grove is actually one of my favorite places to go and when they have Laura Ingalls Wilder days, um every year that the museum has asked me to go, like, just tell me when to be there. I know it's July, but just tell me when. And uh the people in the town are so hospitable. And then you always hear the story of the people that came. It's like their family vacation and they've saved for it all year.  And it's a really big event.
15:26And sometimes the stories are just so incredible because you'll see that um everything in somebody's life is totally breaking apart and they've got these huge things going on. But the one thing that gives them solace and consistency is watching the Little House on the Prairie  series and reading the books. And so a lot of times they'll tell you these stories and they make you teary-eyed because to have such a
15:53profound effect on somebody's life. It's not anything you ever imagined you were capable of doing, you know,  so  it is  it's just really it's hard to articulate  the profound that effect it has on the cast as well as uh the fans and we're very appreciative of the fans because we know for all those years that we were
16:19uh on NBC and the years after if it wasn't for their loyalty and their patronage, we wouldn't be able to do the things that  we have done like  for the 50th. They took  a uh group of the cast member to Monaco and they did a big film festival in Monaco. And you know, when  I was like, you know, seven or eight and doing the show, that is not, I mean, I didn't get to go.
16:44because I didn't have my passport at the time, but  that wasn't anything I ever thought would be an offer for us to do. So it's just amazing. It's special in the truest sense of the word. Yeah. Yep.  And the other thing that I would tell you is that in reading the Little House on the Prairie books and watching the show, it colored my perspective and
17:10I'm sure that's why I live on a 3.1 acre homestead with chickens and a dog and a garden and barn cats, because the stuff that you read when you're a kid, it sticks. It sticks in the back of your head and it, it paints a picture of the things that you could do when you're a grownup. Right. Right. And who doesn't want to have like a Jack or a bandit or
17:35you know, a raccoon that stays in the barn  or a bunny who doesn't want to go riding on bunny all the time, you know,  and  there's a lot of those connections just not between people on the show, but between, you know, humans and animals and stuff like that. You know, you get kind of like the little lassie theme with with Bandit, you know, where he seems to have this understanding beyond just being a dog, you know.
18:03uh And those things are really, I think, important to kids to inspire them to use their imagination and think beyond the social restrictions and not everything fits in a little, know, perfectly little neat compartmentalized uh box, you know. So it's important for them to know that there are alternatives out there if you don't want to settle for what is right in front of you. Yep. My bandit is named Maggie and she's a girl dog.
18:33Mine is named Rios. Rios? Uh huh, Rios. Nice, okay.  So tell me about your book. I didn't realize that you had written the book because I glanced at the picture and didn't realize it was your book.  Yeah, it's my book and uh it's geared towards children ages two to nine. So it's  more, you know, pictures rather than actual uh written word.
19:00But it's based on  the seven angelic virtues  and there's the seven sisters each one of them embodies  one of the virtues and is named after them and then they're sent to  the earth to help the humans because Psyche who is known  as the mother of the soul in Greek mythology she  was a human and then got turned into a
19:28or God later, which is a whole another story.  she creates the seven sisters and sends them to Earth to help humans learn how to cope and manage.  then she gives them the  lantern of humanity, which is a beacon and will shine a light when somebody is struggling and lead the sisters to that person to help them uh work through a resolution together. So it um
19:59It fosters that even though you may have a personal struggle, you're not alone in your struggle. There's others that can help you.  And it really kind of uh echoes that through teamwork, ah we can do  incredible things and make changes. That's beautiful. Did the book just come out?  It's actually being delivered today, believe it or not. So we were taking pre-orders and then...
20:26We're gonna start uh mailing them out this week.  And the first 150 of the books are limited edition series  that have an authenticity certificate in the back of it.  They're numbered and they have my signature. And then they're in a hard laminated cover for longevity and durability so that uh they won't get  bent or tweaked out of shape.
20:56And then the spines on them are all hand bound  and there's beautiful illustrations in uh them. it's been so interesting because when we made the illustrations, I didn't have any experience doing a book and neither did the illustrator that helped me. And so when you do it, you're supposed to use a little extra room so that some of it can fit into the binding.
21:23And I didn't know that so that we had to go back and rework all the images so that when we bound them, all the um story wasn't in the the seam of the of the book. So I delayed us a little bit, but it's probably going to be better in the in long run, you know.  So, yeah, so so excited. I'm very excited to see them  with the certificate of authenticity and everything today. And then I'm going to do like an unboxing.
21:53video so that everybody can kind of open them with me for the first time.  I'm so glad you said that because I was just going to ask you if you're going to do that because I would love to see your face when you open that box of books.  Yeah, I'm not uh I'm not  technically  good enough yet to do like a, you know, a Facebook live, but I will do the actual, you know, real video footage so that people can can see it and then.
22:22Eventually I'll get there. I'll get to where I can do like the podcast and the live and all that stuff. But it  just has picked up so much momentum  since December that I'm caught a little off guard because I never did all the social media stuff  before. So now I'm having to learn it along the way too.  Just if you get frustrated, take a breath and walk away from it.
22:51do something else like dishes by hand because it will give your brain a chance to catch up. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And there are times like that. And I think that's totally normal for everyone. So I have to remind myself because we always hold ourselves to a super high standard and I know I do. And so a lot of times when I'm trying to do some of the reels, I might have scripted out the keynotes of the dialogue.
23:21that I want to use or the key points that I want to hit. But I try and keep it a little bit fluid because it's easier for me because as soon as I lock it down and it has to be certain words, I get super tongue-tied. And the more I get tongue-tied, the more frustrated I get. And there are times where I have to do exactly that and go, okay, just take a break for a minute. It's not such a big deal. Like we've got all day to do this, you know.
23:50And you step away for a second and come back because uh you  start thinking like, you know, why can't I do this? Why isn't this easy? And one of things I had to adjust to is like when you  use like your uh cell phone to do a video, you're actually seeing yourself in the video as you're talking. And so that can itself can be a distraction. And then you start getting self-conscious and you're like,  well,
24:20Do I really move my hands that much? Do I really make that face? And then all of a sudden you're off track from what you're trying to do and you're like, okay, okay, like just take a minute. absolutely. People think that doing social media, know, doing videos is easy. It's not. I refuse to do them because it does the same thing to me. I get distracted by the phone and I cannot think. And it's been something I've really had to
24:50adjust to. never realized like I've known people that did like, you know, TikTok videos, and they call them influencers and that kind of stuff. And I was like, Oh, yeah, great. But I really never realized how labor intensive it is, how detailed it is. Like when you get into the marketing of it, how you can break it down into different demographics and stuff. And it's just way more
25:18uh technical  than I ever gave it credit for. So  to all the people that do social media and run their own sites and their own pages,  you have kudos from me because it's way more work than anybody ever gives, probably gives you credit for, you know? It is. And it's funny because I  don't, I do two podcasts. It's easy because I don't go on video ever.
25:46So I don't get distracted. get to focus on the person I'm talking to.  And it works great. And I keep thinking I really should do video. I don't want to. Probably never will. We'll see what happens.  So I have one more question about the Green Bush Twins and Company project that you're in the middle of, the beginning of. um Is it just California artisans or is it  nationwide?
26:14No, it's nationwide and eventually I'd like to be, you know, worldwide. um Really, we're all just uh human beings. It doesn't matter if we live uh in Europe or if we live in  the United States or if we live in South America.  We're all just humans trying to  get along and  do our thing. And so  it started here in California because I am here, but it's not
26:43uh restricted to anyone. I really want it to be an open format where everyone is welcome,  every voice matters, when we get to the part where we can share stories and uh experiences, then we can get there too. uh And it's  really  making those human connections. uh We  as a society have
27:08lost some of our human connection, right? Because everything's um online now. And although you can connect with people  visually and auditorially, m you lose that touch and that feel. So eventually we'll go out and I'll do um site, like we can call them site visits, but um public appearances in different places and.
27:34help to bring people into that area. And if anybody ever wants to be involved in the site beyond just being in like a joiner of the community, like if you make things and you think you've got something that you want to  propose to the site, by all means contact me, you know, because that's really what it's meant for. Like  it's to shine a light on those individuals that may be
28:02uh can't reach out to a lot of people but have stuff that they believe in or they want to promote or  they want to show you that there's an alternative uh product that  you don't have to necessarily use the stuff that  Big Pharma or corporate America tells you  is what is proper to be used.  love that you're doing this, Sydney. Thank you for doing it.
28:32And I love the concept of your book and I will tell you why. The reason why is because the last probably five or six years have been scary and chaotic and  weird and there is still light in the world. And I think that you are  like one of the brightest lights shining in it right now. Oh, thank you so much. That's sweet. But  I agree with you. I've seen that too.  When  I was a
29:00a kid, you know, we were always talking about the golden rule. And sometimes you ask kids today and you ask them, do you know what the golden rule is? And they'll say, oh, yeah, that's Bitcoin. And they don't they don't have those little sayings and phrases that we had um growing up. And so it's really to to try and show the younger generation that  even if something looks scary or looks different,
29:27It's not something to be feared. doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing. You know, it could be a great thing, but you won't know until you, you know, try. um so, yeah, it's really something that  has come around because of my time on Little House, but it's kind of the same um lessons and morals, but in a fresh uh format, you know.
29:56There, for some reason I lost you. Oh, you can hear me now? I said, I here's an older, an old saying for you too. Don't hide your light under a bushel. That's right. That's right. That's a good one. I like that one. Yeah, I'm 56. My mom is 79 and my mom had all kinds. She's still with us by the way. But when I was a kid growing up, she had all kinds of sayings like that. And I remember all of them.
30:23And I will say them around my grown kids. And they're like, that's so old fashioned.  It's it's funny because you and I are the same  age. I'll be I'll be 56 in May.  But yeah, you you you say that to people and then you go, oh, my God, I sound like my mother. Where did that come from?  Well, I love my mom, so I'm OK with sounding like my mom. And  my dad had sayings, too. He's still with us as well. He's 82.
30:51I insulted him the other day because I said he was 83 and he was like, I am not. I was like, well, I just gave you back a year of your life then. but, but if you're lucky enough to have parents that share things like don't hide your light under a bushel and do onto others, it's, it's a great thing. Oh yeah. I mean, I, a lot of those little things are
31:18Because the way Seven Sisters was set up was to be a series of seven different books. so  obviously the first one is easiest because it deals with envy and greed, which are really common themes. then that's some of the later stories are going to be,  know, don't  be afraid to be you. Don't be afraid to be different.  know, not everybody has to be the same thing. And  we're actually better when  we're different, you know.
31:47So if you come up with any other good things, send them to me. Variety is the spice of life, my dear. That's one for you. Yeah, that's a good one too. All right. Sydney, this was a joy. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Where can people find you? Well, you can always contact me through the website, is greenbishtwins.com.
32:12or you can email me at info, I N F O at greenbushtwins.com. And both of those come straight to me. Okay. Fantastic. And your green bush twins and company on Facebook as well. Right.  And Facebook, Instagram, and in LinkedIn, think we have LinkedIn too. All right. Fabulous.  Um, as always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com and
32:38Sidney, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend. Oh, you too. And thank you for reaching out to me.  Thank you for having the time. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks.
 

Small Scale Rebellion

Today I'm talking with Emily and Nathan at Small Scale Rebellion. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:26A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Nathan and Emily at Small Scale Rebellion in Canada, and  Emily told me, where in Canada?  Where in Canada are you, Emily?  We're in the West Kootenays of BC. Okay, thank you.  Welcome, you guys. Good afternoon. How are you?
00:56We're good. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I always start every podcast with how's the weather? How's the weather where you are? That's a little gloomy. Yeah, we're over winter. It's just dragging on. But the words are coming back and you can kind of tell that spring is just around the corner. So it's like the final stretch. Yeah, I stepped out on my porch about two hours ago, maybe three hours ago now.
01:25and I could hear birds singing and I was like,  oh, the blackbirds are back. have a, um there's a word. Can't think of it.  We're in a flight pattern for these blackbirds.  They come back every spring. Migration pattern. There we go.  And this is the earliest they've come through in the five years that we've been here. So I think we're looking at an early spring.  Yeah, for sure. It was like a really mild winter,  all things considered here.
01:55So we are looking forward to hopefully an early spring, but also a moderate fire season because normally if the snowpack isn't very good in the winter here, we have like horrible fires.  So fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I'll cross everything I have for you because wildfires are a terrible thing.  And that does not mean that burns are a terrible thing.
02:22Burns are important for agriculture and for growing things, but they need to be  not taking down structures that people live in or killing people. So that's my caveat there.  All right. So I was very excited to stumble across you guys on Instagram. Tell me about yourselves and what you do at Small Scale Rebellion. So  we're farmers first and foremost. um Our farm is called Confluence Farms.
02:49And we started Small Scale Rebellion as a way to teach other farmers how to have profitable farm hubs. a farm hub is composed of four components. It's online ordering, a, help me out here. Home delivery, a collaborative.
03:13a full diet offering. we do local food aggregation. So we've become like a one-stop shop for all things local.  And then we also do free choice  ordering exclusively.  And so people can order what they want, when they want. And then we even have like a credit-based CSA. So people buy credits to our store. And then that way we get money upfront, very similar to  a CSA, except you don't have to commit to like a weekly CSA box for 20 weeks. You can just pay us. uh
03:43for credits and then use them whenever you like. And what we discovered is that  when you make eating local easier, a lot more people will start doing it. Yes, because humans love convenience.  And instead of fighting that, I think it's important to,  you know, just embrace it  because if you don't, it's really hard to make it as a farmer. Oh.
04:11Absolutely. And what you're doing is amazing. So  what made you decide to do this?
04:19Um,  well, it kind of happened by accident.  We actually started, um, we had this  kind of goal of just growing all of our own food for a year.  And  when you start growing food, you always end up having too much food. And so you end up giving it away to friends and neighbors.  And we were doing that for a few years and then COVID happened  and  we didn't really have, uh,
04:48That kind of affected our income.  And we were getting ready to grow like a half acre worth of food, which  thinking back now for two people is like an insane amount of food. Like it shouldn't have been growing that much, but we, didn't know what we were doing. We're just like, Oh, let's just grow a little bit of everything. And then COVID happened. And then we were kind of locked inside and thinking of ways to make money and we were already growing food. So we're like, Oh, why don't we just start selling the food that we grow? And so we decided to grow even more food. And then.
05:18because of lockdowns, like, well, what if we do like online ordering and home delivery? And so we started doing that and then that started taking off.  And then we had an opportunity to move to the Kootenays where we are now and start a farm on  an elderly couple's  homestead who were looking for farmers to come in and kind of take over the farm and to help them with the property. So, and moving here was like our ultimate dream. Like our ultimate dream was to start a farm in the Kootenays.
05:45And then we just kind of stumbled our way into it. And then, yeah, it's just been kind of growing ever since. we've been refining the model and making it better. And now it's at the point where it can support the two of us full time, full year round with just a half acre and the two of us. no, employees or volunteers. Wow. That's, that's amazing. Okay. I have two questions. First one is what, what are the Kootenays? Is it mountains?
06:13Very mountainous. Yeah, it's like rural, very rural BC.  We're in the boreal forest. So it's like green mountains in every direction, lots of rivers, huge  freshwater lakes. It's a really, really beautiful and popular area. There's a lot of actually Americans that live here too. It's like an international kind of hub because there's lots of  snowboarding and things like that here too. So there's like Australians and New Zealanders and Americans.
06:42people from all over the place kind of in this one little unique area.  Okay, thank you. Cause I didn't know what they were and that helps.  Um, and then  if you are growing more than a half an acre of food, you must have equipment. You must at least have like a bobcat tractor or something.  No. we're doing a half acre like exactly.  And it's all by hand.
07:10That's one of the really like when we started our farm, we had no money like  negative amounts of money  and  we've just been very scrappy  at um Making it work  and  We don't have like a walk-behind tractor. We don't have anything with an engine except for our Delivery vehicle, so it's all no till um regenerative  ag
07:38And we have permanent beds  and  you know, we just make it work.  Um, and you know, we would have, if we had money in the pat, in like the first couple of years, we definitely would have bought a lot more tools,  but not having the money  made us half to get creative.  so we like borrowed tools, we got tool donations.  Um, we traded neighbors for different services, like tilling.
08:06And we just kept everything super duper lean  because we don't own our land  and we've had to move our farm three times,  four times  in the past five years.  we just, you know, having a bunch of equipment wasn't  an option.  And it actually turned out to be good because like, what we realized is that you don't actually need to spend a whole lot of money to  farm.
08:36You just need like really good systems. And then if you do like things like local food aggregation, you can get your sales up by collaborating rather than trying to grow everything yourself. oh So it was a very interesting experiment that actually turned out to be a blessing because, um you know, we've been able to stay small and manageable and profitable with just a very, very simple setup. And very little overhead. And that's also because, you know, you can't really invest.
09:05in leased land very much. So working within the constraints that we have has been kind of like the theme. Okay. So what do you guys grow? So we focus on growing all of our summer stuff, like everything that's perishable. So we grow kind of like most of the normal things you would see at a farmer's market, know, carrots, beets.
09:35all the salad greens, the lettuce, cherry tomatoes,  the hits, cucumbers. We also grow flowers,  which we just started a couple of years ago  and  is something that I really love doing. ah So what we don't grow  is all of the storage crops.  And we actually have a very long winter here. So we actually  buy in enough storage vegetables to last us like seven months of sales. So we buy in.
10:04potatoes, storage carrots, onions, garlic, rutavega. All the root vegetables. All the root vegetables  and those in general come from farms with tractors. So we're leveraging the equipment that other farms have instead of investing in our own.  That's  smart. That's a really great business plan. uh
10:34Okay. So the other thing I wanted to touch on, as you mentioned, COVID.  I can't believe how many times COVID comes up on this podcast. I swear it should be a drinking game.  If you hear a COVID, take a shot, you know,  and don't do that. I'm joking, but that's how it feels.  And I feel like COVID  really kickstarted what was already a movement into a runaway train.  Yeah.
11:04One concerning  thing that a pattern that we see and one of the reasons we started Small Scale Rebellion is that there was a lot of farms that started during COVID  and a lot of those farms end up failing, um which is not good for the local food movement  and  we don't want that to happen. So that's why we're sharing everything that we've learned with farmers so that
11:34you know, we can make local eating mainstream and we can make sure that farmers are thriving instead of just surviving or going out of business.  Yep,  absolutely. And I'm going to say it again,  if you, for the listener, if you don't know your local growers and your local producers,  you should start getting to know them because the supply chain issues that happened during COVID, that's not necessarily a one-time thing.
12:03It could happen again and again and again. Yeah. I mean, it's inevitable.  It has happened for us before too. It's not just COVID. It's like if there's a natural disaster, like a fire is like the trucks.  But there was another time where trucks, uh, the food trucks couldn't get to where we're at. And some of the shelves went bare again and people were freaking out and they were all,  you know, excited to eat local again and reaching out to local farms. then once,  once the food's back on the shelves, they just.
12:32people forget and they go back to their normal routine and it's just like this cycle of, you know, fear and then back to normal.  Yeah. And it's so frustrating because I feel like the stuff you get local tastes so much better than what you get at the grocery store.  100%. And I mean, in our area, the price, like, I'm not even, I need to go and do like a more thorough price comparison, but like the prices really aren't
13:01very different.  And that's probably because we're in a very isolated area  and  it costs a lot to get things to us. And so local things are, you know, naturally a little bit cheaper. But I don't think that the price difference is that big or as big as people think it is in their minds. And then when you add in the fact that
13:30you know, it's more nutritious  and it's strengthening the local economy, which has like a huge beneficial ripple effect. I think that  local food is the way to go.  Yeah. think it's, um, it's too inconvenient for most people's lives. And so people would eat  local more if it was more convenient. And then that's kind of what we discovered and that's  kind of what we feel. And that's kind of what we're trying to convince other farmers.
14:00to do because there's this mentality like, the customer needs to go out of their way to support local. Like, why don't they care enough to go out of their way? But what we're saying is like, they do care. They just need to be easier. And if it's easier, they'll do more of it. Mm-hmm.  Yeah. And what I would say the average American, but I think the average human  doesn't realize is that the longer the produce has to travel and has to sit and then is stocked at the grocery store.
14:29the nutrient denseness of it drops by grand percentages. Yeah. And then you're getting even less value for your money.  Right. Yep. So  again, for the listener, if you want nutrient dense,  really fresh,  good food, find out who your local growers and producers are because you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. Yeah. And I will, I will.
14:58I will die on that hill, damn it. Go ahead, Emily, you were going to say. Support them all year round too. Not just during the peak season, like farmers need income year round. Like one of the big things that we have an issue with is like, we have lots of variety of winter crops, but people just lose interest like dramatically during the winter and then they come back in the summer. And like, that's just not a sustainable way to.
15:28you know, keep farms alive. No, yeah. And it's, it's like a cultural thing. I think, you know, people are used to eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers all year and they just don't really know how to cook with winter vegetables or they don't care to,  you know, so it's definitely like, we've done a lot of education with our farm around eating seasonally, particularly in the winter. And it's pretty hard to move the needle. Um, but it's something that we're, you know, committed to doing.
15:59Yes, and I call winter soup season. Yeah. Would you believe that I have not made a single soup this winter because we've been eating a lot of hamburger based meals. I haven't made a single soup this winter and winter is almost over. That is like a sin in my house. I need to make some soup. Damn it. Yeah. Before it's too late. Yeah. And the other thing is I refuse.
16:28to eat tomatoes from the store in the wintertime because we grow tomatoes here in the summer.  our garden fresh tomatoes are amazing.  And ever since we started doing it, tomatoes from the grocery store tastes like cardboard to me.  The reason I say this is I am really craving bruschetta. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah, really craving it. And I have been debating. uh
16:55picking up some vine-ripened tomatoes at the store.  Because really what I want it for is that kick you in the face balsamic vinegar and olive oil flavor.  And I suppose that I can spend $15 on crappy tomatoes to get the flavor hit that I want. But I was thinking that maybe I should just pick up some organic  zucchinis, know, the small ones. Cut.
17:22those up into small pieces and do that instead of tomatoes because the tomatoes here in Minnesota in the winter time  are not great.  No, I mean, it really like  when you can't have something all the time, it makes it way more special when you can have it.  Yep. Yeah.  Yep. That's why we all  love Thanksgiving and Christmas.
17:49Because there are things associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas that we eat that we don't eat any other time of the year. Mm-hmm. Yeah So I love summertime I We didn't have we didn't have any cucumbers last year because it was so wet and then it was so hot and then it was so wet and then it was so hot that they got blight  and they all died  So there was not  one single cucumber out of our garden last year
18:18Usually we have great success with cucumbers and I eat a cucumber and tomato every day the minute they start coming in. Yeah. That's Christmas for me.  Yeah.  So I love the name that you chose, Small Scale Rebellion,  because I'm always joking that if you can grow something on your property that feeds you,  you're a rebel.  Yeah.
18:47And it's true because I don't know what the government is like in Canada, but the government in the United States probably isn't thrilled that we're not spending our hard-earned money on stuff at the grocery store.  We're spending it on seeds so we can have food out of our garden. Yeah. It's,  you know, it's definitely an act of rebellion.  Yup. Be a rebel. Grow something you can eat.
19:17I need to get t-shirts made.  a rebel. Grow your own food.
19:23You guys should do that. Do you have t-shirts? Haven't got around to it yet. We haven't even made t-shirts for our personal farm business confluence and it's been like five years. Well, it costs money to get t-shirts printed. So, this food hub thing, is it, are you going to have a website and set it up so that people can find where they can get locally grown food or what's the plan?
19:51No, the plan is to teach farmers to become  farm hubs on their own. Okay.  And so it's kind of like a franchise model where we teach farmers the business model and then they use their own farm name and their own branding to promote it. Okay.  But it's like a full business model. we build them a website, we teach them how to work with other farms, we teach them marketing, which is lacking uh greatly in the farming community.
20:20And we just teach them how to manage their money and how to become profitable so that  they can become  this convenient hub for  customers and then also a reliable sales channel for the farmers that they work with in their community. Cause a lot of farmers, like wholesale accounts are kind of dwindling year by year as supermarkets get bigger.  so farmers need wholesale accounts  and  customers need more convenience. So we're trying to kind of promote that whole model.
20:50But it's all based off of our own  farm hub, which we do have a website for and you know, all of our sales come in through the website. So it's, it's all online ordering with free home delivery  and all of the systems that we teach we've perfected over the last five years  in our own business. What's your delivery radius?  It's like an  hour.
21:19And a half at most.  So we live in a weird area. It's a very rural  and everywhere is like  minimum 30 minute drive away to go anywhere or do anything. So it's, go to the two  towns that are near us. So one of them is a 40 minute drive and it's a town of like 10,000 people,  maybe a little more. And then the other one is a  20 minute drive and it's like 8,000 people. And then there's like,
21:49you know, some people in between there. So we basically drive to the town and then we stay within the city limits and then come back home.  OK, so it's not it's not like you're driving eight hours  on way. That would be. Yeah, we've actually been shrinking our delivery zone over the years because,  you know, there's enough people to support us. So at this point, we just need to be more efficient. um And it sucks to kind of like turn people away. But, um you know, your deliveries have to be quick.
22:17Otherwise you'll spend your whole day driving around. Yeah, so this is a no to lot of people who just like live in the country. You know what I mean? Like we drive straight to town. We stay inside town pretty much. If somebody wanted to get produce from you and they were willing to drive further than that, could they come to your place and pick up produce?
22:40No, we don't do any pickups. It's only home delivery. also don't have any meetup spots  or any pickups in town. And that's for two reasons.  One, to streamline our process because it just adds a lot of complexity, believe it or not. Communicating with people, arranging a time, making sure that they remember, et cetera, et cetera. Like  it's just not worth it.
23:07And then also they can't come to the farm because we lease land and our land holder doesn't want people showing up at his house.  That makes sense. I completely forgot that was leased. I know you told me, but I wasn't thinking about that.  Yeah. again, constraints.  Yeah. We stopped doing our CSA because  it  was fine, but we only had a few people who signed up every year.
23:35And sometimes they would forget and they would have to make a different time to come get stuff and My husband really enjoys going to the farmers market. Nice. Yeah farmers market is on Saturday morning from 8 until noon  That was when we used to have people come pick up the CSA stuff He can make more money on a weekly basis at the farmers market than we ever made through the CSA So we had to make a choice. Yep
24:03Yeah, it's kind of tough like cutting things out. mean, what do you guys, what are you guys doing now? um Just the farmer's market and we have a farm stand on our property. Okay, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And are you, so are you growing vegetables?  Yes. Yes, we are. And  my husband is the gardener. I always give him all the credit because I am not the one out there in the dirt.  I used to be.  I don't love it as much as he does. So that's his Zen.
24:29That's what he wants to do and I'm like go play in the dirt. Have fun.  But he grows tomatoes, grows cucumbers, he grows summer squash, he grows winter squash.  He has gotten into growing cabbages. He grew the most beautiful cabbages last spring. Nice. And people loved them. Like he did 50 I think  and when they were done people would be asking him if he had any cabbages.
24:57And he would say, no, I only planted 50. They're gone. And people, people would be crestfallen on their faces. There were no more cabbages. Yeah.  That's the power of food when it tastes really good. Yeah, it was really sweet. I don't know what variety it was, but it was  really good.  Um, I also found a short season, personal size watermelon variety. Nice.
25:26that we're gonna try this year.  It's a 60 day watermelon. What's it called? I don't know. I would have to look it up.  And I know exactly where the seed packet is downstairs. We haven't even opened the envelope that they came in yet. So when I open it, I will find out and I will message the variety to you. Cool. Sounds good. I'm sure you guys would love a 60 day watermelon. Oh yeah. I mean, we haven't grown watermelons um since we first started just because of space.
25:55We're at the point where a half an acre is not really enough space, but we don't have other, we don't have anywhere to expand into. our climate is our growing season so short. Like you can, you can barely even grow a buttermoth here cause it won't ripen in time. I'm so sorry. It pretty much shows like the worst place to start a farm. Well, Canada has a short growing season.
26:25over much of the country,  Yeah. And it's also very snowy here. Yeah. mean, I'm in Minnesota. I'm right over the border from you. I mean, I'm not. I'm like eight, 10 hours from the border. But  we have  a shorter growing season and we don't plant anything  usually until Mother's Day  because by Mother's Day, we're pretty sure the last frost has happened. Yeah.
26:56Yeah, we had one year where we had a frost on June 15th and it killed all of our tomatoes. They frosted back down to the ground, but then they bounced back and they were fine. And we actually had tomatoes only like one or two weeks later than normal. It  was quite the experience. Huh, I didn't know they'd bounce back. They had established enough where
27:23They did. They sprouted from the base of the plant. They were very, very, um,  branched that year, but they were fine.  Huh?  I did not know that. I will have to let my husband know we may have to do an experiment. Yeah, just give them a few weeks to see what happens. if they're, if they got roots, you know, they'll bounce back. So if you think about how many like runners they, they, they give out, right? Yeah. They'll just do that from the base. Okay.
27:53Well, we have a hard-sided greenhouse that we're going to be starting seeds in here. I think he said this weekend. I'm not sure. It might be next weekend. But we've never started seeds in there before. We've had it up for two seasons now. A lot of people are writing. I asked him the other day, said, are you going to bring in the seed trays and do them on the kitchen table? And he said, no, we're starting them in the greenhouse this year. Nice.
28:20And I said, are you sure you want to do that?  And he said, yes, I do. He said, because I've been keeping track of how much. OK, little tiny backstory. Most people who listen to the podcast have heard this before, but you guys probably have not. um We have IBC totes that we painted black filled with water  in the greenhouse.  as the sunlight comes in the greenhouse, heats up the water and it disperses the heat at night when it cools off outside.
28:49And so usually by mid-March, it's not gonna get below, it's not even gonna get near 32 degrees Fahrenheit in there overnight. It's gonna stay at like 50, 55. And for seedlings, that's perfect. So this is the first year we're starting the seeds in the greenhouse. And I am nervous. I am very nervous that this is not gonna work and he's gonna be really, really disappointed.
29:17As I keep saying to everybody, keep your fingers crossed that this works. For sure.  Well, know,  the ceilings are, they're very cold hardy when they're started cold. Like we don't have a nursery.  We've never used a nursery.  And I start my seeds and I put them outside way before you're supposed to with some cover, but they, you know, seem to do fine. As long as you're  very, um,
29:45careful about starting them cold and not like giving them a huge shock.  Plants  hate, hate shock from temperature changes. Yeah. They do not enjoy it and they may survive it, but I'm, I'm just praying and I'm not a praying girl, but I am praying that this, this goes well because if it does, it means that  two springs from now we can really do a whole lot more.
30:15Yes. Because the greenhouse is over 15 feet by 25 feet.  So it's a good size greenhouse. Yeah, nice. Yep. Very, very excited about all the things that it opens up for us. anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there. Where can people find you?  You can find us on Instagram.
30:42Small scale rebellion or also our farm account is called Confluence Farms Kootenays. Okay.  Awesome. I hope that people go and look at your stuff because I think what you're doing is amazing. Thanks, Mary. We appreciate that. All the best, you guys. Thank you. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Nathan and Emily, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks. You too.
 

Homestead Education

Today I'm talking with Kody at Homestead Education. You can also follow on Facebook.
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Mary talks with Cody Hanner from The Homestead Education in Idaho about homeschooling through agriculture, raising heritage pigs, and building a life centered around food, family, and practical skills. Cody shares how a life changing health diagnosis in her family led them to move to Idaho, embrace homesteading, and rethink how children learn.
They discuss how agriculture can teach real world math, science, history, and problem solving while helping kids understand where their food comes from. Cody also explains how she turned her family’s farm learning experiences into a widely used homeschool agriculture curriculum now used in multiple countries.
The conversation explores the importance of applied learning, the lost knowledge around food production, and how rebuilding those skills can strengthen families and communities. They also dive into homestead topics like raising quail, food preservation traditions, and why character and rural etiquette matter when building strong communities.
Topics Covered
How a health crisis led Cody’s family to homesteading
Teaching math, science, and history through farm life
Creating an agriculture based homeschool curriculum
Why applied learning helps kids retain knowledge
The connection between food, history, and holidays
Raising heritage pigs and supporting local 4 H programs
Why more people are returning to homesteading skills
Raising quail for eggs, meat, and income
Teaching character, responsibility, and rural traditions
Resources Mentioned
The Homestead Education curriculum and resources
Homestead business and food safety coaching
Holiday based agriculture lessons for homeschoolers
Where to Find Cody
Website: TheHomesteadEducation.comPodcast: The Homestead Education PodcastSocial: The Homestead Education on Facebook and Instagram

Salt & Fern Bakehaus

Today I'm talking with Cally at Salt & Fern Bakehaus. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm.
00:26A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Sealspoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Cally at Salt and Fern Bakehouse in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good morning, Cally. How are you? Good morning. I am really happy to be here.
00:50I'm glad to have you and I'm really glad that I didn't screw up the introduction because I have been stumbling over my words the last few episodes and I'm like,  get it together, Mary. You know how to do this. That's moving for a cup of coffee. Yeah, I'm telling you. It's crazy. um Normally, I would say, how's the weather? But since you're about half an hour for me, I'm guessing the sun has just broken through the rain clouds from this morning.
01:15It's still pretty cloudy here, unfortunately, but I'm sure the sun will be on its way. know we've got some 50 and 60 degree days coming up. I cannot wait. I am so excited. I am so ready for this winter to be over. Me too. Get me in the garden. Yep. Right there with you. My husband is itching. I said to him, I said, are you going to get seeds planted in the seed trays on the kitchen table this weekend? And he said, there will be no seedlings in the house this year. What?
01:44And I said, okay, he said, I am starting everything in the greenhouse. Oh my gosh. Do have an exterior greenhouse or like those rollable ones? We have like a, I think it's 25. I don't, I don't know the exact dimensions. It is probably 15 by 30 feet. It is a, it's not one of the hoop houses. It's a hard sided greenhouse. What a dream.
02:12Yes, I applied for a grant a couple of years ago and got the grant and the grant was to go for a greenhouse. So we are very... that through U of M Extension? It was through the market and entry fund. Okay. I'll have to take a peek at that someday. Yeah, I can send you the link to the website if you would like it. Please. That sounds fantastic. Yep. it's been up. The greenhouse has been up for two seasons now, but...
02:39He's been leery about starting seeds in there because we had to figure out a way to  use the sunlight without using the solar generator panels. And so we put water in IBC totes and we painted the IBC totes black.  so starting about now when the sun is out and it's pouring into the greenhouse, it heats up the water and then the water disperses the heat at night. That's brilliant.
03:09So this is the first year we're brave and we're going to try starting the seeds, you know, in the greenhouse. That's so exciting. What a new journey. We're very lit up about this around here and I'm just keeping everything I have crossed that it works because we sell at the farmer's market in the summer and if those babies die, we have to start again. So keep everything you have crossed for me that this works.
03:36Absolutely, I will. Are you selling at Mankato or like up in Liss- because you're in Lissour, right? Yeah. Yeah, we sell at the Lissour Farmers Market. I'll have to come give that a peek sometime. Is that usually Saturdays? Yeah, Saturday morning from 8 until noon.
03:52That sounds so fun. Yep. And it's a very  busy, very robust, very friendly group of people who've been there. Oh,  yeah. I'm definitely going to have to come give that a peek. Yeah. It's really fun.  it's,  I don't want to say it's really diverse, but there are definitely  some different things. People sell crafts there too.  Ooh.  Like everything from lotions to artwork? um
04:20I don't know about artwork, but there's a guy that takes traidel sewing machines and makes them into tractors, makes them look like tractors. There's a guy who does jewelry, like  pendants and stuff.  And there's a lady who is in her eighties who sells eggs every summer. And there's like three or four people selling baked goods. And that wasn't the case a couple summers ago,  but this past summer.
04:49there were like four or five people selling baked goods there.  I wonder if that's just a sign of the economic times that people are starting to get out there and  utilize their skills in a financially helpful way or if that's just like they just decided to pick it up at that time. I have no idea but  my husband ends up bringing home treats because everybody's sharing  and there's a lady who makes lemon cookies that are to die for. oh
05:17That sounds really delicious.  when he comes home with lemon cookies, he is he is like all stars in my book.  I bet they don't last too long on the counter, huh? No. And he usually brings back like they're small. They're maybe the size of a half dollar or so. Perfect. So if you bite that, if he brings home six, they're mine and they're gone in about 10 minutes.  What a blessing.  I love it. I love lemon.  All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.
05:46Well,  I  obviously, you know that I have my little bakery, my salt and fern bakehouse um started out doing sourdough a couple years back. I think I believe I started during the pandemic um and then started selling about a year and a half ago now. um It was just something a little therapeutic and I like keeping things alive. this sourdough starter was uh the next logical step, I guess. um
06:16And then people liked it and I was like, well, maybe  I can be a neighborhood baker, even if I'm not gonna have an actual shop open. I can at least provide Mankato with a few extra loaves. uh And uh I like knowing where a lot of my food comes from. Local food is really important to me. My degree back in the day was with food systems, consumers and markets. So  I am under the impression that honestly,  buying local.
06:45does more for the environment than even  specifically buying organic  can help because of the gas mileage that it takes. um It seems like buying local saves a lot of energy costs as well as em you tend to hold people responsible more when you actually know  where you're getting your product from.  for sure.  And every dollar you spend locally stays local for the most part.
07:15Exactly, exactly. So back in the local economy and ah that can only help my neighbors further. Yep,  absolutely. uh We actually don't have any eggs in our farm stand this morning because somebody bought the last six dozen last night. Whoa. And I feel bad that there's no eggs in the farm stand today.  How many chickens you guys have? 18. Nice, a good number, a solid chicken math number. Yes, it's not crazy. It's not too few. It's not too many. That's so smart.
07:45But yes, I am. I swear I say get to know your local farmer and producer on every episode of this that I do because I am such a proponent for it because it is crazy to me that  we can buy eggs from California at our local grocery stores. Yeah, which is wild because Minnesota used to have some of the most  chicken farmers  to my understanding in the nation.  I don't know if that's true to this day, but it used to be.
08:15Yeah, I don't know. And again, I'm going to repeat myself as I do. It is coming up on bird flu season, season for this. And I want, I want my neighbors to be able to have eggs. So if eggs go up in price again at the stores because of egg, because of bird flu, I want my neighbors to know that they have another source where they can pay $5 a dozen, not 10 or $12 a dozen. So right. True.
08:43I'm lucky enough to have both my sister-in-law and my mom-in-law both raise chickens and then I have another friend in Mapleton who also raises chickens so they're usually pretty willing to trade bread for eggs when I'm in need which is, you know, even cheaper than a  cash payment in my life. Oh, absolutely.  Speaking of sourdough, I just got my new sourdough starter started on Tuesday. Do you have a name for them yet? I don't name them. Fair enough.
09:12I figure that they're probably gonna die so I don't name them. Once I get one that actually lives for longer than a month and a half, I'll start naming it. Did you start it yourself or is this do you receive them from other people and then keep them alive? I received the first one last year from a friend  and I was moving the jar over to my island to feed it and I dropped the jar and it shattered. No,  RIP.  Yeah, so that one went away real quick.
09:41And then I decided to start my own and they were doing, did two and they were doing really well. And then they got the dreaded pink mold. No, no. And you can't come back from that. Nope. Those went in the trash too. And I was very disappointed because they were at that point where you put the spoon in and you dragged the spoon through it and it crackles because of all the bubbles.  That's so satisfying.  I was so mad.  So I started this one last Tuesday  and yesterday I pulled half of it out and added the
10:09the flour in the water and stirred it up and I looked at it this morning and it's got bubbles all around the glass. I was like, okay, so another three, four, five days and maybe I can make a loaf. Maybe. I will be crossing my fingers and toes for you. That is the most exciting part. It is. And I've made two loaves so far. And I know this episode is not supposed to be about me, but I've made two loaves. The first one.
10:38came out okay. was slightly undercooked and it was almost like a bagel texture. And it was yummy. I didn't even care that it wasn't not all the way cooked because I love bagels. Like the flavor, you can't beat the flavor of sourdough. It just doesn't compare to anything that you can find on grocery store shelves that's made to last. I know sourdough will disappear usually before it can mold luckily, otherwise it molds within a week.
11:07And then my grocery store loaves will sit there for two months and still look like they did before we even, look like they did when we got them in the first place. Which is really scary. The second loaf I did, it was less undercooked, less baggily. Nice. like I was making progress and then I got the pink mold and had to stop. So did you know you can freeze some of your starter as well? I'm going to do that this time. Good choice.
11:36Good choice, because then you can always bring it back.  way if anything happens to the one that's going, I will have a backup because  I really like the fact that I'm trying to do this because I don't like store-bought sourdough because it's so sourdough. Sure. Well, do you know why that is? No. Okay, so grocery stores, don't have enough time to do the three-day process that it usually takes to make a true loaf of sourdough. So they often are a yeasted dough.
12:06that adds like essence of sourdough into it to make it sour, but it doesn't have the fermentation process that a true sourdough has. Oh, yeah, it's not my favorite thing. Yeah, so I learned that in the process of screwing up the first attempt, that it doesn't have to be super sour to still have the benefits of sourdough. Yeah, it's still, the yeast is still eating all of the sugars out of it.
12:33not out of it, out of it, but like making it way more digestible. Yes. And I don't love the sour sour dough. So when I learned that I could make bread that I actually like to taste of that I would get the benefits from, I was very excited. Life changing, truly. Your sandwiches will never be the same.  No. And there's something about the chew of a sour dough bread that I love. It's dense. It can actually hold up to like a BLT, a juicy garden tomato won't just fall right through it.
13:04So  I have all kinds of great things to say about sourdough. I love sourdough now that I know about it. And now I know it doesn't have to taste like vinegar.  Helpful. So made me very happy to discover this. And if my friend hadn't given me the starter a year ago or whatever it was,  I wouldn't be doing it now. Well, I'm glad you're here with us. Yeah, I've been assimilated.  It's always wonderful when your friends invite you into their adventure. Truly.
13:31That's how we get to be curious and grow together and then maybe have a little guidance where we need it when we're just starting out. So tell me about your cottage kitchen because I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like you have some pretty hefty equipment. So  how are you doing this? um Well,  I  just got a new simply bread oven earlier this year and it just got hooked up as of basically yesterday.
13:58um So that's my heftiest piece of equipment because I've otherwise just been baking two loaves at a time in my Dutch ovens  and that was you know, if you're baking from 5 a.m. Until 10 11 p.m. Before a market it's a little  more exhausting So my capacity to be able to do 12 loaves at once now is going to be absolutely life-changing
14:21Oh, yes. Oh, I screamed.  was just completely overjoyed and then had my husband and four of his buddies come help carry it inside because that was not a one-man job. uh And then I also have uh a new mixer that allows me to do 10 loaves uh at a time that was a lot more helpful than trying to mix all of my dough by hand. I might even upgrade this year to have a second one  so my timing can be more. uh I can do more loaves in the same amount of time again.
14:52Do you have all of this in a small house or how is this working? Yeah, it's just uh a typical Midwestern  Rambler  kitchen. um I have a pretty big dining room table that most of the stuff gets set upon.  My sister is a carpenter and she built it for me. And yeah, I think it's like an eight foot table and it's real sturdy so it can handle all the shakes that come from the mixer. uh But yeah, most of it.
15:21Probably most of my work takes place within a like a 10 foot square of my house. Wow. And honestly, I say wow and I shouldn't because I used to make like major meals in a galley style kitchen at our old house. So I know. get it. I know what can be done. It's just it's just that I always think that things are much, much bigger than they are. It's why I've been like, oh, people are like, oh, when are you going to open a physical location? I'm like,  I'm not.
15:49I can get everything done here in this small space without paying for a lease. Yeah, that's a smart way to do it and it keeps your profits coming to you not going into rent. That's the hope. Because most of the businesses that I've seen that did take that step in my childhood, they never made it to the seven-year mark. Have you heard that thing of like, if you make it to seven years, you can be established there for 20, 30, 40. But if you don't make it to the seven-year mark, then you were kind of always doomed.
16:19Yeah, I have. And it's either three years or seven years for any business. Sure. Sure, sure, Yeah. So I'm nervous to like start that and start that timer. I'm like, I'll just keep baking out of my kitchen until capacity is such that I cannot handle what people are asking for anymore. Yes. And that leads me to my next question. uh You started this a year two ago. So how is business? it?
16:46Is it robust? Is it growing? Is it stagnant? How is it going? I would say in general, it's growing. I've been kind of on a two-ish month hiatus with the newborn. ah All of my brain cells have kind of gone into that small child at the moment, but I'm starting up again this weekend ah with the first experimental loaves out of the new oven.  And uh in general, I would say I probably have been selling, you know, when I was still going whole hog at this, I was probably selling
17:1610 to 15 loaves a week on my Monday pickup days.  But then every time I would do an actual market, like at the Mankato Makerspace, I would sell out within three hours, no matter how much product I made. um So I feel like if I can start doing farmers markets this year, that would really be an excellent opportunity on my end.  And then I would probably continue doing the weekly pickups, although I'm
17:41trying to decide if more people would be willing to do pickups if I made pick up day Saturday instead of Monday. But I just figured like, oh, you want to start your work week with fresh bread instead of start your weekend with it. But  there's a lot of experimentation and growth yet to still happen. I feel very  young in my process of this all, which is kind of crazy that people have been  appreciating what I've been doing to the extent they have because I feel so
18:10Not unprepared, just it's unexpected to be appreciated in the way it's been. Yes, yes. I know exactly what you're talking about because we all suffer from imposter syndrome. When we start something new, it's like, OK, I'm going to try this. Yeah. Then it goes well. The first whatever span of time. And the further you get into it, you're like, I got a handle on this.
18:39and then you take that next step. And then you go through it again. Do I know what I'm doing? Who am I to try this? Right. Who am I to explain it to other people? And I still feel like there's miles and miles of knowledge still yet to be gained before I could call myself any kind of a true  expert or baker in general. I still feel like such a novice. And then my friends are like, no, you're awesome. You can teach me these things. like, I don't feel like that's a huge responsibility.
19:08I'm still making so many mistakes. What do you mean? Yeah, but every journey starts with the first step. True. And I'm willing to make a million of those because I'm a curious,  nonsensical human. Yes, I'm like that too.  I started this podcast over two and a half years ago now. That's awesome. I had no idea  how to do it,  where to start. And I just Googled everything and made notes and drove myself crazy.
19:37for three months before I ever record an episode. That's awesome. And I mean, you know, the school of YouTube definitely helps for a lot of things like that as well, I imagine. I didn't even really look at YouTube. Really? Helpful. Nice though. Good.  Nope. I just went out and looked at what other people did on their podcasts.  And then I typed in, how do I start a podcast in Google? Word. And all kinds of help. So.
20:06If  for the listener, if you want to start something that you're interested in, try it. Yeah, just do it. Just take the first step. It does not have to be perfect. No. And if you find out you hate it, you don't have to keep doing it. True sunk cost fallacy.  It's it's real and you don't have to do it. Yeah.  And no one's going to punch you in the face for trying something new. No. And then you'll know more about yourself when you come out of it.  Uh huh. Yep.
20:35Absolutely. I am again a proponent of people following their dreams. Don't drown in them. If they're not going well, don't keep doing it. Right. But try it. You never know what's going to happen. Give it a shot, man. Yeah, absolutely.  And I'm old. I'm 56 years old and I started a podcast when I was 53 or 54. If I can do this, anybody can do something.
21:01I feel like is not even that old these days. I feel like you  have so much more of sense of yourself at 54 that you probably have more freedom. I think that's what actually saved me. Is that I was like, nobody cares. Nobody cares what I do. I am not out to impress anybody anymore. I'm just gonna try it.  And that's what frees you. Like then you can just do exactly what you want because it's like, well, who cares? Who's gonna tell me no? No one. No one is gonna...
21:31like yell at me for trying new things these days. Yes, and if you're 16 years old, the same thing holds true.  You don't have to be constrained by other people's opinions. You have to be true to yourself. I feel like that's a much harder lesson to learn at 16 than in my  30s.  Oh, I would never have done anything like this at 16, ever.
21:57Do think it's because of the communities we've built up that we know have our backs or is it just our sense of self?  I think that when we are in our teens, we're trying to  rebel and conform at the same time. um And when you're trying to rebel and conform at the same time, you find yourself very confused, very insecure and very not sure of what you should do. That feels accurate.
22:25And I think once you turn 40, especially as a woman, that's the time where you're like, okay, I have tried to conform. I have tried to rebel. I have found middle ground. I'm going to stay in the middle ground for a while and just be me. And then we're newsflash happy, crazy, happier. Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully fingers crossed. But I don't think the age is the thing that that should keep anyone from trying out.
22:55something that they're interested in. No, definitely not. It's  just about exposure. I'm really proud of you for doing what you're doing, especially with a brand new baby at home.  Thanks. I've just always wanted to have a family. think  my ADHD is kind of a superpower in the kind of life that I want to live between
23:18Okay, well want to know everything about raising a child. I want to know everything about raising a garden. I want to know everything about starting a business and starting to bake all these things. Like, being able to bounce between all the different interests has made my life kind of more manageable and my mental health happier. Well good, because you've got to take care of you first. uh So  I'm assuming that you saw the email that went out a while ago from the cottage food.
23:47law stuff in Minnesota about that we're going to be able to ship in Minnesota starting in I think 2027. Yes,  I'm excited to see it, but I'm nervous to see if people are going to be willing to pay whatever the shipping costs are. Yeah, and it's going to depend on on how heavy the thing is that you're sending them. Because I mean, one of my loaves is two pounds already. So I  mean, if people are going to ship canned goods, that can't be cheap either.
24:15You know, honestly, I would never ship canned goods. I just wouldn't do it. I  would be so worried about it coming shattered.  Yep, I wouldn't even try. My mom lives in Maine, and obviously I'm in Minnesota, and she makes the best canned green beans.  I love them. They're one of my favorite things on earth. She offered to ship me a couple jars, and I said, please don't.
24:41She said, why you love them? And I said, because if they show up broken, I will just cry for days. Don't ship me green beans. Just devastating.  Oh, it would be ridiculous. I would be crying over green beans and my husband would walk in the door and be like, what? Who died? And I'll be like, green beans died. OK, you know  the travesty. But um I am very excited about the fact that we're finally going to be able to ship in Minnesota because a couple of years ago.
25:09someone asked me if I could ship my granola to them in Northern Minnesota. And  I couldn't because you're not allowed to until whatever the date is in 2027 now. And I had to tell them no. I believe it's August.  Good. And I mean, that's only another year and a half away. But I was I was just so frustrated. And  I for the life of me do not understand.
25:37And I've ranted about this before and I'm going to shorten it up on this one.  I don't understand because if it's a  producer to consumer situation,  if someone in Northern Minnesota orders granola from me, I make it in my cottage food registered business in my kitchen.  I package it in my kitchen.  I take it to the post office. I get a tracking number for it.
26:07It goes to the home of the person that opened it or ordered it and they receive it and it has a tracking number.
26:16You can track where it was made. You can track who it went to. Yep.  It's  it's driving me crazy. I do not understand.  And why did they decide that we could ship in Minnesota, but we can't ship out of state? I wonder if that's due to other people's cottage laws. Like, have you looked at New York's cottage laws compared to ours? No.  So strict, ridiculously strict to the point where it probably wouldn't even be worth it to have a cottage license because you can't
26:45bake anything. Like maybe you could do a single loaf of bread with no inclusions. Because I don't think you can use chocolate in a bunch of things. can't use like it's  yeah,  I feel grateful for the freedom we do have in Minnesota, but also feeling like there's so much farther we have to go yet. Well, on my other podcast that I do with my co-host, my co-host was telling me that um for the first time in 250 years, which is how long we've been a country this year,
27:15that our government representatives are as far removed from agriculture as they've ever been. True. And so I feel like sometimes the people who are making the laws  don't have a working knowledge  about what they're making the laws about. That feels really accurate. They might know politics and they know nothing else and then it's they create unreasonable standards. Yes.
27:45They also are some of the people who are like, I don't need to buy sourdough from Cali in Mankato when I can go to Hy-Vee and buy a loaf of sourdough bread. Yeah, it's about convenience, suppose. Which additionally, I wish that one of the rules that had changed for 2027 had been that we would be able to occasionally sell our goods at a co-op or like I've been reached out to by
28:15Have you heard of Seal Foods  in lower North Mankato?  I may have.  They're fantastic and an incredible Asian grocery store. The only one that I'm aware of in southern Minnesota. uh they would have loved to work with me on making a milk bread to go with like a whipped cream and strawberry sandwich. But I'm not allowed to sell my bread to them to use in their deli stuff. Because of the commercial kitchen. Exactly. Exactly. And so I'm like, I know.
28:44I know that my stuff is safe, but I'm not willing to risk my business in doing that. So I'm wondering if that'll be another change that maybe  we'd see in five years, or if by that time I'll just have  access to a commercial kitchen space that would be able to follow the rule of that law.  You might. Stranger things have happened. True. ah So tell me, I'd like to keep these to half an hour and we got a couple of minutes left. Sorry.  No, you're good.
29:13Tell me about the Mankato Maker Space. my gosh. Okay, so they are this incredible, like if you are into skill learning and mutual aid, that is the place for you. um They can teach people how to do anything from  metalsmithing to pottery to woodsmithing or carpentry and uh jewelry making, 3D printing. Like if you want to learn a hands-on artistic crafting or building skill,  chances are they will have the
29:41tool and the teacher for you. um can either take classes there or you can, um if you have a project in mind, you can become a member there and then  as long as you take the safety courses, you can just use the tools yourself.  They also put on markets for crafters to come in a few times a year and sell their wares there. So I'm not, uh I'm friends with a lot of people that help run it, but I'm not technically a member myself, but I come to all of the craft fairs that I possibly can.
30:09uh And they also have these new things called Fix-It Clinics,  where  they're working with the community to  maybe they have a couple volunteers and you can help fix a lamp. So it's  helping the right to repair uh community as well. Like  they're just so involved in getting people  skills and opportunities to build that I think a lot of us have lost.  They've always been so impressive to me. When I went to one of their events for the very first time when I first moved here about five years ago, um
30:40I  grew up in the church. I'm no longer part of a church. But walking into their event, where it people of all ages, all backgrounds, just kind of curious and loving on each other, felt like what I imagine other people experience in a church. Very nice. I'm going to have to get hold of them and see if somebody will talk to me on the podcast. I bet they would. They're really, truly fantastic. Yeah, because I'd love to get the word out about them.  Do you know if they have set hours?
31:07I believe they do have set hours, but they're quite extensive. I want to say it's like 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Don't quote me. Well, you're obviously quoting me on a podcast, like it's fairly long hours availability wise. I'll look them up and put the links in the show notes so people get. All right, Callie, this went really fast. Holy cow. I love to gab. All right. Where can people find you?
31:32I am on Facebook under Salt and Fern Bakehouse,  Bakehouse is B-A-K-E-H-A-U-S. uh So Instagram, Facebook, and then I have a Bake-See, which is where they can put their orders in. And hopefully I will be back in ordering business by the end of the month. Well, I hope you are, but I'm going tell you having raised four kids,  make sure that you get rest and make sure that you enjoy that baby before he's too big.
32:00Oh, we are getting all of the cuddles. That boy does not want to sleep unless he is on top of me or my husband. So we are attached to the hip.  Do not sacrifice this time when you're first baby because it doesn't come back. That's very good advice. I will keep that close to my heart. Yeah. I hate to, I hate to sound like your mom, but I've been through it and you don't get it back.  All right. You can, as always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. Kelly, thank you for sharing your time with me. I appreciate it.
32:29Absolutely. Great talking with you. You too. Have a great day. You too.
 

Thieving Otter Farm

Today I'm talking with Rebecca at Thieving Otter Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
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Episode Show Notes
Guest: Rebecca LynchFarm: Thieving Otter FarmLocation: TennesseeHost: Mary Lewis
In this episode of A Tiny Homestead, Mary chats with Rebecca Lynch of Thieving Otter Farm in Tennessee. What starts with a conversation about unpredictable winter weather quickly turns into a fascinating deep dive into otters, quail, chicken genetics, deer hunting, ADHD superpowers, and planning ahead in homestead life.
In This Episode
The Story Behind Thieving Otter FarmRebecca shares the heartwarming story behind her farm’s name. After setting up trail cameras on her wooded six acres, she discovered river otters visiting her creek and pond. Despite their habit of stealing fish, Rebecca could not be happier. From spotting baby otters to watching an entire family swim by, these “fish bandits” inspired the name Thieving Otter Farm.
Raising 4,000 Coturnix QuailRebecca is primarily known for raising Coturnix quail, and she estimates she has around 4,000 birds. She explains:
The difference between domestic Coturnix quail and wild bobwhite quail
Why Coturnix quail thrive in smaller spaces
How they can be ideal for homesteaders in areas with HOA or city restrictions
The importance of understanding wildlife conservation when it comes to releasing captive birds
Rebecca also shares her journey from casually accepting a dozen quail in 2020 to becoming deeply involved in quail genetics, writing standards, and judging international shows.
Developing New Chicken BreedsRebecca is currently developing two new chicken breeds, with the ambitious goal of becoming only the second woman to have a breed accepted by the American Poultry Association.
She discusses:
How her first line, affectionately called “Mop Tops,” began with mixed breed birds with crests
The selective breeding process for temperament, egg size, body type, and color
A second accidental breed that started from a mystery chick that did not match its hatchery label
The long, detailed process required to stabilize a breed before applying for APA recognition
Her birds are known for sweet temperaments and prolific laying, including large brown eggs.
ADHD as a Homesteading SuperpowerRebecca was recently diagnosed with ADHD at age 47, and she reflects on how it has shaped her homesteading journey. From raising thousands of quail to out hunting the guys during deer season, she embraces her tendency to dive deep and go all in on new interests.
Mary shares similar experiences from her own homestead, including experimenting with rabbits, planting fruit trees, and considering quail after her husband fell down a research rabbit hole.
Avian Flu and Planning AheadThe conversation turns to avian influenza and how outbreaks impact egg prices and poultry availability. They discuss:
The risks associated with migrating waterfowl
Biosecurity challenges with free range systems
Strategic planning for adding laying hens before potential outbreaks
The importance of thinking one season ahead in homestead life
As always, homesteading involves balancing opportunity with responsibility.
About Thieving Otter Farm
Rebecca raises Coturnix quail and is actively working to develop two new chicken breeds with strong genetics, excellent temperaments, and productive laying ability.
You can learn more at:thievingotterfarm.com
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Steel Spoon Farm. Founder Jen Kibler teaches homesteaders how to build a sustainable blog or email list and use Pinterest for long term marketing without relying on social media algorithms. Inside the Content Seeds Collective, members receive weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to the Root Seller Resource Library. Join for $37 per month at SteelSpoonFarm.com.
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If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow homesteader and leave a review. It helps more people find these real conversations with farmers, food producers, and makers across the country.

Quirky Quail Acres

Today I'm talking with Caitlyn at Quirky Quail Acres.
 
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00:00If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm.
00:26A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Caitlin  at  Quirky Quail Acres in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Caitlin. How are you? Hi there. I'm well. How are you? I'm good, except I can't get through an introduction without stumbling all over myself today. I don't know what's going on.
00:57Um,  so I would normally ask about the weather because that's the question I ask on every single podcast episode, but you're only half an hour away from me.  So I'm guessing it's sunny outside. Yep. Sunny and feeling balmy compared to yesterday. No doubt. Yesterday was terrible. I mean, it was pretty, but it was cold. Yeah, it hurt. It hurt, especially after  tank top weather last weekend. Yeah.
01:24Yeah, that was really nice. And I knew it was fall, spring, but I was like, I will take it. It's a good reprieve. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. OK, so I again, I'm Caitlin and I am a mom and I work full time and we have our little farm here just outside of North Mankato, Minnesota. We
01:53He are kind of jack of all trades sort of farm. We raise quail and we raise chickens and we have an orchard and we have a very large garden. Hopefully this year we'll also have a greenhouse. We also tap all of our own maple trees and we make maple syrup. And we also have, we.
02:20We volunteer at a nearby shelter. So we have three rescue dogs.  Um, it's just chaos all the time.  It sounds amazing to me.  Well, we're right there with you on the big garden  and we have 20 apple trees. We have  one huge wild plum tree. have some Alden plum trees. We have peach trees. have rhubarb.
02:48We do have a greenhouse. have chickens, we have a dog and we have five barn cats. So  there's a lot of overlap there between you and I.
02:59I freaking love it. Yeah, no, I wouldn't choose anything different. um I'm so passionate about it. And it's I've never been one to like I don't want to go to the gym to exercise, but I want to be I want to be active all the time. I want to be I want to be moving and working. And I like I like the hard work and I like feeling accomplished at the end of the day.  Absolutely.
03:26So the reason that I asked you to be on the podcast, I have a little tiny ulterior motive and I don't usually.  My husband and I have been talking about maybe getting a few quail and seeing how they do.  And I'm guessing you know a lot about quail. So  can you tell me all about quail today? Yeah, absolutely. So we,  we raise Coturnix quail  because A, they are the largest variety that
03:56and that you can  own really. um You don't need a special permit like you do for other species of quail because they are considered a domesticated species. uh Whereas for like, bobwhite, you would need a game permit.  And also  they don't lay as many eggs. um They  are smaller birds, so they're not really good meat birds. Generally people raise
04:23Bob White for dog training and stuff. we're not,  again, our dogs are,  they're pound dogs there.  They'd be useless for that. um Anyway,  and  Coturnix quail lay about 300 eggs a year. um We  don't raise exclusively jumbo because we like to go for a good mix of colors in our birds too, just because it's, you know, it's nice to have a pretty bird that you're raising also. So we
04:53focus more  on um egg and feathering  color genetics, but they are highly productive.  are their eggs are so nutritious when you compare them  side by side with like an equal weight of a chicken egg.  The nutritional profile is just phenomenal because they are heavier in the yolk. So then they have all of that additional um
05:22nutrition to go with that. We find them very, very easy to raise. They were kind of our poultry introductory species. My husband had been wanting to raise birds for some time and I was kind, I knew, I knew that I would be doing the majority of the work and so I kind of said, whoa, hey, we're not going to dive in head first.
05:48until I feel really prepared for this, let's try quail first because they require less space, they mature faster, they're productive enough that it can  serve our family's needs off of that. We started with about 15 quail  and now  at any given time we're sitting at about 100 quail.  so quail math equals chicken math. Same thing.  very much so. And it's especially because it's so easy to hatch out your own.
06:17They're mature in eight weeks. uh Some mature faster, but generally they're all mature by eight weeks and laying. You know who's a boy, who's a girl. So within two weeks or within two months, you can vent sex them  and  separate the boys from the girls.  Unfortunately, they are not like chickens in you can't you cannot successfully have a bachelor flock. So  unfortunately, um
06:45The extra males do  end up in freezer camp because um they are very unkind to one another if you have too many roosters in the cubby. But yes, we  very quickly went from 15 in  a hutch to now we have an indoor aviary in our barn because they are very flighty birds. They are very prone to oh
07:11offing themselves if they get scared by anything. And so just with the number of predators we have around, we felt that it was best to keep them under stimulated a little bit in that sense.  And so they have an indoor aviary that we have a bunch of hidey holes and we have artificial sunlight and we keep them as entertained as possible and they get to run around but they you know, they just seem to live their happy little  lives they are.
07:42They're sweet, they're beautiful.  are  what I would refer to as a feathered potato. They do not have brain cells or personality  of some larger poultry, but that's okay. That's okay. Cause they are still lovable. Well, that was a very good introduction to quail. have a couple of questions.
08:04Is it a pain in the butt to crack quail eggs? Because I've heard that quail eggs, you need three quail eggs to equal one chicken egg if you're going to do scrambled eggs. So is it is it hard to crack the eggs or is it just like cracking a chicken egg? It's just smaller. So you actually are best off using an egg scissors for quail eggs because they are. It's not so much the size, it's that they have a much thinner shell, but a much thicker membrane than a chicken egg.
08:33So if you try to crack it, you kind of end up just crumbling it without actually breaking through the membrane. So um you can buy quail egg scissors and cut the top off and dump them out. So that actually makes it very slick and easy,  way less getting, you know, digging shell out of the bowl or the pan with your fingers um than sometimes I have with our chicken eggs. using the scissors is very simple.
08:59Okay, cool, I didn't know such a thing existed. So I have learned something new yet again on a podcast that I am doing. And then for the quail meat, my husband asked me to ask you this. said, can you ask her how she would describe how to cook quail meat and how it tastes? Does it taste like the dark meat on a chicken? What does it taste like? I can honestly, don't eat our quail.
09:28because I'm just not a big meat fan. My husband reports that it is like the dark meat. It's not a lot of meat per bird, but it is very rich. It cooks quickly. They're very easy to process. And typically the way that we cook them is in a crock pot, kind of with potatoes and spices and
09:58broth just sort of stewed. um But I know that a lot of people like to braise them and stuff. I will say generally it's just that my husband makes them more than I do because he eats them and he is a little bit lazier about the food preparation.  I understand. um My husband and I both love to cook, but  weeknights are kind of a pain in the butt because he doesn't always get home at the same time. um weekends are when we actually cook.
10:28And that's when we make things that we want to spend time making  together. um The reason he asked me to ask you is because I'm not a fan of the dark meat on chicken. And he was like, if we get quail, we can have quail meat like three times a week. And I was like, not if it tastes like the dark meat on chicken.  Maybe not. Yeah, I can say it definitely. um
10:53It has that game-ier smell to it when it's cooking. And so you can tell it is, you know, even though they are conventionally raised, is still definitely a game bird that you're eating.  Yeah, I had pheasant one time and it was really, really good. And I was like, why did I not know that pheasant is  yummy? I had no idea. um OK, so here's my here's my big question, because he and I have been going around about this a little bit.
11:22because we both have differing opinions about many things.  I don't know that there is a market in Minnesota for quail meat or quail eggs. And I also don't know how much it would cost, you know, a round number to get started with like a rooster and six hens just to try it out for ourselves. So  do you have answers on that? Yes. So I can say there is a market in Minnesota and in Southern Minnesota. We actually sell our quail eggs at the St. Peter food co-op.
11:52um And depending on the time of year, so like  around the holidays, we were selling a lot more. We were resupplying them pretty regularly. There are other times where it's, you know, we're only dropping off 10 dozen every few weeks.  So it's not, they're not necessarily flying off the shelves, um but there is a market for it.  And we are...
12:17going to be opening our own farm stand here in the next month once  we can  get all the ice cleared away and keep it cleared away for a little bit  to get that set up. there  is Soul Foods in Lower North Mankato, a Korean foods market. They sell quail eggs. ah I know that Rebel Rooster partners with some  wineries and they have
12:42quail egg pizzas and stuff that they get, they source their quail eggs from rebel roosters. So there, there is a market. I, we have not tried to sell our meat yet. Our meat, have mostly kept for ourselves or given away to friends and family. So I can't speak to that, but,  um,  the spaces I'm in online, does seem like there is definitely a market for that.  Okay. Cause
13:09I was just, he was all excited and he was like, we could get quail and we can  take the eggs and we can incubate the eggs and we can sell the meat and we can sell the eggs and that. And I was like,  um,  number one, cool idea. Number two, slow down for a minute. We need to some research. Yes,  absolutely. And that's where we started with so few.  Um, and where we started, I mean, we would have every, if my husband had his way, we would have every farm animal under the sun.  Um,
13:39that, as I mentioned before, I would end up taking care of because once it comes to that part, he's like, oh, well, I'm not that interested anymore. um But so we started small. We  ordered, I want to say from  Hoover Hatchery down in  Iowa.  We ordered some chicks to start with once they aged out. um
14:03We were able to figure out the hens from the roosters. Our kids had already named every single one of them. We tried to do the bachelor flock because  we did not have the kids permission to process the quail. That didn't work.  they did end up in freezer camp and we don't even bother with it anymore because we know it's not going to go well. But the  introductory cost, especially compared to  larger poultry, is  much lower.
14:31not only in the sense of the birds themselves being less expensive, or if you can find hatching eggs, even less expensive. And I will say, that sense, shipped quail eggs, so you might not be able to find a local supplier. Anybody who wants to look at hatching out eggs can feel very confident in ordering shipped quail eggs because
14:58they have a much higher success rate than shipped chicken eggs or goose eggs or whatever. They are safely going to  get an 80 % hatch rate on shipped quail eggs. They're very, very hardy.  So that's a good way to cut that introductory cost is just ordering the eggs because uh most of them will end up hatching.  And then just their space requirements. Each bird requires about a square foot. Some people will say
15:28three birds per square foot, but that  is too crowded and quail can be very, very vicious with one another. And we would never recommend anything less than one square foot per bird, um even in our aviary setting where they're running around all day long.  a  lot of people keep them in hutches are first because we just had so few.  We bought some two by fours at Home Depot and built our hutch, made a plywood floor. um
15:57And the, was a couple hundred bucks versus our chicken coops, which we all know you cannot build for a couple hundred bucks. Not unless you have your own trees and a sawmill. Exactly.
16:14Yeah, we bought some of the  already made garden sheds that they have at like Home Depot in Lowe's. our chickens have chicken mansions because they're bigger sheds.  so it's really funny when it snows because the front of the sheds look like little houses. so it's really pretty. And my husband will take pictures of the snow sticking to the doors.  And I'm like, oh my god, our chickens live in a castle.
16:43That's funny because we actually have the same setup for our coops. we just like that, A, they have more vertical space. They like getting up high to roost. ah It's functional. It's pre-made.  Handles the weather well. Yes. It's so easy to insulate. um So we actually do the same thing. They have like a little loft in there that they can go up and.
17:08hang out in. We have outdoor runs. We have such high predator pressure that we don't do free ranging. But we have massive runs that we were able to just attach to this pre-made shed that's very sturdy and build it out from there. ours too. And we've got the little like solar lights that are, it looks so fancy and it's just full of chickens.
17:35It's such a special building for such an average animal.  Okay.  Well,  I am so thrilled that you told me all those things about quail because now I have answers to give to my husband. Because I was trying to look everything up and I was like, why don't I just talk to somebody who knows what they're doing?  So much easier. um So when you  when you incubate the eggs, is there
18:03Is there a special incubator for quail or can you just get an incubator and it has trays that will fit the eggs?  No, you can put it into any  incubator. um You can get attachments, inserts for different incubators. So like a Matty Coop, you can buy  3D printed inserts that keep smaller eggs upright or  a Nurture Right 360 is another incubator lots of people have.
18:33you can buy an insert for that, or you can double up eggs in any incubator that has chicken slots. I find that they roll around a little goofy and sometimes they get crunched with that thin shell. So I prefer to get a quail specific insert when I can. But I've had 95 % hatch rate success in cheapo incubators I got off of Amazon. So you don't need anything special at all. They have a
19:02shorter incubation period than chickens as well. So they are an 18 day incubation period. Like a little over two weeks. Yeah. Yes. And I don't know that I've ever had them take the full 18 days. Usually we have them popping out like popcorn after about 16 days. um And they  do pop out like popcorn. They hatch so fast. You can hardly even catch them unzipping. just like, there's a quail. um
19:32They don't require different um humidity or temperatures or anything like that. So it's very much as set it and forget it as a chicken egg. You just got to put it in the lockdown a little earlier. Nice. And then do you have to put them in a brooder for a few days or a week after they're hatched?  Yes, we do keep them in a brooder  generally just because we um
19:59don't want to mix them in with the rest of the covey until we have been able to sex them. We keep them  in  a separate, we brood them in the basement for the first week or so when we want to keep a close eye on them. And then we move them out to the barn and they're  in a hutch situation where we can keep the heat lamps on them and keep them separate until they are grown out enough for us to tell who's a boy, who's a girl. And then  the girls and any boys we want to keep get.
20:28tossed in with the cubby.  And on the Hutch's, how tall do they have to be? Because you mentioned that they're very good at unliving themselves. how tall do they need to be? Yes, that's a really good question. this is, it's so specific. This is one of the very specific things when it comes to quail. You do not want any height that is between 18 inches floor to ceiling  or six feet floor to ceiling.
20:57So you can have them in a hutch that is no taller than 18 inches, Florida ceiling,  or  in our aviary, we have eight foot ceilings because um quail cannot control their flight. They get startled at their own shadows. They get startled at absolutely everything. um One time I had an extra nesting pad and I was like, oh, maybe they'll like this. I put that in their aviary. They did not lay for two weeks because that was such a disturbance to them.
21:25terrified them, they wouldn't do it. So they are very flighty  and they go straight up. So if they flush  and there is a ceiling  at say two, three, four feet above their head, they will hit the ceiling and break their necks. So  it's really important. That is the one most important thing with raising quail.  The other thing being their feed, which I'll touch on in a second, but
21:53that height is very specific. So I would say 15 to 18 inches floor to ceiling for a hutch. Okay. Cool. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. And then I would say the only, the one other really important thing I would say with quail is their feed requirements  are a little bit, well, they're quite a bit different than um other poultry. They require a higher.
22:19protein. So they do need be started on a 30 % game bird feed. We get ours, we source ours locally here in Minnesota  from a mill down in Mabel. And then  we  use Chick Starter for them in their adult life because that's at that 21 % and that keeps them a lot healthier. um We
22:47don't use a layer feed because of the roosters. So we provide calcium separately. We actually use uh a reptile  enclosure substrate that's calcium based  because they're so small.  can't handle the crushed oyster shells and we're not going to try to grind it up in a food processor.
23:10But so that  is another distinction to be aware of is that they do have different nutritional needs. So you can't start them  on a regular chick starter, a regular adult layer feed.  They do best when they have that higher level of protein.  Okay, good to know. Thank you. Hold on one second.
23:33I was gonna cough and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh So we're looking at a little bit of  of fundage for the outlay to start this but once we get started it would be okay. Yes, yes and they're  they're so self-sufficient like you can just keep going you can just keep taking your own eggs especially because they lay so many.
23:59that it doesn't feel like you're cutting into anything to save a few to toss in the incubator. um And you  just keep going. There's never a point where  I feel like we have to invest anymore in new birds. We do like to. Every so often,  we will buy some hatching eggs from outside to just add genetics back into our covey to  keep things  fresh.
24:29But you can go several generations before that's even a concern. And certainly we have  more than the average person keeping some for their family would have. Yeah.  Cool. Oh, my God, Caitlin.  I was really hoping that you were going to be  a quail expert lady. And you are. I'm so thrilled that I got to talk to you because  this whole weekend, every other sentence was I was thinking about the quail question.
24:57I'm like, oh my God, we're obsessed. Okay.  And I just, needed somebody who does it because you  know things that Google doesn't know. Trial and error.  And I do,  I'm glad to info dump about  our uh quail anytime.  Yeah. And I was like, am I being  like, I don't know,  terrible? Am I a terrible person asking you when you're only half an hour away?  But
25:27But people aren't necessarily gonna drive from Jordan down to Mankato to get your quail eggs. No, absolutely not. And we don't expect them to at all. And again, you know, we know we're not even the only ones in the Mankato area. And I think that's great. And I think that's fine. And, yeah, definitely not a concern  on our front.  Good.  I just I always worry because usually people who are in
25:56agriculture because quails agriculture. They're pretty good about no, you should try it if you want to try it. Absolutely. But there's always one person somewhere that's like, oh, they're going to be competition. That's not cool.  Not not not my vibe at all.  Yes. And I didn't say anything to my husband about this and he's going to listen to this episode because it's full of information he wants. I'm going say it anyway.  He was talking about ducks and I was like,
26:24It wouldn't be fair to get ducks. And he's like, why? I said, because we have no running water on our property. There's no creek, there's no pond, there's nothing. And ducks like to swim.  Quail don't care. They don't want to swim. Nope, they don't at all. They just want to... We  have some... I bought some totes, some like decorative storage totes.
26:47Those are flipped upside down inside their aviary. You can cut some evergreen boughs down and create little hidey holes for them. They  don't even want to roost. They just want to run around on the ground and hang out and eat.  How do they handle the really cold weather in  Minnesota?  They do fairly well. Again, ours are indoors, but they are in an unheated barn. know,  they're...
27:17there have been times as you know this winter where it has been absolutely necessary to go out three times a day and give them some fresh water because freezing in 20 minutes. But aside from that, do well. I will say when we were having 40 below, we would lose one just from.
27:39shock to the system. were generally our older birds that  we would lose one after got super, super dangerously cold.  aside from that,  they do really well. just huddle up together, fluff up their feathers, especially because they're on the ground um and they can kind of  burrow down into the bedding. do great.  Good to know. Thank you. uh
28:04And then the other question I have, because I didn't think I'd look it up or ask my husband if he knew,  is are there wild quail in Minnesota? There are not wild quail in Minnesota. um We  used to have a small population  of Bob White quail in Minnesota, um but we do not have  an extant  population at this time of any species. OK. Hmm.
28:34Did people shoot them? Did they migrate? Do you know what happened to the quail? Yeah, they seem to be migrating to... Well, okay, so here's... I'll go on another tangent. I actually work for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever also. That's my full-time job. I have a lot of information on this specific topic too.
28:58Most of it is because of our habitat loss. So the degradation of our native tall grass prairies has been  what has diminished quail populations across the entire United States and has condensed them to very small pockets around the country. uh And it's generally where they can find the best cover. So because we don't have the proper
29:26ecosystems for them to thrive in.  They've just left.  Well, they got to go where they want to be, just like humans do.  Okay. And then the last thing I want to bring up, because I saw it on your Facebook page and I was very impressed, was your post about chickens  and what  the definitions are for free range and cage free and all that. Because I am going to share that on my page.  Perfect. Yes. That was...
29:56something,  I was looking for sturdier  egg flats um for storing our eggs  before we packaged them.  And I ended up on the site  of a company that makes  products for conventional farm setups. And I just was struck by this is best case scenario. The pictures they're sharing on their website are.
30:22best case scenario. This is them saying, look at how humane this is. And it was just like  shoulder to shoulder room full of chickens with no room to move. And that's cage free.  And so I just think that people are going to the grocery store and they're spending extra money for these labels that do,  that don't mean a whole lot. They do not mean that these birds are living in more humane conditions. If they were more humane conditions, they wouldn't be de-beaked so that they don't.
30:50tear each other apart out stress. Even with free range, they just have to technically have access to the outdoors and two square feet per bird indoors. They do not have any minimum space outdoors. So it could be, you know, a teeny tiny run that only five of them can fit in at a time. But that meets the legal definition of free range. And that's what people are paying several extra dollars at the store for, is to have this label that doesn't actually mean those chickens are treated well.
31:21And so I  just thought it was worth pointing out because I don't think a lot of people understand that. And I know that some people will hear that we don't free range ours and think that that's  awful and abusive, but we do have 15, 20 square feet per bird, as opposed to  one to two square feet per bird.  keep constant enrichment. is exclusively for their safety because we are positioned
31:50along the river, m surrounded by woods. We have eagles, hawks, um raccoons, opossum, coyotes, foxes. We have red foxes, gray foxes. We have other people's barn cats. We have just so many things around all of the time. uh Plus  I am  doing breeding. so just from a biosecurity standpoint, we also have lots of wild turkeys that can bring disease. And um so for us, it's just
32:19it just is a safer thing for them. But we do our best to make sure they have the maximum amount of space. They have the best nutrition they can. They have constant uh enrichment that's very, important to us, constant interaction. They're well loved. um And that's just
32:41I just think that people should be aware that if  they're already paying extra at the grocery store for these labels, then they maybe shouldn't be turning their nose up at the fact that farm fresh eggs might cost a dollar or two more  because they are far exceeding those minimum legal expectations for a label to be slapped on an egg carton at the store.  Absolutely. And we sell our eggs.
33:06at our farm stand and I am so thankful to our customers who just swing in the driveway, park, go in, buy their eggs, leave their money in the bin and go home with really yummy eggs at $5 a dozen. Yes, and it's, mean, we're not making a big profit margin out of the $5 a dozen. It's very little really, but it feels good.
33:30It feels good to know that we're taking really, really good care of our birds. They are not de-beaked. They are well-loved. They get to go out and sit in a lawn chair with them, and they'll all climb up on my lap and get scratches. um we, again, we source our feed locally. We feed our birds on a certified organic diet. So we get a locally grown, locally milled certified organic diet um that we go straight to the mill for. We actually just picked some up a couple of days ago.
34:00Um, and it's just, I can say they, taste better. They, the, the birds are not stressed. And I feel like you can tell that when you're, when you're eating the eggs. Um, and I think that it's, it's worth the, it's, it's the $5 farm fresh eggs from birds that are well-loved is worth more than the $7 free range.
34:30eggs at the store.  Yes.  And as we all learned during COVID supply chains go down.  if you want to be smart, get to know your local growers and producers and buy from them. Yes. And that's  very much part of my motivation for,  what we're doing here  is not, not just self-sufficiency, but having the skills  and the means.
34:56to provide support for my community because I think community care is so important. And I think that people need to be able to oh make community. They need to be able to help one another. And this is what I feel like I can do to be part of that no matter what else is happening in the greater  scope of things. The only thing that has been keeping me sane in 2026 is the fact that we have chickens.
35:24that lay really good eggs and we get to sell them to people who want them. Yes. It's amazing. It has been a very, very long 2026 in Minnesota for us folk who live here. Yes, it has been. I can't it's only been two months. I can't believe that February is almost over.
35:46What the heck, it all went by at the speed of really cold molasses, but also in the blink of an eye. And I don't know how that works. Time is just weird. All right, Caitlin, thank you so much. Like if I was standing in front of you, I would hug you. For all the information you just dumped, because I really needed to learn about quail so I can give my husband some answers. Absolutely, I'm so happy to share. Where can people find you? We are on...
36:16Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We are just quirky quail acres on all of those.  Did I say quirky quail farms or did I say... No, I believe you said quirky quail acres. I talked to so many people. I never know if I say the right thing. Pretty sure you did. If you didn't, I missed it.  All right. It's quirky quail acres. If I said farm at the beginning, I might have, who knows. um I really appreciate your time.
36:43And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Have a great day. It's so pretty. Get outside and have some fun if you can. You as well. Thank you so much. All right. Bye. Bye.