A Tiny Homestead

Shady Hill

Today I'm talking with Ashley at Shady Hill. You can also follow on Facebook.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Ashley at Shady Hill. Good afternoon, Ashley. How are you? I'm doing great. It's about low 70 degrees here in Virginia, so it's feeling really good here.
00:26It's a little warmer than that in Minnesota where I am. I think it's probably 75, but it's also overcast. So I'm hoping it does not get hot today. That would be great. All right, so tell me about yourself and Shady Hill. Yeah, so Shady Hill is very new for us. My husband and I, you know, I just turned 26 this year. I feel like I'm getting up there in age now, but I'm 26.
00:54My husband is 25, so we're considered young farmers in our area. Um, but we always wanted to farm, but didn't grow up on farms. So after we studied agriculture at Virginia Tech and kind of grew up throughout FFA, which is an agriculture organization for youth, we were like, okay, now what, like, how do we start farming? You know, we got the education. We've kind of been a part of community groups that have tried to help us and encourage us to start farming. But.
01:24It wasn't that easy. Um, I started off teaching as an ag teacher. He started off working at a community bank as an ag, uh, loan officer, portfolio manager. So we were still really plugged into the agriculture community, but we didn't have any money to just buy a farm. Um, where we ended up living and moving is where I grew up. And so around here, most of what it looks like to farm is cropland and minimum of like a hundred acres of it.
01:54Small farms around here are probably about 50 to 60 acres big. So it just wasn't feasible realistic for us. So that's really where Shady Hill came about was, you know, after I left teaching, I worked in marketing for a little bit and then I had a baby and stayed home. And with that extra time and just getting tired of making excuses for not being able to buy a farm, we found ourselves, you know, we lived on one and a half acres, so why not just start where we are. And so.
02:23Shady Hill was born because we live on a hill with a bunch of shade trees. Um, and we mostly do everything on one acre, but that's Shady Hill and a little bit about us. You can do a lot on an acre and a half, just so you know. And it's a lot, and it's a lot better to start farming young than it is to start farming old. I can tell you that from experience. Well, we had the most of the encouragement we got from older farmers was to start small.
02:52and to start because we kept saying, you know, oh, we can't afford, you know, especially now. I mean, I remember when I graduated college, we were seeing an acre of land for about $6,000 to $7,000 an acre. Now you see, you know, if someone has a nice house sitting on 10 to 15 acres, you're paying nearly a million dollars just for that. So we always just had this dollar value on farming and homesteading and we thought we just couldn't afford to
03:22do it. But then we realized homesteading anyways isn't even about making money. It's about just being more self-reliant. We didn't have to take out any big loans for this and we're learning a lot now. So kind of the advice from those farmers that we got about starting small that we used to get annoyed by, because the world is not set up for farmers to start small to be honest, was actually some of the best advice because now in the future, depending on...
03:50where this takes us and what opportunities come up with land, we now have experience for some loans or depending on what that even looks like. Because before we didn't have any experience to prove that we would be able to farm the land that we were going to buy. So we just didn't look good on paper to begin with. So it's been a blessing to learn and get the experience now, but it's by far not the easiest thing we've ever done.
04:18Yeah, and honestly, it probably wouldn't have been the easiest thing you've ever done, no matter when you started it, because it's all learning and experience and trying new things and failing and then trying again. I have been where you are and it's so much fun. The beginning is so much fun, but it's really scary too. Yeah. Yeah, we have so much of, should we keep doing it? Should we not? And I think too, I forgot to mention what we do at Shady Hill is...
04:46We grow cut flowers. And everyone thinks I've got these acres of flowers. You know, at a farmer's market, they're like, oh, how many acres of flowers do you have? And I tell them like, you know, our beds are 50 feet long, four feet wide. I've got four of those. And we pasture raise chicken for meat, and we butcher and package it all ourselves. And we sell it direct to consumer. And we sell out of chicken before we even get the chicks here. Like people, the demand is so high.
05:16that we don't even have any to take to farmers markets when we go. We just have to ask people to pre-order. So doing all of that, the very first time we butchered chickens, my husband injured himself really bad. And we ended up going to the ER after we were 40 minutes in, like starting the whole process. And that was a big, should we even be doing this? Like this is, this could happen again. You know, it was kind of a freak accident. It wasn't
05:46our fault. And so just, that was the first time that we had this, ooh, is this worth it? And we just started, but we just, we take these lessons in strides and we don't take it as a sign from God saying, don't do this. We're like, no, this is like a lesson to learn so we can keep doing it. So a lot of like these humbling moments keep coming up. Cause there's this.
06:12I always come across these memes on social media for stay at home moms, now that that's kind of my life, that says when you were working, you just wanted to stay at home and figure out how to homestead and make more money only to realize that staying at home and homesteading costs you more money and you've worked harder than you ever have before. So that's kind of like where we're at right now of just all these trials and very intensive labor for us.
06:41but it's been great for our daughter to grow up around that. And she's, we've seen that come out in her. She's one and a half just with how advanced she is and how independent she is because of the type of work that we do together.
06:56That's awesome. I love that. And I love that she's a little girl and she is independent and advanced at one and a half. Oh yeah. She's a little woman really is what she is. One and a half going on 40. Yeah exactly. She's more mature than me some days I feel like. Uh huh. Yeah. Until she throws a tantrum and then you're like, I don't get to throw tantrums. Damn it. I know. No, I think about all the time.
07:25how acceptable it is for toddlers to do literally anything and how adults, we have the same needs. Like we need naps when we get cranky. You know, like when we're upset or cranky, we either need a nap, water, or we're hungry. Right? And for a kid, it's very acceptable for them to have a tantrum about it. Adults not so much. So I know that I'll get to enter that space again when I'm very elderly, but right now I'm not allowed to have tantrums.
07:56No, I always try to remember the acronym HALT, H-A-L-T, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Because I live in a two bedroom, one bathroom house with my husband and our youngest son who is 22. The house is like over 1400 square feet, but it's not laid out well. And so it feels like we're always kind of in each other's space. And if
08:24Somebody in the house is acting like they might need a nap or like something's wrong. I always try to remember the hungry, angry, lonely, tired thing. And I will literally ask them, are you hungry? No. Are you angry? No. Are you lonely? No. Are you tired? Yes. And I'm like, good, go take a nap. That's like, I need to remember that. Yeah, the HALT acronym, I heard it a long time ago when my kids were little.
08:54Because as a mom, you know that the first thing you do if your baby is crying is you check to see if the new diaper changed. You try to feed them. If those don't work, you rock them because they're probably too overtired. Same thing with grownups. Yeah, we live in the overtired space a lot. And I have to remind myself too that she needs to play because it's so we have so much to do around here.
09:23the farm tasks that she just follows along and does things with us. Like I'll cut flowers for her that don't look awesome. Or sometimes she picks the awesome ones herself and I just lose those. Uh, and she will be okay for a little bit playing with the flowers, but then she needs like to play with me as her mom. And so I have a lot of moments where I have to slow down and remember that. Things are just going to take a lot longer or not be as.
09:50pretty or perfect because, you know, it's the farm is not at the expense of how our family grows. It's more for it to be the thing that helps our family. So there's been some moments where we've had a pause and realize like, oh, it's kind of coming at the expense of our family, whether that be the stress or the time versus the thing that's actually the reason why we started. So she's been able to help us slow down and
10:19Um, remember that our family is more important than what's at stake with farming, but I'm glad that she's around to kind of teach us these lessons now. Yeah, it's amazing what you learn from your kids. I had four in my house at one point in time and I learned so much from my kids. The other thing that I will say is that farming is not a perfect endeavor. You know, people see all these pictures on Facebook or Pinterest or
10:49All the other ones, I can't even list them off today, I'm too tired. I'm tired too. And you see all these beautiful pictures and it all looks so lovely and so perfect. But if you actually go to a working farm, probably the first thing you're going to smell when you get out is cow shit. And you're going to see a bunch of animals all muddy and dirty because they've been rolling in the mud and it's not perfect. So there's no reason to expect.
11:18that your life on your farm should be perfect. Your life with your husband and your child should be wonderful.
11:29Yeah, we've heard of people, because homesteading is kind of a movement right now. People move in from the city, you know, Biden the little rancher, and just you think you could do all your stuff. But then the second thing that's trending that I saw after this on social media was people leaving homesteading or they're hiring people to work on their homesteads. Because
11:55they don't realize how much work or even death for that matter that happens on your homestead like with animals. There's just a lot of upsetting or tragic things that happen that's out of your control as a farmer or producer. We've had chicks that just, we don't know why, but survival of the fittest, don't make it. Or we spend eight weeks pouring into a flock and then...
12:22something on butcher day doesn't go like as planned with like partying that like after the process of Butcher, you know, like when we're plucking the feathers off if something perfect doesn't happen. We're like, okay. Well now we can't sell that chicken Um, so there's a lot of things that's happened along the way. It's like you work so hard, but it's still not at our will of what really what's the final product that we get from that and a lot of what why we started homesteading was to
12:51get us a more, just to know more about our food and what's going into it and have better products and just be more self-reliant in that way. And so on not a lot of land, chicken was the answer for me, for us. And so we get upset when we mess something up or if it doesn't look perfect for a consumer, but we're like, well, it's really for us and we don't need it to be perfect. So.
13:17There's been the, we have to remind ourselves to slow down and not sell all of our stuff. Because one time we sold all of our chicken and we didn't have any for our family. And we were like, oh, like we got so excited on the business side of things and how it was growing that we didn't remember to check and make sure that we had what we needed. So we've had to adjust a lot of things because even though we started small and there's so much potential to grow and more people are asking and businesses are asking about our products,
13:48have that scale right now. Like we just can't do it. And that's been so disheartening to have like say that but it's like we're not really turning us like a salary off of this, you know, and we're also still very new and very fresh. But I think that's a big frustration that people have with farming and starting out. It's like you realize, oh, it's not profitable to do it for myself only. So now I need to like do this for consumers. But then...
14:16you start scaling up and now you have this whole business that you've scaled up and you can't go back. We've seen that a lot, kind of where we're at of people getting too big, too fast. Mm-hmm. Yep. Drowning in their success. Yeah. So it's kind of, it's like frustrating for us, but we're also like, there's no way we could have taken on more right now. We just don't have time. Yeah.
14:43And it's true of everybody. You have only a certain amount of numbers or hours in the day. You have only a certain amount of energy. And when you run out of both, you're done. That's it for the day. Yeah. So I think it's amazing what you're doing. And I'm gonna, I'm going to tell a secret that I haven't mentioned on the podcast ever when we bought our place four years ago, one of the things that we made sure of is that it didn't have to be a homestead.
15:12It could just be a home. Because my husband and I, well, I will be 55 in November. My husband turned 55 in June and we're not getting younger. We don't have the energy of 20 year olds or 25 year olds or even 30 year olds at this point. And so when we looked for a place, we made sure that we found a place we didn't have to remodel. Number one, cause neither one of us want to do that again for a while.
15:40because we had a house that needed to be repaired all the time for 20 years and it was awful. And we found a place where we have a huge pole barn. So if we wanted to, we don't have to do a garden, we don't have to sell eggs, we don't have to have animals. We could literally rent out the pole barn for people to store their boats and their trailers in for the winter. So we tried to find a place that would work on many levels when we looked for it.
16:10So we have done the gardens, we have done chickens, we have sold stuff, and I'm telling you, I think we're probably gonna be scaling, or not scaling, pivoting in the next five years to other things because I don't know that we're gonna be able to keep up with a 100 foot by 150 foot garden in five years. Who knows? So home studying is...
16:35a lifestyle. It is not about a land. It's not about whether you're selling stuff. It's about how you're living your life.
16:45Yeah, I 100% agree.
16:49So, you grow flowers and sell flowers, you have chickens and you sell chickens. What else do you do? We have Christmas greenery. So that was kind of the first thing that I ever started. I was still working at the time, but we have evergreen trees on our property. So I was throwing together some Christmas wreaths and I did probably only 20 my first year. Well, last year.
17:19was year two. And I said yes to doing a fundraiser for a school. And then everyone else wanted Reeves and I never changed my prices because I didn't know better. And I was up till like 2 a.m. for about two weeks just making Reeves because our daughter was six months old at the time. And we were mostly still breastfeeding as well. And you know, I couldn't get work done until she went to bed at night.
17:47So we were up so late just cutting greenery in the dark, bringing it down to our garage. Everything happens in our garage, by the way. We have a half garage so we can't park a car in it so we create everything in our garage. But we sold over a hundred last year. So I went from experienced, in quotes, saying, oh, I can make all these wreaths. Yeah, it's great. And then we sold over a hundred and made over a hundred. I think it was like a hundred and eighteen maybe.
18:16Um, and so now this year we're trying to plan ahead, but it's tough because you can't really separate your time when you're doing something like greenery, uh, for the holidays, because the holidays, it's a calendar event. Like it, it doesn't go longer or shorter. Like people want it all at the same time. So you have to just power through and do it. And we're not at a place where we're paying employees to help us. And even if we have friends that we trusted to help create something like Reeds with us. Um.
18:46It's like, well, then how do you value their time? Because it is a lot of work. So we just, we're like, we're not at the place to do that. So we do it all ourselves and we just kind of say, you know, we have a week or two out of the winter where we know we're going to be a little tired and power through. And a lot of others who see everything we're doing or who actually know how hard we're working and they question like, Oh, how do you do all of this? Like you shouldn't be.
19:14doing it all. One of our family members says, we're human beings, not human doings. But when my husband and I look back at this and we're like, yes, we're really tired, but we enjoy this. And kind of to your point of like, you guys are going to start scaling back because you're getting older and that's just something you want to do. It's like...
19:35We're not 20 year olds going out to clubs and partying in the city. We're the 20 year olds that are spending all of our time and energy kind of being crazy doing things like this instead. So it's almost like we're the, you either get this type of 20 year old or you get that one and we're the, the ones that are just kind of overspending our time and energy right now on, on learning and just doing all of this business stuff. So yes, it's exhausting, but it's not, doesn't last forever. Um,
20:03And the older our daughter gets, the more kind of helpful she gets too. And it's a little more independent and doesn't need as much of our attention. But, um, that's been one of my favorite things of our homestead is the greenery, just cause that was the very first thing we ever started. The chickens came out of, because I used to work for a chicken company when I was in marketing, but it was a commercial company. Um, so I learned a lot from that. And then the flowers, I worked in a flower shop in high school and it was my project in FFA. So I learned a lot.
20:32from my boss there and I was her first and only employee. And then now I actually, she reopened her shop in my hometown and I'll go in and see her and tell her some of the stuff we're doing. And she bought flowers from our farm a couple of times. So it kind of just all stays full circle, but we're really involved in the community even outside of our homestead too. So we spend our time.
21:02canning portion of our homestead where this year I just kind of had women coming over who wanted to learn how to can foods. And I just taught them how like we, they paid for their produce and jars and they just came over to the house and took notes and canned with us. And I think there's more potential for that to be more of like a workshop in a commercial kitchen next year. But for now, it was just personally me testing waters on how something like that would go.
21:31But we're always brainstorming for the next big thing that we're going to be doing.
21:38Yeah, absolutely, because you're growing. You're growing your home state. You're growing your business. You mentioned FFA. You were part of FFA when you were in high school. Oh, yeah. So my FFA has about a million members nationally now. When I was in FFA in high school, there was about 600,000 members. So on a national scale, it's grown so much in just such a short amount of time. But
22:03I was blessed to have a middle school chapter. So there's not a lot of middle schools that have FFA and mine did. So I was in FFA starting in sixth grade and didn't grow up on a farm but heard that I can make friends and have a lot of food at meetings if I joined this club so I did. And my teacher like still today is a friend of mine now but became such great mentors from middle school through high school. I was a state officer.
22:31with FFA and so was my husband and that's how we met. So we were like leaders for our state here in Virginia. I moved on and tried to run for national office and didn't get it but stayed plugged in after that. And now I actually train other state officers with national FFA. So we're FFA nerds. We're trying to already plan how our daughter is going to be in FFA when she's in middle school. But it's really big around here. So we help out a lot with the chapters as much as we can.
23:00so that we can kind of try to pour back into those teachers because I know it's hard being a teacher for FFA and Ag and those students still need community support so that those programs stay strong. We're also involved in Farm Bureau too here locally. So we just try to stay plugged in because really if it wasn't for us staying involved with these Ag organizations, we would not have had the support that we needed to start this business.
23:30because we had never farmed before. So you can't just come out of water with no network and just sell to your community. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It does not. We tried that. We failed the first year. We finally figured out that if we didn't meet the people in our area, we weren't going to sell anything. So the reason I asked about FFA is because I interviewed a lady from FFA.
23:58for the podcast months ago. And she was fantastic. She was great. She told me all about Future Farmers of America and how it's not just Future Farmers now, it's the science of farming and all kinds of stuff. It was just a great informational chat. And I haven't really talked to anybody. Yeah, as I say, yeah, it started in Virginia. And so it started with just six,
24:27six men at Virginia Tech here who wanted to start an organization for farm boys. So the only people who were allowed in FFA when it started in 1926, technically 1925 on this, like it was called Future Farmers of Virginia. So you had to go to Virginia Tech and you had to be interested, and to get into Virginia Tech, you had to be interested in the military and agriculture mechanics.
24:52So you had this really small group of folks who were even allowed to be in it. And over time, like in the 60s, women were allowed in the FFA. We merged with New Farmers of America, which was an ag organization for African-Americans. So a lot of changes that happened, honestly, really late in our history as an organization. But yeah, now it's, I mean, in the 80s, they changed it to where it wasn't Future Farmers of America anymore,
25:21turning away people who weren't farmers, but were really great for the agriculture industry. So yeah, I mean, I hope you nerded out over that because it's really cool about how it's changed over time and all of the things that it's doing still now for students. It's crazy. Oh, yeah. I asked her every question I could think of because I was not part of FFA when I was growing up because there were no classes at the school that I went to.
25:48But what I was going to say is I haven't talked to anybody who has actually been in FFA in school. So I'm really glad that you brought it up. Yeah, I took, when you start out, you take these really introduction classes that teach you about animals, plants, and mechanics. But when you get a little deeper into high school, like after you take those intro classes, you get to pick.
26:17like if you really like mechanics, then you run with the mechanics class. If you really like plants, then you run with like the natural resource classes. So I ended up taking a mechanics class, which I ended up not pursuing that. I was terrible at it. Um, and then I took some more plant science classes and my project was with floor culture. So it ended up paying off like what I had learned back then to right now. Um, and now I have, like, there are students that are in these ag classes.
26:46that can do so much with small engines that I'll never know how to do. You know, and they're in high school. So that helps them learn more about careers they're gonna be interested in, whether it's college or not. So once they're gone, they're gonna be a productive human that knows about food, knows about the environment. You know, like I said, I did not grow up on a farm, but after my FAA experience, I was on like a national team that judged soils.
27:11I sit on the national team that for Envirothon is what's called for the environment. So it's just like these contests and incentives that happen that reward you for just knowing more about the world that we live in. So it's definitely worth it to be an organization to invest back into whether that's time or money. If anyone ever comes about FFA, it's ultimately making good humans that will live around us. So.
27:40We hope that our daughter chooses to be an FFA. We won't force her to do it, but I think naturally it will just be something she's interested in because of how she's gonna be growing up. Yeah, my granddaughter, who is, I think, 12, it's hard for me to keep track of her age because they live in Nebraska and we live in Minnesota and we don't actually see her a lot. So she is in...
28:06The very last year of elementary school, or she's in the first part of middle school, I can't remember right now. And her school is tiny. And she just got involved in 4-H. And my son called. And he was like, yeah, she's going to join 4-H. And I was like, yes. And I almost said, do they have FFA? And then I was like, they probably don't have it for elementary school, because that's not where it starts. But if they do, I suspect she'll be in that too.
28:35Her classroom size is 10 kids. Wow. Yeah, you know, my high school was about 700 people. My graduating class was about 150. So when I went to college and I learned that some people had a graduating class of 1,000, and then some had a graduating class of 10. And I was just like, OK, I don't know if I'm in the middle or what, but I just never knew such things existed.
29:04of having such a small group of people that you are going to grow up with. But we've been considering homeschooling our daughter. So that's the only downfall about FAAs. There's no FAA for homeschoolers. But just, you know, I was a teacher only for a year and only for a year for a reason. And I just am like, I don't know. I don't know if I want her to sit inside a school all year, not going outside other than for 30 minutes of recess.
29:33But you know, my husband and I went through public school and we turned out fine. So I know it's not the end of the world, but we're just trying to figure out what we value more with school and kind of the lifestyle that we're trying to, to live here on what we're going to do. But we've, we have a little bit of time, a little bit of time, just like one and half, so we don't have to pick anything right now. Don't stress yet, mom. Don't borrow trouble yet. You've got lots of time. Yes, we do. Yep. Um, my kids went to.
30:02a small town, elementary school, middle school, and high school. And then a couple of my kids actually did homeschooling for the last four years of their education, you know, the high school. And I don't know which is better. I honestly don't. The fact that they were home with me the last four years of high school made me feel better because I didn't have to worry about their school being shot up because they weren't there if something happened.
30:29that they were not at that building if something happened and that made me feel better. But they also are very antisocial and I don't know if that's from them being home schooled through 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade or if they just get it genetically because I'm terribly non-people too. I'm not terribly social. That's not my husband. My husband is like that.
30:57Yeah, so I don't know. My husband is-
31:04Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was interrupting you. My, my husband is very antisocial and I am not so much. Um, but what I've learned from working with students, like through FFA now, um, but even this college age group is that just typically this generation coming up is being called the pandemic generation because of COVID and just how that's affected them like now developmentally. And just a lot of.
31:33this younger generation is very anti-social or has a lot of imposter syndrome, mostly because of technology, are very good at putting on a face in public, but then behind, like when they're behind closed doors, they're like really down on themselves. And so that's really hard to hear when, cause we get trained on this so that we have more just situational basic awareness of this population that we're working with primarily. And that's not the case for everyone.
32:03Um, but, you know, unfortunately, especially I was in doing public school, um, during the pandemic. When school was mostly virtual and we saw some students who just switched to homeschool and they were doing really well. And then some who just didn't have that choice and family members were still working while they were having to get, like be responsible for themselves to get on the computer, to go to class. Um, and these are middle schoolers, elementary schoolers.
32:31uh, that are having to have this responsibility really early on and just not doing well with learning. So I, I, I feel like it took four years to get back into the routine of normal school quote unquote normal school. But then you have this group of children who had three or four years of not normal socialization, not normal education, trying to figure out what new normal is, is very dangerous territory.
33:01organizations like FFA or families who are more plugged into their community through farmers markets, through organizations like Farm Bureau, you know, you just don't see that. You just don't see people caring about where they live or what they eat or who they know anymore. And I think that makes me very worried about my daughter going to school in the future and the people she's going to be interacting with. So it's unfortunate when people say the world's not the way it used to be and it's really not.
33:31So that's where it's like, I don't know why we just don't take matters into our own hands and work to create this like home that we want to create and this community we want to create. It's not like you have to change the world by any means. Um, I just don't know why we don't care anymore. So yeah, that's kind of a big reason why we try to switch some of our mindset to kind of be more independent, but still be plugged into our community, you know? Um.
33:57So we'll figure out what we'll do with school, but I think it's just a generational thing that we have antisocial kids, you know? I think that's very normal now.
34:07Yeah, and I'm going to tell you when I was growing up and when I was in school, I got teased and bullied a lot and school was not fun for me. I loved learning. I loved my teachers, but I did not love the social aspect of school. And I think that's where my, I'm not really comfy around a lot of people started. And so now I get to curate my life, which means I get to have people who I really appreciate being around.
34:37around me. It is such a beautiful thing that when I say, Hey, would you like to come over and have coffee with me? It's because I genuinely appreciate the person that I'm inviting into my home. So I'm not, I'm not anti people. I'm just anti. I don't like people that don't act like human beings who are good. Yeah. Does that make sense? And it's so, yeah. And it's so hard, you know, cause like you want to tell like,
35:03a kid that or a student in high school is a little easier to grab on to because they're going to graduate soon. But you want to be able to tell students who have a hard time that it gets better because when you're an adult, it's not like this. But at the same time, you have to be able to process the trauma you went through as a student. A big reason why I left teaching was because it was emotionally taxing for me. I would have been able to do
35:30come home exhausted from the emotions I was carrying for my students because of just what they were dealing with at home. It was a lot. It's like I couldn't just, I couldn't be a teacher. I first was usually like counselor mode, which I'm not trained in to do. And I like, it's just being a teacher is a lot more than teaching content, which I already knew that, but just the issues of the world today really got to me.
35:59And I had students who were bullying me as a teacher, just the disrespect that was happening in the classroom. And so, you know, I hope that over time, the world tends to shake out when you become an adult and you, like what you're saying, like you have more control over what you wanna do and I'm still learning that as an adult now. But.
36:21It's kind of sad to see what students have to go through. So yeah, that's where I've seen these, I have homeschool groups in our community where I've got to see how they're taking their kids through homeschool or these smaller schools. Like we have a private school across the road that's pretty small. And just seeing the hearing from those parents, the positive things that are coming from their students' experiences there. And I'm like, I think that's more of the route that I would want my daughter to grow in instead of feeling a little more limited.
36:51Um, but I just, you know, I say, Oh, we turned out fine. We went to public school, but it's like, well, public school is different now. So, yes, yes, it is. Absolutely. But like I said, you have lots of time and you get to watch your daughters grow and become who she's going to be because the, the one and a half year old that she is right now is not the five year old. She's going to be. Yeah. That's sad to think about.
37:21She's going to grow up. Yeah, she is. She's going to grow up and she's going to become a fabulous young woman. And you're going to be like, wow, the days are long, but the years are short. And thank God I did all the things I did for her because she's an amazing human being. That's what's going to happen. My daughter is 34 and she's brilliant. And she entertains me every time I talk to her. So you have wonderful things to look forward to.
37:51Yes. Yes. 34 and your youngest is 22? Yep. Do you only have two kids? No, I have four. I have four. That's right. That's right. You say you have four. Yeah. My daughter is 34. My stepson is 33. I think he just turned 33. And my son after that of my body is 27. And then the youngest is 22. And that's a boy too. So my daughter is the only one out of the four.
38:21as a girl. Wow. Yeah, we don't know what will happen next for us with kids, but we hope to have at least one boy, but we don't really get to pick. So yeah, the thing that's funny is everybody when I talked to them, they're like, how many kids do you have? And I say four and they say, how many girls? And I say one and they say, where does she fall? And I'm like, she was the oldest or is the oldest. And they're like, oh my God, she must have been hell as a teenager. And honestly, she was the easiest one of the four.
38:51and she was the girl. The boys were harder for me. So, yeah. He just assumes that- Our girl is so sweet right now. Yep.
39:04Yes, baby girls are adorable. I really wanted my last baby to be a girl and then I found out at the ultrasound that he was a boy and I cried for five hours straight. Oh my goodness. Yep, sobbed. And then he was born and I locked eyes with him and I went, oh, you're all right. This is okay, I can handle another boy, it'll be fine.
39:30So, I cried for five hours for no reason, because he's a wonderful young man, and I love him just as much as I love the other three. It worked out great.
39:39Yeah. So, anyway, we got way off homesteading stuff, but we definitely talked about choices that wrap around homesteading lifestyles like homeschooling. So that worked out fine. Ashley, I tried to keep these to half an hour. We're at 39 minutes and 45 seconds. I'm going to let you go. Thank you so much for your time today. Yeah. And, um...
40:03We encourage people to follow along with us on social media. We're Shady Hill VA for Virginia. And so we post kind of everything we're doing. We've built most of our equipment and things that hold our flowers and chicken. So we have a lot of folks like ask us questions about where we buy things. We're like, well, we built it. So we try to share that experience on social media and on our website so people can follow along there if they're ever interested in pasture raising chickens or growing their own flowers.
40:32Yes. And your Facebook page is beautiful. It is loaded with so many gorgeous photos. Yes. I worked in marketing. So I've got the, what do we need to do to actually show up and be a brand online? And so we've invested a lot first there with marketing. And it pays off when you have your products looking great and tell your story the way you want it to be consistent.
40:59So really that's kept sales going for us is just being present online. Like all of our sales have been online. Um, so it's definitely worth the investment. So check us out on social media. Cause from time to time too, I give tips, um, from my, when I used to be a social media manager on like how to kind of be better about the little things you can do on building your brand online. Awesome. All right. Well, I will put the links in your, in the show notes for this. And thank you so much for chatting with me. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much.
41:28All right. Have a great day. Ashley. Bye.
 

Fostich Farms

Today I'm talking with Elisabeth at Fostich Farms.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Elisabeth at Foss Stitch Farms. Good morning, Elisabeth. How are you today? Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you. Good. And you were saying you're where? We are located in central Missouri. So that would be where...
00:29Our very small town is called Edwards, but it's the Ozark area in Missouri. Okay. So I've heard a lot about the Ozarks. I watched the series on Netflix or whatever it was with What's His Face and What's Her Face and all the crime and stuff. I'm sure that that is not true. So tell me about the Ozarks because I keep talking to people from the Ozarks or that area, but I don't actually ask about it. What...
00:58What is special about the Ozarks? Well, a lot is special. It's a beautiful, beautiful area, gently rolling hills. There's lots of beautiful rivers, bluffs. It, contrary to that episode, or that series, the Ozarks, I think a lot of that is fabricated. Oh yeah. But it absolutely is a beautiful area. And we love it down here. We have...
01:28We actually lived in this area for about four years and we moved down here from, we had a farm in Oryk, Missouri, which was like about two hours north. So we do, we love it down here. And also there's like the Ozarks. Okay, I was just curious, I've never been anywhere near it. It's very beautiful. Yeah. I've never been in that area at all. And I keep saying to my husband, if we take a road trip, we should head that way sometime.
01:58Yes, so of course my parents always want us to take the road trip to Maine to see them So that takes precedence every time and that's totally fine with me because Maine is beautiful, too Okay, so tell me about yourself and about Fossage Farms, okay So we my husband and I both grew up on farms. We'd be considered like second or third generation farmers but we're
02:24first generation using regenerative practices, which is what we kind of have focused in on our own farms. So after I left home, I continued farming on a small scale. I went to college, I'm an RN in the ER since 2002. My husband and I got married, realized that conventional way of farming really wasn't for us. It wasn't long-term.
02:51what is healthiest for the land or our livestock. So we started researching alternative ways to raise our livestock. And so we started with cow-calf pairs and then we started with small scale meat production, just like word of mouth, things like that. And then, you know, as mentioned earlier, like we grew up on a conventional farm. So we used, our families use conventional methods.
03:21And both of our families had small ruminants, so sheep and goats. And then also we had, my family had a dairy farm, Jersey cows. And then my husband's had Angus for the most part, cows. So okay. I love Jersey cows. I don't love them because of the milk that they give. I love them because their faces are so sweet. They are adorable.
03:47love them. Every time somebody says Jersey cow, I'm like, aww. Okay. So did I see something about hair sheep on your Facebook page? Or was that somebody else? Yes. No, we love our sheep. So what we got into after we kind of moved toward the regenerative
04:16are bred specifically for meat, so we do not shear them. So we pride ourselves on like excellent genetics. We have Sancroix, which is a breed that is parasite resistant. We have Catodin, which are excellent mothers. They have a beautiful, good hair coat that sheds really well. And then our rams are Lewis White Dorper genetics, and they actually are out of Oregon.
04:45But this combination of genetics, which we've kind of fine-tuned, I guess, over the last several years, end up being really good mothers, no hoof issues, they're parasite resistant, and then when we wean them, they have excellent weight. Their weight is really healthy and good. So that's kind of the direction we went to. We also have...
05:12Angus cattle and so what we do is we do rotational grazing. So our livestock, our sheep are moved behind the cows. Sometimes they're moved together, it just depends. About every three to five days and then it allows the lamb that they were on to rest and kind of return to its, helps the biological ecosystem kind of return to normal, helps microbial growth and then it...
05:42Basically, we don't use any pharmacological interventions because we have animals that are never in the same area for any length of time. They're constantly moving. So that's what we focus on. We basically, like I mentioned earlier, conventional farming is fertilizers. I'm kind of letting the animals and livestock roam freely throughout your property and supplementing with grains.
06:11finishing with grain and we don't do that. We are grass-fed from birth. They're grass-finished. If you want to call it finished, we don't really change their diet. We use rotational grazing system. Like I said, giving pasture time to rest, regenerate soil health. And so what we have seen over the years is that our
06:39The land has really come back to life and our livestock are so healthy. We have return of life, beautiful native grasses, pheasants, quail, we are with plenty of deer. And then this allowed us to have what we call stockpile. So we have extra areas to graze, especially through the drought years that we've had.
07:08our sheep have literally come out unscathed when we were in drought years, so. Fantastic. Every time lately I hear regenerative farming, the thing that pops into my brain is back to basics farming.
07:27Because it feels like it feels like everybody's going. Yeah, it feels like everybody's going back to the way it was done over a hundred years ago and, and it's the best thing for the earth and for the animals and for growing things. So, so I keep thinking back to basics every time I hear it and I'm like, it's not basic, but that's how it, how it translates to my head. Yes.
07:55You know, it really is. It's going more of a natural direction where you aren't, you know, feeding your animals grains and things like that. And they have, like I said, they have more of a natural diet and they are able, we do supplement with minerals, of course, and we work very closely with...
08:22vet out of Bolliver, Missouri, which is he's like about an hour away from us, but he's specializing in small ruminants and He is you know, we make sure our animals are healthy and they have what they need based off our Geographical area as far as minerals go but over time, you know That will even improve as we continue to rotate and the ground gets healthier so Okay
08:50So I have questions about hair sheep. I think I talked to somebody a few months ago about them, but I didn't ask this. Is it H-A-R-E or H-A-I-R? Well, for H-A-I-Rs, I think the way you spell hair. Okay, I didn't know what you were. I'm not a great speller, but I'm pretty sure that's, that would be it. Well, I'm sure if somebody types it in either way, it's gonna end and has sheep after it, it'll probably bring up what you're looking for.
09:19Probably. So I know that their fur, hair or whatever isn't technically wool. You don't use it the same way that you would use wool from the curly haired sheep. Right. But can you use their hair to like, I don't know, stuff a blanket or a pillow? Does that work? I have heard people have different uses for when they shed their coats. And
09:48Some breeds have a heavier coat than others as far as hair goes. And so you'll kind of see, you'll literally see a coat of hair in the pasture where they have shed. I have heard people, you know, place it on the ground in between their garden rows to help with, you know, weeds and things like that. I haven't heard of uses like
10:16stuffing a pillow because it truly is a hair coat. And what we have found with really good genetics, we don't have a lot of, we don't even see them shed. It's just like, I don't know if you've been around horses, they're, you know, once a year they might, you brush them and they get real thick on the curry comb or whatever, and they shed their coat and it's, you wouldn't, you couldn't peel it off. You wouldn't even know. So, and so they're very, very different than
10:45wool sheep in that sense because wool sheep it truly is wool and you shear it off and you have a big coat of wool that you can utilize for shearing. But these hair sheep, they're specifically bred for me and ours we want them to shed without any issues. We don't want them to have a big leftover coat on there. Okay. Yeah. And then the other question I have.
11:13And I've said this a billion times on the podcast already because I, I talk about the same things all the time. Um, we love lamb as a, as a food source and we don't have it very often because it's expensive at the stores and we don't happen to know anybody raising sheep right now. But have you, have you compared your hair sheep breeds meet with, um, the other wool sheep breeds?
11:41for the taste or the texture or whatever of the meat? So I have not. I have compared breeds of hair sheep, but I have stayed away from wool sheep as far as meat goes. I'm sure you could try it. I'm sure you could, you know. However, we have done white dorper, which are kind of the angus of the...
12:11sheep world, if you want to call it that, and they are fabulous. That's half of the rams that we process are half white dorper. And the cod has also a very wonderful flavor. However, the sandcroy are a leaner breed, so they grow a little slower and they don't have as much meat
12:40very good as well. So I've compared hair breeds but not wool versus hair. Okay, I was just curious if there's any real big difference in the meat itself. Yeah, I don't know. I know that as far as hair sheep, they are specifically bred for meat. So we look at, especially wean weights, we look at how much they weigh and how they're growing on grass.
13:10not all breeds and not all genetics are equal, obviously, and you can have very poor genetics will not produce, you know, high wean weights and sheep that grow well and maintain their body weight on just grass. So we do look at that because we want healthy sheep on grass.
13:39So, okay, so do you sell to sell your meat or do you just do it for yourselves? No. So what we have done and it started through word of mouth. I was working in Kansas City for a long time and I started, you know, we started with grass finished beef and then basically through word of mouth is how we've developed our customer base. We
14:09We like to have a relationship with the customers who buy our product. We love that. Um, as a matter of fact, some of them come down to our farm and, um, see the farm and how the sheep are raised and how the beef is raised. Um, and so, uh, it's mostly word of mouth. Um, I have a Facebook page, the Fostage Farm Facebook page, but I do very minimal advertising. Um, I re I wish I could stay ahead of orders, but
14:39Basically we lamb in the spring and I fulfill orders in the October timeframe typically and we also try to have a reserve throughout the year for individual cuts. We do use a USDA inspected butcher for our orders, especially when people want individual cuts and not a whole lamb.
15:04And we sell all throughout Missouri, Kansas. We've done sales in Arkansas. My son, he actually kind of delivers our orders when they're large enough. But a lot of times we have just individual orders. Somebody wants lamb chops, and we're just thrilled that we can provide that to people. And so we're super thankful for our new and returning customers, and a lot of them are
15:34our current and former coworkers and colleagues that both my husband and myself. Okay, cool. So tell me about a day, a weekend day on your farm because I ask people this all the time. They're like, eh, and they don't really tell me anything. So what can you tell me about a typical Saturday on your farm? Okay.
16:04We have, I make a plan for the day. We will either be building our next area for rotation, which is we use poly wire and stakes. And so we kind of estimate how much we need to fence in. So we build our enclosure and then we will move the sheep or the cows, whichever we're moving. And that.
16:32takes time, obviously. Water's a huge deal. We always make sure they have clean water. And if it's pretty far away from the house or from a well, we do have to haul water. So that's time consuming. But basically we are always planning for the next rotation. Even today, we're planning for the next rotation. Yeah. And then we...
17:00It's kind of a, we have three kids, it's kind of a joint effort. We build our next rotational area. Sometimes we build two or three enclosures ahead of time. So we're, which is really nice because then all we do is just move them. But we'll move the livestock. We'll make sure they have fresh, clean water and mineral. I always check the health of the animals. That includes the.
17:29cows as well because we've started calving actually now and then we lamb in the spring. And so we always check the health of the animals, make sure they're all you know looking good, their body score, and then so obviously that takes time. And then we have another area with our rams that are being, well we call them just they're just being grass-fed, finished, whatever you want to call it, but basically that's a separate area so we
17:59have to move those as well and we always check their health and how they're doing as well. So it's a lot of fence checking, especially if for some reason that our voltage on our polywire is not the greatest. We have a lot of wildlife, so occasionally the polywire will get hung up on a barbed wire fence or a stick or something or a tree or fall. So there's a lot of fence checking, a lot of moving of livestock.
18:27And then we have maintenance things like making sure we're head on, then roll and fixing the tractors and trucks. My that's basically what my husband does, but there's a, I focus on the animal health side of things and, um, that consumes quite a bit of our tour time. So, um, like I said, we don't do grain. Um, but if, if for some reason we have to
18:55We see something that needs treated, which is pretty rare. We'll actually take like four, like a gated little corral thing and do it wherever the animals are at so we don't have to move them up. They are bucket trained. I mean, we could put gravel in a bucket and shake it and they'll come. So they're bucket trained, but they're not getting grain. So.
19:23But as far as like their temperaments and stuff, they're super chill. And they know, I love sheep because they know they're shepherd or shepherdess in this case. So they're very, you know, good with familiar faces and stuff like that. So, like I said, it's just mostly building fences and moving and checking. And we also have other animals. We have horses and chickens.
19:53I have milk goats and you know, cause we would like to be as self-reliant as we can. We like to grow our own food. We love to garden and things like that. It's a good plan right now. It's a great plan. So do you guys have herding dogs to help or is it just you guys pushing the cattle and the sheep? We have livestock guard dogs, which are a big Antolian Shepherd.
20:22Pyrenees and acbash actually, that's their breeding. I will tell you that we would be dead in the water without them. They protect that flock and do not leave the sheep. We have several of those dogs that are with each herd of sheep. Then I call them my fancy breeding rams. They're actually up here close to our house.
20:52because I don't have an extra dog to put with them. So we kind of rotate them around the pastures close to our house so that we can keep an eye on them. But we, because of wildlife and, you know, just coyotes and different predators, sheep have, you know, pretty much three issues, be your predators, your parasites, and your parameter, your fencing.
21:19And if you can get that, if you can master that, you've pretty much, like my vet says, if you can master those things, you've won the war. And we worked really hard. And I feel like, you know, that we have a good system in place. I'm not going to say we've mastered anything because as far as like predators, especially, there could, but again, we have wonderful livestock dogs and we could not serve.
21:48We could not have sheep without them, period. And they have significantly minimized our losses even with the cattle with calving, because we're pretty far out here. And there is black bear out here in Missouri and there's lots of coyotes and stuff, but we just don't have predator issues anymore thanks to those dogs.
22:12They're doing their jobs. I love it. Right. And we also, I will say we do have a blue healer, but he only works with the cows. We don't stress those sheep at all. They are very gently handled. We went and did a beef quality assurance cow-calf certification on our farm, and we just try to handle everything as gently as possible. And like I said, if for some reason we can't, you know, this...
22:40our blue healer needs to get in there and help with a cow being naughty. Then we'll use them. But we try to do everything just by walking and hurting them that way. They're very cooperative. I will tell you when cows and sheep are trained this way, they move themselves. They know it's time to go. So they just follow along. It's pretty amazing.
23:11Well, you know, it's very, it's almost intuitive. I've been doing this my entire life. As a matter of fact, my very first degree, I was a vet tech and then I went and got my nursing degree. But I think it's experience, you know, you anticipate what can go wrong. And if you don't love it, you're not gonna get in tune with it. And I think, you know, I love it and there's nothing else I would rather do. And I'm.
23:40I'm thrilled that to speak with you and to have customers that want our product, it's just exciting to me. But as far as skills, that's from experience and messing up. And it's very, very intuitive, I think. And like the animals know you and the livestock know you when you're out there and you spend time with them. They get your routine. They
24:06They have a routine. They know when it's time to move. They, you know, it's pretty amazing. And it's also amazing to watch those livestock guard dogs take care of those sheep that that is incredible. So it really is. I, I have seen videos of livestock guardian dogs doing their jobs and it is beautiful to watch them just know that that's, that's their charge.
24:35that they have to take care of the animals that they have been given to watch over. And they just do it. Yeah. And what's amazing is when we move them, when we move the sheep to a new pasture, they, one is in front, one is in the back. As soon as they get in, one stays with the sheep, one runs the perimeter. And it's like they clear the area.
25:00And so, yeah, it's incredible. We've found very interesting things that they've, you know, taken care of or killed over the years. So, yeah. We don't really have a whole lot of scary predators here where we live in, I guess, southwest Minnesota. I know up north there's bears, but we have never seen a bear down here. We have coyotes who tend to hang out.
25:28probably a good quarter mile away. They don't come on our property. Partly because we have a dog and she's, she's around all the time. So she's always using the bathroom outside. She's always yipping. She's always playing. So her scent is everywhere. And I think that's part of why the coyotes don't come on our property. And there, there are foxes in the area, but I've never seen one on our property.
25:55I will tell you it was not about eight weeks ago, my daughter and I were up in a pasture pretty far away from the house and we couldn't believe what we were seeing. We saw a couple black bears and the two, one of the big, big livestock guardian dogs just took off after them. We've never seen them since. And I don't think, I think it was just a fluke. They're not in our, on our properties.
26:25often there's no dens here or anything that I'm aware of. But it was pretty amazing that for the distance that they were, they sensed that and it was just amazing how he just bolted and they took off. We've never seen them since. I love your dogs. I do love your dogs. I'm glad they take care of your animals and they take care of you. Yes. We have...
26:54It's interesting, we have skunks in our area. Oh, yeah. And in the spring, they amble out of wherever they're hibernating and they make sure that we know they're around because they stink. And then this time of year, they start kind of showing up again in the area because they're eating everything they can to get ready for hibernating again. And
27:18I woke up at one o'clock in the morning the other night and our window was open. I was like, oh yeah, because somebody either hit a skunk or one walked through the yard and said hello. And so my idea of predator is not something that's going to kill my dog. It's something that's going to spray my dog. Make him smell for a couple of weeks. Yeah, I really don't want that to happen when she asked to go out at five o'clock in the morning. It was still dark. I was like, do you really need to go out or can you wait until it's light out?
27:47And she looked at me and I opened the door to our porch. She stuck her nose in the doorway, sniffed, and she was like, nah, I'll wait. She walked right back in the house and laid down. I was like, oh, so we do know what a skunk is. Okay, that's good news. But we don't have any livestock. We have chickens and we're going to be dispatching chickens this weekend because they're old.
28:13and they're getting lazy and we're feeding like a dozen chickens and we're getting two eggs a day. Oh no. So it's time for them to meet their demise and become chicken stock. There you go. And then we're going to get more chickens in the spring so we can restart our egg supply. It's going to be very weird buying eggs at the store. We have not bought eggs at the store in over five years. Oh wow. Yeah, you're going to have a, you'll have to get used to that.
28:39Yeah, I mean, I don't eat a lot of eggs, so it's totally fine. But it's just going to be weird to be handing money to a cashier for a dozen eggs, because we have done that forever. Yep. So take it that your kids love being part of the farm. They enjoy what they're doing too. Yes, I think they do. I hope they do.
29:03They know nothing else, honestly. They have been born and raised on the farm. So when my son turned 16, we kind of told him he's an official employee and he's been extremely helpful. So, and our kids are definitely heavily involved with from, you know, FFA to, I would say, I'm very proud of them, but.
29:33They know a lot more about livestock than probably most of the kids these days. Yeah, and FFA is Future Farmers of America, right? Yes, it is. Yes. I interviewed a lady from FFA. She was great. Oh, great. Yes. It's such a wealth of knowledge they learn and opportunities for leadership and agriculture and things like that. And we have it through the high school the kids go to.
30:02So both of them are involved with that. My daughter more so than our oldest son, he's a huge runner. So he does track and cross country, stuff like that. But she loves the animals, our middle child. So absolutely loves it. She actually helped with the state fair, took some of our sheep up there so that people could see them. And so it was a fun opportunity for her.
30:33So very nice, very nice. So what what I'm hearing from you, what I'm inferring from everything that you're telling me and how it sounds and how you how it feels when you talk is that you have built yourself a beautiful life that requires some hard work. Definitely. It's very hard work. It's very labor intensive, but it is so rewarding.
31:03Like I said, we absolutely, there's no greater joy than when people buy our meat and love it as much as we do and we know they're getting an exceptional product because it's, you know, there's probably nothing quite healthier, you know, honestly. And we don't, and we raise it in a way that the animals are cared for, it's affordable. You know, we're not, we don't have to, you know.
31:32Mark up the price crazy. They're born here. We know how they're raised and it's it's just we love it. So and we do I think my favorite part. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I think my favorite part of having sheep if I had sheep would be lambing season like the rest of the year. I would not care but lambing season. I would be like, oh my god, babies. It is my favorite time of year. It is amazing.
32:00that all our sheep are born outside in beautiful clean pastures with no assistance. We have twins. Our new mamas have singles sometimes. Sometimes they have twins. We have triplets. We've had quadruplets in the past, but it is absolutely amazing. And it's like popcorn because I put the rams in in November and then in the springtime around April.
32:29we'd start lambing and it's just, there's babies everywhere. And it's incredible. That's why I say it's like popcorn, because they just keep popping out. They're just everywhere. And they're so healthy and strong. And that's what we've worked so hard for as far as the genetic side of things, is they're so healthy, so strong, and so vibrant and get right up and suck and the mamas accept them and it's just, it's incredible.
32:57Yeah, and I'm sure that you have had moments where things haven't gone right and that has broken your heart. But I think that you have worked really hard so that things don't go wrong. Right, right. And you know, it's just, it's a, we know that that's life. And it happens. And I will tell you, you know, just even a little situation that happened this spring.
33:23We had one mama that had triples, so she already had two babies, and I didn't see the third one because her placenta had landed on the third one, and the baby couldn't get up. So it did pass. And so it was sad, but I was like, you know, she still has two beautiful babies, and she's feeding the babies. And it's such a rare thing that that happens.
33:52long as you are out there and kind of you know what to watch for you know when to intervene if Necessary but as far as helping them lamb pulling lambs, that's extremely rare Maybe afterwards just assisting with you know them latching on again extremely rare but we Went the more you do it the more you know what to look for I guess and when you have a pretty big volume you do have to be on it you have to be on top of things be out there, but
34:22It's probably, like I said, my favorite time of year, but extremely rewarding to see all the babies. We worked hard just to kind of identify what could go wrong, and that's what we look for. Yeah, I saw a picture of one of the lambs. I think it was 12 days old on your Facebook page.
34:47He has, he or she has the smushiest face. I just want to like lean in and kiss it through the screen. So that baby was actually 12 hours old when I took it. Sorry, 12 hours old. That's right, yeah. And so they are amazing because when you do, if there's any intervention, so this year we had a very minimal, we've had bottle lambs in the past, of course. They're your best friend forever. I mean,
35:16The lambs always remember the shepherd or the shepherdess's face and smell. And they're the most affectionate animals. And people don't realize that. They think they're a dumb sheep. But they're so affectionate and so sweet. And especially with the kids and my husband. Yeah, they know who takes care of them. We have a group that were bottle fed over.
35:44years that are probably some of the sweetest sheep. And it really is amazing because a lot of animals, if they are bottle fed, you know, they always kind of show a little bit of a deficit here or there, but not with sheep. They still grow very well, very nicely. They still catch up with the group. They're still able to be bred. So they're pretty remarkable animals.
36:13I lied. I misspoke earlier. We have friends that do raise sheep. We were over at their place for something a couple years ago. They have seven kids. One of their younger boys was going to go get mom or dad. I think we went over to get chickens. He had walked up the road from where the cattle pasture is to see who had pulled in.
36:40We had gotten out of the vehicle and right behind him trotting along was this probably three day old lamb going, going baa baa at him like it was barking at him. And I said, I said, that's a really interesting looking dog. And he said, it's not a dog, it's a lamb. And I was like, yes, I know it's a lamb. I was being silly. And he said, oh, he said, I thought you didn't know it was a lamb.
37:09I said, no, honey, I know what a lamb is compared to a dog. I said, apparently my humor doesn't go over well on the farm. And as I'm saying it, my friend had walked up behind me for the whole thing and didn't, I didn't know she was there. And she tapped me on the shoulder. And she's like, yeah, she said farm humor is different than not farm humor. I was like, well, I tried and she's like, I thought it was funny. So, but it was his best friend that whole summer. Oh yeah. There.
37:40It's pretty amazing. Love it. Yup, they're really fun. I would love to have sheep. I think that would be really fun. But as I've said a billion times already, we don't have any pasture for them to graze. So it's not going to happen where we live. But I love living vicariously through you and everybody else I talk to because I get to hear all the fun stories. Oh yeah.
38:05And so does everybody else and everybody else is like, we have pasture, we could get livestock, that would be great. Yeah, it is wonderful. There's nothing better in my opinion. Yeah. All right, Elizabeth, we've been talking for 38 minutes and 13 seconds and I try to keep you to half an hour. So I'm gonna let you go, but thank you so very much for taking the time to talk with me this morning. Oh.
38:31Thank you for letting me be a guest on your podcast, Mary. I appreciate it so much. Absolutely. I need all the people and all the stories I can get, or I don't have a podcast. So thank you so much. Have a great day, Elisabeth. You too. Thank you. Bye.
 

Winkleman Family Homestead

Today I'm talking with Anna at Winkleman Family Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anna at the Winkleman Family Homestead. Good evening, Anna, how are you? Good evening, I'm good, how are you? I'm good, I don't usually do recordings in the evening, but I had to talk to you, so this was the only time that worked. I had, I get to talk to you.
00:29Oh, thank you. Very honored. Yeah, I have a hard time at night because I tend to go to bed early. So I want to drink all the coffee in the world in the afternoon if I'm going to be up past like eight. And I was like, I can't drink coffee all afternoon because I'll be awake all night. So this is what we get people. We get a sleepy Mary talking to a very pretty Anna. It'll work out great.
00:56All right, so Anna, tell me about the Winkleman family homestead. So I have a husband and three small children. My children range in ages of three months to four years. And I grew up in St. Louis city in Missouri, so not homestead at all. It was very urban. And honestly, like the little house in the prairie vibe, I always kind of liked.
01:25but it just seemed like something that wasn't attainable. So yeah, I think my why started with COVID. When I saw those grocery store shelves empty, I was like, wow, maybe our systems aren't as, are more fragile than I think they are. Maybe I should do something about this and prepare myself more.
01:52Yep. And that's, I think that's why the homesteading movement really picked up steam in 2021. I was going to say, you probably have had several interviews like this. Um, there's been a lot of talk of COVID babies and I don't mean human babies. I mean, new ideas, new projects, new focuses, COVID babies is what I call them. And the one thing that got me with the supply chain issues.
02:19is I really like using Dawn dish soap, the green apple scented kind. Could not find it for a year. I was so mad because all the other dish soaps to me smell terrible. And I'm the one that does the most dishes. And I was like, I want my green apple Dawn dish soap back. Yes. But there were worse things than that. I mean, there were medications you couldn't get. There were just all kinds of things that you could not get.
02:50And like we're through it. I think we're okay now for a while until the next thing hits. But yes. I had a formula fed baby during that time during the formula shortage. It was pretty rough. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other stuff that really scares me because I nursed all three of the babies that I birthed until they were...
03:15I think my daughter was six months. I think my son was about six, seven months, and the last boy was eight months. And I can't imagine not being able to find formula for my babies if I wasn't nursing them. Just, it makes me choke up now just thinking about it. So yeah, that's terrible. So what did you do? How did you handle that? Well, we went to our pediatrician and...
03:42We're like, well, what do we do? It's just not there. It's not on the shelves. And she's like, well, there's not really a substitute for formula. And I'm like, well, formula is a substitute. There has to be something. I know that our grandmothers made things. And she was basically like, you can't really do that. It's unsafe. Your baby will get sick. And so essentially what my husband and I did is we prayed before going to the store.
04:12And just hoping that it would be there when we needed it and it was Every time that we went so I Just prayed Yeah, yep. And the fact is if it's a choice between your baby dying of starvation Right or trying something that might not be safe, but won't kill baby. I think that the thing that's not Not defined as safe might be better than it starving to death. So
04:40Right. And the nice one of the good things that came out of COVID is that the European formulas are much more accessible in the US. So that has been great. And they're, they're healthier, they're better. If the US formulas, most of them, the first ingredient is corn syrup. But whenever you look at the ones from Europe, the first ingredient is milk, which is great. Yep.
05:09Okay, so now I know your why. So what's the what? What's the how? What are you doing at your place? So we live, we're still pretty urban at the moment. We don't really have a whole lot in the way of land. We have like maybe a fifth of an acre. And we have a small house on top of that, 768 square feet. I know exactly how big it is because I have to use every inch of it. So.
05:38Yeah, it just started with like preservation with just different skills sourdough baking Gardening I don't have chickens yet But that's on my list for it was on my list for last year And then I found out I was pregnant and I was like I don't think I can keep chickens and the baby and the garden alive, so Gonna have to pick something So chickens are next year and then probably the biggest thing that I've been doing though is
06:08Just making, building relationships with those around me. A lot of farmers in the area. I know where to go to get raw milk now. I know where to go to get beef. And that's been such a blessing and I've met so many wonderful people through that. Yes, resources is a big part of homesteading for sure. We were in the same boat as you.
06:34for 20 years. We lived in a house that was 850 square feet of living space. It had three bedrooms and it was my husband and I and our four kids on a tenth of an acre lot. So I have literally been in your shoes and you can do it. I mean, we grew a really nice garden on that tenth of an acre and it wasn't a very big garden, but it was productive.
07:02And there was a huge patch of rhubarb that had been there for years. Like when my husband bought the house, like I think it was a 12 by 12 patch of rhubarb. And my neighbor said that the rhubarb was probably at least 50 years old, the roots because she's, she knows about plants. So we had, we had lovely rhubarb. We would share it with everybody because, because we're the only ones on our block that had rhubarb.
07:31Mm-hmm. And so, and so I was like, anybody need rhubarb? Because I have it coming out of my ears right now. Come take some. And if you want some of the roots, take those too. And we grew peonies and we grew little roses bushes and we grew climbing roses on the trellis in the back. And it was just this lovely urban garden thing. And we gave the neighbors produce every summer. It was, it was just really fun.
08:02And then we moved because we were tired of being in town. So now we're on a 3.1 acre lot. But you can do it and you can do things like, um, you can get raw beeswax from the hive that the bees have made honey in and you can melt that wax down like seven times in boiling water, let it cool down, all the wax rises to the top, all the yuck falls to the bottom.
08:31and you have beautiful beeswax to make candles with or lip balms or soaps or whatever. There's so many fun things that you can try just because you can do, just because you can, that are homesteading skills. Absolutely, yeah. And that's something that I've been really encouraging a lot of my friends to do and just people around me that even those who live in apartments, you can have a few tomato plants on your patio, you can have a little herb garden.
09:01and you can learn how to can. And actually when I started canning, I didn't have any equipment. My husband isn't really 100% on board. He's kind of supportive, but he's like, I'll call him frugal, but he's kind of cheap. So I was trying to find ways to make it really frugal. And I managed to do a bunch of canning without actual canning equipment.
09:30I kept some canning rings on the bottom of a stock pot just so that the cans didn't or the jars didn't hit the bottom. Yeah. And just using things I had around and it worked.
09:44Yeah, I wouldn't, I'm not recommending anybody do this. Do not do this without looking into it and learning about it. My husband's grandma used to make tomato sauce by just hot canning, not actually water bath canning or pressure canning, but just making sure the jars were sterilized and then putting the hot tomato sauce in the jar, wiping the lid with vinegar. The, the
10:13rim with vinegar and putting the clean lid on. And my husband was like, I think we should try it. And I'm like, I think we're going to die. And he was like, we're not going to die. Nobody died in my family from eating her tomato sauce. And I'm like, okay, we can try it. I said, but if I see anything in that, that tomato sauce, when I open it, it's going to the trash. And he was like, okay. So he did that one time and it made me so nervous. I mean, we ate the tomato sauce, nobody died, but I don't ever want to do it again.
10:43So the point of me telling the story is that I would not recommend that. There are things that our ancestors did that might not be as safe now as they were considered to be then. So, but, but yeah, I literally, every time I open one of those jars, I put like a little star on the lid. So I knew which ones were done that way. Every time I opened a jar, I'm like, don't let us die. If we eat this, please, I don't want to die of botulism. It seems like a terrible way to go.
11:14So yeah, there are risks that I'm willing to take and some that I'm not, and that one was very, very iffy. Yes, I probably would also not take that risk. Yeah, yep, I was like, I don't know, babe, this seems like a really, really iffy kind of thing to do. And he was like, it's fine. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna trust you, but if I die, I'm coming back to haunt you. And he's like, okay.
11:43The Amish do it. They have practiced that for a really long time, but yeah, I'm not sure I would do it. I don't want to do it again. I really don't. Next time he's like, I'm going to do it that way. I'm going to be like, well, you're going to be eating them by yourself. I don't want to do it.
12:06Speaking of the Amish, I was actually another... I have a couple other things. That's not exactly my why. Yeah, go ahead. Yes. No, go ahead. I was just going to say... Oh, sorry. So part of my why was for health... is currently for health reasons because I've done a lot of research on just how this way of life is just healthier. Being outside is healthy and canning your own stuff from your own garden organically is healthy.
12:34And I started researching how the Amish have very, very low cancer rates and very, very just from, I don't want to get into a vaccine debate, but they don't vaccinate and they also grow their own food and preserve their own food and they just live really healthy lives. And I don't know, I just think there's something to that.
13:02Yeah. And also, I don't think I could be wrong. There may be an Amish man who's in his 50s sitting on a rocker on a porch right now smoking a pipe. But I don't think the Amish smoke, I don't think they drink alcohol. You know, all the vices, I don't think they have as many vices as the average American does. It's all it's all a crap shoot. There's so many bad things that we do that all pile on that.
13:30make us not as healthy as we could be. Right. And whatever you can do to mitigate some of that, do it. We eat tomatoes all the time because they have antioxidant properties in them. Antioxidants are very good for your body. It helps you. So anything you can do to improve your health, I am all for it.
13:54So I was gonna say, while we're talking about the things you can do if you don't have room to grow your own stuff, is you can do a thing that we used to do. We were lucky enough to live near an apple orchard where the owner would sell his seconds, the apples that weren't very pretty. He would sell half a bushel for like 12 bucks, half a bushel of apples. And that's a lot of apples.
14:24Oh, two months worth of apples for a family of six. Nice. Yep. So we would go up every fall and we would buy a bag and I, we would make apple sauce because real apple sauce from apples cooked down with just a little bit of sugar in it. So good. And we would make things like apple pies, but we wouldn't bake them. We would put them in the freezer and bake them in the wintertime.
14:51So we had like an almost fresh apple pie in January. And we would do- That's so nice. I do something similar. We did like an apple butter. Yeah. All right, you do something similar. We do something similar. We go to a farmer's and get, so my first year gardening was a crap shoot. It was awful. I failed miserably.
15:20I failed a few times since too, but it was pretty bad. So I actually went to a local farmer and just, he gave me, well, didn't give me, he sold at a pretty reasonable discount. I think it was like $20 for a huge box of tomatoes. So I canned our own salsa that way. I made some bread and butter pickles. He sold me a bunch of pickling cucumbers. Yeah, it was good. It's so, like it's work. It's work to do this.
15:50But I'm telling you, there is nothing better than going into your closet or your cabinets or your pantry and grabbing a pint jar of applesauce that you cooked down and you put in the jars and you water bathed and you put away and opening that up and tasting it because it tastes exactly like the moment you cut into the apple that you're eating.
16:18It tastes better, I'm convinced. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's some real pride and satisfaction in all this stuff. And I, anyone who's never done it, I don't think they have any concept of it.
16:33Yeah, I agree. And you can tell I'm like steadfast in this because every time I talk about this with somebody who gets it, my voice gets really ringy. I can feel it in my jaws and my head. But yeah, it's just, I don't know, I love it. And I'm at the point where there are certain things that I really, really love to do that are homesteading skills.
17:01The stuff that's a homesteading skill that I don't really love to do, I'm at the point where I don't really do it anymore. I used to love to do cross-stitch things or gifts for people. I don't do it anymore, because it makes my hands hurt. And I don't crochet as often, because it makes my hands hurt, because I'm getting older and my joints hurt a little bit. So, when you're younger, so many things you can try. And things that you can try just for the hell of it,
17:31just because I think I want to learn how to do that. I don't really have a purpose for it, but it looks fun.
17:38I'm assuming you've tried that. Oh yeah. There's a few things, like making my own cleaning supplies, just different things that I've learned how to do just to say I could do it. I don't necessarily want to keep doing it, but I want to have the skill. Like cheese making and yogurt making, I've done both of those things. I just don't do them all the time. Yeah.
18:05A skill that I tried doing just because I could is lock picking. My youngest son wanted to learn how to be a locksmith like five, six years ago, maybe more. And he ended up getting a locksmithing tools kit. And it has the little picks that you use. And he was all excited because he had an old padlock and he got it to unlock with the picks.
18:34And he was like, watch mom. He showed me how to do it. And he locked it again. He said, you try it. I was like, I don't wanna pick a lock. He said, I just showed you, you try it. And I did it on the first try. He's like, you are no fun. He said, you have such beginner's luck. And I was like, well, you told me to do it. So I did it. So I sort of understand the mechanics of picking a lock. Not that I will ever do it for nefarious purposes, cause it's not who I am. But that was one of those things that I learned how to do just because somebody said, do it. And I tried it.
19:05So that's what I meant. There are things that I've learned to do that I will never use. I will have no use for it ever in my life. Right. But anyway, so you said you're in Missouri, is that right? In Missouri, yep. Yeah. How's your garden done this year? Well, the weather, I just can't decide what it wants to do. And we had record rainfall in July.
19:35It's been, I've gotten some cucumbers done pretty decently. Of course, every year my garden, it's kind of a battle between me and the squirrels. So I got a decent crop of tomatoes, I got cucumbers, some of it is just, it's just gone. Yeah, it's been a rough year for a lot of people across the entire US because Mother Nature can't decide what she's doing.
20:06Our garden's a mess. Our garden's a disaster. It's, it's, I don't even want to talk about it. It's such a disaster. No, I think that, I don't think that's great. I'm sorry. I think it's, I think it's great to talk about because I feel like we have this fear of failure a lot of times. And whenever somebody wants to pick up a skill and they don't do well with it at first, they just want to throw up their hands. But yeah, it's, it's hard. And just
20:34Yeah, my first year gardening, I didn't do any research and I planted a broccoli plant in the middle of June or something. And it was just a bad, it was, so the following year I actually read a little bit about that and learned I shouldn't do that. And I had a little better second year, but yeah, I think it's good that we share how things aren't going well.
21:04encourages others. Yeah, let me just tell you a little bit about broccoli for a minute. Broccoli is a cold weather crop and even if you plant it at the right time, it's still probably not gonna work out great because they don't get big enough to pick until it's hot out. And then they bolt and they're no good. They flower out and they're gross.
21:25So broccoli is a pain in the butt to grow and we did it for a couple of years and gave up. I don't, we don't grow broccoli anymore or cauliflower because it just is too hot in June. And we plant them as soon as we can get them in the ground in Minnesota, which is usually not till May 15th. So there's not enough cool, long-term cool, like there's not enough months of cool weather for it to do well. So I understand your pain on that one.
21:55And the reason I said I want to talk about my garden is because the last three summers it's been beautiful, just lush produced tons. I mean, not tons, but but many, many pounds of produce for us and to sell at the farmer's market and to share with people. And I've had people messaging me and calling me and saying, you guys have tomatoes this year for canning. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. No, we do not have to.
22:22And everybody's like, you seem so sad. And I'm like, I am. I expected to have panning tomatoes for us and everybody else this year, but nope. Nope, it's been awful. And my husband is the gardener and he's been, I've said this a couple of times, he's been so great. He has been so reasonable in his disappointment with his garden this year. I thought he was just gonna be grumpin'. And.
22:47He's like, there's always next year. We've gotten some tomatoes to eat. We've been some cucumbers. It's all good. I'm like, okay. I'm waiting for him to blow up about it. I'll figure about the end of September when he puts the garden. This summer socked. I'm like, yep, sure did. Hun, you're not wrong. So it's been rough on everybody. And I'm, I'm very concerned about how much produce is going to cost in the grocery stores this winter, because it's been rough for the.
23:18the bigger producers too. Mm-hmm. So I'm a little worried about that, considering I don't have anything to can from myself. I'm gonna be relying on the canned stuff from the store. Uh-oh. Right. So that supply chain thing might become an issue here in two or three months, I don't know. We'll see what happens. I don't know. I'm crossing my fingers. It's all gonna be okay. So anyway, you have little ones, yes?
23:47I do. Okay. Two little girls, four and three months, and then a little boy who's three. You have a three month old? I do. Yes. Oh, cute. Cute. I love babies. I've said this a bunch of times. I love babies. I really do. I'm glad I'm not in a position to be having any more babies, but I love babies. They are so sweet and they're so much fun.
24:16Mm-hmm. I always say I'm going to be done having kids and then I'm like, I miss the babies. Uh-huh. Yeah, it's an addiction. They're delicious. I love babies. Babies are wonderful. So are the older two into helping out with what you're doing? A little bit. The older one had her own little garden bed this year.
24:43Did it do great, but we're learning about... Okay, what did she grow? About how she grew zucchini and pumpkins. That's what she chose. Okay, and will she actually eat them? She does pretty well actually with vegetables. So yeah, she will eat them. We've gotten a couple of zucchini and maybe one pumpkin.
25:11The issue has been her, she likes to be in control. So when I'm trying to give her direction, she's like, mom, I got this. And then she like plants the seeds too close to each other. So we're learning. Uh-huh. Mom, I got this. And you're thinking, no, you don't got this, honey. Yep. Our kids were not really into the gardening when they were small. They loved going out and picking.
25:41the green beans and the peas and just eating them out of the garden. And they loved picking the cucumbers and eating the cucumbers out of the garden. They just were not into the actual gardening part.
25:55So, I don't know. Our kids were crazy. They were into theater and reading and school. I mean, I can't fault them for that. Those were all good things to be into. But gardening was not a thing. They didn't love it.
26:12We were bad parents. We ruined them. No, you don't have to garden. It's only the way we eat, but no, you don't have to garden. It's fine. But they're all, they're all good now. And my daughter is actually, um, taking care of her mother-in-law's plants right now, cause they're staying at her mother-in-law's house and they have, they're in Florida, so they have citrus plants and they have a pomegranate tree. I guess a tree.
26:41and they have avocado plants. So she's been doing some gardening. Wow. And then the stepson is also doing his own gardens this year because they now have a place to actually garden in. So he's been sending us photos of his gardens and they're doing great. So apparently they learned to garden and they just didn't want to be part of gardening when they were little. Right.
27:06So, and I don't, it doesn't matter to me if they wanted to buy everything at the store, that's up to them. So did you say that your husband did garden or he wasn't really a gardener either? He wasn't in his home? Not really. It's interesting, husband actually, so we both grew up like, I don't know, in kind of in the city, really urban. But his first job was actually working for a farmer.
27:36He sold the produce at a farmer's market and he would go out and work the farm. So he's done that kind of thing before, but whenever it came to me homesteading, he thought it was just me having another fad, another thing I wanted to be a part of. He thought it was a passing phase, but it stuck around for a good four years. Yeah, it's amazing how the passing phases build up to become a life.
28:06because that's what happened with us.
28:11So, have you gotten into any of the crafting stuff that goes along with homesteading, like crocheting or sewing or anything like that? I actually learned to crochet when I was a kid. My mom taught me, and I guess it is a homesteading skill. I didn't realize I had one, but I've had one all this time. Yeah, so I've crocheted. I'm not a very crafty person. I'd much rather be in the garden.
28:41My husband's a carpenter. That helps a lot. He's able to build me things, because that's a skill that I also do not have. I've tried. He asks me not to. It ends poorly sometimes.
29:00Yeah. Um, the reason I asked about sewing and crocheting and stuff is a lot of the home studying skills start out as little hobbies. You know, things that our grandparents or great grandparents did and we find out about it and we're like, I should try that. That sounds like fun. And it's a little hobby, but all those little hobbies and things that you learn just compound and add up to
29:26the things that you end up doing as a part of your everyday life. Absolutely. Yeah. And I for a long time. So I learned to crochet when I was a kid. And then I just didn't pick it up for years and years. And I saw some yarn and a crochet hook when I was cleaning up. I was helping my parents clean out their house. And I was like, Mom, can I take this yarn? And and I got back to it. I was like, this is I don't realize how much I miss this.
29:55Yeah, it's very zen. It's very relaxing. I haven't done it in a while. I've talked about it a few times in the last few months. I'm like, I need to find my yarn stash and my crochet hooks and do some of that this winter. I think that what I would tell people, if they were like, how do I get into homesteading? I would be like, you need to go to a Joanne's Fabric store or a Michael's store, walk in and look around and see what grabs you. Because if it's the fake flowers that grab you,
30:25You should be doing flowers. If it's the textiles, the materials, you should be doing sewing. If it's the yarn, you should be doing crocheting or knitting. Because really, I think that's where the little pieces start. And I know it's where it started for me, because I was like, I love Joanne's fabrics. I love the yarn. And then I was like, I hate knitting, but I could probably try crocheting. And that's where that bug got me, was just walking down the aisles of Joanne's fabrics, where the yarn is.
30:56So, I mean, you can go to a farm and watch farmers milk cows or muck stalls or, I don't know, castrate steers. But I don't think that's the same thing for people just starting out. I think that's a much bigger scope. Right. No, I think that's great advice. Yeah. Whatever you're drawn to at the craft store, go for it. Yeah. It's like the Marie Kondo thing about whatever doesn't bring you joy, get rid of it.
31:24Whatever does bring you joy, bring it into your life. And I just, I love cooking. I love crocheting. I love eating the food that my husband brings me out of the garden when the garden actually survives. It's, it's all just a lifestyle. And I've said this, I have said, it's just a lifestyle. Homesteading is a lifestyle choice in every interview I've done this week. And I've done four now.
31:53It's a choice. It's a lifestyle choice. It's not about land. It's not about animals. It's not about gardening. It's about what you want to do that makes you happy and what makes you self-sustainable and feeling like you're doing the things that are good for you. Absolutely. OK, good. I think I finally nailed it. I finally got it down pat. Yes.
32:16All right. I can't think of anything to ask you. I told you this was going to be silly because I'm sleepy, but it's okay. I try to keep these to half an hour, so we're at 32 minutes and 17 seconds. Thank you, Anna, for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. It was wonderful talking to you. All right. Have a great night. You too.
 

Weaver Meadow Farm

Today I'm talking with Megan at Weaver Meadow Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Megan and a couple other people at Weaver Meadow Farm, and Megan can tell me the other two people's names. We are here with Rye, my office administrator, and Bree, my sales rep. Oh my.
00:29You got the business end happening with you today. Yes, we've got all three of us here. Good. That's awesome. All right. So tell me about your farm. So I am Megan Weaver of Weaver Meadow Farm. We primarily raise a rare breed of pig called mason. They originated in China and they've only been available in the US since 2016.
00:57And I am one of the largest breeders here in the U S with registered stock. And then we also, uh, raise sheep as well. Okay. I literally not even our, an hour ago got done interviewing with a lady who raises hair sheep, so I would much rather talk about this special pig than sheep for another half an hour. So can we talk about the special sheep? I mean, special pig, sorry. Yeah.
01:24Not a problem. I love my sheep, but I really adore my pigs. Okay, good. So is it is it kind of like the wagyu beef that people are so fond of? Is that the same kind of level of special for the pig? Yeah, quite similar. We're still restructuring our grain program to create that similar marbling that the wagyu has. We are getting close to that and it is a red
01:53deep red pork that is super flavorful. The fat has a lower melting temperature and so a lot of it will melt during the cooking process and reabsorb into the meat, just creating something wonderful to eat.
02:11Oh, you're, you're, you're barking up the right tree here because I'm not really a fan of pork, but that sounds wonderful. That's pretty delicious actually. Yeah. Uh, Brie here has been, uh, taking photos and playing with recipes in ways that you don't traditionally see pork being used. And she's come up with some really creative recipes. Nice. Are they on your website? They're getting there. Okay. Good. Yes.
02:40Good because no one's going to cook with the the mason pork. But right now we're just taking photos and then trying dishes and posting them on the Facebook page for people to view. Awesome, because no one's going to know how to cook this to the best of their ability without recipes. Believe it or not, this pork is actually really quick to cook. It's not, you don't take your time. It'll dry out. It's very fast.
03:10Easy meat to cook.
03:13Awesome. So how did you get into this? Um, when I wanted to get into farming after I was a farm sitter, I didn't want to just get traditional breeds. I wanted something more unique. And so I was doing a lot of research. Um, and I finally came across the Mason pig, but at the time there was only roughly 200 registered in the whole U S and they weren't cheap.
03:42So I decided to go with a mixed breed, half mason and half herford, because it was a lot more budget friendly at the time to give it a try, see if the meat was any different. And even with it being a crossbreed like that, it was a big difference to any other pork that I've ever had. And so then we took the dive and we actually moved to a different location that was more suited for farms. And we
04:11delved into the sheep and the registered mason. And that took a little bit of time to grow them and then breed. And it just took off from there. I think I was a couple of litters in and I was number 300 on the registry. Peg registered number 300 for the whole registry there.
04:36And so that was pretty exciting and now the breed has really taken off. So it's just been fun because I love this breed. The look of them is like crossing Eeyore with a Shar-Pei. I think they're super adorable. Other people say they're an ugly cute. But they're just they're very docile breed. They're very easy to be around. They're not.
05:05aggressive or dangerous. I've had little kids supervised around my boars. There's just certain ones that capture your heart here on the farm that are just like well mannered little puppy dogs. They follow you around. They just want, you know, to be scratched on. And so they've been a lot of fun. And the piglets when they're born, their ears are really big, but they're flat against their neck and they look like miniature elephants.
05:35It's the cutest thing ever. That sounds adorable. How big did the the male pigs get? Um, unfortunately, my scale is for sheep and my pigs are a little too long for it. Okay. I would say they're around three to 400 pounds. And I think my biggest style that I have and she's really big for this breed. She's probably around 500 pounds. Try it for me. Yeah.
06:04But a sweetheart. Okay, so they're not small pigs. Nope. They're considered a medium size in the pig world. But if you really haven't been around pigs very much, they appear to be very large. Yep. So how hard is it? Like I want to know how hard is it to raise pigs? Like what do you need?
06:34to have to acquire a piglet and raise it to butcher? This breed is a little different because they are more lazy than your typical pig. So they just need a basic shelter to get out the wind and the rain. If you're in a very snowy area, then they need extra hay in their shelter to kind of burrow into. My pigs, they stay contained in a two-foot.
07:03mesh fencing. They're just very easy about that. So, you know, obviously the more room you can give them the better. This pig does like to graze and they do minimal rooting. So they're more of a surface rooter. So you may see some dirt patches where they've, you know, messed with the ground a bit, but come next season after the rain, it'll actually regrow grass in that spot because they don't damage the roots of your plant.
07:33Yeah. Um, and so some people who want to get into pigs for the meat side also want a pig that can rotate for the garden area. Um, this pig is not ideal for that. They are more ideal for a pasture rotation program. Um, unless you just have a lot of room, you don't have to rotate them, but they do find in a smaller area too, if you just want to raise them for meat. Um, they are going to take on
08:03some flavors of what you feed them. So you don't want to just feed them garbage because then you're just going to make a garbage meat. But if you eat them clean food, even some of your scraps and stuff is fine. But your basic grains, they do really well in that. They do love some alfalfa. Didn't you once tell me they're picky? They can be picky. And that's back when I used to get these massive amounts of fresh produce from Costco.
08:33And so they were so used to getting good produce that they would turn their noses up at spinach, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. They're just like, no, we don't want that. But they do love a lot of veggies. And then, I mean, if you really push these pigs on their feed, you can butcher at eight months. But I feel
09:01I mean, at six months you can, but I feel 10 to 12 months is the best, best time to wait until butchering.
09:13Alright, cool. So I don't want specifics because I don't want to be nosy and rude. But on average, how much does it cost you to raise a pig? Unfortunately, we, my grain supplier went out of business and so we have had to restructure our grain program. But you're, you're about,
09:43up to one ton of feed if you're going to butcher at 12 months without a pasture program. And so here that can cost anywhere from $530 to $700 depending on your feed and what you're feeding them. But with the pasture program, you can cut that down by half. Nice. Okay.
10:10So you're looking anywhere from 500 bucks to 1200 bucks in food to feed a pig from piglet through to butcher. Yeah, and that again just depends on your goal for your pig, you know, but it should not cost 1200 for this pig. Probably roughly $300 to $500. Okay.
10:36Mm-hmm. Yeah, I always I always overestimate because we have chickens and you would not believe how much feed these little crappers Eat. Oh my god My husband feels fills their their container with food every night and by morning It's three quarters gone. I'm like don't feed them at night feed them in the morning That way they get some and then they go out and eat the bugs and stuff. He's like, yeah, but they're hungry night I'm like no feed them in the morning, please
11:06It's crazy. Chickens do not know how to self-regulate. It's terrible. It's awful. I hate it. It's a meat chicken. Yeah, so. We'll be getting meat and egg layers. Yep. And milk and pot. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's... If you can't let them free range, be prepared to be feeding them lots of feed. Yeah. It's ridiculous. I wish...
11:34I wish that I didn't love having eggs at my disposal any time of the day, because we just wouldn't have eggs. We wouldn't have chickens, period. So yeah, we're looking at getting the 50 egg layers mill this month and then each year getting 50 more and keeping a proper rotation with the layers. And we'll actually be providing eggs to the pigs in their diet.
12:04Yeah, that makes sense. Are you going to sell any eggs to your community at all? Um, probably not, but we will be supplying it to like the employees and stuff like that. Cool. Good. Okay. So that's awesome about the pigs. I'm really excited for you that you have some different kind of breed that is not common. That's, that's unusual. So that's really fun. I saw that you guys have Anatolian Shepherds. Yes.
12:33Yes, we do. Um, yes, you're my favorite kind of people. I am.
12:44I was going to say I'm madly in love with my dog. So anytime people are raising dogs, all I want to do is talk about that too. And don't blame me there. We got some puppies on the farm that are learning the trade. Quite entertaining. So how many litters do you let your female dogs have a year?
13:06We've only just recently gotten to the breeding side of it. And so we've only had one litter so far, but we only plan to do one litter per female a year. And only probably two litters out of that female. So we have another breeding pair that we'll have coming up here soon. She is a brindle.
13:33And he is three quarter Anatolian and one quarter Akvash, but he is big, gorgeous and takes his job very seriously. Um, with people, he's like a giant puppy and he has become the farm favorite for the dogs. Everybody loves Milo.
13:57Okay. So how many pups do they have? Like, do they have eight? Do they have 12? Does it just depend? Yeah, it's going to depend on the dogs and their genetics. Zaya, for her first lawyer, she had 12. Was pretty large. How do they handle that? Because they only have eight teats. How do they handle feeding 12 puppies?
14:27Um, you know, they just kind of rotate. She was such a good mom. She would lay there and let the pups figure it out. So when, you know, one got its fill and started to fall asleep, a pup would come and shove it off and take its place. Um, she was an excellent mother, just an excellent mother.
14:47And that's kind of similar with the pigs too, because I do try to breed for lots of teats with my pigs, but sometimes they have more piglets than they have teats, and it's the exact same thing. Piglets will fall asleep while nursing, and so another piglet just comes in and shoves them off. Yeah, just like human babies, they fall asleep while they're nursing. I can remember having to like poke my daughter's cheek to get her to wake up to continue eating.
15:16I can't imagine feeding that many kids. I have no idea. No, me either. But she would just, her head would fall back and she'd be asleep. And I'm like, um, you're not done yet. I felt the same way. I know you're not done yet. Wake up. Okay. So, I had more questions about the dogs. So the Anatolian Shepherds.
15:42I know a little bit about the Great Pyrenees dogs. Are Anatolian Shepherds sort of the same kind of dog? Are they a whole different animal? Their purpose is the same. It's to live out with your stock and protect them. Some of the differences are the coat. That's a big one. The Anatolians have a shorter coat. They don't get mats and burrs and stuff come out a lot easier than the Great Pyrenees.
16:12I also find that the great Pyrenees bark more than the Anatolians. My Anatolians only bark if there's a reason to. A lot of times I won't even see a predator out there at night, but some is out there and they know it. During the day, it's very quiet on the farm. They're like, okay, there's people out and about. They've got this. I can go and sleep now.
16:40you don't really hear the dogs unless it's for a reason, like a predator or a new person coming onto the farm. But at night, I can tell when we have predators around because all the guardian dogs will be upset. And then there'll be nights where I don't hear a peep out of them. So they're not out there barking just to bark.
17:04Well, that's good because sleep is important for you guys. Um, our dog is a mini Australian shepherd and she just got house privileges like a couple months ago, like at night. Now she can just be in the house. She's not stuck in our room with us because we were afraid she was going to eat the house if we let her have the run of the house at night. And, uh, she's, she's been, she's kind of had the run of the house for a few months now and, um, one night, like three, four weeks ago.
17:33At two in the morning, I woke up to her barking her head off. And I was like, um, that's not good. Cause there's no reason for her to bark in the middle of the night. And I poked my husband because that's what we do. We poke our husbands if we have one. And I said, Maggie's barking. And he was like, what? And I said, Maggie's barking. He's like, Oh, he got up and grabbed his robe, went downstairs. And he said, what's up, Maggie. And she just looked at him and stopped barking.
18:00So he looked outside and stepped outside and nothing. And he said the only thing he could think of is that a big truck rolled by startled her awake and she was dreaming about something and was barking. So even our little house pet who's 35 pounds is a really good protector and watchdog for the house. So pets can be that too. Absolutely, yes. Zaya, the mom to the puppies.
18:27During the day when people are coming and going, she's quiet. But once everybody leaves for the day and goes home, if a vehicle pulls up the driveway, she alerts just to let me know, hey, somebody's coming up the driveway. And it's really nice, because I do have Belgian Malinois and they're gray alert dogs, but sometimes they're in the house with me. And so they're kind of my comfort in my house while my Anatolians are my comfort outside.
18:56It makes me feel a lot more comfortable to be out on my farm with them around because we do have coyotes, bobcats, cougars, and possibly bears out here too. Where are you guys again? Brownsville, Oregon. Yeah, okay. I didn't think that that got said at the beginning and I was like, I don't know where she is. We have 177 acres and it backs up to forest land. Wow.
19:25So we're kind of out here. Yeah, we have 3.1 acres and the only reason we have a dog is because we wanted to know when somebody rolled into the driveway who wasn't supposed to be here. And I mean, obviously we love her. She's great. We got her when she was eight weeks old and fell in love immediately. But the main reason we have a dog is because we wanted to have a watchdog. That was her only job and she does it way too well sometimes.
19:55The Belgian Malinois, really hard to say. They look like a German Shepherd, but they're a bigger dog, right? They don't have the same markings as the German Shepherds. They're generally a tan body with the black face markings and some black on their legs, but they can go out to darker colors in their body. But they don't have that same pattern that you think of when you think German Shepherd.
20:24Yeah, they have the long nose and they have the pointy sticky up ears, right? Yes. Sticky up ears. They do. And they are very intense, intelligent, high-energy dog. Yeah. And they're gorgeous. Yes. I've got one of the lighter ones and a darker one. My five-year-old, she actually is a great herding dog and personal protection, property protection.
20:53Rodent control. I mean, she kind of does it all. So we recently moved sheep and she hadn't worked in that field yet. And I wanted them to go in an area that was very difficult. Well, she basically put them away all by herself. I didn't have to do anything. We just kind of stood back and watched. That's impressive. That's really impressive. She's never done it before.
21:21Oh no, she's done the herding. I've worked with her since she was six months old on it. She just hadn't worked in that big field yet. And so it's, you know, a hundred acre field and we were trying to get them into this little pen. Okay. Yeah. And she got them all into that little pen by herself. Is that breed a herding dog? Uh, originally they were bred for herding. Um, but.
21:48You know, it was just noticed how well they did at protection. And so anymore that's traditionally what they're bred for is personal protection or police work. Okay. Yeah. I didn't know they had been bred originally for herding. I learned something new today. I love this podcast. I learned something new every single episode. It makes me so incredibly happy. Every day you got to learn something new.
22:18Oh, I don't have any choice. I am a lifelong reader and learner and I am so curious about everything. So every day I learn something new, but sometimes I learn something that I didn't even know that I wanted to learn. Does that make sense? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. So, okay, since you have your business team there, how's business? How is this going for you?
22:47I enjoy working on the farm and working with my animals and I hate doing office work. So when Rye stepped in and started working on the farm, it just made such a big difference for me. It took a lot of stress off of me and a lot of tasks off my plate so I could focus more on my animals and the development of the farm.
23:12And then recently, Brie has come on and she has just been doing amazing work with her photos and putting up the flyers, like making our pamphlets and information sheets. We're finally getting our nice proper farm sign put up now that we have an official logo that she has worked with and created and she has gotten us into another store.
23:42Yeah, production is getting up there and now we're starting to branch off and meet other needs. Hopefully by next year we'll be able to do Saturday markets in Lane and hopefully Marion County. Crossing fingers, trying to branch, get people into the Maison community. So before I only had two little stores and
24:11Bri has made the connection to get us into a big grocery store here nearby, which is really, really exciting. And now that we have transitioned to a new package company, we are going to be able to sell jerky and meat sticks and summer sausage. And some of that will actually be shelf stable that we can ship and put on Amazon. Nice. So you're growing. You're growing a lot.
24:41bigger than you probably thought you would be. Yes, so it's very, very exciting. And then we also have a new product, because we have a connection over from India, and we are now selling coconut peat. Oh, yeah. Okay. It's not as easy to sell as it is meat, by the way, if you're wondering. Is that because people don't know what it is? That and it's end of season for gardening and
25:11Even though it could be used for other sources, like I use it for my reptile. I have a bearded dragon and he loves to nestle in it. It's, it's, it's just unknown. People don't know much about it. So trying to educate the community and the public about it, and then trying to sell it for the price that we have is not always the easiest. I really think the biggest difference will be here soon. It's going to be on Amazon.
25:40Uh-huh. And a lot of people assume that it's coconut core because that's what you see for sale. Is coconut core? Well, it's actually completely different. Coconut core is more of the long strands off the coconut and it's not absorbent. It's great for aeration in the root system, but it really doesn't add to anything. There's no absorption of moisture to it. With the coconut peat, however...
26:10It's a much finer ground and it's a different part off the coconut and it has huge absorption rate for water without choking out the root system of your plants. It makes it the perfect medium for starting seeds in or to reduce your water needs in your plants. Because I was having to water my sunchokes morning and night and after just even adding a layer to the top of it.
26:40I was only having to water every other day. Nice. So, is this available anywhere besides you or is this another unique thing to your business? It's pretty unique. I personally haven't been able to find it online like on Amazon or anywhere here of coconut peat. It's always coconut core or it's a mix of the core and the peat.
27:09you're impossible to find just the pure peat alone. Okay. So is your farm your only job? Yep. This is all I do. Very nice. And how long have you been doing this again? It's been about five years now. Five or six. I think we're going on six now. Wow. So...
27:35It's not like you've been doing this for 20 years. I mean, I'm not, I'm assuming you're not even 30, so.
27:43just over 30. Yeah. Yeah, you've accomplished a ton in a very short time. Yeah, when you add it all up, it is actually a lot. But all I see is, you know, how much more I can still do, you know, and how much further we can go. You have the heart of an entrepreneur and the energy of someone who's not 40 yet. So
28:12Ride that wave as long as you can. Unfortunately, my body feels like it's 70 though. Oh honey, you tell me. Tell me about that. I understand completely. I'm going to be 55 in November and I wake up every morning and I'm like, thank God I do a podcast because if I actually had to go do anything that required bodily work, I would just go back to sleep.
28:37Roll over, not today. Yeah, not happening. I'm going back to sleep. I'm more comfortable in my bed than I am in the world. We're good. But I chose podcasting because it's something that I can do no matter what kind of day I'm having because it always makes me feel good and I don't have to look a certain way and I don't have to be a certain way. I just have to show up and ask questions. It's fantastic. That sounds amazing. It is. And then I get to talk to people like you.
29:05who are doing things that no one else is doing. And I'm like, oh my God, how cool is that? So how did you find us? Cause at first we've been getting so many random scams lately and I think a lot of other places are. And so Bri's like, oh my gosh, somebody wants to interview us. And I was like, well, first make sure they're legit before you message her back. Make sure it's not a bot. Yeah. Yep. No, I think I saw you on Facebook
29:35thing that Facebook is really good for is feeding me more of the things that I'm interested in. And right now I'm interested in homesteaders and farmers and people who cook or bake and people who make things. So as long as I keep looking at that stuff, Facebook sends me people like you through my feed all the time. Nice. Yeah, and that's fine because I need an easy way to connect.
30:03with people who are doing the things that I want to ask them about. I feel the same way. It's great.
30:11I have an unending stream of people who are like, oh, this is what we do. And I go, oh, there's more to that story. I need to talk to them. Yeah, I'm thankful I've got, you know, Rai and Bree because I do not like technology. It was a chore to keep up with the Facebook and I just didn't even do that very well.
30:36Now with rerunning that show primarily, it's just, it's been awesome. We've got so much more views going now and it just, it feels a lot, a lot nicer to be able to post, you know, what's going on on the farm and have people. Enjoy it. Yeah. And it's always better to have someone who likes the job do the job. You know, if she.
31:03If Brie likes doing that and she's good at that, fantastic. If you don't like doing it, you have Brie to do it. I like taking pictures. Yeah. I'm a picture person. Yep, my husband takes beautiful photos and he has always got his phone on him and he'll see something that I don't even think about and he's got his phone out to take a photo and I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, look at this, it's beautiful. I'm like, oh yeah, cameras.
31:33Huh, weird, because it's not the first thing I think of. I'm so in the moment that I don't think that, oh, we should take a photo so we can remember this 10 years from now. I'm the exact same way. I see so much happen on my farm that I just, I sit there and I enjoy watching it and I'm like, dang it. I should have had my camera out. But again, it's not the first thing I think of. Yeah. Yep, and I used to, like years ago, I had a camera.
32:03like a camera, a digital camera, that I would take places with me. And I was always pulling out of my pocket and taking photos because it was super easy. And now I'm like, my phone's in the house. Usually if I step outside, my phone's in the house. So I'm going to miss the moment because I had to go back in and get my phone. So I don't take photos, but his is always on him. So he's always taking photos. And we had barn kittens this spring.
32:29And he got some of the most adorable photos of barn kittens for about six weeks. And he would send me these adorable pictures of barn kittens. And after about the second week, I was like, yes, they're cute. You don't have to send me anymore. It's okay. And yeah, and we have a new batch coming here sometime in the next two weeks. So, uh, I'm going to be deluged with another round of kitten pictures again. So prepare yourself. Yeah. And.
32:59They're super cute. The problem is that barn kittens don't always survive being barn kittens. So I have to remind myself that it's, it's right now. Like there's this moment with them because there may not be the next moment with them. So it's a mindset thing. And the first batch, Oh my God, we lost. I think we lost two right off the bat. I think they were like two weeks old. Gone just disappeared. And.
33:27I was so sad. I was like, where'd those babies go? Yeah. Yeah, I can relate because with the pigs, you know, things happen. You know, they're such a big pig and the babies are so tiny when they're born that, you know, you do sometimes have them get squished. And so it was really hard at first when I started breeding pigs, you know, and come into the barn and you see, you know, a dead piglet.
33:56Mm-hmm. Um, you know, and it's still not pleasant at all to find them, but it does happen. And so those moms though that have, you know, 12 to 19 piglets and they don't squish a single one, those are very, very good mothers that I want to keep in my breeding program, you know, and focus on that.
34:21Yep, I feel like loss is the cost of doing business if you're going to be raising any living creature. Yep, absolutely. And we don't sell the barn cats. I mean, we let mama have a couple of litters a year because like I said, they don't all survive and the adult cats don't always survive either and they're barn cats, they're not pets. So.
34:46We don't mind if she has a couple of litters a year because we keep a couple, we have friends that take them and have them for their barns and it's fine. And sometimes I feel real bad about this because we really should get her fixed because, you know, the world doesn't need more kittens. But I also don't want to be spending $50 on barn cats four times a year because we've lost one. So it's just...
35:15I think it takes a real specific kind of person to live a farming or home setting life. You really have to be able to manage your feelings and your emotions about your life.
35:33Yeah. Yeah. And so as bad as it sounds, like, you know, I do raise animals for me, you know. And so those from a young age, if I know they're going to be for me, like I take very good care of them. I make sure that they have clean, fresh water, drink, proper shelter, food, but I don't socialize with them. Yes. You know, because each one of these pigs has a personality. Each one of my sheep has a personality.
36:02I don't want to get attached when I have to take them to the butcher. Now with my breeding stock, I make those my pets. Yes. Yeah. And you can't get attached to the ones that are going to be food because it hurts to let them go. Yep. But the breeding stock, you don't have to let go so you can love them as much as you want to. Yes. And it makes handling them so much easier when you need to, you know, move them around or...
36:28they have the piglets, you have a better bond. You know, some of these sows are more protective of their babies. And so you want at least a bond to be able to go in there and still clean the stall and, you know, give water and food without her coming after you. And then I have some of my sows where you can just cuddle with them while they're giving birth and hold the piglets, you know, anytime and just be in the nest with her.
36:56You know, she has no problems with it. And then there's some who are just like, you know what, you can be in here. Just don't touch the babies. Yep. My dad would call that a good mom. I would call that a pain in the butt mom. I would have to concur with that. Yep. So anyway, um, we're at 37 minutes and 10 seconds, and I try to keep these 30 minutes, so I'm going to let you guys go. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it.
37:26Yeah, and feel free, you know, to find us on Facebook or the website and get on our newsletter. All right. I will put the links to all that in the show notes. Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Megan. Have a great day. It was a pleasure.
 

MN River Valley Homestead

Today I'm talking with Holly at MN River Valley Homestead.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Holly at the Minnesota River Valley Homestead. Good morning, Holly. How are you? I am good. How are you? I'm great. What a beautiful morning we have in LaSore, Minnesota today. It is wonderful outside.
00:29Yeah, it's a little allergy inducing, but other than that, it's great. Yes, I agree. So, um, Holly is an acquaintance and sort of friend. She lives not far from me. And the way that I met Holly is because she sells her lovely baked goods at the farmer's market. And I had asked her months ago if she wanted to be a guest on the podcast, but there was stuff going on. So.
00:55I finally get to ask you all kinds of questions today. So tell me about yourself, Holly. Well, I have been a stay at home mom for, let's see, gollish, it's been so many years, I don't think I even know, almost 20 years, mainly because I can't work because I'm epileptic, but I have all seven kids that I have raised and.
01:23One is gone and now I just sit and keep track of the other six. And right now it's nice and calm because there's only two left at home because the other are at school. Yay. Today, first day today? Um, no, it's actually, um, they started their second week today. They started last week, so they were excited.
01:48Yeah, I feel like kids are in one of two camps. They're either tickled pink to go back or they don't want to go back. Yeah, my two older ones were not very happy and the two younger ones were very, very excited. So. So how old are the kids that are still living at home? They are 345715.
02:1716 Okay, so you got teenagers and little still at home. Yep Okay. All right. So what do you what do you do at your your? Minnesota River Valley homestead when I'm at home which is all the time obviously I Work on a lot of my yarn crafting I do a lot of crocheting I make blankets and
02:46I make dishcloths and handbags and hats. Pretty much you name it, I can make it. Otherwise I make jams and jellies and then there's the other part of it that my husband is a really big part of. We make a lot of sourdough and bagels and other sandwich breads.
03:14and we're now starting to get into dessert breads.
03:19So yeah, we, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I guess that's, that's, that's the big part. Otherwise I get into making a lot of oils for different purposes, not, not scent, you know, not essential oils, but healing oils, things like that. So I'm a lot, I'm really big with herbal things. So always.
03:47So you're a typical homesteader. You've got your hands in almost everything. Yeah, pretty much. Nice. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna toot your horn for you. Your bagels are amazing. Kyle brought some home Saturday and they were the Osceaga ones. Oh my god. So yummy. Yeah. And you're, uh, He said he's been eyeing those for a while, so he decided to get some.
04:16Yep. And your raisin ones are really good too. Oh, I'm glad you like those. Yeah. We love bagels. We don't love store-bought bagels, but we love your bagels. So, Oh, I'm glad. I was going to ask, um, the Italian bread that he brought home. Um, I didn't get any. Cameron and Kyle ate all of it before I could get to it. Oh my gosh. But they loved it. I didn't get a chance to try it.
04:46Oh, well, just let me know and I'll make you some. Okay. Yeah. I was going to grab some and I was like, where'd the bag go? And Cameron was like, we ate it. And then Kyle made honey oat bread and, and, uh, herbed bread yesterday that he makes, so I was like, okay, well maybe I'll get some of those maybe. Yeah. Food doesn't last very long in this house if it's, if it's really yummy. So it must have been really yummy, Holly. I will find out eventually.
05:16Well, that's good. We make sure we have fresh herbs growing outside on our deck so I can grab them and we use those. So yeah, fresh herbs are the best thing. And if you can't have fresh herbs, dried herbs work just as well. So it works out great. Thank you.
05:39I'm very excited you're going to get in dessert, two dessert breads. I cannot talk this morning. I feel like I'm not separating anything out and I'm not pronouncing my consonants. I don't know what's wrong with me. Your dessert breads are an exciting new thing. What kind of dessert breads are you guys doing? Oh, um, well, Chris has been making, um, one of them is a, gow, what does he call it? It's a cinnamon.
06:08uh, cinnamon or not cinnamon chocolate, twist, I guess is what he calls it. But it's, um, he rolls it out flat and then he puts Nutella all over the whole thing and then he rolls it up and twists it and turns it into a circle. And then after it's done baking, it's covered in a caramel sauce and, oh, it's, it's just really good.
06:35And then last night with our daughter, he made a raspberry, a raspberry twist that has chocolate chips in it. And that one is just super good. And then he made, oh, he made a sticky bun kind of thing. And they have a really light glaze on top of them. And they're just to die for. He's he's so good with
07:04baking stuff. I mean, I like baking, but he goes beyond. Yeah. I've told this story before a bunch of times on the podcast. I'll mention it again. Kyle is the bread maker in our family because I kill the yeast every time I try to make it, try to use it. And so I have been saying that I want to try making some and he's like,
07:30Now that I'm busy with my job, because he got the new job back last year, he said, if you want to try making bread, he said, have at it. He said, if you kill a beast, he said, he said, just keep track of what you're doing. And I will try to help you so that you figure out how not to kill it. I was like, okay, that would be great. But yeah, it's wonderful when our husbands, when our husbands do some of the baking too. Yes. I really like the fact that he does it and he got into doing sourdough. I.
07:59six years ago, seven years ago, somewhere around there. And it's just really flourished since then. And he's just so into it. And I just come up with new ideas on what to do with them. And I'll, he'll make the dough and then I'll put everything in it and put it together and bake it. But as far as the dough is concerned, he's, he's got that. I can't do it.
08:29Yeah, but you're a team. So that's amazing. I love that. I think when married folks can work together, even if you're doing separate parts that come together, it's fantastic. Yeah. Oh, I had a question. Oh, the farmers market. I keep meaning to ask other people who are part of it because Kyle's really the only one I talk to about it. It seems like
09:00in the last three years? Do you feel like it is too? Well, the first year, excuse me, I had my zapper go off. The first year went really slow. And then the next year, last year was a lot better. And that's when Kyle came and started and it got a
09:30amazing with how many people, vendors have showed up. And it's just, it's really flourished. It's been great. I really like it. I think that it's really nice. There's a lot of new people coming to shop. And I just, I couldn't have asked for anything better.
09:58big a deal. Like people showed up, they sold stuff, they went home. And when Kyle started going last summer, he was like, it's really robust. It's really good. And I was like, well, maybe you were the magic charm. Maybe they just needed you to show up. Yeah. Well, last year he was a really big part of it because it was a good year with the tomatoes and all the other produce that he brought.
10:27Because not very many people were bringing things like that. And so, you know, he was a big deal With it and it it's a bummer that it was so bad this year Because I was actually looking forward to more tomatoes because all of our tomatoes went they just drowned Well, if it makes you feel any better, there are 50 tomato plants in the garden right now that he put in like end of June
10:56when he could finally get in the garden and they're growing. So as long as they don't get frosted anytime soon, we might be able to help you out with some tomatoes in like mid September, maybe. Don't hold your breath, but if we have enough, we will make sure you get some. Oh, that would be wonderful. I still have a couple bags of what I got last year that I need to get turned into something.
11:25but I need a couple more because I want to make some more sauce and just some more canned tomatoes overall because we ran out really quick. It doesn't last very long in our house at all. Yeah, all of our tomato sauce is gone from the last two years. We've used everything we can in the last two years. So I understand completely. Now I have a funny story to tell you that Kyle probably will never tell you, but I'm going to tell you it.
11:53He was talking last winter about making some breads and selling them at the farmers market. And he's made bagels before and he loves doing it. He was like, I can make bagels and sell them at the farmers market. I said, excuse me, sir. And he looked at me like, what? I said, our friends sell bread and bagels and stuff at the farmers market. I said, do you really want to be in competition with Holly and her husband?
12:22You're going to lose. Their stuff is better." And he was just laughing. He was like, I completely forgot that we would be in competition with them. I said, yeah, don't do that. I said, if you want to make something, make your cinnamon rolls, because I don't think they make cinnamon rolls and yours are really yummy, make those. Oh yeah. He was like, oh yeah, I have things I can make that won't be in competition. I said, no, they won't. And that would be good.
12:49And he just, he completely wasn't thinking about it as he was saying it. I'm just inside, I'm just dying, giggling my head off in my brain. So I saved you guys from some minor competition by reminding him that that's a bad plan. Don't do that. Thank you. I, I am very grateful for that. I mean, there's, you know, two other people, um, vendors that go that sell bagels
13:20Um, and sourdough and one of them, I mean, she's nice and her husband's nice. And, but I mean, I, and I hate sounding like I hate her because I don't hate her. It's terrible to say that, but every time we come out with something new for a flavor or, or the other vendor, they come out with something new with a flavor. They come out the next week with the exact same thing. And it's.
13:49Just, it's horrible. It's like, oh my goodness, can you just think of something your own? It's terrible. It's frustrating. And, and competition is good, but, but, uh, direct copying, maybe not so good. Uh-huh. I know what you're saying. And I'm sure that you don't hate her. You're too nice of a person to hate anyone.
14:15But I'm also positive that it is very frustrating for you because you're like, we've been here, we've been doing the work and now somebody else is just like doing the same thing all of a sudden. It's very disheartening. Yeah. It would be like us trying to bring out candles and he sits there with that whole table full of candles and free smells. I love it. It's great. We were right next to him last weekend.
14:45I laugh every time he says it to somebody. It just cracks me up every time. But I wouldn't want to do that to him with candles on my table. I felt bad when I started doing granola. And last year he brought granola, but he didn't have it this year. So I decided to start making granola. That's because I haven't been making it. That's the thing that I make. Okay.
15:12And the granola has been being eaten here for breakfast. So we just haven't had any extra to sell. Ah, and I haven't had time to make it because I've been doing the podcast. Okay. Well, that makes sense. Yep. Most of the time I do a recording at 10 and then I go downstairs and I eat a bowl of granola for breakfast because I don't like to eat food before I record because it gets in my teeth and I'm licking my teeth through the hole.
15:42conversation is just gross. I don't want to do that. I actually felt weird about the granola last year because I know how I make it. It is a very simple thing to make. I know how much it costs per bag. It cost me to make it. I was like, how much should we sell the bags for? Kyle was like, I don't know. Whatever we sold it for, 10, 12 bucks last year. I don't remember.
16:12Yeah. And it's not that big a bag. And I'm like, I feel really weird about this because people are paying for it. But it seems like it's a lot of money. And yeah, I looked at the same size bag at the store, you know, people who are selling it at the store. And granola is freaking expensive at the store. Oh my gosh, it is.
16:35And I was like, I am taking the time to do this right to make sure they know what's in it. And it doesn't have any preservatives or colorants or anything in it. Now I know why people are buying it. Uh huh. Exactly. And I found that, um, we were selling it at $10 a bag and I think they're 15 ounces and, um, they weren't really selling very much.
17:05So I lowered it to eight and now it sells constantly. We went to those who were fair the other, you know, a couple of weeks ago and I sold out. I was like, what? I mean, it was crazy. I didn't- But that's fabulous. Oh, it was. I was like, I didn't realize I needed to make more granola before we go to the market next week. I think the thing with granola
17:35is that people like it, but they don't want to eat it every day. And so if they find it at a fair or a farmer's market, they're reminded that they like it and it's a small bag. And they're like, yeah, I can eat this before it goes stale. And they'll buy it. But no one's going to go buy a humongous five pound bag of granola because they're never going to eat it. Right. Yeah, I don't eat it every day. I eat it.
18:04maybe every other day or every few days. But I mean, it's just, it was kind of crazy how much it sold. I was really astonished. It really floored me. I am applauding you. I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and clap in front of the mic, but in my, in my head, I'm applauding you because that's fantastic. Good job. I don't know how you make your granola. I will tell you how I make mine and it's why I felt weird about selling it.
18:34I basically dump a bag of oatmeal into our roasting pan. You know, we spray the roasting pan with nonstick stuff. And then I flatten it out with a spoon. And then I pour in like a cup and a quarter of veggie oil, a cup and a quarter of honey, stir it all up, add in some cinnamon and a couple splashes of vanilla, stir it up.
19:00Bake it at 350 for 15 minutes, stir it, shut the oven off, leave it in there for another 15 minutes, and it's done. That's how simple my granola recipe is. Yeah, that's pretty simple. I put them in a bowl, in a big bowl, and I use maple syrup that we get from the gas station downtown. And I use that unless it's... I have four different flavors that I do.
19:29and one of them has honey, but the other ones, all the other ones have maple syrup. And then I'll put any nuts, usually pecans and cinnamon. And a lot of them have, I use pepitas and sunflowers, sunflower seeds. And I'll mix it all up and put it in the oven for 15 minutes, stir it 15 more minutes.
19:59and then I pull it out and I let it cool. And then I'll add craisins or raisins. And then when it's all cooled, then I just bag it up. So yeah, it's still pretty simple. Yeah, it really is. And if you don't like granola, no one's gonna make it themselves. It's not even worth making it. But.
20:27I feel like people don't realize how simple it is to make it. And that's probably to our advantage. Um, the other thing I will say about granola, I tried to make granola bars years ago for the kids. And I didn't know that you were supposed to not put the dried fruit or chocolate chips or whatever in it before you baked it. Oh yeah, I did that a couple times. God, the chocolate, like it didn't burn burn, but, but it burned. And so the entire batch tasted like.
20:56charred chocolate. It all went in the trash. I was so sad. There was no saving it. So if you're ever going to make granola, anyone listening, do not put anything with sugar, like dried fruit or chocolate or Nutella or anything like that in the granola bowl or you put it in the oven because it will burn and you will ruin it. Oh yeah. And also if you do put any dried fruit or anything, if it doesn't burn, you
21:26It'll just get really, really hard, and you'll probably break a tooth. Yeah, it does. It gets really hard and it's gross. It's just not good. Add that stuff in after it's cooled off and then it's great. So there's a lesson on making granola for the day. Um, I do have another question for you. It has nothing to do with granola or the farmer's market or anything else. How did you and your husband get into the homesteading stuff?
21:56How did we get into the homesteading? The home, the homesteading. Yeah. Um, we have been wanting to do it, um, for a long time and, um, we've moved from a lot of different places that were, you know, small and we went from a trailer to a house, um, in Arlington, which is really small.
22:25And I mean, it had a bigger yard. We had a big garden there, but it wasn't, you know, big enough to really do much with. And then we found our house here and we have a nice big yard where we can grow stuff. And we finally decided that we should actually do something and actually make an actual homestead with it. We've been wanting to get an actual farm
22:55get some goats and, you know, just kind of expand a little more. But right now we're, we're pretty good with what we have. And, um, we've been, that's, that's what we've been wanting to do. Just kind of expand a little bit more with what we have and we use what we have. We're making an orchard in the yard with a whole bunch of different fruits and we've got berry bushes and all kinds of stuff. So.
23:25It's just Chris grew up on a farm, on a dairy farm. So he's always loved farming and I grew up in the city. And I've always liked being outside and working in a garden with my grandpa and stuff like that. So I didn't like being in the city and we just, we like being out in the country. So that's kind of what we do.
23:55Us too. We're right there with you. Um, speaking of fruit trees, we just, I just made our first apple crisp with our apples last night. First, we've been able to actually have from our trees that we put in, in the fall of 2020 and it was delicious and it was more delicious because it was our apples. They were honey gold variety apples.
24:25No, we got, we have, we started with one apple tree that was here when we moved here and we don't know what kind of apple tree it is, but the apples are huge. And if the deer don't get them first, we get some. And last year I finally got some in the freezer and that's what I made my apple pie sourdough with last week. And it is amazing. I use my apple pie filling.
24:53that I got from my grandma and I put that in my sourdough and it is really good. Those apples are wonderful. You gonna have any this weekend coming up? Probably. Okay, I'll put in my request with Kyle Lainley of Saturday Morning. Yeah, I've been trying to do a new fruit sourdough every weekend. So it's been challenging because I'm trying to.
25:23do fruit that are in season. So apples are definitely one of them. I am so happy it's September. I, anyone who knows me knows that basically the very last week of August, I start to get high because I know fall is a week away. Yep. I love fall. I love apples. I love, I love winter squash. I love all the
25:50the things that come rolling in starting in September. So I am, I'm feeling the best I have felt since, oh, probably this time last year, because winter was weird, as you know, and spring all it did was rain, and our garden, as you know from Kyle's stories, has been a disaster. I mean, he has made it go as much as he can, but it's just been an impossible year for having a really good garden.
26:18And it's so sad because the first three gardens we put in here did great. And this year, no. So I'm much more bright and shiny and happy today than I have been since this time last year. Well, that's really good. I am right there with you. I mean, this time last year, I was not in a good place. I was getting over the surgery that I had and I was going in
26:48In a couple days, I was going back in to get one of the wires fixed that they had put in and it was a mess. This whole last year was terrible for me. But now that everything is taken care of and they took out what they put in in June, so I'm just, I'm back to myself. I feel good. And now that it's turning fall, which is my favorite, all that stuff that you like, I am right there with you. I love all of it.
27:18Uh-huh. It's just, it's wonderful. I love it. The only, I think the only part that I, I like it a lot, but it gets really overwhelming is that I have two boys that have birthdays in September and it gets a little bit much. Uh-huh. I, I understand. Um, my, my routine back when I had the kids all at home when they were younger was that we had a birthday in August.
27:47and then we had Labor Day, and then we had the kids going back to school, and then we had Halloween, and then we had my birthday and my daughter's birthday, and then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas and New Year's. So basically from August 21st through New Year's Day, there was planning for all kinds of things that entire stretch, so I get it, it's crazy. Yeah, we go from my birthday,
28:17in April, two weeks later, it's Chris's birthday. And then two weeks after that, it's our oldest daughter's birthday. Two weeks after that, it's our 15 year old's birthday. And then we go a month into July, it's another birthday. And we get another month in, and then it's September with two birthdays. So it's like, holy cow, there's our summer.
28:44There's always something to celebrate in your home though. Yes. And we get a good rest, I guess, break, after September in fall and beginning of winter and after Christmas. And then all of a sudden, February comes and it's like, oh, two more birthdays. But it's crazy. I love it. I really do.
29:13It's wonderful. It is. You must make a lot of cakes in your household for birthdays. Actually, I don't make any of the cakes in my house. Oh, does Chris? My daughter makes most of them. Oh, okay. Chris makes some of them, he used to, but now our oldest daughter likes to make them. So she usually makes the cakes. And I am very happy about that
29:43of a baker as I am, I do not like baking cakes at all. Unless it's a cheesecake. Yeah, I love cheesecake. I keep saying I should make one and I don't do it because I get busy and I forget. I don't mind making cakes. What I mind is having to do a two-tier cake and decorate it. If it's just a cake in a cake pan, I am all over that because I love cake batter more than I love the finished cake.
30:14No joke, I will make a cake just to lick the bowl. Yeah I kind of agree with you on that one too. I like that too. I really have to stay away from all that though. Oh my word I do. Well that's why I only make a cake about once a year. And I only make outrageous brownies once a year because I don't know if you heard that story yet from Kyle but I make these brownies and they are...
30:43My god, I think the pan probably weighs six pounds when it's cooked. And it's butter and chocolate and all the good things. And the batter on this stuff is so rich and so beautiful. It looks like silk when you're stirring it. Like it's so pretty. I want to take a bath in it. And it's so smooth. It's so smooth that all you want to do is eat it like pudding. And you can't do that. Cannot do that. You will be sick.
31:13But when I make them, I get like one brownie. That's all I can handle. They're so rich. So I only bake those things once in a great while because otherwise I would be 500 pounds and I cannot do that to myself. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. So I have to stay away from a lot of that stuff just because of the extra weight that I ended up gaining this past year.
31:42because I was on antibiotics all year and I ended up gaining so much weight with it. It was terrible. So I had to stay away from all of that. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's no fun. Yeah, it's terrible, but I manage and it's going good because I'm finally able to get up and move. So it's good. I have to stay away from the cookies that I made for the...
32:12fair. There is so many cookies in our freezer and the triple chocolate ones are just, it's really hard to stay out of them. But yeah, it's, it's a temptation that you don't need, but you needed to make them for the fair. I understand. Yeah. I'm, I'm just glad that they're out in the freezer in the garage instead of in the house. So, but yeah, I don't know.
32:41That's about all I can say. Yeah, no, I understand. I really do. I have finally gotten to the point where I have a handle on my weight, totally, for the first time since I was probably 20 years old. I used to be a string bean until I got pregnant with my daughter when I was 19. She was born like 10 days after I turned 20. And I put on some weight.
33:10with that pregnancy. And it's been kind of a yo-yo thing for years. And in the last three years, I have maintained a reasonable weight for my height and I feel really good. So it can be done. But yeah, it's a habit thing a lot for me. Like, if I get in the habit of choosing certain behaviors, then I just continue to choose those behaviors. So for me, that's what works.
33:40but it doesn't necessarily work for everybody. So anyway, we're at like 33 minutes and I try to keep this to half an hour, but I do wanna say that you have been real honest with me about your epilepsy issues and journey. And you have managed to build a beautiful life and a business with your husband, with all the things that you have been going through with the epilepsy. Number one, really proud of you. Number two,
34:09you are living proof that you can do this, even if you have an issue. Yeah. I, I, I try. I mean, I've been trying really hard and I try to make it so people like me can do it. So, I mean, it's, it's somebody has to be there, you know, to show other people that they can do it. So, Yeah.
34:38Exactly. So I'm really glad that you're doing it and I'm really glad you wanted to come on the podcast to talk to me because this has been really fun. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time, Holly. I appreciate it. Yeah, it was fun. I was looking forward to it a lot. Good. Then then objective met for the day on that particular topic. Yes, ma'am. All right, you have a good one, Holly. Thank you. You too, Mary. Bye.
 

Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders

Today I'm talking with El at Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with El, Minnesota half-assed homesteaders. Good morning, El, how are you? Good morning, I'm wonderful, how are you? I'm great, it is a glorious day in Minnesota this morning. It's beautiful, I always love it when I can go out and do chores in the morning with a sweatshirt on and you have that perfect, like, cool weather. It just...
00:29It starts the day off perfect. Yeah, it's almost feeling like back to school day, used to feel when I would go back to school every year in Maine. So yeah, it's cool outside, but it's so sunny and everything's bright and shiny. It's lovely here. You are in Pine City? Pine River. Pine River, sorry. Nope, that's not it. And that's north of the cities, right? Yeah, we're in the Brainerd Lakes area.
00:55Oh, so you're up there. You're in the really pretty area of Minnesota. Yes. It's beautiful up here. Awesome. Okay. So two things, El and I were talking before I started recording. El's real name is Elspeth. And I was saying that that's one of the most beautiful names I've ever heard. And I thought she might be named after a family member, but no, she's named after a person in a book. So do you want to tell me about that? Yeah, absolutely. I don't ever remember the name of the book.
01:25But when my mom was pregnant with me, she was reading a book that had a good witch who was a steward of the earth and she would go around planting flowers and bringing life back to dead areas on earth. And her name was Elspeth. And my mom fell in love with the name.
01:52They were going to name me Rowena after my great grandma. Um, but once mom found that name, she really liked it. And my dad liked it because I'm the youngest of four kids and the last girl. Um, and he thought it sounded like a princess name. So he was okay with that. And then gave me the middle name of Prairie.
02:19Um, because he wanted to name me Prairie Rose. So they both kind of got to pick and ended up with Elspeth Prairie. I, like I said before, I think it's absolutely beautiful and how appropriate considering what you're doing with your life that you are named after, uh, a princess or whatever that, that basically stewards the earth. I, it's come to full.
02:46come to full fruition for me. And it's one of those things that now, especially since my mom has passed on, and I'm kind of keeping her legacy alive too in homesteading and foraging, natural medicine, things like that, that I realized that maybe she was, she was getting to something and kind of determining my fate before I even knew it. So.
03:13I feel like this podcast episode is going to be magical. That's how it feels from the start. Okay. So, and another thing, I love Minnesota half-assed homesteaders for a name. That is fantastic. We, you know, a lot of people who end up joining say, I joined because of the name. My husband and I started it about two years ago.
03:38kind of just as a way for us to document what we're doing on our homestead. Our successes, our failures, our challenges. And it kind of grew into this community. It was originally strictly for people who were in Minnesota. But then we found, you know, we had people who had growing or similar growing seasons that we have.
04:08and had similar interests and we wanted to have that diversity to be able to compare and contrast. So we started getting people from all over the United States and now we have
04:215,000 people, 5,400 I think in two years. So it's kind of grown into this fun little community of people who are like-minded. And our whole purpose for the name of the group is that we're not fancy. We don't necessarily, especially when we started, we didn't have a lot of money to put into.
04:49our homestead, but we knew that we wanted to make our own food, provide for ourselves and be as self-sufficient as we could. And I was joking one day saying, well, I guess we're just doing it the half-assed way. And that is how Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders came about because we do what we can with where we are and what we have.
05:19using plastic grow bags on the deck because we have horrible soil and we didn't know what our you know sun exposure was we didn't know where our best places to grow were and most of our yard was too shady for gardening anyway so over the last couple of years we've cut down trees and kind of expanded and built our way up.
05:47to having raised beds and chickens and ducks, and we're just gonna keep seeing where things go. But that's kind of how we started, was just working with what we have and just wanting to kind of build this dream for our future of being able to be self-sufficient in as many ways as we can be with the limited land and resources that we have.
06:17Yep, absolutely. I'm always saying do what you can with what you have where you are. Yep. And it's better to be half-assed than no-assed. So you're doing a good job. You know, exactly. And the other thing I like about it is that it implies that there's, you know, some amount of work that goes into homesteading. Some people think that homesteading is just, oh, I have this little vegetable garden and I just kind of putz. And
06:47Homesteading is hard work and it is a labor of love. It's a lot of dedication. It's a lot of heartbreak, but there's also a lot of joy that comes with it. And we wanted that to kind of be one of our messages too, of it's not for the faint of heart, but anybody can do it. And I get a lot of people that I talk to who say,
07:14Oh, I would love to have a homestead, but I don't have any land. I live in town and I want a garden. And, you know, I always point out, like we started with buckets on our deck. Um, and you don't even need buckets. You can use, you know, empty coffee containers and, you know, like empty food containers to get started. It's not something where you really have to put a big investment in right away.
07:44And once you figure out what works for you, then you can expand. Um, but that's kind of always been where, you know, I guess kind of the soul of our group and of our homestead has been with.
08:03being half-assed, but also, you know, it's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of failure. But at the end of the day, it is very fulfilling looking at our...
08:18cabinets looking at our pantry and knowing that we grew that, that we preserved that. Absolutely and my definition of failure is not doing anything. My take on my mistakes, which people would call failures, is that they're learning experiences.
08:42Exactly. And, you know, there's stuff that we've done that just has not worked out. But very rarely have we ever went, well, I guess we're done with that. We're never going to do it again. It's okay. Here's how we can do this better next time.
09:01Yeah, and the other thing is that sometimes things that you try, you can't make go because you don't have the conditions to make it go. Correct. So you can't count that as a failure because it's nothing that's beyond your control. Right. So, you said you started out small. Where are you now? How are you doing now? Now we have... Oh...
09:28Can I talk? You can talk. Hubby's here. My husband, Eric. Welcome, Eric. The other part of Half-Assed Homestead. Hi. He knows better on where we're at because he does all the building. I just help with procurement. Okay, sure. Chime on in, Eric. All right. Right now we're growing in about 70, 5-gallon buckets still. We have 22 raised beds that are around a 5-foot diameter.
09:57and 70 foot hugelkultur mound that's doing very mediocre. Okay. I also have just a shelter logic, 20 foot greenhouse with a few various greens and some starts in it. Awesome. Can you, can you do me a favor and explain what a hugelkultur mound is, how you, how you did that? Because I keep hearing about it. I keep reading about it, but I don't know how to explain it.
10:26Simply, it's just a compost hill you grow on. It's a fancy compost hill in simplest terms. Ours, I didn't do full horticulture because I didn't have the time to do it. I laid out just fresh cut and some forest fall trees we had in the yard in a long line. Put a little bit of dirt on it, let it sit for about two weeks to compress some, and then just pile dirt and straw on it. Okay.
10:54It so it ain't fully composting it has some hot spots where he just kills everything because some of the stuff is composting a little too well. I figured in five years, it'll be a good mound to grow crap on. And the whole kind of concept of a Hugo culture is that you basically create a self feeding self sustaining environment for whatever you're planting in there. So the
11:22tree fall and whatever you're putting underneath the soil ends up composting, which feeds your plants. And then because you have all of the extra wood and it's in essentially a stack or a mound, as it rains, that wood absorbs the water. So theoretically, you should never have to touch your hugelkultur. You shouldn't have to water it. You shouldn't have to fertilize it.
11:53this microclimate for whatever's growing on there. So right now we use that for our potatoes and then our squashes. So we did squash all along the top so that as they grow, they'll go down the mound so that they're easier to harvest. And then I also have my blueberry and my raspberries in the end of the mound. And then we just have wildflowers all over.
12:21I bet that's gorgeous right now, because this is the end of the season for wildflowers. It's mostly our zinnias and some of our nasturtiums. It was really pretty when all of our potatoes were blooming, because then we had the purple flowers all over the mound. We do still have quite a few squash blooms, but next year we're going to start over and really put down a lot of tack mulch.
12:49because the hardest part about maintaining it because it's kind of this, you know, natural microclimate is there is a lot of weeds. Yeah. So we're gonna do tack mulch at the beginning of the year so that we can kind of use that for some weed control to make it a little easier on ourselves so we're not spending an entire day weeding. Yes, because weeding is terrible.
13:17I hate weeding. I hate it. I don't want to do it and I don't do it because I'm not the gardener my husband is but I remember weeding with my mom in her garden and I despised every second of it. When I'm growing up with my mom in her garden, I also I hate weeding. I don't like it. I never have.
13:40And I, but I always wanted all of the goodies that came out of the garden. I wanted the fresh tomatoes and the fresh peas. And so my mom would be like, you didn't pay the weed tax, so you don't get any. You don't work, if you don't work, you don't eat. Yeah. If you don't work, you don't eat. And so I would go out to the garden and I would be more than happy to help pick stuff. But when it came to the weeding, I was like, I don't want to do it. And so my mom would.
14:04finally get to the point where, you know, she'd come in with these gorgeous peas and I'd want to eat them and she's like, you didn't come out to help weeds so you don't get any. Oh, that's, that's mean. I mean, I know it's tough love, but it's mean. Tough love and it teaches you that, you know, you need to work for what you want. And if you want it bad enough, you'll do the things you don't like. Yes. Yes, you will, because that's how it works.
14:31So how did you guys do with rainfall this summer of never ending rain in southern Minnesota? Because I don't know what it's been like for you. You know, we were pretty... Obviously, it was a pretty mild winter, so we didn't have the snowfall to start out the season with adequate moisture. But we did have a lot of rainfall. And...
14:58For us, in some cases, that's been nice because one of our biggest challenges with expanding the homestead and the gardening has been water sources. So last year we ended up putting in a well at the other end of the yard that's run off of our solar generator so that we can water everything at that end of the yard because that's our direct sun. It's, you know, it gets Northeast sun.
15:28Um, and that was our biggest obstacle. Uh, we, we didn't have a lot of success the year before last down there because we just, we were running hoses and our well that we have here wasn't enough to support it. So we're thankful this year that we have it, but we've had to use it very rarely because of
15:57the rainfall. Now, the other way that we designed our beds is it's a raised bed, but then in the middle of the bed is a five gallon bucket that has holes drilled into it in the bottom. And the purpose for us doing that is that when it rains, we can take the cover off and let it catch rain. So it'll help to water, kind of disperse the water throughout from
16:28the middle of the bed. But then we also, when we are weeding, or if we have, you know, a tomato that's gone bad, we put our compost into the middle of the bucket so that it can put the nutrients back into the soil so that we don't have to do as much soil amendments. That's brilliant. We also have started a couple of colonies of worms that we've kept going of red wigglers.
16:57And so each spring, we'll get a pretty healthy batch of worms going over the winter. And then we can just put a handful of compost and worms in the bucket in the spring. And then they help to aerate and spread the nutrients out, eat the compost. So that has helped having that set up so that it's not as
17:26you know, these solid beds that have to be watered. Um, that really has been beneficial for us too, even with the rain and having that, I think also helps with some of the drainage because we haven't really had overwatered stuff. We haven't had anything that's really drowned because of too much water. And I think that that's because of how we designed our raised beds. That whole.
17:56story of what you've done with that bucket and how you're using it sounds really simple, but it's also ingenious. It's really smart. It's, it is in the spirit of half-assed homesteaders. We try a bunch of different things and see if they work. And if they work, we ramp them up. So one of the other things that we did this year is we were gifted from somebody in our group.
18:24a water catchment system that had four large barrels. We decided it doesn't really work with our setup and we're going to do a water catchment system in the future. But we ended up taking one of those barrels and while I was at work one day, Hubby went and drilled holes and
18:53from the top to the bottom, I think we have six rows. The top was cut off and then we used a heat gun and actually a wine bottle to heat up the slits and then push the wine bottle in to kind of make it a cup. Yeah. To turn it into a planter for herbs and it's kind of my like salad planter. So I have chives and tomatoes in the top.
19:20Um, and then all of our herbs and lettuces around the side, but we did the same concept that we did with the five gallon buckets in that with using a four inch PVC pipe. So there's actually a four inch PVC that runs from the bottom all the way up to the top that has a cap on it so that when I need to water, just because, you know, it's a little closer together, it's a little bit harder to water all the way to the bottom.
19:50I just stick the hose in the middle and I let it fill up until it starts spouting water out the top. And I think I've probably only had to water that thing three times this summer. But then we can do the same thing with the compost too. So we just, you know, put a leaf matter or any weeds, anything like that down into the hole and between the water and the...
20:18the compost and the worms, it's been really, really healthy with all the plants. So we're hoping to do another one or two of those for next year. But we looked at it and it was just stuff that we had laying around. Most people have a chunk of PVC pipe and an old tub or something around to do it, but it really helps, we've noticed.
20:47you know, retaining moisture, being able to water easier, but also with our soil health. The ones where we kind of had bad soil to start with because we were using what we had. After two seasons of using the bucket with the compost and the worms, the soil is beautiful, and it is healthy. It's balanced, and we haven't really had a whole lot of issues with
21:17either because we do a lot of companion planting. So I think that all of that, we've kind of hit a sweet spot, so to speak, knock on wood. I hate to say that because I feel like we're deeming ourselves for disaster next year. But it's been a good year. And despite the lack of water in the spring, and then the constant rain all summer.
21:45I think our setup is kind of the perfect system for that. I am so glad that you have had a good growing season. We have not had a good growing season here in Lesor, Minnesota. No, Minnesota is rough. Yeah, I've talked about it a lot on the podcast already, so I don't want to get too far into it. But the one thing that it did teach us that we didn't know is that you don't have to
22:15to stake your tomato plants. We couldn't go stake our baby tomato plants this spring because it was a soupy mess in the garden. Could not get out there without sinking up to our ankles. And the tomato plants didn't die, they just stalled out. And we're pulling in tomatoes off those plants and they are literally laying on top of straw because we had to put straw in so that the fruits that were on the ground wouldn't rot. So you know.
22:44Our tomatoes are that are in our raised beds, the ones that are in the buckets we stayed up. Um, but our raised bed ones, we did not stake and they are, you know, taking over, they're laying on top of other stuff. They're hanging off the side. They're, you know, growing, laying on the ground and they are coming in like mad. Um, we had no idea that you didn't actually have to stake them.
23:14You don't. Generally when people recommend staking your tomatoes, it is so that you can get the appropriate airflow so that your, your vegetables, your tomatoes don't end up rotting, but you know, if you think about commercial tomato fields, they don't stake theirs, they don't trellis theirs, they don't do anything. They literally just.
23:42put them in the ground and they grow like bushes. Yeah, yep. So it hasn't been a total loss that we thought it was going to be this year. That's good. We have some, we have 50 young tomato plants that my husband Jess put in the actual garden, like a month ago. Oh wow. Cause we had them growing in the greenhouse. We put up a greenhouse in May.
24:08a hard side of greenhouse and my husband was smart and planted 50 more tomato plants from seed back in mid-June because he knew that we were going to have issues with the plants that were in the garden already. And those tomato plants look gorgeous. I looked out the other day and I was like, oh my God, look at that beautiful row of tomato plants. You know, and it's funny that you mentioned that because our tomatoes that we actually put in the bucket.
24:38did not, granted the sunlight that they get is a little bit different than the ones that are down in our actual raised beds. But the ones that we put in the buckets did not do well. Our plants didn't do very well, but they were the...
24:59the little, kind of the more, so we learned a big lesson this year that the soil that you use for your seedlings is vital to the health and abundance of your plant. Oh, yes. We had a bunch that we had used some compost mix that we had gotten from the store and it wasn't composted enough. So we ended up...
25:28burning all of our seedlings because they got too hot. So we started just doing our own mix of taking a big giant tub and doing a third potting soil, a third compost and a third perlite. Yep. And those ones, when we did our second start, our second set, because we saw that our first ones weren't doing very well.
25:54those ones did amazing and they're continuing. Those are the ones that are producing. I mean, the plants are so full. I don't know how I'm gonna get all the tomatoes out of them. But the ones that were in the first set that were in the less nutritious soil just did not do well. And so I'm glad that we went and we did do the second round of starting with new soil
26:25everything that we started with that first set just didn't do very well when we, you know, planted it with a hope and a prayer. But even the same tomatoes, the same kind from the same pack of seeds, the ones that were in the soil that got too hot were having a lot of issues with blossom end rot and with cracking.
26:49But the exact same ones that were started in the better soil, we haven't had any of those issues with. So it really is kind of amazing how you can just make one change, you know, with seed starting in a couple of different batches and really see the difference that that change makes either positive or negative. Absolutely. I can't agree more. And
27:18I end up talking about tomatoes a lot on this podcast because I happen to love tomatoes. I love spaghetti sauce. I love bruschetta. I love just a cucumber and a tomato cut up with some dressing on it. I love tomatoes. So if it seems like I talk about tomatoes on this podcast a lot, I do because I love tomatoes. Not everybody loves tomatoes. So I'm sure that I've had people like...
27:46leave because they're like, I can't listen to tomatoes anymore. Funny because I adore fresh tomatoes. I always have. Eric does not like them. So a lot of people who know that they're like, why do you guys grow so many tomatoes when he doesn't like tomatoes? So we grew one cherry tomato plant this year for me for like fresh tomatoes to have in salads or just to eat, however. Yeah. But we use a lot of tomato products as well.
28:15Um, and we love making last year. We did catch up. We did pizza sauce. We did pasta sauce. Um, we did our own barbecue sauce last year and you know, it's the stuff that we use on a daily basis and a lot of it is condiments, but you know, we're Minnesotans and it gets cold here in the winter and sometimes you just want to have, you know, spaghetti once a week. Um.
28:41So yeah, we talk about our tomatoes a lot as well, just because that's, I think, what we grow the most of, but it's because it's what we use the most of. Yeah, exactly. That's us too. And I would talk about cucumbers a lot, but cucumbers are not easily preserved. You basically preserve cucumbers by making pickles. That's pretty much it, because you can't freeze them, because they go to mush. And you can't just can a pickle. I mean, a tomato. I can't even talk. A cucumber.
29:11because it doesn't taste like anything if you just can a cucumber, you have to make them into something. So I love cucumbers, but I don't talk about them a lot because I don't use them in a lot. I eat them in season and that's pretty much it. So I was going to say about tomatoes, the other reason tomatoes are important is because they are a huge source of antioxidants and that's really important for your body. So that's the other reason that I eat a lot of them.
29:40I talk about tomatoes more than I talk about Maggie my dog. So I guess that's okay. Just change her name to tomato and then people- No, no. I can't do it. She's been Maggie since before we picked her up. So I can't change her name now. Yeah, we're known around town as the dog people and the garden people because that's-
30:06That's pretty much what we talk about. That's pretty much our lives is our dogs and our gardens. What kind of dogs do you have? We have three. So we have Bert. He is a King Corso Mastiff. So he's our big boy. Oh, yeah. Loves just this morning we were out in the garden. He loves fresh vegetables. And so his favorite thing is garden snacks. And even this morning, he was.
30:33sticking his head in the bean plant, pulling beans off of our bean bush. Oh, he even picks them himself. Oh, he will help himself to those and cucumbers. And he's not a huge fan of tomatoes, but his beans, cucumbers, he will help himself. He thinks that it's the greatest thing that mom and dad built him and all you can eat buffet. Okay. And then the other two dogs? The other two we have Sally. She's our golden doodle. She's our little...
31:00our little rescue we found actually Burt found her running down the middle of the road by us. Oh my. And went to save her. And then we have their not planned baby that we call our canoodle because she's a cane corso and a doodle cross. And Abby's so she's kind of the the best and the worst of both of us. Your canoodle I love that. That is so cute. Okay. All right.
31:29Well, if it makes you feel any better, Maggie loves winter squash. She loves slices of zucchini. She loves slices of cucumber. She loves watermelon, more than anything in the world. Our dogs are melon fans. I kind of thought that they would be. My other dog, Emmett, that I used to have, he loved melon, but Bert never really liked it and I think it's a texture thing. Yeah.
31:59We can't eat watermelon without Maggie sitting at our feet, being very, very well behaved and just staring at us like, can I please have a piece? And she doesn't, she's not a begging dog. Like we trained her not to beg. So her version of begging is just sitting politely beside you and waiting for a piece to be offered to her. Bert doesn't beg, but in the true nature of a mastiff, he will just sit there and drool. Yeah.
32:28two laces down the side of his face until you give him some. So that's his way of begging for food. Yeah. Maggie's way is being very pretty. She's a mini Australian shepherd and she's the classic black tri. So she has the gold beauty marks above her eyes. And she's beautiful. And she knows the face to put on to be like, I'm just waiting patiently. I'm being good until you give me some. Right.
32:57So she doesn't beg, she doesn't whine, she doesn't try to get your food, but she definitely makes herself available. They'll get someone when you're done. Yeah, and she just loves watermelon. If we cut a watermelon open on the counter, she hears the snap when it comes apart, and she comes running from wherever she is in the house and sits down and she's like, I'm ready and I'm pretty. Cool, good, we'll get to you when we get to you.
33:27So yeah, I try not to talk about Maggie too much anymore because I really talked about her the first six months of the podcast. So I'm like, it's gotta be relevant. So- Well, we talk about the things we love and the things that are important. And honestly, our dogs are a central part of our homestead. So it's kind of, we don't have kids, we've never had kids, don't ever wanna have kids.
33:56So it's, you know, our dogs are our babies, and then we have our chickens and our ducks, and they take up our time, so. Oh yeah, yep. We have four adult kids, and the youngest one still lives with us. He's 22. He'll be 23 in December, oh my God. And I don't talk about the kids much, mostly because they all, one lives in Florida, one lives in Nebraska,
34:26Minnesota not with us and then the youngest lives with us and the youngest doesn't want me to talk about him on the podcast. He's like, it's your podcast, don't talk about me. I'm like, okay, that's fine. So I don't really have little kids to talk about. I don't have medium kids to talk about and the grown kids don't want me to talk about them. Well, and that's why you have Maggie. I do. She's the kid that doesn't tell me not to talk about her.
34:55Usually she barks in the background. She's been real good this morning. I haven't heard her yip yet. So anyway, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me, Elle. It's been a pleasure. I apologize that it's taken us so long to connect. This ended up working out. I took a couple of days off from work to do the fall stuff. We're working on stew and soup this weekend. Hubby planted leeks.
35:25Yum. And they're doing amazing. So we are doing our beef stew that we put up. We are gonna try freeze drying that this year too. And then it's soup weekend. So we have chicken wild rice soup that we're gonna be making and potato leeks. So. I am so looking forward to fall soup season. I just mentioned this to my husband yesterday.
35:55I was like first cold weekend, I am making French onion soup. I am making chicken, wal-braise soup. I am making bacon potato soup. And if Cameron doesn't want it, he's our son, you and I are gonna eat it and I'm gonna freeze the rest of it. Because we didn't really do a lot of soups last winter. I don't know why, but we didn't. And I have just been craving soups. So as soon as it gets cold, it's gonna be like three weekends of soups going on. I am.
36:23eternally and will always be a soup girl. I used to say that I could live off of soup. Oh, me too. Eric is not a soup fan. He's not a chili fan. He likes everything that goes into them separately. Yeah. But he likes stew. He'll do that. But I am the soup person. So I know how you feel there. I did. Actually, we just pulled him out of the freeze dryer the other day.
36:51because last winter I made ham and bean soup and I made chicken enchilada soup for me for lunches for work. And I just, I made too many, you know, starts getting hot and you don't wanna eat soup. So we freeze dried them so that we can take them out on the ice this winter when we go ice fishing. So that'll be a new adventure for us too with our first actual like freeze dried meals. So we're really looking forward to doing that this winter.
37:20That's so fun. You're gonna have to message me and let me know how it was. I'm really, really hoping we have some winter squash growing out in the garden. I haven't dared to ask because I'm afraid that they didn't make it. But I love making squash soup too. So that's gonna be on list for like January, if we have any, I will roast it and freeze it. I'm looking forward to that too. And just fresh squash. Luckily, ours is doing okay.
37:48Emerald pumpkins are taking over everything. So we're going to definitely have a lot of pumpkin, but I'll have to figure out what to do with all that. Yep. And we're going to have to, the husband and I are going to have to get up to the apple place in Jordan and get some apples so that we can do some apple crust here in the next couple of weeks. Cause that is like the, the thing for September. Cause I make a killer apple crust. Where you're talking about and their apples are divine. Mm hmm.
38:17Yep. Um, I'm not talking about the, the apple barn though. I'm not talking about Minnesota's biggest candy store place. I'm talking about the one further up 169. And I'm not talking about Sponsles either. Uh, maybe that's one that I'm thinking of. But they do. Sponsles has great apples as well. They actually sold an apple called Minnesota 1666 about eight years ago. And they ended up renaming it, whoever developed it.
38:45renamed it the Renaissance Apple, which I thought was so funny. And it's an early apple. It's really hard to find because they aren't, there's not a lot of supply yet because it's a brand new variety. It is so good. It's great to eat. It's great to bake with. It's great to dry for like, you know, fruit leather or apple wedges that are just dried that just eat. Yeah. It's fantastic. Crack some of those down. Yeah. I love them.
39:14We won't get any this year. They're probably sold out by now because they're they're really early apple Okay, but anyway, we've been talking for almost 40 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour So i'm gonna i'm gonna cut you loose. I'm sure you got stuff to do Yep, we gotta run to town and do some errands. So All right. Well again, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you l I appreciate it. Thank you so much You too. Thank you. And if you ever want to do this again
39:43would be more than happy. All right we'll have to set it up for spring so I can find out how your winter went. Yeah that's a great idea. All right cool thank you. You're welcome. Bye. Bye.
 

Makers Acres Homestead

Today I'm talking with Tracey at Makers Acres Homestead. You can also follow on Instagram.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Tracey at Makers Acres Homestead. Good morning Tracey, how is the weather in Tennessee today? Good morning. It is sweltering. I think we're going to have a record high today actually. So like...
00:28actual about 100 degrees. I'm not sure what feels like temperature will be, but I am so sorry to hear that. We had feels like temps two days ago of 110. Wow. In Minnesota. I'm going to say that's something from Minnesota. My goodness. Yeah. It was gross. You stepped outside and you were immediately misted. It was terrible. Yeah. And we were in a drought too. So my gardens are a hot mess right now, a little bit of a dumpster fire, but you know, you just kind of go with.
00:58We've got a pretty good dumpster fire going on with our gardens and absence. So may so I understand. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you're doing. Makers Acres Homestead. Yeah, well, we we do a few things where I maybe I should say I or I don't know my husband's kind of long for the ride and some of this stuff. I'm the person with all the ideas.
01:23I want to do about a thousand times more than I'm doing because my ability to execute everything doesn't keep up with all my ideas. But we named, we kind of gave it this property when we moved here five years ago from Michigan. We gave this property, we're on six acres and my parents have a home on the property as well that we moved them down to a couple years after we moved here.
01:51And Makers Acres is just meaning that we just recognize and proclaim that all this belongs to the Lord and this is His land, His property, and we truly just want to be obedient to Him in that and how He wants to use it. But back in Michigan, before we even moved, I really had this like dream that I felt like God put on my heart.
02:21to grow food and give it away to people, basically. And mainly because a little bit of just a brief backstory is I have really seen the power of nutrition change my health story and that of my family. And so I just recognize like everyone deserves access to fresh fruits and vegetables. And even back,
02:51before even my health transformation, we, for a time period during the crash in 08, we actually utilized some of the government services like food stamps and stuff like that because my husband lost his job. And so I have like this intimate knowledge of just that process and being a part of that, just that world. And I mean,
03:17It's fascinating. That's like a whole different rabbit trail. But when you can get candy and junk food and all that with food stamps, just as well as anything else, you're going for cheap because you're trying to make your dollar stretch. And so I think when anyone, whether they're using government assistance or not,
03:44When you're feeling that pinch in your budget, we're always trying to make everything stretch farther. And it's so easy to.
03:55just to compromise because unfortunately the system and the setup is where like junk food is cheaper than healthy food. And so we, I just really wanted to give everyone the access. Now I, you know, not everyone wants it. That's fine. I mean, I get that. And so there is an educational piece behind it. But
04:19I just really wanted everyone to have access to fresh food. And so that's what kind of started this idea in my heart to essentially grow it and give it away. And I personally use these vertical aeroponic tower gardens, a distributor for the company. And that's really how I got my start, zero green thumb, but I just wanted to grow food for my family. And
04:45Michigan soil is very sandy and I lived in a lot of shade and so My back porch was really the only place to grow so That's a nice. I started growing with those and I just realized how much I could grow in a small space So that's kind of what spearheaded that and that dream really took root once we moved to Tennessee and we bought this property and we're like
05:12Okay, so we actually, it's the name of that is called Maker's Pharmacy. And pharmacy is spelled F-A-R-M-A-C-Y. You know, just, you know, food is medicine. And so that's kind of the, the story in brief behind that. I'm sorry if I went off on a rabbit trail a little bit with your question, but. Nope. I want all the stories I can get. I am thrilled when people talk for five minutes about what they're doing. It makes me happy. Oh, good.
05:41So when did you move to Tennessee again? So we moved in the summer of 2019. Okay, so it's been like five years. Yes. Okay. Do you love it? It's been a really good move for us, yes. I mean, it was just really God. We had zero plans to move. All of our family lived in Michigan. Well, I shouldn't say all of my family did. My husband had a few.
06:09family members outside. And, but, you know, never, never planned on moving in that sense. And then just a few things happened. My husband really was feeling super frustrated at work, wasn't able to grow and, but it was like the best job he could get in the area kind of thing too. So you feel easily can feel trapped and I'm not going to lie.
06:38I mean, you live in Minnesota, so you get this. I was kind of over the winters. Oh, I'm getting there, yeah. And our actually, our oldest son had already graduated and he was living in Florida with my father-in-law. And so initially we started, it was like one of those like wild hair ideas that all of a sudden you just like start pulling that thread and God just seems to be like, yes, yes, yes. Let's see what happens next, yes.
07:06So we explored the idea of Florida initially, but I wasn't overly, I mean, I like it going to the beach on vacation or whatever. And I know not all Florida's beach, but it just, it didn't seem to be the fit for us. I had visited Tennessee a few times with my business and it still had four seasons, you know, albeit they're, they're different a little bit, but I just, yeah, we ended up, we ended up coming here.
07:35And it's been a nice like just in between place between all the family and then family continues to move closer to us now. That's always helpful. The reason that I won't leave, I will never live in a non northern tier state is I love the Four Seasons. I hate like with a purple passion, passion. I hate high summer when it's hot and muggy. And I hate low winter.
08:05mid January to the end of February when it's cold and icy and snowy or just cold. We didn't even get real snow last year. So what the heck Mother Nature is doing? I have no idea. We got like a foot of snow last winter. But I love spring. I love rolling into summer. I hate high summer and I love fall. God, I love fall.
08:35Michigan. It's not the same, but I'll take my mild winters. Yeah. Yep. This past winter here was crazy. And it was probably the mildest winter I have seen in the over 30 years that I have lived in Minnesota. It was crazy. So the reason I asked you if you love Tennessee is because I keep talking to people from Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
09:02That's where most of the people I talk to who are growing things live. Most of you are homesteading live. And I'm like, well, maybe we should have moved to freaking Tennessee instead of state Minnesota. I don't know. Oh, you would hate the summer though. Yeah, I know. I know. But we're, we, we have basically found our favorite place on earth to live. So I can't imagine that we're going to.
09:27move again before we die. We found our dream home. We love it. We live here. We live here. I mean, it's not like it's where we lay our heads. It's where we live our lives. So, so I'm going to tell you this. It's really funny to me when people, it's not funny to me. It's unusual to me when people talk about God like he's their friend, like personal friend, because I am
09:57religious person I know. And it's not that I don't appreciate people who have faith, but it's just really unusual for me to hear anyone speak of God as if he's their best friend. So when people do, I'm like, oh yeah, people do that. I forgot. So if I seem weird about it, that's why. I just had a conversation with a lady yesterday and I was like, I'm the most Christian.
10:27un-Christian person you'll ever meet. And she said, how's that work? And I said, I try really, really hard to live by the tenets set forth by the Ten Commandments, but I don't go to church. I don't know if there's a God. I don't know if there's a heaven. I don't know if there's a hell. I don't know. And she was like, huh. She said, so you're Christian, but you don't ascribe to being Christian. I said, kinda sorta. She said, you're the most interesting person I've ever met. And I just laughed.
10:57So it's really interesting to me when people do have a strong faith and I'm always curious about it. So good for you. I'm glad that you have a strong faith and you remind me so much of the girls in the TV show Sweeping Magnolias. Sweeping Magnolias, is that what you call it? Sweet. Sweet Magnolias, I think it is. I don't think I've heard of that. Oh, I think it's on Netflix or Prime. I can't remember, but it's adorable.
11:24It's this little southern town with all these southern bells. It's so much fun. So anyway, we got way off track there. That's okay. Well, thank you for sharing a part of your story. Yeah. The reason that I am not a church going girl, and I can tell this story because I'm sure that the pastor of that church is long gone by now. When I was living in my little town of St. Paul's me when I was growing up, there was a pastor.
11:53and he did some very unsavory things, and I know it to be a fact because I got the facts, and that was the church that I went to when I was a teenage girl. And the people involved were teenage girls in that church. I luckily was not involved. And I used to go to Sunday school there, and I found out what happened, and I went home from Sunday school that day, and I said, I need you guys, my parents, to verify if this is true.
12:23And they did. And I said, I'm never going back to church. I'm not. And I know that churches are not God. Like it's where people go to worship. It's where they go to commune and learn. But it put me off it pretty hard. So that's why. Yeah, I respect that. On behalf of
12:52Christ followers, I'm sorry. I apologize on behalf of people in authority that have not walked humbly before the Lord and obedience to Him. And unfortunately, unfortunately, I mean, I'm not making excuses. We all, everyone, I don't care if you're a leader or what authority position, we are all in need of a savior because we have all fallen short.
13:22But when you're in a position of authority, that, yeah. I mean, so many people, it's sad to me. I mean, sad's just not even the right word. How many people have been hurt, grieved, grieved and abused by the church when that is truly not the heart of God? Yep, no, no, it's not. But I was like 15 when I found out about this. And I was just like, nope, if I wanna talk to God,
13:52I'm gonna go for a walk in the woods and I'm gonna have a chat with God. That's where my church is. So anyway, we're getting real deep on this. The other thing I wanted to touch on is I'm so proud of you for wanting to feed people. Make sure that people have good nutritious food. And I will tell you why. There was a period in my life back when I was in my twenties where I didn't eat a lot of food because I didn't have a lot of money.
14:21And I learned what it actually feels like to be truly hungry. You know, I was eating one meal a day and I felt really lucky to have that. And hunger is a weird thing because you can get used to it. You can adjust to it. And I lost weight. I didn't, I didn't get too skinny, but I lost weight for sure. And hunger, if you have never felt it before, feels like the inside of your stomach.
14:48one side of your stomach is rubbing the other side. That's what hunger feels like. You also get like your brain gets cloudy because it's not being fed. Yeah. Hunger is not a fun place to be. So really, really happy that you're doing what you're doing. So tell me how you're doing it. How are you feeding people? How are you feeding your community?
15:18vertical gardens. We use those primarily, but then this last year I actually received a couple raised beds and trellis from Vago Gardens. They donated to us and so that's allowed us to expand our offering because the vertical gardens
15:40can grow so much, but they are a little limited to, they cannot grow root vegetables because it's not, it's a soil-less system that we use. And so, and it's, you know, root, so I'm not growing onions. So I'm growing onions, potatoes, carrots, that kind of thing outside of those towers. I can do that in the raised beds and stuff like that. So that kind of gave us some more options. And so we partnered, like the,
16:10Last couple years, we just kind of play it by, well, I don't know if play it by ears is exactly the right term, but each year we approach it. Each year we approach it differently and see who we can serve. My goal or our vision is more to, I'd rather go deep with one organization than do a little bit with a bunch of organizations, if that makes sense. So Yep.
16:38I'm not trying to be a food pantry itself. I want to partner with the organizations and ministries, whatever, that are already working and have relationships with people in the community that they're serving. So we've worked with a couple in the past, we've worked with a couple homeless shelters that serve a few meals during the week and or give out food bags.
17:07this year we partnered with a ministry that's actually serving women that have gotten out of sex trafficking and sex exploitation and they're kind of in a rehabilitation home. And so we've helped provide fresh food for them. And you know, when you start something
17:37morph as you go because, you know, for example, when you're serving, so when I'm serving this home that is, that has women that live there and I can provide for them and they have a kitchen and they can make stuff, you know, that is, that's different than even when I'm providing food bags for, for largely.
18:02The homeless are on I think on houses, the more politically correct word. It's the new word. Yes. But, um, you know, like, so with them, I'm like, I've packaged up some cucumbers and some cherry tomatoes, cause I'm like, you can just eat those going down while you're walking down the street or sitting at the park or whatever, you don't have to have a kitchen, you know, to prepare that. So it, I, I. Totally.
18:32I would say I started with a lot of ignorance, but God is so faithful to just, He can do so much with obedience. You don't have to be skilled and completely knowledgeable or educated and all the things you want to do. You just, a little bit of ignorance on fire and you show up and He does the rest. So like I said, we're changing kind of what we do from year to year. And then
19:00I'm going to be completely transparent with you. OK. We are actually, just last week, our board, we voted to put it on hold to go dormant in a gardening term, whatever, for the winter. So last fall, we did raise money. Last fall, we put up a greenhouse so that the towers are in the greenhouse.
19:30That way, the goal is to be able to grow year round in a greenhouse. So that was the vision. We haven't been able to complete all that work yet financially, but as far as like wiring the greenhouse for all that. We put it on hold largely because I kind of got burnt out. It happens. Yeah. Well, and...
19:56And I want to say this very carefully because I don't mean any disrespect to anyone board members or people that partnered with us, but.
20:08no one will work as hard for your dream than you will. And I totally understand that. But yet, we got to a place where I'm like, I cannot do everything. And so alongside, I have a business, I homeschool my boys, I'm a wife, I'm a caregiver for my parents. There's just so many different
20:37this ministry can become and did become, especially during peak growing season, easily at least a part-time job several hours a day. And it just became where I just couldn't do it. And then it got to where even if I could do it, I didn't want to do it anymore. But not from a like, I didn't believe that it wasn't important. It just was like, I am tired of doing this by myself.
21:07I don't know, I'm working through that a little bit and I feel good with putting, essentially closing it down for the winter. I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I fight like, oh my gosh, did we do something wrong or did I try to make something happen before it was the right time? You know, where have I failed or whatever.
21:38I just have to surrender it and release it and just trust what God is doing and trust the process. And we'll see, you know, I just, I need more people to come around to make it actually work. Yes. And you have not failed. You have started something wonderful. And I'm going to be completely transparent with you. I'm going to bust my everloving hiney over the next couple of weeks to get some episodes recorded and banked.
22:07So I can take a week off from recording because my house needs a humongous cleaning. Oh girl. I know. And I'm, and I'm, I'm starting to find that trying to do a, a interview a day every day is a lot. Yeah. So I'm going to try to do a few extras a week so that I have some bank so that I can take like four days off from recording.
22:34so that I can get stuff organized so I feel like I'm more focused on the podcast when I'm focused on it. And I think that you taking the winter to, number one, give it a rest, number two, reevaluate, and number three, figure out where to go from here, is healthy. That is not a terrible thing to do. I agree. I...
23:00Like I said, I'd be lying if there weren't those doubts, but at the same time I reached such a place where I'm like, I just, I don't even know if I can say this, but it's like, I don't even, I care, but at the same time when you're so tired and weary, like I don't care what happens either. There's a word, I'm not going to use it. You have no Fs.
23:27to give at this point. Yeah, I know what you mean. And there's another term, out of spoons. When you're tired, when you're done for the day, I have friends and I learned it from them that say, I'm out of spoons. I just, I can't keep going right now. So if you don't want to use the F one, you can use I'm out of spoons and people look at you funny. You just say, I'm just out of gas. I can't keep going right now.
23:51Yeah, and I just felt like it's like a season for me to withdraw. It's not like the right word either because I don't, it sounds a little bit of a negative connotation, but it is just to be like, okay, I am just setting some boundaries and I'm just focusing on my home, my family and my business. And like you said, I mean, I'm just working through even
24:13some basic cleaning projects around my home and property because it just gets neglected when you're going in 20 directions. Yep, it sure does. If you could see the back of my stove in my kitchen right now, you'd be like, Mary, why did you not clean your stove for a month? Because we don't have a vent above our stove. We don't have the thing that blows the grease out because it's just not set up that way.
24:38I can't seem to find a place that has one of those when I live in it. It just never shows up. But my husband and my kid love bacon. They love burgers. So grease gets everywhere when you don't have one of those hood vents. I have got to, got to this weekend clean that because it's driving me insane. It's going to feel so good when you do that. Oh, you're going to be so proud of yourself.
25:06And nobody else really cares. And I don't really care because nobody really visits here very often. Cause that's how my life is set up. I'm not a people person. I don't have people over very often, but when I'm looking at it and going, that's just gross, I got to take care of that. It's time. And it's just, there are so many things that you have to make choices about every day about what you're going to do and what's going to wait. And, and I looked at your Instagram.
25:35page feed, whatever they call it. You have lots going on. Yeah. So don't beat yourself up. Mentally hug yourself. Say that you're taking care of you and do things you need to take care of you. It's okay. And don't lose hope because once you take a break, you get yourself together. You figure out what you want to do. You're going to have renewed energy to make the next thing even better.
26:06Yes. And I sound like a cheerleader, but that's what I would tell myself. I'm going to tell you. Yeah. So, and I'm assuming you're not going to go anywhere. You're still going to be available online on Instagram and Facebook. Oh, yeah. People can still learn about stuff from you. I love, I love talking about it. And I love, and like, I love equipping and inspiring others to, you know, to provide for their family and have hope for the health of their own family, as well as
26:36you know, to be able to operate in the plans and purposes God has for them and designed for them too. So I love, I'm the worn out woman and maxed out mom right now, but I love to champ. I really love championing them because I've been there. I am there. And, but I know it's not our story forever. It's just a chapter. Yeah. And the thing I've learned in 54 years is everything is a chapter. Yeah.
27:05Every stage of your life is a chapter and sometimes you have to go back and read past chapters To figure out what maybe the direction of the next one is Yeah I've had to I I have and to remember what is like Remember how you've changed and grown through every chapter because of the chapter, too Yeah, the thing I hang on to is you can only make decisions based on what you know at the time and so
27:35I refuse to see anything I've ever done as a mistake. I see it as a learning experience. Yeah. I tell people that about gardening all the time. It is always an adventure and experience. The best gardeners have killed many plants. Oh yeah. So I actually did a post about this the other day. I said, I was talking, the video of my dad cucumber plant, even the healthiest plants, they come to an end. They have a season.
28:04But it's like, I don't regret planting that. I don't think it was a waste of time. So I shouldn't view where I'm at and just where Maker's Pharmacy is at either that way. I should just, it's just a season. It is and hang on to that because it will keep you sane. There have been days in my life where I have looked around and gone, what the hell am I doing? Why? Burn it all to the ground.
28:31Why am I doing this? Well, how did I even get to where I'm doing this? You know, just having one of those terrible days. And I haven't had one in quite a while, but I remember the last one I had, it was probably eight, nine years ago. Frustrated, beyond measure about something, and just mad, you know, horny mad. And I called my mom and I was like, I need to vent, because my mom's real good about that. She's like, you call anytime you want to talk. So I called her, I was like,
29:01This thing is going on. I know I did it to myself because I made these choices, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, yes. I said, having a bad day. She was like, yep, that happens. She said, I have compassion for you and I'm glad that you called the vent because that's what I'm here for. She said, but you need to sleep on this. She said, go on with your day. Try to find some good things in it. Get some sleep. Look at it tomorrow morning. It will probably look better. Love, my mom.
29:31So I got off the phone and I basically hiked up my big girl pants and finished my day and went to sleep and actually slept. That helped too. Got up next morning. I don't know why I was so mad yesterday. This is easily fixable. I just need to change some things. It's okay. And the other thing I'm going to say, I was thinking about this this morning, is that sleep is as important as food. I, my husband, my husband snores.
30:00And I go to bed early so I can get at least four hours solid sleep before he comes to bed because half the time he comes up, he doesn't snore, I'm good. Other half of the time he snores like a chainsaw and I get no sleep. And four nights in a row of no really good sleep will make me really, really angry. So, so people, good food is really important, but good sleep going hand in hand with nutrition is really important. Yes.
30:31Yes. Amen. Amen. I will join you on the amen on that one. So, so it's all about, I mean, you're tired. I know you're tired and you're busy and you're trying to give of yourself and that is a noble, wonderful thing. But if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of anybody else. And this whole podcast today has been very, very new agey, coachy.
31:00And that's not what the podcast is really about, but it really does apply because when you're trying to do things like grow produce or raise animals for meat or heck raise kids, cause you wanted a pastel of kids, it's all very big and very tiring and very good makes you feel great when it works, but you have to be good in yourself to be able to do it.
31:29So I think it's appropriate. I think that this whole 30 minute conversation was really important today. Good, I hope that it encourages someone and just they feel seen and know that there is hope. It's okay, like you said, we have bad days. We have rough, hard seasons. It's been a hard year, but it's laying the ground for something better too. And I just.
31:58I put my hope and my trust in Lord Jesus. Yeah and I'm not religious at all but I'm going to say this and people are going to laugh at me. Maybe God put me in your path for me to talk to you about this today. Yeah, God uses, God can use anyone. Was it they believe in him or not? Exactly and I figure he has a very good time doing that. He's like, I'm going to let her know I'm here whether she thinks I am or not.
32:28All right, Tracey, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're there and I really appreciate you being so open with me. That was great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for the invitation. You're welcome. And thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Have a great day. You too.
 
 

The Steady Home

Today I'm talking with Lexi at The Steady Home.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Lexi Maitland, and I don't really have a business name for you. So good morning, Lexi, how are you? Hey, Mary, I'm good. And our business is The Steady Home, but how are you? The Steady Home, yes. I think that's how I found you, but I completely forgot.
00:29No, that's okay. I'm well. It is not stiflingly, miserably humid and hot here today. So... Oh, I love that. I love that. Now, where are you, Barry? Minnesota. In what part of the country? Minnesota. Nice. Yeah, it's like 90, I think 93 here today. So it's a little toasty on my end. And you're in Virginia? I am. Just south of Richmond and Dimwitty. Okay. Yes. All right. So before we get into what you do...
00:57I have a little minor self-promotion thing to say. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my podcast. What? I'm so excited for you. I saw it on your Facebook yesterday. I was like, oh my gosh, that's so exciting. Yeah. And I just wanted to thank all my guests. I'm upset. I'm like, I'm shook up here. All my guests and all my listeners. Because when I started this, I didn't think it was going to do.
01:27anything at all. So one year is a big deal. It's a massive deal, Mary. Your discipline through your podcast. I mean, you do multiple a week. I listened to a podcast not long ago and you said that you did nine interviews within a week. So I just want to congratulate you because it is not easy doing a podcast by itself, but your discipline and the community that you've created within your podcast has been amazing. I've loved listening to you.
01:57Well, thank you. And if I didn't love it so much, I wouldn't be doing it. Well, you do a great job. I love it. Thank you. I didn't realize I was going to tear up, but boy, what a year it's been. Yes. Take that moment for you. That's amazing. So, that's my teary moment for the day, I guess. So, anyway, thank you everybody for supporting me. And so, tell me about the study home, Lexi. Tell me all about you. Sure.
02:25a little bit about me. I grew up on a little over a hundred acre farm most of my life throughout my whole childhood and when I hit adulthood I had I thought I had been sheltered and so I thought maybe the city offered more to life and so I shifted to a smaller city and then I quickly came back to my to my roots and so how you found me I think was through
02:53the Facebook group that I created. And so I'll get into a little bit about that. But how I started homesteading was my daughter, personally, I mean, I grew up on a farm, but personally started homesteading within my own home and cultivating that throughout my family was my daughter was born in 2021. And after the massive push for the COVID Vax and the boosters, I started doing my own research and questioning what feels like everything.
03:20So when I started, I started a little Facebook group in November of 2023 to help others find a community of information and to feel safe in asking some of those difficult questions specifically for beginners. And since I started the group the end of last year, we've grown to over 97,000 in the group and our active newsletter subscribers reached a little over 40,000 now. So we have a total of 60 but active are right at 40,000.
03:49Um, so we've, we've done some, a lot in a short timeframe and I feel like it's been a little overwhelming. So I understand celebrating your first year. There's so the, the grind and the hustle that first year is, is, um, you know, some of the best work I believe through that discipline. So again, hats off to you. Um, so since I started the group, um, yeah, we've, we've
04:16We've done a lot. And so we've done, we've created like homestead workshops, we've created a membership, we have, you know, the newsletter and now, you know, we're inviting sponsors to sponsor the newsletter that are aligned with our audience. We've done a membership, we've started a little blog on Pinterest and yeah, it's been, it's been quite a year. So that's kind of like a gist and you know, what, what we're up to within this.
04:45quote unquote steady home. It feels kind of cliche to say it publicly, but I really wanted to create more sustainability within our home and we ran a solar company for a little over five years. And so we really were immersed into sustainability before we were immersed into homesteading. So now we've got the basic homestead animals, the chickens, the goats, canning and.
05:13growing our little raised gardens and now we're getting ready to the big dogs now. So we're pretty excited. And it was just a, it was a lonely journey when I first started. So I didn't want that for anybody else. And so that's why I created the Steady Home and the little Facebook group and it's just grown immensely. You got some big numbers going on there, ma'am. Yeah, it's been quite a, it was wild.
05:40to be honest with you because I had only started this group in Virginia. And I think because of the beginning of the group, it says getting started, homesteading and natural living. I think a lot of people, at least towards the end of the year and the beginning of this year, started growing within the nation. And so what was meant for me to just find my people in Virginia, it quickly grew to nationwide. So we're looking to see how.
06:08We can kind of connect everybody. So right now we have within the Facebook group, we have all the states, all 50 states. And you can go in there and introduce yourself, figure out who within the chats, I'm sorry, within the chats, you can go in there and say, I'm from Dimwitty, Virginia, and who's around me? And they'll shout out and say.
06:33I'm in Prince George, I'm in Chester, and everybody kind of gets excited because you start finding all of the people that are also on that same journey of getting started within homesteading and natural living. And so it's been amazing. I absolutely love this journey. You've created a network so that the tribe can find its people. Yes. Yes, I have. Good job. You're a connector. That kind of feels...
07:01very fitting. That feels fitting for me. I found that I've really enjoyed operations within business and, you know, helping people kind of work up the hierarchy ladder and, you know, who they would manage well and looking at their skill set. And so this just kind of feels like my skill set is, I just like to connect things, connect the dots. Yeah, and I'm a systems girl. I really like having a system for things.
07:28Yeah, which is real hard when my husband has ADD and wouldn't know a system if it bit him on the butt. So, so yeah, it's a part of the reason I started the podcast is because it's mine. It's the only thing that's mine. I have a system. I know how it works. I work the system. This system works. Yeah, I get it. And you you partner pretty well too. And just finding your network for your podcast host, you know, who you want to host with and making sure that they're aligned, they're aligned
07:58your goal as well. So Mary, if you don't, I know you typically ask the questions, but I have a question for you if that's okay. That's totally fine, I think. So what is your mission with the podcast? Like what is the origin story of A Tiny Homestead and what is your long-term vision for A Tiny Homestead? What would you like to see? Well I've told the story a couple of times, but I'll tell you real quick. My son was going
08:27four kids. He was going to be leaving in September last year and he was going to go stay with his brother for a while, which is totally fine. They're really good friends. It was just going to be me and my husband. I was like, I need a project because otherwise I'm going to go through that empty nest thing hard and that's going to suck. I need a new baby. I had really been wanting to do something that actually used my talents. I was like,
08:56And I wanted to do a podcast, but I don't know what it is. And I talked with my husband about it, and he's like, just keep throwing ideas at me. One of them will stick. And after a month or two, I was like, how about interviewing people who are doing homesteading, cottage food producing, and crafting, because that's what we're both into, and other people would learn from it, and it would be really fun, and I wouldn't get bored with it. And he was like, yes, do that.
09:23Oh my goodness. That was so perfectly aligned for you guys. So that's how it started. And then my son actually moved back two months after he moved out. And I've told this story already, too, but I'll tell it again. He was like, I have a doctor's appointment. Can you take me? And I had told him when he got back that you need to put stuff on the calendar because I have a calendar now that is booked. It's all it. And.
09:49I was like, I have an interview at that time. And he was like, can you reschedule it? And I said, yes, but this is why we need to put things on the calendar. And he has since he's let me know every time when he has something going on that he needs a ride to. Very long story on why he can't drive right now. He has a thing going on that he has no control over and I can't talk about it. I'm not allowed to. So it's.
10:16He's home living with us for very, very good reasons. There's nothing bad that he's done. So the long-term plan, I don't know, until I am bored of talking with people who are brilliant and inventive and creative and geniuses. Do you ever get bored of that, ever? Not really, no. And I mean, the long, long-term plan is that it brings in some supplemental income to put toward the homestead here.
10:46Yes. Oh, that's an amazing vision. I love that. Yes. And I actually had my first sponsor two Mondays ago, trial sponsorship two Mondays ago for two weeks. And I just monetized it that same day. So I had my first sponsor and monetized it in under a year. Oh, my goodness. That's an amazing milestone, Mary. That was the goal for the first year and I didn't think I'd hit it. So Oh, gosh.
11:15Yeah, you hung on to that vision. Even with a little bit of self-doubt, you did amazing. That's so exciting. I figured if I didn't think I would make it, I would be so excited if I did, and I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't, so. I get it. There's pros and cons. But also, the other thing I wanted the podcast to do is get the word out about all of you guys doing the things you're doing. Because it's really hard to market if you're not a marketer. It is.
11:45It is. Yeah, that's something that I've learned to grow as, especially, you know, running a solar company for the last five years. We really adjusted to, you know, the different marketing strategies on the different platforms, having the different channels and what speaks to this person doesn't speak to that person. And so it's always interesting to test, you know, different ways of the delivery channel and then, you know, what makes people bite.
12:15Um, and so I've, I've really loved that part of the life that we've created is, you know, learning the different styles of personality within the people too, because, you know, you'll have a voice for people that I won't ever have a voice for. And you know, my channel is not, is not a podcast. And so the people that you reach in collaboration with, you know, those two different audiences is
12:42is a very strategic way for you to grow your podcast. So that's incredible, Mary, I love that. So that's the shorter version. The short version is I needed a hobby, so I picked one up. That's the simple version. Yeah. That's amazing. So what do you guys do exactly? Sure. So when I started the Facebook group, I really wanted to just create a community where people feel safe in asking the questions.
13:11It took me personally two years to really just understand the basics of homesteading and natural living. A ton of trial and error, hours of research, reading through tons of blogs on Pinterest and watching the YouTube videos to learn what I know today and picking my grandparents' brain too. I still feel like I know very little about homesteading if I'm being completely honest.
13:41people can jump in and ask the questions that they think are silly. I think that there's a big push since the keyword, I'm sorry, the C word, to take back some of the control and question everything. And if there is one thing I've learned, it's if I'm interested in something someone else is too. And so that I trust I'll personally pioneer the path to learning and then educating as my give back for my active service. So...
14:10I have a, I created my mission last month through this workshop that I was doing. And my mission is to educate sustainability through homesteading and cultivate an abundant mindset. I think a lot of times in homesteading, it can be perceived as limited or minimalist or frugal. And the sub effects could impact our own mindset and that we have a limited resources or a limited supply because it's what we've created off of our.
14:39our own land. So my goal is just to cultivate the overflow mindset and the abundance mindset. So that way there's, you know, always more within their own little family, because I think a lot of the people that I touch are the either the homemakers or the people that are, you know, working the nine to five job want to control some of the things that are going into their children's bodies, their own bodies.
15:09what the better goal of the government is. And so just having like more more control within their own home and what goes on for their children. So we have with our membership, we have we like to just turn down the noise of the Internet and turn up their action into Homestead and Natural Living. And so we have tutorials on all things Homestead based on.
15:37research that we've done. We've cultivated many, many different blogs that we found extremely helpful through the two-year journey that I have and so that I did within my first two years. And so just kind of finding those resources that really impacted my journey that I felt were extremely educational. So we've condensed the amount of information that a lot of people can just go on Pinterest and search for. Within our
16:05newsletter, we do three personalized emails. So we have like a DIY, DIY email and educational email and then homemade recipes. Those are the three dedicated emails that they get within the membership. And then we also do giveaways. And then they have access to pre-launch within the merch because we have like a small e-comm store. And
16:31Let's see, I'm trying to think of what else. They get discounts on our website. They get discounts with our partner brands. One of the things that we are working on is for the beginner homesteads. They don't, homesteaders, they don't have a lot of assets on their homestead, but we still want to ensure what they do have. We have, within our group, we have beginner homesteads, stutters, intermediate homesteaders, and advanced homesteaders. And so one of the things that
17:01we've seen within our community is that somebody's homestead caught on fire and they lost so much equipment and animals in their barns. And so one of the things that I really touched my heart is that the community themselves chipped in to get them back on their feet, get them back. And they were living off of their land. They didn't have full-time jobs. Their entire living was based on their own homestead. And so when that happened, they felt like...
17:30they went to nothing. And so when I saw that, I was like, Oh my gosh, I wonder if there is insurance that protects homesteaders for in an event for a fire. And luckily everybody was safe. Um, minus some of the, the barnyard animals, they, but there was nothing that I could find that really protected the smaller homesteaders. There were things for, you know, the larger farmers. And so that's one of the things that we're looking at.
17:59to turn our membership into an actual homestead association. So that way we can lend a helping hand in the event anything happened. They're also protected through the Homestead Association. So that's in the works that'll probably be live within the next 45 days. So that's been really interesting. So I've basically buckled down and just put my head down, figure out what people want. That's the most, that's the creative.
18:28Part of me that I absolutely love is just learning what other people are looking for. You can typically share what those journeys are based on what you've already been through. Because I was able to look at the last two years, all of my Pinterest, my massive Pinterest board, look at the things that I changed within our own home, I was able to create a community within my little network. Then I was like, well,
18:57Let's create a Facebook group because I'm sure there's more people out in Virginia that I don't know that I'd love to connect with. And so that was the, that was the idea. I think I created, I created the group back in November and then it caught wind November, December, and January. And in January is when we took it nationwide just for other people to find their people. Um, I figured I didn't.
19:26I don't want to be selfish and just kind of keep my little network. And so I just created a bunch of different chats for each state and so that way everybody could find their own. So it's been a blast. I absolutely loved it. It's had its challenges. Some people would be in the group and given false information.
19:50And so that's been really interesting. Just, I had to hire an admin just to accept the amount of group members that we received in a little over 10 months. Um, and so I had to hire an admin and I was like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm paying for this out of my pocket, which is fun, but it'd be really nice if, you know, we could just somehow offset some of the costs. And so that's why we started the membership, just so that way we could have, you know, I couldn't.
20:16hire somebody to write the newsletters and so that way I could focus on my full-time job of running another business. The entire idea was not to monetize the Facebook group. The entire idea was to just create friends, create a little network for myself. With every startup, there comes its challenges and there comes their delegation.
20:46So that's the idea of the membership. And we have a little over 300 people that are within the program currently. And we're consistently seeing growth every single day. So it's been awesome. Super cool. I love that. I love it. I love it when people are like, I'm gonna do this thing. And then it just keeps exponentially growing like a spider web, you know? It really has. I think the coolest part is just seeing it.
21:14the different levels of homesteading. It's like, we have, you know, people within the Facebook group that'll ask the most basic questions and you can tell that they just feel bad or they'll ask, you know, questions and be anonymous. And then you'll also have, you know, people that will talk about, you know, the insemination of different animals. And it's like, huh, I haven't gotten there yet. You know, there's levels to this game. But it's...
21:43It's really, really cool to see just how the community itself can be like help just has an active service to help. You know, I've been there, let me help you with that. You want to learn sourdough. Okay, first you need a starter. Here's how you start. Here's the, you know, portions. And so, just seeing the different people kind of jump in and be so resourceful within their own life and then want to give back to the people that are in the beginning stages has been.
22:13incredible. Yeah, the thing I've learned over the last year is that most people I've talked to, whether they're bakers or they're crafters or they're homestudders, they're all genuinely happy and willing to share help and information. And I love that because the world is so small, but so disconnected sometimes. It really can be. And I think the disconnection even
22:43has been a massive push for the last few years. I think that's what the pandemic did to a lot of people is kind of cut off the social and the bartering. And I'm seeing a lot of people go back to the bartering lifestyle. And that's been amazing too. I guess you can call her my mother-in-law. She's got chickens and they're producing eggs and she's so excited about it.
23:13And her neighbor across the street has like opened up a little farm stand for blackberries and blueberries. And she was like, Oh my gosh, I wonder if they would trade for my, my eggs for their blackberries and blueberries. And I was like, they absolutely will. Like you just have to, you have to make that connection. And so it's interesting to just see people be a little more hesitant to just going up to people and asking them, Hey, you know, would you be interested in, and maybe swap in or doing this service?
23:44Yeah, we've done quite a few within the last few months. We've provided sourdough starter to a couple hundred people within the group. We created a seed swaps chat within the group too. So people are swapping seeds. We did that in the spring and every morning we do a Bible devotion within the Facebook group. I'll go into the Bible app and
24:09read the devotion and copy and paste it into the Bible devotion app. And there's been, I think there's like over 3000 people in that, in that individual chat. And so that's been really cool to see too. So there's a lot in the works. I think people are really kind of going back to their roots. I think there's been so much more awareness that has peaked over the last few years. And I think it's.
24:38for the better, especially with, you know, the different bioengineered foods that are coming out, you know, genetically made eggs and things like that. So just people taking back that control and responsibility in their own life has been really awesome to see.
25:05They're all kind of winding down on giving us eggs and feeding chickens just to feed chickens is not the plan. And so over the winter, we're going to be buying eggs at the store. We haven't done that in four years. Oh my goodness. Are you considering getting chicks again or just... Next spring, yeah. Next spring. Gotcha. Yeah. We did a workshop not too long ago. One of the girls... One of the...
25:31group members named Caitlin did post a workshop on how to process a chicken. And so I'll have to send you that video because if, have you already, have you already or ever called a chicken before? Yes. Yes, we have. So this is new for you. Yeah, but it's good that you have that because a lot of people have never called any animals. So right. But we're going to take the healthiest chickens because there's still like four of them that are fat and sassy and look really healthy.
26:00and we're going to dispatch them and then we're going to roast them up in our roaster and make chicken stock and hand the chicken stock. Oh, that's so perfect. So they're not going to go to waste. No, no. And you could savor every single part, almost every single part. We have a friend and not too far, he's been an hour and a half away from us and him and his wife also process chickens and they do a big batch twice a year. I believe it's twice a year.
26:30I've bought quite a few chickens from them just to get away from the grocery store. And anyway, it was really crazy to see the difference in a chicken that was raised and processed on a local farm versus the store-bought chicken. I could not believe the difference in the taste. And it is a little bit more expensive, but for me, it's so worth it.
26:58Just to know where things come from and you know what goes into their bodies and you know what they're what they're feeding them so I think that's the that's the way to do it is support the local farm stands and support the local farmers that are Getting off, you know their feet to to process because that is not an easy job After watching the workshop video. I was like, wow, this is insane. And I had no idea how much work went into just plucking
27:28So it's a lot of hard, good work. Yeah, I was going to say, it's relatively hard. I don't think it's difficult. I think it's time. It's a lot of time involved. Yes, if you don't have the proper equipment, it does take quite a bit of time. Yeah. So I have a rather pointed question. It's going to sound pointed. I'm not trying to be a snot. I just need to know.
27:57Is your, is the study home your only business or do you guys like garden or do you have animals or do you do any of those things? Yes, we do. So we have, let's see, Martha, we have goats, we have Nigerian dwarf goats. My first goat that we got, her name is Martha, she just had her first, she just went into, I guess came out of kidding season.
28:24And we just pulled her babies from her last week. So we have five total now Nigerian Dwarf goats. And then we have, let's see, one, two, three. I think we're at either 11 or 12 chickens. So very small. And then we have the raised garden beds that I realized this year are just way too small for us for our goals with having a massive pantry. So that,
28:55bought the equipment that we needed to be able to do our own full garden. So I think that's going to be like 0.25 acres of a garden is, yeah, so pretty big. At least for us, it's pretty big. But my grandparents have a bigger one and a massive greenhouse too. So I always feel like I'm just a little guy. But
29:17Yeah, so we do everything that we teach. We're not just all business. We very much are hands-on, and my kids are hands-on. So that was the main reason that I wanted to do this was for them, because I realized a lot of the grit that I was taught as a kid came from having my hands in the dirt, riding fullers, and being outside, and fishing in the pond. So a lot of the grit was instilled
29:46through my childhood and as I was reading my oldest daughter, Lily, I realized that she didn't have a lot of grit. She was actually a little scared of the dirt. And I was like, no, we need to pivot. So we jumped into chickens first, like I think everybody does as far as hands in the dirt. So we got the chickens and then we...
30:10Got two goats after that and got another set of chickens and we got meat chickens and that did not actually did not turn out the way that I had expected. We had a predator get to them that wasn't we were not prepared for that as much as I thought that we would be. And so we're going to do another another round of meat chickens next year just to be able to do it.
30:38you know, see how we like it. And if it's something that we like, then we'll continue to do it just for our family. And let's see, I think that's it. But we're only on like two and a half, a little less than two and a half acres. And so we're in search of more land that is centralized to the kids school. And my oldest daughter is eight and then my youngest, she's getting ready to turn three.
31:04And so just finding something that is central to the area and then not too far from our family because our family is about an hour and a half apart within his mom's side and then my dad's side. So it's quite a hike. So we got to find something kind of in the middle. Okay. And the reason I said it was a pointed question is it was going to come off sounding like, well, if you're doing this, but you're not actually raising anything, then why are you doing this? And that's not what I was getting at.
31:34Oh, I didn't take it that way. Yeah, so I wanted to make sure that I put that in there because you don't have to be a homesteader to learn about homesteading skills. Right. Yeah, there's a lot of people that are just putting potatoes in a five gallon bucket on their back porch in their apartment. And so I think.
31:56You know, you can really start at any point wherever you are in your life and, you know, growing little seedlings within your house. That's where I started with my garden. And yeah, it's just, I think to be educated and just to consume the knowledge and not take any action on it. If you have a goal of taking future action, that's completely great. Like that's great. You're doing what you need to in order to get started. But if you never take the action, what's the
32:24There's minimal point in my opinion of doing it because you learn so much more hands on. You know, there's, there's, you can consume as much information as you like, but if you don't apply the knowledge, you lose it in 30 days. Yes. And honestly, if you can make a meal from scratch, one meal, that's homesteading. If you can, if you can crochet a basic scarf, that's homesteading.
32:54Exactly. Yeah, the first thing that I ever, I was so, I don't know all of the ends and outs of it. I got a sewing machine for my birthday and I still have yet to really put in more than an hour's work on it. We've just had our hands in so many other different projects that I just haven't slowed down. And I think slowing is like...
33:17the intention of that is just to take a break and disconnect and be creative with your hands and you know, learning how to do the basics. And I've watched a couple different videos on sewing, but I did mystery, like a wasse mystery. That was part of the thing, one of the launches that we did for the sourdough. But yeah, we've done, I've done a couple different
33:47plug in the little, the needles into. And that was the first thing that I ever said. And so just taking time to just slow down and create little things like that, I think is so fulfilling too. Yes, because the world is so busy and distracting. You can find anything to do where it's your hands or your body and you are focused on the one thing that you're creating. It actually gives your brain a chance to relax.
34:17Mm-hmm, and that's what I love about cooking. Oh So you're in the kitchen that's where you relax Yeah, and on the podcast because I really love listening to you guys's stories So I'm focused on your stories for a half an hour to 45 minutes every day. Hopefully You know a lot of people think that it it takes and I know we're coming up on time No, I think a lot of people
34:40think about homesteading or just slowing down, like that's slowing down as a particular lifestyle that you have to slow down in every area. And I've studied masculine and feminine energy and understanding the different roles and how they integrate. And I think integration is extremely important. There is a certain point where you have to have a lot of drive and a lot of masculine energy to go, go, go. And then there's a certain time where, even if it's five to 10 minutes a day,
35:09For me, it's walking out in my backyard with my toes just ingrained in the grass. I just feel so much more connected to what our long-term mission is. I can really go into a creative space within my mind if I want to of what is the next vision. Or I can slow down and say, okay, I'm going to be present here in this moment. I feel sun on my skin. Just taking that time for us to get out of the hook.
35:38the hustle culture that they've created has been my wind down. I've just connected and then, you know, doing the devotions every morning has been very fulfilling. And reading a book, you know, anything that I think just makes you utilize some of your, your senses rather than the mind so much. It's definitely ways to slow down. Yep. And everybody needs a chance to slow down.
36:08I've said this a bunch of times over the last year, your body cannot handle a state of constant anxiety for very long without starting to break down. Right. Yeah. Staying in a fight or flight state is not going to keep you alive or, you know, see your great grandchildren towards the end of your life. You've got to learn different ways to cope and to...
36:35get back into your body and figure out what it is that you wanna do within your life that doesn't create a go, go, go. Because at the end of your life, I think you always question, what is it that I was here to do and did I fulfill that? And if the answer is no, it may seem like a life full of regret. But if you do take time and say, okay, what was extremely important to me and to the people?
37:01around me that creates the fulfillment, then did I have a life worth living? Absolutely. Yep, absolutely. And that is a great note to end this podcast episode on. Thank you, Lexi, for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, thanks so much, Mary. And congratulations. Happy one year to you. Thank you. And I will put all the links to all the things in your show notes, okay? Yes. Okay. Sounds good, Mary. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good afternoon.
 

Red Tool House Farm

Today I'm talking with Troy at the Red Tool House Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Troy at Red Tool House Farm. Good morning, Troy, how are you? Good morning, how are you? I'm good, it's nice to talk with you again. Last time we talked, we were talking about the Homesteading-ish Conference, but today we're talking about you. Yes.
00:29So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Red Toolhouse farm. Well, Red Toolhouse is the name of the place that we've been on for the last 24 years. It is about a hundred acres and we're in the southwestern portion of West Virginia, what I consider the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a piece of property in major disrepair when we bought it.
00:57had lots of garbage on it, old house, old trailer, just had been abandoned for so long or unused for so long that it had just accumulated a lot of the neighborhood garbage. So we bought it knowing that we were going to have to put a lot of sweat equity into it. We had a lot of potential with the property. We knew.
01:22We knew there was a lot of potential there, but just, just going to have to get through a lot of that work. Got a great deal on the property. Um, so young and dumb, didn't know any better. So just dove head first into it. So over the last 24 years, just kind of embraced more of a regenerative agricultural elements, you know, the homesteading, we kind of picked up the homesteading vibe about 14 years ago and started pursuing that more kind of knowing where food comes from, producing our own food.
01:51raising livestock and then just managing the forest on this 100 acres is kind of where we've landed. Okay. So where did you live before? Okay. So I, my wife and I, we dated through high school and we were West Virginians. So we were, well, she's a transplant. She was from Florida originally, but we went to high school together. We went to college together. We went to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
02:16And after college, we decided, hey, we can't stay in West Virginia. We want to get a job. All the things that went along with that. So we moved to Orlando for a couple of years. And Orlando is okay, but there's a lot of humanity in Orlando. So we kind of felt the call to come back home. We always joke that West Virginians are like boomerangs. They keep coming back. So we moved back in.
02:441998, I believe, eight or nine. And moved back, actually stayed in a little cabin that was just over the mountain from where I grew up and spent a year trying to find property. I told Kelly, my wife, I said, if we're gonna move back to West Virginia, I don't wanna live in town, I don't wanna live around people. Orlando had really turned me off from even liking people anymore. I just didn't like people. So I...
03:10I said, we need to live as rural as we possibly can, but we both still work full-time jobs in the city of Charleston. So we knew we still had to be a reasonable commutable drive from Charleston. So we looked about an hour out, just drew a circle around the city of Charleston and said, let's look for land.
03:31This land wasn't even on the market. It was actually just a piece of land lying here and we had to go door to door. As before, the internet was really a thing where you could search all that stuff. So we just went door to door, finally found out who owned it and made an offer on it and they accepted our first offer. Okay, so you had a plan for sure to do this. This isn't like you were living in town and went, eh, I want to try something completely different and just chose this. You had a plan.
04:00Well, I grew up rural in West Virginia. My folks, we just call it rural life. I mean, mom and dad did a garden. We didn't have any livestock. I think we did a garden. We lived on a bigger tract of land. So we cut firewood. We provided our own fuel source for heat and that type of stuff. So I thought, well, if I'm moving back to West Virginia, I want to go back to the things I miss and Orlando really made me realize how much I missed not being surrounded by humanity.
04:30And there's just some beautiful land in Western, just a gorgeous state. And I thought, well, I want to be able to have something I can call my own and be able to carve out whatever I want, have enough acreage that I can do, do the little piddly things that I like to do. So that was, that was probably really the only goal. We weren't, I wasn't thinking self-reliant. I wasn't thinking prepper. I wasn't thinking homestead. I was just thinking, I don't like people and I don't want to be near them. And of course that, that changed the good Lord changed my heart in the first.
04:59first 10 years and, and, uh, and it kind of had me refocus on what was important and what wasn't. Yeah. I'm going to jump on the, I don't like people part. I, I keep saying that I don't like people. I like persons. Yeah. Like I can deal with one person at a time. Just fine. It's when I have to be around a lot of people that I get real twitchy and it's because people are unpredictable critters. I have no idea. If I go.
05:29someplace where those people I haven't met, who those people are, what they're gonna do, or what they're gonna say, or how they're gonna act. That's the part that makes me not like people. Now, as a general rule, I do enjoy people. I just don't like being in confined spaces with more than one or two at a time. Right, yeah, Orlando traffic really affected me negatively, and you're exactly right, the crowds.
05:55And in West Virginia, we're only 1.8 million people. So even in a state our size, it's just usually not around a whole bunch of people, even when you're in urban areas. So it was quite an adjustment for us. And when I got home, I was like, man, I really need one. I wanna stretch my legs. Those several years in Orlando really, really kind of cramped me. Yeah, that happens. Okay, so tell me about your farm. What do you guys do on the farm? Well, so.
06:23So the 100 Acres is, since it's West Virginia topography, it obviously has a lot of pitch and roll to it. And I joke that with 100 Acres, I only have two places where I can turn my truck and trailer around easily. So it's very hilly. It's out of the 100 Acres, probably 95 of it is wooded. So it's Appalachian hardwood forest, which is just absolutely gorgeous all year long.
06:51So it provides for us a lot of natural resources. So when we bought the property, I, uh, to help fund our initial expenses, I had the property selectively timbered, which was a very, um, it was a very detailed process. So the timber broker that I use, he went through and of course, itemized and inventoried everything. So point being that, that not every, it wasn't a clear cut. It wasn't a slash and burn. The forest was maintained nicely.
07:18And it gave us quite a bit of revenue to be able to help do some startup stuff. So we built a small garage apartment to live out of until we could afford to build a main house. And took, took all these projects on for myself. I was in my mid twenties. Again, too young to know any better. Um, so, uh, took those projects on. So as, as it developed, we started, as most homesitters do, we, we started by adding chickens because, uh, we thought, well, we, we want to be more.
07:45responsible for our food that we eat. Our first child was born at that point and that was kind of that catalyst. It's like, well, we want our son to eat better than we do or did at his age. So we got chickens for eggs. And then I realized that, Hey, I could, I could put pigs on this property very easily because pigs on pasture and woodlot are easy to do and they won't have a huge expense and fence and I really like bacon and that really.
08:13really started my love affair with pigs. I just absolutely love those animals. And so we still raise pigs to this day. We still have our egg laying chickens. In fact, we have multiple flocks that we're doing different things with. And then we do broiler chickens during the season. We have some in our brooder right now. That'll be our final run of broiler chickens. And up until, actually up until the last couple months, we decided we were gonna do all of this at retail scale. So...
08:42I'm self-employed, so it just seemed like kind of a fit to say, well, if I'm going to raise one pig or two pigs or three pigs for me, why not raise 15 or 20 or 30 and try to make some revenue from that. We've had retail sales with the pork and with the eggs and with the broiler chickens and just here recently, but my youngest son, I have two boys, my youngest son graduated from high school, so I lost my labor.
09:10So we're deciding now to kind of scale back to the homesteading level. We're going to raise just enough food for ourselves and some friends and family. Um, but we're, we're constantly experimenting with things. We're experimenting with the land and, and how to, how to improve it, how to improve soil, how to manage the forest, how to have a good symbiotic relationship with our, our pigs in forest, uh, we're creating Silva pasture.
09:36because we do want to introduce, hopefully within the next five years, get enough land open up that we can introduce beef so we can raise some of our own beef. And then just, we really like, I like a permaculture aspect to a lot of things. So I try to do things on the homestead that allow me to do function stacking or just have a little bit more responsible approach to stuff. I do have a tractor. I do burn fossil fuels and do those types of things.
10:05be a little more deliberate on how I do it and maybe when I'm burning those things, I'm maximizing that potential as much as possible. Okay. The experimentation part, I have a thing about that too. We put in two peach trees last year, you know, just saplings, and my youngest walked in the house last night with four peaches in his hand from one of our two trees. Yeah.
10:33They are delicious and we didn't expect the peach trees to produce anything for three years. So we were very excited that we now have another food source on our homestead that we didn't expect to have for at least three years. Yeah. Peaches are fantastic. I keep forgetting how much I love them because they're also expensive, which means we don't buy them very often. Yeah. And they're not just a Southern tree. A lot of people just assume that peaches are only the Georgia.
11:01You know, the, the south, uh, part of the United States region, but yeah, you can get peaches to grow real far north. I think they grow them in New England. So, yeah, I think you can grow them in Southern Canada, but it has to be a specific variety. I mean, the peach tree you're going to grow in Georgia is not the peach tree we're going to grow in Minnesota. Exactly. But I was so excited and it's like the highlight of my summer, which seems like a really low bar to reach.
11:31But it rained here all springs or our garden did not do well. So seeing those beautiful peaches on my island was just fabulous. Like I went to bed just smiling. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's a perfect example of you kind of experimenting with. Can, can we raise, I really like the perennial plants. My wife's more of the annual, she does the annual side of the garden. And I really like the perennials. So an example of experimentation in line with your peaches was
12:02We have an apple, a cherry, and then I cultivate some wild plum here that just occurred naturally on the property. And so we have that in a small little orchard area. And around June, the Japanese beetles come out in full force and they were just skeletonizing our fruit trees, just wearing them out and really stunting the growth and I thought, man, I tried the traps, the traps just seemed to bring in more.
12:27I tried all these different things and then realized, well, I just hate to use all these chemical processes of eliminating this pest. There's got to be something more natural. And then do a little bit of research and just trial and error. I have a mobile chicken coop, so it's a trailer that I can pull behind my ATV. I call it the coop de ville. We move it in May. I move it.
12:54around the fruit trees. And of course, we use the poultry netting so I can move that wherever I need to. So I ring in all of the fruit trees with the poultry netting and have the Coupe de Ville park there. And the chickens, we let them stay there for about a month and a half. So they are a little bit hard on the grass in that area, which I don't mind, but they eradicate the Japanese beetle larvae as they come out of the ground. And so
13:22that has been able to completely eliminate damage from the Japanese beetle. We may see one or two that have flown in from the outskirt type of thing, but we don't have that high concentration that we've had for years. And so this year was the first year that I got a decent amount of apple production off the apple tree because they weren't stunted by the Japanese beetle activity. Very nice. The other thing that you could have done.
13:50because I talked to a lady who taught me about trap crops, T-R-A-P, is Japanese beetles really, really love rose bushes, rose leaves. And we had rose bushes at our old house that went up a trellis. And our garden was small in our small backyard where we used to live. And the Japanese beetles showed up back 10, 12 years ago when we still lived there. And they were eating the rose leaves.
14:18And I was like, I will sacrifice the roses for the stuff we can eat in the garden. Right. So I was talking to this lady. She's, I can't remember her name right now, but I interviewed her and her episode was released weeks ago. She said, you had a trap crop. I had never heard of a trap crop. And she said, so did you sacrifice your roses every year? And I said, well, yeah, cause they would bloom in a big lush bloom phase before the Japanese beetles showed up.
14:46So I got my one really pretty moment and then the Japanese bees would eat the roses and they wouldn't eat my garden. And she was like, you did something you didn't even know you were doing. I was like, yeah, huh, weird. So a trap crop works as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of different options to explore more natural methods of pest management. And again, with the permaculture aspect, not if I would...
15:14If I would redo it, I wouldn't even plant my fruit trees together in a small orchard. I would mix them up in guilds and that way that pressure in one area doesn't spill over easily into the other. So definitely things you learn as you go along. Yeah, because you can't know everything when you start. I keep saying on this podcast, everybody has to start at the beginning. Absolutely. That's where the beginning is. It's at the start. You can't know until you know. You can't experience things until you do the thing.
15:43So that's why I really love doing this podcast because I get to learn things from people that I hadn't even known existed and get to try them or find out I've been doing a thing that people have been doing forever. And I'm like, oh, well, okay. Yeah, yeah. So I saw your video about how to tell a boar from a sow on Facebook and laugh myself stupid and thought, well, yeah. And then...
16:12I was like, not everybody knows all these things about animals and I shouldn't laugh. But it was a very funny video. Yeah. I always say my spiritual gift is sarcasm. My wife disagrees that she doesn't think that's a spiritual gift. But I do. Yeah. So it was just, it was just funny simply because of, and there's actually a funny story behind this. We had some friends that came out with their young children, two young girls came out of
16:39Last year to the farm and visited the farm for the first time and so I was taking them around and showing them We had piglets on the farm at the time So showing them piglets they want to see the chickens the baby chicks all of those type of things and then we when we got To our breed stock we had our boars. We had them at that point We had them sequestered in their own little little pasture area because we didn't want them breeding at that time and so the Boars are hanging out and these are good sized boys as you saw in the video and so they're
17:08They're just big. They're big everywhere. They're, they're well endowed and the, um, the physiology of a bore, his, his reproductive organs, of course, hang out very prominent on the back end of him. And so the girls didn't say anything. They, you know, they was, oh yeah, bore. Okay. And no words, but, but our friends called us when they were on their way home. And they said, we have to tell you this. And we could tell they'd been laughing so hard that could barely breathe.
17:32We have to tell you this and we got in the car, headed back, we asked them, you know, what was your favorite part of the farm? And they were talking about all these different things. And then one of the daughters said, it was just really strange. The boars with their, their, their little pig butts. And so they're like, what are you talking about? Their pig butts. And she, they both assumed that these, these large, this large appendage hanging off the back of the pig, which kind of looks like a butt cheek. Well, it was actually the butt cheeks of the pig and instead of its testicles.
18:02So they got a good kick out of that. And we just laughed and laughed about that. And it's like, yeah, you kind of, you kind of, you're sexing a full grown pig is not difficult to do if he's intact. So that's why I did the video. It's like, let's do a little tongue in cheek here to say, if you're having a hard time figuring out which is a sow and which is a boar, then let's give you some tips. And of course, just go to some of the non-obvious things while showing the video of the very obvious thing right there in front of you. So, yeah.
18:32Kids say the darndest things and I love kids. They make me laugh all the time. I was highly entertained for basically concurrently over a hundred years raising my kids. Not consecutively, but concurrently with all their years. So yeah, kids are fun. And kids are also a lot of work. I mean, I am happy that my children are adults and they're raised and I did a good job. And I'm pretty sure I did a good job.
19:01So I'm at that point in my life where I get to kick back and watch them be grownups, which is almost more entertaining. Yes, yeah, it is. It is good to see them. Almost. Right, yeah. Yeah, it's good to see them make good choices. Yeah, the one knot of my body is actually starting a garden. He's my husband's son from a previous relationship. And he has the most beautiful produce coming in right now, and he keeps texting us pictures.
19:30And then we send him pictures of our sad garden. And he's like, there's always next year guys, it's okay. So he's being our cheerleader this year. That's great. Yep, he's very excited. We did send him the pictures of the peaches though. And he was like, those look fantastic. I was like, yeah, the one thing we didn't expect is doing great. The things that we expected to do well are doing nothing. Go big. That's the way it goes. Yeah, nature is fickle. When she...
19:59When she provides, she really provides. When she says no, there's nothing. It's not, it's not fair. Okay. So I don't, I, you also said you do timber stuff. So do you sell wood from your property? So, um, at one time I did, I've had a, I've had a mill for about, well, off and on, cause I sold one and then, uh,
20:28got my other one, I got a new one. So yeah, probably 10, 15 years of being here, we we've had a mill or at least access to a mill. And with, with that, I, I, I like doing woodworking. The, the little garage apartment that we lived in for two years before you built the main house is now my wood shop. So I have, uh, finishing equipment. So, you know, what would you consider the standard equipment you'd see in a wood shop to make furniture and do that. So I was doing a lot of.
20:56of milling to the point of taking it to furniture building. I was getting into cabinetry a lot, like gun cabinets, that type of stuff, not kitchen cabinets, building small furniture, doing that for some extra income and just for the love of it. And then as we got more invested in the homestead and experimenting with doing more agriculture type stuff, then I kind of shifted and said, well, I'm going to do less woodworking and kind of come back to doing more general carpentry and construction.
21:26The mill allows me to produce lumber to build, I build our farrowing barn, which is a decent size structure that our pigs hang out in when it's time to farrow. And then I built a fixed coop that we use for compost creation. And I call it the chicken church. It's built to resemble, even has a little steeple, it's built to resemble the old country churches that you don't see much of anymore. It's kind of my homage to those relics that are going away. But.
21:56The mill allows us to provide that type of building material. So we're, we're constantly doing that. I'm actually sitting on a deck that I made for Kelly as a surprise for our anniversary this year that was all milled from white oak that, uh, that are harvested from the property. So I really haven't done much here in the last couple of years that, that I would resell the timber because every time I fire the mill up, I have a purpose or a use for the material that's going to come off of it. Okay.
22:25That makes sense. And what a great present for your wife. Oh my God. How did you keep it a secret? Well, fortunately, she and the boys were on their way to her side of the family. They were just getting together for a niece's birthday. They were doing four or five days down in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. So they were going down, renting a cabin in the mountains and hanging out. So I had this idea brewing in my head, and this was a perfect opportunity to say, well, I need to stay home and take care of the farm.
22:55They wanted me to go. I was like, well, if I take care of the farm, we don't have to put the dog in a boarding situation. So we'll save some money there. I just got so much work to do. I just can't do it right now. So they were disappointed that I didn't go, but all the while I was lying to them because I had this project in mind. So I had basically a four-day window to get it done. I'm 51 years old, but my mind still thinks I'm 25. It was tough.
23:21But did get it done. In fact, the Sunday morning they were to return, I was cleaning up and attaching the last boards and doing all that type of stuff. So I was able to pull it off just in time. And we did a whole video about it. But when they showed up, I was sitting out here on the finished deck in the shade just enjoying a nice afternoon. And poor girl, she showed up. Everybody got the flu down there. That was their gift for going to the...
23:51She came back and she was sick as a dog, but she was so excited about the deck. You know, actually was, was quite a blessing because, uh, being, she was sick all week and we, we had just a beautiful stretch of weather. It was about, it's about a way it is now 70 degrees during the day, low humidity. So she just stay out here on her hammock all week to just recover and, and just soak up, soak up that UV, get the sun, get the fresh air. And then it really helped her in her recovery process. But.
24:20Yeah, it was fun. It was a fun project. I bet. Um, speaking of sickness, I'm a jinx myself. I have not been sick since the December before COVID hit. There you go. And that was four and a half years ago now, I think. And I don't, I like, I'm so afraid if I get a bug, I'm going to be so miserable and it's just going to be perception. Cause I haven't felt sick in over four years. And so long, right.
24:50It's crazy and you know, in my, I don't wanna say in my defense, it doesn't really matter, I'm not defending anything. I don't really go anywhere or see anybody. If I go anywhere, it's to pick up groceries because I'm not gonna spend my time actually shopping. Right. Because why would I do that? And I love where I live, you know? We have three acres. If I wanna be outside, I just step out the door and I have three acres to be wandering on. Exactly, yep. So, yeah.
25:19It's crazy. And I don't want to get what anybody else has gotten. I sure as heck don't want to share any germs I have with anybody else. So I just don't people. It's just easier. Yeah. Um, so speaking of people, you have a conference coming up here in a couple of weeks and I don't want to get too deep because we already talked about it, but how's that planning going? How's it coming? Do you know how many people are planning on attending that kind of stuff? Yeah. So it's, um,
25:49Yeah, it's first time, so it's an inaugural conference and it's got a little bit of growing pains as we'd expected. So we're still working out some of the kinks, but you've got a good lineup of speakers coming and those have all been confirmed and so excited about that. Ticket sales, we still have tickets available. We're only selling 500 because of the venue. We wanted to try to keep it a little bit more intimate so people could interact more with the speakers and have more Q&A time.
26:18But still, some of the vendors and sponsors are probably our biggest hurdle right now, still trying to get some of that taken care of. But we are, we're at least to the point where we're net neutral when it comes to expenses. So that's been a big relief to say, okay, we're at least, we're covering our expenses here, the nuts covered, so anything else, we get to reinvest for next year if we wanna do this. But it's gonna be a fun, fun event. We're partnering, so Red Tool House,
26:47is partnering with our Capital Conservation District, which is a conservation entity. They have more ties to nonprofit organizations, academia, that type of stuff. And of course, what we bring to the table is more of the homestead or social media connections that we have. So I think it's going to be a neat mashup of practical homestead interaction. Of course, meet some of your favorite homesteaders with people like Joel Salaton and...
27:17and Josh Draper and Nathan Elliott, those guys. But then they're going to bring in, hey, here's kind of the soup to nuts on how to take advantage of this type of process if you want to, like high tunnels, utilize NRCS money to help with a high tunnel, that type of thing. So it's kind of an interesting mashup. I really haven't seen a conference that's kind of doing it this way. So I'm hoping it's going to be successful. And
27:44at least present information that we think people will find useful. I hope so too. And I actually don't have any doubt that it will. I think it think it's going to help a lot of people. Um, so this whole homesteading farming, growing produce, raising animals, whatever. People think that it's either really hard or it's really easy to the point that the dumb people do this. And.
28:14It's not really hard and it's not really easy. It's really what you want to do with your life and what you want to do for yourself versus what you want to pay somebody to do for you. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I don't think that this is for everybody. I think that if you are a person who wants things to be done for you and you want to pay money instead of time and effort, that's totally fine, do that. But I really...
28:43love it when people learn how to do things themselves because there's such satisfaction in knowing that you took the time to learn how to do the thing, you tried to do the thing, you may have failed a couple of times trying to do the thing, and when you finally get it right, it's just amazing. Yeah. And I agree with you 100%. And I think the two biggest mistakes that I have seen people do is that they don't know
29:10do or their attitudes towards homesteading when they want to do it, but don't necessarily want to embrace it. And I've got one friend, I'll leave his name out so I won't embarrass him in case he's listening. But when he first was looking into this, he was a doctor, so medical professional. His ability to earn income off the property, of course, was much, much higher than he could ever do on property. Very specialized doctor. So he had a lot of resources.
29:41So what he would do is he would start to bankroll these things. He would, you know, bit these big seed caches together. He'd buy all this off grid equipment and have it just, just kind of squirreled away in these places. And I remember just having a conversation with him. He's like, yeah, if it hits the fan one of these days, then I'll be able to, we've got all these seeds, I can plant a garden. I'll be able to do this and provide for my family, do this and this. I'm like, but you've never done that before. And the fallacy of saying, well, I've got all the material and.
30:10not having the experience. I mean, you know good and well, Mary, just as well as I do, that first time planting a garden, you take a handful of seeds, you take it out and throw it in the ground, you're not going to get a bounty of produce that's going to allow you to feed your family for another year. And that was kind of the fallacy. It's like, man, you need to be experiencing this seasonally every day. You need to be out here doing this so you have the experience. So when it does hit the fan, then you've got the experience. You can't just go to your cash of stores and say, bang, here's the money.
30:39This is all going to work out for me now. So that was a big issue. And then, and then the second problem I've run into are people that will. That will, will approach us about, Hey, um, we're having trouble making ends meet, playing the game, you know, the rat race, working the nine to five, the, the, the car, the house payment, all that type of stuff. We want to scale back and save money. Uh, so we want to embrace the homesteading lifestyle because we think that's going to be cost effective.
31:08And I would say, well, even though your intentions may be pure, your motivation and the actual results could be different. Homesteading doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a cheaper way of living, especially if you don't have your land. And right now, post-COVID with land prices just going out of control, that's become the biggest obstacle. Somebody says, well, I want to move out of the suburbs, so I'd like a 10-acre tract. It's like, okay, are you ready to throw down?
31:35anywhere from five to $10,000 an acre in some places. It's like, well, okay, now I've got a mortgage on that. So I got to work a job. So, and then try to buy all the equipment and the experiences of learning to homestead and raise your own food and do that type of stuff. They think, you know, the joke of, you know, when you grow your first tomato, this is the tastiest $100 tomato I've ever eaten type of thing. And they just don't see that.
32:01Accumulatively, it's actually going to cost you more money to transition into that lifestyle. So you have to be a little bit more deliberate. It's not going to be a way to save you money immediately. It may have savings and other value added benefits in the long run. And that's the thing I always try to caution people. It's like, don't think you can make this change. Sell your house in the burbs, even if you sell it for way more money than what you're going to buy property for.
32:28You still got to have a place to live and you still got to find a way to pay your property taxes and you still got to find a way to buy and acquire the supplies you need to have a homesteading lifestyle. Yeah, I've said a billion times in the last year doing this podcast that homesteading is not property. It's lifestyle. It's about learning skills piece by piece and then eventually moving into what you want to do with those skills.
32:58home in the burbs and just have a little side garden and make your own stuff, that's homesteading too. So it's not about, we call our place a tiny homestead. It's 3.1 acres. We have a garden, we have chickens, we have barn cats, we have a dog, and we have a really nice home and we love our home. So for us, we call it a tiny homestead.
33:25A lot of people would not call it tiny because it is three acres. It's not like a tenth of an acre like we used to have. Yeah. You can do a lot on three acres. Yeah. But we're not doing livestock or anything. We don't, we don't, we're not interested in doing growing animals. We're interested in growing produce. Yeah. So it's all choices and decisions about how you want to practice homesteading as a lifestyle. Yes. I agree. That's what, that's what I think anyway. Yeah.
33:54Yeah, very eclectic options. Yeah, you can do anything. And that's the other thing that's funny is I hear from people all the time. Well, I can't do that. And I'm like, well, you probably could if you tried. Is it more that you don't want to do that? Yeah. And I'm like, well, yeah, I don't want to do that. And I'm like, okay, don't say I can't just say I'm not interested in doing that because they're two different mindsets. Right. Yeah.
34:21Yeah, there's that initial apprehension to learn something new. And if you get over that, that's one thing I've tried to ingrain in my boys is like, you need to be learning every day. When you stop learning, it's time to start dying. And you just, you need to challenge yourself every day. And, and as you learn new things, you discover, well, I really enjoyed that. Or I didn't like that at all. I really don't want to do that again, but at least you have an educated opinion now of whether that's something worth your time and effort. Right.
34:50And the other thing is it's a lot easier to get started on the homesteading stuff when you're younger and your body is younger, because you don't hurt half as bad when you work hard. Right, for sure. I would have loved to have started this when I was 25, but at 25, I was still married to the guy, the first husband that I am no longer married to, hadn't married the second one, and hadn't even met the third one. So...
35:19So it's just life gives you choices and you make the choices with the information you have at the time. And so if you have the opportunity to do something you really want to do, jump on it. If it doesn't present itself and you think you really want to do something, I don't know, go make the opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Just, yeah, exactly. Take advantage of what you can take advantage of. Explore what...
35:47what you feel is a challenge and then embrace the suck as they say, right? Yes, yes. And even if it's a great thing you're doing, there's always going to be some kind of suck that goes along with it because that's how life works. Right. All right, Troy. Thank you for coming back and talking with me. I really appreciate it. Well, I enjoyed it, Mary. It was a good conversation. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Thanks. Have a great afternoon. You too.
 

Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance about composting as an environmentally friendly self-reliant activity. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Good morning, Brenda. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. You're in Minneapolis? I'm actually in the Washington, D.C. office. Oh, okay.
00:29All right, cool. What's it like in Washington, DC today? It's it's actually a very nice day. It's in the 70s. I don't have the AC on. I have the fans going. Very nice. It's it's overcast in Minnesota, but it's also not hot yet. So that's a good thing. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I head up one of our.
00:56initiatives at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. We are a national non-profit research and technical assistance organization and we were founded in 1974 so we turned 50 this year and we have championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership. So what does that mean? Well we work in key sectors of the economy so
01:25We have an independent business initiative, which is fighting the outsize monopoly power of corporations like Amazon. Before that, it was Walmart, which has kind of been dwarfed by Amazon. We have a community broadband initiative, which is promoting municipally owned broadband fiber optic networks, for instance. We have an energy democracy program, which is promoting community controlled utilities and.
01:54Looftop solar and the like, and I head up our composting for community initiative and have been working on waste issues for 38 years. I've been at ILSR for 38 years and, um, most of that time I've been fighting trash incinerators and documenting communities with the highest recycling and composting levels and in.
02:18probably the last decade began to focus more and more on composting because composting is inherently local. We can do it in our backyards, in our communities, at schools, community gardens, urban farms. You can do it anywhere in the world. Wherever we are eating, which hopefully if we're lucky we're eating at least three meals a day and you have food scraps, so we should be doing something with those food scraps.
02:45Even the final product that you make from compost is generally used locally. We're not shipping the food scraps from coast to coast. You know, we have, you know, markets for waste paper and steel and metals, other types of recycled commodities. Those can be global markets, but we're not shipping our banana peels from the East Coast to the West Coast. And then the finished product tends to be used within local and regional markets as well. Back into the soil. Good. Okay.
03:15So I am gonna, I'm gonna tell you my experience with composting in a small town. We don't live there anymore, so I don't have to abide by their rules now. But back when we lived in this small town in Minnesota, in town, we were only allowed to have the compost barrels that get closed up and you turn them. We were not allowed to have any kind of open compost bin.
03:45And I think the reasoning was that it would draw in pests. So do you hear this in cities that there's specific ways you're allowed to compost? Yeah, there are definitely archaic and two laws on the books, old laws. And there was ones like the one you described that are just far too prescriptive. So I actually did a report a few years ago called Yes in My Backyard.
04:15for local government on home composting programs. And we had a whole chapter on how to address archaic laws and ordinances. And we actually called out the problem with the specifics like what you just mentioned is, and let me just back up and say that there are a few things that you need to keep in mind for successful composting. And they are things like you gotta balance your
04:40nitrogen rich materials, that's your food scraps, glass, grass clippings, think of nitrogen rich materials and things that can rot easily or have a lot of moisture. And you got to balance that with carbon rich materials, that's your browns. And the right ratio, you got to pay attention to oxygen, composting is an aerobic process, it needs oxygen, and it needs moisture. And you know, you need enough mass, but to do it successfully and to keep out...
05:07unwanted critters like rodents or raccoons or possums. It's not about whether it's enclosed or not. I mean sometimes that can help but I know lots of composters that are and even in Brooklyn, New York there's a site that has open piles but they seal the piles, they're composting correctly, there's open space around them. So composting successfully is not so much about the system
05:36but about whether you're taking into account things like the recipe and the oxygen and the moisture. Sure, yes. So when we moved to our acreage, we were so excited to have room for actual big old compost bins that weren't regulated by the city. And we've been here almost four years, on our fourth anniversary, August 7th. And we have three huge compost bins out by our tree line.
06:05And we have had them since we moved in, I think. And we have made the most gorgeous compost for our big garden. And we do all the things you just said, the greens, the browns, the whole bit. So it is absolutely doable. But can you tell people who live in cities how to go about it? Because again, there are, there are regulations and laws on cities about how you're allowed to do it. How do you, how do you get around that?
06:36I guess is what I'm asking. Yeah. If you're in a city, contact your local recycling office, Department of Public Works, and ask what kind of resources they have for home composting. Increasingly, we're seeing cities and counties offer educational materials at the local level. You can also contact your local extension agent. Sometimes they
07:04local university extension offices will have actually do training on how to compost and level up. Take a course, take an evening course. Many are offered just an hour. Increasingly with COVID, we have more opportunities to learn virtually. I do think that that can help, but there's nothing like an in-person class to learn how to compost and get your hands in there and smell the system and build a pile together.
07:32But if your community offers a course, it's not rocket science, but you do need to know the basics. And so taking a short course can really help. As I was mentioning, some cities and counties have programs where they might give away a home composting bin for free, like the City of Orlando in Florida does that. Or they might offer, you can order online a few times a year.
08:02bulk purchasing so you can get a bin for wholesale prices. Then they might have a day where you just go, all the bins are delivered, come pick up the one you ordered. There are cities that have those programs. If your city does not, which is perhaps sadly more common than if it did have a program, then advocate for one and contact your local city council or county council rep.
08:30They need to hear from their constituents about the programs that you need. You need the resources, you need the bins, you need the equipment. But if you want to get started, we have some resources on our website, ilsr.org. And you can go just Google once you're on there for home composting. Actually, you could just Google ILSR home composting resources. We have a series of YouTube videos, so you can watch those there. You can watch the whole.
09:00One hour training we do or it's broken into pieces. Like, how do I know what bin to get? Or now that I've made compost, how do I use it? We also offer that training in Spanish. So, um, and we're increasingly looking at offering more of our resources in different languages. Awesome. That's fantastic. Um, okay. So it might seem weird that I asked, asked you to be on the podcast, but
09:27Part of the reason I asked you is because I had never heard of the Institute for a local self-reliance. And I have actually been being fed through my Facebook feed a lot of places that I didn't know about because they relate to my podcast topics. And it's frustrating to me that I don't know. I didn't know that your organization existed. There's been a couple other organizations that have been fed to me. And I was like...
09:56Who are these people? I didn't even know they existed. Like there's an organization, I can't think of the name of it right now. And it's Water and Land Conservation is part of the name. And they've been around forever and I didn't even know about them. So how can help? I mean, I'm trying to help get you out there in the world so people know about you.
10:25by having you on the podcast. But how can we get organizations like yours more known? Do you know? Wow. Thanks for finding us. I'm so happy to be on here. Thanks for finding us, Mary. And you know, we're not a huge nonprofit organization. We're fairly small as national.
10:47nonprofits, we're not strictly like an environmental nonprofit like the Sierra Club or Natural Resources Defense Council, or the Nature Conservancy. And we really do have a unique mission and lens, which is fighting concentrated corporate power. So we don't really fit into one of those kind of silos, but you know, for lack of a better byline where we really do promote sustainable.
11:13local economic development or promoting a homegrown economy. But you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. So I think our Facebook is, I mean, not people are moving away from Facebook, but more and more but facebook.com slash local self-reliance on Instagram, where instagram.com slash ilisr.
11:40underscore org. But anyway, if you go to our website, ilsr.org, you can click on any of our social media handles. And, you know, if you go to our website, we have a lot of resources. One of our biggest campaigns right now is fighting the proliferation of dollar stores and in both rural and urban communities. And there are now more dollar stores in America.
12:08Then there are Starbucks, McDonald's, Walmart's, and Target combined. Think about that. It's like 36,000. It's probably more than that because every day there's more. And at best a dollar store, you know, when it comes to healthy food, at best it's like frozen waffles and canned peaches. So they, um, their model is really putting out healthy local grocery stores in communities and taking over. And there's.
12:37Most of those stores that I mentioned are owned by two companies alone. And so this is, you know, this is the kind of monopoly corporate concentrated power that is our lens to fight. And we have, if you're facing a dollar store, there's just lots of resources on our website about that. Um, Amazon, you know, it was very popular for many reasons. It's kind of like frictional, frictionalist buying, but they're outside control.
13:06in so much parts of the economy now is really scary. I mean, you go online and you're like, I don't know, looking for pot holders or bar stools for your kitchen. They control so much of the internet infrastructure that they can now feature their store above any other independent suppliers or vendors. Not only that, but their algorithms now
13:35show that, will tell them the data that what's popular, what people are looking for. So then they can start manufacturing that and put out other independent businesses. So the way that Amazon just needs to be broken up. I mean, it's just too much concentrated power. So most of our resources are really oriented, not necessarily towards the everyday person on our website. You know, it's, it's, um, we,
14:04run a coalition Athena of independent business owners. So, you know, elected officials, we do a lot of policy work. And I would say our home composting resources is one of the outliers on that, that of course we're trying to reach people who, you know, like to garden, have big yards, or wanna really be able to use that black gold. Maybe you're buying soil amendments and you realize you can create your own.
14:32So, but I think part of the issue for people not knowing who we are is partly because our audience isn't necessarily just the everyday person. Okay, that makes sense. Wouldn't it be nice if corporate America and the little guy could maybe shake hands and cut a deal and the healthy things that the little guy is trying to create or produce could be marketed by corporate America and that way corporate America is not this big
15:01scary in it only for the dollar thing. I mean, that's very, very, very idealistic, I understand. But wouldn't it be nice? Yeah. And you know, we're not against, you know, just to be clear, we're not against businesses and corporations. I just mentioned the Athena coalition where we have thousands and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of independent businesses, part of that coalition through independent business coalitions that exist in
15:30So we're just against concentrated monopoly power. And you know, you think about, you know, this election that's coming up too, is people are feeling disenfranchised and left out of things and that the system is rigged against them. And a lot of the reason that they're feeling that way is because of whose pockets are being lined, it's not theirs.
15:59It's the big companies, you know, profits are at all time highs for so many companies, Amazon being not an exception to that. And so this is this is kind of the one of the big structural issues that's facing us as a country and our economy and some of the key problems that and challenges that people face on a day to day basis. Yep, absolutely. The other problem with with.
16:28what you're talking about is when you buy something that is manufactured, it's probably going to break sooner than something that someone actually built themselves. And I'm going to give you an example. My husband built me this beautiful desk for the corner of our bedroom and our house. And I wasn't going to give that desk up and move because it's gorgeous and it's solid and it's never going to fall apart.
16:57So we made a spot for it in the new house. That thing is made out of maple. It is never gonna break. And when we moved in here, I really wanted a coffee table and there was no time to make one. So I ordered a coffee table through Amazon. It lasted two months. If people are interested in buying long lasting things, then maybe find a local
17:28business that isn't a corporation where they actually do build things by hand. And yes, you are going to pay more for it, but it's going to last you a lifetime and probably your grandchildren's lifetimes. Yeah. And you know, there's a, there's a growing sharing economy too. Um, I was looking for a nice dining room table set because we just needed a new one and, um,
17:57you know, I wanted to support local artisans and it was so expensive. Like, you know, talking thousands of dollars for the table, the chair. And I'm like, Oh, I thought I got to buy something that fits in with my values. You know, not gonna, you know, and, but then I'm on my community listserv and somebody says, I have my family dining room set and I'd like to sell it and it's Oak and you know, I want it to go to good family. So.
18:22My husband and I went over there and we ended up buying this beautiful set for like a thousand dollars. I had the seats reupholstered and I supported a local, talk about reused, reupholstery business and picked out the fabric. And it's just like so great to have this table. And the woman who sold it to me was so happy that her family set ended up with another family. My kids were young at the time. We've had it for 20 years now already.
18:52Yeah, I mean, there's so many other ways to get durable products. And, you know, back to your compost bin and your town that was so prescriptive, oh, you need to have this, you know, enclosed system that you buy. Well, it is actually, um, if you have somebody who's handy, like, it sounds like your husband is to build your own, they actually work better. Like you can take repurposed wooden pallets. It's cheaper local resource. You can, um, if you are in an urban area and you're concerned about.
19:21critters and rodents because you know that there's like in DC where I am, you know, and other major cities in America, there's a lot of rat problems. So you might enclose it with what's called hardware cloth, quarter inch will keep out mice too. It's like a steel mesh and you can build like three or four foot cubes and you could do like a multi bin. There's tons of designs, you know, online for these type of systems.
19:50It's easier to compost in a multi-bin system. You can flip from one bin to the next and it'll last you longer. Whereas the tumbler that you're talking about, it's, I have tried to use those and it's really hard to get oxygen in there. So having the mesh, you know, in a wooden pallet is actually easier to do composting than an enclosed system. So then often with these tumblers, you end up with a mushy kind of mush in there.
20:17you know, and it's harder to troubleshoot or you have to empty it. And so it's just, it's just almost easier to do composting and it do it yourself system. Yes. And the bin that we had, because we were going to do it, you know, we, we, we got a composting bin, a one that you rotate. And number one, that thing gets heavy when it's full. So it's really hard to rotate.
20:41And number two, when you open it up, you might want to be wearing a mask because it does not work the way it's supposed to and it's super stinky. So yeah, don't, don't buy those rotating ones. If you don't have to, they don't work as well as other things that people have tried. Yeah. You know, a few things on that. The ones that rotate on the vertical access. So they're kind of taller when they're full.
21:06they are actually harder to turn. So the ones that are on the horizontal axis are easier to turn. There's a lot of systems, the cheaper systems tend to be smaller and you do need sufficient mass to compost. I mean, they say you need like three feet by three feet by three feet in order to have enough of a pile that it can heat up. And by the way, the temperature when your pile heats up comes from the microbes consuming
21:36the organic material you're feeding them and they're giving off energy in the form of heat as they consume the material. So that's where the heat comes from. It doesn't come from the sun. So you don't need a black bin to absorb the sun. You can compost during the winter. It can slow down a little bit more in the winter, but you can compost your round.
22:00The heat comes from making those microbes happy. And one way you make the microbes happy is you, you don't, you have to have oxygen in there. So if you have a tumbler and. You know, in some urban areas where there are rat issues, you may want an enclosed system, but just know like you have to get air in there. You have to fluff it. You don't want it too wet. If you do have a strong odor.
22:25that can indicate that the nose knows, as we say, people were training the nose knows. So if there is, composting does smell, there's an odor, but it shouldn't be a noxious odor that you think, oh, this is not good, then you got to troubleshoot, maybe add more leaves, more carbon, maybe it's too wet. Because when it's too wet, you fill up those spaces in your pile.
22:52what we often call pores, and then the pile goes anaerobic, meaning lack of oxygen. And when it goes anaerobic, then you produce methane and it creates more odors. So if you're having a strong odor, that's always a sign you need to just do some quick troubleshooting, fluff it, get some oxygen in there. Maybe it's too wet, put some wood chips in there to create some pore space. But you can compost in a tumbler.
23:20But don't get one that's too small. Sometimes they have these tumblers that are like split. So there's dual sides, which the reason they do that, it's a batch system. So while one side is composting actively and maybe you want to let it finish, because if you keep adding material, you're never going to get compost. You need to let it cure and finish and stabilize. So that allows you to start a new batch on the other side. But what happens is it makes them,
23:49each chamber gets smaller often. And so then you don't have that adequate mass to, to be able to enable the microbes to heat up the pile. And so just keep that in mind when you're buying a tumbler, it's bigger to get a, it's better to get a bigger tumbler for more mass. And, and, um, there are some systems that are insulated that can help through the, that really, um, deep winter, which maybe in Minnesota might, what it would have been interesting if you had tried some of those. So.
24:17You know, not all tumblers are created equal and you can actually make your own tumblers. There's lots of good design on those too, but I just think they're just a little more challenging. Yes, we, we think so too. And we, we kind of love our open bins because they're made out of pellets, because that was the easiest way to do it. And the least expensive. And, uh, last winter, my husband took the tractor out and wanted to see how hot the inside of the
24:46compost pile was. So he took the tractor and he dug into the middle of the pile from the outside, flipped it, and it looked like smoke out there. It was so hot on the inside. So yes, composting does work in the wintertime, even at minus 20, which is good to know. Yeah. So tell me what, I know what we use compost for, but tell listeners why compost is important and how you can use it once it is compost. Yeah.
25:16I like to call compost black gold because there are so many benefits to using it. So when we throw our food scraps in a landfill, landfills are actually anaerobic conditions without oxygen. So you're producing methane. Landfills are one of the top sources of methane, very potent greenhouse gas. So one of the top sources in our country of manmade methane emissions. And if they say a food waste was a country, it would be the fourth.
25:46Just the food, yeah, food waste, if food waste was a country, it would be the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. So how we handle our food scraps and wasted food has very direct connections to climate protection and climate disruption. So, but when we make compost, that black gold, it's a soil amendment. Now, compost is not soil, but it's something that you can amend your soil with.
26:15helps sequester or store carbon in soil. So when you're adding compost to soil you're now instead of emitting methane you're now putting carbon into the soil and holding it there. Once it's in there it can improve soil structure, it improves the water holding capacity so if we're facing more drought conditions it can be the difference between your tomato plant surviving or a crop for a
26:45because of its water holding capacity. And even during storm water conditions, because there's humic acids in compost, kind of humic acids act like a glue, like an aggregator of soil particles. So compost is organic matter and it holds soil together, which is one of the reasons why it increases water holding capacity in your soil. But it also, during storm events, it can prevent soil erosion.
27:15that works much better when you've got plants in it too. So when plants go into the soil amended with compost, you have bigger root structure, you have bigger plants, more photosynthesis, so then you're getting those added compost benefits and you're holding the soil in place, so you're having less soil runoff and soil erosion. In addition, there has been many studies on the benefits of
27:42compost to plants. Like a lot of people, if they're doing like fossil fuel based fertilizers, it's like, you know, it's more like steroids. You know, you're giving your plant, you know, food for a day. But if you're feeding the soil, then you're actually helping the plant survive over the long term. So studies show you're resisting plant disease when you're adding compost, you're improving growth hormones. So the ability to put us for seedlings to.
28:12leaf growth and grow early on in their life. So there's all these nutrient benefits, plant growth benefits and carbon benefits to compost. Okay, thank you. Cause I just talked with my friend who's a master gardener on my other podcast, which is Mary and the master gardener. My friend Liz is the master gardener. We did a whole episode on compost that hasn't been released yet. And so...
28:39Um, that one's being released probably Monday and then your yours and my episode will be released a week or so from now. So there's gonna be two compost episodes coming up. So if people want to know about compost, I have people covered. Um, so I, I'm going to say this, probably going to sound stupid. We knew all this stuff back in the day. We just didn't know the science behind it.
29:08like in the 1800s, farmers did this stuff all the time, yes? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, indigenous knowledge and ancestral knowledge. I mean, the Mayans were doing it thousands of years ago. I was in the lease on an island, Ambergeese Key, and the local guide said, oh, if you go down to the southern side of the island, you know, the mangrove groves are like, whatever they were, I don't remember exactly, but like 10 or 12 feet tall, because the Mayans would compost back.
29:38that you know down there at that side of the island. So yeah, composting it, you know, has been around for a very long time. So the question for me is, how did we get so far away from all of this stuff?
29:55Well, you know, there's probably many factors like with so many problems, but just coming back to the corporate concentration piece, I mean, in the U.S., there are just a handful of companies that control the $90 billion solid waste sector. I mean, think about that. There's like three companies that own more than 50% of the landfills. So they're a vested interest.
30:23that want to see us continue to consume and produce waste and throw them in their landfills so they can line their pockets. Whereas the alternative, you know, is for the public good is community, cities, and counties giving out bins, training their citizens how to do this in their backyard, educating them on the connections to healthy soils, which we need to survive, and climate protection and waste reduction.
30:53frankly, controlling cost. I mean, if you have a truck coming every week to pick up your food scraps, which is the heaviest part of what we put out at the curb every week, then your local government is saving, you know, a boatload of money. The research I did and that guide I mentioned earlier on yes in my backyard showed that for every 10,000 households composting, local government could avoid up to $250,000.
31:23a year just in collecting and throwing away the food scraps. Because now once you set up a household for composting, for success, that's why the training and the giving away bins is so important, that household will continue to compost for as long as they have that bin. And then those savings, you know, compound for that local government over time. And so there are all these benefits and we just need to do a better job of
31:52telling that story and providing that narrative and fighting against the vested powers that be that make money off of us continuing to throw away our stuff. Yes, I agree. And honestly, we have we have chickens. So a lot of our food scraps go to the chickens. And then whatever's left goes to the compost pile. And so I guess what I would tell people is if your city allows you to have three or four chickens,
32:22get three or four chickens and get a composting bin or figure out a way to do it. And then you can give the chickens treats and you can have a compost pile and you'd be well on your way to some self-reliance. That's what I think. Absolutely. And there are cities like Austin, maybe Austin's the only one, but they, Austin, the city of Austin offers a $75 rebate if you on the cost of building a chicken coop using a design that they have or the brand that they use.
32:52But cities like Austin are actually encouraging backyard chickens. And chickens can eat a lot of food scraps, as Mary can attest to. Uh-huh. And they love it. And they're very fun to watch when you throw the food scraps in the run. When we buy strawberries, which doesn't happen often because strawberries are expensive. And we grow strawberries, but the one that's season here, we give them the hulls. And
33:18The chickens lose their minds when we take the bowl of hulls up to them. It's like watching them dance. It's so much fun. That's great. And yes. Then you, and then how many eggs do you get every week or day? Well, a chicken lays an egg a day. So we have, I think nine chickens right now. So we get, well, we got a couple freeloaders. They're older, so they're not laying. So we get about seven eggs a day. That's a lot. That's, that's great. Yep. There's, there's a lot of.
33:48good to be found in doing things the old-fashioned way. And that's part of this nice start of the podcast because I was like, there's a lot of people out there doing things the old-fashioned way. I want to talk to them. Yeah. And you know, one thing that we promote is, you know, there's many ways to compost from backyard bins or worm bin in a classroom all the way to huge industrial sites. And food waste recovery is growing. I mean, curbside collection, but I think there's a disturbing trend.
34:17to collect food scraps and take them to far away industrial sites. And you know, at some point we may need those. I think the jury is still out on that, but they shouldn't be privileged over local, hyper-local options. I do some work in Baltimore. I've done over many years and there's a great site. It's called Hidden Harvest Community Farm in the middle of Baltimore. And
34:44There's such a model, I think of what you're talking about, local self-reliance, because they have, they're all volunteer cooperatives. So there's volunteers that run the farm cooperative and there's volunteers that run the chicken coop cooperative. And then there's volunteers that run the compost cooperative, but right as part of the farm, they have a part of the farm that's set aside for growing, uh, plants for, for dying cloth, for dying textiles. So Marigold, gold, indigo.
35:10can't remember all the plants that they have there. And then right next to that in the alley there, they have a warehouse where they're drying the plants and creating the dyes and teaching workshops and how to use the dyes to dye textiles. And so I just love that it, and then in the alley too, they have a refrigerator for rescuing food. So people can come and drop off food that they don't need or want on, you know, unopened kind of stuff.
35:38And then other people can come and take what they need. So it's the community fridge. And it's such a lovely model of community, local self-reliance, like, you know, it's in an urban area, it's a neighborhood. They're engaging the community. They're teaching classes. Um, you see people of all ages working together, coming together to build this fabric of community. And so, you know, growing food together. Um.
36:06learning how to compost together and manage a little community site. And on Saturdays they have a drop off. So people from the neighborhood can drop off their food scraps. I think it's like 10 to 12 every Saturday. And I've been there a number of times and there's families coming in with their kids and then they come to the garden and they could get stuff at the farm. So it's just, it's just so lovely to see these things percolating and growing across the country. That is super cool. I.
36:34I love it when communities come together to help each other out. I live in LaSore, Minnesota, and technically I don't live in LaSore County. I live in Sidley County because we're right on the border. But my mailing address is LaSore. And we have a really thriving farmers market in LaSore. And we grow a farm to market garden, so we sell at the farmers market. And there is a dollar store or a dollar general or something in town here.
37:03And our town is like 6,000 people. And it's really interesting to me that we have this robust, thriving farmers market. It's just been growing and growing for the last three years. And people come, I mean, they walk from their homes in town to the farmers market. They don't even drive. And so they're not driving, which means they're not emitting greenhouse gases, which is good. And honestly, the dollar stores don't have.
37:33produce really. They have stuff that's canned like you said. So our community is really stepping up and providing homegrown healthy produce for our town. And my husband and I are part of that because we grow the garden and we sell there from our stuff. And I feel like every little town that does something like my town is doing or like what you were just talking about.
38:02It's one little tiny step, but if there's a lot of tiny steps, it becomes a week. Yeah. And you know, that's where a lot of the work we do is kind of structural work for on policies and, um, passing state laws. I mean, on the, I mentioned the community broadband work we did. Well, you know, in, um, there was, there were cities like Chattanooga that were early cities that developed their own.
38:31municipal owned broadband and they could offer that service for cheaper prices at faster speeds to more of their citizens or residents. So it was an equity issue in terms of access. And then the big companies, telecom companies tried to pass statewide laws to prevent cities from owning their own municipal broadband networks because they didn't want to give up that market.
39:00That's where the structural, like exercise, you know, we need to lead by example and do the things we're talking about. But it's also, I think, really important to exercise your civic muscle, your citizen muscle, and advocate for good policies. And fight, you know, they have so much money for lobbyists and to pass bad laws and prevent us from doing the things we need to be doing to promote.
39:27you know, the sharing economy, reduce waste or save money or be more self-reliant or, you know, the homegrown economy. And so we have to really fight that power structure and we have to protect. And, you know, my, one of our co-founders, David Morris coined this term because we're a democracy, like we make the rules as a democracy and the rules make us so, you know, it's very important being engaged in the rulemaking in your community.
39:54One thing I want to go back to that you said, what you talked about the table your husband made for you and durability, and then when you bought the coffee table from Amazon, it fell apart in two months, but durability and just moving towards more reusable products is really easy. And it can save a ton of money, not only for our local governments, but also individuals, as families. If we carry a water bottle and fill it up, we're blessed to have clean water in this country.
40:23You're not buying bottled water, that's a ton of money. If you get old towels and you rip them up as rags and you're not buying paper towels or you use cloth napkins and you're not buying paper napkins, you're saving money, et cetera. So there's just so many ways that we can save money through reuse and I think some of the policies are catching up at the local level. There's now, I think it's, forget the...
40:52some of the towns that have passed bills that if you're using single, you know, that single use like coffee cups, you can get a discount for usables, but you pay a fee for the single use. Same with like a lot of shopping bags. I don't know in Minnesota where there is, but it's big in Maryland, in my area, where in the county, Montgomery County, for instance, you pay a five and DC to you pay like a five cent fee for your plastic shopping bags.
41:22everywhere you go, people are using, we use bags just to avoid that five cent fee. So it's, it's not a lot of money. It's not a big, um, incentive, but it's enough of a policy shift, setting the infrastructure that we can shift people to different behaviors. And I think that's just really important. Yes. And on that note, it takes a month to build a habit. I've been told. And.
41:48We do shop at Sam's like once every couple of months because we need to stock up. This is how it works in my house. And we got the cooler bags for milk and butter and things. And we always remember to take the cooler bags because if we don't, then stuff gets warm and it might spoil and it's not good. Took us two months to remember to bring the cooler bags because, you know, it was new back when we started doing it. But...
42:16Now there's always a cooler bag, at least one in every vehicle that we own so that if we do stop somewhere and get milk, the milk goes into the cooler bag. That's a reusable system. And really a lot of the stuff that we do in our daily life is habit. So it only takes a month to build a habit, whether it's bad or good. So if the listeners think that they can't change how they do things in their lives,
42:46They can. It may take a month, but you can change to a better way of doing things.
42:54That's right. And we're trying to, we've been doing work in the schools because there's nothing like your young kid coming home and saying, we're going to start doing it this way. So kids have a lot of agency and a lot of, um, and, uh, can get, you know, it was kids, they say has got us all to wear seat belts. They'd be like, your seatbelt's not on, you know, so, um, holding their parents accountable. Um, it can work both ways. I know, but, um, but. Yeah. Getting.
43:23giving kids the tools that they need to improve their own world. I just find they're just fierce advocate advocates for the change we need to be making. And it's a good thing they are because if they weren't, they probably won't have a world to to be doing better things in. And I say that not to be a downer, but because I believe it's true. My son and I were talking, I don't know, last year about this time about something.
43:53And he's a young adult. I mean, he's 22 now. And I said something about the future, like 50 years from now. And he completely deadpan looked at me and said, it doesn't matter, I'm gonna be dead by then anyway. He's 22. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, the world is gonna blow up long before then. And he was not being silly. He was completely serious.
44:19He said, mom, he said, all the damage has already been done. Do you really think we can fix it? And I just, I was so sad in that moment. I was like, this is my kid saying this to me, you know? And I said, I think that if we keep doing what we're doing and other people keep doing the kind of things that we're doing, yes, I think that the world can be saved. Do I know for sure that that's true? No.
44:49So yeah, kids are definitely a good gauge of what we can do to make things better and they're sponges and they soak up everything. So if they get fixated on a good thing, encourage it. Yeah, and you know, I'm not a behavior expert, but my understanding is some of the research but from behavior experts indicate that
45:16you have to give youth, all of us really, hope. Because once you give up hope, you can descend into despair. And once you do that, you begin to deny the science. So in the case of climate, we don't want people giving up hope and then beginning to deny the science on climate disruption. And so that's one of the reasons I love to work with youth is and...
45:40particularly with, with, with food waste, because you can reduce it, you can rescue it. Kids are advocating for shared tables and fridges in their schools and composting, you know, in terms of the field in which I'm working, and I'm sure there's so many others that kids can be involved, but we're giving them something that they can work on and make a difference on gives them hope and gives them something to work on and provide some action and activity. And it's just so important right now.
46:08And we can't let any of us give up hope. And the other thing I'll just say when it comes to climate is that if we're facing rising temperatures, there's a huge difference between four degrees of global temperature rise on average and eight degrees. So there's a lot of momentum towards global temperatures increasing and we have to still do everything we can to slow that down.
46:36because the planet's warming, but we don't want it to be the catastrophic warming. So, and like I said before, food waste is a part in the pond, a low-hanging fruit, because along from farm to table and back into the ground, there's so many places along that route to avoid the climate implications of how we consume and use our food and discard it.
47:06Yep, exactly. So I feel like I'm just saying, yep, yep, yep, a lot. And it's because I completely agree with everything you're saying. Not everyone does, and I guess that's okay. I mean, I don't think it's okay. I think that everybody should be trying to improve their world. But I'm trying really hard to get people to wake up a little bit. And that's part of the reason I do the podcast is because people need to know
47:36is out there that they can do to change their little part of the world. Because if they change their little part of the world, it changes all kinds of things in the bigger scope. That's right. And you know, how we talk about things doesn't make a difference. I mean, just to give you an example, you know, when you talk about organic farming or regenerative agriculture, a lot of rural areas of farmers, you just cut off discussion for whatever reason. I think it's ridiculous. But
48:05If we're talking about healthy soils, like everybody wants healthy soils, for some reason is just not as loaded. I have no term. So figuring out how to tell the story in a way that makes those connections and crosses the aisle or crosses the bridge and becomes nonpartisan, I think is just going to be increasingly important in our country. Yeah. Healthy soil, clean air, and clean water are the really important things.
48:34And when you say it in those words, people are like, well, yes, of course I want those things. But then you get into all the layers of how we achieve that. And I think a big part of it is that people get overwhelmed. They, they don't, they can't take in all the information, but they understand healthy soil, clean water, and clean air. So I guess it's just a matter of, of trying to break it down enough.
49:04little pieces. My friend used to say how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And so maybe what you're doing or what I'm doing, what a lot of the people I've talked to on the podcast are doing is that one bite at a time part. Yeah, yeah one step at a time baby steps. I mean we recommend that whether you're an individual or city like here's a whole menu of options you could be doing and you know if you don't have a
49:32you know, millions of dollars to implement a program or a huge site, whatever you need, don't worry. You can do these other things. Just, you know, do something. Oh, yeah. And we like to emphasize the cost savings. So whether it's to the individual, like on the reuse examples I was giving or, um, for city, like doing these things actually really saves money and taxpayer money in the long run. I mean, if we're building more landfills and more incinerators to
50:00you know, because we continue to live in this throwaway society, that's, that's expensive. I mean, waste incinerators are like, and Minnesota has its fair share of those, you know, is one of, is the most expensive way to handle our waste. You know, you need bonds on, on Wall Street issued, and then you got to pay back those bonds, you know, over a 30 year period. And landfills are expensive too. And so the main thing,
50:28And that comes back to us as taxpayers. So talking about the job creation, saving money is always gonna be important. And on the jobs, I'll just say we've done tons of research over many years. So for like 10,000 tons flowing to a landfill, maybe one job, but if you take that 10,000 tons and you send it to a recycling facility, just for sorting the materials,
50:58just so it's ready to go to remanufacturing plants. That's 10 times the number of jobs. And once you make new products from the old, like you have a reused paper mill, that's gonna be like a hundred times the jobs per ton than even sorting, let alone landfilling. And composting is the same way. I mean, if you have a distributed kind of more hub and spoke,
51:28infrastructure for composting like at schools or farms or smaller sites, you're going to create more jobs per ton because you've got it distributed now or diverse or decentralized rather than one industrial site. So there's many ways I think to make the case and reach people where they are. I think it was in Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, where he talks about the things that are needed for things to tip on and
51:57catch on like wildfire. And he says, we need the early adopters. I mean, he didn't come up with this, of course, the notion of early adopters and the majority has been around for a long time, but, um, the early adopters, you know, willing to take risk, whereas the majority early majority, late majority, at very risk, adverse has to be proven first cost effective first. And then, so you need the early adopters, but you need the translators who translate the experience, tell the story. Right.
52:26of the early adopters and their success to the early majority so that things can tip and catch on. And so all of these, you know, you need the models. Some people won't do it unless it's proven. So you got to prove it. You got to tell the story in a compelling way. You got to get things to tip. You need the mavens to tell the story. So you're a maven, Mary. All right. You're telling the story. You're getting it out there, getting things to tip. Go girl.
52:54I'm not telling the story. I'm giving people a place to tell the stories. Yes. The Tipping Point is a fabulous book. Anybody who loves to read, read it. I read it years ago. I loved it. It was so interesting to me how that works. So yeah. And the point I was gonna make, I almost forgot, was that one of the things he said for things to tip, it's gotta have this thread that connects to a lot of issues that people care about. So if your issue is climate,
53:22you sell on that. If your issue is jobs or economic development, you sell on that. If you're like in Baltimore, I mentioned earlier, a lot of the abandoned buildings or row houses that
53:36you know, have been taken down, they become places and drug dealers to hang out and rats. And so, you know, if you're now creating green spaces and gardens that have compost as an accessory activity, then you're, you're, you know, the people in that community are like, oh, you're doing youth engagement. You're, you know, I'm in a food insecure neighborhood. Now you're producing food. So that's why they are interested in composting food scraps. You know, if you just gave them a bin and it went to some industrial facility far away, they wouldn't be, you know, so inspired to participate.
54:06You need to make these connections in all the areas in which different people care about in order for things to tip. Yes, and everyone needs to eat. So yes, so food is the thing. And good food, healthy food is the thing that we all want. And so I'm going somewhere with this. If we teach people how to be invested in
54:34how their food is grown and where it comes from. That's the tipping point, I think. Yeah, and affordable food. And that's why the dollar stores are so popular, even though there's so, you know, it's because it's viewed as, this is what I can afford. Yes. And the other thing that's really frustrating with all of this is that money is the underlying thing for everybody. And
55:04I hate that. And I understand there are buy nothing sites, there are sharing sites, there are thrift stores where things that are really expensive, you might be able to find them for less, blah, blah, blah. There are ways to not spend so much on money. But money is the root of all evil, as we all know, and hurt our entire lives. And so when we talk about the dollar stores,
55:31I have read so many things about people saying that the only place they can get to get food is a dollar store in their city because they have to take public transport or they just don't have the resources to be able to go somewhere else. And I really wish, and again, this sounds really idealistic and I hate to sound like Pollyanna but I'm going to do it anyway. I wish that every
56:00Small town would have a big community garden that is central to the whole town so that people could go and grow their own. I wish that if it's a big humongous city like New York City that they would do that for the boroughs, I guess is what it's called, where there's different little communities in a big city. Because then maybe dollar stores would be
56:30I wish that that would be a thing.
56:34Yeah, I'll just say another word about dollar stores and it's not the initiative that I focus on, but they are data showing, our data and others, that they're actually the cause of decline and poverty in the areas in which they go in. So they're creating and exasperating food deserts.
57:00They create fewer jobs and pay lower wages than independent grocery stores. They have very poor labor practices. They extract wealth from the community. You know, you're just lining, as I said before, the pockets of just a handful of companies. And they provide really poor value to customers. They are targeting black and brown neighborhoods.
57:29There's just so many problems with the proliferation of dollar stores at this point. So, yeah, I mean, I could just go on and on about them, but I know we're running out of time at this point. Yeah. And I could talk to you all day. This has been fantastic. So really what it all comes down to is compost is wonderful, which is what we were supposed to be talking about in the first place. And if you have...
57:58If you have a small yard, you can get like three or four chickens if your city allows you to. You can have some kind of compost bin and you can put some of your food waste into the compost bin and chickens love strawberry hulls. They love apple peels. They love all kinds of things. So whatever you're not going to throw in the compost bin can get to your chickens and you'd have your own little yard full of things that are good for you.
58:25And also another option for small yards is worm composting, vermicomposting. So, you know, keep that in mind people. Yep. There's all kinds of things. And if you're curious, go look up composting on YouTube or the internet or wherever, because you will find all kinds of ideas to do composting. There you go. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet, so do check out our website. Um, yes, yes, of course. Thanks to some good. Yeah. But, um,
58:53Yeah, not all compost is created equal. So. Yep. All right, Brenda, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, pleasure to be here. Take care. Have a great day.