A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Joe and John at Farmstand: Fresh & Local. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Joe and John at FarmStand, fresh and local in Oregon.  Good morning guys, how are you? Well, how are you? I'm good.  So, number one, how's the weather there? I always ask how's the weather?
00:46John, you want to take that?  Yeah.  It's been pretty decent. Yesterday was hot. It was in the low 90s. Today is supposed to be more of the same, not quite as hot, but we're getting a little smoke blown in from some of the local fires, unfortunately.  But overall,  pleasant.  Nice. And we are at the end of September, so things are going to get better. Well,
01:15They're going to get better and then they're going to get worse, but it's going to be very fallish here soon.  How's the weather in Minnesota? It is lovely. I was just pulling out my weather bug app to tell you what the temperature is. is 71 right now. The high today they're saying is supposed to be 87, but I don't think it's going to make it because it's overcast. I don't think we're going to get to 87.  And it's just nice out right now. There's no rain.
01:42And it's not hot and it's not muggy. It's just lovely considering a month and a half ago we had three weeks of tropical dew points for a three week straight. It was horrible.  I was like keep saying Minnesota doesn't get a three week stretch of tropical dew points ever. So it was very weird.  I feel like Minnesota do you guys get you get really hard winters. So
02:12The summertime is like kind of in the Northwest. Everybody just lives for these few months of the year. We're always looking forward to it. Is it the same there?  Yes, but the last two winters here have not been nearly as hard as they have been up till now.  So usually the area that I live in an hour Southwest of Minneapolis, you'd be getting at least five, six feet total for the winter.
02:42of snow. The last two winters we've been lucky in our specific little area to get even a foot of snow for the entire winter has been the weirdest thing.  So I can't give you an answer on what the winters are like anymore because they're changing just like they're changing everywhere. But yes,  true dyed in the wool Minnesotans, which I am not,
03:11live for summer.  I am a transplant to Minnesota and even after living here for 30 years,  I'm like,  it's weather.  Wait five minutes, it'll change because that's what I grew up with in Maine. So I don't think I have the same culture about it that people who grew up here have. Sure.  And that's fine. I don't have to. I just have to agree. I have to smile and nod.
03:39a lot here because sometimes I'm like, yeah, that's not what I grew up with. But okay, yes, you're right.  Anyway, can you guys tell me a little bit about yourselves and what you do?  go for it, Joe.  Okay.  Yeah,  we,  my family of six, my wife and I, four kids live in Clackamas County here in Oregon.
04:08We have a small five acre hobby farm where we raise pigs and chickens and bunnies and we have dogs and cats and all of the things.  We homeschool our kids, have a little community co-op in Malala that the kids will go to.  yeah, full time, I'm a fireman for Clackamas Fire District, currently working in Damascus.
04:38Oregon with John, which is kind of how this whole business kind of got going.  Being that John and I work together all the time,  we got to brainstorm and talk and to come up with this idea.  Okay. And John? Yeah. So I grew up in Southern Oregon,  came from a big family. I'm the fifth out of nine kids.
05:07And, uh, yeah, I grew up on acreage, uh, met my wife down there and ended up getting hired, uh, in the fire service up in, uh, the Portland area and, uh, moved my family up here.  And we currently live in, uh, in like a suburb of the Portland Metro area.  Um,  uh, a little town called Westland and, uh,
05:36We have a little garden and my wife and I have four kids as well.  And yeah, I met Joe a handful of years back and we fortunate enough to get placed together on the squad, working together out in Damascus.  And yeah, this year we jumped into the 4-H game with our kids. My oldest daughter really wanted to
06:06raised some rabbits.  we just last week finished up fair, which was our first 4-H year participating.  Growing up, we always went to the fair and had friends doing that.  And my wife's family was big into that as well.  So yeah, so just a fireman, a dad,  a husband.  And yeah.
06:35enjoying this farm stand journey that we're on.  When Joe came up with the idea and shared it with me, was like, yeah, that is a fantastic idea.  Because my wife also, she makes tallow and we had a garden. We always have a garden, but last year our garden was going crazy with kooks and zooks, we called it.  And so I was like, man, we got more than we know we can do with.
07:05You know, we just put a box out for free, you know, and, and, still it was like, there's so many, it's just people, you know, would come and take as many as they wanted, but it's like hard to get rid of them all, you know?  And so, yeah, when Joe came up with this idea last year, it was like, yep, that's, that's genius. We should make that work.  So.  So I want to talk about the farm stand idea, but I also want to say thank you.
07:35for being firefighters because with all the wildfires that we've been going through in this country for the last, I don't know, four or five years, it seems like there's getting more and more and worse and worse. So thank you for doing what you do. Our pleasure, yeah. It's an honor to be able to do it.  And at the end of the episode, I actually want to ask, I want to pick you guys' brains about the things that we...
08:00homesteaders, farmers and ranchers need to be aware of regarding fires on our property, because I figure you're probably going to have some answers for me. But we can talk about that at the end.  So tell me about this farm stand idea.  How did you, I mean, you just said because you had so much, but tell me more. Yeah.  So, so last year around this time,  we were
08:29or I was driving home from work. And as I was pulling into, I live in in a little gated community out here in the country. There's like nine lots.  We all have like five acres.  And last year we decided to make our own farm stand so we could share the goods from our garden or, or my daughter likes making baked goods. So she would put baked goods in it. And so we had this farm stand.
08:59which was off the beaten path and behind the gate. And I thought as I was driving through the gate, I thought, if this ever was available to the public, how would they find it? Yeah.  There are resources online that people currently use to market their farm stands and their farms.  But you potentially are lost in the mix. It's really difficult to find what's close to you. And so
09:27I had the idea of developing an app, which is what Farms and Fresh and Local came from. But I've had a lot of ideas for a lot of different little businesses in the past.  And I usually bounce them off my wife first and she shoots most of them down immediately.  because she knows all the time and effort it takes to start a business.  But this one was unique because she was in love with the idea from
09:56the start, and so was everybody else. And so that's when I thought, well, maybe, maybe I'm onto something. Nothing like this specifically for farm stands existed. There was some other apps that would market farms or farmers markets, but not specifically farm stands. And when the idea came about it and realized that, that there was a farm stand movement that was kind of going to start.
10:25And so since then, yeah, I had to, I had to figure out how to develop this app. I am not a tech savvy individual, but I have a friend who is in, in that world. And so I started picking his brain and I always envisioned somebody else developing the app. But that wasn't going to be feasible because I didn't have the funds to pay somebody to do so.  I had, I had to research.
10:55how to do it myself, using all the available resources to me. And yeah, so over the last about eight months, I've spent hundreds, probably over a thousand hours developing the app, constantly tweaking it. And I've got it to the point today where it works really well. It seems to be adding value to people's farm stands. And yeah.
11:25We were seeing pretty decent growth at the early stages for app. Very nice. Do you happen to know the average number of how many people use the app? Do you have any idea?  Well,  daily average users. So we have about 515 farm stands nationwide. And originally we were thinking about
11:54We're trying to target locally first to build up density within our, our County or the state of Oregon. But once you get it on the app store and Google play, everybody has the opportunity to download it and to add farm stands. And so we're seeing, we have 500 and about 15 farm stands nationwide. Uh, and we have about, uh, we're, nearing 3000.
12:23downloads and of those about a hundred people a day are using the app. And so we envision more people using the app once the inventory in the form of farm stands and small farms. Once that grows, the consumers will then find value in the app and use it more regularly.  makes all the sense in the world.  Can I?
12:50Can I make a suggestion that you may have not thought about for the app if you want to keep playing with it?  Absolutely. We have a notepad right here. Yeah.  In the Northern Tier States, when we get into winter, we're not growing things outside like we were. But what we are doing is lots and lots of fall festivals and fall craft shows and things like that because people are getting ready to buy gifts for Christmas.
13:17Is there any way you could maybe add that kind of stuff in?  Absolutely.  Yeah, farm stands,  this thing is constantly evolving.  Initially it was fully focused on farm stands and we want to do one thing well and not expand into a bunch of things too quickly. But we want to connect people with local goods,  homegrown food and fall festivals are right in that same line of
13:47of thinking.  We actually,  John was talking about our county fair and 4-H. We just met a couple who live on a pumpkin patch and they have a fall festival every year. So we're going to meet up with them probably this week,  talk to them, see what they have, take some videos and help promote their farm and also put them on the app so people can find their farm when they're going out and looking for these.
14:16pumpkin patches and fall festivals. So yeah, we're headed that direction. I don't know how many times in the past my wife and I have been looking for Christmas trees and you want to find the best place and the best prices. Well, it's really difficult to do.  So hopefully this app will fill that gap as well.  Awesome. I didn't know if it was on the radar yet, so I thought I would throw it out there for you. Yeah, thank you very much.
14:42We haven't had a Christmas tree for two years because Christmas trees are so freaking expensive now. Live trees. Oh my God. Yeah. What do they cost over there?  Oh, a really, really nice Christmas tree. Like a balsam fir last year,  a six foot tree was at least $60 and that was the low end. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's, that's, uh, that's pretty much the prices over here. They can well, and they can, we
15:10The Christmas tree to have over here is probably a noble. And then there's duck furs, but they'll cost you anywhere from 50 to well over a hundred dollars, depending on your location.  isn't Oregon one of the biggest Christmas tree growing States in the United States? Oh yeah.  Yeah. We actually grew them on our property over the last 10 years. And last year was the first year that we had them. But we leased our land to a big Christmas tree.
15:40grower and five plus years ago they were selling over 600,000 trees a year I think just in the Willamette Valley.  Yep it's a beautiful beautiful state you guys live in one of the most beautiful locations on earth. Well thank you.  Not as beautiful as where I grew up because you know I got to be loyal to the East Coast. Sure absolutely.  But Oregon from what I've heard is stunningly gorgeous.
16:09Okay. Fantastic. So, um, the app, people can use it for free. Yes. Yeah. It's, totally free to anybody who wants to use it. Uh, and, and initially we thought, how are we going to monetize this to make it worth our time? Cause it's, it takes a lot of time away from our families.  Um, and we initially thought, well, there'll be free features and there'll be premium features. Well, we quickly realized that.
16:39we want people to use the app to its fullest. And if we are saying, hey, pay us, even though the app isn't, isn't built out with a bunch of inventory and people using it,  people wouldn't want to use it. And so we made it completely free and John and I and our wives said, you know what, if this thing succeeds and we get the users that we envision,  then monetizing something later,
17:07not on the backs of the consumers and the farmers, it'll happen.  right now, it's completely free.  And yeah, we want people to use it.  Yeah, and if I can jump in there too, think there's this struggle with any app or any tool that is brought to a farmer or even to a consumer.
17:35It needs to be useful. Farmers are very busy people and growing up on acreage and realizing the amount of work and time dedicated or required just to like farm is a lot.  And so nobody wants to download something that's not useful to them.  So we believe we've created something that is useful, but we right now we're in the initial startup phases and the building phase.
18:04of telling people that it's useful and informing them like the tools and features of it.  And it's kind of this teeter totter of building users,  building the platform with farm stands and because nobody wants to be on the app if there's no farm stands on it and no farm stands want to be on the app if there's not users. So we're trying to build both those simultaneously, which is
18:34challenge, but I think we've seen constant steady growth and we've gotten a lot of really good feedback.  People like the idea and yeah, so I think with that monetization side of it,  it's always going to be free for the users.  It has to be in order for it to be a useful tool.  absolutely.
19:04Um,  one of the things that we did started three years ago with our farm stand is I printed out our Venmo QR code and we put it on the board that we have in our farm stand so people could pay using Venmo.  And it's been great because people do want some way to pay that is digital. And, um, I didn't even realize that Venmo had become the thing.
19:32that people use to pay for things digitally that seems to be the most popular.  And so that's one of the things that I tell people when they ask me questions about the farm. How are you doing that? And I was like, you go to Venmo and they have a QR code and you print it and you put it somewhere where people can scan it with their phone.  it's interesting too, because in the Pacific Northwest, I'd say Venmo is the primary
20:02you know, digital platform to allow people to pay like that.  And regionally, like I have a brother who lives down in California and down there, it's like everybody has cash app. Which I'm like, okay, same thing, but there's all these tools now that make it a lot easier to have those transactions, you know, seamlessly.
20:28Yes, and one of the other things about farm stands that I've discovered over the last few years is you don't just have to have produce in there. You can have homemade lip balms or soaps or candles or goodies like, you know, cupcakes or cookies.  humans are impulsive. There's a reason that they put candy in the checkout aisles. They're called impulse buys.
20:55If you have things in your farm stand that aren't necessarily produce or I don't know eggs, people are very likely to buy a lip balm for $5. Oh yeah, absolutely. We have some friends who have a farm stand locally and one of the main things they sell is sourdough loaves. know, people come home from work, they want to buy a sourdough loaf for dinner. Well, she also has cookies there and she sells the cookies out just as fast as sourdough because people grab cookies and eat them on the way home.
21:25Yeah, and then they ruin their dinner, geez.  Do I sound like a 56 year old mom of four or what?  Just to finish up on the Venmo conversation,  in the future,  hopefully sooner or later, we're going to add a feature of pre-orders.  so people will be able to purchase
21:55products through people's pages via the app. And the idea came about,  was reading someone's Facebook post and they were from Alaska and they were wondering how they could keep their products from freezing in the winter time. And so I reached out and talked to the person and then I thought, well, if you could pre-order in Alaska,
22:24that would prevent your things from freezing because you could make them have a time you could come pick them up and they would be there all paid for and off you go. And this would apply for, for everywhere in the country.  So that, that is to come.  Nice. Awesome.  I'm so impressed. I just talked to another person.  Um, today's Tuesday. think it was Friday and
22:51His business is very much like yours. It's called Vine Stops, V-I-N-E-S-T-O-P-S.  And I interviewed him. So I'm running two different farm stand things back to back this week.  And I try not to do that, try not to do things that are so close one after the other. But you guys are doing it differently than he is. He's doing it differently than you are.
23:21There has to be competition in the market. There just has to be.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that just proves there's a need to market farm stands and farms.  the, yeah, the small town America farm sometimes gets missed, you know, and we're all just trying to help promote them.  Exactly. And that's why I have this podcast because I want to promote.
23:50farms and ranches and homesteads and bakers and crafters and people who are adjacent to those things. And you guys are actually, I don't know, farmerish and adjacent. So it works out great.  I had a question as I was trying to explain that I lost it. I know what it was. Does Oregon have cottage food laws like Minnesota does?
24:20Yes. Yes, I do.  And is it in Minnesota right now, it's free to take the class and then take the test and then have your registration? Is that what it's like in Oregon?  I'm not 100 % sure on that portion of it because I know there's business licensing and certain things that go along with that. OK.  And I don't know if that's where they
24:50I know there's a cost associated with that.  But as far as like getting your cottage license and all that,  I'm not 100 % on that. Okay. I'm just glad they have it because I think I could be wrong, but I think all 50 states have cottage food licensing or registration now.  I think.  Don't quote me. I mean, I'm being quoted because I'm being recorded, but whatever.  I know that a grand majority of states have cottage food producers and it's a
25:20wonderful thing.  Okay, so we have like six minutes left and I wanted to ask you guys about what people who live on acreage, even if it's only one acre and they're doing homesteading or farming or ranching,  what can we do to make sure that our places are safe if a wildfire comes?
25:45You want me to take lead on that Joe? Take lead, Joe. All right. Perfect.  Um, yeah. So I think the biggest thing is having one, a plan for if there is a wildfire, right?  Anticipating, um, you know, uh, do I have a defensible space around my structures,  right? Is my firewood stacked right up against my house, right? And as when I grew up, that's how it was, you know, um, do I have
26:14overgrown bushes or trees or, you know, down in southern Oregon, I always joke that it would be taken over with by blackberries and poison oak if all humans left for 10 years, you know.  It's just there's so much foliage that is, you know, if you just let it go, it can become a fire hazard.  So making sure that you have a plan on, you know, what would you grab if you had to leave in a hurry.
26:44to making sure that your your home has a defensible space and and by that we mean keeping the the the trees trimmed back the the brush and all that Keeping debris off your roof because most fires When there's a big wildfire event that comes through most of the fires Aren't initial most of the homes lost aren't lost on the initial flame front
27:13burning through. mean, on rare occasions, like, unfortunately, we just saw in Spokane, or down in California last year, you get those crazy wind driven fires and yeah, burns a whole neighborhood.  But in general, in wildfires, it's the slow creeping fire that burns through the grass, and then comes right up against the house and then catches the sighting on fire.  So just keep in keeping your house.
27:43you know, clean around it.  um, yeah, I'd say that's probably one of the biggest, both Joe and I have been out on wildland deployments before where, uh, one of the things we do as first responders is we, we try to get ahead of where the fire is going to be and triage homes, right? And, and we have different categories for those homes. Like, Hey, this house is salvageable based on it doesn't have a bunch of stuff piled up against it, you know, um,
28:13If there's things that we can do to like prep a home for a fire front coming through, we'll do that. But if there's too much stuff, have to say,  okay,  this one's a write off, we're gonna have to go to the next one. And we try not to do that if at all possible. But there are unfortunately some of those homes that fall into that category just because it is unsafe.
28:40For us to try to stay in there. Maybe it's an access issue to where there's a one way in and one way out and the you know, there's no turnaround or something like that So yeah, so those are just a few things that that people can do to try to Better their their or make their homes more resilient in the event of a wildfire
29:07I did want to circle back one other thing back on the farm stand app, if I may.  One of the cool things that FarmStand Fresh and Local does is we really want to empower people to support their neighbors, even if they don't have a farm themself, but they know of their favorite farm stand or their favorite flower stand just down the street. Users can add that farm stand on the map.
29:37And I think with empowering the users to be able to support their neighbors in that way and their farmers in that way,  that's just kind of one of the cool features of this app is it not too many other of the other apps that are out there have that feature.  And so I think that that's kind of one of the unique things with ours that we're trying to we're trying to give.
30:07empower people to help support their local farms so that we can all eat healthier and help the local farms.  That's amazing. I love that.  And as I keep saying, a rising tide raises all ships and that's what you're doing. So fabulous. And I'm always saying on this podcast,  we need to we need to shop local and we need to support our local producers because
30:36We can't always rely on a local or federal government to come in and bail us out. If we are connected with our communities and we know who makes what and who grows what, we're better off shopping in our own little bubble. Yeah, by 100%. Yeah. And it makes us all healthier, right?  yeah, because you know where your food's coming from. It's just better.
31:05Yes. And you were saying that you had Zooks and Cukes last year.  We have tomatoes this year.  Oh,  So many tomatoes. And my husband has been selling 10 pound flats for 25 bucks and they're just gone. They're gone. People are like, do you have tomatoes? Yep. Sure do.  awesome. That's great. Yeah. And I don't know, we're selling San Marzano.
31:33tomatoes,  they have aroma,  and beef steaks. And I don't know if either one of those are determinate or indeterminate. So I don't know if we're going to be swimming in tomatoes until the first frost, which is supposed to be in like three weeks, because we heard... I don't know, do you guys know this old story about how when you hear the first locust sing, six weeks from then is the first frost? I have not heard that. That sounds like a Midwest thing, but...
32:03I would buy that.  I heard him singing last night.  we're getting close. Yep.  heard the first one two or three weeks ago on a Sunday night and I went, well, I know when the tomatoes will be dead. Six weeks from now.  That's awesome.  but anyway,  I don't know what I was saying. Oh, just we have so many tomatoes. We're probably going to be giving some away here in a couple of weeks.  Yeah. That's great.
32:33Because you can't let them go. You can't throw them away. You got to give them away. No, no. Yeah. That's a fact. Yeah. Have you ever canned any of them? We do. We make tomato sauce for spaghetti sauce in the wintertime.  And it is so good.  When we have to buy tomato sauce from the store, I'm like, God, I don't want it. don't want it. Well, let's build out the farm stand app and then you don't have to buy it at the store.
33:02Yeah, exactly.  Exactly.  All right, guys, this has been wonderful. Where can people find you?  We are. Oh, go ahead, Joe. No, you first,  Okay.  We are on both the app store, the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Just search for FarmStandFresh and local. We're also on social media with Facebook and Instagram under the
33:31The tag farm stand, fresh and local, just all spelled out.  Yeah.  All righty. Awesome.  You can find me at atinyhomestead.com and I'm on Facebook at Atiny Homestead podcast.  Thank you so much for your time, you guys. And thank you for the hints about trying to make the outcome better if you're faced with a wildfire barreling down at you. I appreciate it. And I appreciate the work that you do.
34:02100%. Thank you, Mary. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Mary. was nice meeting you too. All right. Thanks.
 

Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops. 
This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
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If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops in New York in America.  Good morning, Jim. How are you?  Morning. How are you?  I'm good. I don't know why I did that. I don't think there's New York anywhere but America, but whatever. It's okay.  How is the weather there today? It's beautiful.  Clear blue skies and it's not muggy, which is really awesome.  Yeah. think maybe, hopefully, dare I say it, we've turned the corner. Maybe.
00:56It was, it was brutal. My tomatoes got decimated from the Sephora leaf spot.  And we get that when you have that a lot of rain and a lot of like mugginess and it was just like the worst conditions for it. So it's a little disappointing. Yeah. We lucked out. Our tomatoes are coming in hand over fist right now for the next couple of weeks. And it's been amazing because we didn't have very good luck last year or the year before.
01:23The weather in Minnesota this morning is sunny. There's a very, very light breeze. Like you can just hear a little bit of a hiss through the leaves, but that's it. And it's 68 degrees and the high for today is only supposed to be 78. So I am tickled with the weather we're having currently. That's like ideal weather for me.  Mid 70s, I'm there all day long. Yeah. It's been gorgeous the last few days and
01:49The one creature on my property that is most thankful is my dog. She had such a hard time with that heat wave that we had.  And she's been so much more comfortable the last week or so. Oh, that's great.  I always love it when the animals aren't stressed out, right? Yeah, she was so sad, Jim. She kept laying on the tiles on the bathroom floor. And every time I would go in the bathroom, she'd look at me like...
02:16can you fix it mom please and no I can't fix it I don't know how I'm sorry.  So you and I spoke in September last year about this project called Vine Stops and you couldn't tell me you couldn't tell me a whole lot about it because it was in the works. So do you want to tell me what it is and give me an update.  Yeah.  So you know we talked about my farm stand and my farm and having the issues that lot of
02:46of farm stand owners and vendors have, which is like, how do we get people to our farm stands,  especially with people that are out there,  like way out there when they don't have a lot of traffic.  And so we came up, I came up with this idea about Vine Stops. Originally it was to, to make pre-built farm stands to sell in big box dealers,  like Home Depot and Lowe's and Tractor Supply.
03:14And I ended up getting a patent on a farm stand I developed.  And then what happened was we really, we kind of transitioned it more to a platform to be able to find farm stands and vendors.  And it's not nothing new, right? There's a lot of apps out there that, you know, you can pay five to $50 a month and be able to get a platform to sell your, you know, your show your
03:44your farm stand or your or your if you're a home baker or vendor.  But that's not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to just throw together another app that,  just, you know, people like us pay have to pay for a lot of money for and then there's nothing behind it. Right. I truly wanted to create an ecosystem that brings everybody together. But a company that is face face forward, meaning
04:13You know, I want our company to be there with the users, not just kind of have them pay a monthly fee. then, you know, we're, we're on an island somewhere running a business from our laptop, you know?  Um,  and so the fine stops since I talked to you last has, has blossomed. It's so incredibly, uh, you know, I'm excited.  We, we thought we were just going to be farm stands.
04:40vendors and farmers markets, kind of a management platform.  We ended up turning it into just a true ecosystem where we have home bakers and food trucks accounts now that have features that were specifically designed based off of feedback from the users.  And that's the best part about VineStops is we're having meetings with the users and saying, what do you like? What do you don't like?
05:09what do want to see? And we're making it for them in the system.  So, Vistops has truly kind of developed into this whole ecosystem of being able to find farm stands, vendors,  farmers markets, food trucks,  events, and even more. And we're continuously growing. So, it's fun, it's exciting, and we're meeting great people. And the best part about it is
05:36we're accomplishing what I want to do, which was create a company that helps farm stands and home bakers and vendors be found, but also doing it alongside with them as one, as a farm stand owner.
05:53Very nice. And it's been accomplished in, well, under a year because we're not even at September of 2026 yet. Yeah.  We're humming along.  And, you know, we haven't even started advertising.  We're doing no advertising whatsoever.  Everybody that's joining the site is word of mouth. And it's also like finding us on Facebook or
06:22you know, comments or, you know, people saying, Hey, check out Vine Stops, you know,  and that's the way we wanted it now for a little bit because we, still are learning. And I think the feedback from people that operate farm stands and the home bakers and, and, uh, farmers markets, uh, is, is very important for us to kind of tailor products, uh, that really, uh, fits their needs, not create a product and tell them what it is.
06:51And then they have to pay for it, if that makes any sense. And our goal is to be no cost, low cost. I would love to continue to build out VineStops where the users aren't paying for it.  And the money that VineStops makes comes from other sources that doesn't make somebody baking out of their house pass along 7 to 8 % user fees to the customer.
07:20you know, because that's what some of these platforms do. And it's a lot of money when you're paying a couple of dollars for a cookie or, or, you know, a muffin already. And then all of sudden you have to pay almost 8 % user fees on top of that transaction.  Yeah. Yep.  And I feel like I harp on this constantly, but with the cost of inflation on everything right now, it's getting harder and harder. It is.
07:48And there's, know, and we can do a whole nother show on this other topic because over the last three or four months, especially now that AI has become like ingrained in everything,  my team has identified probably 10 to 15 new farm stand,  farmer's market apps that are getting pumped into the, the,
08:17social media world, you know, as having tens of thousands of users and people on these platforms. And they're tricking people because what happens is, you know, this app was just kind of thrown together with AI, right? And then it gets pumped on social media as a farm stand, farmers market app that has, you know, 10,000, 30,000 users on the system worldwide. And then it
08:47tells you, hey, know, free trial for seven days and you're paying 10, $20 a month after that. And then when you get on it, there's truly actually no users. And, you know, I started learning a lot this year about the whole tech world and, and, um, AI and, and what's called API's in, and how they kind of connect with different sites. And all they're really doing is they're taking an app, they're throwing a platform together. They're connecting it to Google and to other.
09:15platforms that kind of collect where these farm stands are or farmers markets are and then showing it on their platform like they're users but they're actually not users. It's just collecting data from other platforms.  And so as a farm stand owner, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to join this platform. I'm going to pay $10 a month and look at all the users and people around here. But you get there and it's like, you start clicking on it and then
09:43You realize they're not users. I'm just clicking on what's already on Google.  so I feel bad. I feel bad because in our journey and talking to some single moms and home bakers and people really struggling to get this off the ground,  it's sad to see them fall for these quick pumps of AI tech companies and platforms out there just to grab.
10:11money from them without offering really truly what they think they're getting.  So that's why we're doing this slow.  We're not. And that's why we don't.  We're trying to keep this low cost, no cost, because I don't want to do that. I want to build a platform that truly is a platform of users and truly is a community of people and that we can actually help people save money and make more money by not charging them what the fees are that are out there.
10:42fabulous and I talked a lot about AI on my other podcast because I started a new one back in January and my co-host has a a bee in her bonnet about AI worse than I do and the problem with AI is that a lot of people over 50 cannot discern what's real and what's AI and it's just sad
11:11And it just, I said this yesterday, chaps my ass that there's always got to be a bad guy looking for a way to make a cheap and fast buck.  listen, I'm not going to lie. You know, we're a tech company. You know, I am a farmer and I am a farmstead owner.  You're not building a tech company in this world without utilizing AI somehow. know, buying stocks utilizes AI. We utilize it in a different way. We created a, we created a leaf.
11:41that's his name.  And Leaf is kind of like your plan. It's our platform like helper and why we created him to help.  So when when people are on social media saying, am I allowed to set up a farm stand in my in my neighborhood? We want them to be able to just ask Leaf that, hey, Leaf, I live in, you know, Guapiners Falls, New York. What are the laws around setting up a farm stand? And Leaf will help you find them.
12:07Or,  Leaf,  find me peaches within 30 miles of my house and Leaf will pull up the farm stands and farmers markets and pull up the peaches that are for sale. So that's how we're utilizing the AI with VineStops.  But again, we're not just a total AI company and you're not going to see the people behind it. We are very much going to be front forward and having
12:35community meetings via Zoom and touch bases with our vendors and even farmers markets.  We've set up a VineStops booth at one of the farmers markets and they're like, no way. I was like, yeah, that's one of our goals. We want to actually be out there. We want to sponsor farmers markets. We want to try to get money for them, whether it's for grants.
12:58Yeah, AI is here, unfortunately, and it's tricking a lot of people, unfortunately, especially the elderly who are not used to it. And it's sad and I hope they figure out a way to manage it a little bit better than they are now.  it's unfortunately a runaway train and it's not being managed properly.  Well,  they let the horse out of the barn too soon is what happened,  as it typically does.
13:29And I am not bad mouthing AI. We've been using AI for years in many ways, shapes and forms.  Just not in the ways that people are using it now. So if you're going to use it, use it for good.  Be a superhero, use it for good.  So I was looking at your website earlier this morning and I saw that you have a calendar feature on there. What is that about?
13:58Yeah, so you're seeing half of it, which is, you know, I last time I told you I couldn't tell you stuff.  So the calendar feature is going to be really awesome.  That's going to live throughout the site through all the accounts and especially from a user perspective, what you're looking at, right?  So there's a couple of ways of landing on that calendar now. You're going to have your farmers markets.
14:24your community events. like if my town puts up like a fireworks show on Saturday, they can throw an event up on there.  And what's coming, what's built, but we haven't released it yet because we're doing a different part,  is that you can now set up mini events for your farm stand or as a home baker especially. And we actually got this idea from a home baker in Virginia.  She sat with us for two hours and really went through everything.
14:52Uh-huh. Bree's Bakery,  she, she's, the way she runs her bakery is that she, she sets her, her menu and then everybody has to get the orders in by a certain time. And then she has a specific pickup time at her farm stand that she'll be at for people to pick up their orders. And so what we did was we built vine events, they're called. And so she can create the pickup window as an event. And then when you, when you purchase it from her.
15:23from her storefront, you can actually click on that event as the pickup window.  And for her on the back end, it helps her organize what she needs to bake for that day. But it also can land on the community calendar as like, you know, as an event where, where you can pick up fresh produce or bakery items, but also for farmers markets.  if, if Bri decides she's going to be at the farmer's market next week,
15:53and that farmers market is on five stops,  well, Bree can actually put that event,  that farmers market as an event in her checkout so people can order it and then tell her they're going to pick it up at the farmers market that day.  So there's those are a couple of the uses that we're going to have for that community calendar. But the goal again is no matter where you are on the site, if you're on the Discover tab or
16:22or whether you're in your consumer profile, that you can go to that community calendar and use the filters. If you want to see what's going on just within 30 miles from you,  then you do that and you can see what's going on within 30 miles from you. And then you can click on each day, it'll show you all the events.  And we also, I'll give you a sneak peek.  You're not gonna see it on there, but it's already done.  We're gonna have what's called Vine Clubs.
16:51And I'm trying to get to see the theme, right?  So we created this community within Vine Stops that's not live yet, where let's say I run the Tomato Club of Wappengers Falls and I have a Facebook group and you know, we do our thing. Well now I can put that group on Vine Stops and we're going to have a whole section for people to be able to put their...
17:20their clubs on their manager clubs, but also tied into the community calendar.  So, and, and in leaf.  So, um, you know, I have my, my club in, in, in in vine clubs.  And let's say you love tomatoes.  You're looking at the community calendar for the, you know, the next two weeks. And, and I have our meeting on there and it says, you know, Oh, look, next Friday.
17:47The tomato club of Wappeners Falls has got their meeting here.  You can click on it and go right to our club page.  But also if you use Leaf and said, hey, Leaf, are there any clubs near me or hey, Leaf, I want to join a tomato club, he'll pull up my club and say, there's the tomato club of the Hudson Valley or Wappeners Falls right there.  And so that's not on the site live yet. It's built in the background, but you can kind of see
18:17how over the past year we've morphed from just like a farm stand locator to a true community style organization. And we want to really build a site and a company where people can explore and just get lost and like going through the site and finding other people and other groups and not feeling like they have to go to Facebook for one thing,  YouTube for another thing.
18:46keep on bouncing around and, and, and that's, that's, that's the whole, that's the, that's the vision right there is to get everybody really just utilizing the site as a source of knowledge and community.  That is amazing. And that's not what I heard when I talked to you almost a year ago. So this is great.  So as you're telling me about all this, for some reason, the library that I went to in a very small town where I grew up,
19:16is coming to mind. They had a big bulletin board and they had pins and they had they had pieces of paper you could actually just write on and put up if you wanted to. And it had community events in the three or four towns around my town and for my town. And they had, you know, people who wanted to, I don't know, rake leaves or babysit or whatever. And they had
19:42just all the little community things that you would expect back when the internet didn't exist.  And this is what that's what this reminds me of except that it's the internet.  So is Vine Stops national?  we've got users worldwide already. Okay. Yeah.  It's it's it's it's we haven't really tried to dig into why we have some accounts and where we do.  Because right now we're just not
20:11truly worried about where they're coming from or more worried about what they're looking for, what they're, how they're using it,  what account, you know, what accounts are being open and really just continuously building the product based off of feedback and my vision, you know, um, I think very, very soon in the next 30 to 60 days, you're going to probably start seeing advertising pushes going out. Cause I think we're, we are at the point, we've been at the point where we could, we could, you know, say, Hey, here's our site.
20:41join, you know, and here's advertising pushes and, and, know, let's get a lot of people on there using,  but boy,  we, we truly love the feedback we're getting it. And honestly,  we'd rather fix it and, and, and really dial it in and then launch then to launch and then have people disappointed.  So we're, we're, we're here.  People, people can go on and sign up right now and, and they could be very happy.
21:10It's certainly not perfect.  What we're doing is we're actually taking four or five different products,  vendors, management platform,  a farm stand, a locator app,  a community.  We're bringing multiple products into one place.  that's not easy to do to where it feels like you're not just looking at five different businesses, that you're truly looking at one organization or one ecosystem.
21:39So that's the tricky part we're trying to do right now is try to really make it feel like a true ecosystem,  not just five different companies in one.  Yeah. Integrating all of this is a trick to make it feel user friendly and comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. And we really could use all the feedback we can get.  Anybody that's listening that wants to just go on even
22:08create accounts as test accounts and just tell us we're happy with that. We can always delete them.  But you know, it's, it's, uh, that's the thing is we want to know where, where people are getting lost. I'll give you good example.  The consumer side of these farm stands and home bakers,  we underestimated the, what the consumer wants to see on their end when they're logging in. Cause a lot of them will log in.
22:36do the transaction, right? A little scan of barcode at the farm stand,  do the transaction, it completes, and then it's kind of like done, right? Out of sight, out of mind. Yeah.  But we didn't have anything behind that.  Like, know, then what? Right? That was like, you know, nobody knew what was next.  So that's why we built out the consumer profile more.  So when you go to your vine stops, you might have a farm stand, but you also have a
23:05consumer profile and that shows you all of your purchases, your messages between you and the farm stands and the vendors that you're buying from, as well as some featured farm stands, farmers markets within your area and some other things below it. But we wanted the consumer to kind of have a landing place where they can see their past transactions,  they can manage their orders, they can see
23:34where they like to order from, you know, they're, they could, you know, add favorites. Uh, there's a quick button now, like if there's one favorite farm stand that they constantly use, you know, they can press that and it takes them right to that farm stand instead of having to go search for it or click a QR code or anything like that. So, you know, just a lot of features.  Some, some, some say it could be feature overkill and it could, we'll probably disappear some of them, but we won't really know until we have like a true solid.
24:04user base,  like I would say next six months to a year, at that point we can see,  hey, all right,  10 % of this population is only using this feature,  but 70 % is using this feature. So let's make that feature a little bit more better or find out if we even need the other feature that nobody's using.  Yep, that makes sense.
24:32I question while you were talking and of course it went bye bye as soon as I started listening again.  I don't remember what it was. Oh, now I do. Now I do.  Do you have a rough estimate of how many users you have now? Yeah, we're almost at a thousand. Nice. And when did it go really live? Well, we really haven't had an official launch yet.
25:02I mean, we,  remember when we, when I spoke with you last, I mean, it was live for you to use. You were able to create an account. We were testing, but ever since then, we really just, uh, we've been live and just changing actually almost daily. We, we, make changes to the platform.  Um, but we have not had a official of Einstein's kickoff mass marketing event yet.
25:31Okay. think that's going to be the next 30 to 60 days that we were talking about. Okay, cool. I love this so much. There are so many people doing something like what you're doing, but I feel like yours covers more basis for people.  does.  You know, some of those other platforms might be more detailed and might have features that we just don't know about that we would want to put in.
26:00And we'll get there. I'm not worried about that. I think, again, the main thing is really want to put something together that's going to reduce the costs for some people.  know how hard I work to make 30 to 50 bucks a day at my farm stand. It's a lot of work.  to pay $25, $50 a month for a platform on top of that, along with
26:30You fees, just I don't see it realistic, you know But hey people pay it so it's there must be a demand for it But I'd like to keep that a lot lower if not free for for the users here And we'll have to put something in it, you know, we just don't know what that looks like yet but my commitment is We're gonna be cheaper than anybody if we even put anything in there Yeah, that's awesome and
26:59The other thing here is that this is a very symbiotic relationship between the customer and the producer. And I am a huge proponent for this.  We need people to grow food or raise food. know, beef is expensive right now.  We need people to raise and grow food and we need people to support those people doing that by buying the products that the people have.
27:28The fact is, if you buy locally, you are getting much more nutrient dense food to put in your body to support your own health. And that's the big thing here. You're absolutely right. Listen, I'm a huge support local business advocate and, and,  uh, and then the of living.  I look at this past just supporting locally. I actually look at this as
27:57supporting your neighbors financially.  Because there's a lot of people that rely on their second, third or a little side gig to just make that extra buck to pay that bill that they barely can pay.  Right now, yes.  And so that's the important thing is how do we do that as a company? How do we help support the mission of shopping locally, but also support the mission of
28:27helping people that need to do this, help them make more money.  So like for me, like I'll tell you the interesting transition I saw from when I started this to now with my farm stand is like, I'm a cash,  it was cash only farm stand in Venmo.  And it's an honor system. you just, know, people walk up and they drop off, you know, they pick up what they want and they take, you know, what they get.
28:56drop cash in the box and that's it.  And I would run out a lot because I don't grow a lot. And what this did for me was I saw my customers transition very fast when they realized they can just order instead of going to my farm stand constantly and not seeing anything.  there's certain things that I know now next year that I have to grow a lot more of.
29:22Because the demand through the orders,  I was, I was, had to say, I'm sorry, I can't fill your order for like a week because I got too many orders, but it really opened my eyes to where I was missing in the sales and with the volume.  But also for them, they were, they would come flat out like, listen, I love coming and sitting there in your driveway and talking to you sometimes.
29:47But they're like, this is great that I don't have to drive there four or five times to see if you got eggs out of the stand.  So it's really helped me in that sense.  And running a honor system farm stand on a platform is not easy at all because there is a very difficult balance of putting inventory on your platform, but also understanding that people are showing up to your farm stand and buying stuff.
30:15without, without using the system.  So there's a, there's a, there's a balance and a management of it that has to happen to where you're not putting stuff on the platform and saying it's all there. And then somebody showing up and nothing's there. Uh, and that's a frequent problem.  So I've continuously tried to alter this to where it's the best, I guess it's the best of both worlds to where.
30:45your your if you buy something if you see something that's online right on on the app and it's it's an honor system farm stand they they know my customers know that most likely it'll be there if they do the order online the way i set it up is i'll acknowledge them hey listen i have your order ready it's ready for pickup you can just go pick it up or i i need i need another day
31:14I do need to get a couple of things free and let them know without them coming.  that's, that's, think really where, uh, where it helped me this year. And I think that's where it would help a lot. Other people that operate these honor system farm stands that don't, don't utilize platform because as you build that customer base of orders, you can actually running an honor system platform or honor system farms in, you can actually organize yourself better.
31:41and not feel like, you know, everything's so chaotic. What's going down there? Who's buying it and when they're buying it? Yes, with our farm stand, if we were going to do it the way that you're talking about,  we have enough room that we could set up a little partition and be like, OK, everything on this table is free game.  Everything on that table is pre-orders and it has their name on it. Ah, I like that. We'd be able to do that because it's big enough, but
32:11If you just have a little farm stand, that might be hard. don't know.  I built a, when I built my farm stand, I actually built a pickup cabinet on the top of it. Yeah. So I have, uh, you know, you just open the drawer and it's got little areas and I put the, I put the orders right up on top there. And so I say, you're, you're, your orders ready. It's on top of the farm stand. That's my separation, but you're right. It could be anything really, uh, on, on,  um, on, uh,
32:42how you want to set that up.  I mean, yeah, the water thing was big.  It's just, you know, the, the profile itself, we, there's a couple of good learnings. We learned that photos are actually important.  Some people are setting up farm stands or businesses that are buying stops and not uploading any photos.  And visually to customers, they actually like to see that personal connection. They like to see where they're
33:12going to or maybe even a logo, right? It gives them a little bit more professional touch and a good story of knowing like where they're buying from and who that person is, right? And so these little things that when we did our customer interviews, like, you know, what do you like about when you shop at these,  let's say we showed them two different farm stands with the same product and one's really nice, one is just basic, right?
33:39That's the feedback we're getting. So now what we're doing is we're actually creating learning videos,  training videos, and there's going to be a learning library in every account to teach people,  if you're running a farm stand on VineStops, here's your best practices and here's what the customers told us why you should do this. I love this so much. There's so much here that's good, Jim.
34:09As I told you last time, I try to keep these to half an hour, so I'm going to wrap this up.  Where can people find you? Well, now they can go to Vinestops.com. It's live. Yeah.  And I am very interactive with it. My team is interacting with it. So they can message me right at Hawk Valley Farm as my farm is on there. If you go to Vinestops homepage and scroll all the way down, you'll see the little link right to my farm stand and they can just send me a private message if they want.
34:39but I'm not, I'm not, I don't hide my phone numbers around.  I'm an open person. love talking to people.  So anybody can call me 518-227-7266. They can find me on Vine stops. I'm on social media, Jim Glorioso.  And anybody out there listening,  I welcome the phone call or the message. I'd love to talk to you. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you again. Oh, absolutely. I love this.
35:08You can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Jim, thank you so much for your time and thank you for everything you're doing. Oh, no problem. I look forward to talking to you again.  Have a great day. You too.
 

Today I'm talking with Dylan at Allegedly Absurd Bakery. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Dylan at Allegedly Absurd Bakery in Janesville, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Dylan. How are you? Good. How are you doing today?  I'm great. And normally I would say, how's the weather? But considering that you're in southeast Minnesota, I think, and I'm in sort of southwesterly Minnesota, we both know it's been a lovely day today. Yeah, it's been super nice out.  Yeah. Did you guys get that wave of humidity yesterday afternoon? Yeah, it was terrible.
00:56Yeah.  you just instantly start sweating. Yeah. I have no idea where that came from. I didn't even know it was on the radars. I was like, this is gross. Hopefully it's not a trend.  So I have to know about the name of your bakery. How did you come up with allegedly absurd bakery?  So I was actually trying to name the donut. Okay.  And so I didn't want something like jumbo or mega.  In one of the words I use all the time is absurd. I'm like, that's just absurd. And
01:26So I was like, well, that's kind of, could name a donut that. Yeah. I got to thinking a little bit more and I was like, you know what? I say allegedly a lot all the time. And it just kind of came together. There wasn't, you know, this aha moment. It was just like, oh, that could work.  I love that. Go ahead. So we came up with, you know, allegedly absurd and we were going to do allegedly absurd donuts. And the more I thought about it, I was like, you know what?
01:53I don't want to do just donuts. I don't want to be confined to just that niche, so to speak.  And so bakery was the natural fit and that's kind of the rest of just history.  Very nice. So now my, my usual question that I ask people is tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Oh, I do a lot of things.  So in regards to the bakery,  so we just started this.
02:23So this is our third weekend, so three weeks ago. Oh, okay. And so we're, pretty new as far as this one goes. Uh, the Tuesday before we started it, I told my wife, I was like, you know what? We're going to do this this weekend. And so I filed the business. started the Facebook page, all that stuff.  And we opened up, you know, that Saturday and sold out within,  gosh, I want to say 30 minutes, 45 minutes, something like that.  Um, so it was.
02:52crazy how fast it kind of came together just on my side of things.  Yeah, just kind of crazy with timeline response, all of it.  to that,  we had co-owned and operated Lollipops in the Legion, which was a bakery.  And we exited out of that, took about, I think it was about 14 months off and kind of re-established what we wanted to do, what we wanted to be.
03:22in terms of a bakery, right? So yeah, that's kind of the story of, you know, how that came about.  you, you, you left a standalone commercial enterprise to go to Cottage Food. Is that because a standalone commercial enterprise takes up so much of your time? No, it wasn't even about the time or anything. We had partners. Okay. And the relationship with the partners just wasn't
03:52good. Like we had different values, different way of operating, just a lot of differences. And so my wife and I made the decision to step away.  Okay. Yep. Yeah. So that was a good transition for us. Okay. I feel like I asked a question that maybe I shouldn't have asked. Sorry about that.  Okay.  So, um, I saw on your Facebook page that you guys do a lemon Long John donut.
04:20And I wanted to transport myself to where they are because I love lemon beyond any other flavor. Yeah, you would love it. It is extremely lemony.  So we have four kids and our oldest absolutely loves lemon. Anything lemon, he's like, yep, I want that. And so he tried it and he goes, you know, dad, you really captured the essence of I was like, what 10 year old talks like this? Like what's going on?
04:50This is when my daughter who's two years younger than he has tried it and she kind of puckered up and was like, oh, that's so sour. So you have the one side who loves the lemon, loves that sour, sweet type taste.  the other one who's like, not quite for me.  Well, at least you have opposing opinions. And if she said this is terrible, then you would have had to think about it a little harder.  There is a lady, I think it's a lady who has a booth.
05:19at the local farmers market here in LaSore and she makes lemon drop cookies.  They're about the size of a half dollar. And my husband brought some home when he was there last weekend.  And I had had them last summer and I liked them. And he brought them home this past two weekends ago,  not this weekend, last weekend.  And I knew what they were. And I was like, do you want any of these? And he said, if there's any left, he said, I will have one. And I'm like, OK, there's like six to a bag.
05:49And I opened the bag up and I could smell lemon immediately. And I was like, oh, these might be way lemony than last time because I couldn't smell the lemon like that the first time I had them. And I took one and I popped it in my mouth and I bit down and it tasted just like a raw lemon.  It didn't.  The sweetness of it didn't kick in until after the hit of lemon.
06:16And I must have puckered up because my husband looked at me, he's like, are you okay? Are you choking? And I just put my finger up and I finished chewing and swallowed it. And he's like, are you all right? And I said, I'm fine. I said, she changed how much lemon she puts in it. I said, that is the most lemon lemon cookie I've ever had my whole entire life.  It was delicious. I love lemon, but even for me, I was like, wow, that is getting right up to the line of almost too much for me. So.
06:44It just depends. It just depends on how much you love a flavor and how what your tolerance is for it.  Yeah. And even the lemon itself, right? Like the recipe will call for the zest of three lemons or something. And so it's how big is your lemon? Because some of those are, you know, can get pretty big. Yeah. So you're trying your best to like weigh it out and measure and do all the things. And it really just depends on the day. It does. And it also depends on the age of the person eating the thing you made.
07:13Because most people don't know that as you get older you lose taste buds they die So as a child number one, you've never tasted anything lemon in your life the first time You have it and you have almost every taste bud you were born with So that flavor is going to be more intense to a child Yeah, if you're 60 you probably had lemon flavored things before and you've lost about a third of your taste buds so
07:43it's going to take more lemon to get that same reaction.  Interesting. Yeah. I didn't know about the taste bud thing until probably 10 years ago. I read it in something that was reputable and I went,  Oh my God, that's why older people really like their food to be saltier or sweeter.  Yeah,  exactly. And that's part of the reason I love my podcast because either I teach something to somebody they didn't know or you guys teach me something that I didn't know. I
08:12freaking love it. It's my favorite thing.  So what else do you make besides donuts?  Dylan? So right now we're just doing long johns and cookies.  What kind of cookies?  So we do a dark chocolate chip. The last few weeks we've done a Northwood's butter cookie. So it's like a take on the Itasca butter cookie. I don't know what that is.  It's oh gosh, it's like a sugar cookie, but there is probably double, I want to say double the amount of butter in it. Okay. So
08:42don't even know how to describe it to do it justice.  Yeah, it's really soft and silky almost.  Is it kind of like a shortbread only more fatty than a shortbread? Yeah, and a little bit softer. Yeah, okay. That would be a good way of describing it. Okay, because I love shortbreads. I think those are great.  Just so you know, I didn't grow up in Minnesota. I grew up on the East Coast, so I haven't even been to Itasca.
09:11So, okay. It's super cool out there. We finally made it up last year and loved it. I would go back in a heartbeat to it. Itasca out there. Okay. Yep. North.  And the scenery is beautiful. It just feels calm and peaceful and peaceful, at least at the state park.  Yeah. Just cool experience. Yeah.  Um, it's interesting because Minnesota is beautiful everywhere.
09:41And this is coming from a woman who did not want to move here over 30 years ago because I grew up in Maine. And I will always say that Maine is the most beautiful state because that's where I grew up. But Minnesota is a damn close second.
09:57Yeah, it'd be cool to get out to the East Coast. We've done a lot of the West Coast.  We've never been out East. So that's on our, on our list of things to do.  Can I make a suggestion if you're going to go to Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont? Sure can.  Go at the end of May, 1st of June or go at like mid September to mid October. And the reason I say this is because in Maine,  mosquito and black fly season starts about the second and a half
10:27week into June and those black flies will carry you away. They will leave welts on you the size of dimes.  They're nasty and they hurt and you will bleed. They're not fun.  And the reason I say September, October is because that's when the trees are starting to change and it's really, really pretty.  Good to know. to know. Yeah. And Maine in July and August is hot and muggy, just like Minnesota.  So
10:58So if you want to go when the weather is temperate and the bugs aren't too bad, the times I just said are really, really good. Yeah. No, I like it. Yeah. I try to tell people this because I've had people I'd say I grew up in Maine and they're like, Oh my God, I was there in August and it's so pretty, but I got so heat sick. And I'm like, yeah, cause you went in August. Yup. Yup.  So anyway, I keep talking about geography on this podcast. I'm like, am I supposed to push this into a geography podcast? I don't want to.
11:28So you said a double, a dark chocolate chip cookie. Does that mean dark chocolate chips in a vanilla dough? Or does that mean dark chocolate chips in a chocolate dough? Yeah. So dark chocolate chips in just a cookie dough. So I like to use the 60 % Ghirardelli.  Yes. I found that those are the best tasting in part two, cause of our kids. So we don't
11:55Our kids have a hard time with a lot of processed sugars.  And so that's why I use the organic cane sugar in the donuts and all the cookies. Nice.  So a lot of that was just from a necessity on our end as parents. We see different behavioral things. Our son's eyes will actually switch if he has too much processed sugar. So like he'll get dark rings under his eyes. And this is all within a matter of like 20 minutes. Oh, wow. Dark rings.
12:23His eyes are kind of glaze over. just the most interesting thing. Um,  until we just made the decision we're not going to do as much as possible, right? Obviously, you know, we go different places and eat different things, but when I'm making it, you know, that's just the standard in our household.  You're, you're a good dad.  We try, we try.  Okay. So I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like you just set up a table and put the little display.
12:54cubes, know, the plexiglass or whatever they are cubes on your table. And that's how you sell your stuff. Is that what I'm seeing? Yeah. So we have that. And then we also do pre-orders. Okay. So pre-orders have been the bulk of what we've been selling the past two weeks.  Um, which is amazing to me.  Um, you know, like I said, we sold out that first week within, you know, 45 minutes. And so we really pushed the pre-orders after that. Cause I was like, I want to make sure people can get it.
13:22but I also don't want to have a bunch of stuff left over.  And that's taken on really well.  Yes. One of the problems with having a farm stand or a porch stand or whatever you're doing, we have a farm stand, so we have produce and eggs for sale all the time in the summer.  The problem with both is that if you pick, let's say lettuce and you put it in the farm stand and nobody buys it, it's no good the next day because it's going to wilt.
13:51same thing with your baked goods. If people don't buy it, you're stuck with it.  Yep.  Nobody wants to be stuck with baked goods. mean, it seems like a really cool thing like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory fun, but I don't think that it's actually that fun. Yeah. You get sick of it after a while. So, know, you can freeze stuff.  Like we've done that where we'll freeze the cookies or freeze the donuts or wrap them up really good and then take it out as you want it.
14:20But even that, gets to be a lot of donuts or lot of cookies. Yeah. And unfortunately you can't actually live on that because it's not good for you no matter how good the ingredients are.  you have, did you say you have four kids? Yeah, we have four kids. What are their ages? Oh, 10, nine, four and three.  Wow. Okay. So you've got the different developmental stages going on like I had with my four. Yeah.
14:50Yep, isn't it fun Dylan? Isn't it busy? It is busy. It's good.  I would say I enjoy Being a dad the most now than I probably have in my life I'm actually able to be present be around when I'm home, which is something that's relatively new to me. I feel like I in the past I've I Would come home and want to not not escape, but I just wouldn't be present And I really worked on actually being home when I'm
15:19If that makes sense.  Yes, it is the time immemorial problem with being a dad. And up until the last, would say 10 to 15 years,  most dads have a job that keeps them out of the house from seven or eight in the morning until five or six at night. And you guys are busting your asses, doing your job, trying to do it well to make money to support your family.
15:46proud of every dad that works hard for their family.  But it definitely takes a toll. And I can say this as a 56 year old woman who has an 83 year old dad living in Maine right now.
16:01It was really hard not seeing him.  And I still miss him terribly. He's great. He's doing fine. But dads get... I think they get a hard time because they're not changing diapers. They're not giving baths. They're not doing the things that the moms do because the moms are the ones who are with the kids.  I don't... I'm not saying that every dad...
16:31is an angel because I know that to not be true. But I have real respect for the dads that try hard and work themselves hopefully not to death to spend time with their kids.  Yeah, it has been a real gift.  So I do asphalt full time in the summer. Yeah. So I've been doing that since I was 11 years old. And I've done some stuff in between there, but that's always been kind of consistent in my life.
17:01And so some weeks I'm 60 plus hours, you know, depending on the week. Sometimes I work weekends. really just depends. And so I've had to choose to make that, you know, one of my top priorities.  And, know, you talk about like the diapers and all that stuff. The rule in our house has been the wife handles the input and I handle the output.  So I'm like, dang it, I got all the diapers. But again, I.
17:31I had the opportunity to do that.  And whether it was the middle of the night in the morning, whether I had to get up for work or not, that was just the rhythm in our house when the kids were little.  And I always just wanted to be present or there as much as possible while also providing. What? While also providing too.  Yes. Yes. I have two things about diapers. One's about diapers and one is about sleep.
17:59diapers changing diapers duty will make it so that you can handle any disgusting thing and not vomit.  Yep. Yep. And that's gross but true because I had four kids. I changed a lot of diapers in my lifetime.  And then the sleep thing. My last child who will be 25 in December. That kid did not sleep through the night until kindergarten.
18:27And I was the one who nursed him and I was the one who got up with him because I was a stay at home mom. My husband had a job. So I didn't get more than three or four hours of sleep for the first two years of his life. I didn't get more than three or four hours of sleep a night for two years straight. I had friends who would say to me years later, do you remember when we went and took the kids and did this? And I'm like, no, I don't remember because I was a walking zombie then.
18:57Kids are amazing. Being a parent is the most difficult but most wonderful job on earth if you want to be a parent.  Yes. Yep. So, again, drifting off into psychology because I have that too.  So do you get the kids involved in the baking?  Not so much right now. They do help sell. So when we sell, we're actually out there.
19:24you know, boxing the stuff up and interacting with people. Yeah.  So they enjoy doing that, you know, the past couple of weeks.  Eventually, I do want them, if they so choose, to get their own cottage licenses. Yes. And then they can sell something as well. So then, you know, we'll figure out what percentage of the profit help teach numbers, all that type of stuff with them,  Again, it's as much or as little as they want to be involved.  Right. I don't want to push it on them, but the opportunity is there.
19:54And our daughter definitely loves baking. She's always asking to help with different things that we're making here just for our family.  But as far as the donuts go, I do 95 % of it just because it's really early morning stuff.  Saturday morning, I'm up at two in the morning and, you know, rolling out the dough, cutting it, frying it, letting it cool, frost it, boxing stuff up. You know, there's a lot of steps and
20:23They're not up. I mean, they're actually really early risers, um, but they don't come out of their rooms until seven o'clock in the morning.  If they had it their way, they'd be up at five 30. They're just early risers.  Your house must smell so good on Saturday mornings. It does even throughout the day. Like we took our daughter out for her birthday yesterday and went bakery hopping. So we went to like four different bakeries up in the cities and we came home afterwards and.
20:52was like, dang, it still smells like donuts in here. I kind of like it.  Yeah, we made donuts from scratch four or five years ago, and we hadn't really done it before.  And I told my husband, I said, we can't make these very often. And he said, why not? And I said, because they're really good when they come out of the fryer, as it were.  said, but two days later, they're not very good because all that fat.
21:20The dough just collapses on itself.  And he was like, yeah, I noticed. said, they're not as good a couple of days later. And I said, no, they're not.  I have a real problem when there's grease on my lips and on my teeth after I eat the donut half an hour later. It's just gross. can't handle it.  So fresh donuts are amazing. Oh my God. I am a donut fanatic. I...
21:47I lived in Crystal for a while, many, many years ago in Minnesota.  they had a really nice donut shop there. And I had a friend who worked there.  And she called me one time and she said, do you and your daughter want to come down early and see how we do this? And I was like, I know how you do it. But my daughter, who was three or four at the time, I said, she would probably love to see how it works.
22:15So we walked down to the donut shop and we went in the back door of the donut shop and my friend showed my daughter how they cut the dough and they did the frying and they had some that were cooled down and she showed her the machine that drizzles the frosting over the top and my daughter was just in wrapped.  She was so interested and I know that's not how you do it in your home kitchen because that you probably don't have the same kind of equipment but it's really interesting how much work
22:45goes into this stuff. Yes, it's an insane amount of work. And I think, you know, doing one batch of a dozen is totally different than doing, you know, 12 or 16 dozen. Oh, yeah. Because you have to time it out, right? You have to make sure that the dough doesn't over proof after you cut it. Or, I mean, there's a myriad of things that you have to think about.  And. It's cool, at least for me to see.
23:13how many different cottage bakeries there are.  They're all over the place.  And just for people like me or whoever to have the opportunity to do that, I don't know, it's just cool. Like, yeah, you have the commercial spaces, have, you know, we would drive all the way down to Red Wing to Hanisch to get donuts, which is an hour and I think it's an hour and half from us. Just because I like a really good donut. And I was like, you know what? We could do that.
23:43I think we could figure that out.  But just being able to have the opportunity, I guess, is what I'm trying to say that I think I, at least in my life, have taken a lot of those things for granted. Yeah. Where I'm just like, oh, yeah, it's just normal.  And it's actually not. You know, we were talking about startup the other day. And I was like, you know, it's not that expensive to start it up. And my wife looks at me and she's like, are you, are you being serious right now?
24:10I like, don't know. didn't think it was like that bad. I mean, we're not spending $100,000, you know? And so my perspective compared to her perspective was just totally different. I was thinking, you know, big plus numbers commercially. And she's like, no, for a normal person, this is a lot. I was like, yeah, yeah, you're right.  I'm glad that you brought that up because my husband has noticed that the attendance of people who are going to buy at the farmer's market this year has been way down.
24:39And I think it's because money is very, very tight for a lot of people right now because inflation is so freaking high and people just don't have the extra expendable income right now. And what I want our listeners to know is that cottage food producers typically don't have deep pockets and they don't have the same. I don't know what the word is.
25:07When a business, when a big business is going to buy supplies, they usually get some kind of discount because they're buying a whole lot of whatever the thing they need is in bulk.  And cottage food producers don't necessarily get that kind of discount.  So the reason that cottage food producers charge, I don't know. I don't know how many 12 cookies is right now from a cottage food producer, but I'm pretty sure it's not five bucks.  Not even close. I don't even know that you can make it for five bucks.
25:37Yeah.  And so I think that people don't understand, number one, the heart that goes into doing what you do, Dylan. And they don't understand how much it costs you for the ingredients and your time to do what you're doing to provide it to the customer.  And so I am really impressed with what you do.
26:03If I was going to be in Janesville, I would be stopping in for a lemon donut, but I'm not going to be in Janesville anytime soon.  So yeah, it's the other thing is that I am pretty sure that your donuts taste way better than the box of donuts I can get at Walmart for three bucks. I would agree with that.  You know, there is something about.
26:32the type and quality of ingredients that you use. Yeah. You you brought up, you know, getting stuff in bulk and that's accurate. You know, what we're paying now for ingredients is a lot more than what we've paid in the past. Oh, yes.  Absolutely.  You know, we still use the
26:51like online kitchen stores, you because we have access to some of those things.  So we do get a touch of a discount, but it's not like what we were getting before. Right. And you're right. People are having a tough time across the board financially.  And it is a splurge for a lot of people to go out to eat anywhere. Yes. You know, like we don't really eat out that much because it gets to be expensive. I like to eat out because I don't have to make the food.
27:20Yeah. But also it's cheaper to do it at home.  And even with our price point, I wanted to go a little bit higher than what we decided on. And my wife was like, no, you need to be considerate. And I was like, okay, you've never steered me wrong before. Like I will always trust your gut and your intuition.  And you she's been right.  And you're not going to pay, you know, Casey's prices are higher than your Walmart. It's going to be more, but.
27:49I think the feedback has been that it's worth the value overall. Um, and we've gotten some feedback here and there on different things, which is valid. And I appreciate the feedback because if don't know if something's wrong,  then I can't fix it. Right.  Yep. Yeah. And I don't know, people seem to be liking what we're doing and there's not really a good donut spot around here that I'm aware of. Like I said, we have the one in Redwing, which is an hour and a half away, but outside of that, I don't.
28:18I don't know of any that are within an hour's drive. You're it Dylan. You're it.  I have one more thing that I want to say. I used to make a recipe called outrageous brownies for my kids for their birthdays.  It's a recipe by Ina Garten. I don't know if you know who she is. And these are like ooey gooey dense yummy double dark chocolate brownies.
28:47My kids weren't really into birthday cake. And I said, what do you want for instead?  my, I don't remember one of my sons said, can you make a really good brownie? And I was like, I can try.  And it's a huge batch. It's probably 15 or 16 big deep fat brownies.  And we all would have one cause it was so decadent and so heavy that you didn't want more than.
29:15And my husband would take some to work with him the next day. And he kept getting questions from his coworkers that had them. They were like, where did you get those? And he would say, my wife made them for my child's birthday. And they would say,  you gonna bring more in?  And my husband was like, probably when she makes them for a kid's birthday again.  And they were like, no, no, no. Can you bring in a pan of them?
29:43And my husband said, do you have $50?  And they said,  for what? And he said, that's how much it costs for a pan of those brownies.  And people were like, how? And my husband explained the cost of all the ingredients and my time. And people were like, I think I'll just wait until you bring couple in again.  Yep. That's exactly what it is. Yep.
30:11And they're delicious. I haven't made them in years because they are incredibly fattening and so, so sweet that I'm at the point where I'm like, I don't think I can eat it. I don't think I can do it. I think my stomach would hate me. I'm old. Don't get old, Dylan, because your stomach doesn't handle things the way it used to.  So yeah, it's crazy. People love things. They love cheesecake. They love really good brownies. They love really good donuts.
30:40But right now everybody has to make a choice on what they're spending their money on. Yep. Yep. So I'm thrilled that you're doing this. And I was so excited to see that you were a cottage food business doing this. Yeah. Yeah. It's been it's been an experience. I would say a good one overall.  yeah, I'm I'm just honestly grateful for the opportunity. I didn't know, you know, what it was going to look like. We didn't know what the demand was going to be if there was going to be a demand.
31:10And people have really shown up and supported and it's just been cool to see.  have, I have one more question.  Are people coming from towns around Janesville? Um, a little bit. Yeah. Yep. We kind of pull in from, I would say maybe 15 miles or so, which is a pretty good size radius for where we're at. And what's the, what's the population of Janesville? Maybe 2000 people.
31:40Okay. So you have, you have a captive audience.  Yup.  That's a good way to put it. Awesome.  Fantastic.  I can't wait to see where you go with this. I will follow your Facebook page until it's no longer on Facebook. I promise.  So can you tell me the name of your Facebook page so people can find you? Yeah. It's allegedly absurd bakery and same thing on Instagram.
32:06Okay. And if people want to pre-order, they can just contact you through that. Yes. Yep. Messenger is the easiest. Otherwise my phone number is on there too.  So text message works fine.  Okay. When are you going to build a website? You know, I have the domain and everything ready.  I just, I wanted to take it slow and I want to do it all debt-free.  Yes.  Anything that we can do, you know, saving, reinvesting, all that stuff is going to be debt-free. Yes. Cause I don't want to be beholden to
32:36other people or other institutions.  That's a good plan. If you can stick to that, you'll do really well.  All right. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Dylan, thank you for taking time on a Sunday chat with me. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Have a great day. You too.
 

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Bayou Magnolia Homestead and Ranch. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Bayou Magnolia Homestead and Ranch in Louisiana. Good morning, Jennifer. How are you?  Good morning. I'm fine. How are you? I'm good. How is the weather there this morning? Brutally hot.  It's only, it's not even 10 o'clock yet. It shouldn't be brutally hot. Well, we have the super thick humidity down here to deal with too. So it adds on to the brutalness of the temperature.
00:57I'm sorry to hear that. I'm up in the north in Minnesota and it is 75 degrees right now and it's really overcast and muggy. It was foggy when I got up.  man, that 75 sounds pretty great right about now and overcast too. We're kind of in the middle of a dry spell. So we're dry, hot and humid.  Yeah, we had two to three weeks of really, really hot and humid.
01:27I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. And it sucked lemons because Minnesota does not usually have a stretch that long, that hot and that wet. So we're real thankful that it's finally leveled out again.  Well, y'all's weather sounds a lot cooler than it is here and I'd kill for it right about now. I'm waiting for the cooler months.  I think we all are. This summer has been hard everywhere with the weather. So I think we're all kind of like...
01:55Okay, two more weeks and then we should be rolling into fallish temperatures, hopefully.  Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, Jennifer. Okay, so I am 29 and I am not originally from any kind of a rural life. I'm actually from the outskirts of New Orleans, so pretty big city.  However,
02:19My family has always kind of been more of a self-sustaining kind of family, even in a more suburban kind of area.  I met my better half and together we bought a small five acre farm a little ways away from the city. And we just kind of jumped in on it, built a house and immediately the first thing I did was start getting birds and pigs and horses and.
02:46So we kind of acquired just a little bit of a small but large farm here. And that was in 2025?  No. Yeah, well, we started building. We bought the property in 2021. OK. But we had done everything ourselves. So it was a wooded property that we ended up clearing ourself. And then as far as our house goes, we built that ourselves. We contracted out a few things, but for the most part, we did it ourselves.
03:14Our barn was built by ourselves. So it took a lot of time. So we started our venture in 2021 as far as acquiring the property. And then we started operating a small business around 2025, which was, we moved here in May. So we started a few months after we moved. Okay, cool. So I'm going to ask at the beginning instead of at the end,  was it, is it?
03:43a steep learning curve and are you loving it?  Absolutely.  And there's never, it's never ending learning. You're always learning something new. And I think that's really important and kind of anything that you go into is that you're always open to the idea of learning new things and believing that you don't know everything there is about what you're doing.  So it was definitely a learning curve.  Getting used to
04:14I mean, I had a few farm animals in the suburban area, wasn't really supposed to, but as far as mass scale, that was a big learning curve. And it's a lot sometimes, I'm not gonna lie. It can be a handful and you always have sicknesses and illnesses and you kind of have to figure it out as you go. But I love every second of it and I wouldn't trade it for anything else.  Good. And you're 29. We need people like you coming up through the ranks to do this stuff.
04:44We need you, Jennifer.  So tell me, what do you have at your homestead for animals?
04:55So we started off with just having, had a horse beforehand that I was boarding. So we started off with the horse, but of course you're not really technically supposed to keep horses by themselves.  we did some searching and I came home with a feral Mustang that I've been training on the side.  She ended up being pregnant. So I have three horses. And then we had, we live in an area where unfortunately a lot of people kind of dump.
05:24animals on our street because we're so rural. Yeah. So they think it's a good place where the animal won't come back to them, I guess.  So we found 15 chickens on the side of the  dumped chickens.  Someone dumped chickens and it was hens, roosters, everything. And they were young. They were probably maybe like four or five months old. So me, I come from a veterinary background. So I have a very large heart for animals.
05:54and I don't like to see endless suffering or unnecessary suffering. So I couldn't leave these birds just helpless on the side of the road. So we took a dip net and started scooping as many as we could. There were probably maybe 50 birds on the side of the road and I collected maybe 15 of them. Oh, wow.  It was quite the adventure and I was pretty disturbed that somebody could do that.
06:20Um, but we also have four dogs and three of those four dogs were also set found the exact same way on our street,  banded on the side of the road. But for chickens, I never knew that people would do that for chickens, but they do apparently.  So, um, I acquired 15 chickens and I absolutely fell in love with them. I had a hen as a child and I love chicken sense, but we weren't really pushing to add a whole bunch of animals at one time starting out.
06:50but the 15 chickens kind of did me in,  then chicken math takes over.  So we ended up getting a few more, some friends had asked me to take a few birds. And then I got kind of really dove into the world of zombie chickens, which is an Ayam Samani and a white-like horn cross and the Ayam Samani breeds.  Uh-huh, yeah, I've heard about those. Yeah, so I thought those were really cool. I...
07:18kind of ventured into maybe breeding those and producing my own stock of those. I acquired a very, very nice Ayam Samani rooster for a very good price. So we acquired him and I then bought a bunch of white leghorn hens that I have. So we originally wanted to start breeding Ayam Samanis and white leghorns.  And we are still doing that. We just kind of took the back burner on breeding birds and
07:45are focusing more right this second on just selling eggs and kind of dipping our toes in the water to see what we can best serve our community with.  Okay, so your number one, thank you for taking in the chickens and the dogs that got dumped.  And I just want to take a minute and or a couple of minutes and say, if you're a person who has an animal you cannot keep.
08:14I'm pretty sure that there are shelters,  there are helplines you can call to find out if there's places you can take your animal,  and it doesn't hurt to ask the property owner if they're interested in taking your animal before you dump it. So please, for the love of God and everything,  good. Ask some questions before you just dump the animal that you don't feel like you're equipped to take care of anymore, please.
08:43because it is really hard on those of us who are not prepared to find animals on our property or right on the road outside of our property because we have really big hearts and we want to help them. But we may not have what we need to take care of them right that moment.  So Jennifer, you have anything to add to that? Thank you very much for saying that. But yes, there is always going to be it may be you know, you may have to, you know,
09:11actually try to find a place that'll take them. But there are places that'll take them. Even the chickens, I mean, I would have rather seen the roosters go to somebody that can use them for food instead of dumped on the side of the road.  Yeah. And you can always, I don't know about Facebook, but I think on Nextdoor, the app Nextdoor or on Craigslist, I think it's free to put up a post that says, I have 50 chickens. Is anyone interested? So
09:40Try everything before you just dump an animal because when you take on the care of an animal, once your animal, you are supposed to commit to the responsibility of that animal.  And please be responsible in trying to find a new home. I understand that times are hard right now, but please try before you just dump them. Right, right. I definitely agree. And we live in a
10:07world full of technology and resources and there's always another way for that.  I hope so.  I we just had an animal show up at our property last week was a probably four month old female orange tabby cat and we were we were fine letting her stay here and be a barn cat and somebody pulled into our driveway too fast and hit her and broke her and my husband had to put her down.
10:36She'd only been here two days.  So number one, somebody dumped her. They picked a good place to dump her because she was welcome to stay. And then somebody else hit her. It was a very rough couple of days here last week. Wow. Yeah, that is rough. I can't imagine. And I don't know if you know this, but most orange cats are male.  Yeah. A female. And I was I was hoping that it was female because we have other barn cats. And I was like,
11:06Yay, we can add to the gene pool, but no, we're not adding to the gene pool because she's no longer with us. So yeah, the whole dumping animals thing, I've got a tiny little burr in my butt about the whole thing. So let's not do that if we can avoid it.  So I was looking through your Facebook page and one of your horses or both of your horses are Mustangs, is that right? One of them is a Mustang that was caught in Nevada as a yearling.
11:35and she went through some pretty bad stuff before I got her. A lot of people that really didn't know what they were getting into. I had been around horses pretty much my entire life and I had worked with alongside trainers and actually trained horses to get free riding lessons as a teenager. So I was very familiar. But she had gone through a lot of hands that weren't very kind to her.  She still kind of has an issue with men.
12:03But she has come a very, long ways. But she was pastured with a stallion quarter horse and she ended up bred. But nobody could do anything with her. Nobody could touch her. Nobody could handle her. You couldn't put a halter on her.  And I was told that she could be, but they didn't think that she was because the stallion supposedly had broken out one time.
12:31I learned later that was not the case. She was housed with the stallion. So she came to me pregnant.  So I have a Mustang cross baby and then a Mustang mare. And my other horse is a 22 year old quarter horse. Okay. And the foal is it like, like beige colored? So she is actually gray. So she was born a very, very dark Bay.
12:58with gray horses and the way that gene works is they're born the color they would technically be as an adult if they did not carry that gray gene. And as they get older, they start lightening up. So that baby, while she's kind of beige looking right now, she's gonna end up pretty white. And she actually started graying very, very early on and very, very quickly. So I suspect she'll be gray within her first couple of years versus maybe five or six that they usually gray out at.
13:28Okay, cool.  So I know nothing about mustangs except that there are wild herds in the southwest and that they can get out of hand population wise and people go capture them. Is that accurate? That's what I've read. Yeah.  So essentially mustangs were descendants of
13:53Spanish conquistadors that came to the US early on when the US was first starting to get established.  And they are essentially a bunch of domestic horses that were escaped or let loose by early settlers. So they can range in different breed types.  So when you say Mustang, you could end up with a very large Clydesdale looking horse or you could end up with something very pony like. It's such a large gene pool that they have.
14:22But they're broken into different sections that the Bureau of Land Management kind of organizes and names.  And when each herd kind of gets overpopulated is when the BLM will step in and round up a bunch of the horses and put them through.  They'll vet them, they'll trim feet, they'll do teeth.  And then they are put on an online auction.
14:51for people to bid on and buy. For the safety of the horses, there is a one-year kind of, it's kind of like a contract where you're not allowed to sell or do really anything with that horse until you have a notice from a veterinarian and farrier that you've been taking care of this horse for the year and then they issue you a title.
15:17that makes that horse officially yours, but you technically don't own the horse that you adopt for a year after you actually acquire it.  I love my podcast so much because I learned something new every single time I talk to somebody.  That's awesome. I didn't know any of that. Thank you.  So you also have a garden. Is that right?
15:44I do.  So we are not very savvy in the gardening world, but it was definitely something we wanted to dip our toes in.  My fiance is very big into okra, wants to pickle okra, so we did a lot of okra. This year we did not open our garden up to any public consumers. We just kind of wanted to dip our toes in and see what we could do, what we can manage. But yeah, we did have a really good garden.
16:10And we did have a lot of production in it. I was quite surprised because the ground here is so much different than what I grew up with. It's very clay-like versus a soft soil that you would typically think of. So I was really surprised that we had success in it, but we did. Good. Did you... I always have to ask about tomatoes because we've had two years of terrible luck with our tomatoes because it was so wet.
16:39This year is a banner year. We have so many tomatoes already coming that we are probably going to have at least a thousand pounds by the time we're done. So do you grow tomatoes?  Yes.  So I, my family grew up with Creole tomatoes. I kind of gave that a swing this year. They did not do too well and they're supposed to be a very heat tolerant tomato, but they did not do too well.  Even with daily watering and
17:05Very rigid care, they just did not thrive here.  I had tremendous amounts of luck with cherry tomatoes this year. I had cherry tomatoes coming out of my ears. I could not keep up with them. Were they good?  they They were very good. Very, very, very good. Good. Did you do something with them or did you just eat them and give them away? I did not do anything with them. mostly...
17:34put them in like my salads and stuff or cook. I would cook them in like maybe burritos and stuff that we would make at home. And I did give some away to like family members and friends, but nothing special that I did with them. But I definitely want to look more into that because if I can grow cherry tomatoes like that every year, I would, I could probably come up with so many different things I could make with them. Oh, absolutely. And I
18:01I could not find the recipe. was talking to somebody else a year or so ago and I swear I've seen a recipe for tomato pie and it's like a cherry pie, but you use tomatoes.  You use some cherry tomatoes. So I'm going to have to do some more digging and see if I can find that recipe because I know it exists somewhere.  Oh wow. That actually sounds pretty good. Well, yeah. mean cherry tomatoes, if you quarter them and
18:31Follow a recipe for it. I assume that if you put more if you put sugar in it It's probably gonna taste like a sweet cherry pie And I mean obviously cherries don't have as much acid in them as we as cherry tomatoes do but I think it would work I'm gonna have to do some real dig and I swear to God I saw a recipe for cherry tomato pie at some point So I don't know it may just be something I dreamed up and I may just have to make the recipe myself. Who knows?
19:01We'll definitely share if you do.  will.  I'm being really silly.  And also,  you bake?  I dove into baking even before I moved here, actually. I was pretty big into sourdough.  Lately, I really haven't had the time to keep it up for the demand that I would have for it. But sourdough was really big on my list. I was doing sandwich breads and
19:29The whole spiel, everything you can imagine I was trying to make.  I was I still am very into homemade is probably the best you will ever have.  I really my goal is to eventually be able to support me and my family mostly on things that we can make here at the farm.  Fabulous.  I have a thing about bread. I actually love the smell of baking bread.
19:58more than I like eating bread. Is that weird or is that not weird? No, I can relate to that actually. I think the smell is probably what triggers us to really want to eat bread.  Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is that first warm slice of a loaf of bread is astoundingly amazingly yummy. After that, I'm like, eh, it's bread. It's better than the store bread, but it's just bread.
20:27Right, right.  I'm also not a big fan of bread. I don't like to eat it just to eat it. So that might be part of my issue.
20:37Well, I can relate. It was definitely very exciting when you first get it, but then when you've had it sitting for a minute, I'm kind of like, meh, it's bread. So I can relate in that sense, definitely.  I do like the homemade bread a lot better than store-bought bread. I can say that. I do too. The only thing that, I don't want to say it sucks, but the only thing that's not great.
21:03is with homemade bread, it's going to mold a lot faster than store-bought bread because homemade bread doesn't have preservatives in it. Right. And that is the downfall. I hated that while making bread because I couldn't enjoy it as long as I would store-bought bread.  I would.  It kind of made it difficult actually because you were trying to find a lot of things to use the bread for before it went bad.  Yeah, exactly.  And
21:28The thing with bread is you can't just stick it in the fridge. If you want to retard any growth on it, you have to freeze it. Right.  the fridge, it just dries the bread out and it doesn't taste good and the texture is really bad.  Right, right.  And I wish there was a way that we could preserve bread a little bit better without adding all of the artificial preservatives.
21:58Yeah, and the thing is, you know why this doesn't work,  right? Mm-hmm. The reason this doesn't work is because people in the old days,  made bread every day and their big families ate it. Right. There was no time for the bread to go bad because by the time the bread would have been bad, it's gone.  Right. And bread was a very big staple. Yeah, and these days we don't have big families and the bread just, you know...
22:26half the loaf sits for three days and then it's moldy and it goes in the jarash. Right. Which is very wasteful and I don't like wasting. I don't think anybody should like wasting right now the price of ingredients and pre-made food. Let's not waste it. Oh, I know.  It's kind of hard for your average person to really survive right now. It really is.  We're having our first batch of this year's bruschetta.
22:56for dinner tonight or for lunch tomorrow. Do you know what bruschetta is? Yes. Yes. We live for this day. We finally have potatoes that we can make a batch of it. And my husband bought the big French bread loaf when he was picking up groceries yesterday. I was like, I'm going to be eating bruschetta for three days because I don't want that bread to go to waste.  Right. Right.  Now.
23:21This is not a hardship by any means, but I won't want bruschetta again until at least October.  I know.  There are lots of things that we've had to live off of that. I'm kind of over at this point.  Mine is Cheerios growing up. That's what we had for breakfast every day for years. I can't even handle the smell of a box of Cheerios being opened these days.
23:48Mine is probably rice. I think rice was always the cheapest and easiest thing to make and have around. So I am very, very burnt out on rice.  We didn't do a lot of rice and I actually love brown rice. I will make brown rice and just eat it with a little bit of butter and salt. That's how much I love brown rice.  So let me think, is there anything else?
24:15I don't think there's a whole lot more here.  So do you have plans to keep adding to the homestead or are you pretty good for a while? So animal wise, I think we're good for a little while. We're kind of up to our ears on animals, but we've been doing pretty well with the eggs. I think the chickens are kind of paying for themselves at this point.  But we don't have any plans to add any more animals.  We are adding some fruit, fruiting.
24:43shrubs and trees on our farm that hopefully we'll be able to offer things like jam and syrups in the future. So really excited about that.  We just got to kind of organize ourselves a little bit better because we're still pretty new here.  So when you say syrup are you talking like fruit syrups? Yeah like a fruit syrup. I had years ago made a really nice blueberry syrup that you could
25:11pour on pancakes, you could also mix it into like a lemonade and make a very nice blueberry lemonade. I was drinking that like crazy.  So that's something I kind of want to experiment a little bit more with and see if that's something that I can offer people.  didn't, I wasn't sure if you were talking about maple syrup or fruit syrup, and I'm glad that you're talking about fruit syrup.  We had a banner crop of black raspberries like three years ago, and we tried to make black raspberry jelly.
25:42and it didn't set up, so it was black raspberry syrup. It was amazing on Belgian waffles with real whipped cream.  was the most decadent homemade dessert we've ever had.  I can imagine.  really, when I had made that blueberry syrup, I was just amazed at the fact that I could make something that tasted better than store-bought.
26:09satisfied my sweet tooth and I could use it for just about everything.
26:16Yes, and you made it yourself. You made it yourself. And this is why I do this podcast. I want people to know that almost everything that is made or fixed or built, people did it long before we had places to go to to get or have somebody fix something.  Right, right. And I unfortunately feel like we
26:45as a society have kind of stepped away from being able to do things and be more self-sufficient and kind of rely on other people to do things for us, which kind of hurts us as human beings tragically.  It sure does. And I live in fear of the day that the internet goes down, you know, for more than a day. Right. Because people are going to lose their minds. They're going to riot. They're going to loot because
27:12they won't know what to do with themselves.  Right, right. And we rely so heavily on the Internet. See me, I'm a very, very big book person.  I will sit down and read books and acquire information a lot that way. But I feel like so many people nowadays rely heavily on the Internet for their sole bits of information that that's all they know. If the Internet went down, nobody would know how to do anything. Well, that and all of our shipping.
27:42systems would go down because that's all reliant on satellites and information being texted and emailed and it would just be a disaster. And I can remember when landlines became digital. There are no actual regular landlines anymore that I know of. They're all voiceover internet protocol, the OIP. Right. And if the internet goes down,
28:11None of us are going to be able to get hold of anybody through our phones.  And my parents live in Maine. My sister lives in Maine. My brother lives in Massachusetts. I live in Minnesota. I won't have any way to get hold of my parents or my siblings if the internet goes down. It used to be that if you had a regular old landline that wasn't VOIP,
28:37You could still get hold of your loved ones to make sure they were okay using a telephone. So I'm dating myself. I'm 56.  was alive before internet was a personal home. Internet was a thing.
28:54So I just worry and we have books, we have at least five books sitting on the bookcase downstairs that are all basically back to basics skills like how to butcher a rabbit, how to butcher a deer,  how to can, how to preserve food, how to salt preserve food even.  So yeah, you can't, I keep saying this, you cannot rely on.
29:21the internet to provide you information immediately if the internet isn't available and you cannot rely on your local or federal government to bail your ass out when you need it right now because that's how it works.  whoever is listening to my little rant here, I should have a power rant thing, I don't have a noise for that, but if you're listening to my rant here,  really try to commit some stuff to memory and try to do some things that
29:50might just save you if things go wrong.  Yes. And as someone that does live in South Louisiana and deals with lot of hurricanes and has gone through a lot of major hurricanes, I can attest that when you're in a state of an emergency, you really can't rely on the government to come and save you. For Katrina, I remember pretty much every man was for himself for a very long time before even the National Guard came and started issuing out MREs.
30:20It's very important to be able to manage on your own and not rely so heavily on technology and your government. You need to be able to self sustain at least to some kind of extent.  Yes, I've heard, I've heard in general it's good to have two weeks of supplies on hand.
30:44just in general, not when there's bad weather predicted, but just to have some water put away,  some canned goods put away, some rice and beans put away so that if something does come up, you're covered for at least two weeks. And I think that that is a very good suggestion. Yes, absolutely.  All right, Jennifer, I tried to keep these to half an hour and I feel like we got a little off topic, but I feel like preparedness is part of home settings. I think we're good.  Where can people find you?
31:15You can best reach me on my Facebook page by you Magnolia Homestead and Ranch. Okay, and do you have a website? You do. I do have a website and it is the same by you Magnolia Homestead and Ranch,  but it is at I think it's GoDaddy. I haven't messed with my website a whole lot. I love that it is.godaddiesites.com
31:41So cool, so people can find you if they have questions or if they want to talk to you about all the things that you're doing.  As always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Jennifer, thank you for taking time out on a Saturday morning chat with me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for inviting me. You're welcome. Have a great day. You too.
 

Today I'm talking with Katie at The Little Farm in the Forest. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Katie at the Little Farm in the Forest in Indiana.  Good afternoon, Katie. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to have me. How are you? I am good. What is the weather like in Indiana today? It is very warm. I think we have some rain that is much needed on the way, but hopefully not too stormy.  I am hoping we don't break the 90s, but it looks like we're going to.  Yeah. Yeah.
00:58I thought we were through all of this really hot and muggy weather, but apparently we're still in August.  I'm in Minnesota and the last few days up until yesterday were really lovely, like 79,  low dew point, nice breeze.  And then yesterday the humidity started to climb again. I was like, no, because I thought my air conditioner in my bedroom was broken.
01:24And I mentioned this to my husband because he's doing a training class working from home this week.  And he came up and looked at it and he came downstairs and he said, I think I know what's wrong with the AC. And I said, what? And he showed me the filter.  The filter was filthy.  So PSA people, if your air conditioners that are window air conditioner are not working right, first thing to check is the filter because now it's working fine.  I'm so glad to hear that. You know, being born and raised in Florida,
01:53I would imagine you are not equipped or used to that weather. know you guys had some heavy, some hard hitting temperatures a couple of weeks ago up there.  yeah. Yep. My poor dog.  Oh my God, Katie.  She's okay. I don't want to spend too much time on this. talk about her all the time, but she's an Australian shepherd with the double coat and her top coat is all curly.
02:20And you're supposed to Aussies because of that double coat. Right. So we don't. And that two weeks, she just laid around and looked at me like, save me from this. And we were giving her ice cubes every couple hours to chew on.  she loves ice. So that was great. But I knew she was miserable because she would go outside, go potty and come right back in.
02:47I'm like, I'm so sorry, honey. I can't fix it.  And she's so dumb because she could have just been in one of the bedrooms where the ACs were on, but no, she wanted to lay by the toilet in the bathroom.  it at least tile? Is the tile cool? Yes, that's why she wants to be in there. Okay, that makes sense. So she's not actually dumb, but she could have been in a 69 degree temperature room, but she chose the tiles instead because they feel good on her tummy.
03:14So anyway, tell me a little bit about yourself and the little farm in the forest. love the name.  Thank you so much.  So we it is a family operation. It's my husband and I and his mother and grandmother have moved up here. We are just outside of Louisville, Kentucky. So, you know, we're just across the border in Indiana. And it's kind of a family operation, first generation sort of family compound set up.
03:41And my mother-in-law actually kind of came up with the name when we were thinking about what we wanted to name our little farmstead or homestead. And I wanted to include something with the forest in it because our property is heavily forested and we're working on restoring the forest while moving into market farming. And so that's kind of how the name came up to be was it was kind of just a mashup of conservation meets agriculture.
04:11Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page, because I do this every time I talk to somebody.  And the one post you've done in the last week really stuck out to me was about the SpaceX debris hitting the moon.  Do you know anything about that?  Were they just trying to shoot a rocket at the moon for funsies?
04:36I, somebody had commented, didn't know too much about it. It was just sort of something that was like popping up all over my feed.  Um, and I guess it was already kind of like up there. weren't aiming and it just sort of got off track.  And I guess the gravitational pull or something had caused it to go there. Um, but it was, it was just something that kind of hit me kind of hard because.
05:00As somebody who's really interested in conservation and being a little bit more self-sufficient and sustainable in my life choices,  just the thought of launching debris into space, it feels like another form of littering to me that we're taking it to the next level.  This isn't necessarily in regards to SpaceX specifically, but
05:29just the thought of us launching things into space and then they just get locked there and it's like another form of pollution.  Well, we've already tried to ruin the ocean. So why not try to ruin space?  Right? Yeah, it just, you know, it really like it had caused me to sit there and reflect and think a lot about, um, just because we can, does it mean we should kind of questions?  Absolutely. Um, my
05:56I have two podcasts. have this one and I have Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture that I do with a co-host.  And my co-host, I love her. She's fantastic. And one of her things right now is AI,  that it's not good. And I agree with her. I don't think it's good.  And that's another thing that's really screwing with agriculture and conservation.  just, we don't need
06:26to do all this stuff. Why can't we embrace what we have, you know? Right.  It's kind of just this reminder.  You know, they talk about living in the moment a lot,  enjoying life, you know, especially this lifestyle. It comes with that, that mentality of having a slower pace of life, really being present in your life and with your community, your family, your friends. And it's like, now we have all of this.
06:55this opportunity through technology to kind of instantize things and make everything accessible. That it almost feels like just the creativity of life, the mysteriousness of life is really just being pulled from us. Because now we can just type a few words into something and it can dream it for us. we're, it almost feels like we're being robbed of our ability to dream.  Yes. And that's not okay. And part of the reason it's not okay is because
07:25We have little people watching us all the time.  And little people have big imaginations. And if we rob them of their creativity, we're robbing them of the joy of life. And I don't want to talk about this too much further, because I could talk all day.  I just, I'm the woman that still gets a pitter patter in my heart when my husband brings in tomatoes from the garden, the first tomatoes.  So I'm very much.
07:53I wouldn't say I'm crunchy granola, but I am right below that, you know?  Right.  Right.
08:03But either way, I just saw that on your Facebook page and I was like, oh, Katie and I are going to be friends because yeah, that's okay.  All right. So you have a humongous garden, right?  So I don't know if humongous would be the word to describe it, but it is the biggest one I have personally done. We are operating it as a market garden. So we're coming in at about 8,500 square foot, which I think roughs out to like a fifth of an acre.
08:34Yep. So I guess it's a decent size.  That's a really good size. Don't sell yourself short.  Yeah. It's been a lesson this year. I've never done a market garden.  I've always just grown food, you know, for myself, my husband, friends, family when they're around.  And yeah, I'm learning a lot from this garden. It has definitely been the garden of lessons for me this year.
09:01And what lessons have you learned so far? What are the biggest ones? I think approaching the market garden the way I would a personal garden was kind of one of my biggest mistakes.  love kind of the potage garden, the interplanted garden, the very wild and chaotic gardens. But when it comes to market gardening, there needs to be a little bit of organization there. And that is not my strong point.
09:31So it got really out of hand really fast. I've just got like basil plants that are like two foot wide between my tomatoes, making it hard to pick right now, kind of hitting peak harvest season. And then I am not super familiar with this area. We just moved here last year. So I'm still again, being born and raised in Florida. I'm still navigating seasonality and like season extension. And that's something I've never really had to do.
10:00on a scale when it comes to making money because this has always been a personal hobby. And so now that we've commodified it and turned it into a business, I have to start approaching it like a business rather than a hobby. Yeah, it does change the view of it. It really does.  My husband's garden, he's the gardener. His garden is 150 by 100.
10:28feet, think, 150 feet by 100 feet. So that's a 5,000 square foot garden.  And he has a hard time keeping up with it.  I'm not the gardener, and he doesn't want me messing with it.  So right now, we've got a lot of beautiful cucumbers and tomatoes coming in for the first time in two years, because last year the garden was bad because of weather here.  The first cucumber he brought in, I was like, can I eat it now?
10:57Do I have to wait till dinner? And he was like, no, you can eat it now. And I cut that thing up in slices and started eating it. And I was like, do you want any? And he looked at me and there was a beat of time. And he said, I would like a bite. He said, but it's yours. He said, cause I know you know how much you love cucumbers. I was like, okay.  So they're really, really good this year. They're just starting to really come in now. And our tomatoes are finally starting. He's picking like 20 to 30 a night right now.
11:26And we're north of you by quite a bit. I'm sure you're picking way more than we are right now.  I, you know, I am actually kind of starting to peter out on the tomatoes and I'm out of cucumbers.  I've replanted cucumbers and I'm hopeful that I'll get a second round in before our first frost since they seem to grow so quick here.  But my tomato plants are kind of, I planted those back from seed in February. So I got them in the ground probably
11:55Um, and April or May, I remember taking a chance and thinking, I'm going to bet that we're not going to have a late freeze. And thankfully it worked out for me this year, but that doesn't always happen up here. Sometimes the freeze does come late.  Yes. those are our least favorite freezes here because we have apple trees and last year they were calling, they were calling for like snow on Derby and I was like, but I have my tomatoes out. Like, what do you mean?
12:23Yeah, we really watch the weather when we know the apples,  the apple trees are starting to blossom.  If there's a frost, we will get no apples at all. It's done.  And we have two trees loaded with honey gold apples right now. And we have a Harrelson and a Regent variety that we've never gotten apples from in the six years we've been here. And they're covered in apples too.  So we did not have a late frost. Thank God.
12:54The last two years have been so rough with the weather that I was like, please just let us have a moderate season, please.  it's been lovely here other than that two weeks of hot. Yes. So you got your two weeks of summer.  You didn't even have to go to Florida. Boy, did we.  And I don't know if you know what Minnesota is like in the summer, but we don't get two and a half weeks of temperatures in the high 90s and tropical dew points. We just don't get that. We get a couple of days, if that.
13:23So yeah, I don't want to live in Florida. I want to live in Minnesota where the weather is supposed to be temperate in the summertime. It's funny because my husband and I joke, we didn't move far enough north. We did a brief stint in Connecticut a couple of years ago. did 10 months.  And while it was lovely, we just, we really liked the Kentucky area, the Ohio Valley.  But now that we're currently like facing a hundred plus degree weather in the upcoming days, we joke all the time. like, yeah, we did not move.
13:54far enough north, like this is not far enough. But I don't know if we can really go anywhere that doesn't get a heat spell anymore.  Even Alaska gets hot temperatures now in the summer, like hot,  hot.  yeah, I mean, you could move to the North Pole, but you're not going to be growing a lot of veggies in North Pole in the summertime. No, I've considered it though. I've considered it.  I'll find something to grow.
14:19Well, you could have an indoor greenhouse, but it would cost you a lot of money to keep it warm.  would. I've looked into it. Not exaggerating at all. Yeah, my husband's dream for a long time. was like, we're going to end up in Alaska. And I was like, hell we are.  No, no, no, no. I don't want to live in Alaska where it's dark all day long, except for an hour and a half in the wintertime. I can't. I would die.
14:43Yeah, I don't. That's the only thing that I think keeps me from wanting to move to Alaska. I know it's gorgeous. I have a cousin that lives out there.  But I don't know if I could do the constant darkness.  No, no. And it's bad enough in the wintertime in the lower 48. Can you imagine?  I couldn't do it. There's no way. I like it when it starts to get dark.
15:12around Christmas time, you know, just before Christmas when it's dark at four o'clock and we get candles lit because it's pretty and it smells good.  we have, we have some kind of bread or something in the oven smells good and it's all cozy. But if I had to do that all the time, no. I don't think I would be productive. I think I would be very cozy in my house all the time. I would not be contributing to society.  Yep, exactly. And I mean,
15:41I have the utmost respect for people who can live with those kinds of extremes. I'm just not that person.  I agree.  I think that's why the Midwest for us worked out like, well, I guess I use the term Midwest very loosely. There seems to be debate if, if the Kentucky and a region would be considered Midwest.  Um, I don't know.
16:04You know? Yeah, I don't either. I'm like, I'm from Florida.  Florida is a weird state, you know? It's kind of southern and it's also very northern at the same time. So I was like, you know what? This seems like a good middle point of the country where I get the seasonality, but I'm not so far north to where I'm buried under feats of snow, but I'm not dying from the heat or alligators.  Right. Yeah.  And...
16:32The thing that's really interesting to me, this is, I don't know, we're talking about a lot of stuff that isn't homesteading, but I used to take the road trip from Minnesota to Maine every few years because I grew up in Maine, my parents still live there.  it's Minnesota to Wisconsin to Illinois to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania, I think is the route.
17:00Indiana feels like it's right literally right in the middle of all these different seasonal changes because I consider I Consider Illinois to be sort of kind of part of Wisconsin because of the route we take so same kind of feel in the climate and Then you get to Indiana and Indiana has always seemed hot to me because when when I was growing up My parents lived in we lived in Maine my parents and I my mom's parents lived in Illinois
17:30So the road trip was from Maine to Illinois and Illinois to home. And so I'm familiar with driving through Indiana in June and July and August. And it just always seemed kind of hot and sweaty.  And we would get to Illinois and for some reason, I don't remember the weather ever being bad when we would visit my grandparents. I'm sure it was, but I don't remember it. And Illinois always just seemed to really moderate and there was always just a nice breeze blowing through.
17:59And then Ohio is where it starts to not be so flat. You know, just the inkling of, we're getting back into trees and some hills here.  And so Indiana has always been this really weird outlier for me from my childhood memories. And I know it's really pretty because my grandpa's brother lived in Indiana. So we would go visit them when we were in Illinois.
18:25I know what it feels like. know what it smells like. I know what it looks like, but I think it's all very colored from the trips I took as a kid.  You do remember things I think differently in childhood. will say Indiana is an interesting state because where we're at in Indiana, right on the Kentucky border, we're only about 50 miles outside of Louisville. So we're very much in the hills here of Southern Indiana.
18:54I don't know if you've ever been, it is, it is beautiful. And it's funny because, you know, just you go an hour to north of us, that's when you start hitting the plains of Indiana, the flat, not much to see,  just fields. And so we really got lucky when we moved to at least live somewhere where it does feel different topography wise and not necessarily so just vast and expansive.
19:24It is gorgeous though.  I do remember that.  My least favorite part of the trip was the Illinois part and has been my whole life because Illinois is very, very, very flat. Yes, we recently made a trip. just did popped over to St. Louis and that's only a couple hours for us.  We're only a couple hours here near the Louisville area.
19:51to a lot of major cities. So Cincinnati, we're not far from Detroit, we're not far from Indianapolis. So we made a little trip out to St. Louis a couple of weekends ago and Illinois was like, we didn't even have to go through that much Illinois, but it felt like forever because it was just like one straight field that we drove through.  Yeah, drive if you're driving it, it's you don't want to drive it by yourself or you'll fall asleep at the wheel.
20:18Right. Yeah, we were like, wow, okay, we know we knew we had left southern Indiana and got into Illinois because there was not a single hill, like a cave, nothing. We very much live in cave country here in the hills. We actually live by two major cave systems down the road from us within miles.  Most of my neighbors have caves on their property.  Our property slopes down, like we're very much built onto the side of a hill.
20:46And so, we were like, okay, we are in Illinois because there is nothing out here. Yes, absolutely.  I shouldn't say it because my mom grew up in Illinois, but I will never live in Illinois. It's too flat for me.  is.  So we have now touched on weather and geography. Let's get into growing things.  Did you?
21:12Did you grow up with parents or grandparents who grew things? Did you say that at beginning?  Kind of.  So I grew up in a very rural part of Florida, kind of really some of the last part of real Florida that still exists, which is now, of course, being developed like most of the state.  So I grew up in one of the biggest peanut producing counties,  big monoculture right outside of Ocala, Florida, which is big horse country.
21:41And like most rural people, like we raised hogs, we had chickens. I had a garden with my grandparents, um, one year, uh, a couple of times we did some canning, you know, things like that. wouldn't say it was a, we weren't a gardening family. were more of a raising meat and eggs family. Um, but I was very ag adjacent my whole life. Um, just growing up in a, a very rural place where there's nothing but farms and Florida's, um,
22:10because it's so southern, the growing season is so long, you're just kind of surrounded by so much agriculture.  Okay, cool. And then the other thing I wanted to ask you and I'll forget if I don't ask now.  You had something on your Facebook page about making comfrey salve or salve.
22:32Is that something new for you or have you been doing that for a while?  Comfrey is something new that I'm working with in the past couple of years. I started making home remedies probably in my early 20s. I think like most women,  I kind of got into this lifestyle when I started getting some health issues and I wasn't getting a ton of help from the doctors.
23:01quite an extensive medical history for being in my 30s. And I had really started struggling with some autoimmune issues. And it was kind of a, I approach this lifestyle wise? Can I do this a little more holistically before I have to take the medications they give for those kinds of illnesses? Because I really didn't want to end up on like any type of like rheumatoid.
23:30medications, any type of immunosuppressants, and I already have a cardiologist, things like that. So I actually got into making a lot of my home remedies for pain as a medical marijuana patient in Florida. It was cheaper for me to buy medical marijuana and make my own lotions to use topically than it was to buy the lotions. So that's actually where I started was as a medical marijuana patient. I didn't know you could do that.
24:00I never really like I was like, if you can infuse oil, you know, with lavender, like, why couldn't I do it topically? I wasn't interested in necessarily like, you know, the mind altering aspect of the medication, which, you know, I'm very pro like, you know, that's, that's a choice people have to make.  That's not what I'm sorry, I'm a little topic here, but you're not you're anti pot.
24:29Right. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say.  But it was, you know, just, I needed something more for topical muscle relief, nerve pain.  And I was, know, at the time on a very limited budget, I, know, I was newly married. We had bought our first house, you know, money was tight.  And after going the pharmaceutical route and not getting a ton of relief or my insurance would only pay for X amount of treatments.
24:56I was like, you know what, if I'm going to have to pay out of pocket anyways, let me try this. And I just, kind of came to me one night. Like I was in the dispensary. saw lotion.  I was like, I don't have the money for that. And I was like, you know what? I know how to make lotion. Like let me, let me see if I can just figure this out. And so I just, that's where I started. I love that.  Um, I have a story that has nothing to do with pot, but it has to do with making a sap.  My youngest son, he is 20.
25:25Born in 2001, so he'll be 25 in December.  He does not live with us anymore. I am an empty nester. I've raised four kids.  He had some dry skin happening on his face like three or four years ago. And he was using my Burt's Bees lotion, which is expensive.  And I was like, why don't you let me figure out a way to make something for your face? Because it's not going to cost $20 a thing.
25:54it's going to cost about four because I have all the ingredients probably that I need. So I looked up what I thought was a lotion and it was a lotion but it set up as a salve and I said, can you just use it as a salve? And he said, sure.  And basically it was cocoa butter,  raw cocoa butter, which I didn't know smells like cocoa.  I thought it, I didn't realize that it would cause I'd never dealt with it before.
26:23And I used that and some other things and made him some face cream and he loved it because he smelled like hot cocoa.  And I was so impressed with myself because he really, had spots that were just flaky and it was just like a minor psoriasis thing.  And it worked.  after like three or four days of him using this every night before he'd go to bed,
26:49He came to me and he showed me his face. He's like, touch my face.  And you know, boys don't... Boy men, men boys, what are you gonna call them? Boys in their twenties don't really want their mom touching them in any way, or form other than maybe a hug now and then. And I said, touch your face. And he's like, yeah, touch my face. And he said, put your hands flat and just put them on my cheeks and then slide your hands down. And I was like, okay.  And I did. And his face was so soft. And he's like,  you fixed it.
27:20And I don't know whether he was like, thank you, mom, and you fixed it. Or if he was just like, how cool is this? You fixed it. But I was so excited that I had made something that really worked for him. Yeah, that's amazing. And when you really do start kind of having to take your own health into your own hands.  It's funny how much we seem to be able to do for ourselves without needing
27:49to necessarily take the steps to go to the doctor, handle insurance and pharmaceuticals.  Sometimes it's just you need to moisturize, you know? Yeah. And I knew that and he knew that too, but I was like, you are not going to use up all his Burt's Bees stuff that I still have. Stop using my good stuff. That I still love. And when I'm out of it, I'll use the other stuff I make too. But in the meantime,
28:16Here use this homemade remedy that's probably better for your skin than the Burt's Bees stuff I have.  Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so dumb because Burt's Bees was my go-to for a long time, you know, growing up and young adult and in my 20s and 30s Burt's Bees lip balm was my favorite thing.  I now have lip balms whenever I want them because I can just make them. I know how. You know, it's funny being in the the ag world because I never
28:46realized how
28:50how much you jump into when you start this lifestyle. And for me, like I've kind of jumped into the cosmetic stuff. Like I like to make like little tinted chapsticks or I make my own facial moisturizers and I'm like, oh my gosh,  I could just make this. I don't have to buy it. It's going to cost me $500 to make it, but I can make it.  the outlay, the beginning of anything is always the most expensive.  Always. Like when you want it, when you decide you want to get chickens for eggs,
29:19Those first eggs are going to be thousand dollar eggs.  But six years later, they're not thousand dollar eggs anymore because you already have the coop and you already know how to take care of them.  And hopefully you found people you can barter with for hay for their nesting boxes.  And you start selling their eggs. If you have enough chickens, you sell their eggs and that pays for their food. But that first egg is like a golden egg, I swear to God.
29:46For sure.  It's funny.  And you you find ways to get scrappy and frugal.  And it really, this lifestyle really does kind of lead you down the path of non-  I wouldn't say anti-consumerism, but it is easier to get more into a minimalistic habit, like habits. Because when you're not having to go to the store for, like you said, eggs or something, all of a sudden you're like, wow, like I'm not spending
30:15as much money or gas or I'm not buying impulsive things.  it's really just I didn't realize how much of my life this lifestyle it would affect.  it impacts everything in the best way possible.  And and I'm going to say this again, I try to date. try to do this every third or fourth episode.  Homesteading, farming, gardening, whatever you're doing. If you
30:45are a soft heart and you have animals, you're going to have to get a stiff upper lip because animals don't always make it on a farm. We just lost a barn cat the other day. We lost kittens two years ago because their mom flaked off. She left four week old babies. We don't know if she got hit or if she was just too young to have babies and she didn't want to raise them and so she went somewhere else, but we lost babies, kittens.
31:14So you've really got to be able to roll with the punches and you will have some of your highest highs in this lifestyle, but you'll have some of your lowest lows too. Yeah, that was something I learned very young and early on with my parents raising hogs and chickens. I actually had a really hard time. I was vegetarian kind of on and off into my adult life.
31:40And even though my parents had tried to explain it to me as a child, like, you know, we want to know that our food was raised in humane conditions, where it came from, what was fed, you know, they were very transparent about some of the horrors that exist in modern agriculture and how removed we are from our food sources.  That really impacted me at a young age to the point of vegetarianism. And it took me a really long time to, I guess, to accept it and be comfortable with it.
32:08And I think a lot of people jump into this lifestyle and don't realize how much it does affect them.  Yep. And it's, it's really wonderful when you're starting out, when you're like, Oh, we're going to get bunnies and we're going to raise them for meat or we're going to get chickens and have eggs and we're going to have meat chickens too.  And we'll raise those up and butcher them for meat. And we're going to get a steer at whatever four months old and we're going to raise that for meat and we're going to butcher him.
32:38The problem is you get to know those animals, you get to know their personalities, and it is really hard to not be attached to an animal you take care of all day long every day. And then you are the ones going end their life and you're going to eat them. It's a hard, hard shift.  And being so far removed from where our food comes from, people think nothing of picking up a nice ribeye steak at
33:07the meat counter because they didn't know the animal.  didn't know that animal in particular really liked being scratched behind its left ear six times.
33:19Mm hmm. Yeah,  absolutely.  As I got older, the wisdom kind of came where I was like, you know what, this animal is only going to know one bad moment in its life as long as I'm responsible for it. And we currently don't actually have any animals outside of our dogs. And my husband and it's funny you mentioned rabbits, my husband and I are getting two Holland Lops this fall.
33:45We've never had a pet together outside of my dog that I had when I was 18, who recently passed in October, but we've never had a pet together as a couple. So we're like, you know what, we really want Holland Lops. And I told them, I was like, I know we're doing this homesteading thing, like bunnies are friends, not food. I don't want to get into meat rabbits.  Like I got to have a boundary and it's not the cow. It's not the pig. It's not the chickens. It's the bunnies.  Cause they're sweet and they're soft.  Yep.  Yup.  It's, it's such a.
34:15It's such a satisfying way to live, but it's also heartbreaking sometimes. And I just, I want people to know that when you decide to do this, there are lessons you're going to learn and some of them are going to be hard.  Yes. And I, you know, it really puts, um, a lot of those hard questions that keep you up at night sometimes, like it puts a lot of things into perspective.
34:44doing this,  you kind of, I wouldn't say understand the meaning of life, but a lot of things become much more apparent and seem much more trivial when you're, when you're having to put the responsibility on sourcing your food and raising that animal, knowing that it's living to nourish you and to sustain you.  Yes. And the way that I justify it in my head is
35:13I have to remember to say thank you.  And if I don't say thank you, I feel really, really bad because that animal,  I mean, yes, you took care of it and you fed it and you raised it, but that animal gave its life so that you can live.  And I was watching something a while ago and somebody incredibly intelligent, I can't remember who it was, said something about everything needs to eat.
35:42So we're not being mean or monsters in raising animals for food. This is how it used to work.  So I just, just, it's so hard and it's so great at the same time is what I'm trying to get at.  Katie, thank you.
36:05So much for coming to visit with me. try to keep this to half an hour and we're already over that by five minutes.  Where can people find you? Yeah, I'm on YouTube at The Little Farm in the Forest. We do weekly videos, anything from herbalism to the garden to showing you how food is grown. And I'm also on Facebook, same name, The Little Farm in the Forest.  Not on Instagram? Not yet. I've been meaning to set one up, but my first market year, I had to drop the ball somewhere.
36:34Yes, because you're a very, very busy lady.  All right. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. Katie, thank you again for your time. I really enjoyed our chat. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day. You too.
 

Today I'm talking with Vicki at Roberts Rabbitry Homestead. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Vicki at Roberts Rabbitry Homestead in Indiana. Good morning, Vicki. How are you? Good morning. I am good. Good. How's the weather in Indiana today?  It's all right. I think it's going to get hot again, but right now it's not too bad. Went out and did my morning chores and didn't break a sweat, which is always great.
00:51Yeah, did you guys have, we had over two weeks of tropical dew points a couple weeks ago. Did you guys have that too or did you just have like a few days?  Honestly, we had such bad humidity that I don't know. It was bad for,  honestly, most of the summer, our humidity levels have just been insane. Yeah, I don't like it. And I keep saying that on every episode and I need to stop. Fall will be here soon. I know it will be. And then I'll be like, man, it's cold again. What happened?
01:21Today in Minnesota it is 72 right now and it's sunny and it's pretty and it's very little breeze and it's supposed to be high of 85 and I don't know what the dew point is supposed to get to.  Probably,  yeah we're going to be back in tropical dew points today 72 at 3 o'clock this afternoon 72 degree dew point. Yay, oh yay here we go again.  Yay.
01:50So, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Robert's Rabbitry.  Well, rabbits. Yeah, I do. I got lots of rabbits. I love my rabbits for sure.  But really, I'm just a normal person.  I'm a mom. I got four boys from... Oh my. Yeah.  The oldest is 15. He just got his learner's permit.  Then...
02:19The next one's 11. He just entered middle school, then seven, and my youngest is five. And he just went into kindergarten. So my youngest went to kindergarten. Did you cry?  You know, a little bit, but honestly, I've been raising kids for the past 16 years, my whole adult life.  My husband and I married straight out of high school. I was pregnant with
02:48and had a kid within a year, sorry, a year of marriage. So I've been doing the parenting thing my whole adult life.  And while it never stops, but they go to school and you get a little bit of more time to yourself.  And it's, you know, that time is like, oh man, what do I do with myself now? You know, I've never had, I've never had all my kids at school at one time. I've always had at least one home.  And when I
03:18kind of started to realize that these kids are getting a little bit older and I have a little bit of time myself and I can, you know, start to explore some of my other hobbies that are a little more time consuming that I wanted to jump into.  So I'd already been doing some of these other skills, you know,  when my kids were little, I learned to sew so that I could make them baby clothes because that's cute.
03:48And so I did that. learned to sew and I have gardened on and off my entire adult life. Some places we could garden where we live, some places we couldn't.  And when we got out here to the country, out to the family farm,  now I have the ability. I don't have to ask permission from anybody to have a garden. So that's been really great. But you know, I've just been learning some of these skills.  do.
04:18I obviously I raise rabbits.  I have chickens and we do pig feeder pigs, but we don't breed them. just get them from a local farm and raise them out for the pork. But I don't have a business.  don't have,  you know, I'm not like big,  huge social media star or anything. I'm just...
04:48just a normal person who I'm here.  you know, I didn't grow up learning any of these skills. And as I got older, I was more interested in them. And now that I have this time, I'm diving a lot deeper into them.  That's fabulous. You're in it for the satisfaction and the self sufficiency.  Exactly.  Good. That's amazing. And I think everybody should be.
05:12I know it's not everybody's cup of tea. There's a lot of people who don't want to do what you and I do in our daily lives and that's okay too.  So I saw on your Facebook page this morning when I was looking to see what you're up to a post from June 4th and it says, going to lie, this was pretty entertaining. And it's a string of messages back and forth about somebody wanting rabbits from you.
05:39Was it a bot? Was it somebody just being stupid? Tell me the story on that one. It's a scammer. Yeah.  So a lot of times, I don't know if it's a bot or not.  I think it might be.  I get them from time to time.  But it's funny to me, you know, when you type back to them because
06:06It's just like they're responding to whatever, you know, they're not like actually seeing what you're doing because they don't actually want whatever it is you have. They want your account stuff. You know, they want your financial information and to be able to get money from you in one way or another.  So it was just funny. was just playing. I like to do that. You'll see it on a lot of my posts. I get tons and tons of trolls and
06:34I mean, I haven't even been doing this that long and they hit me very quickly and they hit me very hard.  Yeah.  And I mean, to me, I just laugh about it and I'm going to put something,  if I even respond, the trolls, it's going to be probably something witty or funny.  It is witty.
07:00It is witty and funny. read through the whole thing. And for the listener, if you want to see it, go follow Robert's Gravatory Homestead. It's the first pinned post. And you will definitely giggle, if not pee your pants laughing at Vicki's responses.  Yeah, I mean, I'm not here on social media to take things like super serious, you know?  So I'm here.  I live in a very, very, very small community.
07:31Honestly, it's an hour before you get to a city with a population over 18,000.  So it's very, very small and I'm an introvert and I like to stay home. So I don't have a lot of friends really, you know, and I wanted that community too.
07:58Honestly, I was having a really hard time finding any resources that could kind of help me learn in the way that I learned.  So that's kind of how the whole thing was built. Really the whole page. I was bored and lonely and just looking for people who shared the same passions as I did. And that's what I ran across when I started my page. And that's a really great
08:27thing to do, really great way to do it.  And I know that people think that social media is a terrible entity.  It's a monstrosity, but if you use it for good, it can be really good.  I think with your voice and the fact that you're an introvert, you should start your own podcast, Vicki. I think you'd be great at it.  Oh my.  I don't know about... I just like the...
08:56learn, honestly, I love to learn.  And I will spend my whole life learning something new every day. That's my goal is just to learn more and more. You can never know enough, you know, or at least that's how I feel. And I just have a passion, I guess, for sharing what I learned because when I started looking for resources and stuff to
09:25on like online because I couldn't find it in person.  I just, I was having a really hard time coming across a lot of those resources that were helpful, especially in the rabbit world.  That is just such a world full of so much good and bad.
09:53That's what I'll say. There's tons of good and there's tons of bad.  Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that rabbit people can be kind of a pity if they show their rabbits, if you're not a show rabbit person.  I've heard that if people are raising their rabbits for the hides and for meat and for rabbit's feet, they can be a little more forgiving. I don't know if that's what you expect. Yes, absolutely. Yep, that is true.
10:23All right, we will get to the rabbits, but I want to ask you a question. You have an Australian shepherd. I sure do.  What is her name? Her name is Renly.  Renly, okay. And you said she's five. She's about, she turns five next month, yes.  Okay. I don't want to talk on and on about mine. I have done it too many times on the podcast already because I love her so much.  What I want to ask you about her is why did you get her? Did you get her as a puppy and did you have a reason?
10:52Um, I did get her as a puppy.  Um, we,  I had a Yorkie that I'd had since, um, I was pregnant with my very first one back in 2010.  Um,  and she was sick.  um, I knew that when that time came, would lose and I would lose my Yorkie.  It would be devastating. Yep.
11:22And I didn't want another Yorkie because that, it wouldn't compare, you know? Like I just felt like I knew I couldn't get another Yorkie and that would save the heartbreak that I would feel when I lost her. So we were out here at the farm and I wanted a family dog that had the energy.
11:51to keep up with all my feral kids.  Yes.  So I wanted, you know, but I didn't want a giant dog because our house is not that big.  um,  honestly, and I had just seen Australian shepherds, you know, here and then at one point I did work for a vet for a short time. And I mean, I saw some of the most gorgeous dogs and cats and, animals that you could just imagine.
12:20And the Australian Shepherds always just really, they were just so pretty.  I started looking for one and I just happened to run across an ad for a guy in the town next to ours, in the Amish town next to ours.  I went, well the whole family, we all went in to look at her and she's actually not the dog I wanted out of the litter.
12:50Okay. But the dog that I wanted was already spoken for and she was the next pick for me. But man, when I saw her, fell in love and everybody else fell in love.  I mean, it was just sealed that moment.  So, but we brought her home and you know, actually she was a puppy at first, but when she started to get a little bit older,  she just really took to the everything.
13:19um, everything about the whole farm life.  She loves the rabbits. I'm not even kidding. I can't tell you. She goes up to every one of their cages every day. She goes and she checks on them. If one is loose, by golly, she lets us know.  time I even had a kit managed to get out of one of my hutches and she, she brought it to me uninjured. In her mouth?
13:48Oh,  a good girl. mean, she is, she is just an insanely great dog. She goes on all the four wheeler rides and walks on the property with the kids. So I don't have any kind of fear, you know, that they're out there by their, their selves walking around or riding. She's always with them.  She, she helps us catch chickens.  She's a very good herder.  So.
14:18I mean her role really is just to be the family dog and the little farm dog that we have. So she's just perfect about it too. We just love her to death.  so you had reasons for choosing her.  Yes, yes I did.  Yeah.  We ended up with ours sort of by happenstance, which is a weird way to say it.
14:44We knew we were going to get a puppy at some point when we moved to our place that is, we've lived here six years now, but we didn't know what we were going to get.  And our neighbors for, you know, it's about half an hour away.  She, the lady, the wife taught our kids in elementary school. So I knew I followed her on Facebook and her her mated pair, as I call them, of Australian Shepherds had a litter on August 3rd. And I sent her a message and I said,
15:14we finally have moved or we have some room to have a puppy, a dog, and we'd really like to have one of Diesel and Daisy's pups. And she was like, oh, okay. And she talked a little bit in messages and I assumed that she thought that we were serious.  And about four weeks later, she posted and she said, we have a couple puppies left. If you want one, let me know. And I'm like, she didn't think I was serious.
15:42So I messaged her and I was like, Jean, I'm serious. How much are you selling the pups for? I said, we want one. And she was like, oh, I thought you were just like, it would be nice to have one. I said, no, we're serious. How much?  And that dog cost us $500.  I can't believe we paid $500 for a puppy, but we did. And we didn't really have a purpose for her. We don't have animals for her to herd or anything. We wanted a house dog.
16:12that was really good at watchdogging because we live in the middle of cornfields and soybean fields.  She has lived up to being a watchdog beyond all measures. She has no off switch.  What I want to say about this particular breed, whether they're small, medium or large Australian Shepherds, I have yet to hear anything bad about any of them from anyone I know who has one.
16:40they seem to be a really good all around dog for a family. I mean, as long as you can get their energy out, that would be the only thing that I would say if you can't get them to run and stuff,  I mean, Renly would be extremely wound up if she couldn't chase after the four-wheeler all the time, and she didn't have her space to roam.  and...
17:07And it depends on their own personalities. I keep hearing from people, you're like the 30th person I've heard that from.  Our Maggie is a loaf when she's in the house. When she's outside, she wants to play. And so we have a frisbee that she loves and we have the little balls that look like mini basketballs and she will chase those and she gets her yas yas out and then she's fine.
17:33But she is very much like a Labrador Retriever in the house. She's a loaf. She wants to lay around and eat snacks and drink water and just hang out. She's not too bad in the house. So we lucked out big.  Yeah. Renly does great in the house, but she's lazy inside. She just wants to come in here and lay down and, you know, cool off and stuff. But then she's right back outside.  We actually found out here pretty recently that she has a thing against raccoons.
18:03They all do.  all do.  Yeah, it was, and that wasn't on purpose. So she goes out with my son every night to shut up the, you know, the feed shed and all that stuff and close the chicken coop. And apparently there was a raccoon and she took off after it and it was a rough and tumble kind of thing.
18:29but we were having just such a bad issue with raccoons at that point. So, I mean, it was probably good for her to scare them away some.  Yeah. And this is why it's really good if you're going to have an outdoor dog, well, any dog, but definitely an outdoor dog, make sure they're up to date on the rabies shots.  Absolutely. She is.  Okay. So I had to ask about that and I want to hear about your rabbit story because did you
18:55Did you know you could raise rabbits or was this a new thing for you?  I have actually been raised, like I've actually had rabbits and have been breeding rabbits since 2022 or the end of 2021. I can't remember.  And I did basic research before, you know, and I had
19:23cage an actual rabbit cage and Willow she's my longest rabbit but I got her from a pet store I walked into a pet store I was thinking about getting a rabbit and I went in there and they had her in a fish tank oh okay at the pet store and I mean I was walking around looking for the treats and food for Renly and
19:53everywhere,  every time I would have to walk by, she was just like, take me home.  And I have a bleeding heart when it comes to animals. I took her home.  I would have too, because a fish tank is not a home for a rabbit. No, I knew that even not having rabbits that that wasn't okay.  And I took her home.  And shortly after,  I, you know, I got a mail too. But really,
20:23I didn't have enough knowledge when I started, but who does? You know, who does? And that's kind of the point of why I do a lot of the stuff I do is we don't have the knowledge when we start. Nobody starts with it, you know? So you're going to make mistakes and that's okay to make mistakes.  As long as you're doing it out of
20:52true ignorance and not willful ignorance.  You know, so I mean, I did lots of things that, well, I know now isn't the way to do it, isn't the way to raise rabbits or things that are not good for them or safe for them.  Over the years that I've had them, I've learned that, you know, I've learned a lot. But it was up until this year.
21:22Um, well, last year, up until last year, I kept a very small, uh, stock. I only had six rabbits and three were females. Three were males.  And while the goal, when I very first got rabbits was meat rabbits, I just, I needed somebody to do it. I'd never killed an animal before.  Never, you know?  so.
21:49Well, okay, I take that back. I had to kill a chicken once,  a juvenile chicken, because there was a loose dog that got a hold of it and I could see its insides through its back.  obviously that needs to be dispatched. So I did dispatch that one, but I didn't watch when I did it.
22:15You know, it was really hard. That was incredibly hard for me.  I love animals. I have a bleeding heart. When it comes to animals, I have way too many strays and just, you know, I love them basically. So when I saw these cute cuddly rabbits being born, these tiny little things, I'm like, oh, I could never do this, you know? And I didn't have anybody who gave me the confidence.
22:46and you know, who would actually show me in person how to do it and then let me do it with their guidance. And it took years to find somebody for me locally who would do that.  And that was before I had really started my Facebook page.  And but I did find somebody through
23:15rabbits here locally and she's a very good friend of mine now.  So we connected through rabbits, which is how I have most of my friends to be honest.  that's good. You've grown your tribe.  Yes. Yes. But she showed me,  you know, she showed me and she helped me and once I did it, I think I went with her twice and did it. And
23:45And then I told my husband, was like, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it here. I'm going to, you know, this is, I'm going to do this all myself without the help and direction from somebody else. So I actually recorded our session, me and my friends,  of dispatching the rabbit and butchering it out.
24:14So I went back and watched it and then I went and I did it myself.
24:22And that's how I learned.  Super proud of you because it is really hard to take a life no matter what the purpose is for. 100 % to every single one.  Still now, it's hard. It's incredibly hard. it's a rabbit that I enjoyed, you know, having around or one that I didn't, I don't care. It's very hard to do it because I have so much respect.
24:51for my rabbits and my animals in general. I have ton of respect for them and their purpose for why I have chose to bring them into this world.  And then when I go to take their life,  they're fulfilling their purpose. So I'm grateful and I'm sad and it's an emotional experience every single time.
25:21It really is. I have not.  The things I've killed so far are bugs because I don't care about bugs. But I have watched my husband dispatch chickens because I made myself stand there and watch him do it because I was like, if I can't bring myself to do it, I need to at least stand here and watch it being done. And I did not throw up, but I wanted to.  It's.
25:47Some people can do it and it's not they don't feel bad about it, but they can just do it. My mom and dad are both deer hunters. They have both gotten deer all their lives. I am really good at spotting deer on the of the road or in the woods when we're hiking or whatever it is we're doing. I'm really good at spotting deer. I don't want to shoot them. I would have to be starving to shoot a deer. I think that they are beautiful.
26:13I think that that men, most men see a deer and they think, ooh, food. I see a deer and think, oh, that would make a really beautiful photo for my phone saver, screen saver, whatever you call it.  So there are just some people who are totally into raising and butchering their own food. There are people who are into raising and not butchering their own food. They will take it to someone who can butcher it for them. I don't care.
26:41how you do it, I care that you're trying to do it the best way you know how.  Exactly.  And a deer is actually how I learned to process meat on my own. So I'm very thankful for deer hunting because we do usually try to get one at least a season and that puts a little more meat in the freezer.  in the end,
27:10Because we process it out ourselves, the only thing we have to pay for really is the tags and those hunting license. Right. Yeah. And it's a lot of meat.  It is. It definitely can be a lot of meat if you if you get a halfway decent deer.  Yeah. The best deer meat I've ever eaten came to us as a gift. My ex-husband had brought my son back from his weekend with his dad. And on the way back, my ex-husband hit
27:40a probably four or five month old fawn. And he called us and he said, I can take it. You know, the officer that's here says that I can take it if I, if I pay for the tag.  He said, do you want it? He said, cause I'm not going to have any time or any room or any know how to butcher it. And my husband does know how to butcher deer. And I was like, yes, we do.  And we stayed up till like two in the morning dealing with that.
28:09fawn that was basically free food. Yep. best venison I've ever had in my entire life because I was so young. And I felt so good that it didn't just go to waste or end up getting thrown into the ditch and rotting.  Yeah, that's one of those things. see something on the side of the road or, you know, especially deer. Man, we have tons of deer here. So when I see a deer on the side of the road, I'm like, oh, what a waste. Yeah, it really is.
28:40And I think here in Minnesota, I'm not positive, so don't quote me, but I think if a deer has just been hit and the person that hit it doesn't want to take it home and deal with it, I think that there's a group that will take it and take it somewhere to have it butchered and then they donate the meat to people who need it, I think.  I've heard the story, I'm not sure it's true, I hope it's true. I hope it's true.
29:08I've heard that around here you can get it processed and donate it to the food donation, the food banks, there we go, the food banks. But I don't know for sure if that's true or not either.  Yeah, and with the chronic wasting disease that's really popping up in the upper Midwest, I don't know if they're still doing it the way I just said.
29:34but I know that they used to try to use the animal if it was still good. know they tried.  So, but anyway,  long story. We're getting way off of track here.  So I would ask you a whole bunch of stuff about rabbits, but I just talked to a lady a few months ago about rabbits on the podcast and she told me more than I ever thought I needed to know about bunnies. Oh, you're wrong there.  Was it Amanda? I don't remember. It might've been.
30:04It probably because I listened to the podcast. I bet it was Amanda from my and Justin's homestead.  It might have been. Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to be really honest with you, Vicki. I do these interviews. I enjoy the hell out of talking to you guys, but I do so many. If I haven't talked to somebody just in the last week or so, it's all in the very back of my brain. So I would literally have to scroll through the list to tell you who I talked to about bunnies. Well,
30:32If anybody listening doesn't follow her, go follow her because she's awesome. She's one of the people that gave me confidence to actually, but she doesn't even know it, but she gave me the confidence to start making the videos that I make, the educational videos that I make. She is. Shout out her name and her place again.  It's Amanda at La La and Justin's Homestead down in Florida.
30:59Yeah, I think I did interview them. If I didn't, I should. Let's put it that way.  So I try to keep these to half an hour. And I feel like we talked about a lot of things, but we didn't really talk about a lot of things. You want to come back sometime?  Absolutely. I'm having fun.  Okay, cool.  Where can people find you, Vicki?  At Robert's Rabbitry Homestead on Facebook. I mean, I'll be real honest, that's about the only place I hang out social media wise.
31:29That's probably good because I have Facebook,  have Instagram,  joined TikTok because my daughter posts on TikTok.  I can't keep up anymore. I'm like, oh my God, I can't spend six hours a day looking at social media unless it's literally for work. I can't do that.  So one place is good. It's easy to find you.  I'm there on Facebook. Come find me and come follow along. We're having fun there.  So you'll see.
31:58Yeah, you'll see I'll find stuff. It's fun and it's fun-y,  know, like in the best way possible.  Alright. I like to laugh.  Yeah, me too.  As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Vicki, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Today I'm talking with Raven at Southern Roots Organic Cabinet. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Raven at Southern Roots Organic Cabinet in Idaho. Good afternoon, Raven. How are you? I'm good. How about you? How are you? I'm good. How's the weather? It's actually pretty good. We had a little heat wave for a bit, but it's starting to calm down a little. Little smoke in the area from the West with some fires and stuff going on, but everybody's dealing pretty well around here.  Yeah, I'm in Minnesota. It is sunny. It is muggy and it's getting a little warm.
00:57been nice the last few days, but I think actually I can tell everybody exactly what the temperature is because I'm sitting here looking at it. It is 76 right now, but it feels like 76. So we're good with that because I don't know, three weeks ago we had tropical dew points for two weeks straight and I was just like, Minnesota is not supposed to do this. Yeah, we had a little bit of humidity last week. We're not used to that up here.
01:22Yeah, it's not fun. I don't love it. As I keep saying, I hate high summer and we are basically in it.  So I don't want to wish away the summer, but I'll be real happy to see apples coming in and winter squash coming in and fall arriving.  Absolutely. I agree.  So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, ma'am.  Okay. Well, I am originally from Southern Louisiana,  grew up in Cajun country down there.
01:51My husband is as well, but we actually never met. He went into the military at early age and I went off to college and I became a nurse, been nursing for 30 years.  And over time, as we've gotten older, we ended up meeting while he was actually on leave and we just sprung a long distance relationship and it worked out. He got out of the military, we got married, but he wasn't used to being in one place. He had left Louisiana a long time ago.
02:21So he was used to being stationed around the country deploying.  so we, I had never been anywhere. I was a Southern girl, never been anywhere outside much of the state. And we, you know, decided we needed to find a place to call home. And we ended up in Arizona for a little while, cause I have a sister out there. They love it out there.  And our daughter was born there, but it was just too hot. It was too hot, too brown. Didn't care for it. My sister loves it. Her family loves it, but it wasn't for us. We missed the green.
02:50You know, we missed being outside a lot because it was too hot to go outside most of the year.  So we did a lot of research, ended up in Southern Idaho and we loved it. We took a few vacations, ended up loving it and we just said we dropped everything, made the move. My husband got a new career, ended up here loving it.  I slowly started to develop some health issues in my late thirties.
03:17thyroid, skin issues, just hormone issues, going through that perimenopause. And so I started doing a lot of research, and know, as a nurse, I started digging and found a lot of stuff, natural ways and, you know, changing up our food. And we have a lot of awesome,  friendly, regenerative farmers here in Idaho,  small businesses that do a lot of your meats and your fruits and vegetables.  And so we started buying locally, it's to support our small businesses, but also to support our health.
03:44Yes. And then I kind of started getting into, was like, you know what, my skin, had like severe melasma acne scars and just discoloration from being in the sun all the time. was a softball player years ago and, you know, getting older stuff. I really don't care. I love growing old. It doesn't bother me at all, but I just, could tell my skin was taking a toll.  So I started looking at things of how, you know, transitioning our house into like a more natural home.
04:13So I started slowly but surely transitioning all of our cleaning products, everything, instead of buying from the stores, just buying the ingredients to make myself.  Excuse me, and over time,  it was great. And then I started looking at labels with products, shampoo, with soaps, and I was like, okay, I'm having some hormonal issues here. Maybe these are contributing.
04:41I started digging and then I started actually buying some, know, tallow goat milk soaps and stuff from other people, whether locally, whether other farmers in other states. And then I'm like, how easy or how hard is this actually make myself? Because I do a lot of homemade food, lot of whole grain food and stuff. I said, I could do this myself, you know, while still working at a corporate job, basically I was working from home as in leadership. However, I was still able to like maintain that home cooked meals.
05:11you know, making everything for our home, for ourselves.  And so I started digging into it and just got into it for ourselves. And eventually my husband was like, you know, there's a lot of people, especially moms, look into really natural products for their skin and their kids, you know,  and don't want to have to deal with their kids growing up with the hormone issues and everything. And he's like, maybe you should kind of look into getting a business and something you think. And he was like, yeah.
05:39So I did, I started very small a couple of years ago, after a few years of doing it myself with just our family. And it just blossomed. took a while, of course, to get my name out there. And I've met a bunch of lot of local artisans like myself. We collaborate,  other bakers and friendly small businesses.  And we help each other out and do things for each other at the markets and promote each other. And it's just turned into a really, you know,
06:08fun.  What started as like a hobby in my kitchen just became this big thing, you know, nationwide.  I ship everywhere across the US and my locals, they'll do local pickup or they'll come see me at the market.  So I have a lot of support behind me and yeah, it's just, it's been a real blessing to be able to take what I learned from nursing school, you know, the chemistry background, biology background, and just doing a lot of research and looking up a lot of
06:38holistic remedies and stuff to use.  And it's helped my skin. I suffer with psoriasis and eczema. My daughter had eczema for a little while. We don't have any issues anymore. I go to my dermatologist and she's like in shock. She's like, why don't we need to see you for six months? know? So, and she's like, what are you doing? And I told her and she's like, that's amazing. You know, so there's a lot of dermatologists that'll be, they're kind of on it, but mine, she loves it. She loves it. You know, the...
07:04act of making things homemade and natural, knowing what's in your products and using it on your skin.  And it's been really big for our health. My daughter is a gymnast.  She's a competitive gymnast. They travel all over the country and her skin is beautiful. My husband loves my stuff. He even uses it. He has a beard, he has hair, he uses my shampoo conditioner, he uses my soaps.  I make a ton of homemade remedies for the skin.
07:32And we have a little bit of pantry items too. And I like to share some recipes as well. You know, like I make homemade granola or vanilla extract and I'll share my recipes with customers as well. Okay. So I'm going to say this out loud. Isn't it amazing how your doctor will tell you not to eat fast food and to cook at home with whole foods, but your doctor won't tell you to find somebody who makes homemade skincare and things that help you.
08:00Absolutely. Yeah, I did it all by myself. You know, just doing it for us and doing the digging and we still have get pushback. You know, we'll still get some pushback on things with certain doctors, but I tell them, hey, I do my blood work like I'm supposed to. I see my PCP once a year. I see my dermatologist twice a year. I have a hormone holistic doctor who treats me naturally because I have Hashimoto's with the thyroid.
08:27and I have to use, I don't use any synthetic hormones, everything's natural, and I take care of my skin and my health and eat whole foods and it is completely transformed. I mean, I am 49, I'm about to be 50, but I feel like I'm in my 30s. And my daughter is like, mom, you look like you're in your 30s. Like she's, know, my husband looks like he's in his 30s. It's not really about looking younger. I don't feel 50, I don't feel 60. don't, you know, I feel like I'm in my 30s and I want to be able to keep.
08:55going and not have to suffer because in southern Louisiana they deal with a lot of heart issues, deal with a lot of diabetes and we don't have to deal with that because of how we eat, how we treat our skin, how we treat our bodies.  So and we stay inactive, that's a big thing too, of course. Getting out in the sun, know, people, oh sunscreen, da da, yeah, but you know, there's a lot of sunscreens out there, we don't buy sunscreen, I'll make, I actually make a homemade sunscreen.
09:21that's natural and we don't use it all the time. We only use it if like we go to a beach and if we're at a big swimming area that we're going to be out there all day. That's the only time I really use it. But being outside,  like just doing chores outside or gardening or anything like that, we don't use it. We're more exposed to the sun. And you know, now there are studies coming out that are finding that typically your skin cancer develops from not being in the sun enough.
09:50and then you choose to go out in the sun and then you're exposed.  it's, you know, there's people, old people that have been in the sun for years farming and doing everything outside that don't have skin cancer, you know? So it's like, everybody's trying to go back to the old traditions, the old roots kind of way. And I love it here in Idaho. We loved our home state. We did. The food, the culture, the family is just, we really enjoyed not having to deal with hurricanes, floods,  humidity.
10:19You know, that kind of thing over there. have, you know, really good, we live in a really good area and it reminds us of home because the people are like a Southern mentality around here.  It's amazing. And we have people from all over, you know, the people that moved from California, from all the West coast, from the East coast, even from the South that come and work here. And yeah, we meet a lot of wonderful people and there's a lot of people, locals that are very good people as well.  Awesome. So.
10:48Tell me why tallow, Raven. I don't know enough about tallow other than I have a bag of it in my freezer from when we got a half a beef.  Well, tallow is a big one. We actually used it years ago when I was little.  My family used it to cook with.  And I kind of vaguely remember when I was little grandparents using it as like a moisturizer. I didn't know why. So I kind of dug into it. And it's one of the most like
11:17not only shelf stable, but also with the vitamins and the nutrients in it that support the skin. And it's almost like a jojoba oil. It's like closest mimics your skin's DNA, you know what I'm saying? And the vitamins,  the minerals that have in it, and it goes into the skin so well. And so we not only use it in my skincare, we use it for cooking as well. But you know, the fat, but you have to get the right kind of tallow. Cause anytime you render a fat,
11:46it becomes a tallow. That's how it transforms.  So we have companies that will, you know, small forms of stuff that will render their own tallow and sell it, or they'll sell the beef, it's beef kidney suet, is what it's called. And it's the fat around the kidneys in the cow.  People do it with buffalo. People do it with sheep.  The pig fat, it's called lard. And when you render it, it turns into a tallow.
12:12and it supports that skin barrier on your skin. absorbs quickly. You don't have that messy greasy last behind. And if you render it correctly, some people wet render, but we actually buy the suet from the local farmer here, because we don't have any cows. And what I do is I dry render all our tallow here slowly over time and strain it and put it in the freezer. If you put it in the freezer, it'll last forever.
12:41refrigerator it lasts a long time and you can use it in anything. But tallow is like kind of our biggest ingredient in almost all of our products. I have a couple of products that don't have it because it's specific for certain for hair or something otherwise. But tallow is big with skin. Yeah. Isn't it amazing that we used to use tallow all the time before the 1900s? Yep.
13:09all the time.  I remember my grandparents, my grandmother,  even though there was washers and dryers available, my grandfather refused to buy her a set. And she was still doing clothes on a washboard and homemade washing machine outside in the barn when I was little. That was back in the 70s and early 80s. So she was still doing clothes that way. And that's what they used. They didn't use any Crisco or anything like that. They went to the farmer. They bought all kinds of beef fat.
13:38You know, and they took a lot of the pig fat and stuff, made cracklings. There was a lot of things they cooked with and they would make soaps out of it too, just simple little soaps with some lime water.  So do you source your ingredients locally for what you make or do you actually grow or produce some of what you use to make your products? Right now I source locally and then I also work with a local family company that's based in Oregon.
14:06who does a lot of my extra supplies, like if I need some coconut butter or if I need some colloidal oatmeal,  just a couple of extra little things that they, they're a small family business and I like to support them. They support me. So anything I can't get locally, I try to look out for the smaller businesses like that are near me to source any ingredients, but I try to keep the ingredients low, you know, low volume.
14:32Because the more you put in there,  it just makes people think. But we're very transparent about our products, what's in them, what they do.  There might be some ingredients you never heard of,  like babesu oil.  Babesu oil is an old oil where it's similar to coconut oil. But some people are allergic to coconut oil or they're more sensitive skin. It doesn't tolerate coconut oil well. So I use a lot of babesu oil in my soaps, especially.
15:01because it's made for sensitive skin. It's made for people that have,  know, that it's not so harsh as the coconut oil. So we'll use that. And, you know, in our ingredients on our website, we list each ingredient specifically, whether it's organic, whether it's raw and cold pressed or whatnot, and what it does for the skin, you know, what to look for, how it helps the skin, like the benefits of it as well. And then of course they can reach out with any.
15:29you know, questions or concerns that we we have a direct contact out there on our website and it gives a little bit more detail, has our story on there.  But yeah, my goal is to try to utilize our local little companies around here to source our products and give them a high five and heads up, you know, and tag them in our post on social media and recommend them as well.
15:55I am so glad you said that because a rising tide lifts all ships. know this.  Yes. So tell me what colloidal oatmeal is because I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is. Colloidal oatmeal is like, oh, it's like your oats, like your ground oats. And it's finally ground in a way where it is so powdery to where when you mix it into any type of batter, you can.
16:22It's very soft and it helps feed this, not only feed the skin, but it helps with any blemishes. It helps absorb and get into like areas for you have discoloration on the skin,  the acne scarring.  It's helped my melasma for sure.  You know, so it just kind of basically oatmeal in a way, just more finely.
16:49a ground up to a powder form to where there when you mix it even into a balm or into a lotion of some sorts You can't even you cannot feel the grittiness at all Okay, thank you. I learned something new every time I do this podcast. I love it Do you guys do you do any kind of homesteading stuff Raven or is it just your business? It's just my business right now, but we're looking into doing the homesteading because we
17:18When we first came to Idaho, know, trying to get to know the areas, the right school we wanted to put our daughter in. And now it's getting to the point of, okay, I need more, I need a bigger garden. You know, I need some chickens. I need some few goats and stuff like that. So I source a lot of my stuff from the farmers right now. But within the next two years, we're looking at getting more property to get, to be able to, you know, house a lot more animals and more sources. That way I can actually.
17:48not only do vegetables but also herbs and ingredients and all the botanicals like the lavender that I use.  I do a lot of the botanical infusions with lavender, rose,  peony.  There's just so much. Calendula,  chamomile.  Those just benefit the skin so much and it's nice to add those into your soaps and it's also nice to add them into your like face creams and body butters. You get a little bit of the smell but you get all the...
18:16natural minerals and the vitamins from those plants as well.  I have something small at the house right now, so sometimes I have to go out and store. Yesterday I was at a market, I had a farmer's market yesterday, and then after that market we went eat, and then I went to another market and purchased some fresh organic lavender, because I needed some to do some more refusions.  So I'm looking to get bigger that way, but I still want to keep the business a small business.
18:45you know, incorporated like here. I, you know, I don't want to make it that big. I want to be able to be involved, you know, 24 seven consistently.  That's exciting. Um, I'm going to give you a minor suggestion for when you get your, your homestead. Okay. If,  there's a space where there's no animals that grows dandelions, you know, in the, in the lawn or in the weeds, yeah, the calendula.  Yeah.  Don't ruin that patch.
19:13And the reason I say that is I tried dandelion coffee a few years back. The dandelion root, basically dig out the root and you break it into pieces and you roast it in the oven and it tastes like coffee in hot water.  That's amazing. I'm going to have to try that. Yes. But you don't want to let your dog, dogs or your cats go to the bathroom. Okay.
19:38where the dandelions are because it's just, it's not, I don't want to eat dandelion. Yeah. Yeah.  I hear you about that. Yeah.  I get that. Yep. And we, um, we partner plant, like, you know, like with lavender, with, um, you know, different plants to keep everything more organic in the area. Cause we don't use any pesticides at all. So actually behind my home, there is some acreage.
20:06a nice little old couple that lives there and they have some grassland out there that is an organic grassland where they grow a vegetable out there and I see them all the time at their tractor.  So it's nice to have someone out there that's doing like similar things we're doing in our yard. So I know that I don't have any pesticides around, you know, the area. Good. And then the other thing that I would say I would share because we learned this lesson yesterday.
20:36If you have a long driveway at your new place when you find it, put up slow signs so that people will slow down. Oh yes. We lost a barn cat yesterday. Oh no.  Yeah. It showed up. I'm going to cry. It was a stray. It showed up here three days ago.  Orange Tabby, really friendly, really wanted to come in the house and we don't do house cats. We do barn cats.  he didn't.  She did not come in the house.
21:05And I really was of two minds on this cat because she's so friendly. I wanted to get to know her. Well, I'm really glad I didn't because somebody pulled in our driveway too fast yesterday, we think, and hit her and broke her back end. My husband had to put her down. Oh, that's terrible.  Yep. And I didn't even know this cat and I had tears in my eyes. I was like, you know, this freaking cat was probably dumped by somebody who had her as a house cat.
21:35She ended up here. We were totally fine having her join the barn cat brigade, as we call it. Yeah. And then up dead anyway. I'm like, you know, universe, could you just not do that? I know that then, you know, when that stuff like that happens, I have to explain to my daughter, you know, God needed them more than us, you know,  and their angels are sitting with our dog Riley and my dad, you know.  So my dad was a big hunter fisherman and he would he raised Labradors and had a garden and everything.
22:05He taught us how to fish and hunt. He taught us how to do a garden. He taught us how to skin wild animals and cook them.  it's like that part of life. But definitely, yeah, that's hard, especially when people have kids.  It's like slow down in the driveways,  The kids don't just play in the backyard. They go out in the front, too. Yeah, I posted on Facebook and explained what happened and basically said, please slow down when you pull in our driveway. We have other cats and we have a dog.
22:35You know? Yeah, definitely. Maybe that'll help. And we want people to come here. We have a farm stand and we are in we're going to be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes here next week. And we want people to come and get tomatoes, but just slow down a little bit. Yep. And one good thing about Idaho, I have to say the drivers here,  they're pretty good about, you know, not.
23:01flying through neighborhoods, not flying down highways or even the freeway, they're pretty good about driving.  And most of them tell us, you know, the reason being is because they love the scenery and it's just a relaxing thing for them to go out for a drive.  So they really big on,  you're going to have your few, it's always going to happen.  But a lot, most of them are really big on, you know, just taking your time. You know, there's like, there's no rush. Like why rush?
23:29You know, it's beautiful here. Slow down and just enjoy it.  Yes. And not everything has to be a hurry.  Society has become so fast. It's like we just need to take a breath and slow down. Stop and smell the roses and have some respect for other people's property.  And I'm not even necessarily mad about the situation yesterday. I'm just I'm very disappointed.  Yeah. And heartbroken. Yeah. Disappointed and heartbroken at the same time.
23:58Little bit. I mean, this was a female orange tabby. There are very few female orange cats. They're usually male. Right. And I was like, yay, new genetics for the barn cat brigade. no, no new genetics for the barn cat. Our cats keep out the pests, guys.  And I think that's something else that people don't realize is that we don't have a bunch of cats for funsies. We have them because they keep the rodents down. Absolutely.
24:29So yeah, when you take out a barn cat, that's one we have to replace.  And if we're lucky, we know people who have kittens and we get a couple every summer. But if we had to go get cats, it would be $50 a piece. It's Humane Society.  Yeah, absolutely. And then they want them in your house. When you adopt, they're like, oh, they need to be inside.  And it's like, let me just go find some people that had some kittens somewhere and just grab some cats and put them in the barn. Yep.
24:57We're really lucky our humane society that's near us, they know that we're living in a very rural area.  So they have barn cats. They have cats that they don't really feel like would be a good indoor cat.  And they want them to be adopted to be barn cats, which is great. Absolutely good. Yep. They even when they post them on their website, they're like, this is a barn cat. This is not.  That's great.
25:26And I've told the story a few times before, but I'll tell it again because you probably have not heard it.  We adopted a completely black male cat from the Humane Society when we moved here five years ago, six years ago.  And they warned us not to try to pet him because he was feral and he was mean and no one would ever be able to touch him. So my son at the time named him Satan, my son who's 24.
25:56And he actually made friends with Satan. And now Satan is the loviest, friendliest cat with us. He comes right up, wants scritches. If you pick him up and put him against your shoulder, he'll drool onto your shirt because he loves being petted. So just because the Humane Society says it's a mean cat doesn't mean it's a mean cat. I agree with that sentiment, definitely. Especially a male. I find a lot of males are very lovable.
26:23The females tend,  the female cats to me don't like to be touched as much or cradled as much.  And they usually attract like my husband, if we have female cats, they love him. They'll get on his shoulders, but they do not like my daughter and I to hold them at all.  They like to be petted, but that's about it.  We think that somebody was mean to Satan when he was younger. And we also think that he might've had an injury to his throat because
26:51His meow is so rough.  It's so scratchy and low. It's like,  morning I go out with my cup of coffee on the porch and he's sitting there waiting because my husband will go out to feed him and I'm like, geez, do you not have another noise kid?  We think he probably had an injury to his throat and it messed up his voice. Well now he's getting all the love. Oh yeah, he's good.
27:18He's a good boy. He might as well be a dog in a cat suit.  So let me know where people can find you please Raven online. You can find us on my website at Southern Roots Organic Cabinet dot com. We also have our Instagram page at Southern Roots Organic Cabinet and you can also find us on Facebook under Southern Roots Organic Cabinet.  I also have I'm in the process of setting up
27:49because we started so small in the process of setting up our business phone actually over the next few months. I've been so busy with the markets. I haven't like just sat down and set it up yet, but we do have our email system where anyone can email us at any time about our products, about if they want specific orders. I have a customer who is a vegan who does not like tallow products or goat milk in our product.
28:17but I specifically make something tailored for her specifically and she'll order, you know, like loaves of soap and things of that nature for herself. And, you know, she's a very nice lady, just that's what she prefers. So I told her, I can, you know, I can work with you. we'll, we'll do custom orders as well. I love that. That's amazing.  So do me a favor before I let you go,  what run down, what products you make soap and
28:46Yep, my biggest seller is soap,  mostly Tallo and Goat Milk Soaps.  We have them for adults, men, women, children.  My next in line is I'll do some face creams, some body butters. I also incorporated lotion bars this year because a lot of people I know travel and they love how they can just take a bar in its container, bring it in their purse or their luggage.
29:12and all they have to do is warm it up between their hands to activate it. So I do a lot of lotion bars.  We do beard balms, beard oils,  facial soaps, specifically for the face for women and men, especially dealing with beards.  I'll do some organic vanilla extract that I get from local source, like
29:40Organic vanilla beans as well as our organic vodka here locally.  That's basically the bulk of it that I use the most, but we're expanding a little bit, doing a little bit things at a time. Like we're looking into doing deodorant. I also have some soap curing for laundry detergent. I'm kind of getting into the cleaning aspect of it as well. So I'll be soon launching some laundry detergent.
30:08Also like dish soap, dishwashing liquid,  that area. We're looking into that as well. So we'll be expanding a little bit on that side. And of course, my, well, my pantry side, my husband, you know, we're big, we make a lot of homemade tinctures and stuff. However, my husband's big on making his own seasoning and we're Cajuns from Louisiana. So he's actually perfecting a seasoning right now to kind of promote on the pantry side. Yeah, baby. All right. Um,
30:37Better living through chemistry is what I say when it comes to all this stuff.  As always, people can find me at attenneyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Raven, thank you so much for your time.  And guys, go check out Southern Roots Organic Cabinet.  Have a great day. Have a great day. Thanks. It's been a pleasure.
 

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Magnolia Morning Co. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:29Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Magnolia Morning Company in Georgia. Good morning, Jennifer. How are you?  Good morning. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather where you are?  Actually, it's a beautiful day. It's not so hot. We've had some really hot weather here in Georgia,  like scorching hot. But today is probably in the high 80s and it's calm. We might have some storms later on this afternoon. So it's a pretty nice day here.
00:58Same here in Minnesota. Yesterday, it felt like September. It was 65 degrees for the high here.  That's beautiful. That's the perfect weather. think high 60s are the perfect temperature to me.  But then again, here lately, I'm cold and hot and cold and hot.  So I feel like I've got an internal thermometer that's going crazy all the time.  Yeah. It was a beautiful reprieve from the three weeks of tropical dew points we'd had before.
01:27I bet, I bet.  We don't get that in Minnesota very often and my god was I reminded how much I hate humidity.  It's awful. So does my beautiful Australian shepherd dog. was dying.  She kept looking at me like save me and I'm thinking I can't save you. can't shave you.
01:53I went to Michigan one time and got off the airplane up there and I immediately felt like I could breathe so much better. I was like, oh, the air is not heavy. It just feels wonderful. And I kept asking people, does it, is it like this all the time? Can you breathe? And the air feels, doesn't feel so heavy. And they're like, yeah, what are you talking about? You know, they just don't have a clue what it's like down here with all the humidity.  Yeah.
02:19Like Minnesota is supposed to be like Michigan, but this summer has been ridiculous.  And I'm going to say it because I'm very excited about it. This heat that we've been having all summer has been wonderful for our gardens.  this week is tomato ripening week. The tomatoes are ripening in our garden.  Yes. Yes. My son has a little small garden as well, and he's been excited about his tomatoes.  So I can understand that.
02:48I bet he doesn't have 190 plants getting ready to pop.  Holy cow, no. But if I would let him, he probably would.  He has a green thumb. I unfortunately have a black thumb.  I want to see things grow. I enjoy watching them grow. I especially enjoy, you know, fruits and vegetables, but I don't do well taking care of them. I don't. But he definitely has the gift of
03:16My dad was really good with that. My dad could grow anything.  And my son has inherited that gene, I believe. So he grows beautiful things. He's got plants all throughout his room and a garden out here. And he takes care of all the flowers and all the things.  growing is a beautiful thing. a hundred, how many did you say? A hundred and eighty?  Over a hundred and ninety tomato plants in the garden.  Wow. That's impressive.
03:45Yep. And our friends and neighbors will be very happy because they'll be buying canning tomatoes from us until probably mid September. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, we're excited because last two summers we haven't really had very many because the weather was not kind to us. So we've been waiting and crossing everything we have and holding our breath all summer to see how this crop did. And it's looking really, really good. We just brought in the first ripening.
04:14They're not red yet. They're not ready to eat, but they are definitely blushed. So that's fantastic. Well, good for y'all. I'm glad it's going to be fruitful for you this year. I hope so. I hope so. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, Jennifer. Well, I am a mother of five and a grandmother to two. I have two little grand boys that are eight and four.  And I am
04:44A full-time everything.  And I'm sure you know what that means,  but I'm a full-time mom, a full-time grandmother, a full-time worker. have a full-time job.  I've been working since I was 15 years old.  Work is just what I do.  I'm a worker bee.  Married to a wonderful man for almost 35 years who is also a worker bee.  And we just stay busy a lot.
05:14you know, and there's always something to do or something to take care of or somewhere to be or some errand to go or some crisis happening. We seem to have a lot of crisis in our family. I don't know why that is.  but, you know, it's a lot of fires to put out a lot of a lot of the time.  So personally, that's that's me in a nutshell,  just busy all the time. And that is how Magnolia Morning Company came about.
05:44I needed to slow down.  when I say needed, I mean mentally and physically needed to slow down. My body started screaming at me and I had some episodes of some medical things that made me take pause and go, okay,  I've got to quit stressing out so much.  I've got to calm this down. I'm a natural worrier.
06:13My brain stays going all the time and I just think things through. think about every scenario and I think about it backwards and forwards and it mentally takes a toll on you, you know, and I didn't know how to shut that off. And I would, you know, be busy doing things for my family and taking them here and there and letting them do the things they enjoyed.  And when my husband, bless his heart, he almost works seven days a week.
06:42When he gets a little time off, he goes to do some things that he enjoys with his friends.  And I'm standing around one day and I'm going, you know, everybody else is doing something and I don't really know what to do.  I don't know how to stop. don't know how to, I'm just, you know, nobody was in the house and I was there. I was, you know, cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floor or something. And I was like, Jennifer, just slow down.  Just stop. Just take a pause and just rest.
07:10And I realized I didn't quite know how to do that.  And the more I thought about it and thought about it and had some conversations with my girlfriends and they were like, yeah, Jennifer, you stay going all the time and doing, need to slow down.  But I just didn't understand how I was supposed to do that. You know, and I've, guess I've grown up thinking that rest meant being lazy.  And that's kind of how I equated it for so long.
07:38So I didn't, so when I stopped, when I would stop and try and rest, I felt guilty. And I felt like I didn't deserve to do that. There were other things calling my name that I needed to take care of this or do that or go somewhere and handle this. And it just became harder and harder for me to do. And so when I had these conversations with my friends and things and thought a lot about it and put some, some time thinking about it and reading about rest and relaxation, I realized, you know,
08:09I need this.  I mentally need it, I physically need it, and it's okay. There's nothing wrong with rest.  And that I didn't have to have anybody else's permission to do that.  So I started trying to figure out what I could do when I rest. I that sounds crazy, but you know, sometimes it's hard just to sit still. And I didn't know how to sit still, but I also didn't know
08:37really what I enjoy to do if I were to rest, if I were to find something that I wanted to do to entertain myself, to do something just for me, what would I do?  And so in thinking of all that, and I was talking to my husband one night and I was telling him about it and I said, you know, I said, I bet there's other people out there like me. I bet there are women that are my age and I'm in my early 50s and I bet there are women that
09:06are like me that don't really know how to rest and don't know what to do when you rest and or even maybe don't even know what they like anymore because they've spent the entirety of their life taking care of somebody else, which is what I feel like I've been doing.  And not that I'm complaining. That's just, you know, what I did all my life. I took care of somebody, whether it be my parents or my children or my grandchildren or something.  And so
09:35We were talking about it and I was like a light bulb went off and I thought, you know, why don't I put something together and share it with other women and let them know that it's okay if we rest, if we stop,  if we just take a pause,  if we just collect our thoughts or we just have some me time. It's so mentally important to have that me time. And I'm just now learning this because I've not
10:04I've not done that my entire life. I've not done that.  I've always been a doer and a fixer and I wanted to make everybody else okay. I wanted to do whatever was necessary,  jump whatever hurdle there was to make somebody else's life easier.  And I didn't complain about that. That's just what I did. And I enjoyed it for many, many years. I enjoyed it.  And
10:33But nobody ever stepped up to make my life better or easier. And I was starting to realize that maybe I needed some of that. You know, I needed somebody else to say, Jennifer, you don't have to fix this for me. Let me do something for you. Let me give you something. Let me help you take a pause. Let me make your life a little easier.  so long story short, that's where Magnolia Morning Company came from.
11:03I wanted to give something to women to know that they can just take a pause,  that investing in their self is so utterly important that we can't give to anybody else until we give to ourselves first.  Because you can't give from an empty cup, can't pour from an empty cup.  And we do it most often.
11:27We dip out of nothing and we take that lack of energy that we have and we take care of and we do for people all the time, every day. But we need to replenish that in ourselves.  So that's what this is about.  When I was little, I grew up for the lack of better terminology in the South and we were poor. And I don't remember living in a house that had running water.
11:57I used an outhouse for many years as our bathroom.  And unfortunately, my parents were alcoholics.  so although they did not mistreat me in any way, but when they drank, mistreat or would mistreat each other. There was a lot of arguing and yelling and those kinds of things. So I spent a lot of time trying to hide.
12:26per se and stay out of the way, not to cause any friction or problems.  And then I started my first attempt at trying to fix things for people, even when I was young, because I thought if I could do things for my mom and dad to make them happy,  then they would be nicer to each other and there wouldn't be any arguing that day or anything like that.  so when I would
12:56try and hide and stay out of the way when they were, you know, drinking and not acting on their best behavior. I would go out to our front yard, which had this unbelievably big magnolia tree.  And I played under that magnolia tree. And I played, that was my home away from home. That was my spot. I climbed it. I played under it with all my cats. We had tons of cats in my house and
13:23They were all outside cats, but I loved them. They were like my little kids.  We played store. played, you know, we rode, I rode bikes and put the cats in my little basket with me and rode around, you know.  But that magnolia tree was my home base. That was where I felt the safest. I took naps there.  I brought food out there. had picnics out there.  That was my calm. And so that's where.
13:51the name came from for this business was because that was my calm space. If I had to think of any place in the world that was my calm space, that Magnolia tree was.  So that's where Magnolia morning came from.  Morning being just that each day is a new beginning.  And I wanted to project that in the name of my business.  So.
14:16So with that said, put it all together and came up with this company and I want to give women permission every month to know that they don't have to have permission. want to give them the okay to say,  hey, you can just take a minute.  You can just stop what you're doing and you can just relax and enjoy something that is meant just for you.
14:42You don't have to say, hey, do you mind if I go here? Or hey,  let me take five minutes here. Just do it. You've got something in front of you that's made just for you. I thought about it.  I've put these things together for women that I thought they would enjoy. And I want you to just take a pause. I want you to take 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, however long you want to, whether it's the first thing.
15:11every morning or or if it's late in the evening after everyone goes to bed or or I don't know when you come home from work and you just want some downtime whenever it's convenient for you. I want you to carve some time out and I want you to open that box and I want you just to enjoy some of the things that I've put in there.  And that's what Magnolia Morning Company is about.
15:36Very nice.  what will the people, what will the women get when they sign up for this? Well, every month is going to be different, of course, but there will be some few things that are staples.  I want to include some things that I enjoy,  like I have to say, I'm a coffee drinker.  Do you drink coffee?  Yeah,  coffee just calms me a little bit.  so
16:07I'm gonna include some coffee in your box every month.  And because I also enjoy some hot tea, I'm gonna include that as well.  So you can try it. And it's probably gonna be some things that maybe you've never tried before, but I want you to be adventurous and I want you to try it one time and see what you think.  So each month you're gonna have something to drink, okay? And then you're also something that's gonna be a staple every month is you're gonna get a new scent of a beautiful candle every month.
16:37I don't know if people realize how calming scents can be to you, but I can light a candle in a room and then walk by and smell that. And then all of a sudden just take a deep breath and go, you know. So I want you to be able to enjoy that each month. And I've taken a lot of time to smell hundreds of candles.  Matter of fact, I went one time to a store that sells
17:05candles and lotions and stuff with my son.  And we were in there for over an hour and he looked at me when we left. said, mama, I think you smelled every scent in there. I said, I did.  And he said, and you bought only one thing. And I said, yep.  I said, because that's the only scent that resonated with me. Everything else, it didn't do anything for me. I wanted to do something for me. So I smelled of them all, you know? And he just laughed. He said, I've never met anybody like you before, mama.
17:35I that's okay, you've got a unique mom.  But I've smelled of all these scents and all of them did something for me and I hope they'll do something for everybody else too. But I want you to be able to get this box every month and I want you to find your favorite cozy place,  wherever that is. For everybody, I'm sure it's different. It could be your front porch, it could be your back porch on a screen porch, it could be inside in your bed, it could be in a...
18:02a chair or a rocker or wherever, or even in your front lawn, know, wherever is comfortable for you, that you feel the most relaxed.  And I want you to just open this box and I want you just to read and enjoy and experience everything that's in it. Um,  along with something to drink and something beautiful to smell.  want to include, um, a craft per se.  Um,
18:29We're not talking something that you've got to go buy supplies for and all those things. Anything you need to do this craft is going to be included.  I want to make it easy for you. But I think women sometimes forget that doing things like being crafty can be fun.  If you've raised kids, you know that sometimes being crafty comes with school projects and last minute things and it gets frustrating and nobody wants to have to do all those things.
18:58So sometimes we get a little bit of a bad taste in our mouth about being crafty. But I used to, years ago, own a business where I went around and did signs for people. We did craft parties where you made your own wooden sign for home decor in your house. And the number of women that told me they had no idea they would enjoy that was amazing. Every party we had, had women that would say,
19:27I didn't know I'd enjoy doing this. I didn't know I would enjoy painting and staining and doing all these things.  And it's because we just don't take time. We don't take time to experience some of the things in life that are out there because we're so busy doing for somebody else.  So that's the purpose of having some type of craft in here is because I want you to experience the joy of making something for yourself and being able to see it and use it and experience that downtime.
19:55And then there are going to be some other things in boxes that are going to come,  you know, one of the things that you're going to get in a box is a journal to use. Now I know not everybody journals and I know there are going to be some women out there that go, I don't want a journal. I don't, I don't write. I don't spend time writing. And that's okay.  I've never been a consistent journaler either.  But one thing I have learned is that if I take the time to write down some thoughts,
20:25I can one,  possibly see my thought process a little clearer.  And two, when I go back and read it, I understand a little better about where my mind was at the moment.  So it gives me some clarity that I may not always have had.  So I encourage women to use a journal.  I don't mean you have to put an entry in it every day or every time you do something,  but I would encourage women to use it when
20:55maybe they feel a little conflicted or maybe even a little sad or down about something or confused or whatever. just, would encourage them to write their thoughts down and maybe go back at certain times and reread them. And I think it'll give you some clarity that you didn't know you could get from writing words on a piece of paper.  I've always been a writer. I've enjoyed writing. I used to write poetry.
21:22I wrote poetry for a calligraphy company and had greeting cards from my poems. And the joy that I could see people getting from getting a card with a poem that I wrote on it is just wonderful.  I like to make other people happy.  And words sometimes can make people happy.  Sometimes people need to hear things they don't realize they need to hear.  I just did a video the other day about grief.
21:51And I know that's not something that people talk about every day, but I had had some close friends lose someone that meant a lot to them. And I wanted to let them know that it was okay to grieve because they were having some conflicting thoughts about,  I know I feel like I need to be okay for everybody else and maybe not cry in front of somebody. And I wanted to let them know that that's okay. That's part of life. It's the way we do.  words mean a lot to people.
22:18and they can heal, they can hurt,  but they can also give you clarity.  And so hence the reason behind the journal.  And there's gonna be some other things in and out of boxes that I think will be special editions. There's another special edition in the first box that I think is gonna be delightful that I didn't realize I needed to put in the box. And I don't wanna tell you exactly what it is, because I don't want to spoil any surprises for anybody, but it's,
22:48It's kind of funny. I'll tell a story about it once the box comes out, but it's something that after I did it, I was like, I would have never thought in million years I would put this in for other women to enjoy, but I've actually really enjoyed it because everything that I put in the box, I test out myself. I do myself. I see how it makes me feel and do I get some joy from it? Do I enjoy it? Does it feel easy enough? Does it feel simple enough so that people can enjoy having that downtime?
23:17And so this particular thing I did and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it and how much it made me smile. And I hope that's the kind of reaction that women get from this particular item as well.  so yeah, so that's kind of the things that I want the box to be for other women. I just want it to be your monthly pause that you, you get that it's
23:44you know, been sent directly to you, for you, about you, not to share with anybody else, not to let your kids go through and look at it go, oh, I want to do this with you. I want to take care of this. No, I want you to do it. I want you to experience it. I want you to know that I set and thought about you when I put these things together. And I thought about what women as a whole needed or wanted to experience that they don't get to do on an everyday basis.
24:15So yeah, that's a little bit about the box.  I call it the reset box because I want it to be a reset for you. I want you to just take that time and be calm,  collected,  enjoy, maybe giggle a little bit,  maybe make some mistakes or do something funny or write something down that you hadn't thought about.  And I just want you to have that experience. I want you to know that you're worth it and you deserve it.
24:44and we should start taking control of our time a little better to reset our minds and our hearts and our soul. So yeah, that's about the box.
24:58Sure.  So everything that I put in the box,  I test out.  I try to get the experience that you would have open in the box and doing these things because I want to know what it's like because if it's not going to be enjoyable, I don't want to put it in the box because I want you to have items that bring you joy,  that bring you some comfort, bring you some peace and some relaxation.  yeah, so I've, you know,
25:25put something in the box that I would have never put in, ever thought in a million years, I would have put that in there.  But in doing it, I found some calm and some sense of accomplishment. And I found myself smiling and I was super proud of what I had done. And I was like, huh, I should have been doing this more often. I don't know why I haven't thought about that I could do this.  It wasn't hard. It was one of the most simple things I'd ever done.
25:53And I think I had overcomplicated it in my head and I was super proud. So I'll certainly tell that story once everybody gets a box.  But, it's gonna seem so simple and so silly, but you you just, you learn things about yourself.  I think that's another thing about the reset box that I want people to experience is maybe learn a little more about some likes, some dislikes, some things that you didn't know whether you would enjoy or not.
26:23maybe taste some things that you might not would have normally tasted.  I just want it to be a great experience for women. I want it to be just for you. I want it to be nothing that you share.  You don't even have to tell anybody about it if you don't want to. Let it be your box.  Somebody says, hey, what did you get? Just nothing. It's for me. Don't worry about it. But just take it somewhere and find some time.
26:48to enjoy, even if you can't do it all at one time, break it up into minutes, know, 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and just have some good, good old fashioned me time. Enjoy. And then I'd love to hear what everybody thought about it and what you liked, what you didn't necessarily like, what you'd like to see more of, what you'd like for me to include. I'm always up for suggestions.  But I just want it to be a fun time, just a little time out for women to enjoy. We are so busy.
27:17all the time doing the things and we deserve to have some me time. So that's what the box is about.  love this Jennifer and it might seem a departure from my podcast to be talking with you but I don't think that it is because women who are running their own businesses or their own homesteads or their own farms they're busy and they're tired and yes my piece is I get up early on purpose I'm usually up at 4 a.m.
27:47so that I can get up and get a cup of coffee and go sit out on my little porch with the windows open,  drink my coffee and listen to the crickets sing in and watch the crickets come up and hear the birds start to sing.  That's my piece.  And my husband said the other day, said, do you get enough sleep? And I was like,  But you're up at four every day. And I was like, because I need to start my day this way.
28:16It's the only real ritual that I have. And he was like, but if you slept till six, and I'm like, I can't sleep till six.  I feel like you're giving people a ritual starting place.  Right. Right. Right. A little bit of a purpose. You know what I mean? And I know that sounds a little crazy because women have so many things they consider their purpose.
28:46but we are a priority and we don't take enough time to realize that.  And it's so important to put back in what you need to put out.  And that's what I want this box to be. I just want it to be a little bit of encouragement for you to stop and pause and enjoy some things and know that I have
29:16I have put together these items because I want to see you smile. I want to see you enjoy. I want to see you take that deep breath and go,  that was fun. I enjoyed that.  So those are the things that I want for women. I so want women to feel included and purposeful, not just for somebody else, but for themselves. And we are
29:46Our women are built strong. We are some very strong women.  We have broad shoulders to hold up most anything that comes at us.  But we also need to relax those shoulders too. We need to let them drop and just take that deep breath and just go, what do I need?  What can make me feel a little better? What can give me some pause and some relaxation?
30:14because we worry about everybody else so much we don't think about us. So yeah, so I'm hoping everybody gets that from the box.  I'm sure that they will.  This sounds like something that would be a great present for a woman. Yes. Yes. So I know you have a waiting list on your website because you're not quite ready to launch until September. Right. So if a husband or a partner wanted to sign their
30:43their wife or their partner up, they can just sign up for the waiting list? They absolutely could. And I want to tell you, your wife would think you were the best person in the world if you gave them this gift. Because, you know, it means you stopped for a minute, you thought about what they needed.  And women just want to know that you thought about us, that you think about what we need and put our needs first sometimes.  So yeah, it would be a perfect gift.
31:10for your wife, your sister, your aunt, your mom even.  But right now you can go to, excuse me, magnoliamorningco.com and you can put your name on our wait list. It's actually only gonna be just a couple of weeks before we open the doors for you to purchase.  But if you're on that wait list, you're gonna get first dibs. I have a limited number of boxes to send out this first time.
31:39And I want you to be one of them, to be able to get one. So that would be the quickest way is to get on that wait list and to know that you've got the information right there in front of you because I'm going to send it to the wait list before I send it to anybody else.  yeah.  Exciting.  I'm so tickled that you're doing this. And I know why you're doing this. As the adult child of two alcoholics,  you were taught to please people.
32:09and think about other people. And you're taking something that started from a bad situation and reclaiming it for something good. I'm so proud of you. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for inviting me here today. I didn't realize that I would enjoy this as much as I did, but I enjoy telling the story and encouraging other women to take time for themselves because it's so very important.
32:35It really is. And we forget, and especially the moms that are still in the trenches raising little kids.  You ladies have got to find time for yourselves, even if it's only, I don't know, half an hour. If you miss half an hour. I've told this story before, I'm gonna tell it again before I let you go.  There's 12 years difference between my oldest and my youngest. My oldest is 36 and she's a girl. My youngest is going to be 25.
33:05in December. So he was a newborn and she was 12 when I brought him to hospital.  She's the only girl out of four kids.  And once he got to the point where he wasn't quite so fragile, you know, wasn't so new,  she was really good with him. She would change his diapers if I needed to use the bathroom, she would hold him.
33:31She was a really good big sister. He sees her more as an aunt than a sister. Right.  when he was about two, I was really tired. Four kids is a lot in that band.  one day I just looked at her and I said, I just need, I need half an hour. Do you think you could handle half an hour with him? So I just go read a book or something for 20 minutes. And she was like, of course we'll play Legos.
34:01I was like, okay.  So it was Duplo's not Legos, Duplo's are the big fat Legos. Yeah.  They had a blast and I got to go crawl into a book I'd been dying to start for two years and I got a chance to breathe. You have to, you have to ask for help. And I didn't feel bad asking her cause she adored him, but it's a really weird thing when you have spent your life being strong and independent as a woman.
34:29And you just finally hit that wall where you're like, I just need 10 minutes. Yeah. And it's hard for women to do, think. It's always been hard for me to ask for help.  I have never, ever wanted to ask anybody for help because I did not because I didn't want help, but because I didn't want to inconvenience somebody else.  I didn't want to burden somebody else with what I had going on. So I would just try and do all the things.  And I got into overload really quick.  You don't.
34:58you know, as you know, you don't raise five kids and not be an overload at some time.  so, so yeah, so, you know, I guess maybe the box can be that little bit of help.  It comes to you, you hear your front door to just say,  take a minute,  here's something for you. You know, just take a minute and enjoy and relax. Lord knows women need to relax a little bit. We're so busy, but.
35:24It's funny that you said that about your kids because my kids are 10 years apart. My first two are 10 years apart.  So, so I know exactly how that is.  That relationship that they have. And then my other ones are kind of stair-stepped.  But,  but yeah, so my kids are arranged from 34 to 15.  And, but those teenage girls I got, got two teenage girls and I'm going tell you those, whoo, if I'd had those two teenage girls at the same time first.
35:54I don't know that I'd had any more children because those girls are wearing me out.  It's so funny. My daughter was the easiest of the four, I swear to you.
36:06Yeah, those girls are something else.  That's awesome. That's awesome. All right.  So where, where can people find you Jennifer online? Is it magnolia morning company.com?  Right. It's Magnolia morning co co and then.com and, um, uh, feel free to, um, ask any questions. can always email me at hello at magnolia morning co.com. I'll be happy to answer any of questions that you have.
36:35But probably in the next, I don't know, 10, 12 days,  we'll be opening the doors.  Because I want you to get your first box in September.  And I want you to start enjoying some of the things that I've put together for you.  So yeah, I'd love to talk to anybody and love to get some feedback once people get some boxes of what you think and what you like.  I am so excited for you. I can't wait to see how this new project turns out.
37:03Thank you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you today. I enjoyed talking to you too. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Jennifer, have a great weekend. Thanks. You too.
 

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms in Montana.  Good afternoon, Morgan. How are you? Good afternoon. I am doing wonderful. I mean, it's 100 degrees here, but we haven't melted quite yet. Well, I'm glad you haven't melted. And in Minnesota,  it is, I can tell you exactly what the temperature is because I'm sitting here holding my phone.  77 degrees right now feels like 77.  Can I switch you? You come here and I'll go there.
00:56No, I'm sorry. I can't do that because we had two weeks of dew points that were tropical and temperatures above 90.  This break we've had has been beautiful. Yeah, I thought I moved up to Montana for it to not be Arizona weather, but here we are, 100 degree weather.  I mean, it literally raises, you know, 10 degrees as you're watching it, you know, the time. So if it's seven o'clock in the morning, it's 70 degrees and outside 80 at eight. It's just wild.
01:25em I'm shocked.  I understand because  I don't remember a time in my 30 years of living in Minnesota two weeks of that kind of heat and humidity. It's crazy. We've had high humidity here too, which is out of dorm, know, but it's destroyed crops out here. Hay is  astronomical. can't even,  I four times as much. I'm just like, all right, well.
01:53I thought Montana grew a little bit better hay and wheat,  we just haven't gotten the moisture. It's been really humid outside, but the rain is like coming later in the year. We normally don't get a lot of rain this month, but we have and it's way hotter than normal. Yeah, I don't like it. I would like things to go back to the night to 19. Honestly, if I'm being real, I'd like things to go back to 1985.  You know,
02:21I have heard that a few times that like the early 1980s to early 90s was like the time to be alive. I wasn't alive until 1994.  So I missed that whole fun part.  Yeah, I was like 15 or 16 in 1985 and I hated school, but I loved my life in general at that age. So it would be nice to revisit it.  Yeah. You know, everyone said I was going to need all that, you know, all that school I was learning and like, well, I needed some of it, honestly.
02:50wish I would have just started farming sooner. I understand why some kids would just drop out and go farm instead.  Yes. And don't get me wrong. I loved my teachers. I loved learning. I didn't like the social aspect of it at all. Yeah, that's right. Because like I'm a social butterfly and over the years I've learned you're kind of a homebody hermit.  like to be your space. I have been shy and quiet my whole entire life. I have been an extreme introvert and
03:18I tell that to people in real life and they're like, no, you're not. And I'm like, you have no idea how hard I have to work to be social.  You and my husband are scup from the same cloth. Let me guess your husband's a bubbly extrovert. He is most of the time. Yeah. See, that's funny. Opposites definitely attract. So he does your farmers markets, doesn't he? He's the one that goes and sets them up.  Yes, he's very good at it. That's right. He was growing cabbage. How did that go?
03:45That was our last podcast. talked about the cabbage and lettuce. it was. Yeah, it was cabbage. I think he's sold every single head of the cabbage he's taken so far this summer. See, it was smart of him to up his cabbage amount, but that's because you guys tracked your numbers and you knew what you guys were going to sell. We just started doing farmers markets and I've learned from what you guys told me.  Well, you specifically, because I talked to you, not your husband. Well, you talked to him through me, but yes.
04:13Yeah, of course, you know, and he he had tracked his numbers. So he went three times as many as that. Correct.  I think so. Yeah. See, so I track my milk  and I've been making goat cheese  and I started making goat caramel also.  And it's been helping. So this week I had to have like a break because of the extreme heat.  get issues with the milk  animals in general.
04:40you know, cows or goats. They just have a really hard time with the heat. It kind of bogs down their immune system.  It's also been really wet, which is like typical intestinal worm season. So we've just been kind of working through that and at a later time.  So we had to take two weeks off and man, I felt it. I felt it in our wallet. I felt it. You know, I was like, I can't wait until you're back in milk. So I ended up buying a second milk goat just to try and keep up with the demand that were.
05:08already having our first year at this Red Lodge Farmer's Market. Mm-hmm.  So you said you're making caramel? Yes, it's called Kahita and it's a goat caramel. Yeah. It's so good. I sold out  in my first 30 minutes when I took it to the first uh Red Lodge Farmer's Market. I was selling pints for 15. I'm going to up them to 20 just because supply and demand. It takes one whole gallon of milk, you know, to make six uh
05:38I think they're half pints. Sorry, not full pints. They're half pints. it's it renders down really far. But  I  added in cinnamon sticks to the  first half instead of adding an actual ground cinnamon this time.  And I like figured out my own recipe. Like, know, you kind of take a base recipe, tweak it a few times. So this was my first time taking it out. And I did free samples and everyone who tried it bought  a
06:07bought a half pint of it. I even had two roommates and they were like, I'll fight you over it. They were going to just split it for their coffee. And they're like, no, I'll fight you over it. They were younger and they were real funny. So they ended up each buying a half pint and they wrote their names on them  so they could keep them separate because it was so good.  Uh huh. And the thing is not very, I mean,  I am ruining this. Sorry. Let me try that again.  That thing  is Kehita or Kaheda, however you say it. Yeah.  Is  unusual.
06:35not a lot of people make it.  it is definitely a supply and demand thing. And I would pay $20  for a half pint of that because I'm only going to do it  once a year and I'm going to enjoy it.  And a lot of the people that go to this Red Lodge Market, it's a tourist town.  So a lot of them are traveling. So a lot of the people, it's almost
06:59I mean, there's a lot of normal  farmers markets where they're not in tourist towns that I could go to, but my booth is $15 there. And so it's a very affordable booth  and you constantly have a new crowd and  every  Saturday during the farmers market, they have some type of event that's either going on before it. have Zuma this weekend and a car show, or they're doing like something after like they did Shakespeare in the park last weekend or the weekend before that.
07:29Like they do this really cool. If you look it up, you'll laugh. It's called the Iron Horse Rodeo out there. And it's a bunch of bikers that are doing the barrel racing and all those types of events, but on their motorcycle. So you get a new crowd every week and they have, they all have different things they're looking for.  Or, you know, you're attracting a crowd that's maybe not used to some of the things that you're in the farmer's market doing. So having an item like I have, and also offering Chev.
07:56um, which is just goat cheese. I didn't know that it's any type of goat cheese. I didn't realize that until after I started making it,  um, was one of those things that it's a niche, not a lot of people are doing it.  And so  I had people showing up, you know, from an hour away just to buy goat cheese from me because it was closer than where I'm at in Laurel. So it's honestly opening up to a whole new
08:22I guess you could say atmosphere of folks, right? Like I'm getting to see a different market every week. So I feel that tracking my numbers is really important. So I'm able to kind of watch all those different things, you know, because the Iron Horse rodeo, I didn't sell any goat cheese. I didn't have um a lot of the products that I had because my goat was taking a break, but I'm almost glad I didn't because of the fact that, you know, we...
08:50I wouldn't have sold them. Nobody asked for them. I talked about them, but everyone was like, oh, goat cheese. There's this like weird stigma around Shev, around Kehita, um and goat milk in general. So it's one of those things. I mean, we've talked enough times about it. I'm very passionate about it. I'm very passionate about kind of breaking the stigma because goat milk is going to be something with the way hay prices are going that I think we're going to start seeing a lot more of because it's almost unattainable to raise a dairy cow.
09:20Yes, I have talked to a few dairy people in the last few weeks and it is becoming impossible to get in to dairy work unless you are part of a dairy family right now.  Correct. I've actually been looking at expanding into a dairy cow because I'd like to make my own cream cheese with goat milk, but it doesn't produce enough fat. It doesn't render enough. I actually went to my friend, so I want you to talk to her because it's really cool. She does dairy sheep.
09:51Yes.  The sheep milk is so good. was 40 % cream in it.  40%. Yeah.  And it tasted just like goat milk.  Like goat milk tastes just like cow milk. People are so shocked when I give them these analogies, but that's the reality of it is that it just tastes like milk, right? But I think we all have these weird stigmas about them. So I'm excited to hear that more people are looking in other ways to provide dairy for the community.
10:20Because you are right. The fact is, is that if you're not already a part of a dairy family, it's really hard or you have to go buy these young bottle calves and you have to travel states like my friend Hannah  Jones, who I encouraged her to talk to you also out here. She drove all the way to Oregon in the beginning of the spring and picked up these dairy calves and she got three heifers. She bought the whole group so she could get the heifers and she paid.
10:48I don't know, $450 or something. I have no idea. But then she had a bottle feed them. So by the time this is said and done in these heifers or bread, they're going to be worth over, you know, her time alone, probably three or four grand, I would assume, with the way Hayes going before you even can breed them.  And if she got them at that lower price, she made out like a bandit because they are so expensive right now. Well, and I think she got them that low because they went through an auction and they were bottle calves.
11:14They're bottle dairy calves and a lot of people if you don't have dairy cows to feed  the babies that you're bottling You know that you're feeding through the bottle. It's really expensive. So like  I think since last time we talked did I had I gotten into full-size dairy goats?  I Don't remember. I don't think so. don't think so. So I actually sold my whole herd of Nigerian dwarfs by the way Yes, yes all of them except for one princess Diane because she's just gonna live with me forever. She's my
11:43She was a party goat. just, she's very sweet. I love her. And she's kind of goofy, right? So you always have one.
11:51Yeah, she's your goat friend. Yeah, she's my goat friend. Like, literally, right? So I kept her around, but I bought bottle babies this year and I could not believe how much milk these little bottle goats drink. I was like, I almost need my own personal dairy cow just to feed these little guys.  And it could have been justified because I had three gallons a day of goat milk that are the red cat milk that I was going through every single day.
12:20gallons for like, I don't know, 10, 12 weeks of that. If you do the math, man, was definitely an eye-opener for bottle babies  on goats and the cost of them and what really goes into it. How often do they have to be fed, Morgan? So it depends. You can go from, well, in the beginning, if they're on their dam, it's quite often, but most people will feed them three times a day. But bottle goats...
12:48can get something called floppy kid syndrome because the ruminant kind of like cows. So you have to let them digest all of their milk. So I'd kind of look at them and see where they were at. Because we called it the milk zone. Like you do not want them to go into the milk zone. Milk zone means death is upon them because they're starting to curdle the milk in their stomach before like it's not emptying fully because they'll curdle it naturally. But they're not able to digest all of it before new milk goes on top of it.
13:15which then means they're just making large amounts of essentially cheese in their stomach. So  you typically feed them in the beginning three times a day unless they're hogs. So like my Lamatra boar crosses, which is a meat and dairy cross, um they eat a ton. And they were the ones that tried to go into the milk zone as we called it, because they're just hungry all the time. Now my other goats...
13:40Some of them would eat, like my purebred Lomacha, some of them would eat three times a day religiously. Some of them would skip a meal during the day, in the beginning. That's the first like three weeks of their life. Then you wean them twice a day. And then if you're showing them, some people will keep them on a bottle all the way up until they're six months because you don't want going, you do not want them going through what they call the ugly stage where they become gangly, they go through the stress of being weaned, their body grows a bunch more because they're bringing in a different type of nutrition.
14:09from grains and grasses and weeds. So it kind of just depends on whoever is kind of running their own system and it's going to be highly based off the goats.  So kind of a loaded question.  It depends on the goats and where they're at in the milk zone.  So three times a day, ideally, some of them need it four times a day,  smaller meals, but we just try to keep it to a solid three and we would give them cold milk because they won't drink too much cold milk to become in
14:38like to go into the milk zone. It's so cold that it cools them down and they have to stop drinking it to be able to warm their body up. Therefore they're not going to over consume. So we learned that like two weeks into it to stop warming up their milk and it helped quite a bit. Good.  Awesome.  So, um,  I want to jump in real quick and open up the discussion to, to shopping local for your produce and your meat because
15:06You've been sick with something, a tummy bug.  A of people I've been talking to have been sick with things.  And I just heard on the news yesterday that there was a recall on eggs because of salmonella. And so I really want to encourage people to buy locally because a lot of the stuff that's happening is from the bigger producers.  And if you're buying locally,  you're not likely to run into as many problems.
15:37Correct. Yeah, absolutely. So I've always been a big  supporter of cottage farms, right?  And that's something why I got into the Red Lodge Market was because there's a lot of bartering as producers that goes on. Like we bartered,  you know, I've bartered for Native American jewelry. I've bartered for, you know, gluten-free bread while I've been there with my cheese products. And when you're shopping locally, even as a producer, because I know a lot of producers are listening to your podcast.
16:06there's room for bartering, which as most of us know, bartering is the way of life when you're a farmer because we're all poor, we have no money, but we have a lot of items and things and goods and skills, right? And so  as a producer, it benefited me to have the barter system that's right there at my fingertips.  And when you're shopping locally, you're helping us as a producer to continue to do what we're doing because when your food chain is local to you, instead of it being
16:34you know,  a mass scale one like Walmart, if there's a trucking issue, which we've seen trucking issues, plenty of us, I know in Montana, we see it because of the weather, there's a gap in the community food chains, right? So you're depending on someone that's not local,  therefore it's coming in, and it's not as good when it's a large scale also, such as we've seen with the lettuce issue that's going on.
16:56You don't know your products as well, right? Like you're not hands-on, your family's normally not eating it. If you're a big producer, maybe they are, but I know a lot of those  places, have heavy regulations. So a cottage farmer, it  is gonna heavily depend on your guys' area and the laws in Montana, the Freedom Food Act made it to where producers could produce a lot of stuff and they just had to pay a fee and then submit their recipes.
17:24So when you're buying from cottage farming markets specifically, you're able to get in season vegetables and fruits, which is really important because we stopped eating in season. And that's why you run into a lot of these issues. There's seasons where certain parasites flourish on certain products.  And typically you're running into somebody that's going to be quality checking their own items. So we drink our own.
17:51Right. I eat my own cheese. I eat my own caramel. I do all of that. So I'm always quality, you know, quality checking. To give you an example  is if you're at a farmer's market, there's typically going to be somebody with milk products. There's a lady at our farmer's market and she always has the biggest line. She grows the best produce and she's able to sell it locally. Now it is going to be a little bit more expensive, but you're paying for a higher quality food that has had somebody.
18:20that is actually tending to it. They're aware of the inputs and outputs. So there's a lot of strengths when you're going to be buying from a farmer's market. Not only is the money staying in your community directly, because people that are buying from the farmer's market, you're normally within a hundred mile radius. So your money then is gonna stay there because most cottage farmer producers are very...
18:44I guess we're smart, right? Like in the sense that we're gonna find where can we find our fertilizer locally? Where can we find an alternative? What does it look like during this season for  parasites or bugs that are gonna tear apart your lettuce or they're gonna tear apart  corn specifically?  And when you have that type of quality control, your product is typically going to be fresher. So instead of the tomatoes being shipped to Walmart and they're green,
19:14and they're not even ripe, you're getting a red fresh tomato that has all the nutrition in it and is not gonna mold as quickly.  Like, I don't know about you, but my strawberries, if I get it from a big box store, they mold within two days because there's no nutrition. I don't even buy strawberries from grocery stores anymore. I don't either.  I refuse to because of that fact that it started molding. That's when I really started looking outwards because we, I mean, me and my husband are pretty...
19:43well, educated in organic living soil, how plants are gonna fruit, where the nutrition is in the plant at that time, what is that gonna do for the product that you're getting and vice versa, right? So we've done kind of that. So when I started seeing the strawberries mold right away, because it's my son's favorite fruit, right? So it's something that he'll eat a whole canister of and when sitting, I was like, well, this is a problem because that means there's no  nutrition for the mold to, know, for the organisms or the bacteria that's on it.
20:13to eat that it's just molding right away because there's nothing in it. It's just, it looks like a strawberry, but they don't even taste like strawberries anymore. They just taste kind of fluffy, right? Like air. And so one of the things that I understood from that was that these are unripened strawberries that are being sent to us and it doesn't have the same nutrition value as if it was right on the vine. Yep.  Exactly. The other thing is you were saying that uh a lot of the stuff at farmers markets might be a little bit more expensive.
20:43How many times have you bought stuff at the grocery store and not even bothered to eat it because it wasn't very good and it just gets tossed? Oh, so many times. We just sold my son's pigs because he wants to move to a smaller one. And I'm so bummed because I don't have I don't have anything to help. You know, get rid of this waste. So now the waste is even more on my mind, right? Because I'm like, wow,  I.
21:08can't even really justify it if it goes bad right away. It still is upsetting to me, but I'm like, well, at least the pigs can get it. And then later on, the pigs would have fed us, right? But now  there's nothing there. So now I'm even more attentive to this fact. So like I'm meal prepping so that I know what I need to get when I go to the farmer's market. And that's something that I'm encouraging people to do too, is that you have to...
21:32You have to meal prep. There's more work that goes into buying from our farmers market, but the quality of products that you'll be getting is way higher.  and  if you're doing that, you're valuing what you're buying and you're going to eat it. Correct. Yeah. So there's a lot of there's a lot of love that goes into that plant. And I believe the energy is not lost despite anyone's religious belief or whatever. I just know the energy is not lost. It's been proven. Right. So if you
22:02love these plants that you're taking care of the product that comes back from it is a lot better. I love my goat pearl. When I went away for two days, my husband had  one hell of a time with her. Let me tell you, she did not want to let down her milk. She won't do all that. My husband loves her, right? That it wasn't a love issue in that it was that it was out of her routine. But when I'm there, she knows that I love her so much that she produces a lot more milk. And it you know, it's not that I'm doing anything different than my husband.
22:32But I have that feminine touch. I'm going to sing to her. sing about how she's so great and she produces milk, right?  And then I stroke her back just the right way because she doesn't like to be scritched with manhand. She wants, you know, gentle touches and stuff like that. And so that's where I believe that even applies with plants. They've done studies on talking negatively to a plant and what it does and talking positively to that plant and what that also does. Right. So.
22:59At a farmer's market, you're not getting the same type of product. It's not just some worker, maybe even a migrant worker, because they work a lot of them, that is being treated poorly and below human standards because they don't make the same wages and all this stuff, right? Because corporation is about greed and money. Where at a farmer's market, you're dealing with someone's family and their income and typically they're the ones tending to it or their employees are highly valued because they're the backbone of that farm still running.
23:25So you're just, getting a different quality of product all the way down to the energy that goes into it.  Yes. And the other thing about this is that when  our tomatoes start coming in, Morgan, please say a prayer or send a smoke signal or something that our tomato plants  stay as good as they are right now. Cause we have a hundred and over 190. Wow. the garden  and they've all set fruit. have all got tomatoes. That's so awesome. Like, wow.
23:56when they start  reddening up, my husband obviously will be selling them at the farmer's market. But the other, cool thing about this is  if he sells out, he will be here on Sundays for people to just come and  ask him to pick, you know, however many they need for candy. See, and that's, that's where it's at. Like that, making a community, being
24:23Involved in your community when you have a community chain. That's really tight like a farmers market There's not months of delay for trucks coming in somebody can just go to the house because hey I don't I sold out on Saturday, but please come and like I think that you pick it is smart I brought that up a few times people are looking for things to do that Kind of get two birds stoned at one time right like they can take the kids there go pick some tomatoes and now they have fresh tomatoes because we all know
24:51The economy is a little struggling right now. I mean, I'm not really into looking at the news and all that stuff and watching stuff, but I can feel it. Like my dollar doesn't go as far. So if I could go pick some tomatoes with my son, that is such a cool experience. And it's not something you get to do every day. Kind of like, you know, we still do the goat parties and we still do the events.  And that's something that is valuable to people.  want what they can't.
25:20have at their own home. So many people are stuck in a rental situation. So if they can go out to your house and pick a tomato, man, that's a different, that's out of their norm, you know what I'm saying? So  I find those kind of hands-on items very valuable to our community, almost more valuable than the actual food or item that it produces. Yeah, and I just, I'm so excited that people are going to be able to get a bunch  of tomatoes and can them.
25:49for the coming winter this year from us. Because  we didn't have that last year or the year before because our tomato plants didn't do very well. Yeah, I remember that. you're like, we're not even sure if we're going to do them. I think we're going to give them one last crack and look at it. So I'll definitely send all the smoke signals and all the good juju your way on those tomatoes. We actually took the year off from planting  just so we could get  the milking.
26:14essentially set up, right? Like I have all these babies for next year. I'm running two milk does this year. We're producing a gallon and a half with kids sharing on one of the goats that we just got.  And that's something we didn't have last year. I mean, we had goat milk, but we weren't going to farmers markets. We weren't able to go to farmers markets because I didn't have the product.
26:39Yup. it's just one of those things, you know, you just sit back. just had a moment where I was sitting back. I'm like, wow, we've actually like completed. mean, when I first talked to you, has it been three seasons now, I think?  know,  the end of August is  the start of the fourth year. So three years in August. So yeah, I talked to you the first year, I think. Yeah. So you got to talk to us like from the ground up, right. And it was one of those things where
27:07We, that was a goal of ours. So to know that before the five year mark, we've been able to hit  every single little thing that we've wanted to do. It just, I mean, it takes in a lot. I don't know if I told you yet, or if you saw online, but we were voted number one and number two with both of the foreign names because Groovy Grazers is more about goats. Culcane and farms is more about farming, right? We're voting number one for kids, entertainer and educator.
27:34of the year and it was people vote. So it wasn't like, you know, a committee that voted on us. It was the actual community that said we earn that. So it was really cool because that's what we want to be seen as. We want to be the educators. I think that if we can show people that your food chain doesn't have to be 20 links, it can be just two, you and the farmer. Yes, you're going to pay a little bit more. The product is going to be way better than what you're going to get out the big box store  and
28:01you're going to be supporting somebody in your community locally instead of corporate greed. Yes. Congratulations, my friend. Yeah, that was really exciting. Not expected. I just threw my name up there kind of as a joke, like, oh, all right, let's see what happens.  And definitely wasn't expecting coal canine farms to be thrown in there. But I mean, it is what it is. was really cool to see my community really supported us and they support what we do.  And it's because we're able to educate.
28:30on what does food,  like where does your food come from? What should it look like?  And how can you go about getting it? I think a lot of people are really intimidated when they go to a big,  go to a farmer's market, they don't know how to ask the right questions or they feel like,  I don't know what to do, I'm not gonna go there.  I don't know,  a lot of people don't even know where the markets are or when they're happening.
28:55And so I think if more people can start turning to these,  I'm going to tell my friend about it. So people in general, when they experience something new, they tell three people about it, good or bad. It doesn't matter. I think I've talked about this with you before. So every person that comes out to your guys' house to come pick tomatoes, good or bad, they're going to tell three people. So that's three more chances you have at somebody coming to you that maybe most likely did not hear about you before.
29:22Yeah, we had a lot of people three summers ago. Three, four.  There were two summers we didn't have any tomatoes.  So the summer before that, so it must have been four summers ago,  we had people calling and asking if we had tomatoes. And then we did not have tomatoes at the farmer's markets last year and the year before, really. We had a couple, but not many.  And people didn't call because they would say, you going to have any at the farm? And my husband would say,  unfortunately.
29:51no because of all the heavy rain we had in May and June.  as long as you can get the word out whether you have a surplus or a deficit, it's great because we didn't have a bunch of people calling us last year and the year before and us having to basically want to cry every time we had to say no. because it's dollars that you're not receiving. because we're not helping. Because we're not helping.
30:20More than money, it's just you're not helping. I mean, it's dollars that aren't helping you or helping them or helping the community because you're going to spend your money locally. So it just it's this huge gap in the community chain. You know, when people call me, hey, do you have milk?  Oh, I'm out, you know, and it's like, well, man, that's one less person that's getting goat milk. That's one less, you know, that's three bales of uh small hay that I'm missing out on.
30:49you know, that could be helping.  it's just like, all right, it kind of helps you gauge though, where, what you need to do, right? Like I knew I needed to bring in a second milk dough this year on a whim. I was like, I gotta do it. I just have to do it because even one week down is 120 to $200 worth of milk products,  right? And that's painful, but it's also more painful to me is that my community is not getting a product that they're asking for, right?
31:17That means that they're going to have to go without this product. And even if it's caramel,  that may seem a little over dramatic to some people, but some people can't have any cow product. Right. So that's one more person that's going to have to go out with, you know, without a joy of life of having caramel, which that caramel brings a lot of joy in my life and my husband's and anybody that's tried it to be real honest with you, it puts a big smile on somebody's face. And it feels good being on the receiving end of having someone
31:44get your product and enjoy it and find joy in it, but then also too, being able to buy from other people. I have a lot of joy when I go in and I support other  farmers at this farmers market, right? Or if I'm coming up to them and I'm like, I don't have any cash right now that I'm able to, because I got to make  my hay bill, but I do for whatever reason have a surplus of this chef, can I trade you X thing? And I'll tell you nine times out of 10, they're excited because
32:13It's one thing they're not having to spend money on. And if they take that piece of bread home, OK, well, then that's one more piece of bread they're going to consume that they already have.  So it's really just an interesting way that  money doesn't even play into farmers markets as much as people would think, as much as it just being the gratitude and being able to feed the community. Right. Money is great. Don't get me wrong. It makes the world spin. Sadly, I wish it would go away in some senses, other senses, not so much.
32:43But it's being able to fill a need in the community directly that I think people need to take away from farmers markets. You're filling the need of the buyer or, you know, of the producer. And then they're feeling the need of you needing an item. So the way that works, it's just this, believe it, what is it called? Osmosis, where it transmutes back and forth equally. Symbiotic. Symbiotic. Thank you. I always say the wrong word for whatever reason, but that symbiotic like relationship.
33:14is really more beneficial to your community.  If your community makes more money, then they're able to do more things in the community. They're shopping more locally. They're going to invest in different projects around there. They're gonna invest in people that are around them. It's been proven that it helps your community. Every dollar you spend,  one dollar is like $10 when you're spending it with a small producer. So that's a huge.
33:41like benefit instead of spending $5 at Walmart and it really only being a dollar that comes back into the community. If I spend it with a local producer, that $5 then turns into 50 essentially with how they're going to use it and spend it and it's directly in my community.  I am so glad that you are a proponent and  a fan and an ag, ag, ag, can't say it,  advocate for all of this because I'm right there with you, sister.
34:10I know, yeah, it's been so exciting. What a season of growth. mean, we're still doing the damn thing, just like we always do, but it just changes. We just kind of, we see a need and we feel a need in our community. So instead of focusing so much on doing the agri tourism this year,  and then gardening ourselves, we found that if we can fill this need with milk, it really is just, it's gonna help us in the long run farther. And that's sometimes hard, right, to give up my passion of gardening for our family.
34:40to doing milk, I see the need is more with the milk and I'm able to barter the milk for the produce that I would be growing anyways. So I'm just helping out all around. It's a good feeling. And I encourage everyone like Google on Facebook or not Google, do the little search bar, like type in your city, type in farmer's market and see where it's at. I bet you there's a farmer's market, if not four or five that are going on every Saturday. It seems like  more people, at least in Montana, are hosting farmer's markets. So I think...
35:09I want to leave everyone on a challenge note up here, right? Cause I always tell people like your followers like, Hey, try something new.  would like, I'd like for you guys to go to a farmer's market in the month of August, because that's when a lot of places are going to have the produce all around from Montana, all the way down to Florida and spend $10.  That's all I'm asking.  Spend $10 of your money in the community and watch how that producer feels at the end of that transaction. And then,  then go home,  enjoy your item and see how you feel after that $10 been spent.
35:38And I would guarantee that it's a more satisfying feeling. And if you really like what you bought, go back next time and thank the person that made it or grew it.  Absolutely.  Yeah, I have people that come up to me, other producers, and they tell me how much they love my item. And it just makes me feel so good. Like, it's just a very positive atmosphere. So I'm super excited that you guys are doing well with the, you know, the cabbage and you guys have a bunch of tomatoes. So I can't wait to check back in in a few months and see where we're all at.
36:09I think we're all going to be doing just fine.  think  the more local we live, the better off we will all be because  you can't rely  on your state or federal government right now. Rely on your local  government and your local resources. Correct. And like uh some horse people will know her, but Trissa all
36:32Trisha Aldridge, owns Audios Pantaloons, what a name, right?  But he's a million plus dollars  stud and what her Motivational Monday was is that no one's coming to save you, but also no one's coming to stop you. um
 

Today I'm talking with Ronel at Zebulon Heritage Farm. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.
00:28Today I'm talking with Ronel at Zebulon Heritage Farm in Tennessee. Good morning. Ronel, how are you? Good morning. Doing well. How about you? I'm good. Is it hotter than Hades in Tennessee this morning? It just about is. Yeah, I looked at the map that was on the news yesterday and the whole country was red. I was like, that doesn't happen very often. Mother Nature, what?
00:56What got up your butt and irritated you? Because you're hot. There's something wrong.  Right. It's been a hot month for sure. It's been hot month. It's been terrible.  And  like I said to my co-host on my other podcast, I have two.  The other one is Grit and Grace in the Heartland. um I said to her the other day, I said, I'm trying to keep a really good attitude about this.
01:24it's getting exceedingly more difficult with every day that the dew point is over 70 in Minnesota. That doesn't happen. Right. Cause that's a little different than here in the East where we have a lot of anyway. Yeah, absolutely. Minnesota is, is yes, close to a great lake, Lake Superior. It's right next to it. But last I knew great lakes weren't the same as ocean.
01:49I grew up in Maine, so we had a lot of humidity in the summer in Maine. But you would not expect it to be this sticky. Well, I guess it is mid-July now, but usually we get the sticky in August. So it's been a bit much to swallow, Ronel. Let's just put it that way. I totally get it. I totally get it. Yes. So I would love for you to tell me a little bit about yourself and about what you do at Zebulon Heritage Farm.
02:19Sure, sure. I guess, well, it's kind of a long story. mean, going back, I guess as a kid, I grew up on a homestead where we would bring you some bottle calves back then you could buy them for $5 from a dairy. And we milked some goats as a kid. I was never so fond of the goat milk though. So I guess later we got a family cow, I guess I was about 12. And my dad's like, here's a cow, milk her, take care of her, I want butter.
02:49And then I milked the family cow for a lot of years. And I guess about 12 years ago, I decided at that point, I already had my own family. I decided I want to start a herd share. Some herd shares have been legal in Tennessee for quite a few years. So I added a second cow and then a third cow. And I guess over the past 12 years, it's just gradually grown and become
03:19Well, full-time business.  Very nice. So  I know what A2A2 milk is. Is that what it's called? Right? Sure. Yes. But not all of my listeners will know. Can you explain what's special about A2A2 milk? Okay. So I guess there's a lot of different opinions, but I guess the short answer is it is the betacassin, which is the protein  in the milk.
03:48but I guess it's dependent on the cow's genetics. there are a lot of different variants. And I guess most people don't know that. Most people assume it's either A1 or A2, but there's actually a lot of different variants. And A2, A2, which is both markers are A2, is the desirable one. It is believed to be more digestible, associated with better health. And I do believe there's merit in that because I have more than one
04:18hard to share member that has told me they had raw milk. mean, most of the time if people can't drink store milk, they can drink raw milk, right? Because it's more digestible, it's less processed. But I have a couple of share members who have told me that they reacted badly to raw milk that wasn't A2A2 and they are able to drink my A2A2 milk. So there is definitely something to it and it is definitely something that a lot of people
04:47or after because it's  associated with better digestion and better health. Thank you for explaining that because if I had attempted to explain that, I would have butchered it. It would not have been good. I was looking at your Facebook page and your website. Is it just jerseys that you milk or is it another  breed as well?
05:08Yes, we have only jerseys. I mean, we do have a beef herd too that we  raise grass-red beef. But as for milking, we only have herded registered A2 jerseys. So it didn't start out that way. I just had some random jersey, you know, that I had no idea, you know, anything about her really,  as far as this A2 registration goes. But I gradually, um I guess, built up to the registered herd. So I bought like one registered cow and then bred her  and  tested. I bred only two A2 bulls.
05:39And the calves I tested and I got lucky in the sense that even though if I had 50 % chance, I ended up getting mostly A2 cuffers. So my herd became fully A2 very quickly.  And then I just continued breeding to A2. So from there, we just went off with A2 cows. Okay.  I'm going to say this for me.  I would get nothing done if I had a herd of jerseys because I love their faces.
06:07And all I want to do is hang out with them  and kiss their noses and stroke their ears. They are so pretty. Sure. I'm biased too. mean, know every breed has their perks and they definitely have their place, but I'm biased too. mean, the jerseys are just super pretty and they're just so curious. mean, they just have personality and they can be different too. mean, some are definitely nicer than others, but generally speaking, they're just  so like  part of the family kind of temperament, know.
06:37They always look like they're going to be really sweet. I'm not saying that every single Jersey cow is sweet, but they look like they're going to be very sweet critters. And they are. I mean, I think I've had ones with my kids were a little, it's like before I could stop them, you know, they would call them on the cow or crawl under the cow. I was like, Oh my goodness, you know, you shouldn't be doing this to a cow, but you know, this particular half-puff, she didn't care. Yeah. It's just that, um, you know, some of them are just really gentle. Some of them not so much. mean, most, most of ours are really.
07:06well-behaved.  I don't keep cows that aren't, but some are really friendly and they will be like upping your business.  Yeah, yeah. I would love to meet your cows. I think that it's so fun. I don't have any cows. We don't have room.  If we had room and I was about 20 years younger,  we probably would have cows.  Right. And I will say this to people starting out,  cows are a digger.
07:33You know, I never had any intention of having the amount of cows I have right now.  It just kind of like every time a pepper was born, was like, I cannot sell her. You know, I have to keep her. And then I end up with, you know, 40 something calves. I'm going, okay, I got a problem.  Well, if you're that smitten with the Jersey breed, you must be just absolutely beside yourself  in love with the babies every time there's babies. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They're just so cute. But I mean, they just look like a little deer. Yeah, I
08:02I have a hard time every time I need to make a decision to keep one or not keep one, know.  Yeah.  Yep. And I can't believe that you remember when you could get  a calf for $5. Do you know how much a calf is going for right now? Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I just sold one this morning. I  mean, it's just a jersey bull. This one I sold, so they're not bringing as much, but the beef couch right now. Oh my goodness. They're, yeah, it's crazy what they're bringing right now.
08:28Yeah, just a couple of years ago, I think you could still get a beef calf for like 50 bucks.  Right.  Right now. I heard the other day over a thousand dollars. Right. Nope. That's basically the heifers are going for  a thousand and upwards.  That's a hell of an investment.  Right. Right. And I mean, haven't, you just a few years ago in the time that I was running a herd chair, if I sold an adult cow that was like
08:58kind of a, you could say a call, you know, maybe when she wasn't breeding or whatever, but she was a nice, fat, healthy, otherwise cow. When you sold her, you would be getting like $200. I mean, I sold more than one that I got $200 for. And I'm like, those days are so gone. Yeah. And I'm really afraid that the days of owning cows and steers or bulls is coming to an end because I keep reading about how the
09:26I'm going to say bovines. The bovine herds across the United States are shrinking because farmers can't afford to keep them. Right. Right. And that is a concern because it's so, mean, buying replacements.  mean, initially it was like, you know, if a cow, if you didn't want a particular cow or there's something wrong with her, you just bought another, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a big deal. But right now it's like, you have to, you know, you have to like take out a loan to buy.  You know, they're so expensive, especially if you're trying to buy a nice one.
09:56Yeah, it's hard to get started in the business right now if you don't already have cows because they're so expensive to get. Yeah, if you're not part of a family that  is raising steers or dairy cows, trying to get in at 20 years old is almost impossible. Right, and I feel really bad because there are some people who want so badly to get into the business, but you know, it's so expensive to get started and then we're not even talking about everything else, farm regulating that.
10:25farm related that is so expensive to get started. It's  really tough. It's really it is. And it's really sad.  like I said, my co-host and I talk about this all the time because she's a rancher in Nebraska. they raise steers for beef. They don't eat dairy. And  she loves you dairy people.  I swear she hugs every dairy farmer she meets. She loves you guys so much.
10:53Well, we appreciate the beef farmers too. Like I said, I do have a beef herd too and  it's been the same way with them. The prices are just crazy. Yep, and it's a lot of work and a lot of heart to put into it.  So, um I know what a herd share is, but not all of my listeners do.  And I want to preface this whole next line of conversation with the fact that Minnesota allows raw milk sales, but only on the farm.
11:22Okay. They don't sell raw milk in stores here. It's illegal. So  can you explain what a herd share is? Okay. So  in 2009, herd shares became legal in Tennessee. So a herd share is basically um potential customers, you could say, or potential share members. um If they wanted to acquire raw milk, they needed to like buy a share of the herd or even the cows. So you can get a cow share too. So
11:52they had to like put a deposit down or put like a payment down and buy the share of a cow. And that would like, um, allow them or entitle them to a portion of the milk. So  I guess what it's basically comes down to is they're getting milk from their own cow, a cow that they own  in part. And that way it's not like, I'm not selling raw milk.  Um, I'm selling shares of herd and then  people can get raw milk by buying shares of the herd. then they can get.
12:22um a portion of milk that way. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It's kind of on the same  idea as a time share, only you get better results. Yes, yes. And  a lot of people do the shares  because  I think it helps the customers be a little more uh committed  because they feel like they have a part in the herd. So it's not like... um
12:47It's not like you're just buying milk this week and then not next week or whatever. You know, most of the share members, they um are committed to getting the milk on a consistent basis. Good, good, good. So, so I think I missed it when you're explaining this.  Is,  is raw milk illegal to buy in Tennessee unless you do it through a herd share?  Um, yes and no. So I guess there's two ways that you can acquire raw milk in Tennessee, either through a herd share, which is what I do.
13:16or you have to be licensed as a pet food seller. And then you have to get like a license through the state and then you can sell it labeled as pet food.  mean, a lot of people do that even though it's not really their pets, you know, drinking it.  I am my own. I am my own pet. I will drink the milk. Yes. Right. Which is a perfectly great way to, you know, sell raw milk too. But I personally chose the herd share  model. Yeah. I found out last time we were in Maine.
13:44or I grew up that raw milk  is not illegal at all. The little general store down the road from where my parents live now,  they sell raw milk in their coolers. oh And I was just like, wow, Maine is so progressive. Yay. Right. Right. And that is nice. Some states are definitely being much more um lenient than others. So that's really nice.
14:13Yeah, I was surprised. I actually asked the cashier, I was like, how long ago did it become legal to sell raw milk at grocery stores?  And she looked at me and the first question out of her mouth was, where are you from?  said, well, technically Maine, I grew up here, but I live in Minnesota.  And you should have seen her face grin from ear to ear. She was like, one of my friends is from Minnesota.  She said,
14:40I thought I picked up just the tiniest little cadence of Minnesota in your voice. was just so excited. She it up. That's fun. Yeah. And I said, I'm so confused that you picked that up because I try really hard not to sound like I'm from anywhere. She said, well, you don't sound like you're from Maine anymore. So check that off the list. I was like, uh-huh. Okay. Thank you. That's funny. So we had a whole long discussion about raw milk and that everybody loves it.
15:09and that it's better for your stomach than pasteurized milk. It was a very interesting 15 minute conversation at the counter. That's great. That's great. So I want to hear a little bit about your beef cattle and then I want to hear about your class or whatever it was I read on your website. So tell me about your beef cattle. So I guess we have a small herd. I actually have a few of the last beef cows. have, Gary has.
15:38Um, mostly Angus, Geltbee,  um, the mixture of both, um, most people know Angus, but Geltbee is definitely a less,  um, common breed.  Um, if I had to sum up Geltbee, it would be like Angus, but it's a little bit bigger, um, than it looks a little different. So, um, the mix between the two seems to be a good combination. They are a little bit bigger. They grow fast like the Angus do, but they're a little bit more sized.  And, uh
16:05The mama cows have a lot of milk. So it seems to be a pretty good breed adapted for our  area here.  So we have heard of those and they just raise their calves. And we uh usually process the steers between like,  you could say 20 to 24 months old um for grass-fed beef. And we have a  customer base that we sell all that to.  Either by the  calf, the steer or whole steer.
16:35Very  nice. Thank you for doing that. That is,  I feel like that's,  I don't want to say harder than dairy, but it is right up there with dairy because there are so many regulations that go with beef. Right. mean, the day to day work is a lot less.  Um, I feel like when there's an issue, it's harder to deal with. It's like, you know, a beef cow, you can't just walk up to her and say, okay, let's pick up your feet. Let me see what's going on with it. know?
17:04You'd have to get her in the chute and she's fighting you. It's a little different. There's definitely more calving problems with the beef cows than with the jerseys. Jerseys tend to have no problems calving if you're breeding into a jersey. But the beef cows, especially the heifers, there's definitely more of struggle there. Sometimes they need help calving. So yeah, it's a different ballgame for sure. Yeah, I'm so impressed with everybody who raises the large animals.
17:32We have chickens and we tried raising rabbits for a year that did not go well.  Not every rabbit understands that they are supposed to screw like rabbits.  Right. My daughter had rabbits at one point and there's definitely something to making them  have babies for sure. Receptive, yeah. Uh-huh. Yes. Yes. And it's like the female, if she doesn't like the male, it's not happening.  No, she has all the say as she should.
18:01um But yeah, we have chickens, they're super easy as long as you have a coop and you have a source of food for them and a source of water for them. They do great. Rabbits are kind of touchy, finicky, fragile. And that's pretty much the only thing we've tried. And that's mostly because we don't have any land for big animals to graze.  We have three acres, it would not work. uh
18:28Well, chickens are a good start. mean, where we are chickens, the worst part of, or the worst struggle, I guess, with having chickens are the raccoons because we have a lot of raccoons. But besides that, chickens are, like they say, the gateway animal. You're getting with the chickens and then next thing you know, you want this and you want that too. Where's the goat? Where's the sheep? Where's the cow? Yeah, we have barn cats. We have a dog. We have chickens. I think we're full up on critters for where we can handle it. That's good.
18:57But again, I have so much respect for people who raise large animals because you've got to be brave, I think. You've got to do a lot of research. You've got to be healthy and strong because just because those jerseys love you doesn't mean that they're going to move when you want them to move. So you got to kind of nudge them, right? Right. It's physically demanding. mean, there's definitely that. And there's, mean, it can be dangerous. I have not had the cow hold the jerseys hurt me.
19:27not on purpose anyway. I sometimes they like, you know, knock it over by accident or whatever, but yeah, if you're dealing with large animals, some of you might get charged by the bull bull and that has happened. Ironically, it was my beak bull, not even my jersey bull, yeah, these things happen and they're hard to keep in. know, if they get out and you know, if a bull bull figures out he can walk through the fence, he's walking through the fence every time. So there's definitely challenges to it. There's definitely challenges and where we live, also have...
19:55you know, a way out the boondocks. So finding a veterinarian to come out can also be a challenge. So that, guess that eventually just forced me to learn to do a lot of things myself.  Which is probably good because then you don't have to pay the vet bills if you are skilled enough to do it yourself. True, Yes, yes. I mean, initially my hands were shaking, you know, if I needed to like set an ITV or something, because I had no idea what I was doing. But you know, after so many times you figure it out and you just know that, you know, this is you have to do because that's not available.
20:24You know, a lot of times they're just not available.  Yep. And sometimes,  I've actually heard a couple stories like this,  sometimes you may know something that the doesn't know because you learned it from somebody who learned it from their grandpa or their great grandpa a long time ago.  Right. And that is another thing because I have a couple vets, but the  one I have, I literally um felt that  he had no experience with dairy cows. So if that had a problem, there was no
20:52There was no use asking him because he didn't know. And it's not like I'm not shaming the vet, but he just had no experience with the dairy cows. He just had no idea.  Absolutely. And that's kind of, this is going to sound funny.  It's kind of fun that you have the skills to handle some of the things yourself.  You must feel a great sense of pride in that. Well, it's taken blood, and tears in a lot of years, but I do, I do. And which is why I guess, um
21:22I like to share that, you know, knowledge because I like to, I feel like it took me a lot of trouble and pain to learn it.  And  I would like to make that available to other people who want to learn so they don't have to learn the hard way and know the way I did.  Which leads me to the last part of my question for you.  I see on your Facebook description. says we also offer mentoring to family cow owners on school, S-K-O-O-L,  at Homestead Family Cow. So tell me about that.
21:51Sure, that's actually a little more recent. The school platform is actually a more recent venture. I've been mentoring, kind of like, cow people for, well, a lot of years. I guess for a lot of years. just like on Facebook groups or whatever, I would give advice if I could. But more recently, I started the platform on school. So that way, felt like if I'm making educational content, I can keep it all neatly in one spot.
22:20so it's not like spread out over the internet. So that way I can make educational videos and put them all on the platform. And then if people want to join the platform, they can read through or listen through the videos and the educational material on there. And they can also ask questions and hopefully we will eventually be able to do like Q &A sessions to help people learning about family cows.
22:45I guess back in the day, grandma and grandpa's, you a of people's grandparents knew these things, it's kind of disappeared for a while. But now there's a whole group of people or a whole bunch of people who is trying to get back into the family cow thing, but they're starting from scratch. So I think it would be great for them to have access to a lot of material where they can learn how to do it. Yes. And the school platform is fairly new, right? It's only been out for a year or so.
23:16It's been a few years, I think. yes, it's not that old at all. Like I said, my group or my community school is pretty recent too. I just wanted something where I can  put all my educational content in one spot and keep it easy to maintain.  Well, thank you for doing that as well, because not everybody has the patience to teach. I don't. I'm terrible at it. I have a hard time with it.
23:41That's why I chose to do a podcast because I know a little bit. I like talking about what I know. like talking with you guys about what you know. And then people just learn from the conversation. Right. Right. So if I wanted to find Homestead Family Cow on school, do I just go to school.com and type in Homestead Family Right. If you search it in the search bar, it should show right up. If you put in Homestead Family Cow, it should show right up in the search bar. And there's a picture with a banner. I guess it's my face with a cow.
24:10So it should  pop right up.  Okay,  I'll put the link in the show notes if I find it. If I can't find it for some reason, would you message it to me? Sure, sure. can definitely do that. I appreciate that. Oh yeah, I want to make it easy for people to find you because I know there's a lot of young people  coming up  or stepping into the role that their parents that have aged out or the grandparents that have aged out had.
24:40and they're new. mean, if  it's a family business, they may know a little bit, but I'm sure they don't know everything.  Right. And most of the people that I have mentored over the year uh who are not coming out of a family business, they were coming in first generation, know, trying to get  in and starting from scratch. Yeah. And it's so much easier when you have a mentor or a friend
25:07Or I don't know, a complete stranger you met at the county fair. Sure. got talking and they were like, I can help. Right. I totally agree. mean, back when I started out, the internet didn't exist. You know, and I was like, we're getting books from the library and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. And I was also quite young, but I made a lot of mistakes along the way. like, I like to help people not, you know, make those mistakes. If I, if I had this information at, you know, at my fingertips, I would have changed a lot of things.
25:38I always joke that if I had had access to the internet when I was 15, I would probably rule the world by now because I was a bookworm and a word nerd. Sure. Sure. And I spent a lot of time with my nose in books. Can you imagine me at 15 with access to Google? I would have been the biggest knowledge sponge on earth. I imagine that. Yeah, I look at my kids, my oldest daughter, I mean, my oldest kids are adults, but
26:07I look at them and I'm like, oh my goodness, know, they just have a head start on knowledge, you know, and just this information that I had, you know, from an encyclopedia. Oh, yes. And I'm going to step out on a limb here that I don't know if I'm supposed to step out on, but I'm going to do it anyway. I was talking to my daughter the other day. She's 36. She's married and her husband is into guns and he likes to go to the range and target practice. And he's very curious about all the different kinds of guns.
26:38And she has learned to shoot with him. And she called me, she called me the other day and she said, I got a question. And I said, what is it? And she said, what do you think of this idea? And she said, you know how women aren't necessarily brought up to handle firearms? And I said, well, they didn't used to be. I said there, there are more now. And she said, well, she said, I've been learning a lot over the last couple of years. And I said, yes.  She said,
27:08I have a TikTok account and I was like, yes. She said, I think I want to do some, some TikToks about gun safety and gun culture and  gun stuff as it were. Sure. And, and my daughter is gorgeous. She's five foot nine. She has the most beautiful face  and she just is so  passionate about helping people.  Sure. So, so she said,
27:34She said, do you think that people would want to watch these TikTok videos if I do them? I said, well, you'll probably know within five TikTok posts, whether people are interested or not. So she's talking about doing that. And that's, you know, it's a little aside. Yeah. think it's great. I think that's great. It's a little aside from my topic on my podcast here, but
28:01I think that women especially these days have so many avenues open to them to either teach  or have a career that they love that they can just throw their whole selves into compared to how it used to be. Sure. And I think that's great that we have these opportunities, you know, and it's that's her passion and teaching people about, you know, gun safety. think that's great because
28:27For a lot of people, they don't know anything about safety and that just makes it more dangerous than it should be. And if that's her passion and she can teach about it, I think that's great. think sharing our passion is really, I mean, that gives meaning to the life, right? And I guess that's why I do what I do. I not only love my dairy cows and I love milking, but I also love sharing about them and teaching about them. Yes, absolutely.
28:56I am so glad that you do and I'm going to die on this hill.  Without people like you, the industry might die and we don't want the industry to die if we like drinking milk and we like eating burgers and steaks.  Right, right. And I'm grateful for the people I learned from, you know, because  we all need someone to teach us some things. And I am grateful for the people I learned from and I hope to pass that forward.
29:25Good. Please keep doing it  and do me a favor. Smooch those cows for me because I don't know anybody with jerseys right now.  Most certainly I will.  All right. So where can people find you? um As in online or as... Okay. So I mean, besides for my Facebook page, which is Zebulon Heritage Farm, I also have a website, which is EvalonHeritageFarm.com.
29:55I guess  my farm is listed on  multiple raw milk, I guess databases or  places where you find raw milk. So the farm is listed in multiple places there too.  And then like I said, my school uh community, which is Homestead Family Cow, that is for learning about family cows  that is on the school platform. Fantastic.  Ronel, I so appreciate your time.
30:24And I say this to everybody who takes the time to talk to me.  I know you guys are busy.  You are being productive. You are helping in the world. So thank you for sharing your time with me and my audience. Sure, no problem. Thank you so much for having me here. I enjoyed talking to you. Good. As always, people can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com.  Ronel, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. You too,