Big Whiskey Creek Range

Today I'm talking with Chebrai at Big Whiskey Creek Range. You can also follow on Facebook.

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Chebrai at Big Whiskey Creek Range. And when I first read the name, I thought it was ranch and I've been thinking it's ranch the entire time. Good morning, Chebrai. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good.

00:28
This being over 50 thing that I got going on, I just think I read things the right way and then I realized that it's not ranch, it's range. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. I have been pretty enamored with the farm life since I was a little girl. I can remember just being on my grandparents farm and it really ingrained like a passion for animals and farm life.

00:58
So I guess when I grew up, I always knew that farm life would be it. And I was really lucky to meet my husband who also loved the homesteading self-sufficiency life and big Whiskey Creek range was born. The range part actually comes from us having a small little shooting range in the back. So. Okay.

01:28
Awesome. So when did you guys start doing this? We started in 2019 and we got six chickens. And I remember going, yep, we can handle this. I had raised horses and trained horses. So I kind of knew what I was doing and thought chickens wouldn't be a big deal. And now here we are with, I don't count anymore.

01:54
But there's goats and rabbits and ducks and chickens and a horse and some pigs Yeah, you got hooked in with the gateway drug of chicken yes, yes we did Yeah We we got hooked in with chickens when we lived in town Because the bird flu was going through and I was like, you know I'd really like to have eggs so I can make cookies for the kids and if this bird flu thing is a real

02:22
problem and eggs go up to $10 a dozen, I don't want to pay $10 a dozen. So we bought four chickens and that was really cool. And then we moved here like almost four years ago now and we have 18 chickens now. So yeah, it meant chicken math. Chicken math is real. The only problem is that I found that chicken math starts applying to all the different animals as well.

02:50
It does. It's an umbrella term for, I got this, I got this handled, I know what I'm doing, what's the next thing I'm going to bring onto the farm? We tried bunnies, I have talked about this at least four times on the previous episodes so far. They were terrible at reproducing, so we decided we didn't want to feed rabbits that didn't give us any return. They were dumb bunnies.

03:18
We have, I think I have seven or eight litters out there right now. I have a mama that was due yesterday, but she hasn't kindled yet, so I'm impatiently waiting for those. Yeah, and nothing cuter than a baby bunny. Nothing. Yeah, I feel like the sweet spot is like three weeks old and they just, they look like an adult rabbit, but they're so small and fluffy. Yeah, and if you've handled...

03:47
them since they were born, they like to be held and petted. Oh yeah, we have three kids and they handle them daily so they are of course, you know, super snuggly. Yeah, they're a lot like kittens except that they don't meow. Yes, yeah and well I mean I was going to say I feel like their nails are sharper but they might be about the same. It's a different sharp because we did get one litter.

04:16
Yeah, they're pokey, but yeah, but kitten nails are curved down and so they hook into whatever they get hold of and If you pull away, it doesn't help you you just push, you know, so but anyway, um, so How do you I don't know? I want to ask you. How do you feel about what do what you do? Do you love it all the time? All the time. No, I'm

04:45
I think the good part is that I'm very passionate about what we do. Before we started getting the animals, I went and found the breeds that I wanted and that I loved the traits for. I think that really helps because there are days where it's hard and you just want to quit. At the end of the day, you crawl into bed if you make it to bed and you just lay there and go, okay, is it worth it?

05:15
Every morning I wake up and I walk out to the barn and I start milking and the birds are singing and the sun's rising and it's like, yeah, yeah, it is worth it. It might be hard but kind of our family saying is we're not quitters. So we keep going. Yeah, and it's really hard to quit when you have living beings counting on you. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And that's part of it. I think

05:45
a mom also helps me want to take care of more. So I'm never one to turn down another mouth. Yeah, and I'm exactly the opposite. When we bought this place, we had big, big ideas. Because when you buy acreage, and we only have three acres, but to us, that was a big jump. You have big ideas. You want to get

06:14
animals and you want to have a huge garden and you want to have a greenhouse and you want to make it go and My husband was like we should get goats and we should get sheep and we should get and I said It's three acres and only about an acre and a half of it would be usable for food for to feed the critters I said you want a huge garden because you love gardens first, right? He said yeah I said we're not gonna have room to graze goats or

06:44
cheap. So that's probably not gonna work. And he said, but you love goats. And I said, I love other people's goats. I'll go visit other people's goats. That's fine. But the other thing that I have discovered, I was thinking about this yesterday and I was hoping I would be able to work it into this interview. I am very one task focused. Like, like,

07:07
Since I started this podcast, I have been obsessed with researching and learning about how to do this because I didn't know what I was doing when I started it. I love it. I love everything about it. I love talking to you guys, learning from you, sharing what I learned with listeners and especially my husband because he has ADD. So anytime I learn something new, he wants to know because he either wants to think about trying it or he wants to try it.

07:36
Yes. I don't have ADD. I am very organized. I am very linear thinking. I am very focused, but not in the way that he's focused when he gets a new idea. So for me, this particular lifestyle has been a huge adjustment because there's always something going on and it's not the same theme for the entire day.

08:05
Yesterday was Mother's Day. And I don't release the podcast in chronological order. So clearly when people are listening to this, it will not be yesterday was Mother's Day. But yesterday was Mother's Day. And he had asked me Saturday if we wanted to order food from our favorite dive bar in town. It's really good food. And have that for Mother's Day for lunch. And I was like, why don't we have it Saturday? Because you're going to be busy outside all day Sunday because the weather is going to be gorgeous, which it was.

08:35
So we had dive bar food for lunch for Saturday. I had a burger and potato salad and onion rings and I love that stuff but I only do it once in a while. And forgot that that would mean that I would need to provide food for him and the kid on Mother's Day, which is fine. So our rhubarb is coming in. And I had asked him to pick up strawberries and I was gonna make scones and do like a strawberry rhubarb sauce shortcake with whipped cream thing for dessert yesterday.

09:05
And then I was like, oh, we might want to eat real food before we dessert. So I asked him while he was out to pick up salad mix and, um, stuff for chef salads, cause I was like, that's, that's good. That'll offset Saturday's binge on greasy dive bar food. And I had podcast stuff to do and I had emails to respond to. I, on Saturday and Sunday, I try to catch up on everything comes in during the week.

09:30
So I spent the entire day inside doing computer stuff and getting food together. And he and the kid went out and put more stuff together for the greenhouse that they're building. And it was just a crazy day of up and down and up and down and doing things. And I got a phone call from my daughter. I got a phone call from my stepson. They both wanted to talk for at least half an hour. It was a very chaotic day for me. And it really made me think about what we're doing here.

10:00
I said to my husband last night, I said, after you get done with your training, next week he's got a thing with work. I said, can we go somewhere where it's quiet and have like a not terrible for us meal, just you and I, and can we talk through what the plan is for, what the five-year plan is from here to five years out? I said, because I'm feeling really, really chaotic and I don't enjoy that at all.

10:29
He was like, yeah, it might be time, because we'll have lived here four years in August. It might be time to reevaluate the plan. I said, I love you. Thank you. I need to reevaluate the plan. So I don't know if that resonates with you, but when you jump into this stuff, it's a lot at first. And then you settle into wherever you are, and you think you've got it handled.

10:55
And then something will happen and you're like, it might be time to reevaluate what it is we're doing, why we're doing it. Yeah, and it's kind of funny because I think I relate to your husband as like the ADHD stuff. I am very ADHD and I have to have several things going on in order to accomplish anything. The other day I was working in the garage and I am...

11:24
building bee barn frames and I'm putting garden beds together and I was doing something else for rabbits and I was just switching. I'd get tired of fastening nuts and bolts, so I'd move to the bee frames and I'd put a couple frames together and then I'd go move to my rabbit stuff. It was just, it was a circle. Yeah, yeah, that's how he is too. Yeah, yeah.

11:49
And I guess I at this point in my life, and I never thought I'd say that, but I thrive on chaos. We are kids are we have three of them and they're young and we homeschool. So they're home all the time. And my husband's gone pretty often for work. So, you know, a lot of the times I'm juggling the kids and the farm and making all of the stuff for our we we just recently actually started Big Whiskey Creek Naturals.

12:18
which we're branching off to kind of do non-toxic living. So I've been prepping for that because our first farmers market was this weekend and it's been chaos, but it's almost felt like the most organized I've been. Yep. Yeah, I have such a hard time. I love him. I must say this, I love my husband to pieces, but I have such a hard time because of the...

12:48
everything is all over the place all the time and he doesn't seem to notice and then all of a sudden like after months of this he's like my desk is a mess and he just blitzkriegs his desktop and just tosses things and sorts it out and gets it put away and filed and I'm like oh my god it's so beautiful but it's gonna last for five minutes. We call that rage cleaning. Yeah he calls it blitzkrieg

13:17
thing but I pick like a week where I'm like okay the countertop really needs to get cleaned off and things need to get put away and I'm terrible because I'm a cook. I love to cook so I will leave like the coffee bag on the counter because I know I'm going to need it within six hours because I drink coffee all the time.

13:41
So there's always a bag of coffee beans on the counter. There's always the coffee grinder on the counter. I don't have a coffee station. I wish that I did, because that would be organized. But I just, I am going through a thing right now where I feel like my house looks like a bomb went off in it. And I clean one thing.

14:02
And 10 minutes later, it's a mess again. I'm like, oh my God, this is useless. Why am I even bothering to clean? You know? And it's that time of year. Everybody's outside. It is, it is. It's springtime. We're hardly inside, I feel like. So anytime somebody comes over, I'm like, okay, don't mind inside. We haven't been inside, so. Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like I am never actually clean for more than five minutes. Like the only time I feel really clean is the five minutes after I get out of the shower.

14:32
Yes. I'm like, okay, I am going through something right now. I don't know what it is, but I need to get some organization back in my life. And the first thing I need to do is get a handle on me. And then I will know what I need to request from him. Yeah. So it's a thing I go through this about every five years where I'm like, okay, what am I doing? What? Why am I doing it? And what do I need

15:01
What am I doing? We try and do five year plans, but I feel like it's just so hard. And it might just be the years of life we're in, I guess, or the stage that we're in where everybody's just constantly changing and something's always going on and the world's fluctuating so much that it's hard to get a good five year plan going, I feel like.

15:30
Yeah, and I feel weird about saying we need to make a five-year plan because we're very much still in the throes of learning what we're doing here. So we're very immersed in, okay, so we've got this greenhouse now almost finished. What are we going to do with that? And clearly, a greenhouse is to start seeds in. It is to do maybe potted plants in. We're going to put in a couple raised beds so we can grow stuff quote unquote in-ground this fall.

16:00
because it's a heated greenhouse. But my husband said the other day, he said, I think that we should start flowering, hanging plant pots next, next spring. And we can hang them from the beams in the greenhouse and we can have baskets ready for Mother's Day. So people can come and buy them at the greenhouse. I was like, oh my God, how many ideas do you have? He's like, well, I didn't know.

16:29
He said, I didn't know the beams were going to be exposed. We'll be able to put eye hooks up there and hang baskets. And I was like, that is brilliant. But, oh, okay. And he said, you're starting to get overwhelmed with this. I said, I am. I said, honey, I said, I spent my years in the trenches raising four kids. And it was constant crazy. I said, I've had about a year and a half of not constant crazy. Cause we finally got settled in here.

16:57
I said, and now I feel like we're ramping back up to constant crazy. I said, I can't handle it anymore. I'm going to be 55 in November. I said, I would like my quote unquote golden years to not be nuts. Yeah. Okay. He said, I understand. He said, I, he said, I think that when you see the potted plants, the hanging potted plants, you will be happy that we're doing it. I said, yeah, I think so too. I said, but.

17:25
Could you maybe do a little preamble from now on when you're going to generate or share a new idea? I had a thought it would be a good start. I was going to say I feel like that is my husband. My husband is you and I am your husband. And it's not gender specific by any means. Not at all. So now we've talked about philosophy and getting older and chaos and calm.

17:55
You have the black chickens. I don't know what they're called. Yes, the I am Samanis. Yeah, those. They do not lay black colored eggs, I read. They do not. I always get asked that, but they actually lay a very light tan almost pinkish egg. But everything about them is black, right? Yeah, yeah. Their meat, their organs, their blood's not, but

18:21
Um, the, uh, we actually did get black layers, but those are kaiugas for ducks and they only stay black for the first kind of couple of lays and then it has to reset yearly. Oh, okay. Yeah. I've been reading about these, these black chickens that their, their wings, their feathers are black, their skin is black, their meat, their meat is dark. Yes. Their meat's very dark. And I've never seen one before and I saw that you have them and I was like, Ooh, I need to ask her.

18:50
because I thought that they didn't have black eggs, but who knows? No, they sadly don't. We have a lot of rainbow eggs, and black eggs are the elusive. Yeah, I don't, I mean, you said that the one you were just mentioning has a black egg, but it doesn't, they don't continue to lay them. Yeah, they're just the bloom on the outside. So the actual eggs are like, they can be a light blue, but they're more white, and then they just have a...

19:18
black dark gray bloom. Okay. All right. Thank you for clearing that up. I thought that was the case, but I thought I would ask. And then tell me about what you're doing with the soaps and stuff. It all kind of just started because we got goats. I knew that I wanted to switch us to, you know, more of a natural lifestyle. And so

19:45
was just the first step. We have so much milk. So it's easy, you know, to freeze some and then make a batch of soap. And it kind of blossomed into, okay, well, let's get rid of all the toxic stuff. So now I'm making, you know, tooth powder and healing salves and just all sorts of stuff to promote a more healthy, holistic lifestyle.

20:14
It's so, okay, it's not easy to do, but it's simple. It's really simple to do. Yes, yes, and that's something that I'm hoping to get into. I hope my goal is that I can make blog posts to share the recipes, because I want everybody to have access to it, but if they don't have the time or the actual physical things to make the products, then I want to be able to provide that for them.

20:43
Yeah, we do soaps, we do lip balms, we do salves, we do candles. And it's really weird because to me all of that is like cooking because it's all chemistry. And I love to cook. So when I first made my first lip balm, I was like, this is very much like cooking. It's a recipe. And I really love the process of cooking.

21:08
recipe making it. Yes. We're going to go back to the not chaotic thing again. It is very calming. It is very Zen. It is something that you have to focus on doing and you're not doing anything else while you're making something. Right. Yeah. I think a lot of people probably don't realize how much planning and researching goes into a lot of the formulations. We kind of

21:38
when I'm making soaps and stuff. Yeah, and it's fun. Yeah. When we first made soaps, we made unsended soap because it was the easiest thing to do. And it's cold processed lye soap. Hey, I said it right. I usually say cold pressed and then I change it to processed. That one is the easiest to do because you're not messing around with essential oils or fragrance oils. Yep.

22:05
And it worked great. I loved it. My skin didn't itch anymore. I, the reason we started making it is because I would get itchy from store bought soap and loved this stuff and our friends and neighbors love this stuff too. So we were like, we need to make more. And I said, I think we should do a lemon scented soap because I love lemon everything. And my husband was like, cool, what, what should we use to put in it to make it smell like lemon? And I said, I don't know. I have to look it up.

22:34
So we ended up using lemon grass essential oil. Okay. And oh my God, it was lovely. Yes. And we screwed up the first batch. We over fatted it. I don't know what the word is. There's a word for that. Too much oil. Yeah. So it's very oily soap and it takes forever to cure and it doesn't look right and it's still slippery. And we screwed up the first batch. And so we made that the bathroom sink soap.

23:03
because that way nobody slipped in the shower with the oils. And so my hands smelled like lemon for like six months because I would use it every time I washed my hands in the bathroom. And it made the bathroom smell amazing. And then we finally got it figured out and made a batch of lemon scented soap for the bathtub and the shower. And it didn't screw up that time. So we gave that to our friends to try. And they were like, can you make other scents? And I said, yeah.

23:33
and somebody said, can you do like a clove cinnamon one? And I didn't know if I could do a clove cinnamon one. So I looked that up too. And the clove cinnamon one, we also put sweet orange oil in it and oh, it's so lovely. So the reason I'm telling you this is the fun part of soaps is if you can find a fragrance oil that's soap safe, or if you can use an essential oil that you've never tried before.

24:02
and it works. It's so exciting. It's so exciting. And it's been, it's been cool, just kind of like, not winging it, but winging it with patterns and swirls and stuff. I, I love being artistic. And soap is just kind of an extension of that. It's been fun. It's it's crafting in a, in a different manner. And I

24:30
I keep getting told that I'm becoming a grandma already. But I'm oddly okay with that. You are not a grandma already. That's like telling someone who paints that they're a grandma. They're not a grandma. Most people have just lost touch with the simplistic

25:00
side of things that anytime anybody goes back to those ways, they're old, you know? Or they're seen as old. Yeah, but you got to have the energy to do this stuff. And that's young. Yeah, it's very young. I climb into bed sometimes and I'm like, boy, how old am I?

25:27
Uh-huh, yeah, after being on my feet most of the day yesterday and I'm not on my feet all day every day very often. And I was on my feet almost all day yesterday and when I crawled in bed last night, I had to like stretch before I crawled up and went to sleep. And I'm going to be 55. I am not 25. I do not have the energy that I used to have. And there's something about menopause that changes how your joints feel.

25:56
and how your body feels and the energy levels that you have. So I don't have it. I don't have it anymore. You're 32, you said? I just turned 30 this year. Yeah, I've been saying that 30 was gonna be it for me for probably the better part of five years. And so far, it's been all it's supposed to be, or I've hoped it to be. So it's been fun, you know, thinking that maybe I wished this for myself.

26:26
I, yeah. Yeah. Um, my thirties and forties were the best years of my life for feeling strong and being healthy and I don't know, feeling like I had the world licked, like, like I knew where I fit. I knew what I was doing. I didn't have to put up with people's crap anymore. Cause I just was like, nope. That makes me feel so good though. Yep. I hit 30 and I was like, okay, I do not have to be nice.

26:56
I still have to be kind, but I don't have to be fake nice. If I don't like something, I'm allowed to say it. And so I was just like, okay, I don't appreciate this thing that you're doing. And if you could not do that anymore around me, that'd be great. And if you must persist, then I won't be around you. And that's not how I said it, but that's how I was. And the real cream of the crop of friends came to the top. Yeah. It was fabulous.

27:26
I'm finding that more often than not, my friends are coming from extended family. So that's been fun. And it's been interesting re-evaluating myself, I feel like also. But everybody seems so scared to turn 30 that it was hard for me who was excited to turn 30 to be like, yeah, woohoo.

27:56
It was the best times because I'm here for it. Yeah. My son who's in the other room who's 22, I had him at 32 years old. And I knew who I was with him. Yeah. When I had him. I had my daughter, my first child when I was 20 years old. And I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what I was doing. It was a constant learning curve. And she.

28:26
says that I was the best mom ever, but my son, I feel like my last child, I feel like I had a better handle on myself. And I had already taken care of two babies and a stepson. So I knew what to do with a fourth child. So yeah, there's something to be said for age, but I'll tell you what, I had all the energy in the world for my daughter when I was 20.

28:55
Yes. With the last baby I had when he was a newborn, she was 12, my stepson was 10, my second son of my body was four and a half, and the youngest was brand new. And oh my God, I was busy every second of every day. Yeah. I can vividly remember trying to take naps. Our oldest right now, he's eight and then we have a four-year-old and a two-year-old little girls.

29:25
and they are crazy. There is not a lot of time that goes by that mom's not being yelled or somebody's not yelling at each other. Yeah, our house was loud. And our house was 850 square feet of living space with my husband, my four kids and me. I don't know how big ours is, but it's not very big.

29:55
Uh, we actually part of the house, the original house was just a one room house. Um, and this used to be, I feel like it used to be some sort of like farm yard. And this was just a little farm hand house and it's since been, you know, extinct, like expanded and built on and there's enough room for us, but I don't, I don't know for how much longer. Yeah.

30:22
I understand. Believe me, I understand. We had three bedrooms and so my daughter had the small bedroom upstairs. The three boys were in the loft style bedroom off of her bedroom and then we had the bedroom downstairs. And as soon as my daughter moved out, the next oldest boy moved into the small room. And when he moved out, the next oldest boy moved into the small room. So when it was just my youngest at home,

30:52
He had both bedrooms upstairs to himself. So one room was for gaming and one room was for sleeping. He was very excited about this turn of events. Oh, I can imagine. So yeah, it's, I don't know, every season of life is different and I am really enjoying this particular season because I'm not raising small children anymore. Yes. It was great while I was doing it. I loved every second of it,

31:22
I'm glad that they're raised and they're adults and they can make their own food and do their own laundry and three of them live outside our house at this point. The youngest is still here. So it's kind of great to work myself out of that job as it were. I feel like we're very philosophical this morning. I didn't mean to do that. Okay. So back to Big Whiskey Creek Range. Do you guys, I understand that you're selling your...

31:52
natural product stuff. Yeah. But are you selling eggs or meat or whatever too? Yeah. So we've been taking the eggs to the farmer's market. We haven't gotten into selling meat yet just because there's more stipulations. We looked into Iowa past the raw milk is legal.

32:16
And we we looked into selling milk, but there's still so many holes to jump through like you have you can't have more than 10 Animals being milked at a time. You have to be testing your milk and the animals monthly It just becomes almost not worth it. It just negates itself. So our

32:41
Our milk's all personal consumption and soap's been the easiest outlet for it. But our extra meat animals like rabbits, we sell those. Or our extra goats, we sell those. Okay. Can you use goat milk in a lotion? Yeah. I actually make goat milk lotion. Since it's...

33:07
milk. I do use a natural preservative and I always tell people it's best stored in the refrigerator just because it won't be as stable. But you definitely can. It still has like the nourishing goat milk properties. Okay, I didn't know because I've heard a lot about goat milk soap. I've seen goat milk soap for sale, but I haven't seen a lot of goat milk lotions or

33:36
It just becomes a little trickier because milk isn't as stable as water. Right. And in the soap, it doesn't matter because it goes through the saponification stage and then it basically cooks it sort of from the heat. Yeah. And the lotion, it doesn't have that chemical process, but chemical reaction that happens. Yeah. I love the word saponification. When I learned that that's what that's called.

34:04
I was like, what a beautiful word. And I am a word nerd. I love words. I love reading. I love writing. I love talking. If you couldn't tell, I know. And so when I learn words like that, I try to use them correctly. And I've had so many people ask me about soap. And they're like, how does it work? How does it become soap? And I'm like, well, it goes through a process called saponification. And they'd go, what?

34:33
And I say, so, ponification. And they say, oh, okay. Cause I say it too fast. And they're like, what does that mean? I'm like, basically it cooks. It gets hot and then it cools down. And in that process, it becomes soap. And they're like, that's a big word for that. Yes, it sure is. Yes. But there's something so musical about that word that every time I say it, I just grin inside my head. Yeah, it's a good word. I like it.

35:03
Yeah, I love serendipity too. I think that serendipity is one of the best words ever invented. Serendipity basically means when everything comes together for the good. And I just, I love serendipity. I think it's a fantastic word and a fantastic promise. So that's my, my education for people day on words. I should do a podcast on books and word, but I'm just not there yet.

35:28
Okay, Chebrai, I don't know why I'm so silly this morning and why we're doing Velocity 101, but I guess that's what the theme was for today. That's okay. I appreciate your time talking with me. And you guys have a website, right? Yes, we do. I'm actually today. I'll be getting it back up. We had market this weekend, so I took it down for inventory purposes, but it'll be back up today. OK, what is it? What's the website? BigW

35:58
Sweet. So very easy. Yes. All right. Well, I hope that you have a wonderful day and keep doing what you're doing because you're doing it good. And thank you again. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye.