Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm

Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at

00:28
Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm, I love the name, in Florida. Hello guys, how are you? Hello, doing good. Good. You're melting in the sun, but trying to stay cool. Yeah, we were going through that yesterday. I said this on an interview this morning that I did, but I will say it again because it was ridiculous. We have central air in our house and it was set for 72 degrees. It got to 77 degrees in my house at three o'clock yesterday afternoon.

00:58
Yeah. Yeah. My dog was laying on the floor panting. I'm like, oh, this is bad.  What kind of dog do you have?  She's a mini Australian shepherd.  Oh, cute, cute. We have a Great Dane. Oh, well, they're very different sizes, but I bet they're just as lovey. I bet they're on the same love scale. Yes.  OK, so how did your farm get its name?  So when I was a kid, I watched the movie

01:27
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? It came out in 2000. Have you seen it? I have not. I keep meaning to find it and I just never get around to it. It's a worthwhile movie and the song, Bad Bottom Girls, you know, is in it. And the movie is about these guys that escape from jail and it's like a story of redemption, finding yourself.

01:58
and really like prioritizing your self-well-being. And it just resonated for me for a long time. And so when we developed our mini farm, it became a little bit of a play on words because we had chickens first and, you know, the layered chickens have very heavy bottoms. And then we got into bees and all the worker bees are female. And it's just kind of snowballed into our

02:27
our farm name. love it. it who what band did the Fat Bottom Girls song? Queen. Yeah, that's what I thought. But I wasn't sure. I didn't want to sound like a total idiot.  Okay, cool. That is very cute. I love that story. So tell me about yourselves and what you do at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm. Sure. So my name is Larkin  and  we  are I would consider ourselves

02:56
first generation homesteaders. It started as a hobby, you know, in the backyard before we had our first child. And that was around 2015 or 16 when we first got chickens and I was a zookeeper, worked with birds at our local AZA zoo. So I'm very fond of birds. And I decided I wanted to bring them to our

03:25
backyard and Kevin is a good sport. So he was like, all right, know, eggs for the kitchen. Great. And then as we got into more gardening and,  and  planting our own crops in our backyard, we decided that this was like a really great, sustainable,  uh, an empowering hobby.  Um, and so we've just been taking like small approximations until we're

03:54
where we are today, we have like a dairy cow.  We do homeschooling as of this year  and  we do take advantage a lot of our  public land for  hunting. And we just try and be as self-sustainable as possible without making it overwhelming. And so that's kind of how we got started.

04:23
How much land do you guys have? So  we  have a family farm and it was built  for horses. My mom  is an equestrian. She breeds  Grand Prix jumpers and then they show on the circuit here in Florida and they travel around the country. So we have probably about 17 acres  and our farm is now down to two retired

04:52
horses that we ride for pleasure and the rest of the farm has been made available to us for our our creatures. Nice. And what do you have for creatures? We have chickens, quail, changing list, ducks, geese, a cow. We have a couple of horses and that's it. We have a rabbit.

05:22
for our  composting needs. He lives a life of luxury.  Yeah, we have the whole menagerie.  And  so are you using,  I don't know how to ask this correctly. I never asked it right.  Is anything on the farm produced to support the farm?

05:46
Oh,  so we do  sell our extras,  if that makes sense. So we really produce for ourselves and for our family.  if we have... Go ahead. Well, Kyle's making what? About  a gallon a day or so? Gallon, gallon and half of milk a day? Yeah. We use that to make a lot of ghee. And then if we have some leftover milk or...

06:14
Even occasionally we'll sell some ghee or butter. It's just the butter and the ghee is extreme and eggs of course. But the butter and the ghee is pretty labor intensive. So it's kind of a tough one to sell. So we end up using a lot of that for our cooking as well as we'll give some to like family and friends and stuff like that. Yeah. And then we do sell some products that we make. So we have like whipped tallow balm, soaps, and then we sell, you know, excess eggs and milk that we have.

06:45
And it's really, we don't do like farmers markets. So the people that are interested, we invite them to the farm. They can take a farm tour, meet the animals, you know, that they are acquiring their food from.  And we try and make it like a fun experience  from when you drive through the gate and you drive off with our products.

07:10
Yeah, if I was buying your butter or your ghee, I would want to go up to your cow and kiss it on the nose and say thank you. She is a miniature Jersey and she is in your pocket. She loves her treats and her people. So she comes up and interacts. Nice. Nice. I love those cows so much. They're so pretty. They're surprisingly friendly. It's like a giant puppy. What?

07:37
Oh, same. They're like giant puppies for the most part. The miniature cows are super friendly. Oh, yeah, absolutely. If we had just a little bit more room here, we have three acres, but there's a lot on that three acres. If we had just a little bit more flat land with some hay, we might get a mini cow, but we just don't have the room and I'm kind of sad about it, but that's okay. So the reason I asked about whether you produce anything that supports the farm,

08:06
is because when we bought our place, my husband loves to garden. don't know if you guys have listened to any of the episodes about on my podcast, but he loves gardening  to the point that our garden has expanded to a hundred feet by, I bet it's getting close to 250 feet now.  And it's not just one space. It's like  three or four different spaces that add up to that. And so the first summer we were here, we grew food and we had some of it.

08:36
or sale to people who wanted to come get it.  And that was cool.  And then  we set up a farm stand three summers ago and we sold produce out of that and eggs and stuff. then  two,  three summers ago, he also started selling at the farmer's market because  we can't possibly use all the food that he's been growing.  Well, that's exciting though.

09:05
Yeah. So, um, I feel like the plan was to sell some of our stuff to our community.  I'm just not sure that I realized how big the plan would become.  And I'm not upset about it at all. He loves it. It's how he, it's his Zen spot. It's how he distresses from his jobby job. Yes. Gardening has that effect. Very meditative.

09:31
Yes. And I'm really happy when he brings me in fresh right off the vine tomatoes and cucumbers  and butter crunch lettuce that literally goes from the ground to my sink gets rinsed off and put in a bowl  and then dressed up with whatever dressing I want on it and I eat it. So literally five minutes from garden to my face.  That's awesome.  Yep. It's pretty great. It tastes better that way for whatever reason.

09:58
Yeah. And who knew there were so many varieties of lettuce that you can grow in the United States. Yeah. Our personal favorite is rocket lettuce. Cause it's got a little bit of a spicy kick to it. Yeah. Um, there's a purple romaine lettuce that we grow and it's so beautiful. People see it and they're like, what is that? I'm like, it's a romaine lettuce. And they're like, nah, romaine's green. I can't be it.

10:27
No, that's purple romaine lettuce. It tastes pretty much exactly like green romaine lettuce. It's just purple. can do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's purple carrots now. There's white carrots. There's red carrots. Yeah, we've done the kaleidoscope carrots. Those are super fun, especially if you have kids involved because you don't know. It's like a surprise when you pluck them from the grounds. You don't know what color you're going to get. So it's really exciting.

10:57
It's fun. And  if you want to get kids to eat foods they think they don't want, you got to make it fun. Exactly. Definitely. Wish I had known that with my first three.  Learned on the fourth kid.  That when they're interested in trying what's on your plate and they're old enough to actually chew it and swallow it without choking death,  it might be a good idea to let them try it when they ask.

11:25
Didn't know that were the first three and they're not the most non picky eaters ever. The fourth child who's 23 and still lives with us is the most adventurous person when it comes to trying new foods I've ever met. That's funny how that works out. Wish I'd known, man. And the rule in our house when he was little was that big kids were not allowed to make a big deal.

11:51
out of foods that they didn't like. If they didn't like it, they could just  not eat it.  And if  they tried something new and didn't like it, they could literally quietly spit it into a napkin  or they could walk to the kitchen, because we ate in our living room at our table. They could walk to the kitchen and spit it in the trash, but they were not allowed to be like, oh, that's so gross.  Because we didn't want the littlest one  to take on their biases.

12:18
Right. You don't want them to be influenced. was awesome.

12:24
No, I really didn't because I really wanted this kid to have the joy of discovering different flavors and different textures.

12:37
Because food is supposed to be an adventure. It's supposed to be an event. Definitely. And if you can incorporate  activities that go along with it, you know, it used to be don't play with your food, but what better way to explore flavors than  to experiment and to play with your food. Yeah. And then everybody decided to get into making sourdough and sourdough is playing with your food. Yes.  And pasta.  All of it.

13:08
Yeah, I took on sourdough about a month ago and I've been avoiding it like the plague because I knew it was going to take time and patience.  And  every day I get out my funnel and my fourth cup measuring cup and the jars that have the starter in it  and a bowl and a spoon  and I'm screwing around with pulling some of the starter out for discard and then I'm putting the flour and the water in and stirring. I'm like, this is like play dough. This is like playing with my food.

13:38
It is. Yeah. Kevin is our sourdough person because he has the patience for it.  I like to step in at the end and do the scoring. Yeah,  I haven't gotten that far yet. I've made one loaf and it came out like bagel texture, which was great because I love bagels, but apparently  it's not supposed to be that dense. So I have to do that to my technique, but it was really yummy.  I've avoided

14:04
sourdough for a long time because I thought that it was very technical. Like you had to measure the flour in grams and you had to measure the water in grams and you had to do it very specifically and come to find out you don't have to do that. Yeah, we you're reminding me that I need to feed our starter but we've got it to where we're feeding about once a week now. It just kind of sits in the fridge. So it's

14:32
It's low maintenance once it gets going.  yeah, it's definitely,  there's a lot of play involved in just kind of in feeling and texture and do any more flour, do any more water.  It's  fun. But yeah, I've never made the same loaf twice. I don't know how these bakeries are like super consistent. That's what's impressive about it when you can get really consistent.

14:57
I don't know either and I will never be that consistent and I don't want to be. think the joy in making sourdough bread is you can make it different every time  and it is a win if it tastes good.  The other reason I avoided getting into it is because I don't love sourdough bread. never have. And  it's the tang in the bread that I don't like the tanginess to it.  And I found out that, if you don't, if you don't make it right,

15:27
As the sourdough starter peaks or something, it's less sour, something like that. uh, the loaf that I made, it was definitely sourdough, but it didn't have that really extreme tangy sour to it that I really didn't like. So I've learned a lot in the last month about sourdough and I have a lady coming on my show, I think Friday, I think it's this Friday, who is, who has a lot of experience with sourdough.

15:58
I almost said expert, but I don't know that she's an expert. She has a lot of experience in it. And she also is an admin on one of the Facebook sourdough groups. I'm very excited to talk to her and I'm going to be like, so tell it to me. Like I'm a four year old beginner. How do people do this? Because I put it off for years because I was afraid of doing it and it's not that hard. honestly,

16:24
If you don't like to cook, you're not going to want to make sourdough bread at all. Yeah, you definitely have. Yeah, it's cooking.  is  chemistry. It is cooking and it is patience. And I am not the most patient lady ever. So  we have to plan your day around it basically.  Because it'll be three hours in, it will be proofing at this point and then I can go do this and I got to be back to do this at that point. So.

16:52
You really do have to plan your whole day around it. Yeah, and even the shortcut recipes, you're still looking at five to six hours. Sure, yeah. That's a lot of time. And you got to figure out stuff you can do in between the stretch and pulls on the dough because it's every half an hour or something on the recipe that I use. Exactly. So it's a thing and I don't want to get too far into it, any further into it because the lady is going to be on my show on Friday and I don't want to...

17:21
overdose people on sourdough. We're  off the lesson now. Yeah. So you guys  have kids? We have a daughter.  She is six years old. And  she just went to her grandparents' house  for a science lesson. So we have the benefit of living very close to both sets of parents.  None of us are from Jacksonville originally, so we've kind of all

17:50
come together on the same  mindset that we want to be close to family, especially  with grandchildren in the mix.  And so when we decided to do homeschooling, was mostly driven for health reasons.  Our child was diagnosed with leukemia last January. And so  going to a traditional school has been increasingly more difficult.

18:19
Just because we miss a lot of school for doctor's appointments and things like that. So we decided to pull her for homeschooling and all of the grandparents have offered to take on a  subject so that Kevin and I  don't have to do it all on our own.  And what is great is that we have a few teachers, retired teachers in our family. And so they've been extremely helpful stepping in.

18:48
for some of the harder things like handwriting and  word groups, you know, to learn to read.  That is stellar. I love that. So what grade would she be in if she was in is going to enter the first grade. Okay. So does she go to and regular school? She did go to kindergarten.  Yep. Okay.  How is she doing?  She is

19:18
Great, we do have  occasional  hospital admittances, but  it seems to be very benign reasons.  You fever spikes require us to be there for 48 hours. If her blood counts are below where they're supposed to be, just to make sure there's no  like blood infections,  things like that.  So our last two admittances were just there, we were there,  but no  underlying.

19:47
Reason causing the fever so they let us come home. Okay,  and I don't know anything about leukemia I mean I had a cousin who  who got it as a young adult not not a kid but it's like in her early  20s actually  and I've heard about it, but I haven't heard about it in little kids. Is there  a cause or is it just something that happened?  Seems to be just something that happens. They haven't really

20:16
nailed down.  As far as I know,  when your kid's diagnosed, at least at our hospital, they give you a big encyclopedia on everything about childhood leukemia. course, we all poured through it that first week and read  it.  Kids seem to do better than when  young adults or adults get it. Kids seem to bounce back, take the treatment a little bit better, I guess, just because they're resilient.

20:45
kind of by their nature. But no, there's no, as far as I can tell, they haven't nailed down what causes it or like what to look for. It was basically she had leg pain and Larkin noticed she had some bloody gums one morning and it was over a couple of days, I guess. And then some bruising on the legs and Larkin was just adamant like, need to take her into the doctor. And it pretty much, I mean, it was by that night, that's pretty much

21:15
But they knew that's what she had. mean, it was pretty quick. Yeah. You know how they talk about  spidey senses regarding Spider-Man, the Spider-Man comic? Yeah.  Mommy senses always trust them. That's true. Yeah.  Well, it's totally left field. And there's different types too. So she was a low risk.  Quote unquote best type. Yeah. And so anyways, but.

21:43
The hardest part of treatment is over and we are just kind in the maintenance phase.  And the tough part about it for unlike other cancers is that the treatment is just more long-term.  It's like over a two and a half year.

22:01
span rather than like six months like some of these other cancer treatments are. So that's a little bit the tough part about it. But yeah, we're kind of, we see light at the end of the tunnel here. Good. I was hoping that was going to be the case because I didn't want to cry on my podcast again. I want to make my guests cry again.  What does she think about the farm? Oh, she loves it. Yeah. She,  uh,

22:28
wants to be an animal rescuer and a vet when she grows up.  And so she's very hands-on with, especially like the chicks, we incubate  eggs. We live above the farm, so we can go downstairs and see our animals and  look out the window and see them in the pastures. we incubate most of our eggs,  but our last batch we let a broody hen

22:56
do the incubating and she did pretty good for a first time mother. yeah,  Hazel loves the farm life.

23:08
Okay, cool.  So,  oh, I was gonna say, your daughter is homeschooled.  I'm gonna tell you right now, that little girl is gonna learn so much more  through homeschooling than she ever would have learned in public school.  Yeah, we can already see a huge difference from  traditional school to homeschooling in a positive way. I mean, she's just made

23:37
huge leaps and bounds because we're doing a little bit of catch up over summer so that we feel really ready for our first grade coursework. I mean, the one-on-one time  makes a huge difference.  And I'm not even talking about  the book learning part of it. If you've got grandparents involved and you guys are on a farm  and she's going to be an outdoor kiddo,  she's going to learn so much more in general.

24:07
like about animal husbandry, about how plants work,  how dirt is not the same thing as soil, you know? Yeah. And she goes on us with hunting trips. We do a lot of camping.  She  just has a love for nature, which I love, because so do we. Yep.  My two boys, my two youngest boys, we did homeschooling the last couple of years of their high school.

24:35
I'm not going to lie to you, we did homeschooling before they were homeschooled because we would go hiking, we would go camping, we were growing food.  We would go to farms and visit other people's animals because we didn't have any. We had cats, you know, we had all these things that we supplemented their public schooling with.  And these kids would tell their teachers stuff about a subject and teachers would call me and be like, how do they know about this?

25:04
Yeah, that's like Hazel's superpowers. She knows all the animals, species names. So she would go in and, you know, they dump out all the animal toys and she could name every single one. Part of that is from like our zoo keeping background. We would when I was working there, if we had like a newly hatched bird that needed some around the clock attention.

25:34
It would come home with me. So we have had penguin chicks and flamingo chicks and vulture chicks  long before we really started getting serious about our homestead.  So  just learning the cycles.  And then when we, when she finally entered school,  we were doing at home,  uh, the monarch watch. don't know if you've heard of this. Yes.

26:01
Yeah, so go ahead, tell me. We would raise cat, well first we planted host plants that we had, you know, wild caterpillars visiting our host plants and then we would, when they were close to pupating or developing their chrysalises, we would put them in a netted enclosure so that when they hatched, could tag them, record it and submit it to the...

26:29
Monarch Watch database and then release them. And then the following year we would see if we could catch any that had our tags. And so that was a great, fun, hands-on learning process. And we were able to bring some caterpillars to her school and show them how to participate in that with her classmates.

26:56
I think you win the coolest parents award guys.  It's really fun. It's fun for everybody. You want to have an  activity that is engaging for all ages because that's when you really bond and  develop these great memories together.

27:23
Yeah. And the hands-on of that project is so good for kids because kids learn best when they have something to do with their hands that  transfers the information from their fingertips to their brain.  And I'm that way with anything I need to remember.  I need to remember something, I have to write it down with a pen on paper or I won't remember it. Yes. I'm a hands-on learner as well. I think  that's the easiest way to make a

27:52
cement in your brain. Yeah, the connection just happens. And I don't know why I could probably type something in the computer into a notepad and it still won't stick. If I write it,  it sticks.  Okay. So  what's  the future look like for your mini farm? Are you going to expand it? Are you going to just maintain it? How's that going to work? I think right now  we're just kind of maintaining, you know, we've

28:21
tried expanding it and that was fine. We did a lot of milk sales, egg sales, things like that. There is a little bit of a level of stress though that comes with, know, selling some of your products, especially milk. you want to sell as fresh as possible and, and keeping up with your, it becomes very expensive on like our end if

28:51
jars aren't brought back to us.  you don't want to charge people  necessarily  for that expense because then it becomes impractical for people to want to visit your farm and  buy your products if it's too expensive. And so we  had like a small clientele base and that was very comfortable for us. And so that's probably where we're going to maintain. I'm not trying to become a dairy or a

29:20
or you know, a grocer or anything. Just kind of like a small farm that offers  on occasion some products and you can visit the animals.  That sounds great. Low key, low stress.  Yeah.  Yeah. Okay. So I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost there. Where can people find you online?  We  are most present on Instagram.

29:49
Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm.  We do have a Facebook page. It's not as active as mostly there to just maintain our name.  But yeah, we don't have a website, but we are on Instagram  social media.  Okay, awesome.  Larkin and Kevin, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And how sweet is it that your daughter was at the grandparents' house so you had some quiet?

30:16
Yeah,  thank you for inviting us.  It's really fun to talk with people  that are like-minded and  share and learn from each other. think that's what is at the heart of home setting is swapping information and  valuing  a simpler life really.  Absolutely.

30:40
All right, guys. Thank you again. And as usual, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. I hope you guys have a great afternoon. Thank you. You too, bye.