Haggard Mountain Homestead

Today I'm talking with Casey at Haggard Mountain Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.

 

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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.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Casey at Haggard Mountain Homestead. Good morning, Casey. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you doing? I'm good. Where are you located?  We are in Western Pennsylvania, a little bit outside of Pittsburgh, PA. Is it raining?  Not today, but apparently it's supposed to,  I think tomorrow.

00:30
Have you been going through what my parents have been going through in Maine where it's rained all every day for the last 10 years, it seems like? Basically, yeah. Every single weekend it's been raining. So a lot of our projects have gotten pushed back, for sure. But now we're having a heat wave, so opposite. Great. That helps a whole lot, doesn't it? Yeah, it's literally the exact opposite, though. We went from cold and rainy to now, I think it's supposed to be like 95, 96 today. Yeah.

00:59
talked to my dad the other day. Whoops, I talked to my dad the other day and he said, honey, he said, I swear, it feels like I have been trying to get my summer garden in since two summers ago for this year. I'm like, yeah, we went through this last year too. So, all right, so tell me about yourself and what you do at the Homestead. So how much of a backstory do you want here? Cause I can talk, trust me.

01:26
Tell me what led you to having the homestead. All right. So my husband and I got married in 2016 and started looking for a house.  And we knew that we wanted a little bit of property.  And at that point, I just wanted a garden, some chickens,  all of that.  And  we ended up purchasing our property. have a little bit under two acres in 2018.

01:55
Got our chickens, got our garden in,  and it's like we can't stop. It's honestly been addicting.  We started with a garden and the chickens  and we put in fruit trees.  He's gotten into honeybees. Now we're doing flowers.  We've done meat chickens  and  now I'm doing the social media stuff too.  You are cementing my belief that once you get into this,  the questions that come up are  why not?

02:25
And what's the worst that could happen? And I'm very, very careful about the second question. I try not to say that outside where the universe can hear me. Oh yeah. If you put it out there, it might actually happen. Well, if I'm going to say it outside, I say what's the best that could happen instead of the worst? That's fair. I like that too. And that way the universe is like, what do I do with that?

02:51
hopefully give you the best that can happen because that's what we want to put out there, manifest it. Exactly. And that's what I'm kind of getting at is that  if you try, the worst thing that happens is it doesn't go quite the way you wanted it to. But if you don't try,  nothing happens. Yeah, that's very true.  We actually, we have a five-year-old son now  and teaching him to emotionally

03:18
regulate himself and trying to like give him these life lessons and how to cope with things. That's actually, he's, I'm a perfectionist and he's very much a perfectionist as well. And that's, I'm trying to tell him, I'm like, what happens if it, if you fail, you just learn a lesson and you move on. Yeah, I used to be a perfectionist and then I realized that it was stopping me. Like if I couldn't do it right the first time, I didn't want to do it at all. And

03:46
I finally just was like, okay, start something that you don't have to tell people about. Just try something  and see if it fails. If it fails and you want to share about what you learned, cool. If you don't, no one has to know about it. Yeah, I like that too. I think  I'm 34 now and honestly, through all of high school, was  scared to try new things because  I was so much of a perfectionist. And I think at this point in my life,

04:14
Not that I stopped caring, but I stopped caring what other people think. And now especially I make silly videos for the internet. Sometimes I act a fool and I just, don't care what they think. If they think I'm an idiot, so be it. There's a really good saying that what other people think is none of my or your business. What they think about me or you. And it's true.  What other people think about me is not my business. It's in their head. Yeah, I like that.

04:42
So I try to hang on to that and I try to realize that if I screwed something up,  other people probably have too. And if I keep trying and share it, people will learn from that. So I'm trying to be very positive about my failures. And when you're home studying, I feel like you kind of have to be, because there's a lot of failures and a lot of learning. It's the best part. The learning is the best part. I have perpetual curiosity. And so for me,

05:10
living on three acres and we have chickens, we have two barn cats, we have a dog. That's it  for animals right now.  And we have a garden and we every year try to put in a new plant, something we haven't grown before,  because we're curious and we want to figure out how it goes. my husband, every  December, January, he says, what new plant are we putting in this year? And I go, hmm, I hadn't thought about it yet. Let me look.

05:38
One of the ones we tried was kohlrabi. I don't know if you know what that is. I know what it is. I haven't tried to grow it here. Yeah, it's the weirdest looking plant and we weren't sure that we had the right growing conditions to grow it and come to find out it's super easy to grow. And it tastes like a cross between a cabbage and a radish. And I love cabbage and I love radish. So I was very happy with the outcome because we actually had edible kohlrabi vegetables to have in our salad.

06:08
Yeah, maybe I'll have to put that on our list. Yeah, it grows. It grows in the same conditions as broccoli or cabbage. So if you can grow those two things, you can grow Colorado. Yeah, we try and do a similar thing every single year. We try and like add something to our homestead. This year is a little bit. I don't know. This year is kind of different. We raised meat chickens for the first time to sell this year and we did one round of those. We're going to take a little bit of a break now during the summer just

06:38
I'm working a lot more than I normally do currently  and I think we're going to like pick that back up in the fall. But that's kind of like our new project this year is like actually raising them to sell for profit. Nice. And that leads me to my next question.  Do you, do you,  again, I always butcher this question. I'm so sorry.  Do you have things that you do  or sell that support?

07:04
homestead itself?  The meat chickens are the first thing that we've actually sold. We've given a lot away, obviously.  But, or no, I take that back. I did sell, we sold eggs last year to a local CSA farm  and then they sold the same eggs back to their CSA members.  They have a little bit of a, they have a farm stand as well, like a little shop that they open on the weekends.

07:33
I have so many dreams and ideas  for what I want to do  and  making that happen is a little bit difficult right now.  I don't know if you've deep dived in our social media at all, but we've been trying to buy a bigger farm for a couple years now. don't know. Did you see that at all? I did not see that. I saw a bunch of stuff, but I did not happen to see that. Okay. So  do you want that story? Yes.

08:02
So we, in adding new projects every year, one of the things we figured out is that two acres really isn't all that much.  Quickly, we are running out of room  and we have a lot of big trees here, lots of hills  and just  usable space we started lacking in. So  we started looking for  bigger property.

08:27
to expand, want to actually start, our dream is to have a beef cattle farm with a big farm stand, be able to sell stuff that we raise and grow from our own property.  And the real estate market around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is  insane right now.  They're putting up so many developments that anybody who has land is selling it for millions of dollars.  So yeah, it's bad right now.

08:57
We, I think it was a year and a half to two years ago now, we heard of an organization called Pennsylvania FarmLink and PA FarmLink. They have a website, they have social media accounts too. And their purpose, they want to link new and beginning farmers with farmers that are looking to retire and get out of farming to basically

09:26
bridge the gap there so that people can get into farming and they can have their farms continue and not sell  to developers. So we actually found a property  through that website, got in contact with the current owners  and  the plan was to do a lease to own situation. We talked to them for about a year and then they

09:53
came back and said, we don't want to do lease to own anymore. We just want to sell outright.  that break your heart? Absolutely. Because at that point we had stopped looking for anything else  and we were not like, we were kind of betting on this,  like hopeful that it was going to happen, but also a little bit hesitant. And we had told them from the get-go, we said, we can't afford to purchase. It was a 70 acre farm.

10:19
I said, we can't afford to purchase this with the way that interest rates are right now. And that was like the whole point why we wanted to do lease to own.  And  yeah, it was, it was a little bit of a stomp on the old heart.  Um,  I'm so you haven't found a new place yet. Correct. Yes or no. We have not.  After that happened, we kind of started looking again, putting some feelers out.

10:48
We're also, my husband and I are both veterans. So we're involved with the Pennsylvania veteran farmers organization too.  And I've gone to a couple events through them. I've gone to some PA farm link events. I went to, we're in Washington County in Pennsylvania. I've gone to some of our counties farm bureau meetings, just trying to like network and see if there's anybody who is in the situation like.

11:14
Are you looking to get out of farming and you want somebody to take over or do you have any land that we can lease?  And I have not been very lucky in that yet. Okay. So I have a couple things for you. Number one, keep networking. You never know what you're going to find. Number two, we started looking back in 2015 for a place and it took us until  2020 to find it.  And I'm in Minnesota.

11:41
And the housing market here is crazy too. It is still on fire. Properties come on the market and they're gone within 24 hours. So it's not just Pennsylvania. But when we were looking back in 2015, we found this adorable house. I fell in love with the minute I saw it and it was within our price range. My realtor said, why don't you try writing them a love letter? And I said, what do you mean a love letter? And she said,

12:09
send them a letter and say, we viewed your property, it's beautiful.  This is our plans for  it if you sell it to us and  tell them what you're thinking of doing. And so I did that.  And  the day that I sent that to my realtor through email  was the day that people decided they wanted to keep it and stay.

12:35
So I understand your heartbreak because I really, really wanted that house on that property. Yeah. At this point, like I, I understand that it wasn't meant to be. It seemed like all of the pieces were lining up for us.  Um, we even, my husband  would have had to switch jobs  and within a week of us meeting with them the first time he had secured a job in that area.  we were like lining everything up for us and then they started kind of pushing back.

13:04
Yeah, it just it wasn't meant to be and  if it is meant to be for us, I know that we'll find that perfect place. It will. You will find it. I know you will because it's the thing that you want and  you're going to manifest that just like you've manifested other things in your life. It's how it works. It's just that there's  there's God's time and there's your time. You know,  and maybe maybe God has something better for you. I mean, I'm not a God girl, but.

13:31
It feels like one of the God things that people talk about. Yeah, I can definitely see that. We actually, it's not like a super good lead, but, um, did you, did you see how I went out to Hershey to meet up with another homesteader recently? Yes. Tell me about that. Okay. So I'll, I'll give you the whole backstory too. Okay. That's fine. So I have been friends with Kristen Norley and

14:00
By default, Hank, like Hank and I never really talked, but Kristen and I are at the point where we talk daily. And they are up in Northeastern Pennsylvania. So we had never met in person, but we are now at the point where we talk daily. We've been friends for like two years. And I, at one of these events that I went to, I found out about this new and beginning farmer grant. That is through our local farm credit. It's Horizon Farm Credit.

14:30
And  it is for $10,000. So  everyone was encouraging us to apply because we were going to be starting our meat chicken business.  There's a plan for next year to get bees again  and get into like making honey and hopefully selling that too. And some cut flowers, all of that. So I wrote up a business plan, applied for that, and I sent her the information and I said, you have to apply for this.

15:00
She was a little bit more hesitant than I was. I was like, no, you have to apply for this. I texted her daily asking if she submitted yet. And at one point she's like, I don't even think I'm going to submit it. I was like, you have to submit this. Well, good thing I like tormented the crap out of her because she won. She won the $10,000 grant. Great. Yeah. And so they're using that money now. I'm sad I didn't win, but again, it wasn't meant to be.

15:28
And I'm super happy that my friend won. So they're using that to  jumpstart their maple syrup business.  And I went out to see them awarded this grant.  Um, and while I was there, I talked to another person from PA Farm Link and she said that she might have some leads for me of people in my area that are looking to retire.  So.

15:54
I'm now in touch with her hoping to get more leads. Yes, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And like I said, keep reaching out, keep doing the networking. Someone will have an answer for you at some point. And you sound like you're young enough that you have time. I don't feel very young some of these days. Well, you don't sound like you're 65. You sound like you're probably what, late 20s, early 30s? I'm 34. So you were close. So you've got time.

16:24
I, we didn't buy our place until- Mentally I feel like I'm about like 84. Uh huh, I understand completely. We didn't buy our homestead until we were both 50. So, so you got some time, honey, I promise. Um, okay, cool, awesome stories. And you are a very good friend to be supporting your friend in, in that, that do it, apply for the grant. You need to apply for the grant. Please apply for the grant, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

16:54
We have to lift people up, you know, it shouldn't be a competition. It should be a, a gathering in. And one of things I love about the people I talked to on the podcast is everyone understands that a rising tide raises all ships. And if we make it a community and we make it where we're all trying to help each other, everything changes. Everything gets better. And even when things go to shit, at least you have people.

17:23
that you can rely on to help you get back up again. Absolutely. I agree. And I, it's hard this day and age. feel like we went from being  very social creatures  to once technology started getting bigger, everybody started isolating. They just stay in their houses and watch TV. Maybe you'll like text people. People don't talk on the phone anymore. People don't meet up and actually do things in person. And one of the things I started noticing is, especially like in the social media sphere,

17:53
Everybody's looking out for themselves. They want, they'll only be friends with you if they think they can get followers from you  or stuff like that.  I just, me personally, and a lot of the people that I'm close with, we want to help teach other people and we want to lift each other up, not just look out for ourselves and what we can get out of situations. Yes, absolutely. That's part of the reason that I started the podcast because I wanted to give you guys

18:22
a place where you could talk about what you do and why you do it and how you do it  so that the kids that are coming up behind you and me have a place to go to learn about this. Yeah, that's a really good point too. And I think at least now like my generation, we're having kids and raising kids in this environment. Like my, my son is five.  He doesn't really know how to use a phone or a tablet yet.

18:51
And I feel like even just like 10 years ago, that would have been seen as a negative, but I'm kind of proud of that now because he hasn't been on it playing games and stuff. Yes. The only thing that your five-year-old kid needs a phone for is to dial 911 if there is an emergency, like mommy fell down and is not responding to me. Oh, I absolutely agree. And that's he's, um, he's starting kindergarten this year and they were

19:20
He  knows a lot of things  about, like, he can count and he recognizes letter sounds and stuff like that, but they did an evaluation and they were like, oh, you need to work on his letter and number recognition. I'm like, yes, I probably do. But he also knows how to weed a garden. He knows where his food comes from. He knows the life stages of meat chickens, like all of these things that.

19:49
Other kids don't know, but they're like so focused on letters and numbers. Okay, Casey, if it makes you feel any better. My youngest son went to kindergarten  and they called me like three weeks after he started kindergarten. And they said,  he's really behind his classmates.  And I said, how so? And they said, well, he doesn't,  he knows his alphabet, but he doesn't know how to read. And he knows numbers, but he doesn't know how to do.

20:18
math and I said well isn't that what kindergarten is for and they said well no kindergarten is more like first and second grade now because preschool is taking the place of kindergarten.  I was like well I'm sorry that I chose to raise my kid and not put him in preschool  and how can I help make this easier for you? I was really really offended and I was I was pretty upset because  when I went to kindergarten

20:47
I learned how to read and I learned how to do math because that's what kindergarten was for. So I think that we have

20:59
This sound terrible.  I think that as a general rule, we have our priorities backwards. And yes, would it have been nice if he could have read a primer when he started kindergarten?  Would it have been nice if he had been able to see a picture of four eggs and plus  sign and four more eggs and know that that's eight eggs?  Sure. But that's what kindergarten is for. So

21:28
I haven't told that story on the podcast and I've been wanting to, so thank you for giving me an opening.  no problem. So yeah, priorities are a little screwy right now.  I was just listening to a Farmerish Kind of Life podcast, a lady that hosted, her name is Amy Dingman. I listened to her this morning, she's friend of mine.  And she was talking  a lot about how convenience is nice, but doing the actual work to get the thing that you want.

21:57
has real satisfaction in it and it fills you up.  And so  I think maybe that's sort of what we're both getting at that this lifestyle  makes you  satisfied in a way that other things don't. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. just raising your kid up, knowing how like where their food comes from, the life cycle of plants and all of that.

22:27
Like how to grow your own food. A lot of people don't know that. even, it's not like funny, but I posted some  videos about us raising our meat chickens and like  one of the most popular ones we did was showing them on butcher day. I didn't show the actual like butchering of them, but I just talked about like, okay, they're old enough. We're taking them to the butcher.

22:52
There were so many angry people, so many angry people that had like nasty things to say. But honestly, like, and I was talking to some other homesteaders about it who have had similar reactions when they talk about that.  And  there was another woman, she was talking about some lady was like in her face yelling at her because she butchers her own animals. And she was asking the lady, she was like, do you eat meat from the grocery store? And the lady said yes. And she was like, well, what do you think? How do you think it got there?

23:21
And when you raise it on your own property, like they're out in the sunshine on fresh grass in a chicken tractor. That's how we raise our meat chickens versus a warehouse where they're all crammed together, not treated nicely by  random people. It's just, yeah. And so that's what my son knows now where we get our chicken from versus the grocery store where it's just plastic wrapped. Yes. And that is awesome.

23:48
I love that he knows where his food comes from. It's really important.  There is a real cognitive dissonance  in the United States, especially  about where food comes from and how it becomes food. You know, we go to zoos, we go to petting zoos, we go to farms and we see  the beautiful Jersey cow.

24:16
with a really pretty face  and we humanize them. We see them through human eyes and we're like, oh, what a pretty face. And we see them  as,  there's a word, I can't think of the word right now.  There's a thing that we do as humans where we transfer or project our feelings onto an animal and  animals are animals, they're not humans.  And people forget that

24:46
animals are what produce the meat that we eat and that  at some point that beautiful cow or steer  is going to be killed and it's going to be butchered and it's going to become  steak that we buy and we eat.  And the cognitive dissonance just drives me insane. I have known since I was probably four years old  that the cute little calf that was sucking on my thumb  at my grandpa's neighbor's house

25:15
was going to become the steak that I ate two years later. I've known that forever. And I had to reconcile that because I loved that calf that I spent time with.  And I loved the steak that I ate that came from that cow or steer. So  I just feel like people don't  quite understand the process here. Yeah, they don't at all. Um, there is definitely that disconnect. And then they also

25:44
I think they mistake like small scale farming where I  not like we didn't like love on our meat chickens every day. Like I wasn't out there cuddling them or whatever, but they were treated really well. I never pushed them, kicked them. They had plenty of space. had food and water, fresh grass, bugs, all of that. And people not saying all factory farming is bad. Like we need food.

26:14
to survive. But like if I had a choice between how I raise our animals versus buying it from the store where I don't know how they were treated, like you'd think that they would be happy that we're doing what we're doing. would think, but it's not always true. Again, part of the reason I started the podcast is to educate people about all of these things. And the other thing about chicken from the grocery store, I don't know if you've bought

26:43
chicken at like a Walmart or Target lately. But we got chicken from a Walmart a couple months ago and it was not good. Like it was really stringy and it just wasn't right. And I thought, what is wrong with the chicken that people are buying at the store these days? Cause this is not good. Yeah. I don't know what brand you got, but if you look on, and I'm not trying to like fear monger here. Um, I don't think it's

27:11
super unsafe and people are gonna die if they eat grocery store meat. But a lot of the stuff in grocery stores, sometimes I've, I have heard that they like rinse them in bleach.  And then I've also heard, and you can see on the packaging, it'll usually say that it's like injected with  XYZ to like maintain flavor. Yeah.

27:34
although it probably doesn't need to be injected with anything if it's good chicken.  these are the things  that come up in these conversations. And  I don't want to fear monger anybody or anything either. I want to educate and I want to invite people in.  But either way, if you can get chicken from a local grower where you can actually go see their farm, see their chickens, see how they're raised, get to know them.

28:03
Then you can kind of feel rest assured that you're getting a good product that isn't going to hurt you and that is going to taste good. So anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour Casey and we're there. I feel like we talked about a lot of stuff. I don't know that we talked about a lot of what you're doing,  but it also sounds like you have big plans and we did talk about that. So where can people find you online? am currently on Instagram,  on YouTube and then

28:32
I have a Facebook account, but I'm not on there. I just have everything from Instagram kind of cross post over. But I do post a lot of stories on Instagram and then Instagram and YouTube are where I post all of our newest stuff. And YouTube, once our son is in school this fall, I plan on  posting a lot more on YouTube, like long form style videos. And people can find you at Haggard Mountain Homestead for YouTube as well? Yes, Haggard Mountain Homestead.

29:01
Um, for Instagram and YouTube, it's at Haggard mountain. And then for Facebook, it's Haggard mountain homestead. That's like our page name. Okay.  Awesome. And as always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com.  Thank you, Casey, for your time. appreciate it. No problem. Thank you for having me. Have a fantastic day. You too. Bye.