Harmony Mountain Farm

Today I'm talking with Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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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 Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Doing well. So tell me all about yourselves and your story because I was looking at your website and it's a beautiful story. Well thank you.

00:29
Well, our story goes way back because Sydney and I together go way back. Um, so I don't know how far back you want to go, but we met in the eighth grade. So we go back pretty far. Originally from, um, a suburb in, in Connecticut outside of Hartford and we lived a pretty traditional life. So Bill and I, suburban, sorry, suburban life, but Bill and I, um, we met when we were 19, we started dating, we started raising a family.

00:58
um, built, you know, built a business and I was in education and we've done a lot of different things. And, um, when our resource allowed, we started skiing up here in Northern New Hampshire. And at the same time, um, my kids had grown and kind of left the house and, and we were just starting to, I think, examine where we wanted the next part of our life to go.

01:26
And I was having some health problems and we were getting tired of the hustle and bustle of living in the area that we lived in. And we started talking about how food was impacting on our health and we just went down the rabbit hole. I was reading a bunch of books on leaving the suburbs or leaving the city to become a farmer and we started researching farmers.

01:54
Joe Saladin and- Yeah, and largely for entertainment at the time because we're living vicariously through those folks, I think, and their stories. Yeah, and then, so this is a, we call it our midlife crisis farm. So we're city suburban people who did not grow up doing this, but we were attracted to the lifestyle for the health benefits and-

02:23
And the more we learned, the more we educated ourselves, Cindy more formally in reading books. I'm a YouTube university guy, so I try, I can, you know, I spend a lot of time watching other people's stories and farms and things. I think we also need to mention we connected with a lot of other farmers, one of them being my cousin out in Missouri, who is, you know, had a generational cattle farm. So we would talk to people and, and

02:53
how you think about what we wanted to do for the health of the animal, our environment, and for ourselves. We think that raising animals or doing what we do, it has many, I guess you've helped me with this. Yeah, well, it adds more meaning to life. Our lives were feeling meaningless in the traditional suburban American model

03:23
you know, our free time was spent, you know, just trying to fill it with shopping or going to different events. And then it didn't seem to be a lot of meaning in that. So when we started down the road with animals, um, which then brought us into our diet and, uh, it just gave more meaning to our life. It was, we felt as though we were doing things that had a greater impact than, you know, Hey, what do you want to do? Let's go shopping or, you know,

03:50
let's go see a movie or a show or yeah and it just seems so incredibly interesting for both of us. It wasn't like we can't, you know, we kind of were doing it at the same time kind of parallel doing research and then it just all kind of evolved on our long drives back and forth from New Hampshire to Connecticut how we wanted to proceed and that just continued to grow.

04:19
And the beautiful thing about farming and living off our land and living sustainably is that we're never bored. I mean, and the work is never done. So there's always something to be done and to be learned. I think I am absolutely motivated to learn new things. I think that's big for me. I think for Bill, it's probably the same.

04:49
Um, it's, it's definitely evolving. We've gone through different animals and, um, you know, trying to find that the right mix of animals for us. Right now we, we work beef cattle. We have a couple of our family dairy cows for ourselves. Um, we do pork and we do poultry, both layers and meat birds. It's pretty much the mainstay of what we're doing is the beef, the poultry and the pork.

05:17
And then we have other animals just for enjoyment. We have three goats that are family pets, we have guarding dogs that are extremely valuable and dear to us. And I think that the main thing for us is like some of the things that I took away from some of the farmers that I had read about or he had watched on YouTube is that everybody has a job here. And so everybody fills a role, all the animals fill a role.

05:46
And they do work for us. Our dog patches is probably, I mean, we don't know what we would do without him. The great Pyrenees and he exemplifies every positive trait you've ever read about a great Pyrenees we have found in our patches. Great discernment, big strong animal, great disposition. But he keeps all the predators off our property.

06:15
When we first started, we had lost several birds. I had lost, you know, we put them in the chicken tractors and every couple of days we moved them so that they can forage on new grass and eat bugs and things like that. But we were losing chickens to bear, coyote, weasel. Weasel was the worst because the weasels, they just, I hope this isn't too gross, but they pull off the head and leave the rest of the body.

06:43
And it was such, it felt like such a waste. But you did, Cindy did stumble one morning going out to feed the chickens. She stumbled on a bear that was sitting in our chicken tractor, who had just killed 75 birds. So she pretty much rolled up face to face on a bear. Eating on our. And we had electric wire around that. I mean, these are some of the lessons we had to learn the hard way. I think.

07:09
There were a lot of tears for me in the beginning because I was so frustrated. It's not like any job you've ever had where you come in and you have your checklist and it all goes fairly well. You might think you're having a hard day until you've done farming because you have animals escape. You have predators. You have, you know, disease. You have parasites. How are you going to manage all those things? And the most ethical way you can. And and to.

07:39
put everything in balance in terms of the way that everybody and everything works together and it's so imperfect. It's so beautifully imperfect. It's definitely imperfect. So I think, you know, we love telling our, you know, our early stories about some of the things that happened, like losing all those chickens, and that was the reason we brought patches on. And the minute we brought that dog on our property who had...

08:06
Previously been with a goat farmer and knew his job. Yeah, he was about, he's just about a year old when we got him. He knew his job. You could see it in his face. The intelligence was visible. And we immediately saw the results. I wasn't losing birds anymore. It's that I don't even close my laying hens in the coop anymore. Yeah, we don't have to close our layers in at night because he keeps such a good watch on them.

08:35
The other morning he had treed a bear, a big bear, and he had treated, I think it had been up in that tree for two hours because when I came out, Patches was in the woods and I had to coax him out. And as soon as I got him about 30 yards from that tree, the bear saw his opening and came screaming down the tree to get away. So these are, you know, when we've learned so many fabulous things about animals and how they contribute to our land, to our lives.

09:04
That's a good point because we, and we tell, when we give our farm tours, we, we make it a point to tell people, you know, I think the conventional thought for example, is to look at a cow and think, oh, that's a, you know, a docile meandering animal. And when people hear that, no, they're super athletic. They can be very fast. Um, they can be very dangerous if you don't know how to handle, you know, beef cattle. Um, but for the most part, they're extremely social.

09:33
very smart. So we've gotten to know the animals in such a different way. I don't think there's any other way we could have come to know the pigs and how smart they are and how fun they can be actually to handle and to have on the property. So yeah, getting to know the animals in just a completely different way. And their social dynamic to me is fascinating to watch them and how they

10:03
communicate and how they work together. And every species has a different- Modality and way of operating. Right, and again, this comes from reading a lot of Temple Grandin. And I enjoy Temple Grandin. Her books, I think I've read them all. But especially animals and translation. And she puts things very simply. She's a-

10:30
autistic woman who's done a lot for the autistic community, but she's also done a lot for the farming community in terms of the way that the animal is processed because she uses their natural inclinations to go through the processing facility without any stress. And there's a lower attrition rate when it's done properly. We do have one facility like this in New Hampshire that does this kind of humane.

10:59
slaughtering. But there's also other places that, you know, do humane slaughtering. You just have to kind of we pecked through that some. That was probably the most challenging. That was eye-opening for us to work through the processing end of this business. Because we, you know, we spend a lot of time and energy and resources raising these animals in a very particular way. We don't want to just hand them off to an industrial processing model.

11:28
So finding the right people and finding the right way to close the loop and bring the animal to market has been really challenging. We have gone through a dozen different processors and we have driven 250 miles at times to try and bring animals to a processor that's gonna, in our view, do the right thing.

11:57
Did we answer your question? I kind of rambled on here. No, that's completely fine. But I have a couple of things to share along, well, from what you said sparked my thoughts. A farm is not a farm without a dog. I fully believe that. Our place is also our midlife crisis. So welcome to the club, I guess. There's no stopping a bear that's hungry without a big...

12:27
Firearm. Right. And Temple Grandin is amazing. I've read a couple of her books and I just, I love her personality because she's so matter of fact. Yes. And she has always struck me as somebody who sees a problem, thinks about it and goes, well, duh, here's the answer. Right. It's so true. I love her. She's great.

12:56
She is. She's absolutely amazing. My cousin had an opportunity to meet her. I have a signed copy that she has around autographed copy and she was struck by how matter of fact she was as well. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. And then you mentioned Joel Salatin.

13:18
I don't know if you guys have listened to my podcast at all, but there's an episode where I interviewed Joel and he is fantastic. If you haven't listened to it, you should go listen to it. I haven't. I'll have to go back and read that. He was the first one that really got me going and I just stumbled on it. It was almost divine intervention. I was going down a YouTube rabbit hole and he's just so, he has such an educated approach and he's able to articulate that.

13:47
so well that, yeah, I did a really deep dive on him in the beginning and a lot of what we've done has been modeled after his teachings. I would have to say though, I always tell people who come on our farm tours that those square paddocks that he can make where he is in the Shenandoah Valley that we have in New Hampshire. You're not making them in New Hampshire. They're crooked, they're like, they're all bent. We're the granite state because you can't go more

14:17
10 inches. It's like 10 inches we could go down. So making fence for us is really, really tough. Yeah. We're in the heart of the white. We're actually just north of Mount Washington. So we're we're, you know, up in the mountains. It's very rocky. It's a very harsh climate. But we love the fact that it's a harsh climate because it's a challenge. Yeah, we have snow on the ground for six months. It's not unusual to get negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

14:46
without a wind chill. Yeah, so it's but we embrace that challenge for sure and the ground is definitely part of that challenge to Like Cindy said you're not getting a straight fence line up here. Dealing with frozen water. I think that that's a challenge as well. Yes ice is terrible.

15:09
Oh, you're in a cold climate too. Oh, and I grew up in one too. I grew up in Maine, so I completely understand harsh winters. And we got our first light frost this morning in Minnesota. Oh wow. Already? Yeah. It was 37 degrees at 630 this morning. I was like, oh, here we go. Yep. We've been lucky this year. We usually have our first frost by now, but... It's been a spectacular fall.

15:38
Yeah, here too. It's been a blessing the last six weeks. Well we're really, it's okay. Like October 4th is a perfect day for the first light frost where we live. But we have like 50, I think, I can't remember what my husband planted. It might be San Marzano tomatoes, it might be Early Girl tomatoes, I can't remember.

16:03
He planted them back in mid July because we had a really rough start to our growing season here with flooding. They all had green tomatoes set on them two weeks ago. We've been waiting for them to show some blush so we could pick them and bring them in to let them finish ripening. Well, I don't know if those plants are going to still be alive by this afternoon. I don't know if that light frost will actually take them out.

16:31
We're going to be waiting to see this evening whether those plants are all black. Oh, I am sorry. Do you use hoop houses? We don't and we didn't know it was supposed to get, we didn't know. There was no frost warning for our area last night. So we couldn't even cover them if we'd wanted to because we didn't know we needed to. I'm sorry. That's okay. This is farming, you know.

17:00
It's disappointing though. You know, I take things really hard sometimes when things don't work out. You know, when I lose an animal, it's very, I mean, it's hard enough for me to bring them to slaughter because we do develop a relationship with them and I go through a little bit of grief when I have to process an animal. But when you lose them, like I did with my birds,

17:31
I'm not as much into the planting yet. We just started. The last few years, we've been getting into the gardening aspect. We put in a hoop house because in our climate, we can't really get tomatoes or peppers without the hoop house. Right. So we put in a sizable hoop house. We've been working on the soil. That's another thing I thought as a city kid or a suburban kid, you know, you throw some seeds in the ground, right? And something grows. And then I realized, yeah, no, that's not how that works.

18:01
It's a way more involved. Developing the soil, I think, is something we're still working at. We're on year four, the fourth grunt. Yeah, I think it is. And I would say my soil is is OK now. It's not good. It's not great. It's OK. You know, fortunately, we have, you know, the manure of the farm and the chickens and everything to fortify and build the soil. But as you know, that's not overnight. That it takes years.

18:29
We figure at some point, maybe 10 years from now, we'll have a really, really good time. I don't know. I think we did pretty well this year. My sister-in-law has been cutting things up, freezing it. We have things for the winter that we never had before. So I think we did better this year. We've definitely gotten better every year for sure. I should step back or go back a little bit and say that we've built a little bit of a compound here.

18:56
in that Sydney and I started with the house and the farm on 264 acres. We have since added about 80, 85 acres. So we're up to a little over 320, 326 acres, something like that. But my daughter decided to join us in this venture. So she moved up. She lived with us for two years as we built a house for her on the property. So she's here with her husband, my son-in-law, and three of our grandchildren.

19:26
nine, five, and three. So we have that second generational experience of essentially living together because their house is only a few hundred yards from ours. The boys, all three boys help us on the farm. And we tell people that our nine-year-old and I, he can drive a tractor. Yeah, you see this on the video shorts, little kids driving tractors. And I think a lot of people think that's horrible, right? They're like holding their breath, but.

19:54
When they grow up in this environment, they mature faster. They become very capable and competent at a young age. So at nine years old, he can pretty much drive any tractor. I have three different sizes of tractors, a skid steer, 30,000 pound excavator. He's quite competent and capable. And the little ones are- We should probably mention he never does that by himself. No, with supervision for sure. Yes.

20:24
But yeah, so having the opportunity to watch and participate in their development has been amazing. And then, as you probably know, not everyone wants to live next to a farm. And if someone buys property next to you, sometimes that turns into problems and issues. So we purchased a

20:54
any of that, any of those controversies where people move in and they don't want to be next to a farm because they don't like the animals barking or they don't like the smells or they don't like, you know, tractors going up and down the road. So we purchased that house and my brother and his wife moved up from Connecticut as well. His wife happens to be a childhood friend of Cindy's as well. So we have, I have two of my brothers living on the property with us.

21:22
I have my daughter and her family living here on the property. So we, and we didn't plan that. That was absolutely not planned. It just evolved into a little family compound. And I think a lot of people have migrated up to this area since COVID. So we've had the opportunity to kind of bond too with people who have, or they're refugees, I call them. Yeah, we're, we consider ourselves Connecticut refugees. We, we not, I don't know, I don't want to disparage.

21:52
Connecticut, but it just wasn't for us. We're looking for a more free lifestyle. New Hampshire provides that. But we've been able to connect, because sometimes it's difficult when you move into a rural community, and there's generations of folks who've grown up together, and you come in as an outsider, that dynamic has to be worked through, right? You just don't show up and have all kinds of relationships and resources. But what's made it easier is that

22:22
there's a lot of new people moving up and there's a lot of people exploring this lifestyle. So it does present the opportunity to connect with more people than I think would otherwise have happened. Right. Let me jump in just for a second. New Hampshire is the live free or die state. Yes? Yes. We're very proud of that. Yep. And you were mentioning when you move into a new place, it's hard to kind of get connected. When I moved to Minnesota.

22:52
They always talk about Midwestern people being super nice. Yes. And they are super nice. And I'm not going to sit here after however long I've been here since 1992 and tell you that Midwestern people suck because they don't. There are a lot of people that I have met that have been wonderful, friendly, generous, helpful people. But.

23:17
It's very hard in the Midwest to make friends because Minnesotans and Wisconsin people and Iowa people are very to themselves. And they assume if you're from the East coast, that you're flusk and direct and rude. And, and I'm not going to lie. I'm terribly direct. I was raised in the state of Maine. Of course I'm direct. But having grown up in Maine.

23:46
and then lived here for 30 years now, I guess. The big difference in New England is that as long as you don't come in and act like you're better than. Yes. And you're willing to be like, hi, my name is, who are you? Tell me your story. New England people are very, very much storytellers and they really want to connect with people.

24:15
but they don't wanna be looked down on. That's how I have learned to see it. I think that's accurate. I think that's very accurate. Yeah, that's very accurate. That's interesting. And we were very, very cautious and- And conscious. And conscious of we were moving into somebody else's home. Yeah. And we had no intention of changing anything here. And we made that pretty clear that we moved here because we like you. We like-

24:43
Lancaster, New Hampshire. I love the area that I'm here for, but there is some, I think there was a little suspicion on behalf of some other people that they weren't quite sure of us. And we are in an area where people are like, oh yeah, I want to move here. And they make it through one winter and they're out. So that's...

25:07
That kind of played into it. Yeah, I think they're cautious and standoff because they want to know who's going to stay, right? You're not just an interoper. Or if you both change things too. But we absolutely tried to integrate ourselves into this community. Yeah, in very practical ways. And I would say to people who are experiencing this or going down this journey, you've got to work at it. I made it a point, and Cindy made it a point, to

25:35
When we go to the dump to stop and have a conversation, don't just be in and out, right? Yes. Go to the local bakery and the local coffee shop and the post office and the hardware store, um, to, to kind of slow down and be willing to, to have a, you know, a friendly conversation and then to make ourselves visible. Like we would, I had my rounds when we first came up every Saturday, I'm going to go to the post office, whether I need to or not, I'm going to go to the dump, whether I need to or not, I'm going to go to the hardware store, whether I need to or not.

26:05
I'm gonna stop at the bakery whether I need to or not Just to you know, it's about the relationship right just to make ourselves We're not you know, and we we just try to Do I don't know what I'm saying integrate we just integrate we I feel I think you feel it has to be genuine and you have to take an active role to try to integrate You know and not just go to people when you need things

26:36
I think we found that we have to be willing to help people. If we're driving down the road and we see someone's cow or goat out, we stop and we get out and we've brought people's horses back. We've chased pigs down the side of the road for people. But they do it for us too. So it's very interdependent. So and I love this about our community is that you have to work with each other and we're such a small town.

27:06
This is the thing I like most. I love going to the grocery store and seeing 10 people I know. I mean, how great is that? When you come from an area like we come from and you don't know anybody, it was really uncomfortable for me. But I know people when I go to the grocery store or go out for coffee and you see a friendly face. I mean, this has taken time. This is our ninth, we're going into our 10th year, but our ninth year is...

27:34
He's coming up soon. So these things, I wouldn't trade for the world. I just can't believe I lived any other way. Yeah, sometimes we'll go back to Connecticut to visit other family members. My son's still back there and we're like, oh my God, I can't believe we lived this way. We lived like that. No wonder, I'm like, no wonder I was miserable. You know, I wasn't quite.

28:01
satisfied or fulfilled in some ways. I just. I can totally relate because when we moved to our homestead four years ago, we had been living in a very small town, like in town. And we still go up there. First off, the bank that we use is up there. So we drive up and we go by the old house. We drive through the old neighborhood because that's what you do when you still live within driving distance where you used to live. And.

28:30
I get into the town that we lived in and, you know, driving the car off the main highway into the town. And I'm just like, I can't believe we lived here. And we lived there for 20 years. And now our nearest neighbor is like a quarter mile away. When we lived in that town, our nearest neighbor was 15 feet from us. That's how we lived as well. Yeah. Very similar experience and story for sure. Yeah.

28:58
You guys are clearly storytellers. You have made this very easy for me, because all I've had to do is sit back and listen, and it's been amazing. But I do have a couple of questions. And if you can shorten your answers slightly, that'd be great. Yeah, we are long-winded. Well, you fit right in in New England, so you're good. So are you selling anything that you're producing on the farm? Yeah, we built a farm store on property.

29:27
dedicated building, substantial building. It's my shop is one portion and then the store. So yeah, we sell everything we produce, we sell in addition to sweatshirts and t-shirts and coffee mugs and hats. That's kind of new for us. But yes, we sell beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk. And we do have a couple of like touristy type items, sweatshirts and

29:57
some other like local producers. So my soaps that are in there are local people with local ingredients. So yeah, we do. It's a farm stand, but we call it our stores. Nice, okay. And then you guys have a festival tonight, right? Yes, we're really excited about it. Tell me about the festival. Well, you wanna? Well, um.

30:24
So this summer we were at a festival and we met a band from New York through a neighbor of ours coincidentally. And we went to see them and we were impressed with them. We've built the farm to entertain, right? We built a party pavilion because we like throwing parties. So we have a party pavilion, 20 by 40 party pavilion. And upstairs of our barn, we have a fairly large barn.

30:53
And naively, we thought we would have hay storage in that barn. So we built the barn to accommodate that. And then we learned through our insurance company that they're not going to insure the building if I put hay in it. Yeah. So this giant room that now I can't put hay in it. So we turned that into a party room. And, um, and that kind of involved. Yeah. So, yes, we, so we met the mammals. I met Mike and I am a musician by trade. So I heard him play and I thought.

31:23
these people are fantastic and the kind of music that I like. So it's very folky, bluesy. And so we just got together and said, you know, let's have a fall harvest. And then I thought I could use my own food for the food truck. So we wanted to sell our own our own product. Yeah, so it'd be our beef, our pork today on the menu. And then bring awareness that we're here. I think a lot of things that a lot of I was finding that people didn't realize.

31:53
that we were here. They're like, oh, I didn't know you had a firm. Oh, I didn't know you sell your meats. And it was my, so my customer base was very small. And now I feel like this kind of broadens things. It brings awareness to who we are, where we are, our practices. And again, this is all to make ourselves a little more visible to the community. Yeah. And it's fun. It is fun.

32:20
Are you selling tickets to it or is it free? Yes, it is $20 per ticket and I do have a cap on it at 150 people. So far we're at about 100. I don't know what else to say. I think we're expecting about 150. We hope we don't have to turn anyone away. But yeah, it was to promote the farm, but Cindy's a musician so any excuse to have... Yeah, any excuse to have music on the property.

32:50
Um, yeah. So, yeah. We toyed with the idea of doing weddings because we had a wedding here during COVID, uh, a close friend of ours, their venue canceled. Uh, so we hosted their wedding and that was hugely successful. So we have, um, built the farm as far as infrastructure so that we can do weddings, even though we haven't done any, we are capable of, you know, accommodating that type of an event. Okay. Cool.

33:20
Um, so what's, what's the weather supposed to be like for your festival? Gorgeous. It's going to be about 60 to 65 degrees this afternoon with mix of clouds and sun, um, but dry and just a great temperature. Awesome. Clear. The mountains are, are. Oh yes. The color is stunning. We're at peak. Yeah, we're probably at peak right now with the leaves. So, so it's going to be a perfect day for a fall festival. I'm so happy for you guys.

33:48
Yeah, we are pretty excited about it. I mean, we even use our own pumpkins for decoration. I mean, things are really coming together for us now where we have a little bit of everything and... Yeah, Cindy mentioned that, but that was hugely satisfying to take my three grandkids out into the pumpkin patch, be able to pick 30, 40 pumpkins and use that to decorate the farm. That was pretty fun. Reminds me of Charlie Brown and the great...

34:14
pumpkin patch, right? Yes. I'm so jealous that you guys had such a decent growing season because we did not. But there's always next year because that's what farmers always say, right? Right. Yeah. All right, guys, I would love to keep talking to you, but I try to keep these to half an hour or so. I'm going to let you go, but I would love to have you back not, not like next week, but like in the spring. And I have other questions about

34:42
the terrain and stuff that you're dealing with, because you're talking about the granite state. So let's try to talk again in like, I don't know, April. That would be great, because it is a challenging time for us. It's mud season and we're starting to get into the spring. It gets very busy and I think it's interesting. Yeah. All right, awesome. Well, let's do that then. Thank you so much for your time today and your storytelling. It was fantastic. You got it. Have a good day. Thank you. You too. Bye-bye.