Higher Calling Homestead

Today I'm talking with Raquel at Higher Calling Homestead.

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00:00
Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.

00:26
because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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.

00:56
You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Raquel  at Higher Calling Homestead. Good afternoon, Raquel. How are you? Hey, how are you today?  I'm good. It's  gray and cloudy and rainy here and I'm kind  of in that very mellow, I could take a nap, but I can't take a nap space.

01:24
I gotcha. It's the opposite here. It's warm and sunny. We were supposed to have storms today, but it turned out to be a beautiful day so far. So  I love you. I'm looking forward to the first really  moderate, beautiful spring day. I can understand that. Yeah, we've just started getting there. Really, really nice winds here in Tennessee within the last couple of weeks. It's heating up quick. I'm like, okay, it's not summer yet. So what's going on?

01:51
Mother nature is absolutely insane and has been for about two and a half years now. That's what's going on. I'd have to agree. Okay. So you have a homestead, but you also have a rabbit tree. And usually I say, tell me about yourself and what you do, but I'm just going to dive in with my questions about rabbits because we tried a couple of years ago to raise rabbits for meat and we failed miserably. So.

02:20
If I tell you what we did, can you tell me maybe an idea of where we went wrong? Yeah, I can definitely pray to help. I do want to preface this by saying that I started our rabbitry with the intention of  doing the meat rabbits.  We started back in, you know, like COVID times. And  that was the intention and do like chickens and rabbits for me because the world was shutting down. was like, want to become more self-sufficient just in case this happens. And I quickly realized

02:49
that I loved raising rabbits, but I was not one of the people that was going to be able to do it for me.  Yeah. I, number one, I couldn't be part of the butchering.  I flat out told my husband and my son, said, if we do this,  I am, I am more than happy to help take care of them. I am more than happy to cook the meat once  it's just meat.  But I, but when you bring that rabbit to me, when it's dead, has to be footless, tailless.

03:18
headless, skinless, because I'm going to fall in love with these things and it's going to kill me. It's hard, you know? it's like if I was in a position to have to feed my family, I definitely, definitely would be able to do it, but I'm not there. And I find it fascinating for people that can do that. And I follow some pages, you know, and I've watched the process and everything, and it's not like I shy away from seeing it, but it's just not for me. And I use the rabbits, you know,

03:47
I use their manure for our gardens and I love them. They have a great life and I raise them for pets, but just the meat rabbit thing ended up not being my thing.  Yeah. And like I am just terrible about killing animals.  I,  I will stomp on a bug faster than you can say my name, but if it's fuzzy, I can't do it. It doesn't matter what the reason is. I can't do it.

04:14
I can see that.  what ended up happening with your rabbitry? Like where did you think you went wrong with it? Well, we thought we were being smart. We got, we got two does and a buck proven buck. One of the does was proven. One of them was a new doe  and we bought them from people who were raising rabbits had had good luck with their rabbits  and brought them home and put them in the right size touches and gave them rabbit food. I can't remember what it was now, but you know,

04:43
whatever it was that they needed, they got. the lady that we got the rabbits from said to give them Timothy hay.  And  I think Timothy hay is amazing. I love how it smells. And I was like, yay, Timothy hay. Okay, yes, that's great. And we put the doe with the buck, because you don't put the buck with the doe in her hutch, because she'll get mad and hurt him.  And they did the job  and that one got pregnant  and had babies.

05:13
And those, there were nine, three of them died due to heat, because it was of course the hottest day at the very beginning of June and we didn't know that it was too hot. So ended up bringing the mama and the babies in the house. had, I think we ended up with five, two of them died that were left out of the nine. So I think we had five, four. And got to have baby rabbits in a container with mom in our house for like a month.

05:39
That was amazing. Baby rabbits are very, very cute. And got to hold them every morning and talk to them and pet them. They loved being held because we did it every day.  Blah, blah, blah. Raised them. They were healthy. They did great. The other rabbit  never got pregnant.  I have no idea why  I really wanted her to. She looked like a wild rabbit, but she was not. She was a domestic rabbit.  She was very

06:09
You know how  the wild rabbits are that  weird brown where they have like white and gold in their brown hair? Right. She was that color. was gorgeous and I really wanted babies from her and no babies. so we kept some of the babies and we actually got a couple more  males from a lady down the street who was also raising rabbits.  And we tried breeding  the new males with the two females.

06:39
never got pregnant.  The only thing I can chalk this up to is that maybe the females were too fat because of the timid the hay because they ate a lot of it.  So we gave up, we butchered the rabbits that we had and they were meat and that was the end of us raising rabbits. So  that's my rabbit story. I'm sticking to it.  And  can you give me any idea what we could have done differently? Cause I'm like rabbits are supposed to um like bunnies.

07:08
Right. Yeah, exactly. Like that's where the saying like rabbits come from what's going on here. So there could have been, you know, a couple things. So like in the heat of summer and things like that, you mentioned it was hot, the bucks can actually go sterile, but I know you got one litter from the other dough. So that's, you know, unlikely that if you bred them around the same time period, you would have been, you know, suddenly sterile.

07:33
The weight, like you mentioned on the females, that can be an issue, but I don't think it would be from Timothy Hay because honestly,  we do,  excuse me, we do Timothy Hay from the time they're babies all through their life.  I'm not  one that likes to do the alfalfa because around four months of age,  the alfalfa is fine for them as babies, but it actually becomes to where it has too much calcium  and things for their body once they become adults. And it can actually be really bad for their kidneys.

08:03
But the alfalfa is so sweet that a lot of times they get spoiled. And then when you need to take them off of that, they don't want to change and they don't want Timothy. So I do Timothy from the time, like I put it in their nest boxes so that when they start munching on hay, that's what they get a taste for. And I've never had any issues with Timothy hay.  Now, if you don't have a really complete feed, you know, if there's any kind of vitamin deficiency or anything like that going on,

08:30
It could affect things, but maybe that one female just wasn't fertile or had something going on in her reproductive system or  something like that. I don't think it was a Timothy Hay issue. I heard your other podcast with that and I was thinking on that. I don't think that it would have been a Timothy Hay because I've never had any issues with that.

08:53
Okay, so it probably wasn't the Timothy Hayes fault, which means it probably wasn't my fault, and I'm okay with that. I definitely wouldn't think it was anything that you were doing, for sure. mean, weather and environment and everything, you know, can come into play. And that's why it can be frustrating, because you hear like, oh, like rabbits, it's going to be easy. It's not always easy, you know?

09:13
Yeah, a lot of this homesteading stuff seems like it's going to be easy. And then you're like, well, this is not as easy as I have been led to believe.  No, it's such a learning curve. Everything. It's just, you know, something else to learn all the time. Yeah. I just chalk it up to dumb bunnies, dumb bunnies. And we moved on to other things because I was like, I'm not spending  money on feed for these bunnies if they're not going to earn their keep. Yeah. Did you try a couple of times like to breed that same doe that didn't get pregnant? Yeah.

09:43
Yeah. I don't know. It makes me think that something was just, you know, with her, maybe. Yeah. To the point that the second and I mean, sorry, third and fourth time we tried,  actually kind of stepped back and watched to see if they were even doing the deed as it were.  the black bunny, the male that got the white bunny that got pregnant, he

10:07
He did what he was supposed to do and did the fall off and the whole thing. I'm like, well, he's clearly doing his job. Maybe he's broken. Yeah, it  very well could be, you know, something just with her that just, you know, she wasn't able to produce. Yeah. I work with him and sometimes, you know, that happens.  I was so sad because I really wanted to have bunnies out of those two that were like unusual looking because I figured with her, with her coloring and him being a black

10:36
rabbit they would have some really pretty babies but it did not happen. That's too bad. Maybe try it again sometime when you  fill up to give it a shot again because I mean it is fun and rewarding and  it's really great  raising rabbits but it can be frustrating.  Well I don't regret trying it because I'm not going to lie it was pretty special having these little baby bunnies on my kitchen table in their container.

11:05
every morning. Like I would get up, get my coffee, sit down and just watch them.  And the mom, the mom was used to us picking them up. So she'd come over and say hi too. And she was like, you're to pick me up and I don't pick up adult rabbits. They kick and they hurt. Yeah. A lot of people think, you know, like, the babies, the mom's going to eat them if I touch them. But you know, mama gets used to your scent  and taking care of her every day. So then when babies come along, it's usually not an issue to handle the babies.

11:34
gets them, you know, tame and used to you. So yeah, and it's a lot easier to deal with them when it comes time to find them new homes or to turn them into freezer food.  If you can handle them. And that sounds really callous, but it's not  because the less you stress out an animal, the better it is for the animal and you.

11:57
Absolutely. That's what it's all about, you know, giving them the best home while they're with you, whether you're raising them for food or for pets or whatever your goal is.  Yeah. Did you hear the part of the story about the fact that my dog wanted to meet one of the babies and I didn't even think about it and  baby, baby rabbits damn well know that dogs are prey animals. Yeah. Yeah. They, uh, they have that built in them very early. think. yeah. Yep. My dog is the sweetest, most gentle.

12:26
loves it when the barn kittens come out of the barn for the first time is a mama to them while they're growing up. She wanted to see this baby rabbit so bad. And I didn't even think about it. put my hand down with the bunny cupped in my hand  and Maggie went to sniff it and that baby rabbit, it was probably three weeks old.  eee! And  I went, oh I was like, I'm an idiot.

12:50
That's really dumb. I should not have done that. It didn't die. It didn't have a heart attack. But I was like, we're never doing that again, Mary Evelyn. That was a bad idea.  So anyway, I was just wondering if you had any idea what we did wrong. But I don't think we did anything wrong. just think that the rabbit didn't have the right biological makeup to reproduce. think that's what we're going to go with.  Wow, that was a lot. That was a lot of words.

13:19
Okay, so now that I got that answered, let's get back to the original question.  Tell me about yourself and what you do, because I know you do stuff other than rabbits. Yeah, we do a little bit of everything. So we are a small hobby farm. are in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It's just right outside of Nashville.  And we moved from Orlando, Florida almost 10 years ago now.  And  we had that dream just to kind of have a simpler way of life.

13:47
you know, live on some property. So we got five acres.  We're still actually in a neighborhood. So we have the best of both worlds. We have our neighbors and, but yet we have five acres so that we're able to do a little bit of our homestaying journey. So we raised several breeds of chickens. We have the rabbits, of course we do Welsh harlequin ducks  and we've started mealworms, you know, for the chickens. And then we also have a little farm standout front where we just sell different.

14:14
things depending on what season it is. So that's been fun as well. Very nice.  I have to ask, are you originally from the South? Cause you have very little Southern accent. I lived in Florida most of my life. So  mom and dad were split up early, so he kind of moved around.  So I picked up little bits of accents, I think from everywhere. It's very, very clean. It's a very clean speaking voice.  then mom was always home base in Florida.

14:44
So that was where I spent most of my time growing up. Okay. I am hyper aware of people's accents and tones of how they speak because of the podcast and because I always have been,  And so when somebody's like, when I see somebody from Mississippi, I'm like,  huh, they're either going to sound like  really Southern, you know, real Southern draw or they're not going to have anything at all.

15:09
And I'm always amazed when the person starts talking. I'm like, I'll be damned. They don't sound anything like I thought they were going to sound. Yeah. And Tennessee is funny because different parts of Tennessee, you know, they talk so different. You know, over in East Tennessee, there's a lot of twang and my sister lives over there and she's grown up over there. And if I'm on the phone with her for 10 minutes, I do get a little bit of twang going on. Uh huh. Yup. Okay.

15:38
So you said harlequin ducks. What  are they?  So,  well, harlequin ducks, they're a  pretty large sized duck  and, you know, people use them for, you know, multipurposes. You can have them as pets, you can use them for meat, and of course you can use them for eggs. So we sell their eggs at our farm stand and we hatch eggs, you know, for people to be able to have their own ducklings.

16:04
Um, so they're pretty cool breed. just got started with them last year. A friend of mine, Jennifer Bryant with Brian's Roost was raising them. And so I, um, had got some from her and just absolutely fell in love with them. So they are, um, they're pretty cool. And I mean, some people, you know, need the duck eggs because they have a egg allergy for some reason, the duck eggs might not affect them like chicken eggs, I guess. So a lot of people, you know, want them for that reason. So it's pretty interesting.

16:34
Yeah, I keep hearing all kinds of good things about duck eggs and  it's really great to have friends in your community who are raising different things than you are and you get the chance to maybe get some of that and bring it to your farm.  That's something that's been really, really cool.  It's just meeting other people that do different things and  getting tidbits from them and learning other things, whether you...

17:00
end up taking that on yourself and try it, you what they're doing or just kind of soak it all in and think, oh, that's not for me. You know, it's just like always, you know, people in a homesteading type of stuff are always willing to share, you know, their knowledge. Yeah, I freaking love it. I think it's so amazing and such a great community to be part of. And I don't have a whole lot of homesteading friends right now. have  one.

17:27
She lives about five miles away and they have O'Connor Family Acres. O'Connor is their last name.  And she texted me the other day and she said, she says, is there any chance that we could sell our duck eggs in your farm stand this summer? And I hadn't even thought of it. I don't know why I didn't think to ask her she wanted to.  I said, I think it's fine. Let me check with the husband. And I asked Kyle, my husband,  if it was okay.  And he was like,  yeah. He said, I don't.

17:55
think there's any laws that say we can't. He said, you want to look into that? And I was like, yeah, but I don't think there's any law that says we can't sell her duck eggs in our farm stand five miles away.  So we're going to be doing that. And that gives me the chance to throw five bucks into the.

18:15
the money thing and buy some of her duck eggs and actually use them in my cakes. I'm all good with It's supposed to be like a baker's secret, know, like the duck eggs. A lot of people swear that it makes their baked goods so much richer  and, you know, just taste so much better. So a lot of people buy the duck eggs just for that reason that are really, you know, into baking. Yeah, exactly. And I've never used duck eggs in my whole life. And so I'm very much looking forward to her ducks starting to lay.  They haven't yet.

18:44
and getting some in the farm stand because it's also a way to get people more interested in coming to see what's in the farm stand.  So this is a win-win-win all the way around for everybody involved and that's one of things I love about this community of people.  So  there was something else I saw on your Facebook page. You're doing all kinds of stuff. What do you want to tell me about what you're doing?

19:12
Yeah, so we're just always learning, know, trying to try little tidbits and to find out if, you know, they're for us or not. And so I try to have this like two seasons rule. And that's where like out of two seasons of the year, I'm going to either add something or I'm going to learn something or I'm going to share something with somebody else and teach them, you know, I'm going to do something to grow like my homestead, not to overwhelm myself to where I have so much going on that I can't handle it. Cause we have to keep that perspective of course, but

19:42
You know, like this year I want to learn more about like beef tallow and we have a local farm here that we get beef and you know, the kidney fat from to be able to make the tallow. And I haven't really dived into that yet, but that's something I'm learning and kind of researching because there's all these like body products out of the beef tallow that are supposed to be really good.  um, you know, I'm interested in adding goats. So eventually I would like to do that. It has been things I've lost my mind, but  he would like to do that. So, you know, just.

20:10
I'm trying to always add just a little something. Right now, you know, we just added the farm stand a few months ago. So, you we do like the fresh eggs and sourdough and beeswax wraps. I still am looking for a homemade dishwashing liquid and I've tried a couple different recipes and they always fail.

20:35
And so I keep digging and I keep trying and I keep digging and I keep trying and I keep failing. And so I always come back to Dawn dish soap because it seems to be the  best  one I can find. And I did try, I tried making a dish soap  and it called for vinegar and it called for something else that was an oil. And I'm like, this is never going to work because vinegar and oil don't mix.

21:01
You don't make salad dressing where it stays mixed all the time if you have vinegar and an oil in it. And I knew, I knew it wasn't gonna work. And I tried it anyway and I ended up tossing it because it was useless. So sometimes  you can Google the hell out of the thing you're looking for and you will never find the solution. Yeah, absolutely. I've never tried homemade dish liquid. That's definitely something I haven't tried but I can't see how, like you said,

21:29
vinegar and oil would go together. So that's interesting. No. And I read it and I was like, I'm going to try it because maybe this is some magic formula I don't understand. And maybe it actually works. And no, it did not. And for the longest time, for like two years, I made my own laundry detergent with the Borax and the stuff. There's all kinds of recipes for it online. And it worked for a while.

21:58
And  what happens is it tends to clog up your washing machine. Yeah, that's what I've wondered about. Because I thought about that too,  about trying that. But I was worried, know, with all the HE washers and everything and you have to have HE special soap, like is it going to end up clogging it up? Yeah. And what it does is it gets in there and it doesn't like, it doesn't make your washing machine fill up with water and pour all over the place, but it just gets gunked in there.

22:27
And it starts to stink. So after a year and a half, my  washer smelled funny and my husband took it apart.  the part in the middle, it twists underneath that was all gook. And I  thought to myself, why can't any of this work sometimes?  Sometimes stuff works, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. And the thing is the clothes were fine.

22:56
The clothes were clean, they didn't smell like perfume, they didn't smell stinky, they were fine. But after that year and a half, forget it, we had to clean the whole thing out and put it back together.  So that was unfortunate. And I don't mean to be a bummer, it's just that I want to make clear that sometimes solutions are not actually solutions, they are problems. Oh, absolutely. So we've definitely tried things that we ended up.

23:23
you know, being like, this isn't for us, kind of like you with the rabbits, you know, like we tried quails and my friend, Rebecca Lynch, she raises amazing quail and I so badly want to get some from her and I see all the things you can do, you know, with the quail and it's just as it means for me, you know, sometimes you try things and it just doesn't work out. Like one could have heard. Yeah. And sometimes you really, really want to do something and you do the research and you think you got it covered.

23:52
And then you look at how much it's going to cost you to start the new thing  and you go,  hmm, maybe not right now.  Yeah. Or time, know, so many things it's like,  you have to have the time to dedicate to it, you know, and like I work full time along with, you know, trying to do the whole homestead thing. So some things I really want to do and I just have to keep it in check and be like, you're not going to be able to do this.  Or at least not right now.  Exactly.

24:22
And I always get frustrated with the not right now. And I have to remind myself that not right now doesn't mean never. Very true. And that keeps me sane because for a while there, I really wanted to get two goats. I wanted to two goat kids. I really did. When we were talking about buying this place five years ago, well, almost five years ago.

24:49
I was like, and we can't get baby goats and we can get this and we can get that. And my husband went,  your excitement is overruling your sense. It's definitely  easy to do to get all excited and gung-ho about something. And  sometimes our husbands have to tell us no.  Yes. And sometimes he gets a little bit out of control and I'm like, are you sure you want to put 5,000 tomato plants in the garden this year?

25:18
So yeah,  it's a give and take and it's a check and balance system in the best relationships and thank God it is. But when I said we can get baby goats and we can get a mini cow and we can get, we can get, said,  no, what we can do  is we can give our 10 or five chickens  more room to move and we can get more chickens. Let's start there.  So chicken math hasn't gotten you yet, then you've kept.

25:47
five chickens and been able to stay with five chickens because we were starting with five. You're funny. You're very, very amusing. No, no, we had 30 chickens  at this time last year. Oh, wow.  And some of them, we  got to replace other chickens and we just hadn't gotten rid of the old chickens yet. So that's part of the reason we had 30 chickens.  And then some of them got sick and not from bird flu, but just

26:16
chickens get sick and keel over and die for no apparent reason. This happens. I've heard from lots of people.  And so we ended up culling the last 10 last fall because they weren't giving us any eggs because they were just not. And it wasn't because of the change in light. They just were not laying.  And we were like, I don't want to feed chickens that aren't giving us eggs through the winter time. That's crazy.

26:40
And then we got 12 more back a month and a half ago. Brand new chickens got the first eggs from these chickens ever.  And so thankful for them because as I keep saying in the last, I don't know,  25 episodes,  chicken eggs from the store suck lemons.  Yeah, they do. Once you've had the fresh eggs,  it's hard to go back to store bought eggs for sure.

27:05
Yeah, and when you're paying $8 a dozen, I would rather feed my chickens and have yummy eggs than pay $8 a dozen for eggs that taste like nothing. with the egg prices have just been crazy lately. Uh-huh. And I talk about this ad nauseum like I just should, I should ban talking about chickens for the next month. But yeah, it's when you go from and

27:34
850 square foot house on a tenth of an acre  to  a little over 1500 square foot house on 3.1 acres.  Your brain and your heart don't necessarily communicate well. And that's what happened with us. So. I completely understand that. And we moved from Orlando. That was the big thing is I was like, I want to have chickens. I've always had a fascination with them. I always  had a fascination with.

28:00
farming and homesteading and I just I wanted my own chickens. And so we would look at houses and that was the one rule I told my realtor is if you know they have a HOA or you know they're in the city limits where I can't chickens I don't want to see the house and my husband you know would see this amazing house and I'm like I don't want to go look at it I can't chickens there I'm not gonna sell down there you know and so he's like really we're gonna give up this house because you can't chickens on my absolutely so we ended up finding

28:31
you know, the perfect spot and five acres. And I went out and got my first four chickens, you know, from Tractor Supply and,  um, and it just, you know, grew and grew and my love for them grew. And now I have, you know, you want to know how many chickens I have. And I raised five different breeds and  shipped them all over the U S and so it's just become a whole thing.  um, but I can understand like all of a sudden you get overexcited about something. I have the space, I have, you know, the means to do it. And it's easy to kind of.

29:01
just dive in head first.  Yeah, luckily my husband grabbed me by my feet and said, Whoa, there baby.  The thing about chickens that just, I don't know, I'm going to say it grosses me out is they look so soft and so nice. And then you get to their legs and their legs look like snakeskin and it just freaks me the hell out.  It's funny. It's not my favorite thing.

29:30
and I have been very honest about this on the podcast with people I know, with little kids who want to see the chickens when they come. They will ask about it. They notice it. They're like, why are their legs like snakes? And I'm like, because that's how God made them. And I don't actually know the answer, so I can't tell them.

29:54
Little bullies want to actually touch their legs because they think they're going to feel like a snake. And I've been told that they do. I don't want to touch chicken legs. think it's gross.  So there's, there's really silly things on the homestead that you never really think about until you're up close and personal with the thing that you thought you wanted.  Cause we got chickens back when we lived in the old house, the small house with the 10th of an acre.

30:24
And I never even thought about like  really what chickens are  made up of, how they're built. Cause I would just go out and open the coop and grab eggs and come back in. And my husband and my sons would do the chores and that was all cool.  And then we had to move them here, which meant we had to bring them here and put them in a temporary fenced in area, move the coop, get it set up, put chickens back in. And I got to help with that.

30:52
And I ended up brushing my hand against their legs. And I was like, that is gross. And my husband's like, you're so weird. I said,  well, yes, what was your first clue?  And he said, he said, you have been cooking your whole life. He said, you touch carcasses  all the time. A chicken, you touch steak, you touch, touch ground burger.  He said, chicken legs, like literally alive chickens legs are the thing that grosses you out.

31:23
Like, yeah.  That's stunning. Yeah. He was like, I do not understand. said, well, you're the one who has ADD. I don't understand half the stuff you do.  And we just had a giggle fest over the whole thing. And he said, you like  running your hand down their back. I said, well, yeah, because the feathers are really soft. That's fine. But their legs just skeeve me out. And he was like,

31:52
can understand. Conversations you never thought you would have with anyone, you know? Right.  So  anyway, I'm trying, we try,  we try, uh-huh.  I try  to keep the podcast a half an hour. We're there.  Thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Have a great evening, Raquel. I appreciate it. You too. Thank you.  Bye.