Home In The Pines

Today I'm talking with Lindsay at Home In The Pines.

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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 Lindsay at Home in the Pines. Good morning, Lindsay. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. Where are you located? We are in East Texas. Okay, cool. Is it sunny there? Because it's gray here in Minnesota. Same here. We've had a lot of rain lately. I mean, honestly, it's just the humidity. I feel like we're just one big

01:26
ball of humidity. It's just like walking through steam all the time.  Yeah. Yeah. I keep waiting for the first really nice moderate spring day and it just hasn't happened yet, but we're supposed to have a gorgeous weekend here. I'm so excited. good.  Yeah. So tell me about yourself and what you do. And  I have one quick question. Your Instagram page shows you as home in the pines, but it also shows you as something else. What's that something else again?

01:57
Um, Homestead Hustlers in Progress. Yes, that. So tell me, tell me about yourself and Homestead Hustlers in Progress. Okay. Um, well, my husband and I are actually originally from Minnesota. So we get through this stand. Yeah. We know what you're going through this time of year. Um, we both grew up in the city. My husband really inner city and I was, you know, more on the outskirts suburbs. And, um, when we first got married, I was teaching. He is a basketball coach, now teacher and.

02:27
Um,  we were led to go to Iowa a couple of years after we were married  and, um, he was coaching at a Christian college there. We adopted our two older boys while we were there and we were in a neighborhood, but we had about an acre of land. It was a super big yard for, for the neighborhood. And we  absolutely loved it, especially both coming from the city.  Um, my husband will say like, I never want to live on top of anybody ever again. And, um, so we just really got like that.

02:58
it to like, oh, this is nice. This is kind of nice having a little bit of space, you know.  After a few years, we moved to West Texas where we worked in a  facility for at-risk youth. We were both teachers, both coaches.  Again,  we had our two older boys and then we had a baby while we were there. And we lived  on,  was like a working ranch. We lived on the ranch there.

03:25
but we also bought some property about 15 minutes away. So we would go there on the weekends. My husband liked doing projects, being out there, bringing the kids, you know, just having some freedom and fresh air, that kind of thing.  Excuse me.  So then just two years ago, we moved over here to East Texas where we purchased a major fixer upper. it  had been abandoned for a few years  besides all the critters.  And

03:55
had another baby, so we four kids,  three boys and a little girl.  And  I work part time from home. My husband still teaches and coaches. And we just, we have about 13 acres here in the middle of the woods and  we love it. It's just, it's like been a gradual progression from like where we started to now kind of just like fully immersed in this like own land,  you know, work it, that kind of thing.

04:23
Okay, that's a fabulous story. I have to know, was your husband living in Minneapolis? Is that the big city? Yes. Yep, right there in South Minneapolis. Okay, cool. Yeah, I had no idea that you were from Minnesota, but the minute you said no, no, I heard the big O and I was like, oh, I would have known either way. everyone's like, where are you from? What accent is that? I was like, I'm the one with the accent. But it's funny. Uh-huh. Yep.

04:50
It's really interesting to me and I swear I should just start a podcast about people's accents and the way they talk because it's so  amazingly intriguing to me.  I grew up in Maine and I moved to Minnesota when I was 22, I think.  And I had a Maine accent. I didn't have the real thick down east accent, but I definitely had a Maine accent. It was not well received in Minnesota. Every time I would open my mouth, people were like, you're not from here, are you?

05:20
No,  no, not.  And so I adopted a generic Southern drawl because apparently it's better to be from the South than the Northeast if you're moving to Minnesota.  And spent years just trying to eradicate any accent that I could possibly get out of the way I speak.  And when people ask me where I'm from, it's with that absolutely open faced dumbfounded look of I cannot figure out where you're from.  You got all of it.

05:49
And I'm really proud of that because I've worked really hard to dump anything that would indicate where I'm from.  But  that big O in snow here,  it slips out all the time and I never had it before I moved to Minnesota. That's funny. People  usually get us on bag instead of bag. feel like, it right. We are bag.  That's the big one. My husband is born and bred Minnesotan and he says big.

06:19
And he says bagel for bagel. And every time he does it, I just want to be like, it's not big, it's bag.  And I learned a long time ago to not do that because number one, it's how he grew up saying it and it's how he knows it to be said. I cannot change it. Also, it's really rude  to comment on people's accents as I learned moving here.

06:47
So I try really hard to just appreciate all the different accents and they're beautiful. They're incredibly beautiful. That's fun. So that's my dissertation on accents for the morning. And typically I don't get too deep into it, but I just love it so much, you know?  So thank you for letting me get that off my chest.  For sure. That's great.  Okay. So what do you think of Texas? Do you love it? Yeah, we love Texas. We'll probably...

07:16
We'll probably be here forever. So  we kind of have family all over the place now, like in Utah, Minnesota, still Minnesota. So  we really love it down here. Cool.  I think if I moved to Texas, the thing that I would love most coming from Northern tier States is that my growing season would be a little bit longer. That is true. I know I keep telling them, I loved the weather in West Texas, the dry heat.

07:42
We would have snow like once a year just for a couple days and I'm like, okay, this is good. Two days, we're done. So I'm kind of struggling with the humidity, but you're right, like the growing season, I'm like, wow, we actually get to plant things in the fall too. That's cool.  Yeah.  And Minnesota gets really freaking humid these days too, just so you know.  That's  comforting. It's gross. Oh my God. The last two summers, we've had a couple of weeks in July.

08:11
where you didn't want to go outside because it was over 90 degrees and it was tropical humidity. It was gross.  So  at this point, I'm not sure it matters where you live unless you live in  Australia  or one of the two  poles, the southern pole and the northern pole.  You're going to get everything. Yeah, it's just the way it is, right? Yeah, it's  so weird. I don't know what happened.  Okay, so

08:41
Tell me  about what you actually do  at your place. I know you have chickens.  Yeah,  again, we're in progress, right? So we  were learning so much. We didn't grow up like learning any of these skills. So it's been fun, too, to think, OK, we can teach our kids this and this and that kind of thing.  We did have chickens. Unfortunately, something got in there.  So  yeah, so we're  working on.

09:10
fixing that up.  And  then got the garden going. We're starting small this year and hopefully adding on, you know, each each season.  And yeah,  our dog had puppies. So that's been really fun for the little kids to play with those. And  like I said, we have we're in the woods. So my husband's created like a path so can like walk the circle, which is  really awesome.

09:38
Yeah, like I said,  the home needed a lot of work. The land needed a lot of work. So we spent a lot of time, especially my husband, just outside cleaning up, fixing things,  you know,  making it nice.  Hence the in progress part of your name. Yes,  exactly.  Little steps. I knew that your dog had puppies. Is your dog a Pyrenees?  No,  the neighbor dog is. Okay, so what's your dog?

10:07
It's Pepper Healer Mix. Oh my, that's a very high energy dog. Yes, yes she is. She owns the place.  Well the puppies are gorgeous. They are, they're precious. Yes, the thing I love about Instagram and Facebook is when I ask people to be a guest, I get to go see what they're up to and see all the photos.  And this time of year there's always babies, whether it's puppies or kittens or calves or kids or...

10:34
Whatever, there's always babies. So I love this time of year because I'm just innately entertained by all the  pictures. Yeah. Our dog, her  mom just had a litter of eight babies  at a place where we got her  and her. I don't even know how to say it right.  I call the other set of puppies cousins because they're not actually related to Maggie. the other

11:02
Australian Shepherd dog just had five or six, like a couple weeks ago. So I'm getting to see all those Australian Shepherd puppies on my friend's Facebook page. And I remember Maggie at that age because I met Maggie when she was two weeks old. So it's really fun. And I always mentioned to my parents when Maggie has new siblings or cousins, because my parents have a border colleague. And I told my dad that Maggie had new

11:31
siblings and cousins and he said are you getting one and I said  absolutely not one dog is more than enough.  Australian Shepherds though they're cute.  Yeah she's a good looking dog. I swear to God I should just do an episode about Maggie like a solo episode just me raving about this dog because I talk about her all the time.  She is beautiful like you know the  Australian Shepherd you see on commercials on TV.

12:01
how they're always the perfect specimen. She's like that. could  be an advertisement dog. model dog?  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And I'm so in love with her that it is sickening and I'm going to stop right now. Hopefully she won't bark because she's been really good lately about settling down when I'm recording.  All right. So you said you have four kids and you said that you

12:29
You adopted two and then you had one  that's a boy and then you just had another one a little while ago. It's a girl.  And  younger two were adopted as embryos. Oh,  okay. Cool. Yeah. So I birthed them, but all four of our kids, Cam,  family of adoption. So it's really sweet. They have awesome stories. That is fantastic.  I  have a question. If I'm being nosy, just tell me and I will edit this out. Does it cost a lot?

12:58
to do the embryo adoption?  And I'm an open book about it. no, that's totally fine.  It depends on the route you go.  A lot of adoption agencies now have an embryo adoption branch. And so that would tend to be more expensive just because you're working with an agency.  Some clinics do it here in the States. And then we actually went to Mexico, worked with an awesome clinic.

13:27
Being out of country, was a little bit cheaper. yeah, it's just crazy, the cost of adoption in general. Okay.  I was just wondering, because I know nothing about it.  I'm one of those very fortunate women that get pregnant when somebody sneezes.  And I'm not a baby factory. I have four kids. One is  a stepchild.  And there's...

13:53
Oh God, my daughter was born in 89, next son was born in 97, and next son was born in 2001. So it's not like I've had 10,000 children. But it's very hard for me when friends say that they're trying to get pregnant and they just can't. I have this weird guilt about the fact that I didn't have an issue with being pregnant. Yeah, you shouldn't.

14:23
I mean, that is nice of you to like understand or feel empathy for people because, you know, some people if they don't understand  that pain, like, you know, but the fact that you  understand and can empathize with them or sympathize, it's  nice. Nothing to feel guilty about though. Yeah, one of the grandest joys of my life has been being a mom.

14:47
And my kids would probably be like, bullshit. And no, is. They are the best things I have ever done. Totally agree. Produced, created, whatever word you want to use. Yeah. Okay. So what else can I ask you? Because I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole on adoption. Because if this was an adoption podcast, we would spend two hours talking. Yes. There's lots. Yes. Congratulations though on being a mom of four.

15:17
And you absolutely are a mom. I do not think that anyone has  any say in whether people have biological children or adopted children. I don't think it makes you any less of a mom if you adopt. Thank you.  Yeah, totally agree. Thank you. My stepson is the child of my heart.  He's the one that I didn't have to carry, but he still feels like I did. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a different  carry.

15:46
Yep, exactly.  And I didn't meet him until he was six. I didn't get to see him as a baby. I didn't even know his dad when he was born.  yeah,  that's cool.  Yeah. Okay, so  off the mom  soap box, back onto the homesteading soap box.  How  are you feeling about all the work that you're doing? Are you excited? you at the frustration point? Both? I guess it depends on the day.

16:16
I really try to focus  on  how far we come. I probably get more frustrated with just the home still needs a lot of work, you know,  and I'm home with the littles all day. And so sometimes I can get like, oh, we to do this, we got to do this, we got to do this. Oh, I feel like I'm living in a construction zone still. But then I just have to remind myself, you know what contentment we've come so far.  There's no rush. Like, this is not what what life is about the perfect home. It's it's it's the journey, you know, little steps.

16:45
Um, and I'm just super thankful. Like I'm excited that my kids get to run through the woods free and they're not focused on the mess. They're not focused on, know,  if there's a baseboard that's not put in yet, you know, that kind of thing. So  really trying to, we're really trying to focus on their childhood, giving them the best that we possibly can and seeing it through their eyes.  And  you're right. They don't care as long as they have.

17:11
good food in their bellies, a place to sleep at night and parents that love them, they're good. Yep, exactly. One thing that we've been trying to focus on too is, and shoot, I mean, I know a lot of people are probably since maybe COVID is, you know, our food. So like, I'm trying to learn more like skills like canning and, you know, like we had these flowers in our yard the other day. I was like, huh, I wonder if these can be used for anything. So I'm like Googling and I like.

17:38
I'm out there with my little bucket collecting flowers and  drying them for tea. You know what mean? Like, I just love it. I love learning all these things.

17:49
Yeah, absolutely. Do you guys have catnip? Do you have catnip that grows wild in Texas? I don't know. We might. I'm not sure I know what it looks like. It looks... I don't know how to explain it. Google it. You'll find pictures of it. But you can make tea out of catnip that is safe for humans. And apparently it has really good...

18:16
There's a word, qualities. It's not the word I was looking for, but it's okay to make tea out of it. And I guess it tastes pretty good too. I have not done it, but I was reading the other day about it and I was like, I  hope our catnip comes back this year. We didn't have any last year because of the drought.  Oh yeah, I'll look it up.  Yeah.  And there's another thing that grows here called pineapple weed and it's wild chamomile basically.

18:44
I want to make our whole yard that so when we mow the whole yard smells like chamomile. Oh, nice.  That's a great idea.  We're not going to do it because it would require taking everything out and putting that in.  I just, every time my husband mows the lawn, well,  the yard, we don't really have a lawn.  It smells really good because the people that lived here before put in some really nice grass in the yard part of the property.

19:12
and he mows and it smells like sweet hay and I'm just like, you can mow every day if you want. He's like, I don't have enough diesel. He says, I don't have enough diesel. I can't afford the diesel to mow every day. I'm like, okay. Well, then you do. Yeah. Mow every day. That's fine. And I wish that people grew the sweet smelling hay here in Minnesota, but I don't think it's a thing anymore. I can remember growing up in Maine and we would drive up to see my grandparents about an hour and a half north of where we live.

19:41
And we would drive by these fields where they'd been mowed and it was hay. And it just smelled so sweet. I don't think that people in Minnesota grow that kind of hay anymore. mean, I can't think of what the smell would be. So probably don't, right? Yeah, I wish they did because it smells amazing. And we are surrounded by corn fields here where I live.

20:07
That's the last two summers. was alfalfa fields, but they changed over to corn. corn smells really weird when it's cut. Like when they harvest the corn, it smells strange outside. I can't quite put my finger on it. Yeah. think, I think I know what you mean living in Iowa. think  I know that smell.  Yeah. It's really weird. It's, it's,  I'm, this is going to sound really weird.  It's  wet. Like it smells wet. Like any cut plant smells,  but it's this.

20:36
very specific scent and it's not sweet, it's not bitter, it's not sour, but I just know it when I smell it. It's weird. Yeah, the things you learn when you move to the country, who knew? The city, you know, different smells there, So are your kidlets into what you're doing, the ones who are old enough to be doing things? Our second son, they're both in high school.

21:05
He definitely loves the garden. Well, one thing he's always been interested, probably since we moved to West Texas, was horses. He got to work at the horse barn there and he just, he loves it. yeah, he's really into the garden. He loves the animals. It's been good. Our oldest is such a hard worker. So anytime my husband needs like, here, help me carry this big old branch or tree around, he'll...

21:33
And he's always barefoot.  We just laugh at him all the time. He's walking through the woods, just barefoot, carrying these heavy things around. Just, you he's definitely a man of the woods.  yeah. our littles, our littles love it because, you know, they get to run around with the puppies right now and hopefully chickens again and help dad out and you know, all that fun stuff. So they do. They seem to enjoy it.

21:59
You love this so much. can hear it in your voice. I do. I do. It's just funny. I,  I told, I tell my husband when I was little, like I always wanted to live on a farm. I always wanted a cow. Like I, I would put, we lived in a neighborhood. Like I'd go in my backyard and put on like a long dress and pretend I was like Laura Ingalls Wilder  in the prairies.  So it's just, just, it's just cool to look back and see kind of like.

22:25
the process of where we're at  now. Like I said, we have so much to learn, but we're just enjoying it while we do it.

22:34
Nice.  Did you read the the Laura Ingalls Wilder books?  Yes.

22:42
Okay. I I read all of them when

22:49
Okay. I read all of them when I was growing up in Steep Falls, Maine. That's where I grew up with no inkling that I would end up living in Minnesota. Oh yeah. And when I ended up moving to Minnesota, I found out there are all these places that you can actually visit where Laurie Ingalls Wilder grew up. And would you believe I have not made it to a single one? I think I've only met a couple, but that is really cool. Especially if you like the book and the story and...

23:18
and everything.  Yeah, I can remember reading about Mankato. I can remember reading about  Plum Creek. And in my head, you know, when I was 12, I was like, oh, that's really cool.  I'll never see that.  And I've been to Mankato at this point. You know, I know what Mankato looks like. It sure as hell doesn't look like it did when she was there. A  little different.

23:49
Very different, yes. Mankato has been built up huge in the last 20 years, let alone the last 100 years.  It's been a while since I've been there. It's just weird when...

24:02
Yeah, it's just weird when you're growing up as a kid and you read about places and you think you're going to stay in the same place your whole life that you are in then.  then life happens and you end up living in a place you read about and you're like, oh my God, this is so surreal. Yeah. And like you never would have thought back then, you know, here you are.

24:26
No! I had no intention of ever leaving the state of Maine. I freaking loved Maine.  I still do. I just can't afford to live there. It's so very expensive.

24:38
I will, yeah. of living. Go ahead. Oh no, you're okay. I've only been as out east as far as New York, but I was like, man, I would love to visit like way up, you know, Maine, all the way up there. It looks beautiful. It is unbelievably beautiful from about mid-May until about mid-October.

25:02
The other months, nah, it's not so much. It's kind of like Minnesota. The weather kind of goes to crap and it stays cold and nasty for five months and then all the beauty happens again.

25:15
worth it maybe those few months, right? Oh yeah, it's the same thing as Minnesota. I'm sure you heard growing up here that we suffer the winters to enjoy the spring, summer, and fall. Yes. I'm so excited. It's spring, Lindsay. I cannot. I don't have enough words. We had sleet more than snow. Okay.

25:44
Yeah, this last these two but I cannot talk these last two winters we've gotten less than a foot of snow  Where I really use or yep. Yeah the whole winter. It's been the weirdest thing and we've had stretches of cold like I've never  Seen and I've lived here for lived in Minnesota for over 30 years. It's been  a week at a time of like minus 15 minus 20 over my goodness

26:15
Yeah, I loved the snow. Like, I miss the snow,  yeah, just the like half the year of the cold, just not so much. The snow is beautiful though.  Well, while we're talking about different states, and  we're digressing, but we only have like four minutes to go. Yeah.  Was it weird for you when you moved to Texas, the different foods? Because I'm guessing that the food culture in Texas is different than the food culture in Minnesota.  Yeah.

26:44
Yeah, it is.  I love it. Like the Tex-Mex. I mean, I would eat probably at a Mexican restaurant every day of the week if I could. And there's plenty to choose from. So  yeah,  not as much casserole based maybe.  Not as much like meat and potatoes, more like barbecue, Tex-Mex kind of thing, which I prefer.  Yeah. You said casserole. It's not a casserole in Minnesota. It's a hot dish.

27:14
Oh, see, I've just been gone way too long. I'm just going to wrap it up because you're having connection issues and I really do want to get this in. Thank you so much for your time, Lindsay. I appreciate it. For sure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun. All right. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye.