Majestic Acres Homestead

Today I'm talking with Joanna at Majestic Acres Homestead.

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

00:29
share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Joanna at Majestic Acres Homestead in Texas. Good morning, Joanna. How are you? Good morning. How are you doing?  I'm good. What's the weather like in Texas?  Today it's cloudy and overcast. Yesterday we reached 90 degrees. So summer is not far off. We were already sweating and we were feeling it yesterday. Wow. OK.

00:55
Here in Minnesota, there's still frost on the dead grass outside and it's really bright and sunny.  And my husband informed me this morning before he left for work that we're supposed to hit 81 degrees on Friday. Wow, that sounds crazy for you guys, I guess.  Yeah.  I said, are the seedlings in the greenhouse going to fry? And he said no. He said he would open the door and...

01:23
We have two doors, so there's a cross breeze through there. So he's going to open the doors before he leaves for work on Friday. And that way they don't die because that would be  terrible.  weather report done.  And tell me about yourself and Majestic Acres Homestead. OK, so we are a family run homestead out in Paradise, Texas.  It actually is called Paradise. I get the joke a lot.

01:49
of, know, are you actually from Paradise? Like, I'm like, yes, that is a town  that we  live in. It's a five acre homestead.  And we do all things.  We do  chicken, sourdough.  I make my own vanilla extract.  We're gonna  be doing  meat chickens, honey bees.  We have goats, sheep,  turkeys.  So kind of just a whole variety of things going on here.

02:16
We are new to homesteading. We probably started about two years ago.  We are kind of your typical suburban people that got tired of living in, you know, a cookie cutter  neighborhood and wanted to venture out and try new things and,  you know, really  give,  you know, self-sustainability  a chance. And it has been wonderful.  Nice.

02:44
I  get the joke about Paradise, Texas because there is a town  in Minnesota called Embarrass.  I have never been there. way up north.  I don't know how I would feel about living in a town named Embarrass. That would be interesting.  Paradise  is probably better than that. Yes, absolutely. It's about,  I would say, an hour outside of DFW Metroplex Dallas-Fort Worth.

03:12
So we're close enough to the city, but far, far away enough that you still get that country feel. And, you know, there's not so much hustle and bustle and traffic around here. Yeah. So  did you always want to do this or is this something you guys just came to  after living in the cookie cutter suburbanite lifestyle? We started talking about it probably after my husband's last deployment. So probably about five, six years ago.

03:40
And we kind of started thinking about what do we want from our family? What are our goals?  And country life and just  developing new skills and venturing out from what we were used to was definitely a goal for us.  I am not  from the country. I am a northern girl. I am born and raised  in Delaware, right outside of Philadelphia. So this is a whole new aspect to me.

04:07
But we definitely wanted this for  us, for our children. We wanted them to be exposed to this and develop skills and  essential knowledge. We all know that the world right now is kind of uncertain. We don't really know what our future kind of entails.  today's society, the kids are just so plugged into their phones and social media. And we just wanted  something different for  our kids.

04:33
That's kind of where we, that's kind of where the idea came from. And we just started, you know, researching and spend hours of, you YouTube videos. I think the first one that we watched that we really enjoyed was, it was Off Grid with Doug and Stacey. And I really enjoyed them and just watching what they were doing, kind of  implementing old school,  old school knowledge with,  you know, new school technology with them. And that was really inspiring.

05:01
So, you know, just kind of gathering information and, you know, finding the right property and moving out here and kind of the rest of history, I guess. Okay. Well, it's good to know that you're a fellow former North Easterner because so am I. Oh, nice. Yeah, I grew up in Maine and very cool. don't think Delaware is technically New England, but it's very close. We call it, we call it mid Atlantic. It's a whole section there. Yup.

05:30
I never would have guessed from  your slight Southern drawl that you were from the Northeast. So good job on assimilating. We've been all over Texas. We lived in  Arizona. We went to North Carolina. We lived in  Fort Bragg there with the military. I went to school in Maryland. I went to school in Louisiana. So I kind of been all over. So it's a combination of Northern accent, but also like you said, Southern drawl.  Generic Southern accent, yes.

05:59
Um, so what branches was your husband in? Uh, he was in the army. Uh, we got out at, uh, 18, 18 years. He got medically retired and, um, yeah, it was, it was a wild ride with the military. Like I said, we've been all over deployments and, uh, it was a good time, but I'm glad that, you know, we're enjoying family time now. He's here to stay, uh, home and, uh, yeah, just kind of live in the country life now.

06:27
Well, thank him for his service for me because my son  was a  Marine. He's not in the Marines anymore, but he says once a Marine, always a Marine. So, yeah, it's been great having him out and available to visit. And  he got married and he has a stepdaughter who is wonderful. His wife is amazing.  And it's just been lovely that he survived his eight years in the Marines and now he's doing really well.  Excellent. That's great to hear.

06:57
Yeah, and he really  loved being in the Marines.  no harm, no foul there.  Okay, so  trying to think what else to ask you because my brain is fried from having a headache for two days.  So do you love it? Do you love that you guys made this switch? We  love it. It really  is  a

07:25
a passion of mine, would say. There's so many things of why we love it. I talked on self-sustainability, just becoming a producer rather than a consumer, being able to supply your own meat source of chicken or lamb or vegetables from our garden.

07:51
And also just kind of building a community and relationships, building kind of a social capital.  We sell  our eggs weekly to the local community. I've met so many amazing people,  whether they're just regular people that live 20 minutes down the road or other homesteads.  So that's been great.  I also just love it because I'm a busybody. I love being active. I love doing all the things.

08:18
It's like a running joke in our family. Everybody asks me at the end of the night, how many steps did you walk? And I am never under like 12,000 steps. It is like 15,000 all the time. I walk all over, carry all the hay,  know, feeding the chickens, doing all the waters.  And you know, it's kind of like, is it a homestead unless you have like 20 different projects going on at the same time? Like we have so many things going on that we want to accomplish.

08:44
But it's been real fun and just being able to build new skills and knowledge. We're doing our first batch of meat chickens next month. We have honeybees come in and we have long-term plans of processing our own  sheep as well. We have two dorpor ewes that we got and they're going to kind of be our breeding foundation.

09:09
because everybody thinks of Texas, know, of beef and cattle. Well, we're only on five acres, so you really can't run cattle out here.  So, you know, the sheep were a great  addition in order to give us  a meat source.  So  that's gonna be an exciting addition.  And then, like I said, just, you know, having our kids being exposed to this, you know, we love the aspect of them getting hands-on and being involved. And  my oldest daughter, Delaney, she's eight, and, you know, we always joke about whoever she...

09:39
dates or marries, she's going to give them a run for their money because they're going to be like, oh yeah, let's set up this pasture fence. And she's going to be like, I gotcha. I know exactly what to do. So it's been great for them as well.  Yeah. One of the things that I really do love about this lifestyle is that it is not a gender specific thing.  Anybody can do it.  Absolutely.  And we didn't get our

10:04
acreage until like a little over four years ago. So all my kids were adults before we moved here. And I really wish that we'd been able to do it when we were younger and they were younger because I have one daughter, she's the oldest and then three sons.  And my daughter is no slouch. She's 35 years old and she is a tough cookie. Like she is the sweetest girl ever, but do not mess with her because she will put you in your place.  But, she's strong.

10:31
Like she's five foot nine and  she's not,  she's like super fit. So if anyone bothers her, she just stands her ground and she's like, you're messing with the wrong girl here.  But I feel like if she had been able to grow up here,  it also would have made her strong in different ways than what she is. Does that make sense at all? I feel like I garbled that.  No, no, I totally understandable. Yes.

11:00
Yeah, and the boys are all tough cookies. They're all really strong and  fit and smart and they stand their ground too, but they're men now. And  men standing their ground is different than women standing their ground, if you know what I mean. Absolutely, yes. So,  okay, so you have two girls and a boy, right?

11:23
I have two boys,  two girls and a boy, I'm sorry, yes. My oldest son is 10 and then Delaney, she is eight and then my littlest one, she's three.  Okay, so the little one is now old enough to get into the game here too. Yeah, so  she loves helping with the chickens, she collects the eggs,  she'll get in the kitchen with me  to help make my sourdough or she'll help pour, you know.

11:50
pour vanilla extract into the bottles and things. So she's definitely a hands-on little girl and she loves helping  in any way she can.  I'm so glad you brought, that's awesome, and I'm so glad you brought the vanilla extract back up again because  most people don't know that vanilla extract is actually super easy to make. It is super easy to make. It's just, I think the hardest part is just waiting.

12:16
for it to be done because it's not going to be done in 24 hours or a week or a month. Like it needs to sit there for, you know, at minimum three months, but ideally, you know, six months plus.  So that's been, that's been a really great, a really great addition to what we  produce here because I'm a huge baker and just being able to produce something  that I know,  you know, what the ingredients are and, you know, just having the purest,  purest, simplest form of it has been amazing.

12:46
Yeah, and  I have not done it, but I've read about it.  I read a ton about all these things.  And I've heard that if you're going to do it, you need to use a  decent alcohol for it. Don't just buy the cheap vodka because it's not going to be good. It's not going to taste good.  Correct. So you want, you know,  70 to 90 percent proof alcohol. I mean, you can do vodka. Usually I do vodka, but you can do other sources.

13:15
of alcohol, can do rum, bourbon, even brandy. It's going to change the flavor a little bit of it. And then you also want to have the best vanilla beans that you can get. Probably don't want to Amazon them overnight. I buy a grade A vanilla bean. They have grade B as well. But I stick to the grade A. And I really feel like that gives the best kind of flavor when

13:43
when the alcohol is infused through the vanilla bean. Okay, that's what I thought, but I wanted to check because you actually do it, so you know what you're talking about.  And the best time to make vanilla extract is like two years ago. Exactly.  Yeah.  I have a little stand at a local shop in town here and I put my vanilla extract there and that's been sitting on my shelf for about

14:08
four or five months now. So I was a little eager to get it out there. It probably should have sat for another month or so, but I kept the beans in there. So whoever buys it,  let it sit for a little longer before you use it.  But yeah, want it  to sit for as long as you can.  Okay. I have one more question about that. Do you slice the vanilla beans open or do you just put them in whole?  No. So you're going to want to  split the bean  long ways.

14:35
You don't want to slice it completely through, but you want to expose the bean  that way that whatever alcohol that you're using can infuse through the vanilla bean. Okay. That's what I thought, though, that one. I know some listeners are going to want to try this and I want to make sure they know what they're doing before they get into it. Yep. It is the simplest thing, but like I said, the hardest part is just waiting.  It's almost like when you make soap, cold process soap.

15:01
Right. really do have to wait at least four weeks, ideally six, before you use the soap bars because if you don't,  they get like slimy, soggy, and they just disappear in the shower or the bathtub.  Right.  And there have been times when my husband has made my favorite one, which is clove, sweet orange oil, and cinnamon oil. I think it is.  And he makes it and he cuts it and it dries in our bedroom on our soap drying rack.

15:31
And so my bedroom smells like that. And every morning I get up and I'm like, want to use it now, but if I use it now, it's not going to last. So there's a lot of waiting involved in a lot of the things that we do as homesteaders.  And I think the biggest lesson we learned from being homesteaders is patience. Yes, absolutely. And I was already a patient girl. mean, I have become very good at waiting before we even moved here. But when he makes that soap,

16:00
Number one, I want to eat it and it's not eating obviously. It smells so good. It smells like fall. It smells like pumpkin bread.  And number two, then I want to use it because when you use it in the shower, it wakes you right up because of the cinnamon and the orange and the clove.  first time we made this,  I had no idea. I had never  used that kind of sense, those kinds of scents before in the shower.  And I got in the shower that morning with that brand new bar of soap and lathered up and I was like, oh, this is fabulous.

16:30
I love this.  So yeah, waiting, waiting and patience and,  and  compassion is another one that we've really learned here because  there's a lot of hurt involved in homesteading, like mental hurt because things die or disappointment because your crops don't do well.  And you just got to have grace and compassion for yourself and the thing that you're doing.

16:56
Absolutely. mean, that applies to, like you said, whether it's gardening or animals. mean, we've had so many  failed attempts at our garden or we've lost chickens and our favorite chickens, the ones that we name. Usually we don't name all of them, but  we name our favorites. it's been hard for some of the kids to let go and know that  they're not there anymore. But hey, it's all part of homesteading. you're going to  have

17:24
you know, you're going to have successes and failures and there's going to be hurt, but there's also going to be so much,  you know, positive outcome along the way. Yeah, I always fall back on satisfaction. You know, when you  when you do something on the homestead, I don't care what it is, whether it's making sourdough bread  or going out and getting that first egg out of the coop  or whatever the thing is that you're doing and it works, there's this huge feeling in your chest of, my God, I can do this.

17:53
I can do big things or hard things.  And then when things go wrong, there's that pit in your stomach of,  I don't know how I could have done that differently, or how could I have done that differently?  So it's this  bouncing thing that we do. And  once you find the balance in those two different perspectives,  then you're on the way to being a solid homesteader because everything doesn't

18:21
throw you so far when it happens? Yes. Yes. I mean,  I don't think you can be successful without failure.  You have to take all those losses or negative things that happen and just  learn from it and make it better the second time. Yep,  exactly.  That's how it works.

18:47
I'm dying to talk about this. I'm just going to throw this in here because it kind of makes sense. We have stuff growing in our greenhouse right now. And this will be the first year in three years of doing the farmers market that we will actually have produce to sell at the first farmers market at the end of May because we have the greenhouse. We've got radishes growing. We've got lettuces growing. I don't even know what else. My husband's been going crazy with getting things planted.

19:16
And for the last couple of years, obviously, we're in Minnesota. We're not growing anything outside that is ready to harvest by the first farmers market.  And so  last year and the year before, my husband would take our soaps and our candles and our lip balms and sell those because he wanted to be at the first, you know, farmers market. And so we're both just, I don't know, giddy with the fact that as long as everything works,

19:46
God willing and the creek don't rise and doesn't rain and freeze things,  we will have  actual produce that's good for people to eat at the first farmers market. And I just have everything crossed that that happens because he's more excited than I am.  Well, that's fantastic. mean, being able to provide your community with something that you've actually done for the first time, that's huge.

20:13
Yeah, and that's the other thing is that there's so many first  time things with this lifestyle. mean,  we don't have goats, we don't have sheep, we don't have any livestock, we have chickens and we have  a dog and we have two barn cats right now. We're waiting on some barn kittens from a friend here in a couple of months.  And so  we don't have the first of, you know, the first goat having her first kids or anything,  but

20:43
We have this first this year  of being able to take produce to the first farmers market. And it seems like such a dumb thing to be so excited about, but we are.  just, we've just got everything crossed that we can do that. Yeah. And just, you know, the, just, you know, thinking about how much effort and, you know, time that y'all put into it, you know, just being able to,  you know, bring that up there, you know, maybe, you know, not a lot of people know how much, you know, you gave into it.

21:13
But I know that y'all just poured in 20 times the amount of effort. Yeah, and we all do. When we were having coffee this morning for my husband left for work, he said, by the way, the radishes are coming up in the greenhouse. And I said, oh, that's great. I said, how many radishes? And he's like, 80. 80, wow. I said,

21:36
Um, what are we going to do with all those radishes? Because they're going to be ready in like two weeks and the farmer's market doesn't start until the very end of May.  He says, Oh, I got it covered. I said, you do. He said, yeah. He said, I'm, I'm going to enlist the, the kids help. My son still lives with us. He's a grownup. He's an adult  and we're going to clean out the farm stand and we're going to have eggs and radishes and lettuces in the farm stand. Like a month from now.  I was like, Oh.

22:05
Okay. Good. That's a fantastic idea.  That's a first too. We have never had the farm stand open. We've had it for three years now, I think. It's never been open until mid-June at least. So it's going to be open probably the first part of May.  Fantastic. It's so crazy to me that we live in a very cold climate and this is the year that we're going to have stuff early and probably late.

22:34
as well into the fall. So tickled, just beyond tickled. And I've talked about the greenhouse so much on the podcast, but  it's really important when you live in a Northern Tier State, if you want to grow stuff for a long time, you've got to have a way to keep it warm.

22:53
Yes, absolutely.  We've had several cold snaps here in Texas. There was one week that the temperatures got negative five, negative eight. It was freezing. And we don't have a greenhouse, but  my husband likes to put seedlings in  our well house and put a little space heater in there and keep them warm.  Because sometimes, Texas  weather, it swings.

23:20
real hot or real cold. It's wishy-washy here. You never know what you're gonna get. You know, that is pretty much every state these days. The weather has been utterly insane the last two years everywhere. And everybody I talked to, it doesn't matter if it's Washington state or my parents in Maine or you in Texas, the last two years have been crazy with weather.

23:49
So you're not alone. Yeah, it really, it really has.  Makes me feel a little better.

23:57
Yeah, and we're so dependent on weather with growing things and even with animals, you know?  If it's really wet for more than two weeks, you're gonna run into issues with pneumonia or hoof rot or whatever. They can't handle it either. Yeah, I mean, there was a period where we had snow and it just got so darn muddy and wet.

24:23
And my chickens, some of them have like the feathered feet and they're just getting stuck in the mud. And I had to put, you know, pelletized bedding down and extra straw just to make a pathway for them. And,  you know, my goats and my sheep, they didn't even want to walk to the water trough, you know. So  it was just a struggle bus over here.  But, you know, we  made it through improvised as we could.  Luckily, we, I think we lost one,  one chicken. But other than that, everything, everybody was good to go.  Yeah.

24:53
I'm just keeping, I said on one of the episodes I recorded yesterday that I'm going to braid my hair every day for the next month and a half  so that maybe it'll bring good luck that we don't have six weeks of rain here like we did last spring.  I'm crossing my fingers and my toes and everything that the people who grow things or animals have a much better season than last year because it was really hard for everybody. Yeah.

25:22
Yeah, the weather will definitely  make an impact, negative impact, although it does bring some positives. But I feel like more negative than positives if it's a constant thing  every day.  Yep, it can be a  bear. That wasn't the B word. That actually was in my head. But I'm using bear instead of the other one. OK, so what's the future look like for you guys?

25:48
I would say, know, just kind of  expanding what we're doing right now.  You know, we definitely want to increase the size of our chicken flock. I definitely want to get into  chicken breeding and definitely playing with, you know,  different breeds of chickens and different colors.  Just, you know, making the most aesthetically pleasing egg that I can, you know, I can deliver.

26:15
Like I said, we're getting bees next month, so that's going to be a whole new adventure as far as honey production  and really getting our feet wet into  beekeeping.  I kind of touched on  sheep as well. We definitely want to be producing our own meat and have lamb as our meat source.  There's a whole kind of niche market in Dallas-Fort Worth area for lamb  that I guess a lot of people don't really  consider when they think about.

26:44
Texas.  And I would say, you know, just keep on, you know, building, you know, knowledge and skills and see what we can improve on.  There's always something to do. There's always something to work on and improve on. And,  you know, just kind of, you know, becoming more, you know, self-sufficient  and hopefully, you know,  you know, be producing more products at home than we are buying at the store.  Good plan. Okay.  So with the honeybees. Yes.

27:14
It's okay. I've talked with a lady who was like expert at it on the podcast. She's there episode was  months ago.  But  what she told me is that beekeeping is an expensive hobby to start. It's totally worth it once you get established because everyone loves to buy local honey.  Can you explain why people like local honey?

27:40
Well, I guess, you know, it  is expensive. It is expensive to start. think, you know, we probably dropped around, I would say, a thousand dollars on all the equipment and the boxes and everything that you need.  You know, I think it just kind of goes back to the fact of knowing what you are getting in your product. You know that, you know, the honey is the purest that you can possibly get. You know, it's from,  you know, your local state.

28:09
you know a lot of people buy honey from the store but you might be getting honey from you know Minnesota or Wyoming well that's not going to give you you know  that's not going to give you the proper  benefits as far as  you know  kind of like treating like allergens and things like that that you can get from that honey source you want to make sure  that it is from a local state where you are in order to get those benefits.  So

28:38
I think that's kind of the benefit of buying local.  But I've heard mixed things on how hard it is. I've heard a lot of people say that it  is challenging.  Maybe it's just because I'm watching too many YouTube videos on things going wrong with honey  and bees. But I've seen people lose their bees.  They just leave and they don't come back. I've seen.

29:07
just you know things get into the hive and you know attack the attack the bees and they're all dead so I don't know we'll see  like I said we are going to start it next month so I don't really have a lot of knowledge on it but hopefully our experience is a lot more a lot more better than  things that I've seen elsewhere but  we're optimistic and hopefully we can produce you know the purest  purest honey for our local community and  you know just you know

29:37
getting something that  has so many benefits  is so worthwhile.  Yes, thank you. That's what I was hoping you going to say because I was going to say  local honey helps with seasonal allergies. If you eat honey from bees that have gotten the pollen from the local things that make you itch or your eyes water or your throat sore, it helps.  And the best part about local honey is that you know it's actually  honey.

30:06
It's not some it's not something that is being billed as honey and you find out that it's just like syrup. It's just sugar syrup.  liquid candy syrup.  Yeah. I made the mistake of ordering honey from Amazon from some company and  I this was not honey Joanna.  It was it poured like maple syrup. I'm like  honey is not supposed to pour like that. It's supposed to be really super thick.

30:35
Right. And I used it because I paid for it, but I will never do that again, ever. Yeah, I'm a big believer in taking honey daily. I usually do a tablespoon daily. So many health benefits. like you said, it's supposed to... There's a consistency that you're looking for. If it's not the right consistency, you might want to be questioning what you actually bought or are getting.

31:04
Yeah, there's a place near us that we used to go to that I've seen  the hives and I've seen the bees and I know the guy who owns the place that sells apples. He has bees, he has honeybees.  And for the longest time we would get like a jar or two of honey from him every time he got new honey in from the hives.  And  when the kids had a scratchy throat, if it seemed like they were coming down with something, if they had that first dry cough that you hear as a mom and you're like, uh-oh.

31:34
We would give them, we would just give them a tablespoon full of honey and we would be like let it sit on your tongue  and then slowly swallow it. And I swear to you, his honey helped them fight whatever they were coming down with every time.  honey has a lot of benefits. It's good for your skin, you can heal wounds with it, it's good for upper respiratory stuff, it's good for allergies.  Bees are the best, honey bees are the best thing ever.

32:03
That's, I think that's where we're probably gonna end the podcast episode today is that honey bees are fantastic. Protect your bees.  Take care of those bees. They take care of us. So,  Joanna, thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. This was really fun. Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. You have a great afternoon. Thank you. You do as well. Bye bye.  Bye.