Minnesota From Scratch

Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Minnesota From Scratch, author of Small-Scale Homesteading: A Sustainable Guide to Gardening, Keeping Chickens, Maple Sugaring, Preserving the Harvest, and More. You can follow her on Facebook as well.

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Minnesota From Scratch. Good morning, Stephanie. How are you today? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I am so excited to talk with you because I have wanted to write a book like you've written for years and I do not have the patience for it. So I'm so happy you wrote a book. Tell me about yourself and Minnesota From Scratch.

00:30
Alright, well I'm Stephanie Thurow. I have written four books. Three of them are food preservation cookbooks, mostly about water bath canning and fermentation. And then the fourth book that came out a year ago today, actually, I co-authored with a friend, Michelle Bruhn, and it's called Small Scale Homesteading. And I'm a master food preserver, master gardener with Hunnibin County. I teach food preservation classes and heirloom skill classes around the Twin Cities.

01:00
And yeah, I live in the suburbs of Minneapolis and we grow a bunch of food in our front and backyards and I have a small flock of chickens. And we just do whatever we can do from our little piece of land here in the suburbs. Awesome. So your book-aversary is today, March 14th, Pi Day. And I don't always release the...

01:28
podcast in chronological order. So I'm just saying March 14th is when we recorded this. So it is your book-a-versary. Happy book-a-versary. Thank you. Yeah, how exciting. I did not get a copy of the book, but I did go look at your listing on Amazon and looked at the look inside part so I could read some of it. And it's such a great idea to share how

01:58
we can homestead on a small scale. Yeah, thank you. That's, that's how the book idea was born. Um, my coauthor, Michelle Bruhn, she lives in white Bear Lake and I'm in Richfield and we met on Instagram a long time ago, kind of bonding over the things we both do from our homes. And so I'm on an eighth of an acre, but that includes my house, my garage, my driveway.

02:21
You know, people that don't know us in person think we have acres of land based on our photos and like our production and all we do. So yeah, that's what's in the book. We teach everybody to do what we do and how we do it. And we have, you know, varying methods for much of what we do. So it's kind of fun. The feedback has been good that people like these alternate perspectives and methods. You know, we have the same outcome, but we're doing it completely different ways. And you know, that's one big message is that there's no right way to do this.

02:50
It's whatever works for you and whatever you actually enjoy doing. That's what you should focus on.

03:00
Yeah, and I, okay, I don't want to alienate people who aren't doing any kind of homesteading because you don't have to do this. It's, it's not a requirement as a human to grow your own food or cook your own food or raise animals in 2024. It used to be, it used to be a requirement that we

03:25
We're nomads and we would travel the earth and we would eat what we could find to survive. But that's not the world we live in now. Having said that, I'm a huge proponent of growing your own food and cooking your own food and raising animals and trying to be part of nature in some way. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it was never a decision to like do this. It's something that happened naturally over 20 years.

03:55
started with canning. And, you know, it was like, well, now we do this, let's try this. Oh, let's add this on. And it's literally been 20 years of growing. And yeah, absolutely, people don't have to feel like they need to do it. And we're so lucky in Minnesota, we have farmers markets year round and that provide us with, you know, everything we need. So we're so lucky in that way.

04:23
Yeah, and I'm real thankful for the people that go to farmers markets to get local food because we sell at the farmers market in Lesor in the summer. So that helps our bottom line, but we also feel like we're helping our community. So it should be a symbiotic relationship between the grower and the buyer.

04:45
sure. And, you know, people oftentimes can't grow enough at, you know, in their residential home like we have. Like there's no way I could grow enough pickling cucumbers or sometimes I have grown enough tomatoes, but that only happened one year, you know, so we need our farmers. Yeah, absolutely. We did the same thing that you are doing for a long time, for 20 years. We had a tenth of an acre lot.

05:13
with a house and a four car garage on it. And we learned to grow our produce up instead of out, and that gave us more room. Yeah. And we had backyard chickens. We had four chickens for a while. Now we have 18, because we live on a 3.1 acre property now. And the reason we started doing it is we had four kids on one income, and growing our own food helped with our grocery bill. And that's where that started.

05:43
I was listening to an interview you gave on some TV show, I can't remember, and you were saying that when you had your babies, that's when this really kicked for you. Yeah. I mean, let's see, it started with the canning and then we bought a house a few years later and the house had some garden. So I was just, you know, trying to keep stuff alive. I had not really, I don't think I'd ever garden up to that point actually.

06:10
I grew up with my grandparents and my grandma always grew a lot of flowers and made everything look really beautiful, but I never helped her and I also didn't understand it. I remember being a kid wondering why she would spend all this time, money, and effort to make the yard look so beautiful just to have it die again. So I've come a long way because I totally get it now. But then once I became pregnant, I was like hyper aware of, you know.

06:36
What are these extra chemicals and all this cleaning products and all these lotions and stuff that we are using? And so at that point, I really started cooking from scratch. And then when my daughter was born and like around close to two, she started coming out and helping me water, picking the tomatoes. And she just every year got more and more into helping me. And so we would expand the gardens. And now we have...

07:04
We've expanded out into the front yard too. And it was really inspired by her for sure. Because I obviously want to just give her the best. But ultimately, it's good for the whole family. And then we all participate in it and just love it. But people change. Because I definitely did not have that mindset 21 years ago.

07:32
Yeah, it's astounding to me how your perspective and paradigm changes when you find out you're going to be a mother. I was 19 when I got pregnant with my eldest, who is a girl. And that's a young, young, young mom. And I had been working and I finished high school and I was always on the go.

08:00
Like, I would not go to bed till after midnight and be up at 5 o'clock in the morning at 17, 18 years old. I was a really good student. I had a job. I babysat. I just had a lot of things. And the minute I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter was the minute I went, okay, it's now time to take care of you so that you can grow this human. And

08:27
I started eating better, I started sleeping more because I couldn't sustain the pace that I was at at 19. And I don't know, my whole, I've had, I've had, I've birthed three babies. I have a stepson. So I've raised four kids. And my goal in life until my youngest hit 18 and he's 22 now, was to live long enough so that they would be self-sufficient and on their own.

08:57
That was my whole goal, stay alive and protect them. You know, make sure that they stayed alive too. And I've been accused of being paranoid and hypervigilant and all those words that have nasty connotations when it comes to parenting. But I kind of just ignored it and went, okay, I love my kids. I want them to eat good food. I don't want them to get hurt. I don't want them to get broken. I don't want them to die.

09:27
And that was my whole focus for so long. And now that my kids are grown and healthy and still alive and good people, some of that pressure is gone. And it is the best feeling in the world to work yourself out of that job.

09:48
I'm a few years away from that. Yeah, I was going to say. My daughter's 14 now. Sorry, we had a connection issue for a second there. That's okay. Yeah, she's going to be 14 and I totally agree. It is weird transitioning right now because she's going to be going into high school. Up until this point, she's been so helpful with everything. For the past several years, she's schooled from home even.

10:14
You know, she helps with the chickens and she helps make syrup and we can together and all this and it's all going to change. So I've been going through this little like midlife crisis over the last couple months. Like, oh my gosh, I kind of feel the same feelings I felt when she went into kindergarten in person, you know, so many years ago. But you know, that's the whole goal, like raise good people that make good choices hopefully. But yeah, it's like onto this next step. I'm like.

10:42
how did it go by so quickly and how is this going to change our life here? Because I like to do so many of these things because we're doing it together. So yeah, it'll be interesting. It always is. Honestly, it doesn't matter what life stage your children are at. My daughter got married, I think, six years ago now, I think. And they just had like a...

11:11
Justice of the Peace wedding because she lived far away from everybody and she didn't want people to have to travel. It wasn't a big deal for her. The day she got married, I was like, oh my God. Wow. My daughter's married. And then my stepson just got married this past September. And I'm like, two of my kids are married. How did this happen? Right? So yeah, it's crazy.

11:39
I think that you have given your daughter a really good foundation in how to live.

11:48
with the homesteading and the gardening and the chickens and the taking care of things. Right. I mean, she knows so much more. I mean, and she has since she was like five, she was making bone broth. You know, she'd cut up all the things. I'm like, okay, what do we need next? And why do we add this? And, you know, I didn't do that stuff until I was out of high school. And so yeah. And when you invite the kids...

12:14
to help you preserve the food or to help in the garden or help with the chickens. I mean, they're soaking it in. These are life skills. And so I always try and encourage that. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I want to ask you questions about the process for the book, the Home Age from Scratch. Is that what it's called? Or Homesteading from Scratch? Oh, the small scale homesteading. Yeah.

12:40
Small, yeah, the small scale, whatever the name of your book is, that one. Ah, yeah.

12:47
the process. Yeah, I don't want to get too in-depth because most people aren't book nerds, but I am. I love books and I still have hopes of writing one someday, maybe. So how did that work? Your publisher is Skyhorse. Is that a local publisher or not? No, they're in New York City, New York, New York. Smaller publisher though. Yeah.

13:13
Yep, but they have lots of big titles. They're fast growing, independent publisher. And the way that I got hooked up with them is that I, are we connected? Yep. Okay. I thought you said hello. All right. The way that we got connected is when I had my first book idea of Can It Inferment It, that's my first one, I had reached out to different publishers that I thought would be a good fit.

13:43
I got shot down a couple times, but then one editor really liked the idea and pitched it and offered me a book deal. And so I've written all four books through Skyhorse because I've just been really happy with them. And so I guess if you're looking to write a book or anybody that's looking to write a book with cookbooks, I don't have to have it all written. I just need to have like an outline. And then...

14:09
You know, just reach out to publishing companies that seem to match what kind of book you'd like to write. And that's really where you got to start. I mean, some people have literary agents. I didn't go that route. You could also do that where they try and get you the deals and negotiate the contracts. Yeah. So how long did it take you to write the book? Let's see. From when the idea was born. So I pitched it before I brought Michelle on because I had this idea.

14:39
and they approved it and they were ready to write a contract, but I didn't want to write the gardening section. I love to garden, but I wing it so much and it just works or it doesn't work. Michelle loves to teach about it and I just thought she would be a great partner. I just kind of randomly threw it out there one day while we were on the phone and she was like, yeah, I think I want to do this with you.

15:09
the idea approved. So I went back to my publisher and said, I'm thinking about bringing on a friend. So then yeah, then we started negotiating and it took us two years from when we signed to when we turned in our manuscript, I guess, for about two years. So. That's a long time. This is one of the things that puts me off actually floating or querying a publisher about a book idea because it's such a long process.

15:39
Yeah, well, I mean, I wrote one of my cookbooks in nine months. It's just, it's a lot of work. What I would say is, you know, start writing now. Like if you're, if you're writing a, say you're writing a cookbook, you know, as you are making your recipes, just put it in a document or if you're, if you're trying to write about a method or a how-to or whatever, just start. And as you're actually doing it, they add up.

16:07
And then you can revise, revise, revise. And before you know it, you have a good basis to jump from instead of starting from scratch after you get that deal. Yeah. Um, honestly, one of the reasons I started the podcast is because I have done freelance writing in the past. And it's such, again, it's such a long process from, I have an idea. I need to find the right publication to float it to. I need to wait for them to say yes. If they say yes.

16:36
And then I have to write it and then I have to send it to them. And then they have to decide which, which, um, uh, month they're going to put the piece in for their magazine. And then I finally get paid and I was just like, I need something more immediate. I'm going to start a podcast because then it's all on me. Sure. And it is, it's totally on me. And it's so much more fun. I, I keep saying this, but I absolutely love talking to you guys because.

17:05
you know so much more about everything than I do and Every time I talk to somebody I learn something new which means that the listeners are learning something new as well. It's just it's fabulous So, um, okay. Oh what else can I do here? Um Yeah, I'm stuck I hate this part I get in the middle I'm like what else do I ask Because I don't want to script it because then it gets really strange

17:35
Uh...

17:38
So I was reading on your blog, I think, description that you've been able to put away almost enough or just enough from what you grow for the winters. Is that still holding true? No. It totally, so last, let's see, last year we had so much book promotion to do. My husband's been sick for like a year and a half, kind of like six years really.

18:06
nonstop. And so, you know, life, life happens. So I think last year, we do some things like we make sure to get our pickles done. We love our pickles. I'll do enough jalapenos, but I don't do everything. And I'm into water bath canning the most. So it's like jams and chellies or chutneys and relishes and stuff like that. So I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to.

18:35
can every single thing I need all winter. But we sure do enjoy having some strawberry brew-ripe jam in January and remembering that flavor of summer. They make really great gifts for the holidays too. People really look forward to that. We tap our maple trees and make maple syrup. So we give that away too and make homemade candles and stuff like that, which is all in the book. So, I don't know. It's kind of fun.

19:05
And I did not do it this winter again just because of life. But the past like four or five years before this, I do all my canning all summer and fall. And then in November, I kind of take a look at my pantry and I'm like, okay, I can take 16 jars of the candied jalapenos and 10 jars of the pickled jalapenos. And, you know, I just pull from my pantry and then I make the labels and I do sell them.

19:35
And so then I have been able to make more than enough money to cover all my supplies for that season and any produce that I bought from the farmers markets, I didn't grow. So that was kind of my goal for many years. And I thought that was kind of fun because then I'm not spending any money to get a whole full pantry. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Yes, I do. We didn't can until a couple of years ago because my mom can. We were growing up.

20:05
And she canned in July and August and September in Maine in a house that didn't have air conditioning. And I assume you don't know a lot about the state of Maine, but the state of Maine gets pretty hot and muggy in July, August, and September. So it would seem like the walls were sweating when she canned. I just don't have really good memories of canning. So I didn't want to do it.

20:29
My husband was like, can we can now that we live in a place with air conditioning? I was like, we can try it. So we canned pickles, we canned tomato sauce, we canned diced tomatoes. I don't even know what all we did. And it wasn't the miserable experience that I remembered as a kid. And actually today I'm going to be pulling some of the not spicy.

20:57
salsa that we canned two summers ago out of the pantry and trying to make a not spicy chili. And by spicy I mean no capsaicin, no hot peppers because I have an allergy to them. So that'll be interesting to see if it still tastes good without the chili powder. But yeah, when we when we put our canned goods away in our cabinets that are original to our house,

21:24
We have one thing original to our house. It's the cabinets. The whole house was remodeled before we bought it, except for those cabinets. They still have the hooks for coffee mugs and teacups in them. When we put all the canned goods away from two summers ago, we had three shelves full of canned goods for the first time ever from our garden. And I took pictures. I was so excited.

21:50
I totally get it. It's really satisfying to stand back and look at it all like, wow. And I always tell people because they're like, oh, canning is such an undertaking, but it doesn't have to be. My cookbooks are all small batch and small batches add up. And it's a great way, even if you're not canning, I ferment a lot and you can really do small batch ferments. And so just having those skills in your back pocket just helps you.

22:19
you know, waste less of your food really, if you're growing it. And that's a huge issue and like friends like to grow stuff but then they don't know what to do with it. And so sometimes they waste it which I'm like, ah. So you know, don't waste it. You can give it away. You can give it to food shelves or you can learn how to preserve it. Don't throw it away. Yeah. Since you were talking about pickles, I have a question. How do you get?

22:48
your pickles to not be soft because we can pickles and the first jar we opened they were still crunchy but then the eighth jar we opened a year later they were soft. So is it alum that you put in them to make them stay crispy? I don't use that. So I learned to can... Sorry.

23:14
I learned to can close to 20 years ago and the person that taught me did use alum and she always had crunchy pickles, but I don't use it. The key, I think, and I don't know because I take her method and I still do it. I just don't do the alum part. So I think the key is harvesting and canning within 48 hours. The quickest you can get them preserved, the better chance you have of keeping them crunchy.

23:42
And then I ice bath them as well. And I think those two things are key. And then size, that's the third thing. I don't like them too big, like three inches, three and a half, that's like ideal. So I can fit two layers in a quart jar, in a wide mouth quart jar. I can stand them, you know, two layers of pickles. That's like the size I like. And it fits like 28 to 30 pickles in it. And I...

24:11
I've only had a couple soft jars in all this time. When you say ice bath, what do you mean? I submerge all the pickling cucumbers in cold water and ice for at least an hour. And then? Then I rinse them off.

24:41
So I pick them up from the market, I rinse them off really well until the water is running pretty clear. Then I've ice bath them at that point and then scrub them and trim them and can them. And I've also done it that I rinse them off outside until the water runs clear, bring them in, scrub them and then ice bath them. Okay. And then...

25:05
You put them in the jars and then whatever brine you've made, you put over the top and then can them? Is that what you're saying? Yup. Okay. All right. I just, I wanted to make sure because my husband's going to want to know and I have to make sure that I pay attention and tell him because he doesn't love pickles, but he was very unimpressed with the fact that I didn't appreciate the pickles we can. So he was like, you need to find out how to make them so that they stay the way you like them. I said, the first person I talked to, who knows?

25:35
memorize it, I promise. Size, freshness, and I think that ice bath really matters. Yeah, I've never done it without it and it always works. And people always say pickles are their challenge. So I think that's, you know, these are the things I do and those are the things that work. So it must make the difference. Yeah. And when I made refrigerator pickles, they stayed crunchy no problem because there was no heat involved. And those are lovely. But the flavor varies.

26:02
I feel like, I mean, they're good, they're fine, but I like the flavor better. And then I let them pickle. So we make them in like July or August and I don't open any until after Thanksgiving. That's like our earliest. So I let them pickle for a really long time. And then if you put them in the refrigerator before you open them, that helps too with the crunch. Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. I'm going to...

26:27
I'm going to do a little bit of an aside because this is all reminding me of my dad. My dad makes mustard pickles. And we were visiting back in, I think, 2014 and he sent home a jar of his mustard pickles with us. And I don't remember him making these when we were a kid, so I think it must be a new thing. And I opened a jar and I couldn't breathe because of the mustard scent. I was like, whoa.

26:55
That is some mustardy pickles happening there. And I carefully took a bite and I was like, yeah, I can't do mustard pickles. That's way, way too much mustard. And of course he asked me when I talked to him on the phone if I'd tried them and I was like, yes. And he said he didn't like them, did you? And I said, dad, I'm not a big fan of mustard and you already know this. And he's like, you're not? And I said, no.

27:25
He said, did Cameron like them? My son, my youngest, he was like, I was like, yeah. He said, okay, well, Cameron can eat the whole jar. I was like, okay, cool. So yeah, if you don't like mustard, you probably won't like mustard pickles. Most likely not. But I had to try them. My dad was so excited about sending home a jar with us, I couldn't not try them. Oh, of course, of course. So your parents are still canning. Oh yeah. Oh, that's great.

27:53
Oh yeah, my mom is 77, my dad is 80. My mom does most of the canning, but dad helps like he lifts the rack with the jars in and out of the canner and stuff. Yeah. Oh, I love that. But I guess he had a big hand in the mustard pickles because he was very excited about it. They're fun. They're fun people and a lot of my homesteading stuff that I do, I learn from them. Yeah, exactly. See? It's amazing.

28:23
I miss them. It's really hard sometimes. But that's okay. I try not to talk about them too much because that's what happens. But either way, my dad had a big garden. My mom canned and they still have a garden and they still can. And my biggest thing that I've emulated from them is my dad has pretty much always had a dog. I think there was a...

28:51
eight to ten year span where they didn't have a dog. And I really wanted a dog, but before we moved to our 3.1 acre property, we didn't have room for a dog. We didn't really have a yard for the dog to go in. And so when we moved here, we got a puppy. And I'm not going to talk too much about her because I have talked ad nauseam about Maggie on this podcast because I love her so much. But my parents got a border collie when they moved to their 14 acre place.

29:21
12 years ago. And she was a puppy at the time, you know, little oracully. And when we moved here, I found out that friends had puppies due about a, I don't know, a week before we were supposed to move in here. And so when I saw the pictures, I messaged her and I was like, how much you selling those many Australian Shepherd puppies for? And she said,

29:49
$500 and I said, okay sold I want one and she didn't think I was serious. She thought I was joking. So it ended up that there were two left out of a seven puppy litter and she had posted on Facebook and said, I've got these two left, let me know if you want one. And it was just an in general post. And I messaged her right away. I said, I'm not joking. I want one. And she's, oh, I thought this was just, oh, it'd be nice to have one. I said, no, I want one.

30:19
And she said, okay, which one? And she sent me a picture of the two puppies side by side and they looked exactly alike. I said, I don't know, they look the same. She said, pick one. I said, the one on the right in the picture. My, you know, looking at it, the one on the right. She's like, okay, do you have a name picked out? I said, female, right? And she said, yeah, I said, Maggie. She said, okay, we will start calling her Maggie from now on. The dog knew her name before we even got her. Oh, wow. So.

30:47
My reason in saying this is that our parents or our family of origin influences us in ways we don't even realize they do. And some of us are lucky enough to be influenced in a positive way. Absolutely. Yep. You're doing it for your daughter. My parents did it for me. I'm doing it for my kids. It's so important.

31:15
It is. And I recovered from my teariness. Yay, we're good. Sorry about that. Not going to sob the rest of my day. No, that's fine. You didn't do it. I did it. So speaking of Minnesota from scratch and homesteading and all this stuff that we're talking about, later this afternoon, I am making white chocolate brownies for my kid. He is not doing caffeine right now for some reasons. And he came the other day and he said...

31:43
He said, could we get some white chocolate? Can you make white chocolate brownies? And I said, I don't know. Let me Google it because Google knows everything. And I found a white chocolate brownie recipe. So I think I'm gonna enlist him to help and we're gonna make white chocolate brownies. I have no idea how this is gonna turn out because I've only made chocolate brownies. I haven't made white chocolate brownies. I assume they'll be like blondies.

32:13
Yeah. Maybe. But I am doing something from scratch this afternoon involving cookies or brownies, so it'll be interesting to see how they turn out. Well, good luck. I actually don't like baking. Yeah. Oh! But fortunately, my husband and my daughter do, so that works out.

32:35
Yeah, and it's like, I don't love canning. My husband does. He doesn't love making cookies and brownies and cakes, but I do. I think there's a really nice give and take in most couples where opposites do attract. And as long as your core values are the same, it's all good. But anyway, I don't know. I feel like I'm very distracted this morning. It must be the plan.

33:05
plans to make white chocolate brownies later. I don't know. Could be anything. But anyway, Stephanie, it's been 33 minutes and seven seconds. So I'm going to wrap this up because I try to keep it to half an hour. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. Yeah. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah. Have a great day. You too. Thanks. Bye.