Natures Farmacy

Today I'm talking with Joe and Jessica at Natures Farmacy.

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00:00
listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.

00:29
At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Jessica and Joe at Natures Farmacy in Alabama. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Alabama this morning?

00:55
It's a little overcast. It rained yesterday and a lot last night. So overcast, warm. Plants are happy. I bet. I bet they are. It is a beautiful sunny morning here in Minnesota and there's a very light breeze and everything has greened up beautifully. And tomorrow is May 1st. Yay.

01:22
Very excited because May 15th is the date that we plant our seedlings. So we only have to wait 15 and a half more days. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about yourselves and what you do.  OK, so uh we're Nature's Pharmacy. We are a  micro farm here in Summerdale. um We grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables. um We're basically on 1.7 acres and we're trying to pack in as much

01:52
ah produce and fruit as we can on this.  It's not tiny, but it's not big either on this piece of land. And ah we use organic growing practices.  We set up at the markets. ah We have five kids.  We homeschool them. So we're here all the time.  That is a lot of little people in your life. We have two that are big people now and we actually just became grandparents.

02:22
from one of them. So that's really cool. She's a month old now. Jessica, you look amazing to be a grandma. saw your videos on Facebook and I was like, wow, she can't be more than 25. guess. Oh, thank you. It's the veggies. Yeah, absolutely. Are the kids involved in the... They're involved in the berry picking and eating. Yeah, it's hard to keep fruit on the trees and...

02:51
on the vines, ah but I'm guilty of that too. I love to get out here and pick berries and eat fruit.  It's really awesome to be able to have that experience and for our kids to have that experience running up and down the rows picking, whether it's fresh carrots or blackberries, plums, peaches. I'm so glad that we get to do that for them. They do help though. They  are oldest,  not our oldest, but the oldest living here. He's 13. ah

03:20
He helps us with harvesting and packaging and getting stuff ready for the market. He helps us set up at the market. The girls help some too. They'll come out when we're planting and want to poke a few seeds in the ground. We don't force it. So if they  want to help, they do. Nice. You're growing budding entrepreneurs while you grow your gardens and your fruit trees. Actually, our 13 year old has his own mushroom operation. I mean, I'm sorry.

03:49
Worm casting. Worm casting operation. Which could lead to mushroom growing. Well, we do grow mushrooms.  So,  yeah, that's definitely something that, you know, if he wanted to get into that, he could. We grow Shiitake mushrooms and  we'll grow other mushrooms as well, like wine cap. But yeah, so he's he's  farming worms and collecting castings and he sets his little worm castings up at the market and he

04:17
He sells worm casting, so it's really cool. He's pretty much staying sold out too. And the girls are trying to get into crickets. They  did just recently order their first batch of crickets. They want to be able to grow those, whether it's for like people that have lizards  or feeding their chickens  or even bait. Yeah, fishing.  I love it. You guys have been an excellent example for your little people and your big people. Thank you.

04:47
I wish everybody could be that kind of example because we'd have a much better world in about 10 years. Well, I think more people  are waking up and  moving towards, you know, going back to  homesteading and  I say a simpler life, but sometimes it's not simpler. mean, there's a lot of work involved, but  I see more and more people all the time. Seems like they're waking up and trying to.

05:15
disconnect from the system and become more self-sufficient.  So.  Yeah, as I've said on this podcast a bunch of times, I didn't know that homesteading was anything weird or different. my parents lived on an acre  in Maine when they were raising me and my siblings and they grew a garden and they heated their house with wood and my dad split wood by hand with a splitting mall and an axe.

05:44
And we helped him haul wood over to the basement and chucked it downstairs and moved it from one corner of the other to stack it for the winter.  We didn't know that that was not what everybody did. And I can remember walking into a house for the first time where they didn't have a wood stove in their house. And I was like, don't you guys freeze in the wintertime?  I think  I was 10 and  the dad of the family was like, what are you talking about? We have electricity.

06:15
We kind of grew up the opposite. Okay, yeah. Yeah, like we grew up on the TV dinners and the plopped in front of the TV and you know, just we didn't know people lived like you lived. Yeah. Yeah, we grew up completely different. But later in life, we, you know, started to realize that that's not the way we wanted to live anymore. So

06:43
We wanted to start growing. We got a piece of property in Summerdale, started our first garden  about 13, 14 years ago and just fell in love with growing and with the idea of being able to provide people with food.  so from there we just expanded on that idea and have continued to grow our farm.  And,  you know, we still want to expand. uh It's a work in progress for sure. Building new beds all the time and

07:12
planting more crops.

07:16
Yeah,  do I explain this?  We have a hard sided greenhouse that is permanent, but we had a,  a, I want to call it a high tunnel, but it's not one of the big ones, but that style of greenhouse, we had one up and the plastic ripped over the winter.  That whole thing came down yesterday. Cause we're not going to use it this summer.  And I was like, I'm kind of, I'm going to miss that little bubble out there. My husband looked at me and he said, what?

07:45
And I said, the greenhouse you took down today. Yeah. It's been part of the landscape for two years. And I it's going to look weird having a hole in there, you know? Yeah, for sure. We love our greenhouse. That's actually where we're sitting right now. It's actually become like a second living space or actually maybe this is the main living space and the house is kind of secondary living space. yeah, we have Thanksgiving out here. if you know, the big kids come over and bring the family then.

08:15
We have dinner out here. It's really nice. That is so sweet. I love that. And is it warm in Alabama at Thanksgiving time?  Sometimes. Most of the time. Yeah, it's very warm. We usually have to have the sides up and  sometimes fan going.  Yeah, we couldn't do that here. It would be very cold to be eating Thanksgiving dinner in our greenhouse. Yeah.  Yeah, most of time it's warm, but like two years ago we had snow. So

08:45
That was kind of unexpected. Bet it was pretty. It was. We actually played in the snow. I don't even think I came inside for two days. I'm just out here walking around in the snow. It's something we don't get to see very often. Did you eat the snow? Cause I would have. No, I did not eat the snow, but I definitely played in it. We do still have a bag in the freezer though. Our daughter wanted to keep some snow.

09:13
One of the most fun things that I ever did with my grandpa when I lived in Maine  as a kid is he would go out and get  the fresh fallen snow that no one had walked on and no dogs had done anything to.  And he would bring it bring it in and put it in a bowl and put maple syrup over it. And we would eat maple syrup snow. So like a maple syrup snow cone. Yeah. And if it snows again this winter you should do that with your little ones because they might get a kick out of it.

09:42
Yeah, that's cool. Never thought about doing that, but yeah, that's that'd be cool. And I don't know if it'll snow again. That's something that's very rare down here. Yeah. If it does, do not use the crappy store bought fake syrup. Get some real maple syrup because it will not be the same without real maple syrup. Oh yeah. That's all we use.  Okay, good.  My husband picked up some of the  not real maple syrup when he was shopping and I was like, we will eat it because you bought it, but don't keep buying this.  Yeah.

10:13
It's bad for you. It may taste good, but it's bad for you.  So much stuff in the stores is terrible for you.  Yep, absolutely. If I knew somebody close by that I could get uh raw milk from, we wouldn't even buy milk from the store. We would buy it from somebody nearby, but there's no one within a half an hour of us that sells raw milk right now. Oh my goodness.

10:39
And with gas prices the way they are, a gallon of raw milk is about $20 at the cheapest around here. And I don't even want to know how much gas it would take to get over to where they sell it. that's, we're pushing $30 a gallon for raw Oh my goodness. Yeah, that is insane. It's so crazy. But it's worth it. I mean, if we were some, if we were nearby somebody that was selling it, we should, would certainly stop in and pay $20 for a gallon because

11:08
Those dairy farmers work really hard to provide a really good product. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it takes a lot of work. It's it is nonstop. Sometimes you got to get up in the middle of the middle of the night, you know, to handle business. So yeah. Yeah. Does Alabama allow raw milk sales?  No. No. Yeah. No. You have to put that it's for  pet consumption only, not for human consumption.

11:36
But if you want to drink it once you get at home, can, right? Sure. I mean, I'm sure if they thought they could bust in and bust you for it, they probably would. It's so dumb, isn't it? It is. Yup. mean, you're just trying to live their lives, man. And I don't know, people who want to dictate what you can and what you can't do. Yeah. Humans have been drinking raw cow milk for

12:02
Ever. Yeah. then the government went, no, it might make you sick. You can't do that.

12:10
Yep, it's insanity.  I can't say anymore because I'll get myself in trouble. I know, I know. That's why I'm just like, it's crazy.  It is. It's nuts. I do not understand why we regulate things that don't need to be regulated and we don't regulate things that do need to be regulated. I will never figure this out until I die. And even then I probably won't find out. It's just about control. Yeah, pretty much.

12:37
God love the government. And honestly, I'm going to say it again because I've said it a lot of times on this podcast. I think that we need government for for a few things, but I also feel like the government makes us trip over feet more often over our own feet more often than not. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Let's government. I mean, they definitely like you said, there are there are some things, but there's just countless things that they just need to.

13:07
you know, get out of our business. Yep.  I have, I have a  B in my bonnet this morning because I just found out that  our government decided that it's going to be okay to mine up in the boundary waters in Minnesota. Like it's, it's going to be legal. And I don't know if you've ever been to Minnesota, but the boundary waters area is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. And it is pristine because we have taken really good care of it.

13:36
Yeah. And now there's going to be mining pits there. Awesome.  Yeah, no, it's really not.  I'm quite pissed off about it. It's sarcastic. Yeah. I know. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.  I'm,  I took a big deep breath when I heard it and went, okay, well, maybe in two and a half years, they'll stop doing that. Maybe.  We'll see. We'll see.  So yeah.

14:06
Go ahead. So yeah, it's it's not great.  And I feel like there are so many or so few  untouched places left. That's right. You really should not be screwing around with them.  every time we lose a place that hasn't been touched, we can't get it back. That's right. Yeah. And they just keep on going.  It's so funny how the double standard, you know, it's OK for them to destroy and I  don't know.

14:35
I mean, I'm not saying that I want to destroy anything, but you know, they they want to control everything and and they give themselves a license to destroy, you know, our our ecosystems and habitats. And it's just it's it's mind blowing. It is. I wasn't even going to talk about it, but I did. So. So do you guys have any animals? You know, I know you do produce, but do you have any animals? We do. We have chickens. We did have some sheep.

15:04
But  where we live and  the fencing situation that we had, we live right on the highway. So  the stress of them getting out and getting in the highway and causing an accident was, it was pretty intense. So we got rid of our sheep, but we do still have our chickens and some ducks. And we collect eggs. And we have cats and dogs. iguanas. Yeah. We have the normal stuff like cats and dogs.

15:32
Iguanas maybe not so normal. um To each their own. Yeah.  What kind of dogs do you have?  They're nuts, basically mixed. They're good dogs, though. Just rescues.  Good.  Yeah. A lady  was going to take them all to the pound, so we adopted two and they turned out to be some fantastic dogs.

15:58
Yeah, it's always the ones that are going to not have a home that turn out to be the best dogs. That's right. I have not told this story before and you guys just gave me a really good opening.  One of my sons, he and his wife saw on Facebook or next door or something that there were three huskies.  They were living in Arizona. My son and his wife were living in Arizona at the time and there were three huskies running around loose in the desert.

16:26
Nobody around somebody dumped these three beautiful dogs. And my, my son's wife looked at him and said, do you want to go get them? Do we want to go get them and give them a home? And without batting an eye, my son said, yep, get in the truck. Sweet. They rescued these dogs and they were over six months old. They're now  two or three years old. There's two males and a female, they're siblings and they're the golden huskies.

16:56
like golden and white? Yeah. They have turned out to be the best dogs ever other than my dog is my dog is the best dog on the planet.  I won't die on that hill, but they have turned out to be the best dogs. Yeah. Huskies are really good dogs. They're, pretty smart. We've had some and uh, yeah, they're very intelligent,  uh,  very loyal. Yeah. Can you imagine being a Husky in the Arizona desert?

17:24
not knowing why you're in the desert. Yeah, no doubt.  Oh, poor dogs. I'm so glad that that my son and his wife were like, yeah, we can add three dogs to our household. Why not?  For sure.  OK, so you guys sell your produce and sell your eggs? Yes, we do. We set up at  the market and we also  we have a CSA program that ah we are running also right now. So you can sign up and become a member. ah

17:54
purchase a share in the farm and we provide you with local all-natural produce.  I think we're one of the few  farms that are actually doing that right now, at least that I'm aware of in our area.  Awesome. Have you gotten into the  making soaps or  bombs or salves or any of that stuff? I'm actually, I have oil going with calendula flowers in it now for making soap.

18:23
and salves.  Nice. Have you done it before?  No, I haven't. How are you liking the process so far?  Well, I've only gotten to the growing the flowers  and soaking it in the oil at this point. So I'm just waiting on the oil to be ready and then I'm going to order everything I need to start trying soaps out. Are you going to do the cold process kind? Yeah,  the lye.

18:53
Okay,  my husband makes it I'm scared to death of the the lion water situation I  it scares me to death that I'm gonna do something wrong and then I'm burning myself with it  But he's been doing it for years and once you get the process down, you'll be able to do it in your sleep Yeah, I was watching videos and it looks  I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how simple

19:17
Like  it's really not that I mean you've got it, you know measurements and everything but I didn't realize it was that simple  Yeah, and back to Joe's statement earlier about people getting back to a simpler life that isn't it's not necessarily simple but it's got a lot of hard work  We all need to remember that Factories didn't make soap 250 years ago. That's right. They didn't make candles. They didn't make dish soap. They didn't make laundry detergent

19:47
people made those things. You're absolutely right. So clearly humans can make the things they need. We've been doing it for a long time. That's right.  I think it was done by design and  I'm not trying to get back into that whole control thing. But I think it was done by design to cripple us  and make us dependent on a system that, you know, obviously is just flooded with all kinds of toxins and everything is so poisonous.  I think it was done by design.

20:18
Think it was done by design. I don't think that I don't think that anyone meant to poison humankind. I Think that if it didn't actually kill us it was acceptable. Yeah, and number two Humans love convenience and they love making money That's true.  So when somebody figured out that they could mass produce soap  and It's not even really soap because if the thing that you're washing your body with doesn't have lie in it. It's not actually soap

20:48
Yeah.  When they figured out they could mass produce it and make a ton of money and people love convenience, that's when that all came together. Yeah. So, you know,  it's it's partly our fault as the consumer, but it's also the producers fault too, I guess.  And really proud of everyone who is trying to take back their power and their autonomy and provide for themselves.  Absolutely.

21:18
So you said you had you grow fruit what you said blackberries what else we have uh peaches plums  blackberries raspberries mulberries we actually grow pineapple  apples uh Occasionally  we'll have bananas, but not so often Let's see what else do we have that I'm not thinking about

21:44
Pear trees. haven't started producing yet. They're still young. Blueberry. Baby trees. Yeah, they're young. Grapes. Grapes. Wow, you guys could just go out and grab a whole fruit salad out of your own property. I know you know what  a food forest is and basically that's kind of the concept that we're  doing here is we're stacking in fruit trees, ah you know, real tight.

22:14
Everything is ah working together.  Like the shade provides a perfect space for lettuces and radishes and stuff here in the summer heat. And we're just trying to pack it in here. We have, our beds are, I know the standard is 30 inches by 50 for like market gardens, but our beds are two foot by 50 foot. And we have a one foot walk space in between. And we're just packing in as many beds as we can and fruit trees in the middle of all of that and our arbors. uh

22:42
on top of all of that and it works out beautifully.  I bet it does because that is an absolutely beautiful system.

22:52
Um, our peach tree is just, it's just getting buds on it. Oh yeah. Yeah. We have one big peach tree and one smaller peach tree. I don't know why they're not, they're not choking each other out or anything, but  one of them just has gotten really big and, uh, it's supposed to get into the twenties tonight.  Oh my goodness. So keep your fingers crossed for us that the, the peach blossoms do not open today because if they don't open today, we'll be fine.

23:22
Yeah.  That's kind of what happened to us this year. Yeah, it was, was, we had a really mild winter and all of our fruit trees, our plums and peaches, they bloomed early because we had a false spring and then  we had two cold snaps there right at the end and we lost a lot of fruit that we were expecting to have this year. I mean, we still, we still got some plums and we still got some peaches, but nothing like what we were anticipating.

23:52
Yeah, we were really hoping for peaches last year because we got like 12 the year before on the first year of growing. We got peaches  and it froze the blooms  last spring  and nothing.  And my husband said that the peach tree is loaded with buds and I was like, God, please don't let it bloom until tomorrow, please.  odds are they probably won't bloom today.

24:22
I don't know. It's supposed to be like in the  high fifties and it's supposed to be sunny all day. So I'm like, no, stay asleep for just one more day, guys.  I don't think anyone who doesn't grow produce understands the impact of the weather cycles. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're completely at its mercy. That's for sure. Yeah. It's really frustrating. We lost.

24:48
We lost  all the blooms off of two apple trees last year because there was a big wind  for two days in a row when they were blooming and  all the petals blew off the trees. So there were no apples on those trees.  Oh man. uh it's so hard.  apple tree is actually loaded this year. This is the first year that it's actually put on apples and held them. So  we are super excited about getting apples for the first time.

25:15
Do you know what variety of apple or is it just apples? They're eintchamir. I have no idea what that is. It was one that was developed in  an Israeli kibbutz. Okay. Yeah. So it's kind of, guess, like Middle Eastern  adapted and  I guess that's similar to our growing conditions.  Huh. I have never heard of that one. I'll have to look it up. What kind of

25:45
tree do you have? We have lots. We have like 20 or 22 apple trees. Wow. And we have. We're on 3.1 acres. Okay, awesome. We have a regent, we have a harrelson. We have four honey golds and the honey golds are the ones that have done the best and I don't even like them. My husband loves them. We have two honey crisp trees that were

26:13
really hoping to see apples from this year as we put them in three years ago.  And then we have a whole bunch of just like  mutt apples over on the other side of the property and we're not sure they're ever going to actually give us apples.  Yeah.

26:32
But we also have plum trees, we have peach trees, we have wild plums, we have... something else and I can't think of it right now. We have rhubarb, we have strawberries, we have asparagus, and then we have the usual suspects in the farm-to-market garden. I've never had rhubarb. Oh, honey. You've got to get some rhubarb. I don't think it grows here, or if it does, doesn't grow here well.

27:00
No, I'm sent you've never tasted it before. No.  Go to the grocery store. I know you don't want to, but go to the grocery store. Go to  the nearest one that has organic produce and get a couple stocks of rhubarb. I've never even seen it in the grocery store here. Really? Yeah. Like  I've never  even, I don't think I've ever even seen it in person at all.  That is crazy.  Huh.

27:29
I wish I knew that it would ship okay, because I would ship you some when ours is ready, but I don't think it would. I think it would get very squishy. might be why they don't have it here. If it doesn't grow well here, I know like pigs and things like that, you don't see them too often in the grocery store. That's something else that we have. Oh, crazy. didn't know that. Well, I've learned something new yet again from this podcast. I swear it's been an education for over two and a half years. That's awesome.

27:59
um So do you guys have any plans to do anything  new this year? Because we always plan for one little thing that's new every summer. um We're hoping to expand our mushroom production for sure.  just putting in new beds and  expanding um as far as any new type of produce or anything like that. um I don't know, we just kind of go through the seed catalogs and whenever we're looking

28:29
things if something pops out then we'll try it.  But trying things sometimes is just kind of frustrating because  you just don't know what you're gonna get.  I guess I kind of like to take the safe road and do things that we know are gonna do really well. As far as new journeys we're hoping to be able to put our farm stand out front and not catch any flak from the town.  Yeah.

28:55
I wish you all the luck in the world with that and if they let you do it, I wish you all the success in the world with it. Thank you. We have a farm stand and people love it. They buy eggs from us almost every day. How many chickens do you guys have? 14. Oh, wow.  So we usually have a dozen or two out there and we're looking at getting more chickens because people are  buying, they want eggs.

29:22
Like they pull in, if there aren't eggs, they pull right back out. And I'll get messages. Are you going to have eggs tomorrow? I hope so. Yeah, we added 32 new chickens this season because we had 24. We've lost a couple. And we get on average 17 eggs a day right now. But we eat about a dozen a day. Yeah, we don't eat as many eggs as we probably should.

29:52
But we also need to make sure the chickens get fed. So every time somebody buys a dozen eggs at $5, we're making sure that the chickens continue to produce. So we are trying a new thing this year. We are trying mini-me watermelons. They are personal sized watermelons. OK, awesome. Because big watermelons don't work here because our growing season isn't long enough for them.

30:22
That's right.  The mini me's are a 60 day um time frame from seed to producing watermelon, to picking watermelons.  Yeah, that's quick.  Yeah. Thank God. Cause we really like watermelon. We could probably fit in a second round of watermelons with those at the end of the season then. Cause we kind of get like a second spring. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of wish we had considered moving south when we bought this place five and a half years ago.

30:52
It's good and bad.  What, Jessica? It's good and bad. We get our storms and  the humidity is a lot sometimes.  Yeah, Minnesota has been  very humid the last four summers, like beyond what I've ever experienced in the over 30 years I've lived here. And I don't enjoy it. So you're probably right. Probably staying in Minnesota was probably the smartest thing we could have done. Yeah, I think our

31:20
like lowest humidity point that we hit here in Alabama is like 80 % humidity or something like that. It's like, we're very humid. You're walking through water in the summertime.  Yup.  All right, guys, I try to keep these to half an hour. Where can people find you?  We're on Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook is just Natures Farmacy. On Instagram, it's naturesfarmacy251.

31:51
Okay, cool.  is pharmacy with a F-A-R-M-A-C-Y like pharmacy. Yes, not P-H-A-R-M-A-C-Y like pharma.  Yes. No pharma on your place. That's right.  Absolutely not.  All right.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Jessica and Joe, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Yeah, we had a good time. Appreciate it. Have a great day.

32:20
You Thank you. Bye bye.