Peaceful Pastures

Today I'm talking with Amanda at Peaceful Pastures.

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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.

00:26
Today I'm talking with Amanda at Peaceful Pastures in Michigan. Good afternoon, Amanda. How are you? Hi there. How are you?  I'm good.  You said the weather's really nice in Michigan? Yes, it's beautiful today. We finally broke that heat spell that we had last week and the humidity has gone down and it's just perfectly sunny. So it's great today.

00:50
So you're having a top weather day in Michigan, just like we are in Minnesota. It's really nice here today too.  That sounds great. I'm glad it's just as nice for you. Yeah, the spring has been actually pretty moderate. I have been,  I dare say impressed with Mother Nature this year.  So tell me about yourself and what you do at Peaceful Pastures. Well, my name is Amanda. I'm a mother to two. I have an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter.

01:19
My husband is here with me too. His name is Andrew. We like to jokingly call him Goat Daddy.  We kind of jumped into Peaceful Pastures, kind of like an overnight deal.  We weren't really looking to sell our house and happened upon this property, just a little over seven acres, and we kind of jumped on it and looked, put it on offer, and right away it became ours.  And overnight I went and crazily

01:47
purchased Nigerian Dwarf goats  and one of them was pregnant and so it began with our livestock. So we now have 13  and we have a mini Dexter cow. Her name is Betty and we have chickens.  Awesome. it is absolutely do a little bit of everything here. Yes.  Fantastic. So if your name is Amanda and your husband's name is Andrew,

02:17
Do you ever get Mandy and Andy as nicknames?  Oh, yes, we do.  All the time.  I have this thing in my head that I do all the time and I rarely ever tell people about it because I think it'll freak them out. But I always end up having nicknames for people that I like. And  one of my friends on Facebook, and she was also in a writing group online with me,  her name is Janna.

02:46
For the longest time when I would see her name, would think Jana Banana. Oh, and I never, I never told her that. And I was like, I got to stop doing this, but my brain just does all these weird associations with names. So,  so if you were friends with me, you would be Mandy and your husband would be Andy in my head. That's okay.  My husband always gets called Andy Pandy. So  it works.  Yep. Absolutely.  Um, okay. So do you guys have a garden as well?

03:16
We do.  actually have a quite large garden this year.  Last year we had a great time with it and a perfect harvest. So I went ahead and jumped it up a little bit more this year. So we planted about five times as much as we did last year. So we're growing  and hopefully by the end of this week, early next week, we will start having some produce. We have a little standout front too. And  I like to fiddle around with that when I can. And we do lots of different things.

03:46
tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, pretty much everything you can think of. We grow here right in our garden. So it's a lot of fun.  Keeps me busy.  Yeah. I call it the usual suspects. When people ask me what we grow in ours, I said the usual suspects, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces,  et cetera, et cetera. So all the good things. Yeah, exactly. All the things that people want to eat in June, July, and August. Right. And I don't know.

04:16
I don't know how things are going in Michigan, but here in Minnesota, we've had the nicest weather for getting an early start on crops this year.  And we also  built a heated greenhouse two Mays ago. So we had  seedlings ready to go in the ground  first week in  May. We usually don't plant until May 15th because of the danger of frost.

04:45
And so we looked at the extended forecast and it looked like it was going to be good. And my husband planted tomatoes like three weeks earlier than we usually do. And I said, if they die,  they're done. There's no coming back from that. He said, they're not going to die. He said, I have faith. was like, okay, I hope your faith works out.  Well, I'm glad it did work out.  I actually got a late start this year.

05:12
because of the weather, just because we actually took our first vacation in the last 14 years. So  we were gone for that last week and a half. So it kind of pushed me back a little bit. So we didn't get started until the last week of May, but everything's in the ground now and seems to be doing well. So.

05:32
I don't hear farmers say, I took a vacation very often. Where did you have the opportunity to go?  I know, right? It's really crazy. So we actually went to Disney. We took the kids to Disney for the first time  and it was a lot of fun, but my husband and I have never really taken a vacation by ourselves. So it was wonderful to have the opportunity to do that. And we were happy to be back home as well. So we really missed our animals and missed what was happening here.  So.

06:01
Good. I'm glad that you did that because your kids are only little once. Trust me. I'm 55. My kids are all grown. They're all adults. And we weren't in a position to do the things that people do with their kids. We never went to Disney. We never went to Florida. We never went to any of the most people go. And the kids would all tell you that they don't have an issue with that. That was fine. We would go see the grandparents and that was really fun.

06:31
But  the thing that I would tell people who are looking at getting into homesteading or farming or ranching is that if you can at all do it, take that week or so a year for yourself. Find people who you trust to come in and handle chores and the gardens and animals.  And preferably  do your vacation in like September or October when the gardens are done. And that way the only thing the person coming in has to do

07:01
is feed the animals and muck the stalls. Yeah, we were very fortunate, very blessed to be able to take a week away and  kind of chill out and relax for a little bit. Like I said, it was our first time being able to do that and it was very much needed.  And  we're really, really happy that we were able to do that with the kids and they got to experience it. But they also love just being home to their kind of home body. So they'd rather be in their own element here and know exactly what we do every day. They kind of have a rhythm here.  So

07:34
Did they get to meet any of their favorite Disney characters? They did. They did. Actually, my daughter is obsessed with Stitch. of course, it was the day that the new Stitch movie came out. So she was super excited to see him. They also got to see Belle and the Beast. And it was a lot of fun.

07:54
Yeah, I see videos of little kids meeting their favorite Disney characters at Disneyland and it just makes me smile. I think it's so sweet.  Oh gosh, yes. The way they lit up was, it was  so priceless. Very much worth it, no matter what the cost was.  You know, my husband wasn't too thrilled with the price of everything, but you got to do it once in a while, right?  Absolutely. And that's really my point is if you have the opportunity to do something like that.

08:22
and you can find people you trust to handle the things at home,  go do it. You only live once. Right. Yep. Yep. Very much would have actually said YOLO, but the last time I said YOLO, my 23- My 23-year-old son laughed his ass off at me when I said YOLO instead of you only live once.  Nice. You got to get with the lingo, right? You got to stay with it.

08:49
He gets so squirrely because my husband and I both are people of the eighties. You know, we grew up in the eighties.  And as you know, we Gen Xers think that we're going to be young forever and  pick up the newest music, the newest slang really easily because things change every day when we were growing up. And so he's 23 and he just thinks that it's ridiculous when  we and our friends talk.

09:18
like we're his age. It's funny. I know my son is always saying sigma this, sigma that, and I'm like, what in the world? You're like on a next level. You're totally out of here, dude. I have no idea what you're saying. Uh huh. Yeah. It's crazy all the slang that happens with the next generation of kids.

09:41
I mean, my parents were not necessarily up on the latest music or the latest slang when I was a teenager.  And my dad  loved  old country music. He's still around. He's 81 years old. And  I really loved  George Michael and Prince. And I kind of liked Michael Jackson. I really loved Janet Jackson when she brought out music.  And my dad was not really impressed with the music I listened to.

10:10
And because he loved music, we had a really nice stereo with a really nice speakers.  So the minute my parents would leave the house, I would be getting the records out, vinyl records,  and putting them on the record player and cranking out music that I grew up with, you know, listen to it constantly. And they would go for a walk around the block every night after dinner. So they left, I had music on and they could hear it halfway around the block. That's how loud I had it turned up.  that's so funny.

10:39
Good memories.  You know, my husband and I were just saying how we're huge country fans and we like 80s and  90s country  and there is no good music like it used to be. So we were just talking about that yesterday, how good the music was in the  90s compared to now.

10:57
I am so glad you said that because I actually flipped the radio on a week or so ago when I was driving somewhere, I don't where I was going, and put it on a country station, know, like, like top 40 country as it were. I was like, all of this is crap. And I thought, oh my God, am I getting old, old now? And so I'm glad to know that it is crap because you're not as old as I am. If you think it's crap, it's probably crap. No, it is garbage. It's just terrible.

11:26
I don't even know how they can call it country music anymore. But  I'm glad we got to listen to the good music and we can still relive that every day.  Well, I'm really grateful for things like Pandora and Spotify because you can listen to anything you want to now and not have to be in a vehicle with a radio.  Right. So.

11:50
We're getting a little far afield, but today has been that kind of day with nostalgia. I actually cried on the episode that I did earlier today.  So I'm not going to cry on this one, hopefully. Yeah, And I only do it about once every 50 episodes. So think I'm doing okay.  So tell me again, the animals you have. Well, we have Nigerian dwarfs. We have Stella, Luna,  and...

12:19
Vega, which all are our mamas. They actually just had a birthing here a couple months ago. So they all had babies. We got rid of half of them  and then we retained a few. And then we also have their counterparts, Rocky  and  Oreo.  And then we also have Frankie, which is the buck that we have. And then we have a mini Dexter cow named Betty.

12:43
And we have chickens. So I like to call them Smokey and the Bandits because Smokey is our rooster and then all of his ladies.  They're a lot of fun. They keep us entertained, pecking around and squawking all day long. So that's pretty much the gist of the animals. And then we also have two golden doodles as well. So you got to include them in the farm animals.  There's always a dog on the farm.

13:10
Almost 99.9 % of the time there's always a dog on the farm. Okay, I have questions about all the things you just said. Let me mute my mic real quick. got a cough, hang on.

13:24
I try not to cough in my guests' ears.  So you have Nigerian dwarf goats, dwarf goats, Yep. Okay. Do you use them for milk? Yes, actually. So  like I said, we came into this kind of overnight. So it's been almost two years now that we've been at the homesteading chain.  And when we first got Stella, which was one of our first goats that we got  right away,

13:51
like four days after we got her, gave birth. So I kind of was around and tried to learn and teach myself on how to milk.  Um, so then this year when it came up, I had three, uh, mamas that delivered and we were able to start milking. So I do different things with that. Um, butter, I try to make my own soft cheese and then, um, also just for drinking as well.  Okay.  And

14:19
I'm guessing you don't use the goats for meat.  No, no, we don't do that here. I know a lot of people have asked us and I just cannot bring myself to do it. Nothing against it, just not our thing. So they're more like a poop here. We truly love our animals and we get super close to them.

14:41
Yeah, a lot of the people that I've talked to on the podcast who have goats only have them for dairy. And there are a lot of people in the United States who will eat goat meat. I have not tried it because I'm the same as you. Goats are friends and I don't want to eat them.

15:01
So, dairy goats are fantastic and I did not, I've said this a few times, I did not like goat milk. The goat milk that I tried in previous years tasted to me like hay and a cow patty in the field. It just didn't taste, it didn't taste good. And then friends of ours who have goats let me try their cream for my coffee from their goats and I love it.

15:29
So it just depends on what the goats eat, I guess. It does, yeah. So at first I was really reserved. I was kind of nervous to try it. And then once I did, I was like, oh my gosh, this is actually really good. So it has a lot sweeter taste than like a cow's milk would. And the fat content is actually higher. So there's a lot more cream  to milk than what a cow, like a regular cow's  milk would be. So we quite enjoy it. Yeah, the cream is fabulous.

15:57
It is so yummy in coffee.  I need to get hold of my friend and be like, can I give you 10 bucks for like  just a little bit of cream? I will pay whatever you want. I just want some goat milk cream. It's so good.

16:14
Yeah, it really is.  And then your cow, do you milk her or not? So we don't currently. She's about two years old. So  obviously in order to get milk from her, she would have to be bred.  So we keep her right now just more as like a pet. I hope to  IA her this fall if everything goes correctly, but we will see how that goes. See how much time we have on our hands.  Yeah.

16:43
I wasn't sure how old she was, so I didn't know if she'd had a baby yet.  then the chickens, do you sell the eggs or do you just have them for yourself? We do. We sell eggs.  We get probably  between 20 and 30 eggs every single day.  We have 32 chickens right now, so they're laying quite well.  We have a little stand that we sell eggs and jams and that type of thing out front of our house. And then we also

17:10
We like to give them away to our neighbors and that type of thing too. So we usually have an influx of them. So we're trying to get rid of them quickly.

17:23
Yeah, we're kind of going through that too. Back when we only had 12 chickens, we couldn't even keep eggs in our house because people wanted to buy them. then we got 14 more chickens. And so now we actually have enough eggs in the house during the week for my husband to have a couple for breakfast before he goes to work.  So doubling up on the chickens was a very good plan this spring. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly what we did. So last year we had 10.

17:50
And then we added another 22 to our account this year. So it's been a huge change to go from 10 to 32. Uh huh. So do you guys have jobs outside of the farm? Yeah. So I actually just stepped away. I had a meal prep business and I just stepped away from that to try to be more involved here on the homestead full time. And then my husband is an engineer, so he works for Stellantis.

18:18
We actually joke because you were talking about eggs and every week he's toting eggs to work. So we always laugh at him because he's like my little pack mule taking stuff with him when he goes.  Yeah. My husband works for a company that repairs printers and fax machines and things. And he takes eggs to work because people know we have chickens. So they buy eggs from him at work. Yep. And then as soon as one does, they love them so much, they tell their friend and then the next person wants to get them.

18:49
Luckily, my husband was smart enough to let everybody know that we only have so many eggs right now. So  you've got to get to him fast if you want the one or two dozen we might have on hand.  I would love to buy a hundred chickens and just  have our place to be a chicken business as it were, an egg business. But the problem is we would have to actually, you know, spend the money to get laying hens.

19:18
or spend the money to get an incubator and hatching eggs, or spend the money to get little tiny pullets. And right now, the money just isn't there for any of it. So we're basically doing farmers markets and selling at our farm stand to put money away so that we can expand our business. we wanted to do this last summer, but we lost $5,000 in income because our garden

19:45
couldn't get planted the way it should have been because it rained so much here. So we're a little behind the eight ball on the expanding the business plans,  but I still have the podcast. So I'm making that work for now. Oh, that's good. That's good. You got to do what you got to do, right?  Yeah, exactly. And  people think that when you, when you buy land and you start a homestead or a farm, you just do it, you know, you just jump in all the way into the pool.

20:14
And that's not usually how it works. you start small and dream big, I think is how people put it. Right. Yep. You have to grow a little bit each day or a little bit each year and keep expanding on that. Yeah, because it's really expensive to outfit a homestead. Oh, You will drop, if you tried to do it all at once, you could easily drop $50,000 in six months.

20:47
Like easily $50,000. Oh, if not more. Yeah. Everything is so darn expensive right now too. All the fencing alone and posts and everything are just crazy.  know we had to rebuild our whole chicken coop this year with adding more chickens. Obviously comes a larger coop  and we easily spent,  I don't know,  close to a thousand, if not more just by  buying materials and building it ourselves. So.

21:16
It's pricey. It's not an easy feat, that's for sure. No, it's not. it's, I see it as a dream. You know, you start thinking about this when you start thinking about it. And then it usually takes a couple of years for that to really get stuck in your brain that you really want to do it. And then you have to do research and then you have to find a place and you have to be able to afford it. And then you have to actually, you know, buy the place.

21:45
and then you have to make it what you want it to be. I don't feel like this is ever an overnight thing. No, and I think you're supposed to evolve with it every year as well. So you learn as you do things, you learn and grow and keep  adapting to what you need. And a lot of things you just make work too. You don't always have to go out and outdo yourself from the year before. Just keep maintaining the same rhythm and routine and ends up being so much greater than what you expect it to be.

22:16
Yes,  and it's the only job you will ever have where you see the entire process of the job  from beginning to end. Oh, yes.  That's my favorite part. by doing that though, because you get to see it come to fruition and all the hard work that you put into it along the way. It's truly something to be  admirable.

22:44
Yes, I have a question for you.  When you plant your garden, you when you put the seed in the ground and you put the dirt over it and you water it and you say,  please grow, because that's how we do it here.  We say please grow and hopefully it does.  When the plant comes up and it's got the actual leaves it's supposed to have,  not the beginning leaves, but  the real leaves, and it starts to grow,  do you just stand there and look at that thing and go, it's

23:13
It's a miracle. Do you have that feeling? Oh yeah, about every single morning and night. That's where I get my zen. So every morning I have my coffee and I take a walk out to the garden and I could sit out there for hours and just sit out there and stare because dad's work is truly, truly amazing. And all the thought that he puts into every single little thing is just, it's miraculous. It truly is.

23:45
Yeah, I don't know that I ever understood the word miracle like I do  now. We have sunflower plants growing out,  out sort of beside and behind our greenhouse.  you can see the plants from the window on the landing on the second floor.  And I was coming downstairs this morning from the first interview I did. And I looked outside and I could see one of the sunflower blooms through the window.

24:13
and I dead stopped and I just stood there and looked at it for five minutes.  I never did that kind of stuff before I lived here.  Aw, well I'm glad that you get to enjoy it, because if you're not enjoying it, then it's all work for nothing. So it's definitely important to take the second and just kind of take it all in. Yeah, the simple joys of this just blow me away.

24:38
I'm so glad that I get to talk to you and the other people I've talked to on the podcast because you guys understand it. When I talk to people who haven't done this or haven't had any interest in it, they're like, it's a plant. And I'm just like, no, you do not understand. And they're like, you're right. I don't understand. And there's no painting. There is no painting a picture for them. If they don't get it, they're not going to get it.

25:06
Yeah, and it's sad when they don't get to experience all the joys and stuff too, because you, like I get super excited about everything that we do here. So down to, I mean, just the simple flower growing is so amazing. And so you want to share it with everybody. And when they don't see eye eye with you, it's kind of like,  ah, I just want you to get it. So they never will until they get to experience it themselves.

25:32
Yes, the one thing that most people do understand though when they come to visit is the peace here. Yes. we have friends over and they just calm down. We had friends come and visit I think the second spring we were here. No, first spring we were here. And they're not, they don't grow a garden, they don't do any of this, they don't even have a pet. And they came to visit to see where we live.

26:01
And I can remember them getting out of the car and looking around, like a good five minutes of just looking around, because it's three acres. And Cal, the guy that's the husband, he looked at me and he said,  you must be  so happy.  And I was like, oh, you have no idea, buddy.

26:29
And his wife came over and hugged me. She's like, I am so excited for you. This is beautiful.  And  they got that part. You know, they understood that we had really wanted to get out of town and have some land  and  have a cornfield around us. Cause why not?  And it was so nice to get that reaction from them because I was like, they're going to think we're crazy. And they didn't think that.

26:56
Well, that's good. I'm glad they were able to see how peaceful it was too. Yeah. And I mean, there are moments that are not peaceful. Like when the chicken got attacked by a raccoon two weeks ago, that was not fun to... Yeah. We've been lucky enough to not experience any  animal attacks or anything like that, thankfully. So hopefully we don't have that, but I know that it's quite crazy around here. We've lost quite a few sheep and goats just down the road to coyotes lately. So...

27:26
I anticipate to have some type of run-in. Oh, you will. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what you're going to go through when you do, because it's very sad. And the fact is, I heard this  a year and a half ago, when you have livestock, you will have dead stock.  And  I can tell you right now, you're going to cry, and it's going to be sad,  and you're going to want to throw up. And it doesn't matter whether you see it happen or not.

27:55
The next time, you're probably gonna be really mad. You won't be nearly as sad. You'll be just pissed off about it. Well, that's kinda how we felt. We had one of our  baby goats that was born actually on my birthday this year. It was kinda cool.  As soon as we got to a birthday party, I had to turn around and help deliver babies. So that was super fun.  But we poured all of our heart and soul into this little goat and we bottle fed him and he was just the sweetest thing.

28:22
My daughter kind of took him on as her own  and at about four weeks he passed away and we think that maybe  he aspirated on one of his bottles while we were gone. So  it was really sad and we had a whole little funeral service for him, of course.  But I don't think it'll get easier as time goes on.  It does not. It does not get easier. You just get used to it.

28:49
Right. That sounds terrible, but you do. get used to the fact that you have to enjoy everything you have now because it may not be here tomorrow. Right. And I still tear up. I mean, we had barn kittens that died at three weeks old and I definitely still teared up, but I was just like, okay, I need to shift from destroyed and sad to pissed off because pissed off is easier. I promise you.

29:16
Yep, you're able to get up and keep moving and do the next job that you need to do instead of sitting there and just groveling. Yeah, sobbing doesn't change the fact that the thing that died died. If it did, everybody would live forever. Right.

29:35
So yeah, there are hard things on the farm too, but the thing I always hang on to is the joy that comes with the good things that happen. Right. There's always joy to be found somewhere. I know my kids were heartbroken and I just tried to explain that's the circle of life. And at least we were able to witness him have a great life, the short time that he did. And we got to enjoy him and he gave us lots of laughs and hugs and love along the way. And we got to do the same for him. So. Yep.

30:04
Exactly.  And  the thing that's really great about farm kids is they experience loss early so that when they end up losing a grandparent or a great auntie or uncle, they have already lost something that they have poured their heart and soul into and it is actually easier on them. Well, and I'm glad you mentioned that because that is actually kind of what shifted my whole mindset of a homestead or wanting to do this type of a lifestyle because we actually did go through

30:33
quite some significant losses. lost my dad  and then a short few years later we lost my grandfather and then my stepdad as well. And  my kids were extremely close to all three of them.  And to lose so much,  you just really start to think about life and what's important to you. And that's why we decided to move here and see what we could actually put our hands into  and just live.

31:01
because we weren't really doing that before. So it makes a huge difference, I think. It does. It really does. And honestly, I have had more conversations in the last six months about the fact that life is supposed to be  lived. It's not supposed to be survived. It's supposed to live, enjoy every freaking moment of it and feel all the feelings because that's why we're here.

31:28
Absolutely. All the ups and downs and hard work poured into something and all of the joy that you get from seeing something come full circle is  there's just no words for it other than just it's great. It's phenomenal. Let's use phenomenal. Phenomenal is a great big happy word. Stellar is a good one too. I'm a word freak. I'm a word freak. love words. I have words for everything.

31:54
All right, so Amanda, this was lovely. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Where can people find you? I'm glad we got to chit chat. So thank you so much for inviting me on here. And I look forward to sharing more  stories  and just enjoying all of the stories that you have along the way with everybody else that you interview. Awesome. I hope you come back and listen. Where can people find you, Amanda?  We are on Facebook under Peaceful Pastures.

32:23
And we are also on TikTok, the same name, Peaceful Pastures. So we are located in Davison, Michigan, and we are about an hour north of Detroit.  We do some bookings and some private events here on our farm. And then  you'll find us on Facebook and you can just shoot me a message and I'd love to connect with you. Fantastic. All right. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Amanda, thank you again for your time. appreciate it. Thank you so much. I had a wonderful time.

32:53
All right.