Pumpkin Hill LLC

Today I'm talking with Mindy at Pumpkin Hill LLC.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Mindy at Pumpkin Hill LLC. Good morning, Mindy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. Thank you. Good. You're in Wisconsin? I am. I am in the southern west portion of Wisconsin.

00:29
Okay, what's the nearest big city? Um, La Crosse. Okay, so you're, I think you're like four hours from where I am in La Sour, Minnesota, I think. Yes, yeah, we're about, I mean, it takes me about three and a half hours to get to the Twin Cities. Okay. Well, every time I talk to somebody who's in a bordering state, I say, hey neighbor. So hey neighbor, nice to meet you. So tell me about yourself and what you do. So um.

00:58
I have two children and a husband and we own a farm in rural fairyville. We just started at this year and we have a pumpkin patch in animals and we're really focusing on farm to table on our farm. We have homegrown eggs we're starting to produce and sell hoping that it gets a little bigger as we go. I also own assisted living facilities.

01:27
more so group homes and then we also beef farm and green farm. Okay, when did you start doing this? Pumpkin Hill, I started a year ago. Okay. So we're really fresh. Well, that's good because fresh pumpkins are good pumpkins. Okay, so why did you start it? What brought you to doing this? Oh, so...

01:57
I guess my dad and I have been in businesses together for a very long time. And we also do vacation rentals. And so we actually, my husband and I came over to the neighbor's house one day because we were going to build a house and we were asking about her sewer and it just kind of took off from there. She looked at us and said, I'm moving. Do you want to buy the farm? And we were like, whoa, what? I think we were in shock.

02:26
And we were like, yeah, I guess. So we had talked and my dad and I chose to sell another property to buy this together. So he's part owner right now of the farm with me. And then it kind of snowballed from there. We're like, okay, we know that land prices are expensive. How can we still provide for our family, live on this beautiful land and pay our mortgage? And so it kind of came from an idea

02:56
let's do something where we can get the community involved and we can share the beauty of this land with everybody. So let's come out snowball. Awesome. The reason I ask everybody why is because everybody's reason is different and no one buys land without wanting to do something with it or on it. Yes. We bought land and we thought we were going to raise

03:25
rabbits for meat and we thought we were going to raise chickens for eggs and meat. And right now we have neither. Everything happens for a reason. I feel like we just kind of, we had different ideas in our minds at first and it just kind of went in this weird direction and here we are. Yeah. Our weird direction failed. We, we really wanted to try raising rabbits for meat and

03:54
Our bunnies were stupid and did not understand that they were supposed to reproduce. Even though we did everything right, since getting rid of the rabbits, we've discovered that Timothy hay may have been the issue because they were too fat. The female rabbits were too fat. And fat rabbits don't breed. Who knew? So weird things happen. You can't know what you don't know. And if you don't know where to look, you can't find out.

04:24
And so our rabbit enterprise was a very short-lived experiment that did not go well. But that's okay, because we got years to go and miles to go and lots of sleep to get, and we'll find a new thing. It'll be fine. So I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like a wonderfully fun thing to do to visit your place. Yeah, we're focusing on family, I think, because my family's so close and

04:52
we're always doing stuff together. I mean, my grandparents came over there in their eighties and God bless them because they put their sweat and tears into this too, so help me get going. And we just kind of creatively came up with games for people and animals for people to see and things for them to do. My cows are kind of my little babies. Um, and they'll come up and they'll kiss me and they'll lick me and they'll, you know, play with people. So we really wanted an interactive place for people also to learn.

05:21
because we know that a lot of places around here don't have that. So people will ask us questions like about our Highland cows, like what different sizes do you have? Well, we just have a mid-size Highland cow. There are four different sizes and the breeds and all that fun stuff. So it's a good learning experience too. And we have schools coming out now too. Fun. And how, okay, I always ask the background stuff because I always am curious about what that.

05:48
requires for you to have the kids come from schools. Do you have a waiver that they need to sign that basically says if something happens, we're not at fault or how does that work? We don't. We have them posted around the farm. We've been kind of going back and forth. We don't really let them in with the animals per se. We'll like hold the bunnies and like hold them so that they can hold them, but we won't let them like kind of like run around the farm with them.

06:15
The same thing with feeding the animals, like we're right there because I just don't want somebody to get hurt. And I think that's part of our growing process, trying to figure out what works best so people can see the animals. And then we're not having to be like right there with them. I think that's kind of something that we were going to work on this year is just trying to figure out how we could make that work a little easier. Because we're kind of like running around the farm right now, like, hey, here's the cows, here's the, you know.

06:43
I'm holding a goat in one hand, so people can pet the goat in a rabbit in another hand, standing down in front of my cow, so. Sometimes that's just crazy. Yes, and having a system and a plan is the best way to reduce your anxiety because you will get to the point where it's too much and the anxiety will be too high and you will be just, I don't wanna do this anymore. And I would hate to see that happen. Yes, yeah. So.

07:12
Okay, I saw that you guys have a skeeball game that looks handmade. Who made the skeeball game? My dad. He is the handy man around here. My husband is too and so is my brother, but he has like, I'll tell him what I want and he'll like just envision it and build it for me. Like the skeeball, we had seen a friend's skeeball machine and he's like, that's awesome. I'm like, yeah, we need to build that. So.

07:41
He was working on it for a few weeks and finally got one built. He's just, yeah, he's just an visionary. Well, I was tickled to see it because Skeeball is one of my favorite things to play at the arcades that may still exist. I don't know. I've been wanting forever. But as a teenager, we would go to the arcade at the mall and they had the fancy electronic Skeeball machine. Yeah. That was the only thing I wanted to play. I didn't want to play video games. I wanted to play Skeeball.

08:10
So seeing an old fashioned handmade game, I was just like, that is so cool. I gotta get my husband on making one of those just so I can play. Yeah, it was totally amazing what he did with it. Uh-huh, it works. It looks really fun. And then your little shop is adorable. The video is of your shop. How long did it take to get that together?

08:36
So funny you should ask. A week before, well actually two weeks before we opened, I told my dad, I said, I really kind of just want to shop. Like I want to have coffee. I want to have a few knickknacks when people come out. Like just something where, and then, you know, as I grow, I can sell my eggs in there. I had some Amish baked goods and he's like, uh, okay. So we have a friend in town that I kind of grew up watching his kids and we were just close.

09:03
And he just cemented his own. So that was all dirt floor. Okay. So like two weeks before he opened, they were out pouring concrete. We were wiring the shop and then we were putting up the walls and it all came together. Like that Monday before we opened, it was finally put together. So it wasn't very long. It was a week. Very nice. I was just wondering because it's not easy to build a building and then.

09:31
and then make it into the thing you want it to be. Also, I'm listening to you talk about this, and isn't it just frightening to you that you ended up buying a farm that you didn't necessarily know was even for sale, and then you got critters, and you made a shop, and you've now made this an agritourism business? Do you ever just lay in bed at night and go, wow, I can't believe we did this?

10:00
Um, I think I'm still reeling. Um, my mother-in-law always says like, what are you going to do when you're off season? And I still, I don't know because I've been so busy cleaning up from the season. The, it hasn't really hit me yet. Um, but I'm like, I don't, I, I, I'm excited. I think it's, I just, I get excited about it because I truly enjoy this. I love my animals and I'm excited to have an opportunity to share it with the world. So.

10:29
I think that there will be a time probably around Christmas when I'm like, whoa, it's like hitting me now, but I don't know. I'm just, I'm enjoying the ride. Good. Enjoy it for as long as it lasts because there will come a time that you will look back on this timeframe and just, just laugh, just laugh at yourself stupid at all the things that you did and things that happened and the things that went really right and the things that went really wrong. Yeah. Well.

10:57
My dad, I have to like hand it to him because he was a huge part of this. But actually I got my animals on a fluke too. So my dad went to go get this people holler that I wanted to hook to the back of a tractor to take him around my farm. Yeah. And it was in Iowa and he happened to go down and get it. Well, when he was talking to this guy, this guy's like, what do you want it for? And he's telling him, Oh, my daughter's starting this pumpkin patch and she's really excited and we need a people holler. And he goes.

11:25
funny you should say that right around the corner here's another pumpkin patch. So my dad ended up driving over there and his name is Landon and he has a whole farm and it's a pumpkin patch, it's animals, it's kind of like what I was envisioning only on a larger scale. And so my dad started talking to him and he's like, yeah, come on over. So I actually got my first alpaca from him and four of my goats.

11:51
This is one of those meant to be things, I think, for your life. Yeah. You've had, you've had some real lucky streaks happening. Um, what's, I don't want to make you sad, but what's the hardest thing that's happened since you started pumpkin hill? Um, I think it's balance. So I wear many of hats and many different businesses that, um, I own with my dad and obviously my husband, but, uh, it's.

12:20
trying to create time for each one of those. I feel like sometimes I have to focus on the farm more than I focus on my assisted living, and I feel guilty, and then vice versa. Sometimes I'm at my assisted livings just, you know, running the show, and I feel guilty because maybe I'm not spending as much time as I'd like to at home with my family or with my animals and doing that kind of stuff. So it's definitely the balance. Okay, and what's the best thing or things that have happened in the last year?

12:49
I would say this experience. I love, I have loved every minute of it. I have loved the animals, you know, my kids get to be raised on a farm and get the experiences that not everybody else can. And that makes me very happy because, you know, it's just, you don't get an opportunity like this every day.

13:15
Okay. Well, my third question in this string was going to be, what's the most surprising thing that's happened? But I think the fact that somebody sold you their farm when you didn't even know it was for sale was probably the first most surprising thing. Yeah. And she's amazing. She's still in our lives. The lady who sold us the farm, she's been my husband's neighbor forever. She comes out all the time. She's so supportive. She's like, just. Fantastic. So yeah, I think it's just all of it rolled into one. Okay.

13:45
I'm just trying to figure out what stories you can tell me because if I say just tell me stories, you're going to go blank. Okay, so your cows, are they highlands? Is that right? They are highlands, yeah. They're miniature highlands, so they're not full size. But they're not the smallest. Are they just for entertainment or do they give milk or what do they do for a job? Well, so you can technically...

14:15
eat Highland cows, they are my pets. So anything on this farm becomes my pet. Anything on the, we have another farm that my husband farms. Anything on that farm goes for the beef and you know, that kind of stuff. So primarily they're just for education and being my friends. We're going to breed some and eventually start selling some. I don't think it will ever be big scale, but I think it'll be enough for like, you know, people who actually want to enjoy them.

14:44
because they're very friendly. You're going to have baby Highland cows? I am. I'm actually taking them to my friend Landon's house where we got the alpaca from. End of this month because he has miniature bulls. And so we're going to breed them. So next season, we will hopefully have babies running around the pasture. Yes, and I should know the answer to this question off the top of my head because I ask it all the time, but I never register it in my brain. How long are cows pregnant for? Nine months?

15:14
Eww, I wanna say nine. Okay.

15:19
Okay, so it's gonna be a while, but it'll be worth it at the end. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. So do you have barn cats and a dog? I do have one cat and his name is Buddy and he came with the farm. And otherwise we don't have any more cats. We have gone back and forth if we want more cats. And sometimes they're great. And sometimes they are.

15:49
hard to do chores with because they will climb up your legs, they'll be in your face. I trip over my cat all the time. So as much as I love him, I think like one or two would be okay. I don't know if I want a whole plethora of them. And then dogs, we have, we do not have a dog on the farm yet. We are working on getting a farm dog, but I haven't found the right one.

16:15
So the dog. So we would really like a Burma Doodle because they don't shed as much. And I really like the Burmese Mountain Dogs. So that's what we're waiting for, to find the perfect one. And you will, but do you want a puppy or do you want a dog? I would like to start with a puppy. My kids are young, so I would like the puppy to grow with my kids.

16:44
Yes, that is a brilliant idea. And the other thing that's great about puppies is if something gets screwed up, you know that you screwed it up, somebody else didn't screw it up. And I don't mean to say it as a negative, it's just that if you adopt a dog, you adopt all the behaviors that dog has learned from the people in its life up until you, and it takes longer to train them again.

17:11
and the Bernadoodles are gorgeous. I love them. And our dog is a mini Australian Shepherd and she looks like a small Bernadoodle, which is really funny. Does she have a good temperament? She's great. She was a velociraptor from about 10 weeks old until about nine months old. She tried to eat the baseboards in my house. She did not succeed, but she wanted to.

17:38
And she hit about a year old and became the most wonderful, calm, friendly, loving creature I've ever had. She does not like people, but we got her during COVID, so we didn't socialize her enough. But she's a great dog, love her, but she does. People are like, is she a puppy Bernadoodle? I'm like, no, she's a four-year-old mini Australian Shepherd.

18:04
But yeah, I was going to be surprised if you didn't have a dog because almost every person I've talked to who has a farm, a homestead or a ranch has dogs, plural. Yeah, we haven't decided on what, I think we're just very picky like what we're bringing into because I don't want to be overwhelmed with trying to have that balance between all the jobs that I have, you know. Yes. And you have to be there.

18:33
to teach that puppy to be a decent, friendly, workable dog. People who get puppies and just put them in a crate eight hours a day do not end up with great dogs typically. So they want to please you, they want to be your friend, they want to do what you ask, but if you don't teach them what the thing you're looking for out of them is, they don't learn it. So you have to train dogs, that's how it goes.

19:04
And I'm excited for you. Getting a puppy is amazing. I'm super excited. We looked at a few and then we kind of, I don't know, we're just going back and forth again. I want to make sure I have the time and you know, the energy. And I want to make sure it's the right dog for our family because every dog breed is different we're finding. My husband grew up with a lot of dogs. I grew up with outdoor dogs. So, we're just kind of trying to find that right mesh for us.

19:33
Mm-hmm. Yes, do the research and make sure that it's what you want because the last thing you want to do is regret your choice. And again, not saying that to be negative. Actually, I'm trying to say it to be positive. If you do the work and you do the research and you find the right one, you will never regret it. Right. And a dog is a big undertaking because they live a long time. So you have that pet for a very long time.

20:04
And it's really hard on dogs when you re-home them. Oh, absolutely. Because dogs bond with their owners. And they bond with bad owners, which just amazes me. There are dogs that were trained to be fighting dogs. And they've been treated really, really badly. And they bonded with their owners, even though they were treated badly. And they mourn their separation from the former owner. It's crazy.

20:32
They just want to love you and they will take so much crap and still love you and it's so not fair. And I'm on soapbox and I shouldn't be. But if you get a dog, love your dog, treat your dog like your child, you know? Because they are, they're little kids in dog bodies. I love my dog so much and it like, it seeps out of me when I talk to people about her and about their dogs and about their future dogs. So.

21:00
Let's get off of that for a minute. What's the plan? Are you gonna grow your farm for the next 20 years? Are you gonna try to make it support itself? What are you thinking of doing with it? So I think the biggest thing is, is I wanna grow to a healthy size. I don't wanna be super huge.

21:25
but I also don't want to be super small. So I have this like medium idea of what it's like, but also creating in my head, I have a vision of having like a tree house rental somewhere on my property where people can come and stay on the farm and really experience it. So that's like a 10 year goal, I think we'll get there. It's just slowly and surely. And I also am learning from things that we've done throughout the year, this year, that aren't going to work for us next year.

21:51
So I think it's going to be a learning process until we can get to that right size. I don't want to say it's going to be huge and amazing. It's probably going to be just a medium-sized farm with a corn pit and a corn maze and some wonderful animals and a few games. And an owner with a huge heart who wants to give to people. Yeah. I think I'm going to end this because it's going to take five minutes for you to comment on this.

22:21
amazing when you buy land that's more than, I don't know, a city lot. All the things that you can do. I mean, I would never have thought of doing a tree house so that people would come and stay, but that's really fun. So I know you said you want to stay at medium size, but when, if you didn't have any restrictions on what it could be, what are the ideas that pop into your head? So my

22:50
I would have the farm, but I would have like a tree house grove. Just really, I would turn the whole farm into a really fun family adventure, I guess, because it's hard to find that in places where you can go and enjoy and have activities for the kids all day long and go hiking and see things you don't see normally. That would be lovely. I think that sounds beautiful.

23:19
Have you watched the TV show, I can't remember what it's called, the tree house show, the guy that built tree houses? Every time I watch that thing, I'm like, I wish I was about 30 years younger. I wish I was about 24. Because I would want to go see that being filmed and climb up in those tree houses. It seems like a lot of fun. And also, have you watched Clarkson's Farm by Enchants?

23:47
Okay, it's on Prime or Netflix, I can't remember which. And it's Jeremy Clarkson. He's the guy that used to be on the show with all the cars, all the fancy cars. Okay. And he buys a farm in England. He's not a farmer, he just buys a farm. And he basically spends three years learning how to be a farmer. It is the funniest thing I've ever seen. And for people who haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching it.

24:14
It's a little bit slow and dry first season, but then the second season, he gets into discovering just how hard it is to be a farmer. It's very funny. I will watch that now. Yeah, it's really funny. And he is, it's so crazy because he's very dry. He's English and he's very stoic. And once he gets sheep and the first lambs start being born.

24:43
You see him go from being this very, I don't know, I don't give a rat's ass about anything, to being very, very gentle and humbled and loving to these lambs. And I'm just like, men are so funny. Men are so funny about this stuff. So yeah, it's really fun. It's interesting. It basically proves the point that if you want to get rich farming, you need to start out rich.

25:13
Yeah. It takes a lot to put money into a farm to get it to go. Yeah. And it also points out the hard work and the feelings that come up when you're dealing with livestock, because as you probably know, when you have livestock, you're eventually going to have dead stock and it's really hard, but it's worth it. It is. We actually lost our baby alpaca this year. And it was, you know, my kids cried for probably about a week and a half.

25:44
every night. Yeah, coming home. If you get attached to these animals and they become your family and it's hard to see them pass away or you know, have to bury them. It's hard. Yes, we're going through a thing right now with our barn cat. We haven't seen her in two and a half days. We don't know if she's dead. We don't know if she went to a neighboring farm. We don't know. And she has

26:11
five kittens that are old enough to take care of themselves, but they were still occasionally nursing and they came up on the steps this morning and they were just like, where's mom? And I'm like, crap. So they're old enough to eat real food. They're like eight, nine weeks old. They're fine. But they went from having mom for comfort to mom's not here anymore.

26:37
I don't know whether to just be matter of fact about it, this happens, or to be really sad about it. And I think I'm coming out somewhere in the middle because maybe we won't have kittens next year because maybe we won't have any more female cats. That was not the plan to begin with. So right. And cats multiply very quickly. It is frightening how quickly they figure it out and how many kittens they can produce. She had her first litter was last fall. She had five or six.

27:06
and then she had a litter this April and she had seven and this litter she had seven and two of them were not thriving and they they just died, you know. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes kittens don't make it and that was really hard to figure out too. I really wanted to take kittens to the vet and my husband was like, they are barn cats. There is a reason that animals have more than one baby at a time because Mother Nature says that not all of them survive. And I'm like, damn it.

27:35
Okay, fine. You're right. Yeah. It's it's hard, but it's also really fun when the ones that do thrive really thrive. Right. One of the kittens is like a real dilute orange. So it's basically a yellow long haired cat. And he is gorgeous. He looks like a little lion.

28:00
and chubby and he beats on the other kittens and he's a bully and we're keeping him to hunt mice. So sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's really exciting and really fun. And I do not recommend to anyone that they take on this lifestyle if they're not good at regulating their feelings. If they can't feel them, get through them and move on. Because if you can't feel them, get through them and move on, you won't be able to live this life.

28:29
Oh, absolutely. It's yeah, it can be tough at times. And again, because I don't want to end the podcast episode on a bummer. It can be really amazing too. And you hang on to the amazing parts and make them the biggest part. And you just handle the parts that suck. So that's how I look at it. Mindy, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And I wish you all the luck with Pumpkin Hill LLC. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

28:58
Absolutely. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. Bye.