Sourdough Farm, Inc. Miniature Animal Retreat

Today I'm talking with Karen at Sourdough Farm, Inc. Miniature Animal Retreat.

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 Karen at Sourdough Farm. How are you today, Karen? Hey, I'm great. Thank you. Tell me the name of your business. I don't have it right in front of me. Sourdough Farm, Inc., miniature something.

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Miniature animal retreat. Thank you. I Tried to memorize it in my brain went. Nope not doing it this morning So what do you guys do at the sourdough farm ink miniature something retreat? Well, basically we are raising a variety of miniature animals and We are in the planning stages of opening up our farm to special guests with special needs

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And it's a lot of work. I'm sure it is. I wasn't sure whether you were rescuing animals and giving them a retreat, or if you were having a retreat for people to come get good feelings from the animals. Well, that's a very good point, because actually it is working both ways. We rescue and help to rehome animals. Plus, we breed animals so that if folks

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mini pig themselves or if they want to have a goat that's been handled and could be used as an emotional companion. We provide the opportunity to give homes to the animals but also a safe haven of peace and joy for folks that just need to get away and need to have good listeners.

01:56
Animals are great listeners. They are, and they don't talk back. They just love back. They do. So what kind of animals do you have? Well, right now we have fallabella, miniature horses. We have donkeys. We have miniature cows. We have miniature goats, Nigerian miniature goats. We have lots of pigs.

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Just this week we have a new litter of Flemish giant rabbits. Nice. How big is a baby Flemish giant rabbit? Because we raised rabbits for a year and they were very small in the one litter that we got out of the rabbits. How big is a Flemish giant baby? Well, the babies look like little itty bitty puppies. I mean, they're just so tiny at birth.

02:53
They hardly look like rabbits, but our older rabbits, the mother and the father, they're good size. They're about the size of maybe a small dog. So they're pretty heavy. You can carry them, but you mostly want to sit down when you hold them. We try to handle our animals on a regular basis. My husband, Steve, and I, we take almost our entire day of spending time with each and every animal.

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just petting and loving on and getting them used to being handled. And so that's what we do a lot of our day is just giving our animals love so that they will know how to give love back to any people that might come visit. What a lovely way to spend your days. Yes. I really love it. I love every minute of it. So how did this happen? How did this come about?

03:51
We've always loved animals. Both my husband and I have always had animals growing up, but we lived in the city. So when my husband retired, we looked for some farmland and this area right outside Savannah just kind of came into our radar. And the minute we saw it, we knew this was gonna be ours. And so after our first year of being here, we thought, you know, we need to figure out a way of giving back to the community.

04:20
We felt so blessed and so lucky to be here. So we were throwing around ideas of how we could help the people that need us most. And I'm talking about maybe people that suffer from depression, people that are just lonely. Our very special folks are our military veterans or folks with disabilities because we are by no means therapists.

04:48
just coming and sitting in the shade and listening to the pond and the fountain and the animals talk is just so soothing. So we just wanted to share that. Okay. So Savannah, Georgia, right? Yes. Okay. And I feel like nature's sound is music. And anyone who saw the news this morning saw that Taylor Swift dropped her new...

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album last night. And I am sort of a Taylor Swift fan, but not like a Swiftie. And there was a news article on the news this morning about how music actually impacts your brain and that it is the most powerful thing to use all of your brain all at once. And so when people are listening to the water,

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and the birds and your animals talking and whatever they're hearing outside. That is another form of music. So I understand that it really does work for people. And actually, I've done some research on music therapy for my animals. We recently had a miniature horse that had to have surgery and she had a long recovery period in the barn. So we were thinking, I wonder if music could help calm her down.

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and help her not get depressed and make her heal faster. And so we do play music every day for our animals. And over time, I've kind of discovered that the most soothing music, at least for my animals, is the happy country music. And so we play that for them. And just soothing kind of music or happy kind of music just keeps them uplifted and feeling good.

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as much as it would for people. Yeah, I have never walked into a barn where people actually have their animals that hasn't had a radio station on. Yes. So music is healing and sound is healing if it's the right kind of sound. Right. Exactly. We took a lot of effort in building our barn or I should I say rebuilding our barn.

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to add just some extra kind of things that would seem a little over the top for a barn. But we added some things that would help our animals be soothed, but also the people that come in the barn. Now I say rebuilt because we had a barn fire two years ago and we lost our barn and several of our animals. And so we rebuilt our barn, it's just now.

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ready for visitors. But we built it all metal and we built it with safety in mind. We have exterior doors on both sides of the barn and both ends of the barn with the center aisle that have doors so that the animals could be let out in case of an emergency very quickly. And we have internet access so we can get the music that we want.

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cameras and fire extinguishers and fire blankets, fire alarms. We've done kind of more things than maybe the average person would put in their barn, given our... You back?

08:23
Okay, I lost you there for a minute. Okay, so you were saying that you have rebuilt the barn and you told me how, so keep going from there. Well, I'm not sure where you lost me, but we put elements in our barn to help protect us from future fire. That's where you were, yes. And we made sure that we had fire extinguishers and smoke alarms that are...

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wired. They're not battery operated, so we know that they always should work. And we also have fire blankets and first aid kits for a barn, tool kits for a barn. We've thought of everything, including having enough doors and access to getting out if there should be some sort of emergency. Okay. So your animals are well protected and anyone who's in the barn who's human is well protected as well. That's right. Good.

09:21
Good plan, ma'am. Good job. I'm sure that the fire probably scared you to death and you were like, how do we make sure that everybody's okay if it happens again? Well, God forbid, but I'm thinking also about other people that think it'll never be them. Yeah. And we never thought it would happen in a million years. And it was all gone in about 15 minutes. And so,

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And we lost our beloved animals too. So it was, we still struggle with it. And, you know, I did safety for a living. I was an OSHA trainer and consultant and I could just kick myself because I'm thinking what could I have done different? But we did buy this place pre-built. So we had what we had, but I should have gone a step further and, and made other kinds of protections.

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for our animals, I just didn't know. Yep, and you can't know what you don't know until you find it out. So you discovered that a fire is a bad thing and now you're doing everything you can to make sure that everything survives a fire if it happens again. That's right. Good job. So are you guys a nonprofit? We're not nonprofit simply because when we started it, we really didn't know for sure what all we were gonna do.

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I am also an ordained minister in Georgia, so we may open our farm for wedding venues. And we just, we don't have a clear plan yet as to how we want to proceed, because I'm just saying that there's so much need out there, even if it's for hurricane, you know, when we have hurricanes here, a lot of the folks with animals closer to the coast need to move them inward to keep them safe. So you know.

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even providing safety for some animals that need to be moved away from the coast if there's a hurricane. But there's just so many directions we could go into that could help other people. And so we're not in stone yet. And we do plan on having some sort of opening the end of summer or the beginning of fall. Nice.

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Well, you have all kinds of potential going on there. I don't know if I would be able to make a choice yet either. Well, we have lots to do here. If a veteran wants to come out and go fishing, we have a fully stocked pond. We have 20 acres of trails and woods. All the animals have places where you can sit down and just watch them or play with them. And we have a fire pit.

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And it's just really, really beautiful where we're at. I have to pinch myself every day.

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I bet you do. So do you feel like you never have to go on vacation again because where you live is where you love? Exactly. I never want to leave here. In fact, I rarely leave here. A lot of my followers don't know because I'm a good faker that I'm also sight impaired. So my heaven is right here where I'm at and I don't need to feel anything better than what I'm feeling.

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I just want to share that. That is the most wonderful thing ever. And I do understand because when we moved to the place we live at now, it felt like we had moved into an Airbnb except that we actually got to stay forever. And I still adore it. Every morning I wake up and I'm like, oh, we still live here. This is fantastic. Okay. Exactly. It's awesome. Yeah, it really is.

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And I hope that everyone in the world gets the opportunity to feel that. And I know that's not probably the case, but I wish that for everybody. So when you say that you breed animals, do you breed all of your animals or just certain breeds? We just breed certain animals. Some of our animals we have taken in because they have...

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some type of disability, they're challenged in some way. And of course, we wouldn't want to breed those animals just for their own comfort and safety. But we have other specific animals that were purchased for breeding. We just purchased a little stallion, a miniature stallion that we're gonna be using for our many girls. And we do breed our goats. We have some special goats that we like to breed

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tiny and very good for therapy animals. We love our pigs. In fact, our miniature pigs, we have raised a couple in our house. And so they're now outside, they got too big, but we have some pigs that we breed. So we're not breeding to actually make money. We're breeding so that we have animals to share with any of our neighbors or anyone in the community that wants emotional

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support animal and we like I said we handle them all every day so that they would be a perfect fit for someone that needs that furry best friend. That's fabulous and you always have babies around and babies are lovely. Oh yes. I love baby animals so much. Well I have five children myself and when the fifth one um went off uh you know left the nest

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I didn't take it very well. So I have a tendency to want to mother everybody and everything. And it's just kind of fun. I just love it. It keeps me young. And by sharing that, I think it helps keep other people young as well. Yeah, absolutely. Animals bring that childlike joy to the surface. And I don't care if you're, I don't know, five and you are a child or if you're 90.

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It just animals make that bubble come up of, oh, it's a baby or oh, it's a, it's a critter I can pet and hang out with. You just fall in love. Yeah. And it's unavoidable. I'm going to talk about my dog again, cause she's the animal I love the most. I should not do this, but I'm going to anyway. I have a mini Australian shepherd dog named Maggie and she is my fifth kid.

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I love her to pieces and had no idea when we got her that she would take over my heart. My parents had dogs when I was growing up and they were fine. I loved them, but I wasn't in love with them. I have been in love with this puppy since I saw a picture of her when she was two weeks old. Oh my goodness. So yeah, animals just steal your heart and they don't give it back.

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That's right. And you have many, so your heart is walking all over the place in lots of bodies. I have to tell you, I love every single one of them. And that's the hard part about breeding, because I fall in love with them, and then I don't want to let them go. But that's just part of it. And we have them die sometimes. Animals die, and we have a little cemetery here on the property. And that always breaks my heart as well. But.

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That's just the cycle of life and living and death. You know, it happens on the farm, but it's never easy.

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Yeah, I read that if you have livestock, you will eventually have dead stock. And I went, oh, yes, that is absolutely true. Yes, it is, unfortunately. Yeah. And I think I should get it printed and put it in a frame to remind myself every day, because we have barn cats and we have chickens and we have the dog. And I think to myself most days.

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This is a wonderful life and then a chicken dies or a barn cat gets hit by a car or my dog will eventually die and that will not be a happy day. No. So I need to remember that just because it's lovely now doesn't mean that every day is going to be lovely. Yes, but all dogs go to heaven. Thank goodness. Yes. Okay. So, you sort of told me what the potential plans are for your place.

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Why is it called Sourdough Farm? That's a really good question. Both my husband and I love sourdough bread. And I don't really know why it hit me, but when we got the farm, I said, it's sourdough. We're Sourdough Farm. It just came into my head, and consequently, I am learning how to make sourdough bread. How's it going? Well, I'm still working on the starter part.

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But it's just a little project I want to do and I want to make some little mini loaves of sourdough bread to give out to our visitors with maybe our little sticker on it with our name or our logo or whatever. But yeah, we just love sourdough bread. I can't help it. And everybody asked me that question. So I think it's a little different. People will remember it. Uh huh.

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Yes, because I thought you made sourdough when I first saw your Facebook page and I was like, oh no, they don't make sourdough. They have a retreat with many animals. Okay. So, have you named your starter? Because I hear if you name your sourdough starter, you are better about taking care of it because it becomes a living thing. No, I'm not there yet. I just... Give it a name. I'm looking at my brand new bread mixer. I'm just looking at the mixer.

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at this point and haven't started anything yet. But I'm looking forward to it. Okay. We debated making sourdough starter here and I did the research and I was like, we're never going to use it fast enough. We don't make bread often enough that it makes sense to have a starter. Yep.

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And so my husband was like, I saw this thing on YouTube about sourdough bread and you have to make a starter and you need to name it and take care of it. And I said, honey, I said, we got enough stuff to take care of and we would have to make bread every other day. We have, we are three people in one house. And he said, well, we could sell it at the farmer's market. And I said, there's a lady that we like very much at the farmer's market who always her husband already has the market cornered on sourdough bread for the area. I said, I don't want to.

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be in competition with them. He was like, Oh, I forgot. And I said, Yeah, don't do that. It's just so good. So we're not we're not doing sourdough bread. He makes some he makes yeast bread, like, I would say three times a year. And it's usually the first really cold day in the fall. And then for Thanksgiving, and then for Christmas, that's about the only time that he makes bread and I don't make bread, I kill the yeast. I suspect if I made sourdough starter

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The yeast is already going, I wouldn't kill it. It's already there. It's a lot of work from what I'm told, so I don't know. Yep. We'll see. I'm going to let other people play with sourdough because they seem to really enjoy it. I don't want to do it. It's not my thing. OK, so do you have babies coming now? It's springtime. Well, we, of course, just had our litter of the bunnies, which were.

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just so excited about. We plan on breeding our goats shortly, like within the next couple weeks and we are working on breeding one of our horses. It's all new to us, so I'm having to get some expert help, especially with the horses because I've never done that myself and the stallion has never done it either. So it's like the blind leading the blind.

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literally. Yeah. But so we we usually have babies all the time and people like to come over and see our babies. But after the fire and rebuilding the barn, we had to take a deep breath and kind of put things on hold a little bit. Yeah. But we are just so excited to get started again. And there is just so much I want to share with other people.

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not just the animals, but also a message of joy and hope. That man, we've had so much adversity. I could just help somebody hold on and pick up a little something that they could do, a little project or something, even if it's just coming out to visit the farm once a week or something. It just can't, it just uplifts you.

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And I really hope I can do that for people in the future. Yeah. So how are you letting people know that you're there for the reason you're there? Well, I have put a couple just a little messages on the community Facebook page so that they could read that, hey, this is in the makings. And also, I have a good local community following on my farm page, which is just.

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Sourdough Farm, but you can just find it just by putting Sourdough Farm in, Miniature Animal Retreat, and we're word of mouth mostly, but we plan on really cranking it up when we get ready to open. I'm gonna, we're gonna do a barn dance and invite whoever wants to come or whoever sees it, it's open, where we'll have a band and food trucks and

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just make it just fun, just an old fashioned barn dance. And so we're gonna, we plan on doing that. And, but mostly it's just been word of mouth. People pretty much know this area that have lived in this area for a long time. And they know we're here. Nice. I don't know if you've already thought of this, but I'm gonna throw it out there.

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I think that your place would be really good for survivors of domestic violence and especially their children. Have you thought about that at all? Not specifically, but you are so right. You are so right. And I'm not sure how to get that out there. I do know that I want our visits to be by appointment and private.

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so that people can come and have our farm to themselves for several hours. My husband and I want to cook for them as well, cook for whoever comes out and provide a nice lunch. But because people that have been hurt really bad, they don't really wanna come out in the public. Even if nobody knows, when you have something bad happen to yourself, you kind of recluse just a little bit. And so...

25:14
Maybe I would just need to make some connections with some of the safe houses or, you know, maybe let them have an alternate way of contacting me where it's totally confidential. Yeah. The other places you could contact is your local police department because they can put you in contact with the organizations that help people. And even your fire department might have some contacts for you. I don't know.

25:44
Very good idea. I appreciate that one. Yeah, a friend of mine came and stayed with me for a week or two, many years ago with her kids, because the situation at home was not great. And she was a friend. I already knew her. So it was very easy to open our home to her and her kids. And she had been staying at a shelter. And she said that the hardest part was that the kids really had nothing to distract

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them from their fear and it was a new place and new people and new foods and everything. And me being able to take her in for that week or two really helped because the kids had already been to our home, they knew me, they knew my husband, they knew my kids. So in your case, you're a new place, but you have soft squishy animal faces to kiss on and touch and pet and love.

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Exactly. I think that's a perfect idea. Yeah. And it affects so many, so many women. And men. And men. That's true. That's why I said survivors, not women. Because men get hurt too. And I understand that it's a, I think it's a lesser percentage of men who get hurt in domestic violence situations, but they do. So I want to, I want to shout out the boys. Sometimes they get hurt too.

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and they need help too. Yes, I definitely agree with that. I'm a mom of three boys, so boys are close to my heart. I have a daughter too, but she's pretty independent and she's pretty tough, so. Yep, yep. Well, I'm gonna look into that because that's a really important idea. Yeah, and another idea is you have been through a fire that was devastating and hurtful to you.

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Maybe people who have been through a fire and are afraid maybe they could come visit and you could tell them your experience and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. A few of the firefighters that came to us that that early morning are actually followers on my page and I just love them because well I don't remember much they remember me and the babies.

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You know, we literally just had to listen to them cry until they stopped crying. Because there was no way we could get into the barn. It was just, it was just totally gone in minutes. But they were so caring, the firefighters. And if, I can't remember, there may have been some police here too, just because it was such a huge fire. I mean, the barn is bigger than our house. It's gigantic. It's. Yeah.

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gigantic. And anyway, but I also want to mention I have a big place in my heart for military veterans. My father was a veteran and my husband's brother and father and I have a son that's in the Air Force. And I'm just constantly worried about our world right now. And I want

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the military veterans and just those that are in active duty know that they're appreciated and Invite them to come to the farm and Just turn off their brain for a minute and see some good and know that they're supported Yeah, absolutely. I love your heart. You have the biggest heart Thank you To a fault sometimes

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Yeah, I don't know if it can be. I think when you have a big heart, it just benefits everybody. I really do. Okay, so Karen, it's been almost half an hour and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and I hope that everything you wish for at your place comes true. Thank you so much. God bless you. Thanks. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.