Sustainable Driftless, Inc.

Today I'm talking with Julia at Sustainable Driftless, Inc. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like information regarding the documentaries mentioned, click here. 

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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 Julia at Sustainable Driftless Incorporated. I think it is Inc., so incorporated. Good morning, Julia. How are you? I am good. I'm good. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm so happy to have you on because I...

00:28
I have been to the Driftless area in Wisconsin once and it's gorgeous, but I don't know all the history and the stories behind it. So I'm very excited to talk to you. You're in La Crosse, Wisconsin? I would say La Crosse kind of geographically might be roughly the center of the Driftless region. I'm actually in the, I call it the suburbs of a very rural area. It's where I live on an 80 acre.

00:58
Homestead. Ooh. But I travel all over the Driftless region. Today I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. And we just do a whole lot of stuff out there in the Driftless. Okay. Well, first off, can you tell me what your part in the organization is and what the organization is? Okay. Let's see.

01:26
About eight years ago, I collaborated with somebody else that I had been working with on another not-for-profit. These two guys have produced mysteries of the driftless through the Mississippi Valley Conservancy, Tim Jacobson and George Howe. And the three of us got together and we formed Sustainable Driftless with the purpose of kind of shining a light on the area

01:55
basic idea is that if you love something, you'll treat it well. So what we're, our attempt was and is to get people to love the driftless region, to see what is around them. There are lots of people that have lived here their entire lives and don't necessarily recognize how precious and fragile and gorgeous it is. I think you have to go outside the region to recognize how special it is sometimes.

02:25
But we're shining a light on that. We produced Decoding the Driftless six years ago, which won some Emmys and worldwide accolades. And I think it's one of the number one documentaries that is shown on public television throughout the nation. And what that has done is it kind of...

02:51
gets people kind of into what this special place is all about. So we've continued on with that, and we had a terrible unexpected loss of George Howe about a year ago in a farming accident. And my role as one of the original founders and vice president, and now also is to find new ways to...

03:16
shine the light on the area and to uplift other organizations that are in this area that do work on sustainability and environmental and wise and smart development of the area, water quality issues, soil issues. We just want to get all those individual groups working, not necessarily working together, but aware of one another and having the general public be aware of everybody because

03:46
It's a really exciting time and it's a really exciting story to see this kind of efforts for biodiversity and home setting and gardening and all kinds of good stuff. Okay, that helps. Thank you. So for those who are listening that don't know about the driftless area, can you explain what it is?

04:12
The driftless area is a very unique part of the Midwest. And what it is, is over the two last ice ages, I think the last one was 10,000 years ago, there was no glacier drift as things melted. There was no glacier scraping this area. So you're not going to find drift from...

04:41
Far away.

04:44
that has landed in this area because the glaciers went around both times. And it's kind of like an amoeba-shaped island that encompasses 32 counties in Wisconsin, southwest Wisconsin, western Wisconsin, a bit of Minnesota, southeast Minnesota, and northeast Iowa, and a little tiny bit of Illinois. And it has karst geology, which makes it very interesting.

05:15
It has what geology? Karst geology, which is kind of limestone. It's like the Swiss cheese of rocks. So the rain and the water that, and this was once underwater as everything melted, but the rain and the water that falls on the hills and at this area and the valley percolates through kind of a

05:40
Swiss cheese, I would say, imaginary rock system. So the water kind of goes through it and absorbs all those minerals and ends up in a very abundant water supply in the area. Okay, thank you. I just missed the word and I didn't understand what you said. Okay, so one of the things that I either understand or misunderstand about the driftless area and people who grow food

06:09
is that you're not supposed to use man-made herbicides or pesticides or fertilizers. Is that true or is that just something that I somehow got stuck in my brain? I think it's not necessarily a law, but it is kind of a momentum of the people that live here.

06:37
Now, for instance, you've probably have seen on your grocery shelves the wonderful company Organic Valley. Yes. And those products, that group was formed in the late 70s, a bunch of hippie organic farmers. And they have changed the world, I think, when it comes to getting people to understand the value of organics. And that whole culture, I came to the area.

07:06
gosh, 25 years ago. So I'm a newbie. But when I came to the area, I began to learn all about this. And about 15 years ago, I was involved in disaster recovery, I was the development, redevelopment and disaster coordinator after these gigantic floods that were happening to this small town. And I got to know the population and it is a very interesting mix

07:36
kind of a hippie culture from the 70s, which really got that organic aspect going. A lot of Amish farmers, which also is very natural, and kind of the old school farmers, dairy farmers that, you know, do a great job and are learning along with everybody else. But just because of the geology and just because of the precious nature of this land, it was a natural to have that kind of...

08:04
organic sensibility outgrowth in this area and it's just getting larger and larger all the time. Awesome because I am big believer in not using any of the man-made stuff if we can avoid it here in our our little garden at our place in Minnesota. And yeah, instead of using man-made fertilizer, we use chicken poop from chicken coop from our chickens. And lady, those are the best things that we pull out of our garden when we use the chicken poop. It's great.

08:34
Right, right. Another good fertilizer is trout poop. Yep.

08:43
Well, it is really great fertilizer. And it is best if you can create that cycle. The first organization that I was involved in was Clearwater Farm, and it still is going. That's over 25 years old. But that was all about getting kids connected to the land and understanding where the food comes from and having free range chickens and having compost.

09:12
And we did the compost awards because that's when you take something that's kind of messy and icky and you turn it into something great. And I think composting is just the best way to go. It just improves soil health and that improves your yields and does no harm in the process. Exactly. You're working with nature, not against her. And that's really important.

09:38
Had I realized how many times I was going to hear and say the word compost and how many times I was going to hear and say the word poop on this podcast when I started over a year ago, I might have rethought my life choice because it's so funny to me that I'm saying poop in a public forum. It's very funny. I know. There's other ways of saying it, but I think poop is kind of an acceptable friendly way. I think it's a great word.

10:05
to use because everybody poops and everybody knows what it is. So right, right. And there's even a book for kids called everybody poops. So I think we're okay. I think it's fine. Yeah. All right. So the documentaries that you were talking about, how can people watch those if they don't have access to public television on their TV sets? You can access it through Vimeo. V-I-M-E-O.

10:34
and you'll be able to download. We also have another film coming out, and it's just a short film. I think it's about 30 minutes long, and that's coming out in the next couple months. So there'll be a lot of push for people to see that as well. Again, you see it, you love it, you're more likely to protect it. And that includes how you manage your homestead, how you manage your household.

11:02
things that you feel are important policy wise, where you buy your food, if you buy your food, if you have a victory garden, which I love that. And those encompass chickens too. So yeah, that film will be coming out as well and will be able to be downloaded. I think the launch is intended to be this May. Okay, awesome. Cause I will figure out how to put that in the show notes so people can find what you've been working on.

11:31
And, uh, speaking of Victory Gardens, we just got our, our reas- most recent batch of Victory chickens this past weekend. We had gotten rid of our old chickens back in the fall because they were really getting old and lazy and not giving us very many eggs and we didn't want to feed them through the winter. Yeah. And we weren't going to replace them until May. And then my husband was kind of making noises that he was very unhappy with the cost of eggs at the store if he could find them.

11:59
And I said, let me get hold of our chicken dealer as I refer to her, she's a friend. And I said, do you have any laying hens for sale? And she said, we do. How many do you want? And I was like, well, I'd love 200, but we really are interested in his like 12. And she's like, I got you covered. I was like, okay, good. So we have brand new laying hens. Like they're not even laying yet. They'll be laying mid-March. That was awesome. So we're very excited to have new chickens again.

12:29
because we go through this about every four or five years. We get it. Yeah, yeah. And the thing about the whole chicken and egg issues these days, again, we're getting into bird flu and huge flocks and increased prices and all that kind of stuff. And you don't have to have even 12 chickens to have a great supply of eggs and a really enjoyable way of accessing and connecting with.

12:58
nature in the land around you. I love going out to the garden and just clipping herbs for dinner. It's such a simple little thing or that perfect tomato or my greens or whatever. And having just a few chickens of your own that are well cared for and get that, reap those benefits I think is great. And then you also get chicken poop which is nice.

13:25
Yes, exactly. And the reason I jokingly said 200 is because we live in an area where people would want to buy eggs from us. And so if we had 200 chickens, we could actually be making some money from the chickens. But that would be a lot of work and that would be a lot of chicken food. I think it would actually like bury our garden. So we're not going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is balanced, right? Yeah, exactly.

13:52
And I love that you mentioned clipping herbs from your garden because right now it is like, I don't know if it's even warmed up enough to mention the number, but at 721 this morning it was minus 21 degrees here. Yeah. And I don't have any herbs in the herb garden right now under the snow because number one, there is no snow where I live. We have like a dusting maybe. And we ripped out our herb garden last year because my husband wanted to start over.

14:22
So there's nothing out there. But many years ago, when we lived in town, I had a small herb garden and it had snowed enough that there was a good foot and a half of snow out there. And it was probably February, probably right about now. It was really sunny out and the edges of the snow were starting to melt where my herb garden was and I really wanted fresh time.

14:46
And I said to my husband, I said, can you duck out while I'm getting this ready and see if there's any green time under the snow? And he looked at me like I was insane. And I said, honey, I said, time is a cold weather herb. I said it will continue to grow under the snow if the conditions are right. And he was like, okay, I'll go look. And he came in with like four sprigs of bright green yummy smelling thyme. And I teared up. I was just like, oh, thank God it was there. I don't have to.

15:15
I don't have to eat crow on this and oh, it smells so good in February. So I totally get what you're saying about being able to go out and get herbs from your garden that you grew. Yeah, yeah. We also, in our situation, we also have a modest, not a large at all, greenhouse. And I always plant tomatoes in the greenhouse and I plant them outside. And the ones that I love about the greenhouse is I can get, I'll have fresh tomatoes.

15:44
Thanksgiving. That's always the goal. That I still have tomatoes by Thanksgiving. And then it just gives you those extra months in the season if you can get it started. So I'm hoping to play out there, which is it's warmer inside there and get it started with some cold weather plans right now. And those tomatoes just keep coming up and it's always so great. But it's funny to me that,

16:13
preserving food and everything. I have not been good at that. I've been good at freezing it, which is kind of silly. I should be canning. But it's just the ability to go out there and just grab some fresh stuff that you grew yourself out of pots or your garden bed or your little greenhouse or whatever. It feels really, I don't know, nurturing for your body and soul. I think it's a good thing, really, really good thing.

16:44
I am referring now to the Victory Garden because I do feel that it's a way to push back and have some hope and feel, I don't know, more joy in this world. It's just to reconnect. We have been disconnected for a really long time and I think it's a good thing. Yes. And right now, especially in February in a northern tier state, anything that can make you feel magical and nurtured and content is a good thing.

17:14
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. For me, all this growing things, it doesn't matter whether it's animals or produce or flowers or whatever. I understand that it's nature. I get it. It's what has always happened because nature abhors a vacuum. If you yank everything out, she's going to put something else where you yank the stuff out. But it's also just this very magical, whimsical

17:44
fantastical thing that you put a seed in the ground, you put dirt over it, you water it, and something beautiful comes out of it. It's so magical to me. And you're right, if you love something, you will take care of it. Well, we love our plants, we love our cats, we love our dog, we love our chickens, now that we have them again. And wonderful things happen here at our little homestead every summer. It's really good.

18:15
I've lately for me one of the I just want to ask you a quick question. Um, I just read an article and I think raccoons are fascinating creatures and they're so cute and they are so destructive and every once in a while we'll have a raccoon party that will, you know, just rip apart things for the heck of it. And it's like, why are you guys doing this? You know, you've got, you've got 80 acres to play in. What the heck.

18:42
And it's not even they're eating anything. It's not like they're hungry. They're just coming to mess with you. And then I read an article that they're more prevalent in the city. Do you have a raccoon problem, even with three acres? We have seen one raccoon way out in the cornfield since we moved here just over four years ago. Wow. But we also don't have anything for them to eat.

19:12
The cats eat all the cat food that we give them in the morning by night, so there's no cat food for the raccoons to get into. We have a shed that all the feed is in, but it is locked up tight. No animals can get in there. I think mice can get in there, but other than that, a raccoon is not getting in the feed shed. We also live in the middle of a big old cornfield that surrounds us and a cornfield across the street from us.

19:39
And if it isn't corn, it's soybeans, and if it isn't soybeans, it's some other green plant. So there's not a whole lot of food resources for raccoons here. Right, right. But the reason they like the city is because all of the trash cans and the dumpsters are there and they can climb up. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. So that's probably part of it. Yeah. Yep, that's part of it. So what do you do with your 80 acres?

20:08
Um, my partner who I've been with for 15 years originally came to the area in the 70s. And um, I have to take a sip of water just a moment.

20:24
And at the time they grew tobacco. They were actually farmers and there was a big tobacco area at the time. But over time farming is not the priority. We've got huge wildflower areas, ponds. And he originally, he started a little brewery for a bit.

20:54
and then got out of that. And now what we've done is kind of in my advocacy work, we looked into bottling our water only in glass with a limited amount kind of trying to lead the way that that's the way it should be done. Like a craft harvesting with limitations that is based on like a.

21:20
of rainfall that falls on the area because we don't want to hurt anything. And we also preserve the water that does come down and comes through very often based on how the water is managed. It just goes through the land too quickly and that destroys the soil. So we're working on harvesting but we're also working on

21:45
soil and water management and we're also working on the limitations and trying to put that out there. The name of the brand is Driftless Fine Water and it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little company. And we've won four international awards for our water and that's the water management that my partner Jack has been working on for the last 40 some years. And there are no chemicals in the area, there's nothing in that water.

22:11
And we feel that that's our harvest. We've got gardens and some horses. And just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. So that's my thing is to get away from. I want the world to get away from single use plastics. I want the world to get away from even

22:38
wanting bottled water because the water supplies that we all have are so good. That's not necessarily the case even locally, depending on how the land has been managed. But in our case, we've been blessed with that and we're sharing it. So. Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. When you mentioned single-use plastics, when anyone mentions single-use plastics to me,

23:05
It reminds me of when my husband used to take his lunch to work from the leftovers from dinner the night before because he was very cool with that. He didn't want to go buy a burger at McDonald's. He wanted the good stuff. He would actually take our silverware with him in his lunch box. It wasn't lunch box. It was a soft sided lunch pail. He had a Ziploc bag that he would put the silverware in. That's a single use plastic too, but it's not plastic silverware.

23:35
And he would take real silverware from the house in that bag and then put silverware back in the bag when he's done with it, bring it home and just wash the silverware with the dishes and take it with him again the next day. And one time- That's just so sane. It's so reasonable. Yeah. And one time I was like, it's so great that you're not, we don't buy plastic utensils. And he was like, well, I'm using the plastic bag.

24:04
put the silverware in and I'm like, okay, but at least we're trying, you know? Right. And I think that's the thing is that we can get a little too hard on ourselves for stuff. But we also forget that everything you do can make a difference. And if there's a lot of people doing that good thing, good stuff will happen. You know, it made sense to have plastic.

24:31
well, it doesn't make sense to me at all. I think bamboo is even a better choice. But re just washing your stuff and all you've had to do is you bring it back and forth. That's it. And what a great choice that is. And the same thing for me. I mean, I travel so much and I got in this habit and I think it affected, it did affect my health. And that also is kind of a driver of why I want to have, I want to be part of the solution of saying yes.

24:59
all natural water, no chemicals added, nothing is in there, nothing taken away. Yeah. This is the good stuff. This is what it, this is what we should aspire to. This is what we want to be able to have. But the thing is, I was in this habit where it was like, okay, I'm, I'm gassing up and I'm going to the next spot and I'm stopping at my favorite quick trip. And I've been to a lot of quick trips and they are great stores, but I don't need to be buying.

25:28
plastic bottle of water and if you really pay attention you can start to taste it and then these forever chemicals are in our systems and they're they're everywhere not at our place luckily, but yeah, it's We've done this to ourselves and we can back out of it by just making just simple easy choices and there's some days You need that plastic bag and there's some days that there's no other solution except for to you know purchase this or that that

25:57
is in plastic, but just that mindfulness of, I just want to reduce, even by a bit to start, all this packaging. I mean, I actually feel sick when I see there's so much packaging and there seems to be more packaging and less food within that packaging. It's like, we don't have to do it this way. We can do better. And we don't have to feel guilty that we can't be perfect because nobody can be perfect.

26:25
There's so many great options these days to make it easier to do better for all of us and the environment. For sure. And my theory on this whole thing that I was talking about is that at least he was eating the food that was leftover from the night before that I had cooked from scratch so it was good for him. And that wasn't ending up in the trash can.

26:48
And he wasn't buying, you know, a double cheeseburger and fries and a soft drink at a fast food place and all that packaging was ending up in the trash too. Right. So I think I won the debate on whether we were being sustainable or not that day because I pointed that out to him and he was like, oh yeah, I suppose one small plastic bag is better than all the packaging from the fast food place. And I was like, yes. And the fact that you're not going to have a heart attack anytime soon is probably a win too.

27:19
And you're going to be happier because good food helps us in so many subtle ways. Um, and bad food pulls us down. So lucky him to have you doing that. That is, that's a wonderful thing. That is a great thing. Well, it's a habit because we had four kids, we had to feed on one income. So it was a lot of cooking from scratch going on in my household when they were growing up and.

27:48
I still do it because I really like to cook. It's just something I always do. But there are so many ways to be sustainable and it always feels like it comes back to food and maybe it does. Maybe that is the root of sustainability. I don't know. But... I think it's... Yeah. I think it's food and biodiversity. Having a small yard.

28:16
that's full of pollinator supporting plants and you're not having to mow it. One, an easy solution as you go larger and maybe you're a manager of larger pieces of land like three acres or 40 acres or 80 acres, there's more that you can do to support not just what's on your land, but your whole area. And the more people that do it, the more sustainable things can be.

28:45
And then my background, take it a little bit further, you've got the food systems and you've got land management and you've got pollinators and you've got water and soil. But then what happens when we want to grow our small cities or land that is, would be ideal to have housing on it. There's all kinds of blockages typically in policy and I know this because my career has been in design and community development.

29:15
that prevents the ultimate neighborhoods and communities. And it could be something as much as the zoning prohibits a chicken, or there is no provision for trails, or there is no provision for green space. And then the yards are what the yards are, and you must mow. There's just so much that can get in the way

29:43
If we just stick with the same way we've been doing things, they can get in the way with sustainability and our choices and the buildings we build and how big they are and what the materials we use. There's lots of choices that can alter how something goes. I was involved in a neighborhood many years ago and what we did is we oriented the housing sites so that the potential for solar on the roof could occur.

30:11
And then in the legal documents, it wasn't something that you couldn't have. And you could have solar if you wanted to. And if you built it, you built it with a chase that would allow you to, with a kind of an easy plug-in, things could, things would work for you. And those kind of forethought ideas do drive us to sustainability because not everybody can have a homestead, but maybe they can have a healthier.

30:41
community neighborhood that is being built. And trees are planted and we're insisting that, everybody plants three trees. I was involved in that for quite a while. And that makes the difference. That makes the difference in our water quality, our soil health, our enjoyment of our communities. So there's a lot of choices that can be made by the individual to make a huge difference, I guess is my.

31:10
summary statement. Oh, absolutely. And I, okay, I don't know how it's going to be received, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Um, where I used to live, there were a lot of new developments going up of, you know, the McMansions or the townhouse or whatever. It was, it was a minor part of our decision making to not live in that area anymore. And, uh,

31:35
A lot of the fields that I had gotten used to seeing in the 20 years that we lived there were going away to these developments. I was like, if I was going to build a development in my wildest dreams, I'm not into it at all, but I was just thinking about it. I was like, if I was going to build a development, I would want to make sure there were trees just like you. I would want to make sure there was a place for the kids to play that wasn't just a plastic

32:05
I don't know, silicone or whatever. Exactly. And I would want to make sure there was a place that was open for people to put in little gardens because that's important to me. And I was like, but people are people. If you made room for gardens, people would like be dumb and fight over the spaces or they would be mean and destroy the plants or whatever, because people are people. I want to have hope that.

32:33
If there was a place like I'm talking about and there was space for gardens, people would like have pretty gardens and share their produce and talk and visit and learn things. But I went to high school. I know how people can be. Yeah. I have a, can I tell you a quick story? Yes. Okay. I moved to Wisconsin almost 30 years ago. And I moved into what I thought was one of the best.

33:02
suburban neighborhoods in this small town in Alaska. And we were right up against two farmsteads, two farmsteads with older gentlemen, and the one was going to sell it across the street and the one next to us, he needed to sell it for a variety of reasons. And the developer had an option. And I went to the developer and I said, just like you just said.

33:29
You know, we need to have trees, and we could do this, and there needs to be a central place, and why can't we have that barnstead in the middle? And he said, for five bucks, I'll give you five years, see if you can make it work. Yeah. And in the meantime, he said, write up what you think could work in terms of how this neighborhood gets managed. You know, you can do better. You can do better than just planting large and small vinyl boxes. We can do better here.

33:59
And I worked with this developer for, I think it's about 13 years. We worked on about five different neighborhoods. The Clearwater Farm was developed and it had a place for people to have their little garden spaces. And it had the animals and it had programming and just people getting connections and we created the trail system. And it's like, we built it.

34:27
And at first he said, this will never fly. We are not going to be able to sell these expensive lots that are right next to where roosters are going to be crowing. And the response was, yes, we can. And the results were those were the most desirable lots. And the developer made more money by allowing this to happen than if he would have done his original plan. So it can work. It can happen. Yeah, it can happen.

34:57
It can happen and the people that are involved in the farm, even though they don't have chickens in their bed, their own individual backyards, they are part of a larger community that has been a neighborhood that has been created. That in exchange for their going over there once a week to do their shift of, you know, shoveling and cleaning and caring and water hauling and all that good stuff in exchange, they get those eggs. So. I love it.

35:27
That's, I feel, should be the future as we develop, is to provide for that space for those kids to understand where the beans are coming from and, you know, roosters can be annoying and stuff like that. And the eggs come from chickens and milk comes from cows, yes. Right, right. I am so glad you told that story because when I was thinking about this development in my head.

35:55
you know, my dream development building practice. That's how I would have done it. And I was like, it would never work. So now I know it could work if that was what I was going to do. Oh, it can definitely work. Uh, that, that farm, that small little farm, which is only three acres. And it is surrounded by, um, wetlands and then bluffs nearby where you can kind of walk up a trail to the top where the dairy cows used to go and sun themselves.

36:23
But it's a tiny little space. And I'm not saying it's huge in production, but what I am saying is it gets people connected and appreciate what our farmers do, and maybe even grows a few, grows some skill sets for some kids and some families, but thousands and thousands of people have benefited from this little effort. And that developer had the sense to say, okay, we'll give it a try. And it worked out to be a win-win for everybody.

36:52
over the years. So I just feel that, okay, we proved that. Let's keep going. That is phenomenal, Julia. I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. All right. So ma'am, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're at 36 minutes. So I'm going to let you go, but thank you for coming to talk to me today. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for inviting me. This has been fun. All right. Have a great day, Julia. You too.