The Home Grown Collective Update!

Today Hayden Caraway of the Homegrown Collective is catching me up on progress since we last talked. You can also follow on Facebook.

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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 Hayden Carraway. I love his last name. At the Homegrown Collective. Good morning, Hayden. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing great. Hope you are. I am.

00:26
I'm a little twitchy today because my daughter lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. And at the moment that we're, we are recording this, there is a huge hurricane called Hurricane Milton barreling its way toward Tampa Bay, which is right near St. Petersburg. So I am sending out prayers and positive energy to Florida right now, like you wouldn't believe. Well, we will, we will join you in that. I couldn't imagine what that feels like.

00:53
It kind of sucks, but she's okay. She promised me she'll keep me updated as much as she can. So. Well, good. I will be contacting you later on, maybe tomorrow in a couple of days, just to check in on that. That would be great. Thank you. All right, so I have questions, Mr. Carraway. Tell me, tell me what you're doing first and then I'll ask the questions. Yeah, sure. So I, several years ago, I started a project.

01:22
called the Homegrown Collective Nonprofit. It was started due to a lot of different factors. One, realizing how our food system was being operated and certain personal immune and digestive issues that I wanted to get worked out and cure, not just...

01:46
not just deal with it. So I've been doing a lot of research and hoping to create a platform that allows people to come together and push for a locally produced, responsibly grown food system. Okay, cool. And last we talked, you were just getting it going, all the publicity and stuff. So,

02:15
I think your answer to my first question answered the first question, which was what led you to start the nonprofit? Well, I've actually, it's a little different than that. I've been blessed to be able to travel with family and for work. So I've experienced how other countries ate and understanding their quality and processes. I realized that America's regulators had led us off a cliff regarding our food system. Then you combine that with the immune and digestive issues I spoke about.

02:44
And it's almost too obvious to correlate the two. And that's what led me to help start this mission of personally eating naturally produced food. Okay, cool. And how does it help the people who grow the food and the people who consume the food? As busy as consumers and especially farmers are, we make it easy to connect.

03:09
support and learn from the producers whose offerings you deem worthy of feeding your family and The tools that the producers have access to only help them save money on marketing You know ecommerce tools marketing tools and local pickup alerts allows them not to miss somebody coming by while they're working So it really helps them save money and gain new revenue streams Awesome so so have you I'm I'm

03:38
I'm going off scripted hitch. Hayden and I have a thing here in emails back and forth about what we're gonna talk about. So what's happened with that? I mean, last I talked to you, you were working on getting the website up and I know that people have signed up because I've looked at the website since, since it's up and running. So what's new with that? So at the beginning, when we first spoke, it was only a mobile app.

04:06
that was only accessible through your phone. And that was our mock trial. We wanted to launch that first to see if we got traction, if people were on board with this and if it would be a good decision to push forward. And so we went on with creating the web version. So now you can access it on your computer. We added new features and we paid to have anything that we discovered causing issues during the mobile app mock trials to be fixed. And

04:36
much more user friendly moving forward. So do you have any, I don't know, stories from people who have talked to you about using it? Yes, we've actually had a lady who logged on. I think it was in Pennsylvania who was actually able within the first month, so the full platform launched this last month and we've already had people saying that they were able to find some things in their area. We have hundreds of you.

05:05
producers logged on across the country and thousands of consumers have logged on just in the first month. And I know it is a little disappointing when it's not fully, I'm current, you know, it's difficult when it's not fully, we don't have all the producers up there in every community quite yet, but, uh, with this kind of growth in the first month, I feel really confident, uh, we'll have a great selection of options for many communities throughout the United States. Uh,

05:35
very soon. Yes, and it takes a little while for people to get wind of what you're doing and sign up and want to be part of it. So I think you're doing great. Great, yeah. I think it's going to be mostly word of mouth. I'm making personal phone calls to small farms that either reached out to us or contacted us, or either I found them on a directory and was able to reach out to them. But I'm getting great responses from people

06:05
with the business model that we've put together. Awesome. I'm so glad. I love that you're doing this. I think this is fabulous. Like we have a thing here, I told you last time, we have the Minnesota Grown website, and it's the same kind of idea where the growers list themselves and then people can find them on the website. And it is through the state, but they're very good about keeping track of it. They don't

06:34
They don't just let anybody sign up, you know, they don't want bots or just people being dumb using it to try to do something bad. So we love our Minnesota grown community too. Right. And so that's the great thing about our platform is we have to approve the producers that get on there. And we have full control, being able to go in and have full control of that.

07:03
Most of the state directories are listed up there. I do, but they don't give you that extra, they don't give you the e-commerce tool, they don't give you the marketing resources, and they don't give you the local pickup alerts tool. So I noticed a lot of those state platforms, they don't get you to that last final step. They don't make it easy. Hey, there's that person, that's where they are. That's how you can contact them. Anybody can do that on Google. I like to be able to do that and give them the option.

07:32
you know, drive straight to them, call them right now, or buy from them directly immediately after asking them a few questions if you want to connect and get to know them better if you plan on making repeat purchases, which is what I think will help grow this idea of a food system is by continuing just to push people to these responsible growers. Yes, exactly. Okay.

08:02
what stage are you currently at in the process of the startup? But I think maybe you've covered that. Yeah, we did great. Your question, you're a natural interviewer. That answered my- Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And the next one was, what are your goals for the platform? So is there more that you wanna do? Yeah, well, there's personal goals. So it's, I want people to understand what my thoughts behind it are. They know what the goal for the, for the,

08:31
for the business and the company and the platform is, and that's the society goal, our goal is to show that people can provide food for our nation in a more nutritious way while still maintaining a variety of options regionally. Another current goal, which is more personal, is as our user base and revenue grows, is to hire someone in the head of operations positions with more agricultural experience than I have.

08:59
So I can focus on user support, directly communicating with our users about the platform. And as the user base grows, the premier business program will grow and our sponsors will pay us more for the views and the traffic that we provide, leaving it free for producers and consumers in the future. Okay, cool. All right, so I have a couple of questions of my own before we get to the last one that we talked about. How old are you, Hayden?

09:29
I turned 30 last January. Yeah, I thought you were young and I'm 54 coming up on 55 next month. And I couldn't tell from your voice last time how old you are because you have a timeless voice. And so I was like, I think he's young. And you are your young pup compared to me. I'm 30 but I you could you would think I was 20. Yeah, you could look at me and think I'm 20. Yeah. So is the Homegrown Collective your job or do you have a jobby job?

09:58
I currently have not been able to draw any salary from the nonprofit. I've been working on it for three years. I've been living very minimally at my grandparents, have a modular home out very far east in North Carolina, so a kind of rural, cheap area. So I've been living minimally, trying to catch as much of my own fish as I can to eat, to eat healthy and locally. But I...

10:28
I was fortunate enough when I didn't complete four years of college, but I was able to go get out pretty early and go work in construction. That was some of the way I was able to travel. When you travel outside of the country, I worked for a company that worked for the Navy, and we renovated some of the bases for them, the hotels and the bases. I was able to save up enough money to put down payments on two rental properties.

10:56
in Greenville. And so I have two mortgages. I live for free at my grandparents modular home and I live off of the little bit of money I have extra after my mortgage is paid. Okay. The only reason I ask, I'm not usually like overly nosy, but I'm assuming that the Homegrown Collective has taken some of your time.

11:20
like a good percentage of your time to get it going. That's all I do. I'm focusing on this until somebody call, until I have to fix something at a house to keep the renters in, which is very rarely. I sit here and I make phone calls. I try to connect with people. I try to learn what they're going through and how I can best serve them in the future as we grow. So I am fully dedicated to this and hopefully one of my future goals is to one day.

11:48
gain some kind of salary that will allow me to work remotely for this nonprofit as the head of support under the head of operations position. Okay, cool. All right. So now I have questions that aren't really directly about the Homegrown Collective because you're in North Carolina. How did your area fare with the last remnants of the hurricane? The northeast did okay. I think we got some rain. Our outer banks and some of the outer islands got...

12:17
flooding, but they're, I think they're used, they're kind of used to that out there. They, I mean, they're playing it for it every year, just to be sure. But it was the Western, my cousin's a power line worker up in the Western part of the state right now. And I think their team is just out there working on pro bono, whatever y'all need kind of stuff is I think, uh, some of the guys up West when they had issues East.

12:45
came and helped for, you know, without expecting anything. So now they're returning the favor. But from what I've heard from him, it's, they're not getting much help outside of the locals that can get up there and people that can find a way to drive up there. And, uh, they're really, they're really doing a good job, I think, you know, starting out, but they got a lot of work ahead of them. We're hoping they'll be able to keep their land is the biggest, is the biggest thing.

13:15
Yeah, because I talk to people who have farms and homesteads, duh, I was going to ask a place like a week ago if they wanted to be on the podcast. And I saw where they live and I had clicked on their Facebook page to contact them through Messenger and saw the first post about they don't have anything left because of the storm. And I'm hoping they, I don't know how insurance works, but I'm hoping.

13:45
You know, like Florida, they don't got insurance. They don't have, you're not allowed to have hurricane insurance. I'm hoping up in the mountains, they let you have flood insurance. Yeah. I hope so. I bet there's just some weird stuff going on with insurance. I'm hoping people can. I'm hoping people had some things in place that would, you know, get them through these times. Yeah. I know, I know that Asheville and I don't know if that's North Carolina or South Carolina. I assume it's North Carolina. Um.

14:14
They got pounded, they got ruined. And I can't ask anyone in that area to be on my podcast because they don't have any time for themselves right now, let alone to talk to me. But I just worry, I worry so much about these people. I have a buddy on the ground around Ashfield actually, and he has Starlink in his little camper. In his little camper, he like gets vans and renovates and lives in them and sells them, whatever.

14:42
But he has Starlink in it, so I've been communicating to him through Facebook Messenger at this time and he's just running around backpacking, sleeping outside, going back to his van when he needs to, trying to help people. But if you want me to, when we get off this call, you send me an email of the area and I'll contact him and just see if I can get you any kind of word. Yeah, that would be fine. I'm just making the point that there are very...

15:12
There are much more important things right now in North Carolina than my podcast. I agree. And I didn't even think about it. When they said that Helene was going to hit Florida, I was like, okay, I don't have anyone in Florida that I'm supposed to talk to soon, so that's good news. And then it went north and I was like, oh God, I hope none of the interviews I have scheduled for the next two weeks are in those areas because I probably won't be doing them because they're going to be too busy or won't have any connection.

15:40
Well, I couldn't imagine the hurricane prep for a small farm. You know, for a house, it's still a lot of stuff you got to get done before it comes. I couldn't imagine having animals, uh, you know, just acres of, of food, uh, being just out and exposed in this or greenhouses. Yeah. I mean, there was, I can't imagine the amount of work there. They would have had to go through the prep for this thing. Yeah. And honestly.

16:09
the thing that you're doing with your homegrown collective project is really important because people don't understand that things happen without any warning. Hurricanes you get some warning, but there are things that happen with no warning. And what your project does is allows people to connect with growers, which means that they can buy produce and preserve it for things that happen.

16:37
God forbid the internet actually goes down. Our whole food system works on internet-driven stuff. You know? And so if they already have connected with a local grower and have bought produce and have canned it or frozen it, and hopefully they have a generator at their place, they have at least some food to get them through until things get figured out. Right. You can't...

17:03
You can't rely on going to the store every day. I mean, I'm not saying don't go once a week, but going to the store every day to get the food you're going to eat that day is a bad plan. Right. I agree completely. I think you should always have at least a cupboard full of cans for, you know, every year, I think you should go get a cupboard full of cans just in case. I mean, especially in North Carolina or coastal areas that see these kind of

17:33
acts of nature constantly or yearly. Just go ahead and have a safety bucket up in your attic full of canned foods, dehydrated stuff, beef jerky. I mean, a big part for me about starting this was the educational side of it. I wanted to learn as much as possible and you're hitting the nail on the head. That's brilliant.

17:58
Yeah, and I'm in Minnesota where it gets very cold and it can be and it can blizzard like you literally can't see across your door yard. You cannot drive in that. And so we always buy two weeks worth of food at a time. And when we have the funds, if we haven't grown our own produce, the summer was terrible, by the way, for growing produce at our place. But we buy stuff from other people and we can, you know, we pressure can we water bath can and

18:27
We have a whole thing of tomato sauce and jams and jellies and preserved fruit and stuff so that if we can't get out, we're not screwed. And honestly, I could imagine there are some people's houses you would be living like a king if you got snowed in there or stuck there for a few days. There's some people that would just pull out, you know, just amazing meals for this kind of food.

18:55
for these kinds of situations and anybody could hopefully learn to do that for themselves. Yeah, and the thing is, it's not that hard. I was supposed to talk to a lady this morning, but I suspect something came up because we didn't get connected. And she is all about the homesteading, canning, baking your own bread stuff. And I'm hoping to reschedule it because I feel like she has a lot of good stuff to say and to teach. But

19:22
I've looked at her Facebook page and she is all about canning and I'm like, I am, I so want to talk to her because there's stuff I don't even know about canning. She cans cream based soups. I assume she pressure cans them and she makes the soups herself from scratch and then cans them for the winter. You put them in the freezer or? No, no, no, no. Once you pressure can something, it's completely safe. The cream. I'm just wondering about the cream. If a factory...

19:52
If a factory can do it, a person can do it with a pressure canter. I guess. Yeah, I guess I don't eat much canned cream, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I make a killer cream mushroom soup. So I want to know how she's doing it. I can do it. I love I love some good. I've been getting into lion's mane and some of those are very useful mushrooms. We recently made some lion's mane steaks that were really good. Yeah.

20:18
Yeah, nobody realizes how good mushrooms are for you. Well, I shouldn't say that. Not, I shouldn't say nobody, but, but not as many people as you would think know how good mushrooms are for you. You're right. Indeed.

20:33
Yup. So you mentioned a number back when you were talking about your producers that have gotten themselves listed on your site. How many now? 200. Last night when I looked at it, it was 230 something across the country. It jumped from around 100 to this last month. We've gotten on about 130 more. And I didn't start my personal phone calls until

21:03
We had the full platform launched, but personal phone calls are really Helping people to gain confidence, you know in in the in the in homegrown collective and in the platform Yeah, and did you I I'm sorry. I'm so I was so distracted when you were talking so thinking about my kid Um, so it does it cost the producers money to be listed or do you say it's free? No, it's free. All they have to do is they send in a thing. It comes through approval

21:32
We check them out online. We might give them a phone call if it looks a little, but we just make sure that they are who they say they are. They are a local food producer. And it's simple like that, but it's easy if somebody gets on, somehow gets through our filters that I can just take them, I can delete a producer immediately if someone says, oh, they said they were selling organic and it wasn't. They're buying grocery store stuff.

21:59
and selling it to us or like whatever. And I haven't dealt with that yet in this process, but I've been able to speak to every single producer on the phone and make sure that they're in line with our goals and are okay with us serving them.

22:26
Do they just go to your website or they have to like email you or call you to be cleared? You're right. They can just go on to the website. There's a create profile or login up on the top right and they can go in. They'll create the profile. It'll send the profile to me. I'll look it over. You know, like look up that if they put an address in, I'll look up the address to make sure that business is where they say it is. Just little things to make sure that.

22:54
Nobody's trying to get on there and cause disruptions. Yep, you're vetting them and that's important. Right, right. Yep, okay, cool. So let me see, we have eight more minutes to go, which means I need to figure out a question that'll cover four because the last question is gonna cover four. Go ahead, tell me something. Hey, don't let me tell me. Do you still have my last question about where I see them? I do, yeah. Okay, well, I'll let you put that where you want to, but I trust you, what questions you got for me? I don't know.

23:26
I don't know. What do you want to tell me besides the answer to the last question? Okay. I can tell you about, my cousin just recently started an oyster farm down here. So we've now got, we've gotten up to herbs, corn, okra, potatoes, and oysters now. So he's, my cousin with a Carraway Oyster Company is close to having his oysters out here freshly pulled out of the water.

23:56
Nice. Very nice. I'm getting excited about that. I miss seafood so much in Minnesota. Seafood is not the same as on the coast by any stretch of the imagination. No, and having grown up on the East coast in Maine, I know what a pulled out of the ocean lobster tastes like the same day. I believe you. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, it's tough. I miss seafood so much and I'm actually not, I'm not a, an oyster.

24:25
um clam, kind of girl. I don't really like those but I love shrimp, I love lobster, I will eat fried clams, they're not my favorite but I'll eat them. And the other thing that's been harder to find here is salmon, really good salmon at the store. Can't find it, it's not great. How do you feel about farm raised salmon? I'd rather not. Right, I agree. I've been doing a

24:55
It's scary the way that companies can market now and say, oh, fresh wild-caught salmon, and it'd be the name of the company if they want it to be, and kind of be misleading. But I'm agreeing with you. I would much rather fresh-caught, wild-caught salmon. The way it used to be, yeah. Yeah, just regular salmon, how it used to be. We have one of the only caviar.

25:23
farms in the country in North Carolina that pumps water out of the ocean and constantly pumps it out to keep it fresh. Really? That was something I recently looked in, looked, did some research on. Well, that's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, I think it helps clean, cleans the water and gives the, gives the fish nutrients and feeds the, all the vegetation around

25:52
You know, the water pumps and stuff. So I hadn't found anything wrong with it yet. Oh, that is fantastic. All right. So now we can get to the last question. The last question is where do you see this platform in five years, sir? Well, thank you so much for asking my questions for me. I have information. I want to get out to people. Uh, but you're, you're great at, obviously you got most of my, you did it already for me. So, uh,

26:21
But I have a few goals to make within five years. I hope we will have a much larger board of advisors across the country with many different unique and different perspectives so we can continue to serve the people who are a part of a sustainable and healthy food system. I think that's the knowledge of all these individuals guiding us is what's gonna help us go for a long time and be able to really serve a purpose.

26:50
I hope our staff will also grow while maintaining a minimal operating cost. You know, keep everything remote. You know, salaries when you're working remote can't be too extravagant. We don't want to be, we don't want to be seeming like we're trying to get rid of off of this. It's really about getting the farmers and consumers recognition and changing our food system. So, and then last, hopefully we can, we'll be able to give back to local food operations

27:20
few educational resources that are already currently doing good work across the country. Any nonprofit can get on our platform and say, hey, we're doing this in our state. And hopefully when we start gaining more revenue, we'll be able to just start donating and really fueling this movement by fueling the people that are already doing it, enhancing what we're doing and benefiting our users with more features and more.

27:50
more beneficial resources. So full circle. Yes. Everybody, I'm hoping everybody can find a beneficial initiative to support this, this nonprofit. And, uh, I hope I've seen, I hope I seem humble being able to step down and allowing somebody with more experience than me, uh, being the head of operations. Uh, cause I really do want to focus on, uh, dealing directly with the, with the users.

28:20
Yeah, and it's always better to have someone who wants to be doing the job doing the job. You know? I mean, yay that you're heading this up and doing this right now, but like you said, you'd rather be doing the in-person or contact with the users and the growers. And I think that you're really good at communicating what you're trying to accomplish. So that's what you should be doing. And having someone who's just in charge.

28:48
of the operations seems like a better idea if they're more suited to that. Does that, did I say that right? Yeah, I understand it perfectly. You're exactly right. Okay, good. Sometimes I get on a roll and I'm like, where was I going with what I was saying? What always ends up being a very beneficial and informative for me. So I would never think of cutting you off or stopping you. Okay, good. All right, Hayden, this was fantastic. I'm glad that you came back to talk with me.

29:18
Yeah, thank you for having me. I think what you're doing is great. Uh, spreading, spreading the word and, uh, helping people, uh, gain more resources on education in this field. Yeah. I'm going to keep doing it and keep kicking ass and taking names. Well, sweet. We'll do it again. Uh, when I get to some next stages. Yeah. Maybe in the spring. Cause I figured you're going to be real busy this winter. Well, we will have a sweet steaks coming up and we'll have some money to give away for, for a spring, uh,

29:47
for farmers in the spring. That'll happen in November. We'll talk again. All right, awesome. All right, thank you Hayden for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, bye. Bye.