Thistle Dew Acres

Today I'm talking with Sam at Thistle Dew Acres. You can also follow her on Facebook.

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Sam. This'll do acres. Good morning, Sam. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. Yeah, I actually saw snowflakes. I know, I'm not ready for it. I think the fall spring came and went. Oh, go ahead. Yep, I was just gonna say that. Yep.

00:26
It's you're only half an hour away from me. So you know what this winter has been like in Minnesota. So yes, yes. It's been wild. Yeah. It's been crazy. Um, our, our supplies are being delivered today for our reheated greenhouse that we're going to be building. Oh, that's exciting. So of course they picked the day it's going to snow to bring it. Yep. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do.

00:52
Yeah. Um, so, um, I live, um, on seven and a half acres right now with my husband and our two kiddos. And, um, I live in Jordan, Minnesota. And right now I made the transition to be full time. Um, we call it 10 99 or self-employed. Um, I have a couple of businesses that one is called, um, doll creations. And that's more of like eco-friendly.

01:21
nature-inspired items, things like fabric paper towels or on paper towels as some people call them, crocheting dishcloths, that type of thing. And then I started up Thistle Dew Acres and that's really focused on the homestead that we have. And that one is a food cottage license that I recently got, so I'm making breads and things like that, along with selling our eggs. We have chickens and ducks.

01:50
Then I also have a podcast as well. And that one is called Minnesota Crunchy. So that one's kind of similar to yours. The big difference is I just kind of talk about whatever I feel like talking about as it relates to either holistic approaches to life or foraging, all that fun stuff. So anything that someone might deem crunchy, which is the new word, or we always call it crunchy granola.

02:21
Um, so that's kind of where I go with that. I'm trying to figure out just a work life balance right now with it all. So that's where I'm at right now. But in terms of our homestead, um, for this'll do acres last night, we celebrated the spring equinox by planting our seeds so that we can get them started for our garden this summer. Yeah. My husband planted seeds this past weekend and my kitchen table is covered now with seed starters.

02:50
Yep. Yep. Um, we don't have a lot of great lighting in our house. It was, it's a 1970s house and they just, this, this house just the floor plan and everything is very weird. So I went and got some shelving and we have grow lights now. So I feel really official, finally like doing something like that. So we'll see how this goes for me. Yeah. Um, we have a.

03:16
big long grow light that we hang from our light fixture over our kitchen table. Oh, and the light itself is pink. I didn't know when I ordered it, but it would be pink. So when I get up at four or five in the morning and come downstairs and pop that on, there's windows right behind our kitchen table. And I'm like, you know,

03:36
a sheriff or a police officer is going to drive by and be like, are they growing pot in that house? Right? Well, and now it's legal, so they won't even care anymore. Yeah, it's just funny. And the paint is so creepy. It makes my kitchen look like it has alien lights in it. That's what mine is. It's supposed to be changing, but of course, when I was unpacking everything, I misplaced the remote to change the colors. So it's also, we have a nice bright pink light in our room too. Yeah, it's very bizarre.

04:03
But I'm getting used to it every spring. It's things light in my kitchen for eight weeks. Yep. So yeah. Yeah. So does thistle, thistle, is it thistle dew? Yes. Thistle dew, like a thistle in the forest, and then dew like a dew drop. So we're very much so a honey type people. So we were looking up names. And of course, I had a list of 15 different names.

04:33
start throwing them at my husband and he looks at me and he says, how about this'll do? And I'm like, this will do? And he's like, no, this'll do. And I'm like, I kind of like it. So that's what we did. Yep. We thought about naming our place last resort acres. Oh, I like that too. But we didn't. We kept with the A tiny homestead name. I cannot talk this morning. I'm sorry. It's okay.

05:02
dip thongs today. Okay, so does Thistle Do Acres have a Facebook page or anything yet? Yes, it does. It has a Facebook page. I will slowly end up becoming a person that has TikTok. I have a TikTok for Thistle Do. I have not posted anything yet. So it will have TikTok, Instagram, and it does have a Facebook page. It's Thistle Do Acres.

05:32
and the picture is a thistle. And then I also have my food cottage up in ready for ordering for that as well. And that's through Cast Iron, but the link is also on my Facebook page. Okay, awesome. I will link all the things. You can message me all the things you want me to link to and I'll link to it in the description. Perfect. So.

05:55
There's going to be a directory for cottage food producers in Minnesota. Did you know about this? No, I did not. It's coming. Um, the guy that's putting it together, I interviewed him weeks ago. His, his, uh, episode is up and out for the public to listen to. And he sent me the link to the website because I'm one of the beta testers, which is awesome. Yeah. And it looks great so far. So I think it's going to be good.

06:22
Oh, that's gonna be so nice just for everybody to have that resource. Yeah, absolutely. When I found out about it, I was like, would you please come talk on my podcast about this? Cause I'm so excited. I can't stand it. And he was like, yes, I would be happy to talk about it. Good. Yes. And I, oh yeah, go ahead. So if you want to know about it, uh, I can't remember Sergeant shortbread is the episode title. Okay. I will definitely look at that. Yeah. I'm just excited that they're talking about allowing us to have, um, free samples on at markets.

06:52
Oh, are they? I didn't know. Yes. So right now how it works is you either have to have a hand washing station, a bathroom does not count. You have to have a hand washing station or everything has to be prepackaged. So some people don't want that because that's all the extra waste. And expense. That too. Yep. Yep. So they're talking about figuring, passing it, I don't know what it would look like, but some type of different criteria.

07:20
to have free samples available for people, especially for, you know, people that are selling food. It's hard to get your samples out there if, and if you do do, if you do do that, then, you know, you could be dinged or cited. And I know there's lots of people that do that. And I'm like, I'm going to be a rule follower because I don't want to, you know, have this this permanent red mark on my, my business. And you know, I want to follow all the sanitary stuff that we have to follow.

07:45
Yeah, the thing I don't understand is why we can't just have a spray bottle of hand sanitizer at the table and just have people do that. Yep. And I'm hoping that if it does officially pass right now, it's not for sure yet. It's just looking pretty good. That's what the requirement is, is that you either have to have some place that has a bathroom on the grounds or you can have...

08:13
have the spray bottle of hand sanitizer. Because honestly, a lot of people touch a lot of grosser stuff than probably how, you know, and everywhere else than this. And I don't know. It's mind boggling to me because you put so much care into your products to make sure that they're healthy and sanitary and everything else. But yet we have this, and there's so many other companies that are bigger that they don't follow a lot of the sanitary things that we have to follow.

08:41
Because we're special. That's why. Yep. Yep. That's one word for it. I was trying to be nice. I'm gonna stop because it makes me angry. And I also don't understand why if someone wants to sample your food, you can't just put on a pair of gloves and hand them a piece. Yep. It makes no sense.

09:04
I also don't want to get myself in trouble, so I'm going to just leave it right there. Hopefully they'll pass it and hopefully at some point they'll pass the shipping thing too. That would be great. Yep. They did that for dog treats last year. So I know I hope, you know, and I know there's lots of people. I understand each state has a different food cottage requirement, which is also interesting to me that if you live across the border, you can cook with a lot of things in terms of like the border, like let's say South Dakota.

09:34
or Wisconsin, it's so, they're so vastly different each state. I wish there was just one standard. Me too. So, yeah. But on the flip side of that, thank goodness we can sell our stuff in our state. So that's the one awesome thing about it. I actually have to renew my cottage food registration sometime this week because I haven't done it yet and I need to do it before I have to redo the whole thing. Yes. Yup.

10:05
You were talking about the Minnesota Crunchy podcast. I listened to a couple of your episodes. I think it's great But on the subject of Minnesota Crunchy I made homemade Moisturizer two days ago because my son has dry skin and I gave him my birth bees stuff that I love Mm-hmm and looked up how much it would be to buy him a bottle and it's up to like $15 for an ounce or two ounces

10:34
And I thought there's got to be a way to make this for him that I can just make it and it's going to cost me a lot less money because I already had coconut oil and I already had vitamin E oil. I just didn't know how to make it into a lotion. So I looked up a recipe and cocoa butter is the thing that makes it a lotion. So I ordered a pound of cocoa butter for $14.99, which is the price of one of the bottles of the Burt's Bees stuff. And I don't want to slam Burt's Bees. I love Burt's Bees.

11:03
products I do. But I can't justify that for him right now. I'd rather make it myself. So made it and oh my god it actually turned into a lotion. It's wonderful. And it smells like cocoa. I didn't know raw cocoa butter actually smelled like cocoa. I should have known but I didn't. So his face gets to smell like cocoa for about 10 minutes. I was like is that going to bug you? He said no I can live with it. I said okay.

11:31
So yeah, a little crunchy over here too. Yes. Well, and a lot of it, whether it's for the benefits because you don't want those added ingredients that you don't necessarily need, the big companies need for preservatives and everything because of how they're marketing. But the smaller people don't need. So if you want it for that reason or just to save money in general because it's expensive out here. I cannot believe how much prices have jumped.

12:00
When I bought this bottle or container of Berksy's moisturizer two years ago, I think it was like five bucks. And now it's $14.99. I was like, I can't, I just, I can't do it. It's not worth it to me when I know I can make it for him. And a pound of cocoa butter is going to make me, I don't even know, eight of the containers of Berksy's stuff.

12:30
I was just like, I've got to do it because that's what I used to do when I had four kids and my husband and I were living on one income. So I thought I can do it again. And it was so fun. It was kind of like when I made mayonnaise for the first time. I was like, how is this going to work? This is not going to do what it said it's going to do. They're liars. And then I watched it emulsify and I was like, oh, that is so cool.

12:57
Speaking of mayonnaise, we started making our own as well. And after the second time I made it, my emulsion blender decided to go. So now I just make it in my little ninja. I have a single serve smoothie maker thing for it. I just do it in that and it takes just as, you know, way less time and I can just pour it out and be done. Yeah. It's amazing how fast it comes together in the ninja. That's how I did it too. Yep.

13:23
No, it's amazing how easy and things can be if you just kind of take that time. Yeah, and speaking of costs for things, I mean, I think you have chickens as well. We do. And we have chickens too. And just looking at how much the cost, like I understand you have to pay for like food for the chickens and things like that. But like we put our extra like food scraps, we give that to the chickens, the stuff that's appropriate, like old bread and things like that.

13:53
but also like how much the price of eggs has just gone up and down so much. Um, like it's every week, it's a, you know, a different dollar price. Totally. And I'm like, you know what? I'll keep it on here. I'll keep with my chickens. Cause at least I know how much my feed costs and I can price it out that way. Um, that I'm just saving money and chickens give me joy. So we'll stick with that. Yeah. And I'm going to say this for the billion time.

14:21
I swear our eggs from our chickens taste better than the ones we get from the store. And I don't know if that's actually true because it's subjective, but I'm going to go with it. Um, I haven't heard. So I sell my eggs as well. And I have heard from everyone that's ever bought them is it's better than store bought. Um, and whether or not they like it because of the pricing of it or because, you know, friends and family type thing. But I think it's just.

14:49
It is different because of the quality that you probably give them for feed. The, the fact that they're not stuck in a little tiny pen for their whole lives. And then also just the fact that, that they just get so much like sunlight and freedom, I think that that makes a world of difference and they're fresh versus being already two to three weeks old by the time consumers get them. That's probably the thing right there. Yeah.

15:16
Anybody who has chickens and has tried to hard boil eggs from your chicken the day you get the egg It doesn't work very well. You want your eggs to be two weeks old I think before you hard boil them Yep, I learned that the hard way to Yeah, I actually grabbed the wrong carton the other day I looked at the numbers wrong and it was like two days old eggs and hard boiled five and tried to peel two of them for an egg-siled sandwich and they just

15:44
ripped right apart. I was like, what was the date on that card? And I went look, I was like, damn it. Yep. So I figured it out and you know, lost a quarter of each egg, but that's okay. So whatever. Yep. The other thing I was going to say, how old are your kids? One's gonna be almost six and one's almost four. And did they help with cooking and stuff? Yes, they do. Um, so we have a dog as well. So right now, I'm teaching them.

16:13
daily chores. So they have to, one has to feed the dog in the morning, one has to feed the dog in the evening. And then depending on who is home when I do it, they both help with picking eggs and feeding the chickens. We have a scratch mix like crack corn and wheat and stuff. So one of them will always toss out some, one likes to drop little pieces here and there while my older one just dumps it all and says it's good enough.

16:43
Um, do they help you with cooking and stuff or not? Yeah. It depends on what it is. Um, they will, if it's something for them, um, specifically like if it's like cookies for them, um, but when it comes to making bread, cause we make our own bread, it's mom, can we just be done with this already? Um, so that part they're not too enthused with, but, um, they help with the cleaning up part, which I will take cause I hate cleaning the kitchen.

17:11
Yeah, me too. I love cooking. I hate cleaning up after, but I usually am the one to do it. The reason I ask is because I am sitting in my room where my desk is with the computer and it's right above the kitchen. And my son, who is 22, put together a beef stew this morning to cook all day in the oven at 170 degrees. And when he was little, he was the youngest of four, still is the youngest of four.

17:40
He wanted to try our food when he started getting interested in solid food. And so he would reach out toward our plate if he was sitting in our lap. And if it was something that was okay for him to have, he'd try it. And if he didn't like it, I would wipe his mouth because he spit it out. And by the time he hit two, he was old enough to ask if he could try something. And I just stopped waiting for him to ask. I would just be like, do you want to try it? And he would say, yes.

18:09
And I would say, okay, here's the rule. You have to taste it. You have to bite into it. If you don't like it, you can go to the trash can and spit it out at home. Or if we're out with family or at a restaurant, grab your napkin and very nicely split it in a napkin and hold it up and put it aside. I said, I never expect you to eat something you really hate. This kid is the most adventurous out of the four kids.

18:38
on what he'll try to eat and he loves to cook and the other three kids love to cook too. So the reason I'm sharing this is because number one, really excited to have beef stew tonight that I didn't make. And number two, if anyone who has little kids, don't make food a battle if you can avoid it. I was a really picky child and it was always a battle and it just left hard feelings and

19:05
I didn't really eat a whole lot until I learned to cook. I was very, very skinny until I learned to cook. So try not to make food a battle because it's really not worth winning the battle but losing the war later. Yep, nope. Same boat is that's what we have our kids do. Whatever the meal is, I portion out just a little bit of everything and they have to at least taste each of the items. My son

19:32
You still have eggs. He strongly dislikes eggs at this time. And for a while I was still having him just try it to see if it was a phase or if he truly didn't like eggs anymore. I would just tell him, just eat one bite, see if you like it. If you don't like it anymore, that's okay. You don't have to finish it. Or we do the same thing where if I portion out their food and they're full, they're full. Like I'm not going to make them finish their plate, especially when I was the one portioning it out for them.

20:02
Um, I'm, I don't believe in, um, forcing the kids to eat all their food. If, if you're, especially if you're the one that's portioned out for them. Um, and I'm like trying to teach them, cause that's where I was is you have to clean your plate before you can leave. And when they're older, I can understand that they can portion out a little bit better. But until then I'm, I'm not going to force them to eat cause I don't want them to think that they always have to have a clean plate to be excused from the table.

20:30
Yeah, I wish I had figured this trick out with the other three. But I didn't figure it out until a fourth baby. Weird. I don't know how that happened. And you would have thought that I would have concerning how picky I was and how much of a battle it was in when I was growing up. But either way, I've been meaning to try to get that into a conversation for, for months now, because we're always talking about food somehow on this podcast. Cause I guess we're all hungry. Um, but either way, yeah.

20:59
Food is not a thing to battle over if you can avoid it. No. So, and the other thing I'll mention about this kid and food is his sister, who is the oldest, went to visit her dad because all four kids have different sets of parents in my family. I have one by first marriage, one by second marriage. My husband has a son from his previous relationship and then we have the youngest together. And so, youngest.

21:29
Oldest sibling who's the only girl had to go visit her dad and youngest would not eat He went on a hunger strike because he missed her so much. She was really little and he was four and So he literally would not eat he would drink milk He would drink water, but he would not eat food And so we even tried to get him to eat ice cream and he wouldn't even ice eat ice cream He lost like five pounds in the first two weeks. She was gone. Oh my god for the summer

21:59
And so I was like, okay, he'll drink things. So we ended up getting the carnation instant drink mixes to put in his milk. Cause at least then he was getting vitamins and protein. And he lived on that for like two more weeks after the two he wasn't eating. And finally he started to eat again. I was, when she got back, I said, um, your brother loves you.

22:25
more than life itself. She was like, why? And I explained to her what happened. And she was like, Oh, no, mom. And I'm like, no, it's okay. We figured it out. But, but don't ever think for a minute this child does not adore you because you left and he wanted a hunger strike. Yup. Oh, gosh. So yeah, that was fun. No, thank you. No, I was really afraid for him. Yeah, scary. So anyway, long story short, I

22:54
just thought I'd share because I think it's funny that he did that. So you have chickens, you have seven acres you said? Seven and a half, yep. Okay, remind me to ask you after we're done where you are in Jordan because I used to live in Jordan so I'm really curious. Oh yeah. So you have chickens, do you have other animals? Are you looking into getting other animals? So we have chickens, we have ducks, and then we have two...

23:22
barn cats and a dog. And then next year, we'll start doing bees. Okay. And then hopefully in three to five years, because we have to we have a lot of it's a lot of woods, there's not any pasture land, it's all woods and ravine. So we have to clear out some area. And then we're gonna hopefully build a barn and then have a cow and a pig rotating so that we can

23:52
uh, butcher our own, uh, pigs and cows. And then I'm thinking maybe about getting some sheep more for the wool portion of it, um, than anything else. Fun. Um, are you going to get them as sheep or are you going to get them as, as lambs? Um, I'm not sure yet. My, so my dad, um, I grew up with sheep my whole life. Um, my dad right now, I think he has three to 400 sheep. Oh wow.

24:21
So depending on where he's at and what sheep he has, because I told him to look out for some good wool sheep for me. So depending on where he's at will depend on if he can, you know, give me a family discount on some sheep or lambs. Nice. Is he in Jordan too or is he somewhere? No, no, he lives way over by South Dakota. Oh, okay. Alrighty. What else? So if you're all woods, do you have a garden yet or are you going to put one in?

24:50
No, we have a garden. That was the first thing we moved here in the fall. So the first spring we came here, I'm like, gardens going in. So we have a raised bed garden right now. It's a 20 by 20. About that it's just a U shaped one with the middle piece being just flat ground level. And then this year.

25:15
with me becoming self-employed fully and then stay at home mom, we're gonna double if not triple our garden. But this time we're just going to till it up and use it as ground until we get more wood to make raised bed garden and also all the dirt that you need to get the raised bed garden. So yeah, so that's the plan for this year. Last year I tried doing loofah and it...

25:43
I planted it directly because I was treating it more like a zucchini and that did not work well. It started to actually produce in October right before the frost hit. So this year we started indoors now and hopefully that will work. But I did do tomatoes directly into the garden last year. I did cherry tomatoes because for some reason we didn't plant any. So I pre-plant them indoors. So

26:12
I put them directly in the garden. They grew better than our tomatoes that we had pregrown and the ones we had bought. Yeah, cherry tomatoes are weird. They either do really, really well and you are flooded with them or they do nothing. Yeah. Yep. They're pretty moody. They're like a teen. Yeah, they're finicky. We've been growing cherry tomatoes for years and some years we have just buckets of them.

26:39
And other years we get like eight and I'm like, oh, that was nice on a salad. Thank you. Yep. So I don't know. Last summer was really hard on growing tomatoes from what I hear. We did really well, but a lot of people had a hard time with tomatoes because it was so dry. Yep. We had a hard time even though we watered them appropriately. We just didn't get very many at all, which is weird because we've always had no issues. And I had to get...

27:08
um, tomatoes from my, um, brother-in-law and sister-in-law because we had none. Yeah, we were swamped. We had, we sold, I don't even know how many pounds is in a bushel. I looked it up last year, but I forget now, but I'm sure we sold at least four bushels of tomatoes in August. So it was a lot and made the most lovely canned tomato sauce for us and still have some jars left. So.

27:37
That's the most wonderful thing about the homesteading lifestyle is that when you have an abundance of something, you have the skill to preserve it so it doesn't just go away. Exactly. Exactly. We do potatoes and last year we just had so many little ones, which I'm looking up ways to have them produce better, but we decided to just let them grow in our

28:06
know, sprout. Well, now they already have like six inch roots. So I'm like chomping at the bit to like plant them quick here. Yeah. Um, I was going to say if you want to get them in something before you can get them in the ground outside, get like the five gallon buckets from, from, um, I don't know, Menards or home. We have like 20 of them right now. Yeah. And poke holes, drill holes in

28:36
Like a drill bit hole and then put the dirt in and put your potatoes in and just let them grow because otherwise they're going to be so leggy by the time you get them in the ground that they're not going to do great. Obviously put something underneath the bucket for when you water it or you're going to have water everywhere. Duh. I'm saying that more because it was kind of stupid that I said it that way, but either way you could bucket them up for now. Yes, which that helps.

29:05
I was trying to figure out like what to do with it and yeah, might as well just bucket them for now because I don't want to lose them. Yeah. And with this weather coming in today and tomorrow and Saturday and Sunday, it's going to be a bit before you can get them in the ground. But either way, yay to be a potatoes and you're not the only one who had little tiny tomatoes or potatoes, potatoes last year because we grew I think 20 potato plants.

29:34
We got hardly any potatoes. It was just so dry. Nothing really produced well last year. Well, I was also hearing, because we have apple trees as well, that a lot of it when we started off early in the year, or spring year, that because of the Canadian fires, those affected also, because all the trees here and everything want to start preserving.

30:04
So they probably also had a, all the plants probably also got affected from that because of the smoke and all the chemicals, like whatever, you know, chemicals make up a tree was coming down here. And that's how it also affected the trees. I didn't realize that until I was talking to someone last year about it. Yeah, it's amazing how the environment impacts everything. Who knew? Yeah, it's last summer was bananas for weather.

30:33
and environmental impacts on things. It was rough. And I've said it before, I'm gonna say it again, I'm very concerned about this coming growing season, considering what this winter has been, who knows what this spring and summer and fall are gonna be. Yes, yep. Isn't it this year too, the cicadas? I don't know. It's this year or something, it's this year, next year.

31:01
Whereas that 217, every 217 years or whatever it is, they sync up with their cycles. So all the cicadas will be out. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be loud. Yeah, so just slowly getting a garden play coming. Oh, I hope not. I really, really, really hope not. Let's cross our fingers. That's not the case. Yes. All the good vibes needs to be sent out because something's going on. Well, yeah, and it has been for,

31:31
But that's all right, we're humans, we'll adapt until we die. It'll be okay. All right. Well, on that terrible morbid note, it's been 31 minutes and 35 seconds. And I try to keep these to half an hour. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time chat with me. You're so welcome. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Thanks. Bye.