Twin Creek Gardens, CSA

Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.

00:29
And Beth and I talked back in April of 2024. So it's been a year and a couple of months since we've had the joy of hearing about Beth's life at the CSA. So good afternoon, Beth. How are you? Good afternoon. I'm doing well. Thank you. Good. How's the weather in Wisconsin? It's hot here in Minnesota. Well, you know, it's funny. I've been waiting for hot and now that it's here, I'm going, oh, God, it's too hot.

00:56
So it's beautiful. It's an absolutely beautiful day. So it's been fun running in and out of the house to to switch  gears with the water every once in a while. Yeah. Given everybody a nice deep drink. Yeah. My husband filled up three different bowls for the dog last night because she really wanted to play frisbee and it was hot out.  And he said  he said that she drank one and a half bowls of water  after after she played frisbee. And I was like, don't play frisbee with her when it's so hot like this. You're going to kill her. You know.

01:25
Yeah, it is hard on them. Yeah, and when it's this warm and it hasn't been this warm yet, so she hasn't acclimated and she's a chubby dog.  She's probably five pounds overweight. So  I can't imagine it's fun being her and running across the yard chasing after the frisbee and realizing how hot she is when she's Right.  So anyway, it's been over a year since we talked on the podcast. So catch me up a little bit. Well,

01:55
Um, last year I was doing a lot of dreaming and my tagline was if we build it, they will come. And I put that hashtag on just about everything as I was posting about what we were trying to do. And it seems like it's true. Um, we have a new website and that has been a game changer for us. I was trying to do that.

02:23
solo and try to build something that would meet our needs and the needs of our members. And it just wasn't working.  And so I found CSAware. I don't know if you're familiar with  that. found it through localharvest.org, which is a nonprofit. And we are a nonprofit, so it was a perfect fit. And I've got a  wonderful person who knows the ins and outs of the website. She's my go-to gal. I can call her or send her a text.

02:52
at any time of day to help me figure things out. I think it's really made the  difference for me in being able to meet the needs of the people of the community and yet still not have to spend so much time with the nuts and bolts of it.  So we currently have 10 families that have signed up for the season  and it's a perfect pace.  They trickled in.

03:21
like two at a time, three at a time.  And  we have some really exciting partnerships that  have started. I'm really excited to share with you. so, you  know, I think it's growing at a pace that we,  and I, can still hold on to the bucking bronco and go for a ride. We're having a lot of fun. Good, because I know you really wanted to take.

03:46
what you and Rob had started building and share it. And it sounds like you are, so that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. We have some families who come pick up their boxes here  on Monday or Tuesday.  And  they are,  what's exciting is it's families. So little people are coming with parents  and  getting a sense of the garden and what it's like here at the farm. And  we're talking about hosting one of their birthday parties in a few weeks. So

04:15
They really love it here. And that to me is  such a blessing.  Yeah. And let me, let me catch people up. CSA, it stands for community supported agriculture.  And basically it is subscribing to a share of the farm's produce that is grown during the summer for a certain amount of weeks during the growing season. Correct.  And our season is 24 weeks.

04:40
But we started a little earlier.  Now, I've learned so much about how I'm going to structure next year.  But  there isn't a ton of fresh produce right now. And so  what we've been doing,  and everybody's so lovely about it, is they're getting fresh microgreens that I'm growing weekly. And they're getting salad greens because I can grow them hydroponically, quickly, and cleanly.

05:07
then the rest of what they're getting in their boxes right now is actually some of our specialty items that are available,  including preserves  and  other  like ferments and things like that, so that they have a sense of what else is on offer  besides the fresh produce. You're brilliant. That is a great idea. Thank you. It's been working really well.  It's so cute when I go to

05:34
greet people and I say, here it is. They say, oh, it's like Christmas.  So they don't know what they're getting for sure. I mean, they do. Let me rephrase that. But they're not necessarily like, it's not carrots and potatoes yet.  know? And so it's an exciting little, ooh, what treat am I getting today?  we also are doing everything is  organic, of course.  But not, I'm not a certified organic farm because that's like a step beyond what we're

06:03
really desirous of in our 60s to go through the hoops to do, but everything is made and done and grown organically and with  permaculture practices. So we're doing regenerative farming with our soil and all of those kinds of things. so  I'm also very much  about not only healing the earth, but healing ourselves through what we eat. So there's a lot of ferments and there's a lot of  sourdough ideas and

06:32
all that kind of  healing food, I guess. I like to look at things, know, food was our first medicine.  And  so I want us to be able to go back to using it for our health, not just because we're hungry. Does that make sense? It sure does. That's why we, what we try to do here too.  This was the first, this is the first summer that we've had  lettuces, like butter crunch lettuce.

07:00
and radishes for sale at the very first farmers market back two Saturdays ago. And Kyle's been doing the  farmers market. This is his third year. So first time in  three years now that we've had actual produce at the very first farmers market.

07:21
Yeah, it's not easy up here. Our season is so varied. I mean, we had so many really warm, hot days in May, and then it would be 39, 42 at night, whatever, really low temperatures at night. so my poor plants were just, I kept them all very safe and protected in the greenhouse. And so...

07:48
are we have these huge garden beds and now they're full because the weather's finally better. But we had three weeks  of  really, really cold, wet weather  and we could have lost everything if we had put them out when old farmers' almanacs said we should have, which I kind of found disheartening.  I think we were wise to go with what we could feel, you know, and just kind of look at the forecast 10 days ahead.

08:18
kind of gauge it that way.  I mean, even our sweet potatoes, and they're under shelter, but it's just the top part of the greenhouse,  the walls are not on in our second greenhouse.  And so I keep them covered at night when it's under 50. I cover them with plastic,  because they're  sweet potatoes and they're a morning glory flower and they don't like it.  So.

08:44
but there was a time there where I was starting to think I'm gonna start knitting sweaters for everybody out there in the garden, those poor babies, because we had three weeks in last week of June and the first two weeks of, or last week of May, excuse me, and the first two weeks of June that were just wet and cold. Yep, I understand. I really wish that we had had more rhubarb planted here, because this weather that we had here in Minnesota  would have been  perfect to grow  scads of rhubarb. We would have had rhubarb coming out our ears.

09:14
And we only have  one really established plant that was here when we bought the place. We brought  some from our old house and put it in four fall ago, four autumns ago. And it just hasn't taken off the way we were hoping it would. It's doing well this year, but not, it hasn't been established yet. So,  but.  That does take a while. I'm having the same situation. I brought some from my house when Rob and I got married.

09:42
I brought the stuff that was from my parents' place that I had at my house that I then brought here. And it's really just now, and that was three years ago, it's just now really, really establishing itself pretty solidly. Yeah, I feel like rhubarb and peonies take a long time to get going, but boy, when they get, when they're ready, they go crazy. Yeah, and then just get out of the way and let them do their thing.  Oh yeah, this was the spring.

10:08
This is the spring I've been waiting for since we moved in for peonies.  Oh my God, my husband took a picture of our driveway. You hang a right into our driveway. It's a long driveway and then it's a round circle at the end in front of the pole barn.  And so on the right hand side of the driveway and  like just where that circle starts, there's a space that he put in a circle of peony plants, probably.

10:36
Probably 15 feet in diameter. So across  the circle, it's  like a radius of 15 feet. And we had coral, had yellow, we had baby pink, we had fuchsia,  we had  what I call Hello Kitty pink, and we had white.  We had white panties this year. this was the year because it's the first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap. Well, this is the fourth year.

11:06
Okay. And my husband was like, do you want me to bring you in panties? And I was like, no, I can see them out the window. Leave them right where they are. Yeah. So yeah, I was very, very excited to see them this year because I have been waiting and waiting and waiting. Isn't it funny how we get, you know, we get this vision in our mind and we just, I can do it. I can wait. I can wait, you know, but then when it takes

11:33
three years to get there, I'm having that same feeling with my asparagus beds. This is my second year with them, but I put in two, know, second year asparagus last year. So technically this is the third year of that, those particular plants, but I'm waiting another year, but I'm just chomping at the bit as they, they're probably, I don't know, 12 inches tall, maybe 15 inches, the fronds.

12:00
They're really thin and tiny and I'm like, oh, come on, sweeties. Yeah  I'm starving for you.  Yeah, so  it's hard to be patient when you know what they're going to be Someday. Yeah I was really hoping to have asparagus to sell in the farm stand this spring as ours have been in  since the second fall we were here so 20, okay,  and They didn't they're not quite at that point yet where I can go out and pick bunches and put

12:29
rubber bands around them and sell them. So I got to have three different, I don't know, messes. My mom would call it a mess of asparagus. Three different messes of asparagus to have here, you know, to go with dinner three times this year. so sweet. Oh my God, I keep forgetting how good homegrown asparagus is. It's like such a flavor that doesn't exist when you buy it in the grocery store.

12:58
No, it's a totally different thing. And  when we moved in here, I was like, can we please put in asparagus  crowns like now?  And my husband said, now. He said, because it's, he said, we have to get settled in, we have to get moved in. We moved in in August of 2020. He said, we have to find our feet. He said, this winter is about planning the gardens.  Now that didn't stop him from

13:26
from accepting some apple trees as a housewarming gift from a  local apple grower that we know who was like, we have some apple trees for your place. I was like, thank you.  But the second fall over here, we got asparagus, crowns, we got strawberry crowns, anything that was perennial that we could get our hands on, we put in that fall in autumn. Yeah,  that's what we did when I got here. We started building the, Rob had

13:55
apple trees before me.  And  we've been establishing guilds underneath them now for three years. So  each of them has  comfrey plants and rhubarb and  borage  and what's the other? Oh, some of them have raspberries under there too, under each of the trees.  And we have  eight trees out in our,  what I'm designating the food forest.

14:23
Right now, because of the deer around here, each one of them has its own little,  what I call their play pens, with the fencing around each tree.  And so I have to peel those back and get in there and weed every few weeks or so.  I've only done two of them so far this spring. But our pear tree is doing remarkably well. And we've got several baby pears, almost probably 20, 25.

14:48
little pears on there and then underneath I've been harvesting rhubarb from that one.  And then I just, the raspberries are starting to  look so beautiful. And that one has golden raspberries. So I'm excited about that.  So we did a lot of perennial stuff those first  two years. And then last year we did as well, but that's up in  the front yard. The food forest is in our backyard.

15:16
And then it's literally up against the forest. So  we have a row of blueberry bushes there that I think the animals think is a buffet I put out for them. never got a, I think Rob got maybe a handful of blueberries a couple of times.  So we're going to probably be transplanting them more up into the cottage garden too, up in the kitchen garden in the front by the gazebo. Cause it's easier for our dog to patrol, you know?

15:44
like this little sentinel around wherever I am in the yard at night,  our  biggest garden. Rob is an in-ground gardener. I, because of the nature of where I lived for 25 years, am a  raised bed  and  green stock planter gardener. Because of the cedar trees in my old yard, I couldn't dig.

16:11
I planted on top of those beautiful cedar tree roots.  But Rob,  he built this beautiful kitchen garden for us around the gazebo that he put in the middle of his five acre front yard. And so that's just been growing exponentially. But now in front of that, he's created this massive in-ground garden  using the soil, the dirt from where the cows used to spend their days.

16:41
So it's beautiful, incredibly beautiful black loam.  so we have, it's 40 feet wide by 80 feet long, no, 30 feet wide, excuse me, 30 by 80. And then  we have a potato patch besides that. And then  he has since made four hukulculture mounds to put more things on  next to the 30 by 80. He loves the big in-ground gardening and the

17:10
I've, you know, because of,  like I said, I couldn't, now I'm discovering how glorious it is to have that space. It's just magnificent. And all I go is turn the water and one half of it gets watered. And then because of the length of the hoses, we only do one of them at a time. So the water pressure is good enough, you know?  So now that he's working days,  that's my job in the morning instead of his, and I'm really enjoying.

17:38
that beautiful front garden of his too.  You guys keep going, you're going to be feeding the entire state of Wisconsin.  I have a question about the pear trees.  What variety is it? you know? No, I am not  certain. We got that the first year.  We had two of them and one of them, well, one of them got knocked over by the backhoe,  unfortunately, and we tried to...

18:07
bring it back and couldn't. But I remember that this one was one that was like viable down to zone three, which made me feel like it would make it in zone four. And so it has. But I do not remember off the top of my head what the variety is. And the other one was a zone four pair that did not seem really happy. I think that where we're at, we're kind of in a bowl.

18:36
And we get a lot, a lot of wind. So I think we feel more like a  3B than a 4A to  me. Okay. I'm  going to have to do some research on pears because we have two peach trees.  We have like 16 apple trees, but we don't have any pear trees.  I like pears and my husband will eat pears.  He would eat pears every day when they're at the grocery store in season.

19:02
Oh, absolutely. Me too. I prefer them to apples, actually. Yeah.  So I'm really excited. Yeah.  I'll message you when I figure it out.  I've got it all  on a database. You know, I'm one of those former teachers who has to keep track of everything. 35 years in the classroom and  data with student learning. Yeah, I'm all about the data. So I have  spreadsheets  on my computer that

19:32
go like the year, the  variety, the yeah, blah, blah.  where I've planted it on the farm, we have maps on there. Yeah. But  there's so many of them I don't have in my head the actual variety. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I was just curious.  don't know half the varieties of the apples we have. I know  we have Regent, we have Harrelson, we have Honey Gold, we have  Honey Crisp.

20:01
We bought two honeycrisp trees a couple of years ago. Oh,  those are so delicious.  They will not thrive up here. And I'm so sad because  my granddaughter and I eat them, love them from the store, right? So then we took the little apple seeds and my little, well, she was three then, planted them in a flower pot on our  window sill.  And now it's about a foot and a half tall and she wants to put it in the yard. And I'm like, baby girl, it won't survive.

20:30
So  we are working  long term at doing a wallopini. Have you read anything or seen much about those? of. It's sort of.  The in-ground greenhouse that you can have like trees and things like that can't survive in your zone. we're planning on going that direction. So I'm going to keep her little tree in our greenhouse.

21:00
and I'm gonna nurture it until we have a wallopini to let it grow in.  I saw this  brilliant thing where they have citrus trees and all of the kinds of trees that they want to grow that can't survive in their zone. They have them in those garden carts and they live in those garden carts and then they can just wheel them in and out of the greenhouse in the winter. So that's what we're gonna do,  because I want citrus.

21:28
And I definitely, after my trip to Europe, I definitely need an olive tree, just for my own sanity. Well, I was in Italy and Greece and fell in love with olives. I've always liked them, but oh my heaven. So I want to grow an olive tree. Yeah, olive trees are really beautiful too. It's not just the fact that they give you olives to eat, but they're really pretty. they are. They're just...

21:56
They're old world elegant. That's what comes to my mind when I looked at them when I was there. It's like, okay, now I get it why people, some people get really obsessed with the old world quote. It's very logical.  They're so just elegant and beautiful.  So that's a plan for me for long range is that wallopini.  But in the meantime, I'm going to hang on to her cute little apple tree, her little honey crisp.

22:26
I think that's great.  So  I can't remember because we talked a while ago.  Do you have any animals? you have chickens or anything? We do not right now.  My  stepson, Rob's  son, Stephen, had the chickens and the ducks, so we didn't  bring them on board. He used to have chickens when he had the cows. But  the last of our chickens...

22:54
was a free ranger boy and it was tough and it would flit around and the cat would chase it and it was kind of adorable that first year I got here.  But  she did not survive the winter.  we are talking about  what I love is one of the  traveling,  there's a special name, like a chick saw, they call it, like a  traveling chicken coop that's on wheels.

23:23
Yes, I want to do that. And so I'm being more patient than I've ever been in my life about like getting a good idea and wanting to do it and then having someone make it for me. He's very, very busy doing all of the other big infrastructure stuff. So I'm waiting on the chickens. Yeah, chicken tractor is I think what most people call that. Yeah. Yeah.  We don't have I've seen them called chick sauce. Yeah, we don't have any of those. just have a run the chickens get let out into and during the day. So

23:53
Nice, nice. if we  have a chicken tractor, it would drive my dog crazy because she would want to get to the chickens to see them. And  she is not allowed off lead because there's a very busy road that borders our property. And if this dog got hit, I would never forgive myself. So she is never off leash or off lead because  I'm afraid she'd get killed.

24:22
Oh, for sure.

24:26
Yeah. So I'm hoping that,  you know, we are in a back end of, we're almost at the end of a road. And so it's, the traffic isn't so bad here.  Our cat goes visiting the neighbors and we'll be down, you know, two doors down and  they're coming out of their driveway will be our little goofy cat who's just wandering the neighborhood. But our dog stays pretty close to home.  So  we're pretty lucky in that.

24:56
Yeah. My sentinel, I call him, he just follows me. And when Rob is during the school year, he works during the night, you know, evenings. So I'm out in the garden this spring by myself  and there he is just looking at the woods, just watching. Nobody's coming in to get my mama.  He's such a good boy. He's doing his job.  as a teacher, are you going to try to have people come and see your farm?

25:26
Oh, absolutely. In fact, the two families that come Mondays and Tuesdays to pick up their things,  we have been talking about  one of the families has teenagers.  And so one of those boys is coming  on Monday, he's going to become our weed whacker.  And he's very excited about clearing the,  you using the weed whacker tool. So I'm going to be able to teach him where we're going to be doing things.

25:54
but that same family has teenage girls and her, the mother, Emily, and Allison, the other mother who comes in the beginning of the week, we've all talked about doing some sourdough stuff together. yeah, and then the people, I was gonna tell you about our partnerships. We have a partnership now with the City of Superior Wellness Committee has,

26:23
promoted our farm to every employee in the City of Superior  and the Douglas County  Government Center. So they've been given our information, they've been given an email.  I did a frequently asked questions paper with pictures  and  we have that's  small but mighty group of five that have started with us and I'm very excited. Last Wednesday was our first delivery with them.

26:53
And Patrick who is  on the Wellness Committee,  and his family want to come out also to see where their food is grown.  yeah, it's going to be that I'm encouraging everyone, the people in Iron River, there's three of them that are coming together  in  not this  next week, but the week after when the father is back. And there's a restaurant where the farmer's market is.

27:23
and we are doing some farm to table  work with that restaurant with the rustic roost in  Iron River now. That's gonna be a partnership. have like, for example, dilly beans  that one of the ladies makes for  having in  their buffet, but also in their Bloody Marys. And so they are putting in a bulk order for beans.

27:47
And so when the beans are ready, they're all gonna come over and harvest their beans  and go make their dilly beans for their restaurant.  And they've put in a request for other things like the salad greens, but also in particular spinach, because the spinach that they are able to  get for, they don't have local. And so they're,  doing,  actually I'm gonna be doing I think some perpetual spinach, which technically isn't spinach, but it's.

28:15
It's much heartier and stands up better on salad bars and in  fresh, you know, when it's traveling to a restaurant kind of thing. So  that's one, two of our partnerships. And then the third one  is another local grower who does mushrooms,  extraordinarily gorgeous mushrooms.  And  I am a newbie at mushrooms. And so they have a website, it's called mushroomsreach.com. And

28:45
with our partnership,  some of the time people will get like this week in their boxes, they got a lion's mane mushroom that was about the size of a small dinner plate.  And then they have recipes, there's a recipe on their website. So I printed that off. And everybody in their box got  a  copy of the recipe as well as a recipe that I had provided with them or suggested to them when they got their

29:13
welcome plant of chives. So when they sign up, they get a  beautiful chive plant that's blossoming. I have so many gorgeous purple blossoms everywhere.  And  one of the things they got as a sample this week in their box was herb butter, which I made with some of the chives.  And then they got a recipe for infused  chive vinegar with

29:41
different marinades  and  salad dressings to make.  So  we're trying to do more farm to table kinds of things so they don't have all of this produce and then go, what do I do with it? Yep. Good.  And I'm doing that with like a baba ganoush recipe. I'm trying different kinds of baba ganoush recipes to find the  yummiest, easiest because we've got tons of eggplant planted.  And I...

30:09
I really want people to learn to enjoy them  other than just your standard kind of cooking process.  yeah, so we're doing a lot of like the pickles. I did two different pickles this last week in little sample jars in their boxes of refrigerator quick pickles. So  if they decide they love that recipe, then when they get their produce, hey, they've got a recipe and a quick pickle they can do with their.

30:40
stuff, their onions and their cucumbers. So  I and it's I love refrigerator pickles. I do. They're so easy and they're so delicious. And  I grew up with a there was always a jar of what we called mom's pickles. And it was just a simple vinegar, but vinegar mayonnaise milk based recipe. And they were when we run out, we just chop up some more and stick them in the you know, it was always in

31:09
in the fridge and and I just  love that it's summer to me is those cucumber pickles. and the refrigerator pickles don't get squishy like  I hate it when I when we can pickles here because we're not great at it I've got to get my mom's recipe she had pickles that were not squishy  but  the ones we've made within like two months of them being canned they're not crisp anymore and there's a trick I just don't know what it is. Yeah.

31:37
Yeah, my grandma was really good at it too. And I think it had something to do with allium or  alum.  So I don't do,  I do can pickles, but I don't do  that for other people because I do my fermented pickles.  I prefer that or the refrigerator pickles to the canning pickles for that very reason, because they're the fermented pickles are so,  they get soft enough, but not too soft.

32:06
And then that's a really good  food for your gut.  And I just do a quick ferment. So it's like three to four days.  And then you get all the probiotics that you should have. And yet you have the yummy, pickly, num, deliciousness.  And I just find that the more we work together to help each other learn about these things, the  gut biome, the brain-gut connection, all of this kind of stuff, as a teacher,

32:35
I knew there was something that was changing about our children.  They were coming to us every generation less prepared to learn, less able to learn once they got there.  I mean, it was just, there had to be something in the environment because it wasn't that it was, you know, these aren't aliens. These are,  you know?  And so it's the food. I swear every generation, they are less and less able to digest and process and they're eating more processed yuck.

33:06
And you know, our grocery stores, even the stuff that is quote healthy, still has addictive salt and fat and sugar in it. And it's just harder and harder for us to raise healthy kids.  by having them come here  and plant things  and fall in love with gardening and  get grounded by, we're having grass instead of rock. have grass and sand.

33:35
so that if kids want to run barefoot in our gardens, they can, because I do. Yeah, That's the way to be healthy, you know? Connect to the earth again. For sure. I try to keep these to half an hour, Beth, and we are at 33 minutes. I so excited that all the things that you had planned on being sort of in the middle of by now, you're either in the middle of or you've

34:04
mastered it and you're you're planning new things. Yeah it's been a miracle. Yeah absolutely.  So where can people find you online? We are at Twin Creek Gardens dot CSA where dot com. Okay cool and you're Twin Creek Garden CSA on Facebook? Yes.  Alright awesome  thank you so much for coming back to chat with me. I'm  I'm cheering you on honey keep doing the good work.

34:34
Thanks so much. You too. I'm looking forward to talking again. as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Have a great day Beth. You too, hon. Bye.