WhoopsyDaisy Farm

Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm.
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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 Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm, I think is the name of your place, right? Yes. Okay. I have, there are so many endings to people's names, farm, homestead, farmstead. I'm like, which is it?

00:27
How are you? And tell me about yourself. I'm doing great. So yes, we are WhoopsyDaisy Farm. We are an eight and a half acre homestead in central Kentucky. And we raise dairy sheep. Very nice. If I sound a little flustered, it's because I, you are the ninth episode I have recorded this week alone. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So it's been, it's been crazy. I've talked to a lot of people this week. I've made

00:55
As of now, nine new friends. It's been really fun. Well, awesome. All right. So, um, where are you again? We're in central Kentucky. Okay. And do you have a big sheep raising operation or a small one or how does this work? Well, we have 30 sheep. So some people say, oh my goodness, that's a ton. And other people say, oh, that's it. You're a micro farm. So it kind of depends, um, on what your perspective is. Uh, I mean, it's, it's.

01:25
It's a mid-sized sheep operation, I would say. It seems like, again, you either own hundreds or thousands of sheep or you own four. I mean, there's not really a lot of middle ground in the sheep industry from my experience. So yeah, we're on the smaller range. We're larger for a homestead dairy operation, but we actually raise two different kinds of sheep. And so that's why we have so many. So we, yeah, we raise.

01:52
We raise dairy crosses and then we raise purebred Gulf Coast natives. So like we have a ram flock of at least five rams at all times so that we have genetic diversity for both types of sheep. Awesome. So tell me how you got into this because raising sheep is not something you just go, I think I'm going to get a couple of sheep and raise them. Especially not wool breeds in America today. So my...

02:18
Origins with sheep were when I was growing up in New Mexico, my best friend's mom had a fiber store and they owned two sheep, two llamas, and 18 Angora rabbits. And they harvested all the fiber, they processed it themselves, they spun it and they would either sell the yarn or they would knit clothing and sell those. And then, you know, they ordered either wool from other shepherds or they got yarn from other yarn outlets and they sold it in their store.

02:48
I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I always wanted to have some wool sheep just so I would have quote sheep yarn unquote in my backyard. But it wasn't really something I thought you could sustainably do, you know, during your working years. This was going to be like hobby farm when we retired that kind of thing. And then between high school and college, I went to Romania on the mission field and I tasted sheep milk cheese for the first time there. And I

03:16
never heard of sheep as a dairy animal, but the cheese was absolutely amazing. And then when I was in college in Louisville, I went to this little Russian grocery store and they would import sheep cheese from Bulgaria and that was always my favorite kind too. So I kind of had in the back of my mind of, you know, okay, well, I'll have sheep when I retire for wool and milk. And so then

03:40
You know, I got married to my husband and he had a major health crisis after he donated bone marrow right after we got married. And so we started seeing a nutritional therapist. I got my certification in nutritional therapy. I started learning about, you know, all the nuances of the food industry of our country and the medical industry. And we found out about Joel Salatin. And my husband was like, well, I want to farm like Joel Salatin.

04:10
thing he was actually passionate about after getting so sick. So I was like, well, let's get a farm then. Because if you're chronically ill, that's what you do. You go get a farm. Sure. Why not? That'll help. So we got a foreclosed property and Joel Salatin says put animals on your property right away. So we got the chickens because that's what you're supposed to do. And we were trying to do a pasture poultry operation, but in Kentucky, everyone still raises chickens.

04:41
corner of the world where everyone has little gardens every summer, everyone has chickens, everyone kind of gives you eggs in the spring or whatever. Like we haven't had a garden the last couple of years for a variety of reasons. And I mean, I don't miss it because people give us produce because they just have it. So all that being said, it's a wonderful place to live. It's not so great if you're trying to make money selling organic eggs pre-pandemic. Because I wanted four or five dollars a dozen.

05:08
for my organic chicken eggs and that was just ridiculous. Back then like, anything over 99 cents a dozen was just silly. So we were like, well, let's, we need a farm product to sell to help offset costs. So, you know, the next thing after chickens is you're supposed to get dairy goats if you're a homesteader. And so we're like, let's get dairy goats and we'll do like the goat milk soap thing. And so we were all signed up to get our.

05:36
starter flock of goats and we were supposed to pick them up in March of 2020. Mm hmm. And so that didn't happen because it was March of 2020. So, um, I don't know what happens to starter flock. They just, they weren't available. Traveling wasn't an option. So I started looking for four-legged in our area and, um, I was like, well, I know some shepherds in our area and I know you can get milk from sheep.

06:06
And this was kind of when we were more like everyone was hoarding toilet paper and pasta. And I was like, well, I don't need to hoard toilet paper. We've got oak leaves for that. My husband can't eat grains. There's no point in hoarding pasta. And all it takes is one pregnant mouse and there goes your stash. So let's, you know, we've got chickens, we've got protein sources, but we should probably get a red meat source and a dairy source just in case the wheels really fall off. So

06:30
There were these two border lester sheep available and those are not traditional dairy breeds at all, but when I was looking them up, the research I was doing said they've historically been used for dairy as well as fiber and meat. I was like, okay, well, it's a tripurpose breed. Let's do that. So we brought these two sheep home and we were just going to have the two for a while just to kind of get our feet wet. And the longer we had them, the more my husband was like, I like sheep. I don't really think we need to do.

07:00
goats, let's just do sheep. And I was like, okay. And then, you know, we started getting stimulus checks. And he's like, let's boost our farming economy and go buy more sheep. And I was like, cool. So we ended up getting a ram in a weather, what they were both Gulf Coast natives. And then we had a Gulf Coast native you, because I wanted to do some critically endangered breeds just because I thought it was cool. And then we have the border lusters. And then I got two dairy mutts.

07:28
Yeah, so they were crossbreed of East region, Awasi, and they had some Icelandic in them. So we don't have purebred dairy sheep in the United States right now for, again, a garden variety of reasons. So when people buy dairy sheep, they're usually a high percentage of the purebred you want, but then they're crossed with something else. Does that make them more hardy? I...

07:51
wouldn't say so because when they import the semen and the embryos and the frozen eggs from overseas so like the way we get our dairy sheep is you start off with a you who is Similar to the breed you want so Yeah, you say you want to eat freeze and I'll just pull a breed out of my hat You'll start with a Chevy at you

08:16
which is a meat breed, but they're larger and their wool is kind of like an East Frisian, so it wouldn't take much genetic tweaking to make them look like an East Frisian. And so then you would either import East Frisian semen from overseas, or now they've allowed you to import frozen, fertilized embryos. And you either do in vitro fertilization on the ewe, which is a surgery, so stupid expensive.

08:43
Or you would do an artificial insemination with the semen, which is also a minor surgery with sheep, which is also expensive. And so then, I mean, the success rate of this is not very high. So I know a shepherd who did this and she impregnated six ewes and she got one viable lamb out of it. So if you do the semen, the offspring will be 50% the breed you want and 50% the breed that you use as the host. And so then you would just repeat that process with the offspring until you get

09:12
you know, the high enough percentage that's considered an American version of that breed. So, so like the highest percentage you're going to get with this system is I think it's like 99.5 or something like that. But I think once you get into the 97% range, then that's essentially considered purebred. Okay, cool. Thank you for the genetic lesson. I love it. I really, really do.

09:38
Yeah, you can get really nerdy and technical with some of this stuff. I find it fascinating and other people are like, just tell me what to milk. I don't care. Well, you just gave me an opening to chat about my dog because I talk about the dog all the time and this is a legitimate reason to bring this up. My dog is a mini Australian shepherd. And in a lot of circles, mini Australian shepherds are not an actual breed. They're called an American shepherd. Okay.

10:08
their bread from Australian shepherds and supposedly smaller breed dogs. I don't know about this. I have to go dig some more because if you look at my dog, she looks like a 35 pound version of a black tri Australian shepherd. I don't see any other breed in her anywhere. So genetics are crazy. How they're absolutely crazy. I, we have a ram and we use a purebred Gulf coast native ram.

10:38
And the Gulf Coast do not look anything like any dairy breed whatsoever. And we crossed the Gulf Coast ram with my best dairy you to try to get hard to your offspring. And she had a you and a ram. The you and so she had twins, right? The you looks just like the dairy cross mom. The ram looks just like the Gulf Coast ram. Weird. And they're twins. Like they grew up in the same, you know, bag.

11:08
look like two completely different breeds of sheep. So yeah, it's crazy. I don't, I think genetics are awesome, but I don't understand them. That's why they call a genetic crap shoot. Because you can hope for the best on the breeding turning out the way you want it to. Yeah. But Mother Nature is always going to throw you a curveball. It's never going to fail. She's always going to be like, haha, look what I made. Yeah. Yeah.

11:34
Yeah, we were both, my husband and I are both control freaks. So naturally we started homesteading because we joke the almighty needed lots of opportunities to humble us and take our control freak, get this out of, out of the system. So. Absolutely. I, I used to be a control freak really, really bad. I didn't even know I was one until someone pointed it out. And as I've gotten older and as things have not gone according to plan and I have had meltdowns about it.

12:03
I have learned that it's so much easier to go with the flow as long as nobody is mortally wounded. Probably going to be okay. Well, that's probably why we called our farm whoopsie daisy farm because I said we're going to make mistakes and we can't just become incapacitated by that. So we're just going to have to be like whoopsie daisy and we move on. Like we're just so we're going to name our farm that as a reminder to just keep rolling with it. So.

12:30
Yes, and I wouldn't suggest to anyone that they stuff their feelings about things on the homestead because that's a really good way to get the courage and give up. So if something bad happens and you feel like you need to cry about it, have a cry about it. Oh yeah, absolutely. But then realize that life is going to go on and things will get better. Well, and with shepherding, I mean, I tell people all the time, like,

12:57
shepherding is going to force you to face every single emotion possible to experience as a human at some point in your shepherding journey. So you are going to have to get comfortable with feeling all the feels because you will experience the worst rage and the most deepest joy and the most profound grief and the most euphoric happiness sometimes in the same hour. So if you don't have the ability to

13:24
look at your emotions and say, I have that emotion, but then you process that emotion and you keep going, you're not gonna stay in shepherding very long. So, yeah, it's very important to acknowledge what you're feeling, but just not to be incapacitated by it. Yes, and I think that that actually has a lot to do with control freakism. I feel like back when I was younger, I didn't know how to process what I felt.

13:52
And so it got all bottled up and I would try to cope with it by avoiding things going wrong. Because if nothing went wrong, nothing hurt. Yeah. So as I, like I said, as I got older, I realized that it's probably not the end of the world. Everything probably will work out. And then I could let go a little bit. So, yeah, yeah. Yep. But anyway, um,

14:19
Now that we're done with our Dr. Phil moment. Done with psychology, yes, exactly. And really, I mean, I hate to be all psychology-y, but there's a lot of stuff that is feelings when you're raising animals or raising produce or raising kids or raising a relationship. It's all tied into homesteading and farming. Yeah.

14:47
influential in how our culture views animals or or PETA, for example, or, you know, all the all the things where in our culture as a general rule, the only animals we really interact with on a daily basis are pets, not food, or a zoo animal, but not food. And so when you leave, you know, mainstream culture to do something countercultural, like homesteading,

15:15
you really have to confront that we actually have a lot of emotion. I mean, like, you know, when I was a kid, if the goldfish died or the hamster died or the dog died, I mean, it was like, yes, you're going to grieve now because your friend died. But if your chickens die, as an adult homesteaders, like, well, I, if I grieve every time a chicken kills over and have a little minor funeral for it, like, I'm not going to be

15:43
protecting the other chickens that are alive. Like, you know, you have to kind of rewire some parts of your brain. And again, not to say that you can't feel your feelings. Like, of course you're going to feel grief that you lost animals, but there's a learning curve, I think, for new homesteaders from moving from, you know, Bambi or, you know, our love of dog Fido to, I do love my sheep. I care for them. I'm their shepherd. Like, I know each one of their ball and what sheep it goes to. They know me as their shepherd.

16:13
But at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to provide my family food. Yes. Yes. And, um, we just, we just lost a barn cat of a couple of weeks ago. This is like, this is like the fourth or fifth barn cat that, that we have lost. And it's the second one that has just disappeared. Like we don't know what happened to her. And the first one, I've talked about this already on the podcast. I cried. Like I was so upset about that first one.

16:42
This one was missing for a day and she had kittens, which sucked. She had like three or four people kittens. And I was like, well, if she doesn't come back tomorrow, we have a problem because we are not bottle feeding kittens. This is not a thing they're doing. Yeah. They're barn kittens. That's not happening. Yeah. And then she didn't show up the next day and I was like, crap, we're going to have to put those kittens down. Not, not a happy moment at all. No, no, no. And.

17:12
You know, I think that's part of homestaying that ever, it's becoming more talked about, I think, now, that so many people are turning to this lifestyle of, you know, you're gonna have a lot of hard. Yep. So you're gonna have to, A, embrace the hard, but B, choose your hard. You know, because it's hard to put down kittens, it's hard to bottle raise kittens. So which hard are you going to choose? And, you know, only you on your home said no, which hard is,

17:42
Feasible for you, right? Exactly. I mean I have a one-year-old. I can't bottle feed a ton of kittens. Mm-hmm Yeah, bottle feed one lamb because they actually stayed in the pack and play together for a while but Probably not Yes, and and they were already they were already young She was not a great mom to start with so they weren't the healthiest little critters that ever seen right and I was just like

18:10
No, this is not a feasibility for us right now. Mm-hmm. But the point in telling the story is that I was sad. It's soft. And I kind of miss Chirp was her name. She was a really friendly kitty. But I'm not broken up about it like I was with the very first one because I have learned that this is the kind of thing that happens. Right. Also, Chirp's mom had had a litter of kittens like two months before Chirp did.

18:38
And we kept one of those kittens and we're keeping him. He's becoming the new boy male, uh, barn cat. And so yes, we had to put down three or four sickly kittens, but we also got to keep a really healthy male barn cat who will do a very good job in keeping mice down. So it's that, it's that one hand is empty and one hand is full, you know? Yeah. And I mean, you know, Daniel's Alison talks about how to be sustainable. You have to call.

19:07
with a very heavy hand. And I mean, you need to cut your losses and invest in the viability, which again, I think is very counter-cultural because we have special need pet clinics for you to go pick up your special need animal. And so the thought of like, we had a lamb, our first lamb ever born on our farm was born crippled.

19:35
And you know, we were brand new shepherds. And I do think the learning curve was beneficial for us to learn, like, all the options to care for this ewe. But at the end of the day, we were like, she's gonna have to go in the freezer. I mean, she's a critically endangered ewe. She's purebred. She's got amazing parasite resistance. Her fleece is okay. But if the flock has to run for some reason, she can't keep up. And if she gets bred, that'll kill her.

20:03
And then are we going to have a viable lamb or a deformed lamb? Like, it's just like the odds of really hard choices outweighing any possibility of physical redemption here. And you know, that was like our first time we had to make this culling decision. And it was really hard because we were like, did we fail her? Like, is the amount that we have to put into her?

20:27
Like, are we just being lazy? But then like the amount we have to put into caring for her is taking into time we need to put into the rest of the flock and that kind of stuff. But anyway, fast forward to picking her up from the butcher, then we tried the meat and we're like, oh, maybe culling's not so hard anymore. Because the end result is really tasty. Yeah, and I really don't want this to be a downer. Like, we're talking about the realities of the choices that we make.

20:57
raising animals or raising produce or having a farm or whatever because it's not all prettiness. It's hard work and it will hurt your heart but it's also really good for you, makes you strong and there's lots of really happy things that happen too. I get told by my city friends all the time, your life is so ideal and I just laugh because

21:21
Yes, there are so many idyllic moments there. There really are. I mean, Instagram is wonderful for making sure I can just tap on an app and I'm instantly shown my grid where there's all the ideal. But behind every ideal moment and photo, there's a lot of work and there's a lot of hard and there's a lot of sweat. Sometimes there's even blood and tears. And, you know, I don't want...

21:45
the hardness to erase the idealism, but I also don't want people going into this thinking the idealism is what is the overarching experience you're going to have because, you know, I like hard work. But you know, I've had to work harder than I ever thought possible my entire life because you know, if you're in lambing season, you don't really have an option if you're tired or you've had a bad day or you're sick with something like when we had COVID, we still had to go milk the cow.

22:15
So, you know, that when you live in the town or the city or whatever, like if you don't feel good, you just put it off and you can if you're on a homestead, like the animals will get sick or die if you put it off. So you really have to embrace self-discipline and you're you're just inner moxie, which I think is rewarding, but it can catch people off guard. Yeah. And and if you're actually really, really sick.

22:44
Hopefully you have a partner who will kick in and help. Or you have a backup plan somewhere where somebody knows your routine and can come help you. Well, I will say, we didn't know to really, like, hardcore cultivate community when we first started because we were in this to be independent. And so when we were just kind of trekking along doing our own thing,

23:07
And when we did get COVID, we reached out to people and they did step up and come and help us and stuff like that, but it wasn't until I got pregnant and we had other small farmers and homesitters in our area basically knocking on the door and saying, here's my phone number, you are going to call me, right? Because you are going to get to the point where you can't do stuff anymore. And...

23:33
you know, then when we did have my son, I had a really hard labor and to recover was a lot more intense than I planned. And I mean, if our neighbors hadn't stepped in, we would have lost the farm because it was right after lambing, like, you know, sheep needed milk, stuff needed to moved around, parasites were hitting really hard. And our neighbors stepped in and just took over for us so that we could focus on healing and taking care of our newborn. And I mean, it was really an eye opener for us of like

24:01
we've really got to talk more about cultivating community in the homesteading arena because it's starting to kind of be vocalized more, but I think it needs to be like, before you get your chickens, you need to figure out who your neighbors are first. Make friends and then get chickens. Yes. Yes, there you go. Yep. When we moved here, it was during COVID, we moved here in 2020, August of 2020. So we're

24:30
August 7th is the day we moved in, so we're coming up on our four year anniversary. Well, happy anniversary. Yeah, very excited about this. And I don't know, like halfway through this past year, I thought, did we make a mistake? Did we really need three acres? Did we really need to do this? And I had to think about it for a couple of days and I had to sleep on it for a couple of nights because it was really bugging me. And I woke up on the third day and I went downstairs.

24:59
and the sun was coming up over the horizon, and I was like, yeah, we did the right thing. Because that sunrise thing was not, we couldn't see that very well from where we used to live, and it was very important to me. Yeah. So, but we didn't meet any neighbors until six, eight months after we moved in. Because we live a quarter mile from our neighbors, any of them, on a two lane country road. And people had...

25:28
They didn't want to meet new people. They wanted to be not around people in 2020 because of COVID. Right, right. So for the first year or so, we were very isolated here. And it was a little weird. Yeah. And then we finally met some people. And we were like, oh, OK, this is going to be fine. But we also don't have any livestock. And I have talked about this a ton, too. We don't have any place for livestock to graze. And feed is really expensive right now.

25:58
So we're not doing livestock, we're doing produce, and produce is great. We like growing garden, it's fine. But we do have the barn cats to keep the mice down in the pole barn, and we have chickens. We have like nine chickens, and they keep us in eggs, and they're very happy, and so are we, so that works out great. So we already talked for like 26 minutes, or 28 minutes. 26 minutes. And...

26:22
I wanted you to tell me about your book because when you emailed me you said you have a book about sheep's milk or something. Yes, I do have a book. It's called The Guide to Homestead Dairy Sheep. It's basically the book that I wish I had when I started shepherding. I actually ended up making a lot of friends online who are overseas and shepherd full time. That's where I got a lot of my shepherding know-how.

26:51
There's some really good books on the market, like there's Stories Guide to Raising Sheep, for example. There's Pat Colby's Natural Sheep Care. But there really wasn't anything, like there isn't anything specific to dairy sheep. So there wasn't anything on here's how you train a sheep to get into a milking stanchion, for example. There wasn't anything on, you know.

27:16
how to care for a ram or why you'd have a ram on your property. Because I mean, with dairy goats or dairy cows, you can do artificial insemination or you can borrow someone else's buck, but dairy sheep are still so rare that you really just need to have your own ram on property. And so I was like, well, it's a male, like they've got testosterone, like sheep are flock animals. So how do I do boy management? And so my book is basically just like,

27:44
Here's the things you need to think about specifically for dairy. And then I do go quite a bit into the breeds of, you know, what is a dairy sheep? When do you want a dairy breed specifically? Or when would you want to, for example, milk a different breed of sheep? Like what are your options? Because, you know, like I said, the dairy sheep are still so rare in the United States. We don't have pure breads.

28:09
So it's not always possible for everyone who wants to get sheep milk to get a dairy-specific breed. So, you know, what are your options then? And then one of the most common questions I get is, well, can you milk a hair sheep? Because a lot of people already have sheep for meat, and so they want to know, like, can I have a, can they be dual purpose? Can I have a viable, you know, sheep dairy with?

28:32
or like can I just milk my katanas to try and see if I like it before I invest in a more expensive dairy animal. So I do go quite a bit into like how to pick the breed you want and why you would pick certain breeds over other breeds. And there aren't any dairy specific breeds on the market currently that are hair sheep for dairy sheep. And so I talk a little bit about the virtues and benefits of wool for homesteaders. But I

29:01
probably going to have to write a whole book on the topic at some point just because it's really unfortunate how maligned wool has been in our culture so that the plastics industry can take over. But I mean, wool for the homesteaders is just a really amazing product that no one really knows about. So I do try to give wool a good plug as well as the milk.

29:29
Did you self-publish or do you have a publisher for it? I went with an independent publisher. So it's a small brand new publishing company and it was started by a homesteader. All the authors are homesteaders and it's written for homesteaders. So it's not a big name label but it sawdust publishing. And they started actually a couple months before I signed my book contract. So I was their second book that they published.

29:55
Okay, so is the book available on Amazon if people want to get it in e-form? It's not in e-form, but it is available on Amazon. Okay. Yeah. So the publisher said, you know, she probably will look at e-books at some point, but they're just they're not old enough yet to start branching into different options. Okay. So and then, you know, with people...

30:21
Well, that being for homesteaders where folks are very rural. I mean, a lot of folks just want hard copies anyway, just in case, you know, internet gets spotty or goes down or whatever. Yep, okay. Well, I will find the link to your book and I will make sure it's in the show notes so that people can find it to buy it. Awesome, thank you. And if you order it from my website, I will sign it for you. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Perfect. All right, Rachel, I feel like we didn't really get into too much about sheep milk, but we sure got into it.

30:49
We did, didn't we? Maybe you can come back in the fall and we can actually talk about the benefits of sheep milk and all the things that people might want to know more about. I swear 30 minutes is just not long enough for the podcast. Yeah, I see the virtue of 30 minute podcast episodes, but to really like flush out topics, you really need an hour, but then it's like an hour's a very long time. So I feel bad for podcast hosts. How do you make that choice?

31:17
Yeah, and I'm really interested in you guys' stories to begin with because it's always interesting how people come to the choices that they make. Yeah. And if there's time at the end, I'm like, oh yeah, and you wanted to talk about duh. The actual topic. Yeah. So maybe I can have you back in September. I'm book solid from now until September, but. Yeah, I'm more than happy to come back. Let's set up a time in September and we'll stick to the topic of Sheeps Milk and why it's really good for you because I know that it is.

31:46
Yes, yes, it really is. So great. Well, we'll talk again in September. All right. Thank you so much for your time, Rachel. I appreciate it. You're welcome. All right. Bye.