Wonderful Thyme Farms

Today I'm talking with Bailey at Wonderful Thyme Farms.

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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 Bailey at Wonderful Thyme Farms. Good morning, Bailey. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. And you're in Iowa, right? Yep. Eastern Iowa. Okay. Is it cloudy in Iowa right now?

00:29
Yeah, it's pretty cloudy right now, but it's a pretty nice day. It's almost 50 degrees. So after we're done here, I'm headed out to get a few things done after I get done with work. Nice. Um, it's very cloudy here in Minnesota today, but it is, I think it's pushing 50 degrees too, so, so it's a nice reprieve from last week with the, uh, brutal frigid temperatures we had for a week. Absolutely. Yep. It's really nice to see the snow melting and

00:58
be able to get outside and get some things done. Finally, yes, exactly. And I don't see it getting really cold again. So I think, I think, carefully I'm saying, I think we're through it. I think, I hope. Oh, Iowa usually surprises us at some point after, after we think it's all done. So I won't hold my breath until it's May 30th, probably.

01:24
I'm talking about the brutal, your face hurts and your nose freezes when you go out cold being over. I think we're through the worst of that. Hopefully. Yeah. From my lips to God's ears, I suppose, but I hope so. Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you do. My name is Dr. Bailey Goose. I live on a small homestead we purchased last year.

01:51
Um, before that we were renting a different homestead. Um, my partner, uh, two bonus kids, one kid, uh, two dogs, several chickens, more in the incubator, uh, we run this, uh, small homestead in Eastern Iowa. Uh, my partner and I both work full time, um, off the farm as well. So right now we're kind of in a building year.

02:21
We're looking to get a bunch of projects done here, but I am a USDA veterinarian. I was in private practice for a few years before that. So we kind of have an eclectic mix of interests and hobbies and careers and everything else here in Iowa. Okay, well, since you are a veterinarian,

02:49
Before we're done talking, I want to talk about bird flu, but we'll get to that in a minute. How did you decide you wanted to become a homesteader? How did you decide you wanted to buy property and have chickens and things? I grew up on an acreage. My parents have an acreage not too far, actually, from where we live now. And I kind of grew up with that whole...

03:17
interest, but my mom always had a garden. When we were younger, at least when we got older, and we were quite busy with sports and activities and 4-H and all those things, she kind of had to let that go. But it was definitely a part of my upbringing as a child. My friends had different ag-related families, so one of my best friends growing up.

03:42
lived on a dairy, so I spent a good amount of time on a dairy when I was a younger kid. I had friends that had chickens and I always thought that those were so cool. My dad wouldn't let us get chickens when I was little. So I kind of came into the homestead space a little bit naturally. It's not too far of a jump from being a large animal veterinarian to wanting your own livestock and wanting to be fairly self-sufficient.

04:11
I've always really enjoyed gardening. So I've always had either a couple tomato plants when I lived in the city or some herbs in my window. So when I got the ability to have a bigger scale garden, I started planting one and then it's gotten bigger every year since I started. So as they do. Yep. Absolutely. So I guess I was kind of.

04:39
born into the seeds of it and I kind of have let it flourish the last five years for sure. And luckily my current career and job really lends itself to being able to be flexible and be able to do this kind of on the side. I don't work a whole bunch of overtime or anything and my partner's job is pretty flexible and we don't have kids.

05:09
every single sport yet. So just some sports. We do the best we can making it work here. Okay. All righty. The reason I ask is because it seems like there's people in two camps when it comes to getting into the homesteading thing. They either have seeds planted when they're little,

05:31
Or they just get sick of the corporate grind and they're like, I need something completely different and they get into gardening and chickens and they're like, oh, I want to do this. Oh, for sure. Chickens and gardening is a gateway drug to the full effect homesteading. So we're not, we're not, we don't have enough space to have everything yet. So we are sticking with our poultry and our gardening and

06:00
We're planning to put in a farm stand this spring so we can offer fresh baked goods, fresh eggs, fresh vegetables and fruits. We have some plans to put in several fruit trees this spring. The homestead we're at has a couple of apple trees, but I love fresh fruit, so we would like to put in about 10 additional fruit trees. Hopefully in 10 years we'll get some fruit.

06:30
Um, it might be sooner than that. You would be surprised. Um, do you like peaches? Absolutely. Okay. I don't know what variety of peach trees my husband bought a year or so ago. What, what, uh, of saplings, but we got peaches the first fall after he put them in the previous fall. Oh, perfect.

06:53
And they're a cold hardy variety. I just don't know what the name of them is, but I'm sure you could look up cold hardy varieties for peaches. Cause I'm assuming Iowa doesn't, isn't really warm like the Southern States in the winter time. So no, no, we got to have cold hardy things up here or down here for sure. I know it's for South of you, but we're still pretty cold here in the wintertime. Mm hmm. Yep. And I'm telling you, we didn't do anything to these peach trees. We didn't spray them. We didn't fertilize them. They just got.

07:22
They just got into the hole in the dirt and dirt piled in around the trunk and these peaches were delicious I got half of one my husband brought in I think six and my son ate four of them my husband ate one I bit into the one I had and was like this is fantastic He half of it set it on a plate on the counter and when I came back it was gone And I was like where's my peach and my son looked at me said I ate it. I was like oh great

07:52
And this is not a little kid either. This is a grown adult son. So they were really good. I just want to buy peaches from a direct farm to direct consumer, fruit truck every spring and preserve as much as I can. We really enjoy peaches in this house and there's nothing better than open up a fresh can of peaches in the winter time to

08:22
to enjoy instead of having to go to the store and buy a can of peaches. Uh-huh. Yep. I'm actually gonna send off an email either later this afternoon or tomorrow to the fruit truck people and see if they will talk to me on the podcast because I looked at their website and they work with farmers. They don't work with factory farms. They work with farmers. So I want to find out how that all works. I have it on my calendar to uh

08:52
Go pick up some strawberries from them in a couple of weeks. So, I wish we could. Our, our fundage right now is a little, little tight and we just can't splurge on strawberries this year. I'm so sad. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Um, and they're selling them in different size boxes this year. They have two different size boxes and it just depends on the size of the box as to how much it's going to cost.

09:20
And I think it's the same price per pound, but it's just different sized boxes in our area. Yeah, we have strawberry plants here, but I'm ready for some farm fresh strawberries. We are almost out of strawberry jam as well. So I will be buying a couple of big boxes and putting it in the strawberry jam. And that's one of the products that I sell out of.

09:47
out of our farm as well as our jams and jellies and stuff like that. Yeah, and for anybody who has no idea what we're talking about, the fruit truck, their website I think is myfruitruck.com. And basically this place transports fresh fruit across the country from wherever it's grown to all different states. And you can just, you literally...

10:12
let them know that you want it and you show up at your local fairground or wherever the heck they're going to stop to do the drop. And you bring cash or a check and you go home with fresh fruits. And sometimes they sell pecans and things. So it's a really neat way to do it in the winter, especially in the springtime right now.

10:35
So that's what it is. Myfruittruck.com I think is the website. But if you type in fruit truck in Google, you'll find it. Okay. So I want to talk to you about the bird flu thing because I just watched a video of Joel Salatin talking about the bird flu situation that he just put out a couple of days ago. And he was saying, and I know that he is a radical thinker. I interviewed him on the podcast a while back.

11:04
I know that not everybody thinks the way that Joel thinks. But Joel was saying that in most situations when there's a flu, you let the flu run its course and then you keep the animals or the people that survived it and you use them as a source of immunity. And that's not really what's happening right now. So do you, number one, do you know anything about the bird flu?

11:30
Uh, yes. Um, unfortunately in my capacity and my role as a USDA veterinarian, we are, um, we are required to direct you to the public information officer to discuss official, uh, bird flu. Um, and they would be definitely happy to help you or talk to you. Um, they are the ones that are.

11:59
contracted and in charge of speaking to the public on all matters of bird flu and USDA. So unfortunately, in my official professional capacity, it's not something I can discuss, unfortunately. Okay. Well, can we make it a broader question that isn't really USDA? It's more how can I keep my backyard block healthy? Absolutely. So there is a...

12:29
website. It is and it is a USDA sponsored program. It's called Defend My Flock. And it gives pretty straightforward biosecurity suggestions to backyard chicken producers, backyard poultry producers, to help keep your birds safe. So that I implement a lot of those biosecurity measures here on my own flock. They have some, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty, if you think about it,

12:59
you know, the virus comes from migratory waterfowl. So being able to keep migratory waterfowl away from your backyard poultry is usually the number one recommended thing that you can do. So if you have a pond, unfortunately, you have a greater risk of spreading that to your birds. But

13:27
There are some great pointers on that website on how you can, you know, just down to making sure you just have specific shoes to go out to your coop and they're not the shoes that you go to the gas station with, you know. You can pick up a virus on your shoes and take it home. So I have a pair of coop shoes that only get worn into the coop. If I've been out and about for my job, I come home right away.

13:53
and change my clothes before I go out and do anything with my birds. So it's just pretty straightforward. No, not expensive biosecurity suggestions on the website. And that's defendmyflock.com. And that's a great resource for backyard producers to try to help keep your birds safe.

14:21
Do you want to get a drink of water before we continue or are you okay? I grabbed my Stanley here.

14:32
I had COVID at the very beginning of January and I canceled like three days of interviews because I just couldn't talk without coughing. So I understand what you're going through with the hacking. I get it. Yeah, absolutely. I have not been diagnosed with COVID this year yet, but I had it last year. And my daughter was pretty sick a couple of weeks ago with influenza, I think, and RSV. So

15:01
It has definitely made the rounds in this house. So I think if you, if you haven't had COVID this year, you've had influenza A, if you haven't had influenza, you had RSV. If you haven't had any of those three, you've just had a head cold. I think that this year was the year that everybody actually got out and about and got exposed and their immune systems were actually down because everybody was so to themselves for three years.

15:29
I also think that if you have not gotten any of those, you've gotten norovirus because that's also been going around as well. Yeah, we haven't gotten that in this house. Thank God. I remember back when my kids were young, my youngest had just started kindergarten and my daughter is 12 years older than he is and there were four kids. So they all came down with some kind of norovirus in the same three days.

15:57
and they were all home from school for like at least two or three days. And I did so much laundry. We were one bathroom household with four kids. It was insanity. Luckily, my husband and I did not come down with it. So at least there were two functioning adults to take care of the kids, make sure they were getting cleaned up, make sure everything was getting washed in the washer, dried in the dryer, folded and ready to go. Because

16:25
If one of us had been down, I don't know how we would have handled it. It was really bad Okay, so I Didn't realize that you wouldn't be able to say anything about bird flu because of your job. I'm sorry about that I wasn't trying to you know, like start anything It's just it's just protocol so Yep, and you mentioned the no-brainer things but some things people don't think about

16:52
We had that situation happen this weekend with our chickens. We just bought 12 chickens two Saturdays ago. And they're going to be 22 weeks old in two weeks. So we should have eggs in two weeks, or at least begin having eggs. And we had a possum outside the coop, the run. And we're homesteaders, so my husband dispatched it with bird shot. And.

17:20
I talked to my dad the next day and he was like, was that lead shot or was it steel shot? And I said, we don't, I don't think we have any steel shot for ammunition. So I'm pretty sure it was lead. And he said, just a heads up. He said, you don't want to use bird shot anywhere where the chickens are going to get to because they will eat it. And then you can't eat the eggs because they now have lead in their systems. And I was like, Oh my God, I never would have thought of that.

17:48
So needless to say from now on, if we need to dispatch a critter, we're going to use steel shot, not lead shot, because our chickens do wander the property now and then. Yep. And that should, it should have been a no brainer, but I didn't even think of it. Well, when you're worried about a predator getting after your chickens, it's not something that comes to the front of mind. No, no, hadn't even thought of it. And the fact is my son does target practice.

18:18
you know on the property because we have a berm and we have the room to do it and he's been using lead shot and I'm like oh god my chickens might be eating lead that's great. So anybody who didn't know about this yeah you don't want your chickens eating bird shot because it will make them sick and you can't eat them or their eggs because it'll make you sick. So learn something new from my 81 year old dad who I think knows everything he's like

18:48
Well, dads are good for that. Yep. And what he doesn't know, he'll pretend he does know. So I'm just snowed. I just think he knows everything. Okay. So you said you're a large animal vet. And I assume that means like not. Oh, there's a word. You deal with cows and horses and do dogs count or a dog small animal?

19:17
I was in a rural area practicing and I saw everything. I kind of specialized in large animals, so cows, horses, sheep goats. I saw an occasional pig, but not very often. Mostly cattle and horses, you know, lots of dogs and cats as well. But that was kind of the area was cattle, sheep goats, horses.

19:46
And then we had a small animal veterinarian in the office as well, who saw a lot more dogs and cats. Okay. So when you're... Go ahead. And then I left private practice and I went to work for a different division of the USDA. I worked for the Food Safety Inspection Service or FSIS. And I worked in a beef slaughter plant for almost three years doing, overseeing food inspectors. And...

20:14
making sure the animals were healthy that went into our food chain. And then I left that position with the USDA and came to this position now. What an interesting job. The, the, the inspection part. I, I, I know nothing about that and I don't want you to tell me anything because you probably can't anyway. But, uh, I think that that would be really interesting. What is your background? Like, did you go to college for this?

20:43
Uh, my degree in undergrad, I went to Iowa State University. I did a couple of years at a community college just to save some money. Um, and at my bachelor's degree is in, um, animal science. I have a dairy science minor. And then I went and applied for vet school and I got into vet school. So I went four years, uh, Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, uh, and graduated from there with a.

21:11
Dr. Veterinary Medicine. Wow, that is a lot of studying, ma'am. I'm very impressed because I did not go to college because I couldn't stand the thought of sitting in lecture halls for four years at least. I just couldn't. So I did not, and that's why I do a podcast. That's why I don't do what you do because I would fail miserably at what you do. So when you say large animals, do you go to the farms to treat them or do they get brought into the building or how does that work?

21:41
Uh, most of the time, and when I was in practice, we would go out to the farms to see the animals. On occasion, they would bring calves into the building for if they had a rough calving or they found them and they were really cold. We were dealing with some hypothermia type things. They would bring them into the clinic sometimes, but most of the time we were going out to farms to see the animals or to vaccinate the herd.

22:11
castrate all the young animals, depending on what time of year and what our clients needed at the time. Okay, cool. The reason I'm talking to you about your job is because we have a veterinarian group here where I live. And they do small animal and large animal. And we freaking love them. They are so great with our dog.

22:39
They were great with one of our cats. And I feel like being a veterinarian is a really special calling because yes, you get to interact with these beautiful animals, but you also have to deal with a lot of messy situations. And it's not the easiest thing in the world. So I really respect what you do, and I really respect what our veterinarian does because she has been nothing but.

23:07
gracious and kind and helpful. And even when it's bad news, we haven't had any bad news about our dog, but I know that if there's bad news to share, I guarantee you she is just as soft-hearted and kind, but straight up as she can be. So I really admire what you do. So tell me about your plans for your homestead because this podcast is really about homesteading, veterinarian care is part of that. But...

23:35
What are your plans for your homestead? You intend to make it bigger or more or actually maybe get some goats? Well, you know, if you can keep water in, you can keep a goat in. So I think if we chose a small room and it would probably be a sheep and, uh, or some sheep, just depending, um, on the breed, there are a few, uh, bigger. Breeds of sheep that I, I'm pretty big fan of. I like doorpers.

24:04
And I like Katadans as well. I like the idea of not having to sheer them. Right now we just don't have the infrastructure, the fencing necessarily to have those. So that's a next five year project. We would like to get bees next year. We just bought this property and moved in in September. So we are

24:32
gearing up for putting in three big gardens this spring. The property has immense huge numbers of flower gardens. That's what the previous owners, that was their wheelhouse. And this place, this property was in Better Homes and Gardens twice in the 90s. Just because flower gardens are extensive and they're beautiful. Flower gardening is not my number one

25:01
a wheel thing in my wheelhouse, but I am planning to take a master gardener course so I can be a good conservator of the land and the gardens. I think they're beautiful. So we're going to put in three big gardens for vegetables. Like I said before, we're planning to...

25:27
put in a farm stand so we can sell direct to consumers. We live not too far off of a highway, so we have a lot of cross traffic, people commuting to and from work. We have plans to put in a duck and goose house to keep them separate from the chickens because everybody knows if you have ducks, you have a mess. So we would like to keep them separate from the chickens and have...

25:57
duck eggs available for purchase. And since I do so much baking as well, I like duck eggs in my products as well. Like I said before, planning to put in several fruit trees this spring. We have some cosmetic things that we need to get done to the house. We'd like to put a deck on the house. And I know that's not homesteading necessarily, but...

26:26
You know, we live here, so that is something that is going to make our life infinitely more convenient if we can walk out of our screen door and go right out to the garden and harvest right away in the morning before it gets too hot in July. Yes, let me stop you for a second. A deck is homesteading because part of the joy of homesteading is being able to have a glass of iced tea in July on your deck and look at your homestead. So it is part of it.

26:56
Go. Yup. We have plans to, since we have moved our previous farmers markets that we attended are kind of too far away to make it reasonable to attend those. So we're looking for some new farmers markets to attend. I do also direct to a couple local restaurants for produce.

27:26
Yeah, lots of big plans. Not probably in time to get it all done. But we have, you know, a this year plan, and a five year plan and then a 10 year plan. We also have 51 meat chickens on order for April. So we need to build a chicken tractor to be able to have those out in the yard, instead of in the coop with the rest of the of the layers. I have

27:55
17 pullets in our brooder right now. I have 20 eggs in the incubator with the price of eggs. I just decided I'm going to fill my incubator all spring so I can have a good supply of eggs coming this summer and this fall. And then if I have extra roosters, they'll go to be butchered with the meat chickens. So.

28:23
Do you have any idea on average how much a meat chicken chick is going for this year? Just one? I can. Let me pull it up in my email. I can tell you how much I paid for them. I ordered them in December before... Everything went crazy? I know a lot of hatcheries are reporting shortages of chicks. Yep.

28:54
And we're lucky enough here where we live to be able to drive to the hatcheries and pick them up. We ordered 51 and if you go ordered over 50 you got a discount. Yeah, 3.26 apiece. Okay, so not terrible. They haven't like jumped to $10 a check. That's good. No, no. The reason I ask is we have friends who are going to be if they can get them.

29:21
they're going to be getting some meat chicken chicks here in whenever they can find them. And I just messaged her yesterday and I was like, do you know how much they are? And do you know if you can even get them? And she was like, I haven't gotten that far yet. I was like, okay, that's fine. Just let me know. Because they were going to go in with us and raise the meat chickens at their place because we have them laying hens here. So I was just curious about that. And yeah.

29:51
This whole egg situation, we live like maybe half a mile from a chicken place where they have laying hens. It's not a huge farm, but I would call it a factory farm, more than a farm farm, because they have chickens. We know they do because every time they clean out the area where the chickens are, it's very stinky. And I said to my husband, I said, I'm very, very concerned about them.

30:21
getting bird flu and somehow it travels to our chickens half a mile away. And he was like, we've lived here for four years. He said, we've had chickens most of four years and everything's been fine. He said, I don't think you have to worry about it. I said, okay, let's just be aware and be careful. He's like, yeah, I would rather not lose the chickens. We just thought that would be bad. Right. Uh, I would be more concerned about, you know, virus coming out of the sky from migratory waterfowl versus.

30:50
neighbors. So yeah. Luckily we don't really have any water within three miles of us. We have we have the Minnesota River which is like five or four and a half miles east of us and there's a little I don't know nature area about two and a half miles from us.

31:13
But the waterfowl don't tend to fly over our property and if they do, they're way, way, way up. They don't stop and visit. So hopefully we will be fine. Good. Good. That's great. Yep. I'm real happy about that. And we don't really have very many critters that show up on our property either. In the little over four years we've lived here, we've seen two deer. One of them had a fawn with her, which was beautiful. And we've seen one raccoon way out in the cornfield.

31:42
And we've seen lots of possums. Possums really like to come visit our house. I don't know why. Well, they are little egg stealers. That is what they really like to do. So. Yup. And I know there's lots of people who are like, possums are harmless. You shouldn't kill them if they're on your property. You should just catch them in a live trap and take them away. And I'm like, if we were doing that, we would be taking 20 possums away in spring. You know?

32:12
So they're gonna meet their demise at the end of some kind of rifle and that will be the end of that story. And if people don't like it, I'm really sorry, but that's how we do it here. So that's the way it goes. All right, Dr. Bailey Goose, I try to keep this half an hour and we're there. So I'm going to let you go. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Thank you.