A Tiny Homestead

The Wild Midwest: Heritage Livestock and Native Plants

Today I'm talking with Kayla at The Wild Midwest: Heritage Livestock and Native Plants. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This 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 Kayla at the Wild Midwest Heritage Livestock and Native Plants. Good afternoon, Kayla. Hi, how are you doing? I'm okay. A little crazy, but good.
00:26I'm excited to talk to you because you're in Illinois and I'm in Minnesota and we're going to talk about native plants. We put in some native plants to Minnesota last summer in the middle of a drought and we forgot that we needed to pay attention to them and they died. I'm very excited to talk about native plants today. Tell me about yourself and what you do.
00:54the Wild Midwest, that is the business that I own and operate. And so it's currently a side hustle. And I also have a full-time job with a company called Canopy Farm Management, where I work in regenerative and restorative agriculture, especially as it pertains to tree crops and agroforestry. So my two gigs are kind of, they go together well.
01:24I actually love that I've talked to a couple people in the last two months that have the same kind of symbiotic relationship with their jobby job or their career and their side hustle as it were. Yeah. I mean, do you want me to expand on like the business a little bit? The business that is your side thing, not your job? Yeah. I want to know how you came to doing this actually.
01:54Okay. So I have my undergraduate degree in animal sciences and I knew that I wanted to do something that was helpful in terms of like conservation of biodiversity and like creating healthy habitats. So I ended up pursuing my master's degree in landscape architecture and during that time
02:24studying more and more with the intention of trying to figure out how we can live in the world a little bit more harmoniously with the other species that are here as well. I stumbled upon how important native plants were to that whole process. So it became...
02:46sort of a huge passion of mine, I started attending the Illinois Native Plant Society gatherings and hikes. And I had a seasonal position at the Champaign County Forest Preserve where I got to meet a lovely botanist who helped me learn a ton about the native plants to specifically Champaign County. And it just sort of became...
03:15I just sort of became completely consumed by it. I started growing my own plants when I was still in grad school. And I think it was 2018 when I grew my first couple hundred plants and had a couple of design projects on the side with some acquaintances and friends. And then it's kind of just grown from there. I graduated in 2020 and
03:43Due to COVID, it was pretty difficult to find another job. So I did have about close to a year of just working on this business and getting it spun up before I did get other full-time jobs. My full-time job I've been in now for not quite a year yet. So, I mean, I would love to.
04:10work on the nursery full time and that is the eventual goal. But it's pretty, nurseries in particular are pretty high overhead businesses to run and they're pretty difficult to get off the ground because they just take so much infrastructure and investment. So yeah, we're still very much in the building phase of the business to try to give it some legs.
04:39you put yourself into starting a business. And many, many people did.
04:48Yeah, absolutely. And kind of out of necessity for a lot of us. Yeah. We moved in 2020 so we could start our farm to market garden and see what we could do with that. That's what we did. And my husband has a jobby job and he comes home and he putters in the garden and he does the farmer's market on Saturday and we sell stuff in the farm stand on the property. We did the same thing too. And it was time. It was time for that to happen.
05:19I keep saying that COVID was terrible, horrible for so many people, but amazing for people who didn't lose anyone they loved and who didn't get sick themselves because it gave us time that we didn't have before to think about what we were doing and how we were doing it. Yeah. It was definitely bittersweet in that regard because for me personally, it certainly gave me some challenges.
05:48debt burden and not having a full-time job was pretty challenging. And thankfully I have my husband who supported me during that time. But yeah, I don't think I, the business would not be as far as it is today if I hadn't have had that time to just solely focus on it. Yep, exactly. So I'm guessing you're probably in your 20s? I'm actually, I mean, my...
06:1630s. So I'm 33 this year. All right. So did you go to school later than after you graduated high school? I took, it took me about five and a half years to get my undergraduate degree because I maintained a couple of part-time jobs during that time. And then I took a year off between
06:43I took a couple years off between undergrad and grad school. I had a full-time job at that time. And then, yeah, then I went back to school. I needed a little bit of time to sort of figure out what I wanted my master's degree to be in. Yeah, because that's a huge decision. I don't blame you at all. And also, I commend you for taking on the weight of the student loans because...
07:11I, if I was graduating high school right now, I don't know that I would feel comfortable doing that at all. My daughter is 34 and she went to school for two years to get a general bachelor's degree, BS degree, something, just to get her core classes out of the way. And I don't even talk to her about whether she's ever going to go back to school because all she does is cry because she's still paying off those loans.
07:39So I don't say anything about college ever to her because the first time I asked her was like two years after she'd gotten the degree that she went for. And I said, so you're gonna go on and pursue something with this? And she started crying immediately. And I said, why are you crying? And she said, because I'm going to be paying off this money for the rest of my life. And I'm probably never gonna work in a field where it's going to apply anyway. She said, I am so upset about all of it.
08:10And I said, I will never ask you again. She said, thank you, mom. I appreciate it. So it's hard. It's, I feel like it is so much harder for people now. And even, I don't know, 20 years ago from 20 years ago till now to get a college degree, because it's so freaking expensive. It's ridiculous. I hate everything about it.
08:36I know, I need to. Okay, now that I've said that, now I've said all that, I always have to tell that story because it just made me so sad for my kid that she was that distraught about her student loans. So tell me what you do regarding the native plants and the stuff that you do. Yeah, so my day-to-day kind of looks, it's a lot of plant care, just keeping the plants alive all.
09:03Throughout all the changing seasons, they all have their own challenges with the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter. Spring and fall are definitely my most favorable growing season times. Right now in high summer, it's a lot of just constantly checking on plants. Sometimes I'm having to water two to three times a day.
09:29And then other than that, it's a lot of, you know, just it's running a small business, keeping the website updated, keeping social media updated, doing social media marketing, making sure Google business listing is up to date and organizing plant sales, reaching out to other small businesses to see if we can collaborate in, you know, any number of ways.
09:56I also do take on design clients and consultation clients. So I'll do one-off consultations where I'll go out to people's yards and they have an hour of my time and they can ask me questions. And then I'll provide a write-up based with my recommendations and some suggested resources for them. So that's kind of our lowest service tier all the way up to me fully designing a property and giving the person.
10:23the plan and then we also will go in and install and maintain those designs as well. Super cool. Do you love it? Do you love doing that, that part? I do. Yeah. I mean, and I actually do like enjoy the social media marketing as well. And you know, I enjoy all of it, but at the same time, it's a ton of work and I'm just get tired.
10:52Well, yes, I can understand that because it's physical work and it's brain work. Whichever side you're working on, you're exercising one part of you or the other part of you or both at the same time and it's a lot. It's a lot for someone in their 30s. It's a lot for someone in their 50s. I couldn't do it. I don't want to do it. I think that people like you are amazing and I'm going to stay in my lane and learn from you guys from what you're doing. Yeah. I do feel like I'm crazy.
11:22a little crazy sometimes. Darlyn, we all are in our own special ways. Everybody is a little bit loopy now and then. So it's okay. You can be crazy. I cheer you on in your insanity. Enjoy. Thank you. Okay. So when you go and do the consults, do people actually take your advice and keep up with whatever it was that you helped them figure out? Or do they just kind of...
11:52Like it was a thing when they asked you to come, but then they realized what they need to do and they're like, eh, I don't want to do that. Or are they actually committed to continuing? I get a mixture of both. I think a lot of people, a big part of my consultations and just my work with clients in general is trying to encourage people to.
12:17Decrease the size of projects that they start and that they work on so I recommend I like to recommend a hundred square feet is a pretty reasonable size for a person who has you know, maybe a full-time job, but a little bit of free time to install and maintain on their own in a single season So a lot of my work is just trying to get people to decrease
12:46the size of projects that they're working on. Cause that's where people get in trouble is they take on a project that's way too big, it gets overwhelming and then they wanna quit because it's not fun anymore and it's just a constant struggle. And there are a good number of people who do take my advice and are super appreciative. And like I just recently went back and saw one that I did a consultation for a couple years ago and their front yard,
13:15beautiful. I was so happy to see all of like, they had totally redone an entire corner of their front yard with all native plants and it was gorgeous. And then I have some other people that you know, I visited them a year or two ago and I've come back and you know, they've just done a few things that we talked about. But almost everybody makes at least a little bit of forward progress. Okay.
13:43I was just wondering because I talked to some people on the East Coast for an interview a while ago. And what they do is they go in and they help people start gardens in their yards, even if it's just a small yard. And they do a lot with raised beds because that's their specialty. And when I asked the couple how they came to doing this, the husband said that...
14:09They would get asked questions all the time about how to start a garden in a small yard or a half acre yard, whatever. They would just out of the goodness of their hearts go and talk to people and teach them and tell them. They would go back to visit and nobody ever did anything. But the minute they started charging for their services, people took it seriously and they would go back and visit and people would have done the work and have these beautiful raised bed gardens. The guy says,
14:37It's almost like when you put hard-earned money into something, you might want to get something out of that money you spent. And I just laughed. I thought it was very astute of him to say that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I do charge for my consultations. I pretty jealously guard my time because there's not a lot of it. And I want to work with the clients who value me enough to pay me. Now I do some things for free. Like I'll do...
15:06If somebody sends me some pictures and like a rough square footage, I'll like give them a list of plant recommendations or if I've worked with somebody before and they just have a couple quick questions, I'll do like a phone call and talk to them for free. But yeah, otherwise I've gotten pretty strict about charging for my time. Good, because your time is money. You need to be paid for your brilliance. Thank you. Yes.
15:35Okay, so I have questions about native plants because I'm guessing that a lot of the stuff that's native in Illinois is probably commonly native in Minnesota. Like I assume that you guys have native coneflower and I guess it's called bee balm. You guys have that in Illinois? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We bought some from people who had it growing in their yard. They...
16:04They are gardeners. They are really good at what they do. And they work in agriculture. And they do a plant sale every year from their property. So we bought some bee balm and some coneflower and some prairie something. I can't remember what it's called, but it's very pretty. And we put it in on our property. And it was during a drought two years ago. And promptly,
16:32forgot that, oh gee, we might want to go check on those and water them. Didn't water them and they died because we were dumb. I should have been on my husband about it and I am not the one who gardens. So I didn't think to say, Hey, have you checked those plants we put in? My question is, is if we had put them in and actually paid attention to them and watered them, they should have done fine because they grow everywhere here. Wild. They are basically weeds.
17:02So I'm assuming if we'd done the things we should have done they would have grown and spread and we would have lots by now
17:10Yeah, absolutely. So that care during establishment is, there's a couple reasons that projects commonly fail. One is not an adequate care during the first season post-establishment. And if it's a drought year, then you're probably looking at having to water them for basically until the first frost and maybe even a little bit the next spring if it ends up being a dry spring.
17:39And then the other one, the other common reason for failure is not good weed management. So these plants are tough and they can take care of themselves, but they do need a little bit of a head start, which I recommend for the first week post planting, watering every day. The next week, watering every other day. The next week, go down to twice a week. Then following week, you can start once a week and stay at once a week.
18:09until you either get good natural rains or the plants go dormant. So I actually really like planting in fall because that means as long as you plant early enough for the plants, you know, probably about six to eight weeks before the first frost, so they have enough time to sink some roots down, you have to water way less than if you do a spring installation because then you have to water all summer long.
18:38Yes, and had I been thinking about any of this in a clear-headed way at the time that we did it, I would have done it differently now that I know that, oh, if you don't water plants they die. And I knew this, but I just, I don't know, for some reason it just didn't click that just because they grow everywhere doesn't mean that when you rip them out of the ground and then you put them in the ground in a different place, they're going to need some care. Duh. I'm actually not.
19:07stupid about gardening. We had so much going on, we just completely forgot about them, which sounds terrible. I feel like we murdered plants and that's just sad. I have to, I myself can't even tell you the number of plants that have died under my care. It's just maybe a tray is just out of reach of the sprinkler and I didn't realize it for a couple days and the whole thing crisps out.
19:36Or, you know, I've planted things that are especially early on when I was doing a lot of experimentation in our own yard that just weren't right for the soil conditions or the sun conditions. So unfortunately, you know, you don't want them to die, they're living things and that kind of feels yucky. But on some level, you kind of do have to kill a fair number of plants to become a good gardener, which I feel like you're probably familiar with.
20:07It's kind of like you got to kiss a lot of frogs to get to a prince. That's right. Yeah. Yep. Well, we did. We murdered a hundred dollars worth of plants and I was upset about it and then I was like, you know what? We can try it again a year or two from now when we're not quite as swamped with everything else going on. And I think that's going to be next summer. I actually will probably get some plants in end of August versus September.
20:34you know, native plants and put them in and that way we only have to worry about them for about a month and a half. So, it'll be fine. Yeah. Well, and you know what? It's interesting because I run into that a lot where people think because they're natives, they don't require as good of site prep or as good of establishment care. And I also see this with seed mixes. People are like,
20:58Oh, they're wildflowers. I'll just throw them out in the grassy area and they'll take over. Well, no, they're not going to be able to compete with established grass as seedlings. So like site prep is another really important piece that gets missed a lot. It's so interesting that you bring that up. We wanted to put in two small wildflower gardens and not the native flowers, just wildflower gardens.
21:28My husband was thinking that he would just throw the seeds in. And I said, no, no, no, no. I need you to actually get the tractor with the tiller and till out the spaces. And he said, but they're wildflowers. And I said, yes, they are wildflowers. That doesn't mean they can compete with everything that's there already. Plus, how are the seeds going to get down in the dirt? There's a ton of grass there. And he was like, oh, oh, yeah.
21:53He said, you know, you're actually better at this than I am. I said, I'm better at the thinking through it. Usually I said, you're good at the hard work. We're a good team that way. And he just laughed. He said, yeah, cause you don't have to beat yourself up to get your wildflower garden. I said, no, but I have to redirect you from not getting it started in the first place. We have a very fun relationship and he's really good. When he's kind of poking me and I poke him back, I think he wants me to poke back just because it's fun.
22:23So we have a good thing going. But anyway, we did till it up and we did do the putting the stuff in the dirt the way it said to on the package. And some of them required winter stratification. So we knew that some of the flowers wouldn't come up the first spring. It would be the second spring. And this is the second spring and those gardens are so, so pretty. They all came up, they're great. So.
22:50not a total idiot when it comes to gardening, just have terrible moments where I go, oh, I did not do that right. Yeah. And yeah, we all have those for sure. Yeah. So in your business name, the part of it is Heritage Livestock. What's the story with that? Yeah. So that's, that's sort of room that I left myself for expansion. We are looking at
23:18potentially moving to some property that our family owns and leasing it. It's about 120 acres. Um, and so part of, part of like reintegrating humans in biology in a healthy way, um, is absolutely agriculture and like incorporating.
23:45biodiversity and native species and appropriate livestock all together in the same space. And that's kind of where my day job especially fits in really beautifully with this. So right now we have, since we live in town, we do live in an area that has pretty lax legislation around poultry. So we have
24:12flock of Welsh Harlequin ducks with three separate bloodlines that I'm working on crossbreeding. My goal is a duck that is like the ideal small farm duck so they can incubate their eggs and raise their babies themselves. They are good layers, they're good foragers, and they are halfway decent table birds, the boys especially.
24:43Yeah, my ducks are, so, you know, we have a fairly small yard, but to the extent that we're able, we do rotate them around our different prairie areas within the yard. And so we incorporate our ducks with our native plants and we get eggs from them and we harvest the boys and I will sell some of the excess girls to other people. And that's something that I want to expand with more people, more species of animals
25:13as the nursery grows, utilizing animals to help me manage spaces because animals will work all day long just for the price of being able to have good food and shelter in terms of weeding and managing plants for you, especially if you are really careful about good fencing and things like that. So I'm really interested in how animals can help me manage my space and how I could share that with other people.
25:42Okay, I have to ask, are you going to get goats so they can keep whatever brush you have trimmed back? I might get goats. I probably would get sheep first. Okay. Just wondering, I have talked with so many people about goats on this podcast and I say that like I'm sick of it. And I'm not actually sick of it because I learned something different from every person that has.
26:08goats or sheep or cows or horses or whatever animal they have. But goats are the big thing from my podcast because most people who are into homesteading either have goats, have had goats, or are thinking about getting goats. So that's why I asked. I have a different question. I have a question about your ducks. If you get ducks as ducklings, do they like
26:35imprint on you and are they friendlier? Can you handle them easier if you need to pick them up? Because our chickens are ridiculous. We did not get them as babies and they fly the run all the time and we have to clip their wing, one wing, so they can't fly out of the run. And they don't like being picked up and they don't listen because chickens do not understand human language. And it's just a total pain in the ass to catch them to clip that one wing. So
27:04Are ducks different or are they kind of the same as chickens? They are, so this, they're quieter. In terms of like temperament, they're usually quieter than chickens. Now I also have a fairly docile breed, which I chose intentionally. There are some duck breeds that are pretty high strung. But they, in order to imprint, you have to get them like...
27:30essentially right after they come out of the egg, which is difficult when you buy from breeders or hatcheries, you know, with the shipping and the transport process. They usually are two to three days old by the time that they get to you. Okay. Yeah. Now, I do spend a lot of time with them as babies, so they're pretty accustomed to my presence and I can catch them. They don't love it, but they don't beat me up quite like my chickens used to when I had to handle them.
28:00Yep, I don't love chickens. I have said this a few times already on the podcast. And the only reason we have chickens is because I love fresh eggs. I love the fact that we have day old eggs at any point in time while we have the chickens. And eggs right from the coop in the pan scrambled taste amazing. Yeah. So that's why we have chickens. My husband on the other hand thinks chickens are great. He thinks that it's a riot to.
28:27get earthworms out of the garden and throw them in the run and chickens lose their minds. He thinks they're fun. I don't love chickens and I've never had ducks so I don't know if I would like ducks or not. And not really all that important. I was just curious about the difference in temperament between chickens and ducks. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly we enjoy them more than the chickens. And so one thing
28:56They do have high water needs in terms of, you know, you might not, you don't always necessarily have to provide them with swimming water, but they at least need to dock their heads fully so that they could clear out their sinuses. And they love, they need clean water and they are really good about making water dirty. So it's constantly managing their water, but that's actually a pro for us because
29:23we take that dirty water and fertilize our nursery stock with it. Um, and so, you know, we are, it's kind of combining two things that way. Yes. I, I, some of the stuff that I love the most about homesteading and about talking with you guys is all the dual purpose and the full circle situations that come up. Absolutely. It, I do this thing.
29:51with my house where I try to practice no wasted motion. So if I see something in the living room and I'm headed toward the kitchen and the thing belongs in the kitchen, I grab the thing out of the living room and put it in the kitchen. Or if I'm going downstairs and I notice that there's dirty clothes on the floor from the night before, they go downstairs with me. So I don't remember 20 minutes later and have to come back up to get them. No wasted motion as often as I can do. And I feel like it's a thing.
30:18that people who are into agriculture, livestock, homesteading, crafting things, whatever, they all just innately do it. They just notice it and go, oh, this makes things easier and it's a natural follow through. So why not do it that way? Yeah. So I love that. I think it's great. Yeah. And I feel like finding those little opportunities is also super fun. Yeah.
30:44It's always funny when you finally notice something that correlates to something else and you put it together in your brain and your brain goes, oh, that's why that works that way. I have this happen to me all the time, the older I get, and I have it happen with words a lot of the time. There are words that are two words that got put together at some point in the past to make the new word. And it doesn't click for me until...
31:12I was this many days old when I realized the thing about the word. And every time it happens, I'm like, God, I'm an idiot. I've been reading for years. I love words. How did I not know those two things ended up together to make that word? And I feel like it's the same moment when you realize the correlation in your work or your hobbies or your life or whatever it is.
31:35It's just this light bulb that pops on and you go, oh, I'm so dumb, I should have known that. I should have noticed that before. Yeah. So, okay, so basically your whole life is about
31:54gardening and regenerative practices and making things work the way they originally worked in nature. Really, that's what it sounds like. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's awesome. I think that's a beautiful way to live your life. Thank you. You're welcome. And that's about it. I try to keep you to half an hour and we're at 32 minutes. So Kayla, thank you for your time and talking with me.
32:23Absolutely. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Bye.
 

Hog Trap Herb & Flower Farm

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Hog Trap Herb & Flower Farm.
 If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This 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 Jennifer at Hog Trap Herb and Flower Farm, I think is the name of it. I'm sorry, I got stuck there for a second. Good morning, Jennifer, how are you? I'm wonderful, how are you? I'm good. You're in Texas?
00:29Yes, we are actually in an odd spot. We're in south Texas and we're not really central Texas. We are south of Austin and east of San Antonio. So we're in a non-regional area. So we call it south central Texas. Okay, well I'm in Minnesota and it is like seven, it's not even 70 degrees yet
00:59And the reason I say this is because we have had the wettest, most miserable spring and early summer ever. So I'm so excited that it's gorgeous out today. Yes, yes, that it helps. But we've had rain, but we've had more storms this year, which has really impacted us a lot a bit. Yeah. Tell me about yourself and what you do. Okay, so I am actually a Texas transplant. I grew up along the Mississippi River.
01:28Mississippi and Arkansas, lived in DC for 10 years and moved down here to Texas. And then married a cowboy down here and we live on a fifth-generational ranch. We do raise cattle, but we also have some areas to the side where I do some farming for our herbs and flowers. I'm a grandparent.
01:57and we have a whole bunch of kids and I'm actually transitioning back into teaching and we're pretty active in our community and just outreach and just we stay busy. We really love living life to the fullest and we are constantly always adding to our busy schedules. Very nice, so my first question.
02:23is I saw on your Facebook page that you have the apparatus to distill your own oils from herbs. What is that called? Oh, I am so excited. So that's kind of a new addition and it's kind of, I've learned to diversify a lot doing this type of work. And so it is a still, it's a distillery. So instead of making moonshine, we're filling a set of stills from raw material.
02:52Oddly enough, I watched it on a TikTok and I thought, you know what, that seems really easy to do. And I purchased it probably about two months ago and I'm already looking to upgrade to a larger device. And so it's something I've really enjoyed in the spirit. It seems like it could be overwhelming, but it's very, very simple.
03:19to use and it's just another avenue for us to get our product out into the market. Okay, the reason I asked is because I didn't know if it was called a still because I thought maybe it had a different name because stills are associated with alcohol. Yes. So no, it's a distiller. So what it does is I use depending on what I'm trying to get from the product. It uses steam and so on the it uses a bottom heat which of course
03:48heats the water and uses the steam that goes up into a column, which then produces either the essential oil in the beginning and then it slowly turns up the hydrosol, which is basically just scented water at that point. You can use it that way or you can just use it for hydrosol and that's when you would just put the material directly into the boiling water and the steam would rise and you would get more of the hydrosol that way.
04:17Okay, so how much essential oil do you get from like one batch of doing this? Because I'm assuming it's pretty small. It is very small. So it all depends on the, it has, if you have a high quality product or if it's dry material will help, will kind of affect the average, I guess, what you get from it.
04:46So if I use dry lavender buds, for instance, I could probably use...
04:56almost a pound and I may get one mil of essential oil. Wow. And how long does it take? Oh, it takes about... So for the essential oil process, you want to grab that first 30 to 40 minutes of the oil. After that, it kind of depletes. It's kind of... Not its pureness, but the aroma effect of it.
05:21But the remaining time, the other two and a half hours, you're going to get your hydrosol from that. And the longer that it kind of distills, the less quality of a product because it kind of goes away after time. So for the most potent part of the whole process, it's going to be the earlier the better. I usually cut everything about two hours. And I usually get about a quart of hydrosol.
05:51You could go longer, but it's not as potent as you do the initial batch that you get. Okay, so what do you use the hydrosol in? What do you use it for? Oh, there's a few different ways you can use hydrosol. You can add witch hazel. So if you're doing a lavender or even a rose, if you go to like department stores and beauty supply, you'll see a lot of the rose water.
06:18And sometimes they'll put like witch hazel in there and use it as a toner for your skin. I also do it, the lavender, and the lavender will help with like inflammation on the skin. This is a safer avenue for smaller children too, because you have to be careful about using the oils on children, but this, because of the water content, is safer for the children. And then you can just also,
06:47We'll take the hydrosol and we'll add pure grain alcohol as a preservative and you can use it as a room spray or to spray on your linens, just to freshen the air in the car. And then you also just have the regular hydrosol with nothing in it that you can actually use as a culinary. If you wanted to add something to a liquor or to...
07:15a mocktail or something, you can use that. Because it's just, it's basically you're catching the smell of the herb or whatever material you have. It's like a flavored water without adding like sugars and all those other things too. Super cool. I didn't know anything about that. But it is, it's, there's so many avenues to, to go down the whole distilling process. It's really interesting.
07:44This is why I love this podcast. I learned something new every single interview. It makes me so freaking happy. Okay, so I wanted to know about the still because I thought about getting one too and then I saw how much they cost and I thought maybe not right now. So what kind of herbs do you grow? What varieties? Oh, so we, I grow everything from your basic.
08:08I say culinary herbs just because people know them for cooking only. They don't realize there's like herbal benefits, medicinal benefits to those herbs too, but I grow everything from your basic rosemary's to basils, different types of basils, oregano's and whatnot. And I even grow things that are a little bit harder to find that aren't familiar with people like
08:36whorehounds and we do motherwort here. It's really a variety. Whatever will grow in Texas, I try to grow. And trust me, I have been through the ups and downs of growing herbs in Texas. So I think I've kind of pinpointed what's working. But we also do the floral, like the calendula, which is a great source for different properties and benefits for venus and oil uses too. So.
09:06Okay. Um, so are we talking acres of herb plants or are we talking not acres? Acres would be wonderful, but unfortunately with irrigation, there's always that problem. So I really kind of concentrate on, um, raised beds, but it's in a large area. So we'll do it around, we do it around the house and the house sits on about five acres. So maybe.
09:36We're looking about maybe about a half an acre to three fourths of an acre total for everything that's spread out around the house. Yeah, I'd love to get to that point. I did have, I did have for the first three summers we were here, this is the fourth summer, an herb garden that was like, I would say 15 feet by 15 feet. And it was packed with time.
10:05sage and chives and lemon grass and lemon verbena and a bunch of stuff. And it was gorgeous. And we, I dried a whole lot of it for the winter. And then my husband was like, I'm going to till your herb garden in. And I said, I said, you're going to what? And he said, I'm going to till your herb garden in. And I said, why? He said, because I want to start over. He said, the weeds are really getting bad in there. And
10:34He's the gardener, I'm not, so I don't actually take care of the herb garden, he does. And he said, I want to start over. And I said, okay, so can I give you a list and we start over? He said, yes, you can, as long as I can till it under. I said, okay. So that was the plan. And then this spring, it rained and rained and rained and rained. So there is no herb garden in the big garden now. The herbs are in the greenhouse and they're doing okay. We had our first batch of...
11:04however you say it, bruschetta or bruschetta last night with our basil. And it was delicious. So they're doing really well in the greenhouse. Yeah, we just opened a new greenhouse. My husband built it. And so we do start our own seeds here. We order from one company and they are heirloom seeds. So.
11:31We, it's great because you get such a different variety that I think people get stuck in the rut of what they know and they don't venture outside a different species of that plant. Um, like basil, yes, we all know Genovese basil, but a lot of people don't know about Thai basil. And so- And cinnamon basil. So we, I tried to kind of introduce that to the community. Um, and we do that through-
12:00markets and then we also we open the greenhouse and we have like a farm store we sell our products that we make as well as seedlings and starts and stuff but I like to kind of open and show them that you can look outside that species and find something that that may taste a little different that grows maybe a little bit different and just kind of educate them outside the box I guess kind of learning.
12:29Yes, I love that. When people ask us about the stuff we cook with, I'm like, what stuff in particular? Do you mean herbs? Do you mean spices? Do you mean what kind of beef do we get? What do you mean? And a lot of time I get, I don't know as the answer. I'm like, oh, okay. Do you want the long story or the short story? And usually it's a short story. So speaking of basil, we picked up a basil plant.
12:59years ago. I don't remember the variety but it had big leaves and they were like crinkly almost like um like parsley crinkly. I don't know what it was does this ring any bells for you? It doesn't ring a bell but I would be interested that I when we're done here I'm definitely going to be researching that and seeing what type of basil that was because um that sounds very
13:29Tasted does it have a flavor that's distinct from the other basils or it just tasted like regular old? Genovese basil, but it was so beautiful So, I don't know what it was and I think it was a variegated color I think it was green and like a little bit of gold. Oh, so I don't know but it was really pretty and it was great And it did Fantastic like it got huge. Oh, well So I've been trying to find it since and have not seen it since
13:59And the other thing that I was going to say about people stick with the varieties that they know, I didn't think we could grow lemongrass in Minnesota. And they had it for sale at a nursery. And I was like, well, let's try it. The worst that happens is it dies. And lemongrass does really well as long as it's in full sun all day and we get some hot weather in the summer. Yeah. It's funny what...
14:25This is what I like to tell people. They ask me, well, what will grow well here? Well, pay attention when you go to the nurseries and to these big box stores. They're not gonna sell stuff that won't grow well in the area. You can sit down and you can look at your, you know, your county extension list and get that information too. But when you're wandering around, be kind of mindful of the plants that they're selling because why would they carry something that's not gonna sell? So that's another avenue.
14:53Like when you're out, say, oh, like you said, I wonder, I didn't think it would grow here. Well, they wouldn't sell it there if they didn't, if it wouldn't grow there. So I think people are like, I don't want to kill another plant. So they're scared to kind of do something different, but it's all, I'm a hands-on learner, so it's, it's experimental and learning about that plant in the process. Um, but yeah, we, uh, we grow lemongrass here as well.
15:21And one of the distinctions you were talking about growing in full sun, one thing that I tell my customers, full sun and Texas full sun here are two different things. And so you have to really have that understanding and experiment. I say plant it in a pot first, move it around, see whether it likes the best and plant it there. Doesn't always have to be so landscaped. It's where it's going to do the best. Yes. And the other thing in the paying attention vein here,
15:51is if you're going to buy fruit plants, I'm not, we're not talking about fruit plants today, but it's important. Make sure that you know whether you need to get different varieties of the plant so it will pollinate because my husband bought cherry plants last year and he didn't get a different variety. He got two of the cherry, the winter hardy sweet cherries that will grow in Minnesota. And I was like,
16:19They're related to apples. They're going to need another variety. And we ended up having to buy a Rainier cherry tree because that was the one that was recommended to cross pollinate. I don't know if you know anything about cherry trees, but Rainiers are one of the most expensive saplings to buy. Yeah, that was fun. Um, I, I, I love him. I love him. He's a great guy, but.
16:47He loves gardening, but he doesn't love the research. So I end up doing the research. That's my job. Yeah, it's a learning opportunity. That's why it works, right? Yep. So I understand that you grow herbs and you grow flowers. So do you, and you're distilling the oils from the herbs. So do you make things with that? So yeah, again, we make the essential oils with it, but
17:16So we kind of refocused our whole agenda, I guess, this year. And I want to concentrate on being a little bit more of a supplier to homemakers that do the soaps and that do more homemade items and be a supplier that way, because they already understand the importance of having good, high quality products to put into their product.
17:43And I just find in general public when we do the markets and stuff, sometimes it's more about, oh, well, I can get it cheaper on Amazon or, you know, I can go down to Walmart and get the same thing. So with the oils, we're just really trying to focus on building our inventory so that we can be that supplier for other homes setters and other people that are interested in that field.
18:12But also, you know, the products that we make ourselves is we make like the salves and we make the lip balms and we make the candles and stuff with those as well. So I'm not a big soap maker. I can never figure it out. I just, you know, there's just things I just can't do in life and that's one of them for me. So I like just being the outlet for people to come and purchase, purchase just raw materials like that as well. Nice.
18:42You were saying that people say they can buy the same thing at Walmart or Amazon for cheaper. It is not the same thing. That's your correct. All right. And so we, I try to go into that education part of it, but you lose people very quickly when they're just looking for like a fast grab and go that aren't interested in really learning about, um, what goes behind creating a high quality product. And that's okay. Cause not everybody's into.
19:12into that aspect of it. So that's why we kind of diversified a little bit and looking at the market being a little bit more of a supplier than the direct sales to the customer. Yep, for sure. Well, I have listeners who do wanna know about why it's not the same. And I would be happy to share my experience about why it's not the same. We do, we make soap, we make lip balms, we make candles. And...
19:41I did order some essential oils from Amazon. I did not get any at Walmart, but I used to get essential oils at Walmart years ago. And it is not the same. They don't smell like they're supposed to. Unless it's somebody who actually does this as a business, it's not the same. Factory produced is not the same. And we had a batch of soap that just crumbled as it cured.
20:09because the oil that we used was not good. And it's expensive to make soap. And we were out probably about $50. And I looked at my husband and I said, no more. No more, we are finding a reputable place to order our essential oils from and our fragrance oils from because this is not okay. Right, it is about the quality. I have found, I did a lot of research, you know, when you get the more commercial,
20:37made oils and stuff. It's not always that oil. There's additives in there. There's like scent boosters. They add things to those, which does affect the quality of the product that you're making as well, like you said, with your soap. So my name is on it. The person that I'm selling to that's making the soap, her name is on that. And they're going to tell that consumer that, oh, well, I know I get my oils from hog traps.
21:06I want it to be a positive that's attached to our name. I don't want it to be a negative. So quality is extremely important when it comes to our products. Absolutely. I would put a word in the middle of absolutely and lutely, but I'm not gonna do it. So why is it hog trap? So I wish that I really had this great, funny, whimsical story that.
21:32to tell you, like I wrestled a wild hog over the land or something like that. But honestly, this is my husband's family's ranch and where we put our house, there used to be a hog trap there and that's it. Well, that's okay. Oh, wonderful, cool story. Like I was attacked by a wild hog or, you know, I killed him with my bare hands sort of deal.
22:01We need to make one up to really entertain people But it's something as simple as we took the hog trap down and we put our house and we're like, hey, let's just call it hog trap So let's go Sometimes the most obvious thing is is the right thing You should you should make up a story a legend about hog trap I'm thinking we like that. Yeah, like that like the ghost hog that comes at night or something like that I think we should we should definitely do do something like that
22:29That would be fun and funny and you could be like in, you know, a little tiny fine print. You could print the story out and fine print at the bottom, be like, this is not a true story, but it's funny. Exactly. I think that might be another avenue that we can go down, you know. Why not? Anything to market what you're doing that is positive is a great thing. Well, it's definitely an attention getter because we'll be at a market sometimes and even the guys will walk past us, a hog trap, because it's...
22:59They're thinking, oh, trapping hogs because it's a big thing here. And that kind of makes them stop and kind of read the rest of my sign. And they're like, oh, okay. You're not selling hog traps, selling girl stuff, you know, or whatever. Girl stuff. Yeah. Then the wives are coming over like, why are you in here? And they're like, oh, you know, yeah, it definitely draws attention. I got suckered in honey. Come look at your girl stuff. No, I know that happens a lot.
23:29Uh-huh. So what flowers do you grow? So we grow most of everything I grow to be a dual purpose. So it's it's pretty, but it's also edible or medicinal in some way. So we grow a lot of calendula, which we make a lot of things with those. And then lots of yarrow because I use those in arrangements as well. Sunflowers, which we.
23:56like the seeds and then I have my non-dual ones, more like the zinnias, which do really well here, the cosmos and we do grow snapdragons seasonally. And when I make my bouquets, I use those flowers, but I also add herbs into it as well. So you're kind of getting the whole, just a little bit of everything that we grow here.
24:22Yes, herbs make bouquets smell so good. I put together something last year and I threw some basil in it. Oh, yeah. And when I gave the bouquet to the person that came for the CSA pickup, I was like, if you run your hands through the basil, it will make the house smell good along with the other flowers. And she was like, really? And I said, yep. I said, and your hands will smell like basil for the day too. And she was like, oh, okay.
24:49Absolutely, kind of provides a little bit of aroma therapy. So if you throw a couple of twigs of rosemary in there, which I adore rosemary, um, and you just brush against it and you smell it, you know, it's a, it's a kind of aroma therapy, you know, uh, effect on you as well. And I don't think people think, uh, herbs as being part of a bouquet because they only see the greenery, but they do flower out like the, the basil will flap.
25:18Most of it will and so it does provide another kind of beauty about the herb to it as well. Yes, basil flowers remind me of little tiny orchids. They're really, really pretty. I had a question and then I got thinking about the flowers on basils and I forgot my question because this is what I do because I'm a terrible journalist. What was it? I don't know what it was now. So do you love what you do?
25:48I adore it. So I'll give you a kind of reason why we started it kind of really in 2016. Very, very small. And then of course, over COVID, because I was teaching at the time, a lot of time on my hands, I kicked it into overdrive. But my mother also come down with cancer. So I moved her in to take care of her. And so our whole
26:16little farm, my little herbal and flower farm is based off healing. And so while taking care of my mom and passing my mom passing away, I kind of have this area out by the house where a lot of the herbs are and I call it the healing garden. I don't think people understand how much you can heal not just by medicinally with herbs, but in flowers, but just being in nature period.
26:46And so my mom kind of just started that with me. And so we have our little ashes actually buried out there. So when we do classes, I'll take the plants out and we sit at an herb box and we sit at a flower box and you're looking at the dirt, you're looking at the bugs in the dirt, you're connecting back to nature and it's very mindfulness based. You're touching the plant, you're watching the plant flow in the breeze.
27:16And we're all right there centered around this big magnolia where my mom is buried. And so it's it's we are motto is healing with nature and really in all aspects of it, whether it's medicinal, where it's mindfulness, whether it's just seeing a beautiful bouquet of flowers that's making you feel good about yourself. That's what we center everything around. And I have found such an enormous positive feedback in little town in.
27:46in Texas where I have seen just an emergence of people really taking time from themselves and connecting back to nature and really enjoying the things that are around them. Awesome. I feel like nature gives you the opportunity to be in the moment they are in. Absolutely. And that's the only moment we have. Right. Is the moment that we're in right now. Absolutely.
28:15And we just take it for granted. We're such a disposable, fast-paced replacement. Let's go, go, go, multitask. A society, and what we don't realize is all of that that we put on ourselves when we're multitasking, we're wearing ourselves down emotionally, physically, and health-wise. And so it's hard for us to stop and smell the roses, in a way, because we feel like we're not accomplishing anything.
28:45in reality you are because you're taking care of yourself in a way. Yes, and with any luck the things that you're doing to take care of yourself and make your soul happy ends up helping other people too. Absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I come across people all the time that they'll come up to me and we'll start this conversation and I tell them the story about...
29:13healing garden and herbs and stuff and they you can see their face kind of transform into you see the little light bulbs going off and you're like oh that's right oh maybe I should do that and that's they might not buy anything but I've planted that seed I've planted that kind of thing in their mind that um reconnecting with nature kind of going back to that childhood when you used to lay on the ground and make shades out of clouds you know take
29:43and reconnecting and to me the only way to do that is using nature. We just adore all that nature has to offer. Yes it is. It is like, it's like, I don't have a word, not Prozac, but it's anti-anxiety medicine that is completely natural. Yes, yes it is. But again it's hard for us to let down those expectations of things that we have to do
30:12complete, you know, there's other things that you can do too. And again, the self care, if gardening is your thing, you know, those are just as important as completing a work assignment. And, you know, being so stressed and all of this stuff, we just got to really kind of take it back in a little bit and reprioritize what's really important to us.
30:38Absolutely. Yesterday morning I was sitting on my porch looking out the window having my coffee and we have three cats right now. We have our male barn cat, we have our female barn cat, and we have our kitten. And the female barn cat is the mama to the kitten. And the kitten lost all his siblings to new homes. The last one went to a new home two weekends ago and he's about 15 weeks old now.
31:05He lost his friend he doesn't anybody play with so he's been trying to get mom to play And I was watching this little boy play with her tail yesterday And she kept batting at him like no no and then finally she gave up and just Plumped him to the ground and rolled him over and was playing with him like she was a kitten My heart felt so good watching that happen and that's nature. Yeah, that is they get it You know they get it so we need to get it. We are the we get
31:34in front of ourselves. We are our worst enemy sometimes because we have these unrealistic expectations and sometimes we just need to dial it back and just let things happen and uh remember while we're here you know and um but I love educating people about that and the mindfulness and being in with the plants and I have seen people really taking what we've taught in classes and stuff and now they're out.
32:03doing similar things. And it's, I love seeing those little seeds that I've planted kind of bloom into something that they were passionate about, but nobody told them it was okay to pursue. They needed that validation. And so I think they get that if you take the extra time and educate them a little bit and so show some support, then they, they can go off and kind of follow that.
32:31Yeah, I feel like people forget that they're growing too. It's not just plants that grow, people grow. Right, absolutely. So, I don't know, it's a very new agey kind of morning around here and I say that with the most respect ever because people are like new age stuff is so silly, it's not. But is it new age? I mean really, I think it's this is stuff that people did,
33:00to these, we went out to Big Bend for a vacation and toward the little ruins of pioneer villages and stuff. And when you step out the back door, right beside the back door, they had herb gardens, but they used it not for culinary, but also for medicinal stuff. I think people back then just appreciated time probably because they worked so hard. So I, you know, I
33:28In some ways there are a lot of new age things, but I think we're also getting back to more of the roots and stuff that our previous people have done here for hundreds of years. Yeah, I think that we're finally maybe getting a clue, some of us, about the fact that the old-fashioned ways and the new ways of doing things can meet up in the middle and be a beautiful thing. Absolutely. So, that's what I think this morning.
33:57Jennifer, I try to keep these to half an hour. Thank you so much for taking time to talk with me. I appreciate it. Yes, it was wonderful. Thank you so much. Have a fantastic day. You too.
 

Simply Rooted

Today I'm talking with Savannah at Simply Rooted. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This 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 Savannah at Simply Rooted. Good afternoon, Savannah. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. You're in Georgia? Yes. We are up in northern Georgia, very close to the North Carolina and Tennessee border.
00:29Is it warm there? It is warm. Occasionally we will be up in like the 90 degree area, but mostly we stay in like the mid to high 80s. So like on average all summer long? Yeah, I would say so. It definitely gets hotter as summer progresses and that our winters are pretty mild. It's funny like we're all the way up in like the mountains of Georgia, but we're
00:57technically a, I think it's called like a temperate rainforest here. So we do get a lot of rain in the winter time. Okay. Well, Minnesota, the summer can't make up its mind. What the hell it's doing. We were really, really cool over the weekend. I mean the high on Saturday, I think maybe got to 70. Wow. Maybe. And today it's really muggy and I think it's 75. And then, um, two weeks ago.
01:24it was hot and the humidity was high. It was just gross. So we never know what we're going to get here. It's like a box of cracker jacks. You never know what the prize is going to be. So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do at Simply Rooted. Yes. So I actually started Simply Rooted back in April and it really started as a subscription box. I am actually by career a registered nurse.
01:53And so I work from home and I have my own company at home. I work with attorneys and I review their clients' medical records. But my husband and I, we have eight acres and we're very much into like the homesteading lifestyle, slow living type of thing. So I wanted to create a business kind of around this lifestyle because I'm so passionate about it. And I have a lot of our friends and family ask me,
02:22about what I do, how I got started. And so I decided to kind of create a subscription box for those who are interested in that more simple living, slow living type of lifestyle. And so it's a quarterly subscription box and it comes in January, April, July and October. And so it's mainly seasonal, but we include products from
02:50small businesses and small family-owned farms from other country. We put their products in our box and we usually shoot for about six to eight different products every quarter. They all kind of revolve around kind of like that home setting lifestyle, that simple living lifestyle. So, you know, we have non-toxic all-purpose cleaners, tallow body butter, tallow body soap. In this box, we have a peach jam.
03:17and we have some non-toxic mosquito repellent. In our last box, we had a homestead and cookbook. And so just kind of things like that, kind of to push people towards cooking from scratch, creating a non-toxic home, getting in their garden and planting different things to kind of really push you in that direction. So there's so many people like with prices today that they really, and like just the stress of everyday life and they really just wanna take it slower.
03:45and enjoy life and not have that stress that they have on a day to day basis. Okay. So I have a question. The in the subscription box is anything made by you or is it just from other crafters that you know? It's mainly from other crafters. We buy it through wholesale. We also have a couple of local people in our community that we get products from as well.
04:11And then something new that I'm going to add here in the future is have our subscribers send in people that they know in their community and we can feature products from someone in their hometown. Nice. So you're a curator of good things. Yes, definitely. Yep. Fun. I should consider that.
04:38I should think real hard about that because we do make stuff. We make lip balms and soaps and candles and whatever. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. And I don't mind doing it. It's fine. But I like your idea better. Yeah. And it just gives a way to support the small businesses around the country. And a lot of these products you can't find on Amazon.
05:04That's kind of like the whole point of it too, is that they're not readily available. And so by supporting these small farms, small businesses, you're supporting their kids and their college fund and all those great things. And then you also get a benefit of it too, if you get these amazing products that are actually good for you. And they come from good ethical people who care about your health as well. Yeah, I love it. That's a fantastic idea. Thank you. So I saw.
05:33On your Facebook page, one of the latest posts, there's a candle and I can't think of the name of it right now, but I looked at the top and middle and bottom notes of it and all I want to do is wear it as a perfume. Those are some of my favorite scents. It smells so good. I am obsessed. I picked up the candles. It's actually from a family ran business here in my hometown and we have her candles in all of our boxes.
06:01I picked them up and I'm like, oh my gosh, these smell like they it might be one of my favorite candle scents like ever. What's the name of it again? I can't remember. It's called Golden Hour. That's it. Thank you. Yes. And that's a perfect name for it because that's what I would I would think of. But I love bergamot and I love musk and I love citrus and and honestly the perfume that I wear all the time is an essential oil blend.
06:28And it's a light musk and a light patchouli. And patchouli is terrible. Like, I don't love patchouli, but this light patchouli essential oil is beautiful, mixed with the soft musk. But there was a perfume out, I can't remember the name of the company, it was many years ago, maybe 15 years ago, that Target sold. I wish I could remember the name of the company. And it had tuberose as one of the...
06:57the scents. Interesting. And I loved this perfume and it was actually like a like a face powder perfume. It was that texture. It wasn't a liquid or an oil. Okay. And I loved it and they don't sell it anymore. And it's probably a good thing they don't because it probably had all kinds of terrible things in it. I know right. But.
07:20Those scents are amazing and I didn't even know what tuberose was until I looked at what the scents were and I was like, I need to find out more about this. Right, right. Yeah, I've never heard about you there. Yeah, so and ylang ylang or whatever that is. That was one of them too. But yeah, I love scents when we make our candles. Our whole house smells like whatever candle we're making.
07:45And those are my favorite days when we do lemon grass candles. I'm high, high for three days on the scent of it. I love that though. You know, it's like, it's good for you too. It's not like it's, you know, causing any sort of damage internally, like some of those, you know, other candle, big candle companies. Yeah. I can't handle, I can't handle it when we do lavender. I love lavender. I do.
08:13but the scent is so intense, it gives me a headache. It is. So I brace for it. When my husband says, we're doing lavender candles, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna down some Tylenol now before we even get started, because it's gonna hurt. It is, it's definitely a unique scent and it can be very strong, I agree with you. Yep, then we do a coffee scented candle. I love coffee, like I am a coffee fiend. Me too.
08:41I will drink it, I will smell things that smell like coffee. I just, I love coffee. And when he says it's coffee candle day, I'm like, yes, it's coffee candle day. So there's a whole thing that goes with making things, you know, it's, it's the experience, it's the, the love of doing it. It's knowing that people are going to enjoy it when they buy it from you. That it just makes me so happy.
09:09Okay, so now I raved about all the smells and scents and stuff. I saw that you have zucchinis right now. Yes, yellow squash, I guess. They are coming out of the garden like crazy. And we also have a ton of cucumbers and we only bought like four cucumber plants. But I think we are at like 60 or 70 cucumbers now that we've come out of the garden. I am so jealous.
09:38We have nothing but radishes right now and peas because all it's done is rain all spring here. So my husband got the gardens in late because the dirt was soup. So we are very patiently waiting for the garden to finally dry out and start actually putting energy into growing what's in the garden. Yes. Yeah. I, that's hard to do. It's just so wet. Yeah. It's, it's been a hellacious spring here for the first time since we moved in.
10:07four years ago. And so we're very disappointed because I keep seeing the photos come into my Facebook feed or the memories thing of everything we were pulling out of the garden this time last year and the year before and the year before and I just want to cry. It's not fair. But I'm hoping that we will have an extended autumn and maybe we'll catch up. Right. Yeah. Are you starting all your stuff?
10:34from seed like indoors or do you just plant right in your garden? We've started a whole bunch from seed. And then we moved that all out to the finished greenhouse that just got finished in May. So the greenhouse is full of plants, but they need to get into the garden to get big. So as soon as we're sure that the garden is not going to be soup every other day, we'll get the stuff from the greenhouse into the garden.
11:04But you know how this goes, weather is the thing that we all deal with when we're trying to grow things. Yeah, so it's funny, we actually watched this show on Amazon, it's called Clarkson's Farm, and it's about this, I think he's either a millionaire or a billionaire, I think he was on British's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, I think he hosted that show. And he bought like a thousand acre farm and decided he was gonna see what it was like to actually be a farmer.
11:31And he's had three seasons now and watching how just almost kind of helpless they are with the weather because I mean, they're growing wheat and corn for the masses to sell and make a livelihood off of and it could either they're dealing with rain and drought, cold weather, warm weather, and it's, it's insane how
11:57you know, these big commercial farmers, all the things they have to go through just to get their crop. Yeah, that's why we are not commercial farmers. I don't ever want to be playing that game. No, me either. Nope. The fact that our garden is basically not producing anything right now is not going to make or break us. It is sad. It is disappointing. Yeah. But we're not going to die because we didn't.
12:25We didn't grow a big garden and sell the produce. Right. I can't imagine being in a position where our livelihood counted on this. Right, I know. I think about that often too. I'm like, I wanna grow all of our food on our own and I don't wanna lack the grocery stores. Then I'm like, I have to be thankful for the grocery stores because I can't imagine what it's like to not have that as a backup. Uh-huh.
12:52We here in Minnesota, in LaSore, Minnesota, are very lucky because the town just south of us has a co-op store. They actually buy produce from local growers and then sell it. And so if we don't have a green bean crop, because they died, because they rotted out, we know where we can get really good green beans that someone nearby grew.
13:21We also sell at the farmer's market whatever we have to sell. And so, so we know the vendors and if we're like our tomato crop went this year, they're going to be like, here, take these. And, you know, at probably a discount, who knows, but we are not without resources here because we live in the land of people who grow crops and grow farm to market gardens and, you know, we're not, we're not.
13:50there's a bad word coming to mind, I'm not gonna say it. We are not in trouble if we don't grow a single thing in our garden this year. Right, right. Yeah, that's always good to have a community around that. Also does something very similar to you. That's kind of where we live too. A lot of people have gardens and I think especially in like recent years, I see a lot more gardens popping up. And even like our friends and family who never garden before are now having these amazing gardens
14:20It's really cool to see people going towards that way because I did not grow up gardening. We had houseplants, but I also lived in South Florida where it was super hot. I definitely lived more in the city type of life. So growing up this way, I did not grow up with vegetables and farm fresh produce at all.
14:50I want to say backyard garden, but it wasn't backyard. It was side yard. Side yard vegetable garden, because my parents had a garden from the minute they moved into our house in Steep Falls, Maine in 1976 when I was like six years old. And so I never didn't have access to homegrown produce. And my grandfather also grew a...
15:15pretty decent sized produce garden at his place about an hour and a half away. Okay. So all summer long we were eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and whatever was growing we had free range to just go pick it and eat it. Yeah. So I did grow up with it and I loved it and I love this life that we're living now except that I don't know if I'm going to have any tomatoes to go pick out of the garden this year. I know.
15:42If we lived closer, I would totally send you tomatoes because we planted like, I think we planted 20 tomato plants and they are all on the vine ready to go. They're still green, so we're waiting for them to ripen. But very soon here, we will be drowning in tomatoes. Yeah, we were drowning in them last year. Luckily, we canned a whole bunch of tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. So I'm not completely up the creek on this.
16:12You know what I'm saying. There's nothing better than a sun-warmed tomato on a salad. I agree. With a little bit of salt too. So yes, and again, I sound like I'm an evangelist and I'm raving about homegrown produce because I am both. I keep saying I'm not an evangelist. I'm not saying everybody has to do this, but I love that we
16:40do it. So when I'm talking to someone else who does it, it becomes this this fest of, of, yay, I love doing this and you love doing this. So, yes. Anyway, um, are you, do you have kids? No, we do not have kids. Um, I am 28, my husband's 30. We are in that stage now where we would like to have kids and we're trying for them, but as of yet, we don't have any. Okay. Yeah. Well,
17:09when you do, they are gonna be some of the luckiest kids ever because their mom has it all together on this being healthy thing. I like to think so, so I mean, we do sourdough, we do as much produce as we can. And I've always like in my 20s, I was in nursing school at the beginning of my 20s and I kind of had this vision for my life. I was like, I have all these things in place that need to be checked off before I will have kids. And I finally feel like I'm
17:38actually at that point now where like all those things are tucked off. Uh-huh. Yep and that's awesome and I kind of wish I had done that too but I didn't. But I also feel like the most perfect time to have kids is whenever they come. Right, yeah. I agree. So I mean I was very young with my first and I was 32 with my last and it all worked out so.
18:06Yeah, I just pretty much, you know, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And we're just going to keep living our lives. Yeah. And honestly, if it doesn't happen in the way that it usually happens, there are lots of babies and kids looking to be adopted. Yes, absolutely. And I've had some really good friends who are adopted.
18:32really great people and have touch base with their birth parents and it's all worked out great. Yeah, that's awesome. So there's options. Yes, lots of options. Yep, and honestly if I was younger and not so tired from already raising four kids to adulthood, I would consider adopting another one, but I think I'm good. I think I have done all the intense mothering I need to do ever.
19:00Yes, definitely four kids. That's a lot. Yeah, I'm done. I'm 54 years old. I raised four great kids. I've done my job. I'm finished. It's all good. Time to relax. Yes, and can't actually relax because the youngest one still lives with us. But he's an adult and he helps out a ton here on our little quote-unquote farm. So he's a big help. Okay, so what else do you do?
19:29You do the subscription box, you guys have a garden. What else do you do, anything? The only other thing that I do, which I know I mentioned, is I have my consulting business. So that actually is more of my day-to-day job. And I really enjoy that and I love it. I have the best clients and very interesting cases that we get. And so it's nice too, because I used to be a night shift nurse in the NICU, which I love.
19:57but working night shift, working weekends, working holidays, is, it was not where I saw my life going at all. And that's kind of where this journey started, was I was thinking, I'm like, how can I make my monthly bills so low to where I don't have to work three, four, five days a week as a nurse and have to put in 60 to 80 hours?
20:23just have the things that I want. And so I kind of, that's kind of how I also got into that home setting place where, you know, you don't have debt, you don't, you know, spend more than what you make. You live off the land as much as you can, you make your own products. And so I was kind of in that space and that's kind of also what led me to trying to find it, you know, trying to find different things that I can do with my nursing.
20:52career and my degree. And so that's kind of how I got into consulting. So I can work from home, make my own hours, no more holidays or weekends, which is so nice. But yeah, so that's mainly what I do day to day. And then, you know, right now the garden is just always calling for us in the evening. So we do a lot of that. And then my husband and I always try to every Friday take off from work.
21:19and we will go to a different waterfall or a different hike or a different swimming hole and kind of explore the area around us. And so we love doing that. And we honestly, we just live a very simple, slow life. Awesome. Awesome, you figured it out before you were 40. I try. Yeah. I'm gonna go back to the subscription boxes for a minute. Yeah.
21:46How do you find the stuff? I mean, have you been, like, I find you guys to talk to because Facebook is amazing at feeding me more of what I'm interested in. So every day, every hour, there's a new homesteader or a new crafter or a new baker coming from my feed. Do you have that too? I do have that. That's kind of one of the things I love about Facebook and social media is the algebra doesn't point you.
22:12into that direction. So I was talking to my husband, I'm like, I hate just like aimlessly scrolling on my phone, like I want to learn more more about gardening and cooking and all that stuff. And so that's something I like about Facebook is that it pushes you towards those people. Right now, kind of when I posted about my box at the beginning of the year, had a couple people reach out to me. And so for example, the girl who does our candles,
22:41We put her candles in all of our boxes and we do like a it's very seasonal. The scent that we pick. But I also purchased off of a website called Fair, which is F.A.I.R.E. And the best way I can describe it is like Etsy, but for wholesale. And so all sorts of creators of different products will post their products on there and then you buy at the wholesale rate.
23:09So that's how I kind of find a lot of our products. Eventually, you know, this is only our second box that we're doing so far. So eventually I would like to, like I said, reach out to our subscribers and see if they have anyone in their community that has a really great product and we can feature them in a box. So I think slowly over time we'll move away from FAIR and just get a couple of our products from there. But I would really like to support our...
23:39subscribers community as well. Nice. Okay. I was just wondering, because now that you told me what you do, my brain is just spinning on how would I do something like that? There's lots of subscription box things out there right now. Yeah. It's funny though, because I try to look to see if anyone else did something similar to this.
24:07And the only thing that I could really find was some people did produce boxes with like actual produce or I saw a lot of meats like frozen meats that would be shipped to your door. But I never could find anything where you would get a mix of different items from small farms, small businesses, family ran. That was like well curated and that would be shipped to you either either every month.
24:36every three months, every other month. I could, I still have not found anything similar to that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I haven't heard of anything like what you're doing. I'm just saying there are so many subscription things out there right now that it's kind of nice to hear about somebody doing one like yours. Yeah, yeah. It's really just the whole point is to get people kind of...
25:03back into their kitchens and cooking for their families, even if it's a quick meal, or even if it's just planting one tomato plant in a pot, doing those little things or making your own detergent or instead of buying the dove soap from the store, you're using our tallow soap. So just different things to kind of get people thinking and using.
25:29understanding where their products actually come from. That's from a family and not a corporation. And so that's kind of like the whole ethical and the whole principle behind the box. Yeah. I love it. I love that that's the premise because not everybody knows where to find this stuff. That was the other problem that I ran into is I would do research on different products and items and I just could not. It's not like I would type in non-toxic.
25:59you know, dish soap and you know, all kinds of things come up, but a lot of it is still big brands and big companies and some of their ingredients are still a little bit questionable, whether it's toxic or non toxic. And so I was like, I bet I bet there's so many businesses, small businesses that no one even knows about or you know, the masses don't know about that we could be supporting. And you know, with the subscription box, they also include like a pamphlet.
26:28and on that pamphlet has each brand, what they stand for, a little bit about them, a little bit about their product or products. And so, you know, my subscribers are more than welcome to repurchase any of their products through those brands. Eventually, I would like to have a kind of a members or subscribers only store where they can repurchase their products all in one place. But for now, I encourage them to
26:58you know, purchase from the brand that we buy from. And so you're supporting them once, but you're also supporting them potentially multiple times as well. So it's like if you liked the thing in the box and you want more, here's where you get it. Yes, exactly. Awesome, fantastic. I was gonna say, I don't wanna, it's gonna sound like I'm bad mouthing my parents, but I'm actually not.
27:26It's just this thing that has confused me forever. My mom and dad, my mom is 77, my dad is 80, and my mom will be 78 this month, and my dad will be 81 this month. Go big. And I swear these people have been using margarine instead of butter for years. Uh-huh. I hate margarine. Me too. Okay? Me too. Number one, it's not good for you. Number two, it's not butter. Right.
27:57And my mom's like, you know, she's like, have you tried using margarine in your cookies? And I'm like, yes. And I don't do it because they go flat. They're not, it's not made for baking with. And she's like, you always bad mouth margarine. I'm like, because it's not good for you. Ants won't even eat it. They'll eat butter, but they won't eat margarine. She's like, but butter, high fat, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, it's from milk.
28:26cows. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. Like I like my mom was very much low fat. That's what they that's really what they preached. When we were growing up is low fat, low carb, sugar free, low sugar, all those types of things. And it's funny now, because you know, the studies on red meat and studies on dairy and gluten.
28:52And what I've realized is a lot of those studies are on commercially processed, commercially highly processed dairy and red meat. They're not done. These studies are not done on locally raised, ethically raised, raw dairy, uh, meat that you raise on your land that's grass fed. You know, a lot of those things are not done on those things. So they say butter is bad, but butter is actually very like it's, I don't want to say it's very good for you, but.
29:22You need fat, your brain needs that fat and you, you know, the dairy, or sorry, the gluten, the whole gluten thing with being gluten intolerance. And I tell a lot of people, I'm like, there's other options, you know, you have sourdough. You also have different types of wheat berries, such as like einkorn flour. That is an ancient grain, you know, we're given all these.
29:46highly processed gluten and corn products to eat. And no wonder we're getting sick and no wonder they're saying it's bad for you. If you just go back to the source of the purest form of those ingredients, you're gonna be healthy. You're not gonna be obese and have arthritis and degenerative joint disease and all those things that we talk about are heart failure, heart disease, by eating good quality butter or raw milk or...
30:16sourdough or kefir, anything like that. So it's so interesting how, I mean, no offense to the older generation, but the older generation is definitely kind of stuck in those ways a little bit. Yeah, and I finally said to my mom, I said, if you want to have margarine on your toast in the morning, have margarine. It's totally fine with me. I am gonna have butter if I have toast, because I want butter. I don't want margarine.
30:45And so there are all these things that are In quotes bad for you that that my folks do all the time and I'm amazed that they are the ages They are that they've made it this far, you know, yep And and sugar dude. I have tried Maple syrup in my coffee. It's not right. I have tried Honey in my coffee. It's not right. Yeah, I'm the same
31:13A tablespoon, a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, regular size coffee mug in the morning, I'm good. Yes. Sugar, sugar is not going to kill you. Butter is not going to kill you. Excess is going to kill you. Right, or highly processed white sugar instead of the cane sugar or tons of turbinado sugar, different options of sugar.
31:43you know, you and I probably didn't grow up this way. You know, you grew up eating margarine and highly processed white sugar and seed oils and all those things. And so trying to understand us a different way, there's different things you can do is also a challenge as well. Yeah. Turbinado sugar is the most yummy sugar I've ever tasted. It is really good. Yeah. I'm a big coffee person too. So I try to like make.
32:12my own vanilla syrup and my own caramel syrup instead of buying it, you know, from Amazon or whatever. I think it tastes better too. Yeah. Yep. I think anything that you make yourself tastes better because you made it. Right. You know exactly what's in it. There's no fillers, no preservatives, no dyes. Yep. The only thing that tastes better than what I make is what other people make from scratch for me. Right. I will do that all day long.
32:40It's so funny, like I make my husband a latte in the morning, so we got an espresso machine. And I'm like, he's like, I wish I could have this every morning, because sometimes I'll sleep in and he'll go to work. He'll be up earlier than I am. I'm like, I can teach you how to make it. And he's like, no, no, no, no, it won't be the same unless you make it for me. Uh huh. Yeah, my husband makes yeast breads. And the reason he makes them is because the first two times I tried to do it, I killed the yeast. And I was like,
33:09you're better at this than I am you make it. Yeah. Yeah. And I keep telling him that I'm going to try my hand again at making yeast honey wheat bread, honey oat bread, because I love that. Oh yeah. And I've been saying it for months and I haven't done it yet. And he looked at me the day he said, it's summertime, you're not making honey oat bread now. I said, no, I'm not. It's too hot. Yeah. He said, you've been threatening for months to do this. He said, first cold weekend this fall.
33:38I dare you to make honey oat bread. And I was like, all right, challenge accepted. So probably sometime at the end of September, I will be trying it and I will probably be saying, what did I do wrong? Right. Bread can be tricky. I don't usually have like, I mean, I will make yeast bread, but it's kind of, it's a little difficult, honestly, to get like the rising and letting the yeast like absorb in the water and the sugar and having your house at the right temperature. It can be a little tricky.
34:07Uh-huh. And he just, he works this magic over it and it's always delicious. I'm like, you should have been a baker. Yeah. And he laughs. He's like, no, because then it would be work and I would hate every second of it. I'm like, okay, fine. Yes, you're right. But boy, he makes some amazing breads in the fall and winter because I don't know what you know about.
34:32baking breads, but if you bake breads, it makes the house feel warmer, whether the house is actually warmer or not. It feels cozier. And the smell too is so good. So as soon as it gets cold on the weekends, I'm like, will you make a couple loaves of bread? And he's like, yes. Yeah, I was saying the other day as I haven't made sourdough in a while and I'm just like, I don't really want bread in the summer.
35:00I don't know. There's something about bread in the fall and the winter and it's like that's that is my bread making period. Yeah, I figure the first weekend where I make a big batch of French onion soup, he'll probably want to make bread to go with it. Oh, that's the best. Soup and bread. Oh, man. So yeah, and I I'm not even a huge fan of bread. Like as a general rule, I don't eat bread every day because I don't feel like it's good for me and I don't enjoy it. Right.
35:29but oh my God, homemade right out of the oven bread. That's the best. Yeah, and it's so funny because people, a lot of people don't even, haven't even experienced that in their whole life. I know, I know, it's insane. It's kind of sad though too that we've like gotten so far from doing those types of things. Like, you know, I, my mom was, she was a great cook. She was amazing cook and I learned so much from her, but we still.
35:59We bought the bread from the store. She never baked bread. Um, you know, spaghetti noodles from the store. She never cooked your own noodles. And it's just like, we've gotten pushed so far into going to work, working nine to five, coming home, making a quick dinner, putting your kids to bed, and then doing it all over again, that there's no time, like we've almost like our society has created this life where you can't even really do that even if you wanted to, cause we have all these.
36:29We want and need all these different luxury items. And the more you need and want, the more money you have to go and make, and the more you have to work. And it's like this vicious cycle that you can't ever get away from. Yeah. And then there's no time to actually enjoy the things that you wanted to do in the first place. Right. Yeah. So yeah, it is, it is a vicious cycle. And I'm, I'm not saying that everyone should.
36:58quit their jobs and go buy a farm. I absolutely am not saying that. I guess what I'm trying to do with this podcast is just share other people's perspectives. And I'm so tempted to find somebody who lives like in the middle of New York City and doesn't do any of the stuff that we're doing and just see if they'll come talk to me on the podcast about what their life is like. Right.
37:28Right. The thing is I have a feeling that it would come off as snotty and I don't want to do that. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, I do know what you mean. It's hard. It's hard to because I encounter, you know, people all the time where they will never understand why we do what we do. And that's totally okay. And that's totally fine. And
37:55there are some people that genuinely love to work and they want to be the CEO and they want to be in the Fortune 500 companies and that's what they genuinely love to do. For me, I thought that's what I wanted and I thought I need to build an empire and I need to do all these things and I need to work and you know, but it's so funny how things change so fast when you realize you just that's not what makes you happy at all. You just want to.
38:25wake up in the morning and drink a latte on the front porch and go to your garden and pull some weeds and then come back up and make sourdough bread. You know, it's so funny how things change so fast. Yeah, absolutely. You can't know until you know. Right. And if you haven't been exposed to something new, you can't know that's what you want to do in the first place. Exactly. So, yeah. I mean...
38:55back 20 years ago, 15 years ago, my husband and I were talking about, you know, our life after the kids were grown. And I was like, I would just like to have a house we don't have to repair every six months and a little bit of acreage. Like I would have been happy with an acre. And he said, what do you want to do with that? And I said, I don't want to do anything with the
39:25I just want to have it so that our neighbors aren't 10 feet away from us. And he said, oh, so the acreage is for me? I said, yes, what do you want to do with it? He said, I want to grow a freaking huge veggie garden. I said, okay, cool. And so from that point on, all the things that we were interested in making happen at this future projected place was what we studied up on, what we learned about how we did our life on our city lot.
39:55Yeah. And then four years ago, we actually moved to 3.1 acres. That's a big. With a house that we have not had to paint or patch or anything since we've been. It's been great.
40:11And so we manifested its life. Yeah, we manifested this thing that we're doing now. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm very big into manifesting. I feel like you have to. You have to live like you already have it. Yeah, and we did. We grew a garden on our little tiny 0.10 acre city lot. And that 0.10 acre.
40:37had a house and a four car garage on it. So you can imagine how small the garden was. Right, right. But we did it and we grew flowers and we grew from scratch and we made things and we did stuff in practice for where we're at now. And I'm so glad we did because I really wouldn't recommend anybody go from zero to a hundred in that situation. That's very overwhelming too.
41:06It's overwhelming. It is, it's a huge, steep learning curve to go from DoorDash and a loft apartment to a big yard and a dog and a barn and you know. Yeah. It's like, oh, I don't know where I am or what I'm doing now. Right, it's exciting thinking about it. And I kind of had that a little bit too, like we.
41:32move on to eight acres and I was like, I want a big garden. So we did a 4000 square foot garden. I bought all the seeds, all the stuff and I was like, Oh man, I'm a little overwhelmed now. I'm like, I'm just gonna. So in the preceding years, I just kind of was like, I'm just going to do minimal. I'm gonna learn this and get really good at these few vegetables and then we will add on to it later another time. And so I think a lot of people
42:02end up quitting before they get started sometimes. And because it's exciting, you want to do it all. Like I'm a very much go big or go home type of person. So if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it like to the extreme and plant a 4,000 square foot garden. But I don't, I definitely don't recommend that. Yeah, I might go big or go home when it comes to the researching and learning about the thing that I want to do. Yeah.
42:29And that really helps because as I research and learn, it puts it into a more reality perspective for me. And I go, OK, yes, I can do these things to start with. Right. So I love researching. I love reading. I love learning. I love learning, too. I tell my husband, I'm like, I just want to learn a new... Like I was feeling a little bit bored lately because I feel like our garden, this is like our third year in our garden.
42:58I've really kind of mastered over the last four years cooking from scratch. I always love to cook, but cooking from scratch is obviously, there's a little bit more to it. It takes a little bit more time, a little bit more skill, but I feel like I finally got my sourdough together. I've got all these things together. And so I'm like, well, what's next? So I'm like, ready to learn a new skill. Yeah, that's kind of how the podcast happened. My
43:25my youngest was going to be moving out and that actually didn't happen. Very long story, not allowed to tell it. Again, very important reasons that he is still living with us and he is a huge help. But I needed a new baby because I thought I was going to be dealing with emptiness syndrome. And it was either sob my eyes out every day or find a new baby. So the podcast became the new baby. And then basically a month and a half after I started
43:55two months after I started it, he was back. And I was like, I have a schedule now, so here's what I'm doing. If you need me to, if you need time from me, you have to put it on the calendar. You have to let me know. And it took him a month to remember to put things on the calendar. Oh my gosh, yeah.
44:20One day he was like, I need to go to this doctor's appointment and he can't drive right now. And I was like, um, that sucks because I have this thing that I'm supposed to be doing that I scheduled months ago. And he said, can you reschedule it? And I said, I love you. Yes, of course I can reschedule it, but this is why I need you to check with me before you schedule your stuff too. So it's a learning curve on this grownup.
44:50relationship now. Yeah, that's definitely interesting that changes in relationships too with your children and trying to find that new thing that you want to do that fulfills you. Yep. Yep. And he was so funny because I told him I was going to do this. And when he came back, I really didn't understand my stats for what the podcast is doing, how it's progressing.
45:20And he said, do you have stats for your podcast? And I said, I do, but I don't know what they mean really. I mean, I know how many downloads I'm getting a day. And he said, how many? And I told him, and he was like, that's not too bad for a baby podcast. And I said, yeah. I said, but there's this other number retention. And he said, what is it? And I said, 100%. And he swore at me and said, I don't even wanna talk to you about this and walked away.
45:48And he was smiling the whole time. Yeah, yeah. And I gave him a minute and I said, why did you swear at me? And he said, because that's unheard of. No baby podcast gets that. You have loyal followers. Yeah, he said, you're better at this than you think. I was like, well, thank you, son. So there's been this whole weird re-establishing boundaries and...
46:13time parameters and what we all need from each other with three people in this house. And it's been really, from a psychology standpoint, it's been really interesting. But thankful that he's here because he helps so much. Yeah, that's always so nice when you have that extra help too. Yeah, especially with the gardens and the chickens and he loves to cook so he cooks like two nights a week, which is amazing. Yeah.
46:43What a journey. I did it right. I raised him right. Yes, you definitely did. 100%. All right. So before we get too far down this parenting rabbit hole, because I'm always up for talking about raising kids because I've done it for a long time. I'm actually going to let you go because I try to keep these to half an hour. And I, oh, and you wanted to share something about the subscription box. Yes. So.
47:09For all your listeners, we are offering 15% off your first box. You can use the code podcast all in lowercase letters. Right now, our July box is sold out, but you can go ahead and pre-order the October box. It'll ship first or second week of October, is what we try to aim for. It's going to be all around fall.
47:38You might see some elderberry syrup or fire cider. We'll definitely have a non-toxic fall candle, and we'll have several other things as well in there. All the good things. All the good fall things. Awesome. All right, Savannah, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Yes, absolutely, thank you. Have a great afternoon. You too. Bye.
 

Nana's Kitchen MN

Today I'm talking with Nancy at Nana's Kitchen MN. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This 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 Nancy at Nana's Kitchen, Minnesota. How are you, Nancy? I'm doing good. How are you doing today? I'm good. The MN is for Minnesota, yes? Very good.
00:24Okay, good. I never know if people want me to use the word that the letters stand for or just the letters. So, nope, we just had to tag it on there when I got my cottage kitchen because believe it or not, there's other Nana kitchens. Well, there's lots of Nana's in the world. So it doesn't surprise me. Yeah, so we had to distinguish ourselves. Okay. Well, tell me about yourself and what you do at Nana's kitchen. I cottage kitchen and I make gluten-free, basically pastries, pies, cookies,
00:54I also make some that are dairy free. Been baking gluten free for the last 16 years and just have done it for family and stuff like that. People always say, gosh, you're so good. You ought to try to sell them. It's one of those things to kind of get the nerve up to put your neck out there and do it. Yes, I do. Yep. One of my daughters retired from the military, moved nearby, and she's been pushing me, just do it, mom. Just do it, mom. She's my spokesperson.
01:23She pushed me into it. But anyhow, I enjoy baking. Gluten-free is something you have to learn to do. It doesn't come easy because there are so many different types of flours and stuff like that. I've worked on a technique that works for me and it comes out pretty darn good. You don't know that they're gluten-free products and that was the whole goal. People don't miss the gluten when they eat the product. Awesome. So when did you start? Okay, two things.
01:53I can't talk this morning. How did you come into this? Like, why? Yeah. And when did you start the actual business part of it? The business I just started doing this year, like in January, I just kind of started putting stuff out on Facebook. Well, my daughter started putting stuff out on Facebook. She's my social media person, like I said. 2008, my oldest granddaughter was diagnosed with celiac disease and she's autistic. And
02:23With that time it was, huh, what's celiac disease? I hadn't really thought, heard about it. Her mom had kind of, my oldest daughter, had kind of looked into it because of the autism, this connection sometimes with different things causing autism. But we waited, it was like December 2007, so January 2008 we had her go gluten free and it was, I mean, at that point in time there aren't products on the shelves. Like you can go in the store now and there's Char and Glutino and all kinds of different.
02:50products you can buy that are gluten free. It was very, very limited. So she wanted like, you know, cookies and the things that she would miss. So I started baking those, looking for cookbooks and recipes. And back then it was a lot of gabaazanbee flour and heavier flours, and it was a product, but it didn't taste the same. And over time, flours have evolved. There's different types and brands you can use. And I'm finding different blends, putting different starches together. Finally, just all worked out that I could bake stuff.
03:20that was palatable and she enjoyed it. So I went from cookies to cakes, all kinds of different things. But as it turns out, her mother then, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with Celiac of May of that same year, 2008. In July of that year, my daughter's younger son, who was seven, was diagnosed with Celiac's disease. Wow. So now we had three of them, which then, my youngest child, I have three daughters and a son. He at that time was 25.
03:49And he got tested. Actually, the whole family did blood work tests. He has celiac disease. So if my four children, two have celiac, two don't. I have five grandchildren, three have celiac, because then the daughter has another child with another man, the second husband. He has celiac disease. So all three of her children have celiac disease. So it runs in the family. We did DNA testing on 23andMe. I'm a carrier. I don't have it, but I carry it.
04:19And the percentages of I have it are the same as my daughter and granddaughter and stuff like that. So I'm gluten free as well. But I suspect my mom had it. She had symptoms years ago that hindsight looking back on it, I think she had celiac disease. So that got me started because I had to cook for the grandchild. Wanted to give her baked goodies that tasted like everybody else's that she could watch her friends at school eating cookies and she couldn't have one. So that's how it kind of evolved.
04:48to process. So I don't, okay, I talked to a lady a while back who has celiac disease and her baby son has it too. And she told me all about how this all works. And I was so thankful that she did because I had no understanding of how bad it can be.
05:14Her situation is if she even walks into the bakery section of a grocery store, she reacts to the flour in the air. Yeah, I never heard of that. My children, well, what's funny with my children, because I'm an old hippie mom, got married in 74 and my children were born late 70s, early 80s. Everything was whole wheat and wholesome homemade. I made all the bread and everything. Whole wheat, whole wheat, whole wheat, whole wheat. And yet...
05:41Two of these children now have celiac disease. Is there a correlation there? I don't think so, I think because of the family genetics is why they have celiac disease. But as a child, there was no reaction, there was nothing. I mean, they grew up on it, they were fine. Only as adults, which is really weird that it took effect and exhibited itself as an adult with them. My granddaughter, it was tummy aches and things like that. The grandson had...
06:10And she was always constipated. Grandson, the same thing. Those are really typical symptoms because the intestines are just not moving. Don't care how much water you give the child. But once they all became gluten free, if they eat gluten, the boys will throw up, like there's no tomorrow. I mean, hours on end throwing up and then their stomach and intestines are sore for days.
06:39my daughter and granddaughter, it goes the other way. They don't throw up. It goes the other way. But the same thing, it'll go on for hours and then their intestines are just ripped apart for days. But it's funny because nobody reacted to we, proceeding going gluten-free, then once they did and it got out of their system and it came back, wow, do they really feel it? Yeah, it can affect everybody differently and some people can actually go into shock with it. It just depends if you're allergic to it or not.
07:08You don't need to have a shock going on. Yeah. Okay, so is your gluten free is a very specific term. Yes, it is. I've been told by many, many people that if you're going to say that your food is gluten free, you basically need to not have any kind of gluten in your kitchen. Correct. So is that how you do it? Yes, there's no gluten in my house.
07:33My husband is not celiac, he's not gluten-free, but he eats gluten-free. Unless we go out somewhere, then he'll order a regular hamburger bun or something like that. But there's no gluten in the house. I don't bake with it, and it's not in the house. He just eats gluten-free because everybody else does around him. I could say I'm a dedicated kitchen. I can't say I'm certified gluten-free because the state has to come in and they're not going to come into your home and certify you gluten-free. Yeah.
08:00So was it hard for your husband to switch over or was it a fairly simple transition? No, he's fine with it because the products that I make, I mean, you're talking regular meals are not a big deal. Pastas are all gluten-free pasta, not a big deal. He eats it, not a problem. Hamburger buns, I make hamburger buns, he's fine with them. No, it's not a big deal. The baking, I've perfected it such that like cakes and treats and things like that, you can't tell the difference.
08:30In fact, one of my customers had a birthday cake she wanted me to make for her. I think she posted a review on my website. She was telling me recently, we did an event and she was there and she said, it was either her brother, her brother-in-law, I don't recall now, was a professional cook. He kept tasting the cake and going, this is not gluten-free. Then he would look at the ingredients and go, no, it's not gluten-free. Which is flattering because that's the whole premise. I don't want you to know it's gluten-free. We had someone at an event.
08:59we offered him cookies and he took a bite of a chocolate chip cookie and he goes, hmm, not bad for a gluten-free cookie and walks off. Well, he's not gluten-free and they taste fine. You wouldn't know they're gluten-free. It was just kind of a catty thing to say, I thought. But you know. There's always one. I know. I know. Always. Always. Somebody's got to ruin it. And this is nobody who even eats it, you know, so why are you taking this cookie sample? Whatever dude. Uh-huh.
09:26But no, my husband has no problem with it. He knows that the kids can't have it and the grandkids. So no, he's a sport about it. Like I said, if we go out somewhere, then he eats regular. It doesn't phase him, but no, not a problem with it. Awesome. Yeah, good. Good. Okay, so I looked at your website of all your goodies for sale. I should not have looked at it at six o'clock this morning because all I wanted was cake and whoopie pies and stuff.
09:53And I don't even really have a sweet tooth, but when I see beautiful treats, I can taste them in my head if that makes sense. And I'm just looking at your site going, oh my God, I need to go find her right now. But I didn't. That's far from you. Yeah, I know. You're a new preg. Yep, yep. But I decided that really it was okay. I didn't have to drive to new preg at 6 a.m. and wake you up and be like, hi, I need all the things now. However.
10:21The photos of your stuff are beautiful. Do you take them or do you have someone take the photos? No, I take them or my daughter takes them. Gorgeous. Just take them here in the house here. Yep. Yeah, we've, you know, iPhones have come a long way. I have a regular Nikon camera that hardly gets out of the cupboard anymore. Everything's on an iPhone, you know? Yeah, it's easier. Yeah, oh, absolutely. And you can look at it right away and mean that it's a digital camera too, but this is so much easier. You can post from it and you know.
10:51Makes it really easy for you. Yeah, you're very good at your photos. Well, thank you. But I enjoy the baking and I, part of when I started doing this too is I don't want to make the prices crazy expensive for people because you know, as a young mom, I remember taking the kids to events or something and they all want a cookie or they want this and you look at prices sometimes at events because they're always higher it seems like. And it's like we were on such a limited budget. They couldn't always get something or we would.
11:19So when I started baking this stuff, you know, I've had people tell me, you know, it's gluten free, you can ask for more, you can ask for more. And even at that, the prices that I sell it for, I kind of go, pff, just seems like a lot. But I know that it's not, because I see what other people are pricing out there, you know, but I wanted to make it affordable so people could buy stuff for their kids, the treats and things, you know, and not feel like, well, I can't afford $7 for a cookie or a donut or something, you know. Yeah, pricing- So I tried to price them more reasonably, sorry. Pricing anything, anything that you do,
11:48is one of the hardest things on earth to do. I actually have a sponsor interested in sponsoring the podcast and I'm trying to figure out what the reasonable price for sponsoring my podcast is. And I went and did a whole bunch of research and I'm like, I have no idea. Didn't help you, did it? Not especially. So I went with what I thought and I'm waiting on the email back and I'm very excited about this. Yeah.
12:16Even when we started selling our candles and soaps and lip balms and stuff, I was like, I don't know what is reasonable here. Yeah, I know. It's so difficult because you don't want to price yourself out of the market. Nope. You don't want to just be like, well, the market will bear $20 for a bar of soap. So that's what I'm in charge because that's ridiculous. I just, it's so crazy to me, all the pieces and parts of running a business that you have to learn on the fly as you go along.
12:45Absolutely. Yep. I agree. Yep. Pricing is hard. I mean, I go through what my products cost me, my ingredients, putting it together, you know, and then I know there's formulas you can use for your time and this and that. It's like, well, if I do that, I'm never going to sell anything that's really affordable. No. I'm not doing that. I'm just going by, okay, this is what it cost me to make it. Okay, this is fair to sell it. Forget my time. I'm not worried about it, you know. Yeah. And I also
13:15which I think you do. Yeah, I do. Your time is a joy. Yeah. The time you put into it is a gift to yourself. It is. And I'm not saying you shouldn't charge for your time because that's part of it, but it's easier to maybe knock some of that down when you enjoy what you're doing. Hold that and you get positive feedback from what you've done.
13:41Oh my god, those are great. You know, I'm so glad they got to buy it, you know, so the feedback is good, too I don't you know, that's okay Yeah You make two of my favorite things on earth. I love anything pretzels. So your pretzel bites look amazing Oh, thank you and your whoopie pies. I grew up on the East Coast So I know what a whoopie pie is and I know the absolute bliss of biting into one And yours look fantastic
14:11Well, thank you. And it's funny because I'm from California and whoopie pies are kind of like, well, what's a whoopie pie? And we thought adding it to the menu and I saw their East coast pretty much. I saw a lot of them from Vermont, things like that places, you know, you hear whoopie pies up that way. So we offered them some, I thought people in Minnesota knew what whoopie pies were and surprisingly a majority of them when we've had them in an event kind of go, what's a whoopie pie? Seriously?
14:38Thought you guys knew what whoopie pies were. So we are selling them at the events. I was just surprised that not more people knew what they were. They do now. But we're going to do different fillings in them. I've got peanut butter and then Irish cream and mint, different fillings that we're going to do seasonal with them. Awesome. Feel free to order them any time you want, Mary. Yeah, I just have to get over and pick them up. I'll meet you halfway. How's that?
15:06That's a great idea. The Apple Barn in Jordan has whoopie pies that they order from the place in Maine that makes them. Do they really? Okay. Yeah. And those are the ones that I was introduced to as a kid because I grew up in Maine. And when we went there, we lived like five minutes from there. Oh, wow. Four years ago. So we went there and I discovered they had them and they have...
15:32the different kinds. They have the chocolate with the chocolate filling, they have chocolate with the vanilla filling, they have a whole bunch of different kinds. And I was like, okay, once, just once, I'm going to buy one of each flavor. And we're going to try them. We had three people living in the house at the time. And so we would pick one a day and we cut it into four pieces and I would get half. So I got two quarters. And my husband and my son would try the other quarters. And we decided that the classic whoopie pie, the
16:02the chocolate cookie with the vanilla filling is the best one. That's what we decided in our house. Yep. Isn't that funny? Yeah. The very basic one, huh? Yup. Yeah. And the thing that I love about Whoopie pies is that the cake, cookies, whatever they are, they're like smooth on the outside cause they're usually wrapped in plastic wrap. So they get that smooth, like sticky coating on them. And then they're like a
16:29the cakey cookie in between the top and the flat part of the cookie. Yep. Yep. So you get that silky thing on your tongue and then you get the cakey cookie and then you get the filling. And the reason they're called a whoopee pie is because you think whoopee when you eat them, I swear. They do make sticky fingers, I'll tell you that. Well, they're messy. They're messy. They are messy. They are messy. And what's good about when I make them, they're also dairy free as well as gluten free. So anybody can eat them has issues with that.
16:58Yep. And that's awesome. I have made whoopie pies from scratch once and I probably won't do it again anytime soon. It was probably at least 15 years ago. And it's work. It's a lot of work to make whoopie pies because it's a bunch of steps. Yeah, there's a couple steps to it. You got to make them and then, yep, got to make the filling, put them together. Yeah, yeah. Not horrible, but it's a few steps.
17:22Yeah, but I was real proud of myself because I did everything and I wrapped them individually in plastic and put them in the fridge so they would do that silky thing that they do. I handed my husband one and said, try this because I need to know if I did it right. He bit into it and he was like, tastes just like the ones we get in Maine. I was like, yes, I did it. Great. There you go. A true labor of love. Yeah. Oh yeah. If I'm going to do something like that, it's because I want to.
17:50and I want to prove to myself that I can do it. And you did it once. Good, check that off, right? I sure did it. And I think there were 14 of them in the batch when they were done. I think I ate probably eight of them. Oh my. Uh-huh. Well, they were lip smacking good, then it sounds like. Good god, they were amazing, yes. And honestly, I couldn't get whoopie pies at that point. There wasn't anywhere near us 15 years ago to get them. They didn't carry them at the Apple Barn then, I don't think.
18:21So I was just really craving a whoopie pie and I went out to Google and found a recipe and I was like, I can do this. I can do this, it will curb the craving. It'll be good. So it worked out great. I'll have to go to the Apple Bar and check those out just to compare it by one and then bring it home and compare, you know? Oh yeah, yeah, that would be great. And then your pretzel bites. What kind of flour are you using for the pretzel bites? Well, the flours that I use is my own blend that I figured out and put together.
18:48And so it's a white rice flour with some starches and stuff. And then there's psyllium in it. There's whey. There's some different things like that in it. And the pretzel bites are great warm. They really need to be warmed up. If you let them sit around like any pretzel bite, they're not as tasty sometimes, you know? So I always, when I sell them to somebody, hey, pop them in the oven, 350 oven for about four or five minutes just to kind of perk them up again, you know? But they're tasty. No, they're a very tasty treat dipped in like, you know, nachos type of sauce, cheese sauce, you know?
19:18Very good. Yep, they're tasty. Yeah, I love pretzels. I don't know why I love pretzels. I think it's just the salt. Yeah, there's definitely salt on them. Yep, the zisto so it rises and everything. But yeah, they're a tasty little critter. My grandkids love them. I just made some a couple weeks ago with some grandkids that were visiting from California. They got devoured pretty quick. Gone. Yeah, they're gone like a shot. Yep, you make a batch and they're gone. Yep, absolutely.
19:46Okay, so you mentioned yeast. So you do use yeast in the flour that you work with? In the pretzels. Yes. The pretzels are a yeast and cinnamon rolls are a yeast. Anything that's a bread type of product like that. Yeah. I use yeast in it. It's, it's risen in the, and then kneaded down and it's a different, yeah, go ahead. So yeast does work with all these different flours. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Again, it's just a matter of kind of figuring out which one liquid measurements differ. I take a lot of recipes that are just a regular one and I adapt it.
20:16But sometimes you have to adapt how much fluid, liquids going in there because starches absorb more than regular wheat flour would. So, most of them that I adapt come out pretty good. Now and again, I'll get one that go, mm, okay, I need to work on that one. But yeah, the yeast flour, the yeast that I use in all the raised type of stuff, pretzels and cinnamon rolls, hamburger buns, all that type of stuff is yeast dough.
20:43Okay, I didn't know you could use yeast in anything but just regular old wheat flour, so that's good to know. No. Thank you. You can use it with a gluten-free blend. Yep, you can do it. It works out okay. Again, it's not like somebody couldn't take a bag of one-to-one ratio like King Arthur or something unless they do have a bread flour mix, I know, but if you took just a regular all-purpose and tried to use it in place in a recipe you're trying to adapt, it's not going to work. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
21:11So you are a cottage food producer, you don't have a commercial license, right? Correct. That's correct. Okay, so you are not allowed to ship your stuff just like any other cottage food producer in Minnesota? Kind of sucks, huh? Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah, I know. I know. They keep trying to get it pushed through and the government in Minnesota keeps saying no. Which is interesting because I believe you can mail dog treats through the mail. Yes, you can. Yeah, you can do dog treats to Cottage Kitsch and send them in the mail. So they may change it eventually, you know.
21:40But then again, some of the stuff I question, like, what I really could ship them would survive it. Like the cupcakes, I can't, not gonna mail a cupcake. You know, I could mail donuts, I could mail cookies, I could mail coffee cake, you know, stuff like that. But not the cupcakes, the icing just not gonna make it. No, and you know they're gonna get shaken and they're gonna get beat up and it's just not gonna work. But cookies, my God, why we can't ship cookies is beyond me.
22:06It's kind of silly. Well, they change the rules every year, so maybe they'll adapt it. I'm hoping that'd be nice. Yeah, I have talked to a couple of people who are part of the getting the rules submitted to the legislature regarding cottage foods. And they're working so hard to get it through and it just keeps getting shot down. Why? Don't know.
22:32And I get so frustrated for them because last year they thought that it was going to go through and nope. Yeah, you have to wonder what the snag on it is, why they wouldn't want people to be able to sail through the mail because they can't make money off of it. I don't know. I have no idea what the hangup is. And it also makes me, I don't know, in this very sarcastic way giggle that we can send pet treats through the mail.
23:01Currently the government doesn't care if our pets die. Right. How nice of them. And I have a dog. I have a dog who is the love of my life and I am really careful about what we give her. So, I mean, I haven't even bothered to try making pet treats for her because she has such a sensitive stomach anyway that I don't want her to get sick because of a treat I tried to make for her.
23:29Yeah, let alone by one that's coming through the mail right from someone's kitchen. You don't know what they did Yeah, yeah this dog. I swear she loves cheese So anytime we open the shredded cheese bag. Oh, yeah pizza or whatever. She's right under my feet smiling at me Oh, yeah, I have some please that sounds like ours So she gets a pinch of cheese because it would give her more than that She's sick for three weeks three days because her stomach is so screwy. Yeah, and she Absolutely loves whipped cream. Oh
24:00So if we have any kind of whipped cream in the house, I will spray a little bit on my finger from the can and let her lick it. And she looks at me, wags her tail nubbin because she doesn't have a long tail. She was docked when she was a baby. Okay. And she goes and lays down perfectly happy. What type of dog is she? She's a mini Australian shepherd. Oh, okay. Those are cute. High energy. We were really lucky. She's very.
24:26She's very go, go, go when she's outside. But if she's in the house, she's pretty good about just wanting to be petted. And then she goes in her crate and takes a nap. And then she asks for things and pets and wants to lick your hand. She's very calm in the house. Well, that's good, good. We lucked out huge. But point being is I clearly talk to people who make things all the time on the podcast. And there's a lady who makes the little bandanas that you put on the dog's collars.
24:57and she also makes dog treats. And she was talking to me about how she's really excited because now she can ship her dog treats. And I was like, that is awesome. Really, really happy for you. I'll be even happier when we can ship our baked goods too. She was like, yeah, me too. She said, because I do this thing where I make a treat for the human and I make a treat that goes with that treat for the pet. So it's like a set. Yeah.
25:27And she can't ship the human stuff, but she can ship the pet stuff. Yeah. It's just kind of nuts. Isn't it? Hopefully they do get that straightened out and say, yeah, you know, folks, go ahead. I'm sure there'll be safety procedures that have to be followed, followed to do it. You know, that that's fine. You know, I just wish that somebody in the powers that be would, would say why they keep saying no, because then I might be able to understand why they keep saying no.
25:54Yeah, it's, yeah, I don't even know who we'd go to to encourage them to it. You know, what, you know, our congressperson or something, you know? Probably our representatives. That's what I'm thinking. Like Angie Craig is ours. I wonder if we went to her and said, hey, can you fight for us on this? You know, I should email her later today and be like, hi, you don't know me from EU.
26:22This is what I do and these are the people I talk to and could you please maybe share with me why? Yeah Why yeah, I don't know what she'll answer to me, but I could try it. Yeah, I'm hurt. Can it? You know my sort of movement be like we talk about this all the time on my podcast Do you want to come on and chat with me about why there you go and fight her and I like her actually So I do too. I do too. I like Angie Craig very much. She's for the working class guy, you know No, I like her. Yep
26:52I don't usually get into politics. I don't usually say who I like or don't like, but I do like her. I think I do like her. I'm a neat woman. So there you go. Reach out. Maybe you get some response from her. You know, she seems to be responsive to people. Yeah. And I've never talked to a representative or a Senator on my podcast. That would be a brand new thing for me. There you go. Might be fun. Who knows? It might also be very uncomfortable. I don't know.
27:18Anyway, we got very far afield there for a minute. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. So what's the reaction? I mean, you said that people really like your positive because it doesn't, it doesn't taste like gluten free. And I don't know what gluten free is supposed to taste like. Well, a lot of the times it's very gritty because if you use a regular rice flour, there's a lot of grit to it. I use a super fine so it's milled really, really.
27:44almost like regular flour, so the texture when you eat something, you don't get that gritty taste in it. And when products were first being manufactured, the gluten-free cookies that came out, and I remember Glutino made some mock type Oreo, my granddaughter was just ecstatic when we found those, they didn't taste exactly like an Oreo. You could taste the gritty rice flour in it. However, today's gluten-free Oreos that you can buy, you can't tell the difference if you have an Oreo and you have one of the gluten-free ones.
28:11They've come so far with manufacturing the rice and the products are much better that they use now. So a lot of times, it just depends on the product where you're buying it. Sometimes they still have that grainy taste to them, but not always. It just depends on the company and what they're using. But that's the big thing is like tasting gluten-free, you're going to taste the grit. It just is, there was a grit, regular gluten-free not using a good flour is gritty tasting. Okay. Yeah. All right. So...
28:39Do you love this? Do you love what you're doing? I do. I've always loved baking. I like seeing people pleased like after they eat it and they go, wow, that was really good. You know, it's like, okay, great, I did it, you know? So no, I enjoy what I do. I've done it for so many years. I've been married for 50 years. So it's a long time to cook and bake birthday cakes and all that kind of stuff, you know. Last 16 years is definitely different than making a regular birthday cake because it transitioned to all the gluten-free stuff. But...
29:06hey, it works out okay. They come out tasty and yummy and nobody knows the difference. So have you made a birthday cake for someone outside of the family and sold it to them? Yes. The lady that I was mentioning that she said it was either her brother or her brother-in-law. Oh yeah. And she brought it to the party. She was the only one that was gluten-free. And she took it to the party and she also brought cupcakes and she messaged me and she said, oh my God.
29:35you know, that she couldn't believe how good they were. And her brother, or whoever it was, the person with her, just couldn't believe that this was a gluten-free birthday cake. He just kept looking at the ingredients and going, no. And then eating the cake again. So that to me is validation that, hey, it's pretty darn good, you know? Yeah, because if you're gonna make a birthday cake and have someone buy it from you for a party, as the person who made the cake, you really want it to be good. Well, yeah. Yeah.
30:06Yeah, because I don't like making things like that to sell. I mean, I make granola and we sell it at the farmers market because granola is granola, whatever. Yeah, right. I like it and other people like it, they buy it. But I don't, I do not have what it takes to make a birthday cake and ask money for it and have it served to a bunch of strangers. I would freak out.
30:29It's intimidating. Yes, it is. So I was really glad when I got the feedback from her that she liked it and that everybody there liked it. Okay, validation good. It was great. That was good. So cupcakes are easier to make, you know, as far as making stuff and birthday cakes aren't that much harder to make. But yeah, it's putting yourself out there a little bit to do it and hoping that you're not going to get judged negatively on it, you know? Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to step
30:58thing for a minute. It's so hard when you're a female in this world because you're taught to on one hand don't give a crap about what people think about you and on the other hand worry about what people think about you and that transfers to whatever you make or do or think. Yep. And grow a thick skin but be nice.
31:26It's like the whole Barbie monologue thing that that America Ferrer or whatever her name is did in the movie last year. It was cute. Yes. It was beautiful. Yeah, it was cute. Yeah, but it's so frustrating because on the one hand, I don't give a whatever I don't give a rip about what people think. But then again, I'm doing this podcast and I want people to listen and enjoy it and think well of it. There you go.
31:54Is there a middle ground somewhere on anything in this world regarding people's opinions? You know? I know. Yep, absolutely. It's so hard. And every time I do the podcast, every single episode, I say it's so hard about something in the podcast episode. Life is hard, people. Deal with it. It is. Yep. You suck it up and you do it, you know? Yeah. And life is also beautiful.
32:24So again, we're in that extremes, you know, from one extreme to the other. And I wake up every morning and I'm like, who am I talking to today? Oh, I'm talking to Nancy at Nana's kitchen. And I'm like, I wonder if Nancy's going to be chatty. I wonder if Nancy's going to be in a good mood. I wonder if it's going to be hard getting conversation out of Nancy. And whoever's I'm talking to. Yes. Invariably.
32:50I get done talking to whoever I'm talking to and I'm like, that was great. I'm so glad I did that. My day is made. I can compare that to when we started doing farmer market venues and the prep going into it and oh my God, is it going to be worth it? And the stress then when it's over, it's like, okay, it came out okay and I made some money. So I understand what you're saying. Yes. Yeah. It's. Yes.
33:16crazy the things that we do because we need to solve a problem. And then other people find out we're doing it and they're like, I have that problem too. Can I buy the thing you made to fix the problem I have too? And then you feel satisfied that you've provided something to someone. Yeah, exactly. It's a beautiful cycle of help. And it makes me really happy.
33:41And it's all about me being happy. Obviously, the whole world revolves around me. Well, of course, around each of us has our world revolving around us, right? Mm-hmm, yep. So anyway, thank you, Nancy, for your time today. Well, you are welcome. And your thoughts. It's a joy talking to you. Your thoughts and your words and everything. Yeah, Mary, it was wonderful talking to you. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, thank you. Have a great day. Okay, bye-bye.
 

The Heartland Self Reliance Conference

Today I'm talking with Jeff at The Heartland Self Reliance Conference. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This 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 Jeff at the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference. Good morning, Jeff. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm well. How are you? I'm great. So I don't know a whole lot about you or what you guys do, so tell me about yourself and the conference.
00:30I sure will. Well, that's, uh, I'm, I'm known to many out there as the everyday prepper I got originally got started in the preparedness side of things. Uh, but always been into gardening and probably the last 12 years or so, my wife and I have been working towards being more self-sufficient and, uh, we just moved to a new place last year. Gives us some new opportunities. So we're, we're working to get everything going there. And, uh, it's, you know, one of my big things is.
00:59coming from both sides, homesteading and preparedness, I really realized how the two really need to come together in a lot of ways and both sides need to learn from each other. Yes, absolutely. And the great thing about homesteading is it doesn't have to be a huge property. It can just be a quarter of an acre or a 10th of an acre. You can still.
01:24grow things, you can still cook from scratch, you can still learn how to take care of yourself. Yeah, and you know, we had, I was just talking to a potential vendor for the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference, and they have a business in urban Cleveland, Ohio, and she was telling me about how many of their customers are.
01:48actually, you know, in an urban area and they're growing whether it's on their balcony or on a rooftop or wherever they find space there Grown their own food and they they're developing an interest in homesteading Yes, because it's a lifestyle. It's not it's not defined by space or Ownership of lots of room and I love that because we did the same thing back when we lived in town so that's part of
02:14The reason I started the podcast is because I wanted people to realize and maybe learn that they can grow some of their own stuff and they can make things in their apartment if they want to. My daughter, the apartment she lived in for several years while she was in college, she was able to have, I got her some planters that would fit over the railing on her balcony and she had some...
02:43peppers, some tomatoes, some other things going there. And I got her a hanging herb basket arrangement that you could put about, if I remember right, about eight different plants in there. And she had that hanging on the side of the railing. And then she had, I think, one or two pots with tomatoes in them. So, you know, there's lots you can do and you're really only limited by your imagination. Mm-hmm, yeah. And...
03:09Honestly with YouTube and Facebook and all the things on the internet you can learn how to grow anything or how to do anything I am so Happy that I live in this particular time. Oh Yeah, and there's you know, there's the internet really gives us the opportunity to really expand expand our knowledge and the ideas that are out there because that's
03:37You know, 40 years ago, if somebody told me one day I would be raising hydroponic tomatoes, I would have told them they were crazy or growing hydroponic tomatoes. But that's, we did that a few years ago, just more or less as an experiment. We got everything we needed and we tried it. We haven't done any here at this house yet, but I imagine at some point in the future we'll be doing it again. Yeah.
04:01I don't know how that works. Could you give me the short version of how hydroponics works? Because we've never done it. Yeah, sure. And you're just putting a combination of things. If I remember correctly, there's some salt and some other stuff that you make a mixture that you put in there with water by nutrients. And basically, we would get a five-gallon bucket.
04:30and you can go online and you can find these covers. They're like a lid, will fit right over the bucket, but the center of them drops down and has sort of a mesh cup in there. And that's you put the plant in there, use some hydroponic medium. The stuff we were looking to look sort of like using looks sort of like lava rock that you would put down in there and actually plant the plant in there.
04:57And you just had to make sure that the liquid stayed up where the roots of the plant could get to it. And really you could do anything and it was amazing. You would pull that lid off and look and the mass of roots that had grown down into that bucket, into the liquid was just amazing. Huh, okay. Well,
05:17It's something to think about for us here. I don't know that we're going to take on any more projects this summer because Oh, come on. You always got to have more projects. Uh, yeah, no, my husband is actually at physical therapy right now because he has a herniated disc. So, so I think that maybe the gardening that we're doing is probably the gardening we're going to be doing this year. That's probably it for now. That may be wise. Mm hmm. So, so tell me your definition of self-reliance.
05:47My definition of self-reliance is basically, you know, nobody's going to be a hundred percent self-reliant because, you know, basically you're always going to need something. It'd be very hard to be totally self-reliant. But what I'm looking at is just having the ability to get along without having to run to the store every week or some people run there every day and trying to make sure that we are prepared in a way that if...
06:16if society would shut down for a while, that we're still gonna be able to survive. We're gonna have all the essentials we need. You know, we're obviously not gonna have everything we'd like to have, but if you give it some forethought and you plan ahead, you can easily adjust so you'll know what you can live without. You'll know what's essential that you better stock up on. And I think being able to live a self-reliant lifestyle,
06:46run into an emergency or we have problems with supply chain or anything else, I think that's the way to go. I think everybody should try to obtain that. Okay. So that's how my husband and I have been living basically since we got together. We always kind of plan for a two-week.
07:08stint of not being able to get out because we live in Minnesota and it snows and there have been times where we have not been able to get out of our driveway for three days. So, we tend to shop for two weeks at a time, sometimes three. We're lucky enough to have some storage space so we can buy a head on bulk items. But also on the self-reliance part, for me as a woman,
07:37My self-reliant stuff is that I know how to start a campfire. I don't need my husband or my son to do it. I have fired a.22 rifle twice. I'm not really a gun girl. I don't love it and there's many reasons why, but I can do it and I'm a pretty good shot. Knowing that it's really good to have extra blankets and extra clothes for if the power goes out and it's minus 20 outside.
08:05You know, those kind of things that aren't necessarily food based, but more, more warmth and heat if we need it kind of stuff. So I think that for us here, self-reliance is about going back to the basics. And if you don't have gas to your stove or electricity to your stove, you can go outside and start a campfire and cook over an open flame. And there is some skill to that.
08:33The first time I did it, I burned the stuff I was trying to cook.
08:40So at the conference, do you guys talk about that kind of stuff too? Yeah. And that's, we're also going to have a, I wanted to have a life skills line of classes there because as I go around and talk to people and meet with different groups and do some training, it's, it's just become an obvious that, you know, society has changed, has changed from, from when I was a kid, because, you know, we had shop class and a home mat.
09:08And people learned a lot of the basics there if they weren't picking them up at home from mom or grandma or dad, grandpa. But a lot of that's gone away. We have people today that can't necessarily read a tape measure. They may not know how to use some of the basic tools. They may not know how to start a fire, sharpen a knife, sharpen an axe. We're also going to have one of my friends who's a member of
09:33Team Rubicon, he's a sawyer for them. They respond to emergencies. He's going to do a, a class on chainsaw maintenance with a little safety thrown in as well as some app sharpening there. You know, there's just so many basics that, that people don't really know that would benefit them. Figured let's, let's put them in the, to short classes that'll sort of fit in between the other classes and give people the opportunity to pick up on some of that stuff. Yeah.
10:02that's really important. When we moved here for, well, almost four years ago, I keep saying this, almost four years ago, it will eventually be four years, I promise people. My husband hadn't really used a chainsaw at all and we have a wood burning boiler that heats our house. And so he got ready to go out to use the chainsaw on the big logs we had delivered.
10:31And I said, what do you know about doing this? And he said, I pulled the cord and I saw the wood and I said, let's back up a minute, please. Because my dad used to do this all the time. I used to help him with the wood. I used to watch what he did. I don't use chainsaws. I don't like them. I'm afraid of them. I don't wanna do it. And if I had to, I would, but I don't want to. So I was like, here's the deal. Number one, you need to be really careful
11:01because you're gonna get hurt if you don't know what you're doing. Number two, there are safeguards on chainsaws, but that doesn't mean you're safe. Number three, when you kick the wood out of the way, make sure it's not right behind your feet, because if you step back, you're gonna fall with a chainsaw in your hands, things like that. And he didn't know any of this stuff. And I was losing my mind. I was like, okay, I was already nervous enough, but now that I know what you don't know, now I'm really afraid for you.
11:31So a chainsaw skills class sounds amazing. The other thing I was gonna say is the other part of self-reliance that I learned a long time ago is being able to recognize edible plants if you're out in your yard or in your tree line or hiking in the woods. Because if you can't get to a store or the stores are not open because the computers went down and the world has gone nuts.
11:58Knowing what you can eat out of your yard or your treeline or within, I don't know, five miles of your house is really important. Do you guys do anything like that? Well, we're hoping to. That's, I need to go and look at the venue there to see what's going to be available in the area. Um, we know some folks who do do classes like that. And my wife has been through a lot of them and, you know, it's really, really difficult. And the best way is to have somebody actually take you out and show you, because it's really difficult.
12:27to look online or look at a book and then go out and find a plant and be 100% sure that you identified it correctly. But you're right, there are so many things out there. If you would see our garden, we have things that volunteered there when they started growing in the spring that I'm not allowed to till down because they're beneficial. We have some lambs quarter and some other things in there.
12:55Basically, you know, I spent my whole life whenever I'd see them, I considered them weeds and would go into the destroy mode. But now we're actually using them as part of our diet. Yeah, it's amazing. We had this weed growing in our garden at the old house and it looked like a succulent plant. A succulent is a plant that absorbs water and hangs onto water so the leaves look fat and turned out to be purslane.
13:24Perslane is amazing. I've talked about this a couple of times already, but it has more nutritional value than spinach. Yeah, and So we tried it we liked it and when it grows in the garden here We don't take it out because it's actually good for you we have a feet trough that we've done experiments on growing several different things in and This year my wife planted cucumbers in it
13:50and some purse lanes start going in it. So now we have cucumbers with purse lane growing all in between them and under the vines. And it's really amazing because you know, you get the two beneficial plants that are coexisting and thriving. So, you know, people gotta learn what that stuff is and learn how to benefit from it. Yes, yes they do. And hopefully your conference will help with that.
14:20It must be really, I don't want to say difficult, because difficult is probably the wrong word. It must be a lot to set up this kind of conference because there are so many things that you could have a class on. So what are the classes that you have planned already? Well, we're gonna have, Sean and Beth Doherty are gonna do some classes for us. Their son, Luke, is gonna do a pork processing demonstration for us.
14:49And then I've got William Bond, the permaculture consultant is going to be there. They haven't quite nailed down which classes he was going to do. But you know, I sat through one of his soil classes back in March and incredible, incredible gentleman and he's got some really great knowledge. And people, it's one thing that people just really don't understand, you know, the ins and outs of soil.
15:18that's going to be very important. On the preparedness side, there's so many things to go into there, but I want to focus on things that are going to help move towards self-reliance. Things are going to be beneficial for folks. I'm hoping to get a couple of classes in there. Something hit me here about a month ago, and I'm working on finding somebody to teach it, but when I was a kid,
15:49Now people wouldn't even know how to hold a slingshot. And a slingshot is a great thing to have on hand. You could go out and get food with it. You could actually defend yourself with it if you needed to. But people, that's just something that has sort of slipped through the cracks. I'm also hoping I've got a bow maker. Again, I'm really hoping I can get him there. But we're sort of up against the archery competition time there. So we'll have to see if he has an opening.
16:19but I've seen him do an incredible class for the kids on archery. And, uh, you know, so in between homesteading and preparedness, I'm just going to try to find things that are going to cover all bases, especially with the homesteading. We want to have some classes that are going to be interesting to people who have been in into it for a while. Then I also want to have classes for folks in urban and rural areas to kind of help them along and point out some of the things they could be doing in there.
16:48their own conditions there. Fantastic. I actually worry a lot about the people who live in the cities when I think about all this stuff going on in the world. Because my husband and my sons and I used to have long what if discussions when they were younger because they were interested in this stuff. And the big what if that always came up in those discussions is what if we lived in an apartment in the middle of Manhattan?
17:19And everything went crazy. How would we survive? And my husband and I were like, well, we're still young enough that we would be taking you guys with backpacks and we would be hiking our way out of the city and praying that we actually got out of the city. Because the city is not the place to be in that situation. And so the boys were boys, obviously boys are boys, and they think about shooting things and beating things up. And...
17:49looting stores to get food and that kind of stuff and of course video games play into that too and They were like we would be fine We know what we're doing and I said I don't think you actually do I don't think you understand that humans are the most unpredictable creatures when panic is is Flowing and you might think you know what that group of people over there are gonna do, but you don't actually know and
18:16They thought they had it knocked and then COVID happened. And my kids were pretty much grown at that point, four years ago. And my youngest was still here. He is still here. He's 22 now. And he was very concerned about the fact that stores were closing and that people had to wear masks and had to make sure they used hand sanitizer and wash their hands and had to do all these things.
18:46And I said, darlin', this is your first apocalypse. And he said, this is an apocalypse. Apocalypse is loud. And I said, no. I said, this is a form of an apocalypse. It is something that hasn't happened before and it is impacting the entire world. That's an apocalypse. And he said, huh. I said, yeah, this is probably the quietest apocalypse you will ever encounter. And it really made him.
19:12stop and think about all his preconceived notions about what he would do if something happened that was out of the ordinary in a big way. And there were many discussions had during that time frame too.
19:28So, yeah, it's a thing. So, with the conference, tell me when it's scheduled for.
19:37It is scheduled for May 2nd through the 4th, 2025. It's gonna be at the Harvest Ridge Event Center in Millersburg, Ohio. It's right in the heart of Amish country in Ohio. And Millersburg and the Holmes County area are just such fantastic areas. I mean, this location, you would wanna go there even if there was no conference. There's so many things to see and do there. It's just incredible, great people all around.
20:06People that follow the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference on Facebook are gonna see me doing some reels. As we get closer to the ticket sales in the first October into the conference, I'll be doing more conference-related things. But over the summer here, I wanna visit some of the establishments in the area, some of the restaurants, some of the other businesses that might support people that are going to the conference.
20:35And I have, I have sworn to the people who are coming to the conference that I will go out there and vet these locations who have pie or ice cream. Okay. I want to make sure I take care of that. I don't want to let anything slip through the cracks. People got to know where the ice cream and the pies are. What about cookies? Oh yeah, them too. You know, no, no good cookie gets left behind. So.
21:03Yeah, I want to hit all of them because some of them just have some fantastic stuff there and I want people to know about it so they can take advantage of it when they're there. The best part of road trips is finding the unknown mom and pop places that do it absolutely right. And just down the road from the conference, there's a place called Mama's Diner. They're doing some remodeling there right now. Great food.
21:30There are so many little places like that throughout the area. I'm going to highlight all of them so people don't have to go out and look for them on their own when they get there. They're going to have a list and they can get their targets set up in advance. So basically they come for the yummies but they stay for the information. Yeah. Boy, you're smart. A hungry person might not learn real well so I think they ought to be happy and get in there and enjoy.
22:00Well, yes, because why would you want to miss an opportunity like that? No, I get it. It's a really good idea and it's fun. Yeah, and that's, you know, I want the I want people to be aware of what's out there in the community. I also want to get the community engaged so they know that people will be coming to the conference and they'll be ready to welcome them. So can people buy tickets now or do you have a start date for when they can get tickets? No, ticket sales will begin the first of October.
22:30And we're going to be doing ticketing a little bit different. A lot of events will start ticketing at a certain time and they'll offer, you know, some early bird sales and everything. What we're going to do is starting October 1st, we're going to be on level one of early ticket sales and we're going to offer a designated number of heavily discounted tickets for level one. And
22:56everybody who gets one of those tickets is also going to be placed into a drawing. And if you get in level one, you're going to be in the drawings for all five levels. Those who buy soon are going to get the heaviest discount and they're going to be in five levels worth of drawings. Awesome! That's great. I'm guessing you're trying to do this so you get the buzz going about the conference.
23:23but also because some people who are into homesteading and self-reliance and stuff, don't necessarily have a lot of money to spend on a trip like this. That is true. And, you know, and having the opportunity to start that far out and have people work towards it and get some good deals, I think is a good thing. And, you know, from my perspective, I'm renting what is basically a county fairground that's used for an event center.
23:53And I have to, I've made a down payment on that, and I have got to pay the bill six months before the conference. So it's not like I can wait for people to come in the gate. Yeah. I need to get some cash up front there so I can pay for the whole place and make sure this happens. Yeah, and on that note, that's a lot of responsibility and a lot of taking on an unknown. So.
24:22So why, how did you get into this in the first place? Well, I've had had friends in the prepping world asking me for several years, you know, if I was ever going to do a conference up this way, because the majority there's there's a preparedness and homesteading conference festival down in southern Ohio. Just change your name. Heritage skills are down in Vinton County. And then we also have the Food Independent Summit that's also in in the same area as our conference.
24:51But getting both preparedness and homesteading up in the area that we're in, people have been asking me, and I think a lot of the folks I know down south just want to come up to see Amish country too. The one thing that always bothered me was the venue, finding the perfect venue. My wife and I were at the Kentucky Sustainability.
25:18festival they have down in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We were down there last October. I woke up two o'clock in the morning and said, the Harvest Ridge Event Center in Millersburg is the perfect spot. And we got with the folks there and they said they had never heard of what we're doing, but they were more than happy to help us. And then things have just worked out. We've come into, run into so many roadblocks where you think, okay, this is the end of the show right here, we can't go beyond. And then we pray about it a little bit. Next thing you know.
25:47things are worked out and we're back on track. So at this point where we're committed, there's, I don't believe there's anything to stop us now. So we're just gonna push ahead and get it done. Awesome. I always get a little bit twitchy about the term prepper because people have this perception that preppers are not exactly sane people. Yeah.
26:15When I come across people who go, oh, preppers, they're crazy. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Preppers are people who prepare for things that are unseen coming down the road toward them. Yes, there are some people who take it to the extreme, but there are people like my husband and I who know that you can get stuck in your house for three days because you can't get out of your driveway because it snowed for two days before that.
26:45and you're in blizzard conditions and you can't get out to clean out the driveway, let alone drive. So we consider ourselves preppers, but we consider ourselves preparers for things that might happen. And it makes me slightly angry when people are like, Oh, preppers are crazy people. They, they're hoarders and then, and then, and then, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not everyone is the same.
27:15When I saw that you were the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference, I was like, okay, is this going to be somebody like us who's reasonable in understanding that preparation is key? Or is this going to be someone who is a hoarder and, you know, at the extreme end of prepping? And I'm really glad to know that you're not at the extreme end of prepping because that would have been a totally different conversation today. Well, yeah. And really, it's...
27:42I get what you mean by extreme, but really, you know, whatever level of preparedness somebody wants to get into is really, really their concern. What's really irritated me over the years is negative connotation, the media, and some of our government officials have put on prepping. And they've, some of them have done the same thing with homesteading as well. And that's why I throw preparedness in there instead of prepping.
28:10I kind of want to disarm them on being able to use the word term prepping. And I'm hoping that I was afraid prepping would turn some people off. And I just wanted to come in and get a full understanding, you know, prepping homesteading is all about taking care of yourself. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I wish everybody was equipped with the knowledge and all the supplies they needed to be.
28:39be able to take care of themselves. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of people need help with that, and that's what we wanna do with the conference. Yes, and I wanted to make the distinction because it really does bother me when people just assume that they understand the term you're using, and they may not understand the term you're using because words mean different things to different people. And I am a big...
29:06Word girl, I love words, I love reading, I love learning by reading. And so when it's a distinction between crazy prepper and reasonable person who is prepared for something coming down the road, I want to make that distinction. Oh yeah. And I always get a kick out of people that, you know, kind of look at you and say the word prepper with a little bit of a sneer or smirk.
29:34And I just sit back and say, okay, you won't see me at Walmart when a snowstorm's coming in. No, because you won't need to be at Walmart because you already have a plan. We can just sit at home and enjoy life. Mm hmm. Exactly. My parents called me, I don't remember, a couple of winters ago to make sure that we were OK, because they knew we were having terrible weather. And they're in Maine and I'm in Minnesota. And I answered the phone and my dad was like, how you doing?
30:04And I said, we're doing fine. Generator kicked in when the power went out. Wood burning for, ah, can't talk. Wood burning boiler is doing its job and heating the house and we're having a really good dinner tonight because everything's still working. And he said, that's my girl. You made your heart happy. Oh yeah. And they have the same, almost the same setup that we do. So when things hit the fan.
30:34There, I usually am pretty sure that my parents with their lovely fortress of a home are safe and they're almost 78 and 81 on the 23rd and 30th of this month. And I used to worry about them. I don't worry about them. They got it knocked, they're set. So there is some real security in being self-reliant and being prepared.
31:03And I love that you're doing conference about this because people do need to know how to take care of themselves. Well, thank you. And that's what it's all about, helping people, helping get the word out, helping getting people educated on the things that they need to move them towards a self-reliant lifestyle. And that's, you know, we're at the stage now, we're trying to get the word out, so we appreciate anybody who can spread the word.
31:32If you're on Facebook, get on there and like and follow the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference page. And we're going to be blasting social media trying to get the word out and doing a number of other things we haven't seen other conferences do. But we're going to try to get the word out to as many people as we can. We appreciate anybody can help us do that. How many people do you have room for for this conference?
32:00Well, you know, that's right now with what everything that we have arranged the facilities we have arranged to get there, we could probably easily do upwards of a thousand. But if we use the entire fairgrounds, we can probably get upwards of three thousand in there. Okay.
32:19And then those people will go out in the world after they attend the conference and share what they learned and other people will learn from them. So it's a really nice spider web of information going out after the conference. Definitely, and you know that's when you look at the math on that. If you just have every person attends goes out and spreads it to two people and they spread it to two people, you're really getting the word out there. Yep, and that's what we need to do.
32:49the hub of it to start spreading that out? Well, it's been a lot of fun so far. I'm meeting some really great people. A lot of the great people are right up there in the Millersburg, Ohio area, including the staff at the Harvest Ridge Event Center. And you know, I can't say enough about the event center because it is easily the nicest facility we have ever seen for any event like this. Fun and great.
33:16All right, Jeff, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're at that point. So thank you for talking with me today. I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you, Mary. Thanks for having me on here and let me talk about something I love. Oh, that's why I do this because I love talking to you guys and you tell me stuff you love and it all works out great. Good deal. All right, have a great day. Thanks, Mary. Bye.
 

Empty Pockets Ranch

Today I'm talking with Lori at Empty Pockets Ranch. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This 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 Lori at Empty Pockets Ranch. Good morning, Lori. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm good. And I can hear the wind blowing, so it must be sunny and beautiful there. For right now, yes. And you're...
00:30You're in New York? Yes, I'm in upstate New York. Okay, awesome. All right, well, tell me about Empty Pockets Ranch. Yep, okay. Tell me about Empty Pockets Ranch. Is it called that because if you're going to run a ranch, your pockets are going to be empty? Yes, basically. And it's funny because that's probably like the number one question I get asked by visitors is, why would you call yourself something like that? And I feel like if you're remotely involved in any type of agriculture...
00:59like you're going to get it. It takes a certain kind of someone to want to do this. You work a bazillion hours a week for hopefully to break even type of thing. So it's just like a running joke amongst so many farmers about having empty pockets. So I was like, this is a nice tongue in cheek way to salute everyone in agriculture because we're all in this together.
01:30Yeah, I was telling my son that I was going to be talking to you today and the name of your ranch and I said, we should have named our place Go For Broke Acres. It's true though, right? Yup, exactly. It's hard work and it's expensive and it takes time. So I think it feels like all of your resources are sucked dry all the time. Yes, exactly.
01:59economic mess that we're in. It's so hard to be able to predict the future, what's going to happen, what should you invest in, what should you grow. It's very, I don't know, it's weird times right now. Yeah, that's what everybody I've talked to lately says. They're like, I don't know what's going on with this world, but we're just gonna keep trying to grow food and feed people. And I'm like, good, do that. Right. So I looked at your Facebook page and your website,
02:29By the way, tried to look at it 10 minutes ago and I couldn't do it. Something about DNS stuff. So you might want to look into that. Yes, it's brand new. So maybe there's some kind of issue. Yeah. I don't know, but wanted to give you a heads up. So look, looked at your Facebook page. You have a gazillion things going on, like you said. So tell me what you guys do. So we started.
02:58in 2017 with dairy sheep. And I had worked at a big dairy sheep downstate milking. And most people are like, oh, you can milk sheep? And then I say, yeah, you can milk anything with nipples. But I started my own flock after college. I went back to college as an adult later on and getting into cheese making is pretty much impossible.
03:29Okay. It's so regulated. There's so many rules. Just to get started, I needed about $100,000 worth of upgrades to my barn. So right off the bat, I said, okay, no, can't do that. I had already started to piece together East Frisian sheep. They're not very common in my area of the country.
03:59wax compared to here. So I had these sheep now and I'm like, all right, these aren't cheap. I went all over the place looking for them. Doing sheep cheese is not going to be an option, at least not at that time. So I'm like, what can I do next? So I bought a soap business. I had never made soap in my life. And I started like experimenting.
04:28using the sheep milk and soap because goat milk was like all the rage several years ago. But it was getting played out at that point. So I'm like, all right, this is working. And I started doing pretty well with the sheep milk soap because it's different, you know. And we upgraded our farm. We were renting a farm in another town and it was only on four acres. So we had the sheep, we had the livestock guardian dogs.
04:55And then we moved to this bigger farm that was 94 acres. So I went from four to 94. And then COVID came, like right after we had moved in. I did most of my business downstate on Long Island because that's where the money was. My town up here is pretty poor, rural, like typical agriculture town where they can't justify.
05:24you know, the added expense of a luxury item like sheet milk. So, so I would take all of my stuff downstate. COVID came and everything was canceled. You couldn't go to markets. You couldn't go anywhere. So we had a three-car garage just sitting here on the property, and it was full of prior owner stuff. So I was like, all right, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm turning this into a farm store. So that's kind of what I did.
05:51I started filling the store with soaps, like some crafty things that I did. I grew a lot of blueberries. And it just kind of like evolved from there. That year, everything had shut down and I had no idea what I was doing, but I opened the farm to the public. So I started doing festivals here and I had to be in compliance with the Department of Health laws.
06:19And the Department of Health didn't even really know what the laws were. Um, so it was kind of like, okay, you're outside, everybody, you know, wear a mask, blah, blah, blah, and everything started going well. So that year I decided, okay, like, I'm going to take some stuff that I've seen work in other areas of the country and I'm going to try it out here and see how it goes. So I planted two acres of sunflowers, just hand planted them to see how they would do.
06:48No one in my area was doing that. And then that was kind of like the kickoff of how things happened. Um, we had a news station come over to do a story and I particularly was not ready for that, but you don't say no. Right. Yeah. Um, they came and they did a feature on the farm. And then after that, it was just like wild. It was the amount of people that were coming here, visiting the farm. And you know,
07:16Like once you get to that level of popularity and you have to always come up with new things because if you don't, someone down the road is copying you. Well they're probably going to copy you anyway. But you always have to keep new things coming, right, to be able to keep the people coming. So I expanded into now I do a total of seven acres of you pick flowers. So I do zinnias.
07:44I do sunflowers, I have all kinds of you pick flowers. And then I got the NRCS high tunnel grant last summer and I've really focused on specialty dahlias and it's a super hot market and there's multiple income streams off of the one flower. So you can sell tubers, you can sell cuttings, you sell the cut flowers. And I went for the stupid expensive high end varieties that the florists want.
08:14So now I can wholesale to florists. I have them come and they cut their own flowers out of the high tunnel of what they want and then they pay me. I've done wedding design work. I do the upick. So, and then I have my own shop which I supply flowers there and then I supply flowers to several other shops in the county. And it's funny because five years ago I didn't even know what a peony was. So.
08:42It's kind of been a strange turn of events of things you don't necessarily ever expect to do and opportunities just fall into your lap kind of thing. Uh-huh. Congratulations on the grant. Grants are amazing. We got one for a heated greenhouse and I think we got it in October of 23 and just finished the build in May. So I understand about grants.
09:10It's really weird because sometimes grants are a thing where you have to sit down and really think about your answers and really write in a very professional manner. And sometimes grants are two questions. You answer the questions and by some miracle you get the grant, which is what happened to us. So. Right. And it's so funny because one of my best friends from- It's kind of crazy. Yeah. She does grant writing. So she helps me out with the ones that are tough.
09:39I mean, I could do it, right? But since I'm pulled in 7,000 directions and my friend does this for a living, I'm like, hey. Sometimes I'm good with the words, so why don't you help me out? And I honestly, if I sat back and totaled it, I probably have gotten upwards of $75,000 of grants. I'm just really good at finding them. I don't know how, they just like come to me and.
10:06But they help, you know, they absolutely help, especially when you're first getting started and you don't know what you're doing. It's nice to, you know, have some help with it because businesses are expensive, you know. Yes they are and more expensive than you would have guessed most of the time. Yeah. All right. So I have a question.
10:29How old are you? You don't have to tell me exactly. You can say mid-20s, mid-30s, whatever you'd like to say. Oh, God, I wish I was mid-20s. I just turned 41 in April. Okay, so it's not the boundless energy of 20-year-olds that's keeping you going. So how do you manage to keep this all organized and how do you schedule or plan your day so you get everything done?
10:55Well, I plan my day one way and then it never goes that way. So I have a toddler too. So that doesn't really help my time management situation. But I do have older kids that are 18 and 16 and they do a lot here. Like they do most of the farm chores. They help me run the store. They do a lot of like the grounds keeping type thing. We don't have employees. We should probably have employees, but.
11:25I'm very much like why pay someone when I can do it myself kind of thing. So it's just like I'm very you have to be flexible right because like you go out to do one thing and then a rainstorm comes out of nowhere and you're like okay can't do that, pivot on to the next activity. So I kind of just do like what needs to be done and what can wait. Like that's kind of how it is.
11:50I'm a little behind from my sunflower festival this year in August. It's a big festival. We have like thousands of people that come. And I'm behind on still getting vendors and stuff like that, but I'm like, nah, I have time, you know? Like, the flowers need fertilizing first. So I kind of just roll with the punches type thing. And something's always going to go wrong. Like last Thursday, I came home from my preschoolers' graduation.
12:20and our store freezer had completely crapped out. I went to the- Oh no. I lost $2,500 worth of prepared dinners that we had just made the day before. And I didn't know if I wanted to like rage throw the freezer or cry, you know? But I'm like, okay, you know what? It's Thursday, we're gonna be busy. I don't have time to like have a mental breakdown over this. So I'm just gonna take care of it and move on. And you know, luckily I have insurance on-
12:49everything because of you know this is going to happen and I knew it was going to happen at some point but you know these things happen at the most inconvenient of times as well so you just have to like know that that's that's all part of this you know you're going to walk out to the field and your cow is stuck in a fence or did something stupid you know or a sheep like cut themselves like they just do things so I think you have to be able to have that like oh well.
13:18onto the next type attitude or it's going to be really hard to survive. Without going insane, yeah. Yeah. Oh, if anyone who wants to get into this willingly, there's probably like a mental illness component to all of us because who wants to work like, you know what I mean? Like it really takes a certain kind of person and you really have to love the lifestyle and
13:45That's why on my post, I try to do as much education as possible because where we live now, we've had a lot of people move up to the country during COVID that thought they wanted to be a farmer. And so they've collected all these farm animals and, you know, want to do a big garden. And then they realized like, wow, this kind of sucks. Like I can't go on vacation.
14:13I can't just leave for the weekend when I want to, and I could work the entire summer and still have a crop failure. So I think there's like a really steep learning curve for people and you really have to have tough skin to be able to make it in this industry because the chance of things going wrong is way higher than the chance of things going right, if that makes sense. Yes, and having said all that,
14:42I don't want to scare people away from trying homesteading or farming or whatever because you can dive in whole hog and spend all your money and get all the animals and all the tractors and all the seeds and all seedlings and basically run yourself into the ground in the first six months. Or you can start small. Right.
15:07You can buy a place with a decent house on it with an acre or so, and you can do a small garden and get your feet wet and your hands dirty. And then you can decide if that's working and then you can make the next step. And if you find that you absolutely love it and you love the chaos and the surprises, then you can sell that place and buy a bigger place if you wanna go bigger. So.
15:34I understand what you're saying and you are absolutely right, but I also want people to understand that you don't have to start all the way in, if that makes sense. Right. And that's what I did. I mean, there are days where this place is overwhelming to me. I mean, I have a 12,000 square foot barn. I board horses. I have a store.
15:55I do flowers. I essentially have like six businesses in one. And if I had like jumped into this, I would be in the nuthouse by now because it is, it can be very overwhelming. And that's definitely the best advice is to start small because you don't know what you're going to like too. I felt like I had to grow vegetables because like, oh, you know, you have a farm, you have to grow vegetables.
16:24After year two, I discovered I absolutely hate growing vegetables. I hate it. I loathed it. I did not enjoy anything about it. So it took me two years to figure that out, that I really didn't like it and I was doing it because I had to. But I did it on a small scale. So I wasn't out a ton of...
16:48I was out of time, but I wasn't out a ton financially, and then I could repurpose the space for something else. So I think that's a really good idea to start small because you might try something and be like, oh, I really don't like this. So cut it off of the table. Yeah, my husband loves to garden. I have talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast since last August, and I don't.
17:15I don't love gardening. I don't love weeding. I don't love it. So that's his de-stressor from work. And honestly, if he came home tomorrow from work and said, I can't do my job and the gardens anymore, I would just dance a jig and be like, okay, cool. Let's just plant peonies on the whole property next year. We will have a peony farm. Three years from now, we will be selling peonies like hotcakes.
17:43He would probably go for that because they grow really well here in Minnesota. Right, right. And they're they're a high value flower. I mean, some of them get seven dollars a stem for you plant them once and they come back every year. And I think that's something to consider, too. Not like I want to like preach everyone go grow flowers. And that's the answer to your problems, because, you know, it's not. But I think like looking at it from a value perspective, too. So.
18:12where I live now, we have a ton of city people that are moving up, and then we have an influx of Amish coming up from Lancaster because they can't afford the taxes, I guess. And who would have thought that New York taxes would be cheaper than Pennsylvania, but I guess they must be. So now, you can't compete with their pricing. They're selling flats of heirloom tomatoes for $20. Wow. I can't throw them for that. I can't do anything with that.
18:42So if you're looking to grow for yourself and or if you're looking to grow to sell I think are two different Things too. I mean even to grow for yourself. I don't think I'd $20 a flat I would go two doors down and Pick up a flat some Peter but you know, it's it's a factor to consider too When you say flat like the actual tomatoes not the plants. Yeah
19:12Oh my god, that is I'm coming to visit them because we can't grow tomatoes that cheap. No, I don't know like how I maybe I don't want to know how. But I mean, if you they don't have the overhead that we you know, that we have. And I mean, I know when I'm pricing things, I'm guilty of undercharging, I'm sure, too. But I'm not taking into effect my weight costs or, you know, whatever. And I, you know, I don't.
19:39pay myself because my time is free here. But there's a lot of things to consider. If you're going to price appropriately, I'd have to charge $120 a flat for tomatoes where they're charging $20. It's interesting to see the price fluctuations. I think that has helped me a lot in my direction planning too.
20:08Do I want to compete with this guy two doors down for me? No, because it's not worth my time. I'm out here picking bugs off of tomato plants and it doesn't make sense. So I think that was an important part of how we got to where we're at now. And really, I mean, we started in 2017 originally, but I didn't open any of this and we didn't even move here till 2020.
20:37So I'm really going on year four and I've pivoted significantly multiple times over the last four years over things that work, things that don't work, things that are gonna be cost effective and things that are not gonna be cost effective. For sure, yep. Okay, so I saw that you do farm camp or day camp. Yes. And tell me about that, is that super fun? Yes, in small doses.
21:06So we did it last year for the first time and we ran two sessions. I did a session for five to 12 year olds and then I did another session for like 12 to 15 year olds. So I could really tailor it because when you combine them, like you're so busy with the little kids, the older ones get overlooked a little bit. So we do a ton of stuff. So we do like, I do like a mini bouquet making class.
21:35They get to spend time with the farm animals. They'll collect eggs from the chickens. They spend time with the horses. And then we have this big steer. His name's Oscar. And he comes out and the kids can pet him and spend some time with him. We go over nutrition for livestock, how to properly handle livestock.
22:01This year we're doing a pottery, a friend of mine from another farm around the way here has pottery classes. So she's going to come over and they're going to make a little farm themed mug with her pottery wheel. So I try to keep them super busy. Mostly our kids that have second homes up here and they're not necessarily exposed to livestock.
22:30those of us who live on farms are and it's they seem to really enjoy it and I have a lot of the same kids Come back every year. So I try to spin it a little bit different and add new activities or new lessons Like this year. I ordered a ton of predatory insects and even though you're supposed to release them at nighttime I'm gonna just let them release them during the daytime and they'll probably fly to another farm, but whatever, you know
22:58So I'm trying to like teach them about not spraying your flowers and vegetables if you don't have to, but I do it in a roundabout way with like cool bugs. Neat. So I have talked to a couple other people that have a farm school or a farm camp or whatever in the last couple of months because it's that time of year. And I've asked both of them and the answers were the same. So I'm going to ask you two.
23:25Does it just warm your heart when the kids that haven't really been exposed to this particular lifestyle come out and they're just like, wow, I didn't even know any of this. Does it just make your heart sing? Oh yeah, because it's, you know, I think I grew up on Long Island and people are like amazed to hear that. But where I grew up on Long Island...
23:52was farm country. No one thinks of Long Island as farm country, but where I grew up was all wineries, potato farms, vegetable farms. I grew up doing that. I was never really around livestock because there's no cows on Long Island. If you wanted to ride horses, you had to be a millionaire. I guess that hasn't really changed too much.
24:17So I remember when I first was around livestock, I was like, oh wow, this is so cool. And I'm sure I asked a million ridiculous questions too and people probably thought they were funny. So I remember what it's like firsthand to have that experience. And I think that I'm guilty of it too though because I'm doing this every day. So I can remember a time when I was a little kid and all I wanted was a pony and we couldn't have a pony.
24:46And now I have horses and sometimes in the wintertime I'm walking them up to pasture and I'm like, oh my God, this sucks, why did I do this? And then I have to step back and think back to that time. Remember, when you were a little kid and this was all that you could think about and this is all that you wanted and now you have it. So I try to relate back to that time when I'm interacting with kids who might not be exposed to the animals and might not be so accustomed to them as I am.
25:15And I think that it's good for me too, right? Because it takes me back to the point of appreciation. Because sometimes things just become a chore and you're like, ugh, you know, I'd rather eat lunch than be doing this. But I think that's a good reality check for me. Like, hey, this isn't just all work and you can enjoy these animals. And there was a time where this was all you wanted and now you have it, so be grateful. So I think it's humbling for everybody. Yeah.
25:43I have a couple things. One is about my dad and about me growing up as a kid with my dad and my mom. And one is about friends that visited this weekend. Don't let me forget the friends part because that's a fun story too. I grew up in Maine and my dad's dad, so my grandpa, lived in mid-state Maine, so like an hour and a half from where I grew up. And he had a farm.
26:11He didn't actually do a farm. He had a barn and an old farmhouse, and he had a big vegetable garden. Down the road from him, family friends had a dairy farm. And so I grew up being around barn kittens and calves and cows and steers because we would go up to visit grandpa and we would stop in and see the tibets while we were there. So the idea of not being exposed to a farmish life
26:41foreign concept to me because I was introduced to it from the time I was very little. Right. And then I moved from Steep Falls, Maine, where I grew up, to Portland, Maine with my future husband. And I had never really explored a city before. And Portland, Maine is not a big, it wasn't a big city at the time. It was a big city for the state of Maine. And it was so weird to me.
27:08wandering around that city and learning the landscape and the layout of the city I then lived in. And I can remember telling my dad when I visited him back at the house that I grew up in that I thought that everyone should live, if they grew up in the country or the woods as I did, they should spend time living in a city. And if they grew up in the city, they should have the chance to live in nature.
27:34And he looked at me and scoffed and said, I don't think anybody who grew up in nature should live in the city. And I said, I think you're wrong. I think that if you are brought up in one environment, it is not bad to try out another. And he said, I don't want to. I said, well, you don't have to. And that was the end of that. It was fine. And then, it has nothing to do with that story. We had friends down to visit this weekend to pick up a...
28:04couple barn kittens for their pole barn and they hadn't been here in a couple of years and I hadn't really talked to my friend in over a year because she got a job she's she's a lawyer so she's very busy and so they showed up she gave me big hug we sat down she's like so what's going on we haven't talked and I said well I have barn kittens for you and she said one and I said you want to and she was like yes so she took two of the
28:33the three that were left. So we have no, the four that were left. So we have two kiddies still here. And I said, I started a podcast. She had no idea. Started a podcast and I explained what I was doing. And she said, I see you guys are doing the farm stand and the farmers market down in Lesor in the summer. So I saw that on Facebook and I was like, yeah. And she welled up, her eyes filled up with tears and she was like, Mary.
28:59I am so proud of you. You guys are doing exactly what you said you wanted to do five years ago. Right. And I said, well, yes, did you think we were gonna buy 3.1 acres with a farmhouse and a pole barn on it and not do anything with it? Yeah. And she said, well, no, she said, but you guys, it's only been, you've only been here four years in August and look at everything you've accomplished.
29:28And I hadn't really thought about it because we've been doing the things. You know, when you're in the middle of it, you're not really stepping back and going, oh, I'm so proud of myself. We did that thing. Right. And she didn't know about the grant funding the greenhouse that wasn't here the last time she was visiting. And she said, really nice greenhouse. And I said, yes, and it's a damn good thing I got a grant or it wouldn't be there. And she said, what?
29:54I said, we got a grant for that. I said, not a penny of that came out of our pocket. And then she had a huge grin on her face and she was like, I'm so proud of you. It's so weird being 54 years old and having someone who's only a year or two older than me saying that to me, you know? Right. Yeah. So it plays into the taking it for granted or the not being aware of what is going on. Right.
30:22Yeah, I mean, and it's easy to do that, right? Because you're so caught up in scrambling, like, oh, I'm behind for planting season. Oh, I gotta get this, and oh, I gotta get that done. But I think it's so easy for us to just overlook and look at what you have accomplished instead of what you haven't or just being so focused on things that need to get done and not maybe looking at the...
30:48the big picture of things and that kind of thing. So I think it's important to do that too. It's nice when other people...and that happens to me too because this farm was empty for I think it was like nine years before we moved in. And I mean it was a mess. I remember driving by this place all the time and I'm like, oh, that farm is so cool. Why are they letting it...everything was overgrown and just destroyed.
31:16And when we moved in, we were just so like, OK, let's get this done. And weed whacking fence line for miles just to be able to get the livestock out because the brush was so overgrown. And people will stop in and be like, oh, it's so nice to see this place become a farm again. And it looks so great. And I'm like, it looks great. I'm like, oh. Thank you, but yes. Yeah.
31:45All I see is work when I look at this place and this needs to be done and that needs to be done. And I wish I had taken pictures of when we first moved in and I don't know why I didn't probably because I was so focused on fixing everything right away. But it would be nice for me to even just like look at what it was and then look at what we've done and be like, oh, you know, we have come a long way. And I think it's important sometimes to pat yourself on the back because Lord knows we all need it.
32:14Yes, absolutely. And honestly, I'm going to say congratulations for building up something that needs so much work. I'm proud of you because I know what it takes. My husband, when he's at the farmer's market, he has people come up to him and say, wow, you're doing so many things at your farm. And I don't really consider it a farm, but I guess it's a farm.
32:41because people drive by our place all the time because it's on a connector road from LaSore to the next town over. And we don't even think about the fact that people notice what we're doing because we feel like we're in a bubble here, you know? Right, yeah. And so he comes home from the farmer's market and he was like, some complete stranger walked up to me at the farmer's market today and said, your place looks great. I'm so glad that someone bought it and is doing something with it.
33:10Isn't it wild how people like pay attention to that kind of stuff? It honestly kind of creeps me out because I feel like no one's really paying attention and I realized they are. Yeah. That's how like we're on a main road here in town, but we're in a like my it's a 55 mile per hour road. So oftentimes people will like slow down and start creeping by and I'm like, oh no, there's an animal out, right? Because what other reason would they be?
33:40creeping by or stopping or whatever. And sometimes it's just for that, like for people to look and see what we've done. And it's kind of cool, yet a little creepy, but also cool. Yeah, I've really had to get over my being an a fishbowl thing that bugs me. Because when we lived in town almost four years ago now, we were very close with neighbors and we were on a road that
34:10was very close to the main street in town and I hated every second of it. I felt like I was constantly being asked, what are you doing now? You know? Right. Right. And so I don't like that feeling. I want to be the fish in the bowl looking out. I don't want to be on the receiving end of the people looking at the fish in the bowl. Right. And
34:33When I started the podcast, my husband said, you realize that you're going to be talking to people and people are going to hear you talk about things. And I was like, yes. He said, that doesn't freak you out. And I said, no. He said, you are the strangest woman I've ever known. He said, and I love you. I was like, okay, good. I said really, to see them, right? Like they're not in your house. They're not in your backyard, you know. So I think it's a different, it's like a different.
35:02But it still does freak me out when my husband comes home from the farmers market and says somebody came up to me today and said they love the podcast. I'm like, oh my God, people actually listen to it. This is so strange. It's a good problem to have though, isn't it? Yeah, it's just I forget. I don't forget, but it doesn't register in the front of my brain when I release episodes that people are actually going to listen to them and pay attention and learn stuff.
35:29I don't know. It's this weird disconnect for me that I want people to listen, I want people to learn, but I can't think about it too hard if that makes any sense at all. Yeah, right, because you're having a conversation really. You know, it's like a free-flowing conversation with your people. Yeah. You know, and I think that's interesting and I think it's important for a lot of people who, you know, want to get into it or
35:59are thinking about getting into it or are not sure. But we saw all these cool pictures on Instagram, and it's kind of like, eh, it's not all Instagram pictures. You know? Like so. No. No, it's not. And the other thing that's tough sometimes is I don't want to be an evangelist for.
36:25for homesteading and cottage food producing and crafting. I mean, if you wanna do it, here's the stuff that people do and here's the way they do it. And maybe this will help you get started. If you don't wanna do it, I don't expect you to do it. This is not homesteading, cottage food producing and crafting church. This is...
36:51This is come sit by the campfire and listen to stories about people who are doing things. Yeah. And it's funny because I hate public speaking. It's something I've struggled with my entire life. Me too. Lately, people have asked me to do all these guest speaker spots and I'm like, ugh, ugh, ugh. You know, and I don't want to say no.
37:17because like I know some things right and if some things that I happen to know can help somebody then I would like to help people. So I've been doing a lot more of them and a lot of it is with the livestock guardian dogs because that whole thing has just become a disaster in itself. And the way I start every single one of these like guest speaker spots is let me tell you why you.
37:45don't need a livestock party and dog. And people look at me like I'm nuts and I'm like, you know, I'm honest to a fault sometimes, right? But I want to set up everyone to succeed. And these dogs are not for everyone. And somehow they've become the face of the farm here. Like everyone knows my dogs.
38:12Mostly because they chase people along the side of the question. So it's interesting, you know, like how the dynamic works where sometimes you're honest, but people don't want to hear that honesty either, you know. So I kind of say what I have to say and then people are going to choose to do what they're going to choose to do.
38:42Regardless. Yes. And you're an East Coast girl. Of course you're honest to a fault. I get that all the time. You don't lie. I'm like, nope. If you ask me if that dress looks good on you and it doesn't, I'm going to say I really like the pattern. I really liked the design. I really liked the way it's cut. I'm never going to tell you. It makes you look terrible, but I'm also not going to, I'm not going to lie, but I'm not going to not lie. So.
39:10And that, you know, like the main reason I don't lie is because one, I'm not good at it. And I forget. So, so like, I'll tell my kids something sometimes because they're like annoying me. Say something. And then later I forgot that I said it and then they'll catch me in it. And then I'm like, oh, okay. So I just like, don't I don't even bother to try to.
39:39This is what it is. Like, I'm just saying, you know? Get a dog and don't get a dog. I don't know anymore. Yes, I just don't have the energy to deal with it. No. And honestly, there's a joke about does this, do these jeans make my ass look fat? And the punch line is no, your ass makes your ass look fat? I can't be that blunt, but I am darn close sometimes. Yeah.
40:09Speaking of the guardian livestock dogs, I really would have loved to have gotten a great Pyrenees because I think that they are big loves and they're beautiful and a great Pyrenees puppy would have been amazing. However, I am not in any way shape or form prepared to raise that dog to 120 pounds. So we ended up getting a mini Australian Shepherd instead.
40:38She's a herding dog. She doesn't actually have a job because we don't have anything for her to herd. But smartest freaking thing we ever did because she's only 35 pounds. She is very calm when she's in the house. And when she gets outside, she loves to run and play. Smartest choice ever made regarding an animal for us. Yes, yes. But that having been said, I do love the Greeks.
41:04Pyrenees, I love the Anatolian, whatever they are. Yep. Yeah. So I have the livestock guardian dogs. I don't know if you can hear this dog barking in the background. It's my neighbor's dog over a mile away. He's got a bunch of healers and the dog has been barking the entire time. But I have like herding dogs. And then I have...
41:33the working livestock dogs and they don't ever intermingle because the livestock dogs will kill the herding dogs like hands down. Really? Oh yeah, yeah because they're not going, they know who they are but the herding dogs are not allowed to actually herd anything. If I were to put a collie or I have an Australian shepherd as well, if I were to put them in there and they were to start moving my sheep, that's a threat.
42:02to the flock. Oh, yeah. So they would expel the dog immediately. Wow. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot to having the dogs and even I had a real scary incident last about two weeks ago with a customer that was here. And my guard dogs, they're they're into separate
42:32The gate is right down by the farm store, but it's all electric fenced. Like they're hot wired in like Jurassic Park. They're not getting out. And sometimes customers pull up to the store and they have their pet dogs waiting in the car or whatever. And this always starts an issue, right? Because the pet dogs are tough from inside the car. They start barking. Then my guys come down and it's war of the barks and whatever.
43:01never really thought too much about it. Two weeks ago, I had a customer come in and she was chit chatting with me inside the store for a bit. I didn't realize she had her husky and her son in the car. So she left or I thought she left and I was checking out another customer and I hear like horrific screaming from outside. It was the kind of screaming where you just drop everything and run because you know it's something bad, right? So I charge out of the
43:31Her husky is in my pasture and has one of my sheep by the throat. I guess when she had gotten into the car, the dog had slipped out. I've had huskies growing up, they're super prey drive-y. If you have a small animal or something, they're going to probably try to kill it. All of mine were like that. It took the blast from my electric fence, went underneath, was chasing the sheep.
43:58grabbed one by the throat and my guys were up top. So I saw them, there's five of them in there. I'm like, oh God, they're charging down and we've clocked my lead female at 32 miles an hour alongside the road. So the dog sees that my guard dogs are coming and now the dog's like, oh God. So he runs into my barn. I can't run fast, you know?
44:23So my dogs get into the barn, they have the dogs surrounded, and they were just gonna rip this dog to pieces. I hopped in the middle, and that was, I probably could have gotten myself ripped up pretty good. And I picked up this dog, I don't know how I did it. I'm 5'2", like I'm not. I lifted this husky up over my head, and my husband had come running in behind me. I threw this dog, I don't know how I did it.
44:50Maybe it was the adrenaline or whatever. And I threw the dog to my husband. I was like, get this thing out of here. So I checked, you know, I went right to checking my sheep and thankfully they hadn't been shorn yet. And I was late this year, maybe for a reason. So there was damage to the sheep or anything like that. But it really, that was the first incident I've had like that and I've had these dogs for almost nine years. And that was the first.
45:17like security breach that we've really ever had where the dogs were put to the test, you know? I mean, they talk a good game behind the fence, but I've never had something come in like that and attack, like blatantly attack my sheep. So it was nice to see that push come to shove. All this dog food isn't wasted and they're going to actually... Yup. They're actually going to do the job that they're supposed to do, yes. How long did it take you to stop shaking that day?
45:47Oh God, it was like, it was like at least an hour and a half. And then I was like, that's it. You know, I used to allow people to come to the festivals. We'd walk the dogs up into horse stalls and stuff like that. So I would allow people to bring leash dogs here and stuff like that. And now I'm like, that's stupid idea. You know, just because you don't know what's going to happen or what can happen or somebody's dog gets loose. So now I'm like, strict no dog policy on the farm.
46:16Which stinks because, you know, I am a dog person, but it's not fair to my dogs, right, to have them riled up all the time from people bringing dogs here. And then, you know, if something were to happen, if they had killed that dog, can you imagine the face of like propaganda against me? My dogs would probably all be euthanized. They'd be deemed dangerous. And can you believe, you know, that kind of thing. So I feel like I have to do with right to protect my own dogs.
46:46even though they're doing the job they're supposed to be doing. It's wild. Yes, it's a liability issue. And honestly, every place like yours and like mine has liability issues. We ended up getting farm insurance and made our place an LLC so that we have protections and so that we can make sure that the people who come on the farm are protected too. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like I would not sell my mother a tomato.
47:16insurance because you just don't know, you know, and let's say people did something and get sick from something else but they also got a tomato from you that day, like they're coming for you, you know, it's a it's a different time where people are just looking for the quick buck, you know, type thing, so I think it's very smart to be protected but there's a lot of great areas.
47:48There sure is. The other part is that I want people to feel safe in coming into our property to the farm stand. Right. And so that LLC on the end of the business name implies that we take it seriously. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So that helps. You have to protect yourself. You have to. Because anytime you're open to the public, like I'm letting people cut their own flowers for God's sake.
48:18They're up here with sharp objects. You know what I mean? So it's like so many things could potentially go wrong that you have to, you really have to. So. Yep. I'm sitting here listening to you and thinking about everything we talked about. And I think that the tag on this one's going to be the realities of farming and homesteading.
48:46Yes, exactly. Because it's true. There's a lot going on all the time. Yes. The reality is, it can be the most wonderful thing ever, but it can also be a lot. Yes. All right, Lori, thank you so much for your time and your thoughts and your stories. I loved your stories. Thank you so much. Have a great day. All right.
 

Triskell Bakery

Today I'm talking with Alain at Triskell Bakery. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This 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 Alain at Triskell Bakery. How are you? Hi, good morning. How are you? I'm good. Sorry to make you talk shop on your vacation. No problem. Okay. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do.
00:30Yeah, so, well, I'm a baker now. I was a food scientist for all of my career, and I retired last September, and I always wanted to start something from scratch. And I had several options, I had several hobbies, and I ultimately selected baking, because that was...
00:57passion of mine. I've been baking for about 15 years and you know, I came from a family of baker in France and so I started the bakery in January of this year. January 23rd was my first day and so I you know I posted on on social
01:27thousand followers from my town and you know, neighboring towns and quickly realized that there was a need for an artisan French baker in Medina, Medina, Ohio, where it is. And it started from there. And yeah, it's taken off fairly quickly. That's amazing. So I have a quick question. In Ohio, do you guys have the cottage food producer?
01:55thing like Minnesota does? Absolutely. That's exactly how I operate. So back in December, I started an LLC for Triskell Bakery and I looked up the rules and regulations for college law and made sure that I followed those guidelines. So I operate out of my house. I converted
02:24mixing and my ingredient storage and all the extra equipment that I need. And I essentially used the oven in the kitchen and I've taken over several rooms in the house now. So my dining room is my office and a freezer in there and a refrigerator. So my wife is very gracious.
02:50That helps a lot. Gracie's spouses are amazing. Absolutely, absolutely. I could not have done this without her support. She still works, she's a marketing project manager for a pet food company. And she's the one who told me, follow your passion. I was ready, I was ready to retire. I'm 57, so I was 56 when I retired, so fairly young. But I had enough seniority that
03:20I was able to do that. So she's the one who carries the load for, she's the breadwinner and no pun intended. And she carries the family with all the insurance and things like that. Yay, girl power. I love it when women have the chance to do that stuff. She's a rock star. Awesome.
03:47Okay, so since you've taken over a bunch of your house, does that mean that you might be considering moving into a bigger space? You know, we thought about it and eventually I think this is something that I would like to get, you know, at least a commercial kitchen so I could expand and grow because I'm close to capacity right now.
04:14And so that's something we've talked about. A couple of options that came up. Ultimately, we decided that we want to go through at least an entire conduit year and see how this progresses and make sure that it's not a flash in a pen and it's something that's sustainable, both from a business standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint for us. We didn't want to go into taking a significant investment at this point.
04:43So, but in the future, I think this is something that I'd like to do. Not to have a retail place to sell bread. That is clearly not my, my, my, my objective. But, you know, we'll talk a little more about this. I'm sure I, besides selling bread at local stores and farmers market, I also teach classes. So what I'd like to do is to have a commercial space where I can, I can have more equipment.
05:13and that I could also teach my classes out of. Yeah, yep. Because you'll need the room because you're very popular and people are gonna wanna learn from you. So speaking of classes, I have a question. I have a question about croissants. When you make croissants, we have never attempted that here. My husband loves to bake breads, but we have not attempted croissants yet. Is that?
05:39Is that like the puff pastry dough? Is that how that works? So croissant is a laminated dough. So that means that there's layers of, yeah, so it's essentially it's a puff pastry but with a commercial yeast. So it's using yeast. So it's, you know, a very simple list of ingredients. It's, you know, very similar to puff pastry, but there's also yeast in
06:09overnight then I create my butter layer which is Typically deposited on the center of that dough that I stretch and fold until I get multiple layers. So You know you you make what you do You make what you call a butter block butter layer and then the dough is Encasing that butter and then you stretch it and you fold it stretch it fold it you do that about three times
06:36which creates about 81 layers of butter and dough. And then you stretch that, shape it, proof it, bake it. And it's been very popular here. So when you, I'm asking, because my husband is probably gonna listen to this episode. He doesn't listen to very many of them because he's busy, but because you're a baker, he's gonna wanna listen. So with the butter, is the butter cold when you do that, or is it room temperature? Absolutely.
07:04Okay, well the butter needs to be cold but pliable. So when I'm, you know, so last night I started on vacation, but I have been baking. Just, you know, just for my neighbors here. It's something I do. So the butter, I make my dough the night before so I made two batches of croissant dough last night. And if they've been proofing overnight so this morning.
07:29After this call, I'm going to make my butter block. So basically you shape and you use a European butter. So it has a higher fat content, so lower moisture. And that really helps in the proofing and it, not the proofing, but it helps during the baking of creating those layers of butter and dough. So the butter has to be cold, but pliable. So you don't want it to be brittle and you don't want it to be warm.
07:59because then the butter would melt in those layers of dough. So it's important to keep that butter at the right temperature. So it's about maybe 50 degrees, 50, 55 degrees, when I do the stretch and fold. OK, thank you, because he's going to want to know. I suspect that I have croissants in my future this winter, as soon as he listens to this. He's going to be like, that's not.
08:28That sounds simple. Yeah, it's not hard at all. It's just time consuming, because you start your, the French call it the trempes, you start your dough the night before, then the next morning you make about a block. You go through your three successive stretches and folds, and then I let that final dough rest again overnight, and then tomorrow morning,
08:57I'll be stretching it to its final shape and shape the croissants and let them proof and bake them tomorrow morning. So it takes about two days, two, two and a half days. So what you're saying is that tomorrow morning, wherever you're staying is going to smell amazing. Uh huh. Yeah. And I have a German neighbor. She's 85 years old.
09:21and she loves my croissants. And so I haven't told her it's gonna be a surprise for her. I'm gonna bring her croissant for breakfast tomorrow. Aw, sweet. That is adorable. Okay, so I read in the email you sent me that you are from the Brittany region, is that right? Yeah, that's correct. I was born in France, born and raised, and I went to school in France. So my...
09:49All my family is from the west coast of France in a region called Brittany. So if you look at France, kind of an hexagon, Brittany is the westernmost region in France. My family comes from the north coast of Brittany, so it's alongside the channel. And when I was a kid, I used to spend my summer at my cousin's bakery. He's my cousin now, but he's my cousin, but his dad owned the bakery at the time.
10:19So when I was a kid, I used to spend my summer there and go and work with him at night. When I was a little too young, he would shoo me and send me back to bed. But I would help him in the bakery and then go on delivery runs with them because they live, it's a countryside area. It's rural, it's not urban.
10:45So we would load the van and we would go house to house and farm to farm and sometime it was, all right, you take two baguettes and a large loaf, you go in the kitchen, don't mind the German shepherd, drop the bread on the table and pick up the money and come back. And that's how it was. And so that's what I did when I was a kid, my brothers and my cousins would go to the beach, I would go to the bakery.
11:13And so, but I was born in Paris and I went to school in Paris. I studied food science. So I was a, you know, food scientist, like I said, and, uh, but yeah. Uh, so, um, French through and through, uh, I've been in the US for 33 years now. Okay. Thank you for all that. The reason that I asked about the Brittany region.
11:38is because you said hence the name Triskell bakery and I don't know the reference so you want to fill me in on why it's hence Triskell? Absolutely. So a triskell is the logo, you know the three arm logo that's on my website and on my Facebook page, that's called a triskell. So when I was looking for a name for the bakery, I was looking for something that was reminiscent of my origins.
12:08And so I had several options and I went to my social media and asked my friends, my family, what do you think of the different names that I had? And Triskell was one of the ones that was intriguing. The logo was very compelling, very unique. And Triskell is a Celtic symbol that has been present over
12:35over centuries, so originated in Ireland and the British Isles and has had multiple meanings across generation. The one that I'm most familiar with is birth, life and death. There's other meanings as well. So I thought the logo was very compelling as a logo for a business. The name was easy to pronounce for Americans.
13:04compelling for me as a Frenchman from the region of Brittany and all my family over there thinks it's wonderful that I chose Triskell as a business name. Awesome. Thank you. Because I was like the only Triskell I know about is in pagan stuff. And I was like, I don't think it's a pagan reference. So I need to know. Okay. Awesome. So tell me about your classes. How? Actually, no, don't tell me about your classes yet.
13:33How much bread are you producing and selling a week? Because I'm really curious. We're a cottage-brew producer. OK, so right now, I do the farmers market in Medina, which is Medina, Ohio, which is located about one hour south of Cleveland. So we are between Akron and Cleveland, roughly, just to give you a location. So from a bread product, I make bread for the farmers market.
14:02The preparing for this is a two day ordeal. I feed my starter on Wednesday night. I shape the bread on, I make the dough and shape the bread on Thursday. Then I start the croissants on Thursday, shape them on Friday. And then Friday evening is when I start baking everything. So I make about between 25 and 30 loafs of sourdough bread, either sourdough bread or
14:31I also make little Brazilian cheese bites, cheesy bread. You can find it in stores. In Brazil, it's called Pão de Queijo. And I traveled there. I worked there for Smucker's back in early 2000. And this is a little recipe that people in Medina love. So I make that as well. And I make about 100%. So between
14:59croissant, pain au chocolat, the Pound de Queijo, bites, I make about 250 of those, and the sourdough. Yeah, that's quite a bit. So it's a, you know, I start baking, you know, I heat up my oven around eight, nine o'clock on Friday night, start baking around 10, I'm done with the sourdough about maybe one o'clock in the morning, and then after that, it's the Pound de Queijo and then the croissant lastly.
15:29I want the croissants to be as fresh and crunchy as possible. And sometimes they are still a little warm when I get to the farmers market. Wow. So you don't sleep the night before the farmers market. I don't. It's a yeah, I pull probably 30 hour to 36 hours straight when I do the farmers market. So I think I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to do all this. And I do it all by myself. So
15:59It's very time consuming, but I love it. And I think I might scale back a little bit next year. And there are some farmers markets in the winter as well. We have a couple of greenhouses here, one's called Boilips, and I do that farmers market in the winter. It's more like every other week or once a month. Oh, so you sleep in the wintertime. That's helpful. Yeah, exactly.
16:27So and then to make my sourdough, so the process is I'm using Dutch ovens. So because that I want that nice opening of the ear on the sourdough to have the microblisters on the side and to have this kind of like gelatinous shiny surface of the bread. So it's not only I want the bread to taste good, but I also want it to look good. So I use Dutch oven for the first part of the baking process.
16:56And then halfway through the baking process, I removed the lid, which enables the bread to start developing color and the crust. And since we have a fairly wide and deep tall oven at home, it's a commercial. It's like a wolf or Viking, but it's to do quite a few loaves at once, which is the only way I could do this. Yes. And
17:24I understand about you want them to look good too because we eat with our eyes first. Absolutely. Absolutely. So one little thing that I do is, I don't know if you saw some of the pictures of the bread that I make, but I have little stencils that I put on the bread before it goes in the Dutch oven, before it bakes, and I sprinkle some flour through the stencil. So then I remove the stencil and I have either the Eiffel Tower or a
17:54uh... you know stock of uh... of weeds or uh... even my logo or or the gazebo of our town center so it's kind of a way to differentiate and uh... you know to give a little bit of that uh... uh... differentiation you know aspect of of my bread and and and people react to it pretty well at the market they want to start with like oh do you have one with the Eiffel Tower or do you have one with the
18:23So my sister-in-law has helped me a lot with a lot of, you know, setting up the bakery and doing all those things. And so she's made all those signs for me. That's fun. Okay. It is fun. Okay. So I still want to get to your classes, but I keep coming up with other questions that don't have to do with classes. We will get there eventually. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. So you learned a lot of this as a young kid.
18:53Did you go to any culinary school at all or have you just learned this on your own? It's learned on my own. It has been, you know, I was gifted a bread machine back in 2006, 2007. And so I started with that. And then I realized quickly that I didn't meet my, my, my, my ideal of a, of a, you know, advertising loaf of bread.
19:20So then I started using it just to make the dough and then shaped it and baked it in the oven. Still was not happy. Then we started investing into, you know, KitchenAid mixers. And then I bought my first sourdough starter, which was a San Francisco sourdough starter, back in 2009, I think. So my starter is about 15 years old. And then I never went back. So, and I learned from
19:50You know from failures and it's really how I've have grown in in in making bread is trying and taking notes some help from some you know bakers and some people that some authors there's there's a great. How do book called the perfect loaf gentleman by the name of Mauricio Leo and.
20:17friend of them online and he's been giving me some advice as well as sharing some of the tools that he uses in his bakery. So I've not attended a culinary school and it's been all about learning myself and practicing
20:43especially making baguettes and making, well actually everything, sourdough baguettes as well as croissants. It took me a while to get to to the quality that I have now and it was sometimes frustrating but you know you just like everything you once you persevere eventually you'll get some results that you're happy with. Yep, it's funny that you mentioned that you got the
21:12the bread maker machine back whenever you got it. My husband started out making yeast breads using a KitchenAid mixer to do the kneading. Two years ago, he made a honey oat bread and he had cleaned off our island and everything to get ready. He started making the bread and I said, you're not using the mixer. He said,
21:39It doesn't need it the way I want it to. He said, I'm just going to do it with my hands. And, and I was like, Oh, okay. Fine. Use your hands. He said, I'm not being prissy. He said, it just doesn't, it just doesn't do it the way that I do it. And I said, have at it. You are the bread maker. Enjoy. And he's so funny because when he's making bread, he hums.
22:05He's so happy to be baking that he hums under his breath. It is adorable. You know, it's funny because even when I, after the farmers market, I need a couple of days to recoup. So usually my weekend is a Sunday and Monday. And we're lucky enough to have a little cottage alongside a small lake here in Ohio. So that's, we come down here and regroup and re-jump, you know, refresh. But when I go back,
22:34I'm excited, I'm ready to do it again. I'm ready to, just the process of feeding my starter first thing in the morning. I make coffee, I feed the dogs, I feed my starter. And then I decide like, what am I gonna do today? And sometimes it's making bread for the neighbor or it's just practicing testing a new recipe. And sometimes I've got people reaching out to me and say, oh, I'd love to learn how to make eggs. And say, huh, I've never made those.
23:04Because I, you know, like I said, don't have a culinary background. So my portfolio of product is expanding, but it's still fairly limited. Okay. And with that, let's get into your classes. Do you hold them in your home? No, no, I don't. That's one thing that we decided my wife and I, like our home is outside of, you know, doing the making the bread is we keep it private.
23:34So people ask if they could pick up bread from the house and say, no, I'll find places where people can go and find bread. So back in January, so very sweet was it, for a second, I was having breakfast with a friend at a little cafe in town, and they have a little kitchen which is set up for classes like this. And the owner was talking with us, and my friend said, oh, Alain could,
24:02teach classes there and the, you know, the, the owners are years parked up and said, Oh, you, you know, you, you, you, I don't, I had done a few classes with a school with my, with my children and, but I had never done something like that. So it's like, yeah, I could. So pretty much simultaneously between starting the bakery, starting to sell bread.
24:28and I started planning classes all at the same time. So March 2nd was the first class that I held. I did a couple of dry runs and just to make sure I had the material that I had the content of the class. I put together a little presentation which I joked that I thought my PowerPoint days were over. And it was, that's how it started. So,
24:56I hold classes mostly at a little cafe on the square called Cool Beans Cafe. And so we take six to eight students at once. The class is about a hundred dollars per student and it's a three hour class. But since the process is a two and a half, three day process, it's a little bit like TV magic. So I started the process two days earlier.
25:25So I make the dough or I make the detente. I prepare the dough. So when we do croissants, onto class with a dough that's ready to be shaped and proofed and baked. So students will go home with some croissants that they've shaped themselves. A batch from scratch during the class. And I teach them making the stretch and fold.
25:56making the top, making the bottom layer. And then we go through a couple of stretches and fold. And then we develop and they take home as well, though that they continue on shaping the next day. And then they send me pictures of the croissant they make as a result of the class. And it's amazing. Some of those are absolutely fantastic. And I think everybody's enjoyed the class so far.
26:24And so that's all the croissant. For the sourdough, it's a little different. So I start the dough a couple of days before, and I shape it so that when we come to class, there's already some loaves that are shaped. So that's where they learn to, the scoring of the bread, they decorate it with the stencils that they bring. But we also start a, I also shape the dough that, so that when I come to class, that dough is to be divided and shaped. So,
26:53they learned the pre-shaping and shaping process of a boule, a batard, and then a baguette as well. And so the bread that they decorate, we bake, they take that home, and then they have, so in the vannette, it's the baskets where the sourdough is proofed.
27:22Each of the students go home with one of those baskets. They get an apron, they get a dough scraper, a bench knife, the slats they use to slash the bread. So they go home with quite a bit. And we also start a batch from scratch during that class to learn the gluten development and doing autolyse and doing all those things that I teach.
27:51But that bread is not done by the time the class is over. So I take it home, I finish it, and I donate that bread to a cafe in Medina that serves free food for people who don't have much. Super cool. This is an aspect also of the bakery that people have actively invested in.
28:18I donate a lot. I donate back to my community and through donation and charity and people have been reacting very positively to that. I say this to everybody who makes my heart bigger than my chest. I love you. You're doing a fantastic thing. What's the atmosphere like in the classes? Is it like chatting and laughing and giggly and people making mistakes or not making mistakes? How does it go?
28:46Yeah, it's a little bit of everything. So the classes that I do at Cool Beans, it's a little more, they are paying customers, so they pay a lot of attention, right? So, and they do remarkable work. I'm amazed at the quality of what they do in a very short amount of time. But it's also fun. And I include some stories about my childhood and some of the language bloopers that I did when I first came to the US.
29:16But then I also do classes in people's home. So if people have like five, six friends, they can book the class and I go to their home. And at that point, usually it's a little more, it has more room for fun. So sometimes it's a breakfast, but they have mimosa or sometimes it's an evening and they have wine and charcuterie. So it's very fun.
29:45and sometimes they are friends and family. I've done some for birthday parties, a surprise birthday party for a man who did that for his wife. That was a great class. And then we have another one also in, it's called Parlor Farms. I've friended the two owners, Tony and Jamie, and they have a beautiful home, beautiful kitchen, and they invite some friends and family and neighbors, and we do classes there.
30:15And yeah, so the classes are really fun. It's probably my favorite part of what I do. And I do a few corporates as well. I do some for, there's a restaurant in town that focus on individuals who are recovering from addiction. So they've asked me if I would teach classes there. So it's a charity, it's a nonprofit. So, you know, I...
30:44I give them a little discount and I teach their cooks their sourdough croissants and baguettes. And I just finished a class last week, a series of three classes with them and I'll do it again because it's rewarding. I didn't go into this retirement job to make money and to be rich.
31:14matters to me and just the aspect of giving back to my community and connecting with people. I see Bred as a way to connect people together and luckily it's been very successful so far. Awesome. All right. So to recap all of this, the reason I asked you to be on the podcast is because I thought that you had started it as kind of a passion project, a hobby, whatever.
31:45And I assumed that you were a cottage food producer because I didn't think you had a standalone bakery. And you kind of fit my things that I like to do regarding the podcast. And the reason that you fit is because you are a cottage food producer, but you are doing big things in that title, I guess, that label. So
32:14People who are interested in baking or making canned goods or whatever, if your state has a cottage food registration, you should be able to take the thing you love making, make it and sell it and make some money from it. And I want people to know that because I didn't know until a few years ago that I could do it. And I've been making granola because it's easy.
32:43And we sell it, we sell it at the farmer's market and people are paying $12 a bag for like not even a pound of granola. And that's to cover my cost and my time and stuff. And I kind of feel bad about it, but I also feel like not everyone wants the fancy factory made granola from the store. And that's even more expensive than what I make. So yeah.
33:12Anyone who wants to do this and has the drive and determination to do it can do it. Yeah. So that's why I wanted to talk to you. So in all of this, I really appreciate your time. I'm going to let you go because I'm sure you'd like to go hang out with your family while you're on vacation. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's funny you mentioned something about the price and people
33:40people tell me you don't charge enough for your bread, you don't charge enough for your croissants. And it might be true, but I see the bread almost as a business card now, because people, when they come and buy the bread, I mentioned that I also teach classes, and the reaction more often than not is, oh, you do? It's like, I could teach you to make exactly this. And then usually they take my card, and very often I hear back from them, and now I'm booked.
34:09I'm booking already into November and December. Wow. It's been a journey, but it has exceeded mine and my wife's expectation. This is really, it's me, I'm the front of the business, but like I said, I couldn't do it without my wife's support. My kids are getting involved as well now. So now it's been a great ride. I don't read.
34:39regret having retired at all. But you said something about people, if you wanna do it, start it. I was interviewed a while back and someone, the interviewer asked me, would you have a tip for someone who wants to start something like this? And I said, do it and start it. If you fail, you learn from it. And next time you have another idea, try it again. And that's the advice I would give anybody who's listening.
35:09Yes, and it goes along with my thing about make the big ask. If there's something you want to know, if there's someone you want to talk to, if you want to learn from someone, ask because the worst you're going to get is no. And if you want to start something like you're starting with this, the worst that's going to happen is it doesn't go anywhere and you try something else. Exactly. Absolutely. So that's how I see it.
35:36All right. Thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. I appreciate it. Have a great day. It was great talking to you.
 

The Fiddlin' Farmstead

Today I'm talking with Kelly at The Fiddlin' Farmstead with an update on her Valais Black Nose sheep babies! You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This 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 Kelly at the Fiddlin' Farmstead, and Kelly was my, I think, third guest back in August, and she was the third episode released back in August. How are you, Kelly? How you doing? I'm doing pretty good.
00:29I'm good. So, Kelly raises Valet Black Nose sheep. And back when we talked in August, you were working on having full bread. I guess that's the right word. Valet Black Nose sheep. Is that what was going on then? Yes, I think we were in the process of purchasing a purebred ram. Okay. So what's happened since then? Because I know, but I know you're excited to talk about it.
00:58We had our first purebred lambs and they are everything and more that I had hoped for. I couldn't be more just tickled by them. So that was super exciting. How many did they did you end up having? We ended up with three. They both had twins. Unfortunately, the little ram lamb on my second ewe didn't end up making it. He was just tiny, stillborn. So we ended up with.
01:27three ewe lambs total. Okay, awesome. So are you going to keep all three or are you gonna sell a couple? No, we've been working on listing a couple of them. We ended up with a bottle baby again as well that lived in my house for a couple months. So she's a tough one to let go, we'll probably end up keeping her. But yeah, I think it just went so smoothly having a ram here. We're hoping to do the same breeding again next year.
01:57Okay. And are you going to, is it going to be the same, the same number of ewes bred or are you going to be breeding more? Yes, it'll just be the same too this year because our bottle baby, you know, our ram would be a herciter. And then we have two polypay ewes as well that we've been experimenting breeding. That would be a first generation valley. So half polypay, half valley. Okay. And
02:26I read something about that blend that there's a reason you wanted to do that. Yeah, I got into it. Well, with the Valley, their personalities and their friendliness just really caught my attention for somebody like me who was not very experienced with livestock. With the Polypay cross, their milk supply and their fiber is excellent. So my idea was to kind of create a perfect homestead sheep with those qualities you want for production.
02:55Also the friendliness and well-maneu-rism. And they're also a polled breed, the polype, and because polled is a dominant gene, this cross will always be polled. It won't have horns, which also makes people more comfortable on the smaller homestead. Okay, do the valet ones have horns? Oh yes, they have massive horns. And they, you know, they're not mean with them by any means, but when they come run into greet you, they really get you in the back of the leg sometimes, and they get caught in the fences.
03:25all the fun that comes with organs. Okay. All right. So for those who haven't listened to the original interview with Kelly, tell me, you were saying something about there are very few full-bred belay sheep in the United States and something about the country that they originated from. So can you refresh my memory? Yeah, so we come, they come from Switzerland. The UK had a breeding program. They were able to import
03:54the actual animals were in the US, we were not allowed to. So we worked out something with the United Kingdom to purchase frozen semen. That's where the breeding up comes in. Artificial laparoscopic insemination. Lately, though, we've been able to import embryos as well. So there are more purebreds. They actually call the embryo ones pure blooded. But there's a lot more of them in the US now than there was two years ago.
04:22just because of the availability of the embryos, more rams live here. So they're not quite as uncommon as they were a couple years ago. A lot of people really got into the program, but they're still hard to come across, that's for sure. OK, and why couldn't the actual sheep be imported? Because of disease resistance. It's kind of a closed.
04:52with, I think with sheep, I'm not sure what other livestock that applies to, but mainly to keep disease out of the US. Yeah. And plus, I'm assuming that it's very stressful on the animal to be put on a boat or on a plane and shipped here. And that would make them vulnerable to being sick on top of being vulnerable to being sick with things they haven't been exposed to before.
05:18Right. We had a similar situation with the valley. A lot of people are still transporting them around the country. So when we brought in the poly pay is actually with some more valleys last fall, they ended up having a detour from where they started all the way to southern US and then up to Minnesota. And it took so long to get here that they did come not feeling well. They had no cops and stuff that we had to treat. And it's just really hard on an animal to, you know, live in a.
05:47confinement like that and travel. And all the noises and all the movement that they don't understand. Yeah. I mean, it's hard on a puppy when you pick them up from somewhere that's half an hour away, put them in a kennel or a crate, put them in the back of your vehicle, and drive for half an hour, because the only place they've ever been to is the vet, and it's typically five minutes away. So I can't imagine what it's like for
06:15for a cow or a sheep or a goat.
06:20Yeah, even a puppy's five-minute trip to the vet can be a handful. Oh yeah, exactly. Because they just, they don't understand and they haven't had enough experience with being in a vehicle to know that they're safe. So yeah, it's stressful and the last thing you want for livestock is to stress them out. So you do it as little as possible. Absolutely. Yep. Okay. I was talking with some people. Well, I've talked with a few people since I talked with you.
06:50Um, like over a hundred. Not. Not all of them have sheep, but some of them have had sheep and they've been telling me that the wool market in the United States is not great. So, so what are the valet sheep used for? Are they for milk? Are they for wool? Are they for meat? Right now they are basically just a, a fancy pet for, you know, to mow the lawn. Um,
07:20The wool market, I mean I think anything agricultural is a really tough market right now. I think people are finding more unique ways to utilize their fiber. I had just connected with a lady who is purchasing a wool pellet machine to actually break the wool down into pellets and it's supposed to be really good for plants. You know, it retains moisture, helps the soil, house plants, gardens, all that kind of stuff.
07:47So there's definitely alternatives to just sewing the fiber, but it is, it's really hard to, unless you have the time to, you know, go from start of the animal to a finished yarn. Then there's not a whole lot of market for it, no? Yeah. I was very surprised when I heard this from the second person. I was like, you are the second person to tell me this. And I went out and did some research and I was like, oh, okay.
08:17I guess my son's hope of getting a real wool cloak at some point might be not as likely. You can definitely still find it. There's so many advantages to sheep other than the lack of a market for wool. That's been just really fitting for us. So there's definitely still wool out there. You could probably get some for free. You just gotta learn to spin it.
08:41and card it and clean it and all the pieces and parts. Spin it. Oh yes. It's a very long process, but I think it's a beautiful one to, you know, tradition to keep alive. Yeah, we, I've mentioned this before on the podcast, we went to a historical reenactment kind of thing event and there was a lady there who has been spinning wool for years and she had her spinning wheel which was beautiful.
09:11And she had the carding tool and she was teaching people about how you card the wool, how you clean it, how you spin it, and how it's not soft once it's yarn. It's not soft. It's kind of scratchy. It is, yes. And I knew that, but I knew my son didn't know that because it was, geez, probably 10 years ago at least. And he was fascinated watching her spin that clump of wool into a piece of yarn. He was like,
09:40Oh, it's amazing when I had learned to do that after we started with alpacas. And the wool is a lot more coarse, especially the valley fiber in itself is, but I have kind of a reaction to the itchiness of wool myself, which is why we started with the alpacas. Their fiber when you spin it is very, very soft and very luxurious. Mm-hmm. I have not. No, no, I have not actually. Um, I have.
10:10Pet a llama but not an alpaca and their fur is different. Yes, llama is very different too. Now the thing with the Valle fiber that intrigued me because of its coarseness, it's actually one of the best fibers for felting. And felting is a much easier way to process fiber into a finished project. You can fill purses, hats, bags, blankets. I also recently connected with a lady who
10:39when you shear the animal, you try to take it off in one big piece, and she felts the bottom of it into like what would be a pelt, but without harming the animal, without the skin. Yeah. And it's just, it's beautiful with the valley that get like really curly locks that, you know, get like 12 inches long. Wow, okay. Twice a year you shear them, so it's, I have my ram's fiber actually in a tote, hoping that she'll teach me how to do that one of these days here. That would be great.
11:09Okay, so tell me about the babies, because I gotta hear about the babies. Are they friendly, was it amazing seeing them be born? Would you see them be born? So I started working back in December, and this has just been really bizarre for me because I've been a stay at home mom and you know, farmer for so many years. So I set up a camera, Wi-Fi, so it could peek on them at work and I actually, I think that the first, you must have lambed literally the moment I left work until I got home, which was only about a seven minute drive.
11:39I got home, I looked out and I just saw these little legs behind her. I thought, oh my gosh, they're here. So the second one lambed in the middle of the night and I did run out to help her back in March. It's so cold. They quickly became so curious and so friendly. We would allow them and they used to be in our main yard with their dogs and cats and other animals. And they got to the point where when my dogs would run along the fence, as cars went by or people came by.
12:06They would run along behind them and chase them. Like they were barking at the object too. They run up to my kids and play. They follow you around everywhere. And it's not really different, my bottle baby that was inside versus the ones that were dam raised. They're just naturally curious and friendly. Okay, I have a question about your dogs. You told me before, but I don't remember what breed of dogs you have. I have a smooth collie.
12:35hurting dog, but he, the only thing he likes to hurt is tractors and big machinery. Um, and then we have a livestock guardian dog that is a cross between a collie and a great Pyrenees. Oh, wow. Okay. And she is amazing. Um, she just adores the baby animals when she even gets a whiff that there's a new animal here or hears a little baby outside her butt wigs, the whole back end of her, she's very calm and gentle with them and, uh, yeah, I couldn't ask for a greater farm dog, really.
13:05Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you about because our barn cat last fall, last September, had kittens and she had them in the barn. And we have Maggie, the mini Australian shepherd dog that I talk about all the freaking time. And she kept the kittens in the pole barn until they got curious enough to climb out underneath the door because there's a place where the cats can get out under the door. And Maggie saw the kittens and she sat down.
13:33She did like that point thing that pointer dogs do, except she was sitting, and her whole rear end was just wiggling on the ground. She doesn't have a tail, she's got a docked tail. And tongue hanging out, smiling like dog, smiling just waiting for the kittens to come over. And that was awesome. Floof, the barn cat, got pregnant again, because we're stupid and waited too long to get her spayed. And she had babies back in...
14:03very first part of April and she had them in the pole barn again. And Maggie could smell the kittens on our hands when we would pet them when we were out there, but they weren't coming out of the pole barn yet. So she knew there was a new set of babies in the pole barn. And I'm telling you the minute one of those kittens stuck its head under the door and meowed, she sat right down and waited patiently with her rear end, just wagon on the ground for the next batch of friends to come visit.
14:33So I was very curious to see how your dogs were with the baby lambs. They're good, Pop. They are really great with them. We got chicks recently too, and Dolly the livestock dog. She's the same way even with the squeaky baby chickens. She'll hover over them, wave her tail and make sure the other dogs and cats don't get too close. So I'm happy for that because with lambs, foxes are one of their main predators. Of course, along with neighborhood escapee dogs.
15:02you know, coyotes and stuff. But we have a lot of foxes around here, so that's always been a concern of mine. So it's great to have, you know, that dog here to keep them safe and. Yeah, absolutely. It just, it surprised me that Maggie was so excited to see the babies and so motherly to them because she's never gonna have. With that breed too, yeah. She's been spayed. She's never gonna have babies. She's never gonna be a mom, but.
15:30I think she probably would have been a really good mom based on how she is with her cat babies. Yeah, that's what I thought too. And we did introduce her to a baby rabbit, which was a big mistake because rabbits are prey animals. They don't like dogs. That poor baby rabbit, Maggie was so curious and I was holding it and I put it down near her nose and that rabbit went, Oh, I'm stupid. I shouldn't have done that. So no more introducing Maggie to anything. That's a prey.
16:00animal because they can have a heart attack and die. Oh, yeah, and that's not fair. Well, yeah, it's nice to have a dog that's friendly around them too, though. Yeah, she loves anything little. Yeah, and she hasn't really been around any big animals. She's met her, she's remet her parent dogs because we took her over to visit from where we got her and she had no idea what to do with those dogs. We got her during COVID so she was never around.
16:30other dogs and she's barely around other people during COVID so she's not the most socialized creature on the earth with people. So it's just weird to me how some dogs see something smaller and they're like attack and eat it and some other dogs are like oh it's a baby I need to be gentle. Yeah that is bizarre isn't it? Yeah so I don't know whatever. Got my Maggie conversation in for the day. There you go. I love her so much.
16:59And love having barn kittens, but I'm really not looking forward to more. I don't want any more barn kittens. We're going to try to get flu spayed here very soon. Yeah. It's tough to control when it, when it gets. Yeah. I don't need a, what is it called? Uh, there's a word for a bunch of cats. A colony. I don't need a colony of cats. I'm good. So anyway, uh, so what did your kids think of the baby lambs?
17:28They adore them as well. It was nice this time they were old enough to really help out with the bottle baby, you know, with feedings and such. They've been working on, if we do keep the bottle baby, we named her Luna. The valley names all the lambs a different letter every year and this year was L, so we found moon names. We have Luna, Larissa, and Leda. I think that's how you pronounce it. But they run around with them. They've been trying to halter train them and they've been.
17:57really enjoyed the friendliness as well. They were excited when we started with alpacas, but they could never really have this kind of a relationship with the alpacas. Yes, because the alpacas get bigger than sheep, right? Yes, and even when they're little, they're not easy to, and with alpacas, especially baby males, you don't want to make them friendly and bond with you because they can hurt you later on in life. Mm-hmm, yep. Alpacas have...
18:24Alpacas have super long legs when they're born, right? Yes, we had our baby alpaca last time I talked to you, I think. I think so, yeah. Okay, I think she had just been born. And yet they're basically like a baby deer, you know, stand up right away and start running around and they're pretty much all legs. Yeah, they're super cute too. So we still have her here and she's actually the baby alpaca that was born last year.
18:54also obsessive over babies that are born here. Oh, funny. She'll just stand and stare at the babies and try to get close and just looks at them with this look of awe and then the lambs follow around and she'll run around and play with them. And we actually were looking to sell alpacas and just focus on the sheep. But it's they're a tough one to sell. They're so great with the lambs. Yeah. And they can also help protect against foxes too when my dog can't be outside. Really? Oh, yes.
19:23Do they yell? Do they kick? What do they do? They'll stomp on them. Some places actually have alpacas specifically as protectors for their sheep, keep the fox away. Not all of them have the personality to do so. But yeah, I know when we had our boys, we had to be careful of friends spread over smaller dogs. They would try to stomp on people's dogs. It was like openness. Let's not do that. Yeah, no, that's probably not a great plan.
19:52Yeah, they fit in well together. We just end up with a lot of fiber between all those animals. I'm sure you do. You're swimming, swimming in it. So what I don't this is going to sound stupid, but it's the only question I think to ask about this. What is the end game for the valet sheep? I mean, what's what's your goal with this? So, yeah, I was going to get into that, too. Naturally, you know, just like with alpacas, the more.
20:19availability, the prices aren't going to be as crazy. And I'm really hoping that they do become more of a normal shape that you see. I was pretty impressed. You know, I make milk based soaps and lotions and such. And I was decently impressed with the size of the udders on my valley when they land. It's not anything like a dairy goat or even the polypate you that I have. It's not that big of production. But again, depending on your demand and what you use it for, if I'm just making soap.
20:49I think they'd be great to milk too because with that friendliness comes the ease of milking them. You don't need to lock them up or put them on a milk stand. They basically just stay in there. So that's kind of my goal is to keep the farm business going as far as milk products. I really wanted to dive into cheese making eventually. Another reason I prefer sheep over other livestock is the nutrient values of sheep milk is...
21:17far surpasses any other livestock. Okay. So there's that factor in it too. I think they're just a great, you know, I guess I would say dual purpose, but also if people raise them for meat, could be a good triple purpose animal to have. Sure. Hoping kind of just to work on Luna as far as getting her out to shows. And I've always wanted to utilize, you know, like at nursing homes and hospitals
21:47that type of route. Yeah. And then eventually have our little flock of sheep to mow the grass and enjoy. Yeah. Are you OK? I have two questions. Are you intending to grow the herd bigger or to keep at your place? Or are you going to just keep doing a few and selling some and maybe keeping one? I think for now, we're going to keep it a small flock. With our acreage being smaller and.
22:14Just with our lives being busy right now with two little kids too in sports. Eventually I would love to have a larger farm and a whole flock of these sheep. Okay. And when you, when you take them places, when that happens, are you teaching about them as well as just letting people experience them? Yep, absolutely. Um, people are quite fascinated by them. Um, Luna, because it was cold out, I didn't get to bring her around as much as I would have liked to.
22:43But we'd go through drive-throughs together often. People just adored her. You know, they get the long curly locks right away and they're just really sweet sheep. But yeah, I love telling people about them and I work in assisted living as well and just the reactions that people get when I bring up that I raise sheep and have lambs. I just think there's so much that could be done with them as far as enrichment for, you know, other humans. Yeah.
23:11I was going to say I was a Girl Scout co-leader for a couple of years. And I suspect that if you have any Girl Scout troops in your area, if you talk to the leaders about the fact that you have these sheep, they would love to have the girls learn about them. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it's really hard to find unusual, interesting things to expose the girls in the troops to.
23:41cold process lye soap at the time. So we had the girls come over to our garage and he showed them how you do that. And they were interested and they each took home a bar of soap that had already cured. And one of the girls came back to me and she was like, do you have any more of that soap? And I was like, yes ma'am. She's like, can I get into the bar? I was like, yes, you can. And so they learned that from us. I had a friend who knew knot tying.
24:11real knots like the ones you use when you're sailing and things like that. And so they taught the girls some basic knot tying skills. And then there was a guy that we knew who had an orchard and he also keeps honeybees. So we took them up to show them how the honey is extracted from the hive with the centrifuge thing. And they were into that too. They thought that was super cool. Oh, yeah.
24:38But we did not take them to see belay sheep because there aren't any belay sheep around here. Right, and that's the bonus about them. They're so friendly. People get to actually touch them too, and I think that can be very therapeutic. I used to teach kids with fiber processing as well, and that was always fun to educate. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. I'm sure there are so many places you could take them to.
25:06to show them off to people and teach people about them. And I think it's super that you did this, you're doing this. And I know back when I talked to you in August, you were so excited about having babies. Yes. And I'm so glad you took the time to come back and talk with me about it. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Absolutely. All right, well, kiss Luna for me. I will. And have a great afternoon next to you time. Yep, thank you. All right, bye. Bye.
 

Nothing But Knots by Mackenna

Today I'm talking with Mackenna at Nothing But Knots by Mackenna.
 If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This 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.
00:16Today I'm talking with Mackenna at Nothing But Knots. Good morning Mackenna, how are you? I'm doing good, how are you? I'm good, tell me about yourself and what you do. So my name is Mackenna, I run Nothing But Knots by Mackenna. I've been doing it for about three years now as an actual business, but I've kind of been crocheting my entire life actually.
00:42I learned when I was super young, was taught by my great aunts and my grandmother. And I just kind of picked it up when quarantine happened again. And then I decided after about a year that I wanted to make a business out of it. Okay. So did you choose crocheting because no one was knitting or have you tried knitting too? I have tried knitting. It's just mainly that I can't quite get it down.
01:12I'm not super, uh, like-
01:17Like able to do things with two hands at the same time kind of thing and with needles with knitting You have to use two needles and crochet is just one hook So it's a little bit easier for me to multitask when it's just with one Like one hook Yep, I understand I I tried knitting when I was younger and the thing that made me not want to knit is the sound of the needles Clacking I yes
01:45Yes, I totally understand that too. When you're so used to it being a very quiet hobby, hearing the needles touching each other can be kind of overwhelming. Yeah, I just didn't like it. And then I learned about crocheting and learned how to do the chain stitch, you know, just one after another after another. I was like, okay, I can do this. And then went on to the single crochet and actually the turn and then the single
02:14Oh, I can do that. And then I read about the double crochet and tried that and then triple and then the other things. And I was like, oh my God, I love this. It's quiet. I can do it while I'm watching a TV show in January. When it's cold out, it's great. I am a big fan of crocheting. Okay. Especially if you're making a blanket, you could just curl up with that blanket that you're in the process of making. When it's cold outside, it's perfect.
02:38Yeah, it's a great way to stay warm if your house is not, if your house is drafty for sure. Our old house was drafty, so I loved doing that. And a scarf is so fast to make if you're crocheting. I couldn't believe how fast the scarf came together. Oh yeah, I tried to make, that's when I tried knitting for the first time was trying to do a scarf and I was like, man, this is really taking forever. I could knock out a scarf with crochet and like.
03:06Couple hours and here I am three days later still working on this knitted scarf. Yeah, I think the hardest thing with crocheting is keeping the tension correct. Because when I first started, I did a scarf and it had spots that were narrower than they should have been by just a little bit because the tension wasn't right. And I also did the washcloth, the crocheted cotton yarn washcloth.
03:35the one corner was always too tight, so they weren't square, and it drove me crazy. I finally figured it out, but the tension is probably the thing that you need to learn how to get correct, I think. Yes, I am on the same page with you there. I mean, it's the same with crochet and knitting, but crochet is a lot easier to keep your attention, because you have one hand free, essentially, at all times. Yep, exactly.
04:01Okay, so now that we've raved about crocheting, because I love it, you love it, I haven't done it in a long time, but I love doing it when I'm doing it. So what do you make? Because I saw your Facebook page photos and the little bear with like the blanket that comes down for the body, that's very cute. Oh, thank you. Right now, I mainly specialize in making bags and baby blankets.
04:26I get a lot of custom orders from my co-workers for baby blankets. I'm currently working on one for my son and I have a niece coming in September so she'll be getting a blanket as well. Besides that, I've kind of been venturing into wearables so like sweaters, hats, that kind of thing, obviously some scarves.
04:56quite found my niche really for it is like stuffed animals and stuff. Everyone wants a stuffed animal. Everyone wants me to make like those lovies like the bears with the blankets attached to them. I am not a huge fan of sewing things together. So if I can find a no sew pattern where I can just kind of crochet everything together, that's where I what I like to do. But a lot of people want like super complicated.
05:26stuffed animals and I'm trying, I love the look at them. I love like making the pieces, but it's putting them all together that I really struggle with. Yeah, because it's not the thing you've been doing. It's an added in thing to learn how to do. I get it. Mm-hmm. And honestly, you're a new mom. You have a seven week old baby. You've got a lot going on right now.
05:50Oh yeah, I haven't really had quite a lot of time lately, obviously, to crochet, but I try to sneak it in during his naps or once I put him down for bed I try to crochet for a little bit before I go to bed myself. Yeah, and as we all know, I mean I've had three babies, I know that sleep is a commodity when you have a brand new baby. So if you're tired and you're trying to learn a new thing it makes it even more frustrating.
06:19Especially when you're trying to count stitches. It's like a project where you have to have a specific number It's definitely pretty hard Yeah, if you're if you're sleep-deprived it just it will drive you bonkers trying to keep it all straight Okay, so So you said you started crocheting when you were little um Who taught you so I have
06:47some wonderful women in my family and my great aunts are the ones who mainly taught me how to crochet so they're my mom's aunts and then my dad's mom my grandmother also crocheted at the same time so she kind of taught me like the actual stitches my aunts mainly just taught me like chains we called them dog leashes at the time because that's pretty much all i could do was just chain
07:17And then I started doing like the simple like single crochet and a half double crochet. Like I said, I lost it for a while. You get busy as you get older. Started my first job, all this kind of stuff. Life happened. And then everyone was off work for quarantine when COVID happened and I needed something to do instead of just sitting here doing nothing.
07:43So I kind of just retaught myself how to do everything, watched a couple YouTube videos, and now I'm to the point where I can kind of just make up a pattern off the top of my head and it somehow by magic turns out. So I got lucky in that aspect. Yeah, I've done that too. I think it's wonderful that you had amazing women in your family to teach
08:13I learned from YouTube videos. And yeah, that is very common nowadays. And I have to get I have to give it to the people that can make videos because I don't have the patience to make a video and try to teach someone how to do it through a video. I'd rather be right next to someone. Yeah, because watching it, you have to reverse it in your head. Mm hmm. The hand placement, you know, because you're looking at it.
08:41their right hand is where your left hand is, you know, what I mean? Yeah, yeah, no, I totally understand. And so it's, it's, if you can't do that in your head, you can't learn that way. The other thing that that's interesting with crocheting is that reading written instructions, it's, it's really hard to learn how to crochet reading it. Seeing someone do it is the trick, I think.
09:11Yeah, you definitely, if I had any like suggestions, I would definitely say start with videos first and then go to patterns and like reading patterns because like you said, if you don't know the terminology like very well and you're still learning, reading a pattern is going to be so difficult for a beginner if you don't know the stitches like abbreviations. Yep. Yep. I was, I was
09:40learning the next thing after the chain stitch and I was reading what I thought was a simple pattern. I got like two sentences into this thing. I was like, I have no idea what they're talking about. I need to go find videos. I can't understand this. It's a different language and I don't know it yet. Okay. So how is the business going? Is it like a hobby that turned into a business? Is it a real business?
10:09And by real, I mean, do you have to pay quarterly taxes on the money you make? That kind of thing. Oh, no. Okay. So it really is a hobby that started out and like, it started out as a hobby. And I was like, I got a couple people saying, oh, you could like sell this stuff. Or when they like, I'd be willing to just like give people something and they were like, oh no, I'm going to pay you for it.
10:38You put in a lot of hard work to this. And then once I had a couple people saying, oh, I'd rather just pay for it for you to do it that way. You're getting something out of it. I was like, oh, well, maybe more people would be interested in this and be willing to buy things from me. It's not an actual business at the moment. I would love for it to be an actual business maybe later down the road. Right now, it's just a side hustle kind of thing.
11:08making like a little bit of extra money here and there. But I mainly do like markets or like craft shows. So that's like my main source of income when it comes to crochet and my business. But it's not like a legal, like pay taxes business. It's more so like a.
11:33I just wanted to give it a name. I just felt weird just going to these markets and it just being me. I felt like I needed a name to go with it, so it felt a little more official to me. Yeah, and you came up with a really great logo. I love that. Thank you. Yeah, anyone who wants to see it, I'm going to put the link to the Facebook page so people can see your logo. It's adorable. So I haven't really crocheted in years because we've been...
12:01I'm mildly busy with starting a brand new home almost four years ago and growing things and getting a puppy and getting chickens and barn cats and stuff like that. But in talking to you, that little niggling thing in the back of my head is telling me that this winter when it's cold, I would be really smart to pick up some cotton yarn and make some washcloths to sell at next year's farmers markets because we sell at the farmers
12:30and I hadn't even thought about it. So I might be doing some crocheting this winter. Thank you. I appreciate the inspiration because it's not that hard. I know how to do it. I just haven't done it. Do you have a favorite brand for your yarn or are you just good with whatever yarn you pick up? I kind of like all yarn. I go mainly based off of like how it feels, but
12:59The brand I like the most for when I do like larger, larger like products or projects like the blankets or a wearable like a sweater is the Karen one pound yarn because it comes in a one pound ball of yarn and even though a lot of like this like these bigger skeins of yarn are
13:29It's like $11.99. You can get it at Joann's or Michael's or really, I assume you can get it at any craft store. I haven't tried like a Hobby Lobby or anything, but they last and the yarn is sturdy. I don't have to worry about when my ends get weaved in at the end of a project, any of it coming out, because it's just a nice thick but soft worsted, which is like the basic
13:59weight for yarn. That's pretty much what all acrylic is. You can get different weights of yarn, but the most popular is the size four. And it's just, it comes in a big skein, it's soft, and I just like the pricing that it is for the size that it comes in. And if I remember correctly, that brand has some really pretty colors for baby blankets.
14:29Oh yes they do. They have some vibrant colors, they have more natural tones, like they pretty much have, if you can think of the color they probably have it. Mm-hmm. Yep. I really like that and I really like lion heart, is it lion? Lion heart? Lion something? Lion brand? Red lion? I don't remember. Lion is in the name, but I really like that for scarves because it's not as heavy.
14:57But it's thick and it's soft. It's so soft. And my kids, I made scarves for my kids when they were young and they loved them. They would wrap the scarf around their neck and squish their chin into the yarn to feel it. Yeah, it's a great yarn. Yep, and I really like the... I think it's sugar and spice cotton yarn for the... Oh, the sugar and cream, yeah. Something like that, yeah.
15:26for the for the washcloth because yeah that's what I used to make my sorry my coasters yep yeah and do you start your coasters or not I personally don't um I I don't I don't have any experience starting anything like any any of my projects so I don't like to if it if I did I was
15:53afraid it would take away from the absorbency of the cotton, like as a coaster. I've seen other people do it and I get why they do it because it makes it like firm, it makes so it doesn't, it's not like super floppy when you like take like go to use it. But I'm afraid it's going to take away from the absorbency and um.
16:14My coasters are pretty like probably not like top five of my best sellers at markets and I haven't had a complaint yet or someone asked me to start them. So, I mean, if someone asked me, I would, but at the moment I'm not going to knock what's working. Yeah. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. Um, I would never want to use one of your coasters to actually set my coffee cup on.
16:39because I would absolutely slop my coffee on it and I would be sad because the stain would never come out because your coasters are really pretty. Well, thank you. I mean, I've had some people say the same thing, but I tell them all the time, things are washable. I understand not wanting to stain it, but that's kind of the whole point of them. Get them dirty. They're washable.
17:04I've been using the same set of coasters that I made for myself for about two years now and they're still their vibrant color even after washing them. So I say get them dirty. I always tell people they're going to get dirty no matter what, whether it's going to be from condensation or a spill. They're going to get dirty, they're washable and their colors don't fade, especially if you use that Lily Sugar and Cream Cotton Yarn. Okay.
17:34Good to know, because I really like nice things. I like nice things that people make. I like nice things like glasses that are beautiful, vases that are beautiful, but I don't typically buy them because I'm like, invariably, I am going to ruin that thing that was so pretty when I started with it. And I also have a younger sister and shared a room with her until I moved out.
18:03at 18 years old and she had a way of breaking all my nice things. So I got trained to not have nice things. You know the line about this is why we cannot have nice things. Yeah. And so I tend to get things that are utilitarian, that the function is more important than the fashion of it. So that's just me.
18:31But anybody who needs coasters, you should talk to McKenna, because they're very pretty. Thank you so much. Yeah, I love what you're doing. I think it's beautiful. And I know the work that goes into creating the things that you're creating. And it takes time, and it takes patience.
18:49So I think that whatever you are charging for your goods, I think that it's at worth every penny because I know the work that goes into what you're doing. Yeah, that's something people don't realize a lot of the time if they don't work on the craft or they don't have like a hobby that's like crochet.
19:15they don't realize, like you said, the time, the patience, and even sometimes the money that goes into them. And then they're like, wow, that's a really high price for something kind of small or something like that. But it's like the same with people that like do like the soldering of like the glass and making all like the glassware, pottery, anything like that. They think, oh, it's like, it seems so easy. Why is it so expensive? It's just
19:45You guys gotta realize how much time and effort and practice goes into these things. Yes, handmade means time. Handmade requires time. Factories can create a blanket in an eighth of the time it's going to take you, if not a sixteenth of the time it's going to take you. Oh yeah. So.
20:10It's a very fine distinction and it needs to be made. So you mentioned Joanne Fabrics. I freaking love Joanne Fabrics. I haven't been in one in quite a while. But number one, I love the inspiration that smacks you in the face when you walk in the door. And number two, I don't know if they still do this, but they used to have amazing coupons and sales. Do they still do that?
20:40Oh yeah, I have the app for Joann's, so I get like 20% off coupons all the time. Sometimes they run like 60% off on sales, especially in the yarn section. I obviously take advantage of that a lot, a lot. But I also take advantage of all their other sales that they have. But yes, they do have some pretty amazing sales.
21:09compared to Michael's sometimes I used to shop at Michael's all the time for all my yarn and then I rediscovered Joanne fabrics and It has just like boosted my yarn supply like Tenfold almost like they have so many more options for not alone like colors, but also brands at Joanne's It's it's just a whole different ballgame over there
21:38Oh yeah, I don't dare to walk into a yarn aisle at Joanne's right now because I would buy 17,000 colors. One of the things that drew me to crocheting is that there's so many fun colors. Yes, there are. I mean, I love sage green. I love navy blue. I love cornflower blue. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's just a lighter, brighter shade of navy.
22:08And I don't really have a lot of color in my house. My house is cream and coffee colors. And I keep saying to my husband, I'm gonna go to Joanne's and buy a whole bunch of crazy colors and make some things to hang because it's colorful. He's like, you are not, you love the color scheme of our house. And I'm like, yes, but we need some color, my goodness. So I should not have talked to you today. Now I'm gonna make a run to Joanne's this weekend. Yeah.
22:36I'm the same way. I like I'm a big sage green fan as well. I that's probably one of my favorite colors Um, and the problem is is if i'm making stuff for myself, it's all in that same color scheme like greens Browns like a very neutral tone, but I love seeing people's work where it's like vibrant colors And I keep telling myself mckenna Make something for yourself in a vibrant color, but then i'm like, I don't know
23:05it doesn't really match everything else, you know? So I'm in the same boat as you, where I wanna make a little bit more, like add more vibrant colors to my collection. Yeah, I asked my husband a month ago, I said, so, I said, we've been here almost four years. I said, next year, are we gonna paint? Cause the house was remodeled before I moved in and it was perfect. And of course we've lived here, so we've gotten dings in the walls and.
23:34There's just things that need to be touched up and trying to match paint is a pain in the butt. Oh yeah. And he said, do you want to paint your kitchen sage green? And I said, I want to make the cabinets sage green, not the cabinet cabinets. The cabinets are cream, I like them. The only cabinets, the only feature original to the house are these pantry cabinets and they painted them the coffee color that is the other.
24:02color besides cream for the color scheme for the house. And these are the original cabinets. They left the shelves in with the contact paper on them. Oh yeah. And they left the hooks for coffee mugs in them. So I will never change the inside because I love that the nostalgia for this old farmhouse is still there. But I said I would really love to paint the cabinets sage green and that would be fine with cream.
24:29And he was like, yeah, he said, we could do that. He said, do you want to paint the accent wall in the living room sage green? And I was like, no, I want to paint it a coffee color just like it is now. He said, oh, good. So people's preferences for colors are very, very specific. And that's totally fine to each their own. I just.
24:56I love it when Joann's would put their yarn on sale in the clearance section because you could get three skeins of yarn for three bucks. I don't know if that's the case now, but you used to be able to. And I didn't care what colors they were because I was just going to make scarves for the kids and the kids loved all the crazy colors.
25:17Yeah, I recently had a pretty large custom order for some pillows that were shaped like cannabis leaves. And I got super lucky that all the colors that this lady had picked out were all in the clearance section and all the brand that I use anyways for that kind of project for like a pillow. And I got super lucky.
25:4710 skeins of yarn for each skein was like $2 each. So I barely spent like 30 bucks. It was great. I loved their deals there. Yeah, it helps, especially if you're new or you're on a budget. So we have about five minutes left before we get to 30 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour. If someone was going to get into crocheting, like they have never crocheted in their lives.
26:15What would you suggest for first steps and ways to make it less expensive if they decide they don't like it? I would always say YouTube is gonna be your best friend and don't stick to one person's like channel for videos and like tips and tricks because everybody does something differently. I would definitely say look at multiple different channels or
26:44If you're not into a specific channel, just multiple different videos for sure would help because there's different terms between the US and the UK. So you want to get familiar with both of those because if you're reading a pattern, it might change. They might say, oh, this is in UK terms and a double crochet in UK is the same thing as a single crochet in the US. So definitely.
27:11watch a lot of different videos. Don't skip to the- don't watch like all the same person. I- I mean all- you can always go back to those videos and watch more of that person's videos, but I would definitely say watch more than one. And when it comes to supplies, shop, like we've been talking about, sale yarn, do some like you said washcloths, coasters, anything like that, and then once you kind of got the hang of it, then invest in that more expensive yarn.
27:42It's just all personal preference. And if you're looking for hooks, there's even stuff, you can go to thrift stores and possibly find hooks and yarn and all that kind of stuff to make it a little bit less expensive. Amazon is great. You can buy like a whole kit where it has like 10 different sizes of hooks and maybe some sample sizes of yarn as well as stitch markers.
28:09Tapestry needles for like 20 bucks for a whole kit. So I mean Just shop around the first thing you see is not always gonna be the best thing look at reviews You don't have to have the most expensive hooks to start off. I started off with like dollar store plastic crochet hooks you don't need Furl brand which is like a really really nice brand like almost fifteen dollars per a hook
28:39You don't need that when you begin and even now I don't use those and I've been doing it for A quite a long time. I don't Definitely just just shop around You don't need the most expensive things cheap things Cheap hooks do the same work as expensive hooks. They more expensive ones might be a little more comfortable in your hand But when you're just beginning It it's not it's not that big of a deal and take breaks when you crochet take breaks I don't know how
29:09how much my hand hurt because I don't I didn't think of that when I first started. Take breaks, stretch your hands out. Trust me, it's going to be worth it in the long run. Yeah, mine, my hands hurt when I did it too. I remember that now. Okay, the other things that I would chime in with is join some of the Facebook groups for crocheting or the forums online because people are so willing to help you if you get stuck. Yeah, especially with patterns.
29:38I'm in a group where they take a picture of the row that they're on or the round that they're on and they're like, hey, I don't quite understand this. People are so willing to explain it to you. Yeah. And then the other thing I was going to say is you can find yarn on Craigslist and on Facebook Marketplace that people are just trying to get rid of. I had somebody message me.
30:07And it wasn't because of those, but someone messaged me who knew that I crocheted and said, I have a garbage bag size bag of all different kinds of yarns. Do you want it? Yeah, I've had that happen to me too, where they're just like, I just wanna get rid of it. You can have it. I don't want anything for it. I ended up, the only problem with that is sometimes it's just like kind of older yarn. But still, you're getting it for free.
30:34go through it, see if there's anything you would like, and then maybe pass it on to the next person, that's what I did. Whatever I didn't use, I passed on to the next person and they passed it on and it just kind of was like a big chain of free yarn. Yeah, and yard sales, and Goodwill, and really, there is yarn everywhere in the entire world, sitting there waiting for you to decide you wanna try to make something with it. Exactly. So.
31:02All right, Mackenna, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great time talking to you. Yeah, I love talking about crafting. I think it's really fun. Don't leave me when I stop recording because I need your file to upload, okay? Okay. All right, thanks. Bye. Bye-bye.
 
 
 

Rustic Roots

Today I'm talking with Cindy and Mike at Rustic Roots. 
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This 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 Cindy and someone else in the background. I don't know who it is yet. At Ruster Groots Farm. Good morning, Cindy. Good morning. It's my husband, Mike. Hi, Mike. Sorry, I didn't know you were going to be part of this. Awesome.
00:29Fantastic. All right. So tell me about yourselves and Rustic Roots Farm. Rustic Roots, sorry. Rustic Roots Greenery. We started a small greenhouse a few years ago and now we've built up. We found a used one for sale and bought it and put it up. We sold a couple of our cows to help pay for it. I don't know. It's fantastic.
00:58Go ahead. All right. Mm-hmm. So for years, she wanted a greenhouse. And for a long time, I did a lot of the plants. And one year, she just couldn't handle me getting rid of the little helpless seedlings that we were thinning out. So she decided to keep them and took over our entire living room. So 2020, with the COVID and the COVID-19 pandemic,
01:24Um, the kids getting kicked out of school, um, finally, after about eight or nine years of, uh, begging, we decided to have a, uh, arts and crafts and science program. And we built a greenhouse. About a eight by 12 or eight by 14 on the pad in front of our house with the kids with, um, rough cut lumber and glass panes and just basically things that we had around. And then we.
01:51rolled it around to the south side of our house. And that first year she filled it. So the second year we doubled the size of that greenhouse and Cindy took that as a challenge. So she filled it again. Um, then I had a friend sent me a link to some people selling a 30 by 70 greenhouse about three or four hours away. And I'd been looking into.
02:19I'm building a different greenhouse for a while and I've really been, I was really getting into the geothermal and some of the different ways to make greenhouses cheaper to heat and operate. And so we went down and we bought this greenhouse from some people that do the same thing. They sell garden starts. And then September of 22, we started our...
02:46construction of our brand new greenhouse or brand new to us. And we dug a 20 by 60 foot hole in our front yard and filled it with 2000 feet of perforated pipe. And we built a climate battery style geothermal and then we plunked a greenhouse on top of it. He says we, but really he built, I just helped a little. You guys sound a lot like me and my husband. Um, we, I applied for a grant to.
03:16to fund a heated greenhouse last year. And we actually got the grant, which dumbfounded me because I didn't think we had a hope in hell of getting it. And I was like, so do you want to build a heated greenhouse, honey? And he was like, I do. We can't afford to. I said, we can now. And he said, did we get the grant? I said, we did. I said, it's got to be finished, complete, by May 31 of 2024.
03:45Can you make that happen? Because we didn't get the money until November of 2023. And he said yes. Oh, wow. And I said, OK, you better pray for good weather in the spring, because otherwise this is not going to work. And it was finished, I think, the weekend before May 31. Oh, nice. So yeah, go ahead. We applied for a grant. But what we learned is the grant money is only for brand new greenhouses. You can't.
04:14You can't utilize that money to buy a used greenhouse or anything like that. Yes. We had to buy all the, the, we had to buy all the supplies new or they had to be in really, really good condition. Yeah. Almost new. So yeah, there's definitely some parameters that you have to meet. Yeah. We had a, we had a drought, um, 2022 and we had a small cow herd that we were running.
04:44And basically it was a decision of, do we want to buy hay and rent pasture? Or what do we do? And we ended up selling the majority of our cows and calves. And we took that money and that's basically how we funded our greenhouse. Yup. You gotta find a way one way or another, because if otherwise it just doesn't happen. And the other thing is, is that animals are expensive to feed. I mean, people who have dogs and cats.
05:13As house pets, they know how much money they spend to feed their pets. And it is just exponentially more expensive, the bigger the animal gets. And the more it's livestock, not a pet. So it's hard. And I don't blame you. It's the weather has been insane the last couple of years. You're in Nebraska, right? Yep. We're in a, we're in the panhandle in Nebraska. We're.
05:38We're actually closer to the capital of Wyoming and Colorado than we are the capital of Nebraska. So we're about three hours from Rapid City, three hours from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and about four hours from Denver, Colorado. Yeah. And we're in Minnesota. And you guys pretty much have had the same weather we've had as far as I know. The last two summers have been rainy in the spring and then not a drop of water to be found at the end of June, July.
06:08Well, yeah, end of June, July, August, and end of September. Last summer, my husband watered every night for at least an hour and a half from the well. Yep. Well, we kind of had the opposite problem last year. Last year was actually an extremely wet year for us. Oh, okay. Um, typically we only average about 15 inches of rain a year. Um, last year we had between 30 and 40 inches. Um, but like, like I say, in 22, we had.
06:37well below normal, probably more like 12 inches of rain. Yeah, so my original statement stands, the weather has been absolutely bonkers. Yup. Yes. I don't know if you guys know what's going on in Minnesota right now, but we have major damaging flooding going on in the lower half of the state right now. Yeah, you got a dam that's no longer a dam, too. Yeah, I'm about half an hour from there. Oh, wow. Yup. Yeah, that was...
07:06Not great. And my husband actually works in the city where that is going on. So the detours that he's had to find to get from Lusor, which is where we live, to Mankato and back has been crazy. And our road out front of our home is basically a two lane county road and it is one of the detours. So
07:31Usually, you know, a couple cars go by, it can be another 20 minutes, a couple cars go by. If it's harvest season, lots of tractors and semis full of corn going by. For the last two days until this morning, it has just been car after car after car and people honking their horns and screeching their brakes. I'm like, we did not move back to the city. I know we didn't. That's right.
07:58So it's eased up this morning because the major highway nearby is back open again, which is a blessing because I really did not miss the sound of the cars. Yeah, I didn't miss the sound of cars all the time at all when we moved here because we used to live in town and it was constant noise. And boy, I got reminded why we moved. Yeah. So anyway, all that having been said.
08:27awesome thing about the big greenhouse. And I think it's funny that Mike tells stories just like my husband tells stories. That's awesome. He's like, yeah, she wanted, and I begrudgingly said sure, blah, blah, blah. But underneath- Well, I know they say to, you know, you need to thin the seedlings and pick the best ones and everything, but I'm like, they're all growing perfectly fine. You don't need to thin them out and throw them away. You just put them in dirt and there they go. Yeah.
08:54But underneath the husband's stories is that I love her, I want her to be happy. How can I make her happy? So it just makes me giggle when I hear other people's husbands tell stories about them because it's the same tone of voice every time. Well, I felt so bad for him because the second year we had the little greenhouse and I had so many in the living room and I kind of took over part of our computer room with plant
09:24We were just outgrowing things and he went outside in March and it was snowing, kind of sleeting outside and he was putting together the other greenhouse, just like kind of tacking it on the end of the other one, just so we'd have room for all of them. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm right there with you, Cindy, because we used to, now we have the greenhouse, we don't have to anymore. Yay. But every year for the last 20 something years.
09:54we have started our seedlings in the house on the kitchen table. And the kitchen table was actually a living room table in the old house, we didn't have any room for a kitchen table anywhere. And so my living room table would be covered with seedling trays and seedlings growing like crazy. And then when we moved here, we have an eat-in kitchen. So where the kitchen table sits, we actually added another folding table behind the kitchen table.
10:22And that was completely covered with seedlings. And it didn't bother my husband, but I love to cook. And part of the reason I was so thrilled about this place when we bought it in 2020 is because it had a place to actually sit in the kitchen at a kitchen table and have coffee or lunch or dinner. And every spring, there's no place to do that because the table is covered. So...
10:48This spring, I was like, this is the last spring my kitchen table is going to have to be covered in baby plants. Yay! You'll get your house back. My husband looked at me, he said, you're going to miss them. He said, you're going to be begging me to bring in basil babies just so you can watch them grow. I was like, all right, yeah, maybe. But at least it'll only be a couple, not two tables worth of seedlings anymore. But anyway, all that.
11:17being said, because this is very much a giggle fest, but I'd really like to know what you guys are doing with all these plants. Are you selling them as bedding plants? Are you selling them from your property? Do you wholesale? How are you moving them? I started my first year, it was kind of an accident. Like Mike said, I just took all the thinned seedlings and planted them. I ended up with 350 tomato plants.
11:42Yep. And normally we only used about 40 to 50 in our garden. So I'm like, what do I do with all of the rest of them? I didn't think that far ahead, but you know, it was amazing. They grew, they stayed alive. So I just kind of put an ad on Facebook and sold them for a couple bucks piece in town and just to whoever in the area. And they went in like 24 hours.
12:11So that was eye-opening. For us, I garden, I can everything. Tomatoes were really a staple in our garden. So I make sauces and can the tomatoes just plain and whatever. So going to places around here, it was extremely expensive to buy the amount of plants we needed. And
12:39The cheapest place to get them at the time was like Menards. You can get a little four pack of tomato seedlings, but you know, they were four inch tall plants. And between the hail and a shorter growing season up here, there was no way to make it work. So that's kind of why we started doing the seedlings to begin with. But in the...
13:07After the first year we sold and they went so quickly, the second year was a little more on purpose. I started a few other things and... I sold them at the co-op that year. Okay. Yep, yep. There's a farmers co-op in town. They let me set up some tables and bring in some plants and they just sold for a percentage and that went really well.
13:37The next year we partnered up with Valor General Store in Hemingford and was able to sell it at both stores there.
13:51So, and then this last year was just at Valor, but Valor and Facebook. We sell some at the house, but we sell a lot of them in town. It's, we're, we're seven miles out of Hammingford, but we're, we're two miles off the highway on a pretty terrible dirt slash mud road. So, um, it's hard to get people to come out to the greenhouse and buy, but, uh, we got a pretty good relationship with the folks that run the hardware store. So we sell in there. And then.
14:21It's a ton of work because they're closed Sunday and Monday. So every, every Saturday evening we go up with a pickup and stock trailer and bring an entire trailer load of plants home, put them back in the greenhouse and kind of nurse them back to health from being inside and then turn around on Tuesday morning and haul it all back. Yeah. Oh, that's, that's gotta be just kind of a bummer to have to do that.
14:50Well, and it's funny up here, you know, I have people starting in April. Well, when are you bringing your plants in? I'm like, you know, we can't plant till like June 1st, right? Our frost dates the 25th of May, you know, which really turns into the first week of June. So. Yeah, but people don't, people don't know. I mean, my husband, the first spring we were here in the new house, planted seeds in February. And I said, what, I said, what are you doing?
15:20Yeah. I said, they're going to die before you can get them out. They're going to be so leggy and root bound and we don't have room to repot them and keep them in the house. There's no place to put the bigger pots. He was like, I'm just dying to get started. He said, I'm so sick of not having anything green. Well, hey, it sounds like the man needs to get into flowers. They take forever. Oh yeah. We are growing. Cindy started.
15:48What was your seed in the ground issue about? January 17th. Yeah, no. And I think I need to start a little earlier because my flowers didn't bloom on time. Oh, and you were doing this in the greenhouse? Well, no. No, in the house? It was in the house, but I had so many going that I ended up taking over part of his woodshed. He's got a little room off the side of his garage that is sort of insulated.
16:17And it was easier to heat. So yeah, I took over a little more of his life. We built vertical originally when we were doing it in the house, we built vertical racks and we're using basically 10 by 20 trays and there's five, I think five shelves, um, and then there's three sets of lights per shelf. And then there's two of those racks. Well, we just moved those to the wood shop and she's got a table out there. And.
16:46soil and then she can plant everything and then what we were doing is she would transplant and then as the season progressed we would then move it to the greenhouse in like four-inch cups. Yeah, yep. When you're growing from seed it is a never-ending battle of transplanting them from the little tiny cells to the next size up.
17:14until you can get them outside in the ground if that's what you're doing, because that's what we do. If you're just putting them in pots to sell them, then you gotta keep doing the thing with transplanting because they keep getting bigger. So yeah, it's a constant, constant, never-ending job. So my question is, I don't wanna ask a rude question, but are you...
17:41Are you seeing success with this? Are you, is it worth it to you? Are you making a profit on this? Well, this year we had trouble the last couple of years with soil. We would end up with a volunteer tomato plants coming out of soil. Yeah. Or too many bugs coming out of some really name brand soils. I don't want to knock anybody, but it was frustrating. So we had to find some special soil.
18:11and ended up being Iowa or sorry, Ohio. My bad. He dealt with it. I didn't. So see how that works. But to get it here, we couldn't find any truckers coming west with an empty load. So the soil ended up being the same price as the shipping. And I just, it's frustrating
18:41preferred to keep using the soil I was using. It was a little more affordable. Anyway, we had to raise prices for that. It just seems like everything was more expensive this year in general. And the store, you know, they were fine with it and people still supported us really well. I was very grateful. So by Memorial Day...
19:11weekend, we had finally broke even on soil and seed costs. Good. So, so, so is there any room to be ahead of the game on this this year? Is that where it sits? So basically, in my opinion, we've for the three years we've done this, we broke even, you know, even with some investments and things like that, which is fine for me, in my opinion, to get a business going. You know, if you can.
19:41breakeven and cover your costs and continue to expand a little bit. Um, one of our most successful things is that we partnered with, um, the recycling center in a town about 30 miles away. And so all of our cups and flats and all those things are all recycled. We don't have to buy any of that. Which really helps the price. Yes. And keeps it out of the landfill. Yeah.
20:09The part I hate is seeing a bunch of these corporations, you know, Walmart, the farm store and then the next town over, they just, they throw all the plastics in the dumpster. Or you know, they can't reuse them. It's just frustrating. I'd rather reuse something and it not be so pretty than to think of it, you know, not quite riding away the way it should in a landfill.
20:38Well, the other thing Cindy always said when we started this is gardening shouldn't be expensive. Right. It shouldn't be expensive to raise a garden for your family. So, you know, yeah, we could charge more and we could do this. But at the end of the day, we also want it to be affordable for people. And that's why, you know, we've had offers in the past from some of the hardware stores to buy out our inventory, you know, but they're just going to take it to town and mark it up.
21:06we would rather sell it ourselves instead of sell on wholesale. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah, it's not all about making money. In fact, I work at a feedlot a few miles west of our place and I've been there about nine years and my boss, he'd just shake his head at me every time I'd start telling my stories about the greenhouse endeavors and he goes, well, does that pay for your time? And I'm like, no.
21:33And he's like, you're just crazy. You're crazy. The guy's all kind of got a kick out of it. Every time we'd start talking about, oh, I got, you know, 250, you know, plants transplanted this week and, and they're like, man, well, how many more you got to go? And I swore about 3,500 more. Yeah. But you love it. So you are, you are getting a return on it because you feel good when you do it.
22:02Yes. And that's why I asked because I wanted to know if it was about money or if it was about the fact that you love it because if it's just about money, at some point you will be like, I'm not doing this anymore. Exactly. Exactly. Because it's not, it's... The other thing is too, the way that we have built this is everything's paid for, right? So there's no stress about paying the bills or paying the payment.
22:31you know, and at any time, you know, Cindy kind of stressed about the greenhouse. And I said, if nothing else, we can completely stop the plants and just garden inside of it, you know, it's, it's paid for it's not a big deal. I just stressed because I even told our tax lady that we, we sold the beef cows we had, which wasn't many, but we sold the, the pears we had to invest into this greenhouse and I'm like,
22:58I feel like I'm going crazy because at the time the prices for cattle were high and I just think you can at least make a good chunk off of a cow every year, but can I come near that with plants? I guess you can, but there's a lot of expense in it too. So yeah, kind of a toss up. Yeah. But
23:26There's an old saying about if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life and work is a very different definition in that phrasing. And you love the work. So if you love the work and you're breaking even, then you're probably doing a great thing. My husband gardens because he loves to garden. Like it's an avid passion for him. It's how he de-stresses from his job.
23:53And he loves his job. He just got a new job last year. Loves it. But it has stresses too. Every corporate job has stresses. So every spring, well, actually every January, he starts talking about planning the next year's garden because that's how he calms down. Yes. So, I don't know. I think everybody needs a thing that they do that brings them joy.
24:22brings them peace and hopefully helps other people too. That's what I think. Yeah. I like it. I start itching around Christmas time. I'm like, we need plants. We need green. We need something. So January 17th, I finally got my first tray of seedlings started. I feel content.
24:51when I start doing that finally. This time of year she's ready to be done. Yep and that's where Mike kind of steps up then because I'm like okay I'm good, I'm planted out let's and he loves the gardening part so I go out and help where I can but this is really his time of year. He loves getting out there and just his quiet time in the garden.
25:18Yeah. It's his happy place. I think that's the reason why Kyle really likes to garden too, because I just leave him to it. I can't even make a suggestion these days without getting the look, you know. And I'm like, do you want me to shut up? I don't need to make any suggestions. I can just be quiet. He's like, what's the suggestion? It might be important. I'm like this. And sometimes it is sometimes like I hadn't thought of that. Thank you. And other times he's like, I got it. I'm like, okay, no problem.
25:48So I am very happy to cook whatever comes out of the garden if it needs cooking with dinner. I am very happy to help with canning. I am very happy to eat fresh radishes and cucumbers and tomatoes when they're coming in. I don't want to be in the garden with him. That is his baby and he can go take care of that baby. I'm good with that.
26:13There you go. So do you guys do other things besides this greenhouse nursery thing? Yeah. Go ahead. What kind of things are we talking? Well you build things, so are you a carpenter? No, I'm actually a welder for BNSF Railway. Okay. I work at a big locomotive diesel shop.
26:41head of the welding department there. That's, that's my full-time job. That's your jobby job. Yes. Okay. Yup. On top of that, we do, I don't know, we got too much broke stuff around here that I fix. I fixed broke things for other people. We were crazy enough to have milk cows. So we milk and make cheese and do all kinds of things like that. We'd, uh, apparently we don't sit still very well.
27:10Oh, okay. Well, you do need to take a break now and then I hope you actually do get sleep. Occasionally. Until he stresses about the garden, you know, or the greenhouse freezing. He gets himself up a few times a night through the winter and it's like, stop, just stop it. So what's interesting is since we built it, so we built it, we started September of 22. We got it basically going by March.
27:4023. So from the time we got it going until now, it's only froze twice inside of it. So we had two nights of, it was 27 and 25 below. And I don't have a propane heater yet. I just got some diesel shop heaters for backup. But
28:02I got up and it was 25 below outside and it was 18 above in my greenhouse, which is depressing because it froze. But it's a little impressive because with no other heat other than the geothermal, it was 18 above in there. That is impressive. Yeah. And it's just a plastic hoop house, you know? Yeah, we run two layers of air inflated plastic. That's all we're running. Wow. That's amazing.
28:33Well, it's a thousand dollars to put plastic on it. And at the time we were building it, I figured it'd be 15 or 20,000 to get, uh, twin wall panels to put on it. So it was just a, it was a cost thing. You know, we had X number of dollars after, you know, we sold cows and we had some money saved. So we had a budget and that's what we went with. And I've been, I've been pretty happy with it so far. Um, that air inflation helps too. We.
28:59we live in a very windy environment so it keeps the plastic from whipping quite as much but I've been really impressed with that geothermal. Yeah we we thought about it for the one that we just put up but it would have been expensive to dig for it you know we would have had we would have had to rent somebody's machinery and time to do that so ours is actually a hard-sided
29:30wood and the polycarbonate panels and the tin roof and back on it. And we haven't, we haven't actually done anything else. It's built, it is a greenhouse at this point. Um, my husband is going to be putting in installation this winter. It has electricity to it. And I think the plan is, is that we're going to get this thing. I don't know the name of it. It's like a battery.
29:59but it's like a generator too. So you can actually plug things into it. Your cell phone chargers, electric things that need to be plugged in, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to get solar panels so that we can use solar for that battery. And then we'll have some kind of heat source that that battery powers to blow warm air around the greenhouse. And we have no idea if any of this is going to work. Not a clue.
30:29And I said to my husband, what if it doesn't work? And he said, well, he said, we will have a greenhouse. We just won't have a heated greenhouse. I was like, okay, that's fine. But we're really hoping that it works because I really, really want tomatoes in January that we grew. That's my one tiny little hope that we might be able to have homegrown tomatoes in January because I was telling someone else, there is a company that grows
30:59Better Boy Tomatoes in Minnesota in hot houses. And they are the closest thing to the tomatoes that we take out of our garden in August that I can get in January in our area. Oh neat. So, I really would love to have tomatoes. I really would love to have cucumbers because I will eat a cucumber a day when they're coming in. I love them. And he said, I don't know about the cucumbers. I said, okay, well, we can try. And we want them.
31:28When our greenhouse frosted, we had, uh, they were 12 or 14 foot, uh, tomatoes in there. They were calling them ceiling fans were clipping them off. Oh, and they died. They were, they were loaded. I was getting ready to can waiting for them all to set on and. We had a sun gold cherry tomatoes out there. And then I had a bunch of, uh, Rutgers for, uh, slicing tomatoes out there. And then we had. Uh.
31:57We were eating fresh green beans out of there. I had whole beans in there. Um, we had zucchini out there. Um, we, we still have strawberries out there. They survived the frost. So I couldn't believe that. Well, they're right by the outlet for the geothermal. Did, did either one of you just cry when you realized everything grows? Yeah. Yes. I was a little upset. Yeah. I would be sobbing. That would, that would be so.
32:26sad and not, not, not. Yeah. Oh, the worst part is I lost a whole bunch of houseplants out there. Yeah. Well, it was getting a little crowded in the house with all of his houseplant babies. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, we have like 10 things of each in here. Why don't we excavate eight of each out to the greenhouse and they can grow happy out there. And he had a rubber tree. Rubber plant. A rubber plant. Uh huh.
32:56It kept getting like, I was afraid it was going to get knocked over. Everybody kept brushing up against it when they walked by and it was right in the way. There's no really good place to put it. So I took it out to the greenhouse and I felt so bad because it died really quick. I thought I had to hunt for another one for him.
33:20Oh, it's so sad. I mean, I cry when animals die, but man, if I had a greenhouse full like that and everything froze, I would sob for that too. Yeah, I did. It's frustrating. All right, guys. Well, we're at over half an hour and I try to keep these at half an hour. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And when I stop recording, don't leave because I need your file to upload from your site, okay? Okay. All right. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
33:50Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Bye.