A Tiny Homestead

Big Whiskey Creek Range

Today I'm talking with Chebrai at Big Whiskey Creek Range. You can also follow on Facebook.
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 Chebrai at Big Whiskey Creek Range. And when I first read the name, I thought it was ranch and I've been thinking it's ranch the entire time. Good morning, Chebrai. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good.
00:28This being over 50 thing that I got going on, I just think I read things the right way and then I realized that it's not ranch, it's range. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. I have been pretty enamored with the farm life since I was a little girl. I can remember just being on my grandparents farm and it really ingrained like a passion for animals and farm life.
00:58So I guess when I grew up, I always knew that farm life would be it. And I was really lucky to meet my husband who also loved the homesteading self-sufficiency life and big Whiskey Creek range was born. The range part actually comes from us having a small little shooting range in the back. So. Okay.
01:28Awesome. So when did you guys start doing this? We started in 2019 and we got six chickens. And I remember going, yep, we can handle this. I had raised horses and trained horses. So I kind of knew what I was doing and thought chickens wouldn't be a big deal. And now here we are with, I don't count anymore.
01:54But there's goats and rabbits and ducks and chickens and a horse and some pigs Yeah, you got hooked in with the gateway drug of chicken yes, yes we did Yeah We we got hooked in with chickens when we lived in town Because the bird flu was going through and I was like, you know I'd really like to have eggs so I can make cookies for the kids and if this bird flu thing is a real
02:22problem and eggs go up to $10 a dozen, I don't want to pay $10 a dozen. So we bought four chickens and that was really cool. And then we moved here like almost four years ago now and we have 18 chickens now. So yeah, it meant chicken math. Chicken math is real. The only problem is that I found that chicken math starts applying to all the different animals as well.
02:50It does. It's an umbrella term for, I got this, I got this handled, I know what I'm doing, what's the next thing I'm going to bring onto the farm? We tried bunnies, I have talked about this at least four times on the previous episodes so far. They were terrible at reproducing, so we decided we didn't want to feed rabbits that didn't give us any return. They were dumb bunnies.
03:18We have, I think I have seven or eight litters out there right now. I have a mama that was due yesterday, but she hasn't kindled yet, so I'm impatiently waiting for those. Yeah, and nothing cuter than a baby bunny. Nothing. Yeah, I feel like the sweet spot is like three weeks old and they just, they look like an adult rabbit, but they're so small and fluffy. Yeah, and if you've handled...
03:47them since they were born, they like to be held and petted. Oh yeah, we have three kids and they handle them daily so they are of course, you know, super snuggly. Yeah, they're a lot like kittens except that they don't meow. Yes, yeah and well I mean I was going to say I feel like their nails are sharper but they might be about the same. It's a different sharp because we did get one litter.
04:16Yeah, they're pokey, but yeah, but kitten nails are curved down and so they hook into whatever they get hold of and If you pull away, it doesn't help you you just push, you know, so but anyway, um, so How do you I don't know? I want to ask you. How do you feel about what do what you do? Do you love it all the time? All the time. No, I'm
04:45I think the good part is that I'm very passionate about what we do. Before we started getting the animals, I went and found the breeds that I wanted and that I loved the traits for. I think that really helps because there are days where it's hard and you just want to quit. At the end of the day, you crawl into bed if you make it to bed and you just lay there and go, okay, is it worth it?
05:15Every morning I wake up and I walk out to the barn and I start milking and the birds are singing and the sun's rising and it's like, yeah, yeah, it is worth it. It might be hard but kind of our family saying is we're not quitters. So we keep going. Yeah, and it's really hard to quit when you have living beings counting on you. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And that's part of it. I think
05:45a mom also helps me want to take care of more. So I'm never one to turn down another mouth. Yeah, and I'm exactly the opposite. When we bought this place, we had big, big ideas. Because when you buy acreage, and we only have three acres, but to us, that was a big jump. You have big ideas. You want to get
06:14animals and you want to have a huge garden and you want to have a greenhouse and you want to make it go and My husband was like we should get goats and we should get sheep and we should get and I said It's three acres and only about an acre and a half of it would be usable for food for to feed the critters I said you want a huge garden because you love gardens first, right? He said yeah I said we're not gonna have room to graze goats or
06:44cheap. So that's probably not gonna work. And he said, but you love goats. And I said, I love other people's goats. I'll go visit other people's goats. That's fine. But the other thing that I have discovered, I was thinking about this yesterday and I was hoping I would be able to work it into this interview. I am very one task focused. Like, like,
07:07Since I started this podcast, I have been obsessed with researching and learning about how to do this because I didn't know what I was doing when I started it. I love it. I love everything about it. I love talking to you guys, learning from you, sharing what I learned with listeners and especially my husband because he has ADD. So anytime I learn something new, he wants to know because he either wants to think about trying it or he wants to try it.
07:36Yes. I don't have ADD. I am very organized. I am very linear thinking. I am very focused, but not in the way that he's focused when he gets a new idea. So for me, this particular lifestyle has been a huge adjustment because there's always something going on and it's not the same theme for the entire day.
08:05Yesterday was Mother's Day. And I don't release the podcast in chronological order. So clearly when people are listening to this, it will not be yesterday was Mother's Day. But yesterday was Mother's Day. And he had asked me Saturday if we wanted to order food from our favorite dive bar in town. It's really good food. And have that for Mother's Day for lunch. And I was like, why don't we have it Saturday? Because you're going to be busy outside all day Sunday because the weather is going to be gorgeous, which it was.
08:35So we had dive bar food for lunch for Saturday. I had a burger and potato salad and onion rings and I love that stuff but I only do it once in a while. And forgot that that would mean that I would need to provide food for him and the kid on Mother's Day, which is fine. So our rhubarb is coming in. And I had asked him to pick up strawberries and I was gonna make scones and do like a strawberry rhubarb sauce shortcake with whipped cream thing for dessert yesterday.
09:05And then I was like, oh, we might want to eat real food before we dessert. So I asked him while he was out to pick up salad mix and, um, stuff for chef salads, cause I was like, that's, that's good. That'll offset Saturday's binge on greasy dive bar food. And I had podcast stuff to do and I had emails to respond to. I, on Saturday and Sunday, I try to catch up on everything comes in during the week.
09:30So I spent the entire day inside doing computer stuff and getting food together. And he and the kid went out and put more stuff together for the greenhouse that they're building. And it was just a crazy day of up and down and up and down and doing things. And I got a phone call from my daughter. I got a phone call from my stepson. They both wanted to talk for at least half an hour. It was a very chaotic day for me. And it really made me think about what we're doing here.
10:00I said to my husband last night, I said, after you get done with your training, next week he's got a thing with work. I said, can we go somewhere where it's quiet and have like a not terrible for us meal, just you and I, and can we talk through what the plan is for, what the five-year plan is from here to five years out? I said, because I'm feeling really, really chaotic and I don't enjoy that at all.
10:29He was like, yeah, it might be time, because we'll have lived here four years in August. It might be time to reevaluate the plan. I said, I love you. Thank you. I need to reevaluate the plan. So I don't know if that resonates with you, but when you jump into this stuff, it's a lot at first. And then you settle into wherever you are, and you think you've got it handled.
10:55And then something will happen and you're like, it might be time to reevaluate what it is we're doing, why we're doing it. Yeah, and it's kind of funny because I think I relate to your husband as like the ADHD stuff. I am very ADHD and I have to have several things going on in order to accomplish anything. The other day I was working in the garage and I am...
11:24building bee barn frames and I'm putting garden beds together and I was doing something else for rabbits and I was just switching. I'd get tired of fastening nuts and bolts, so I'd move to the bee frames and I'd put a couple frames together and then I'd go move to my rabbit stuff. It was just, it was a circle. Yeah, yeah, that's how he is too. Yeah, yeah.
11:49And I guess I at this point in my life, and I never thought I'd say that, but I thrive on chaos. We are kids are we have three of them and they're young and we homeschool. So they're home all the time. And my husband's gone pretty often for work. So, you know, a lot of the times I'm juggling the kids and the farm and making all of the stuff for our we we just recently actually started Big Whiskey Creek Naturals.
12:18which we're branching off to kind of do non-toxic living. So I've been prepping for that because our first farmers market was this weekend and it's been chaos, but it's almost felt like the most organized I've been. Yep. Yeah, I have such a hard time. I love him. I must say this, I love my husband to pieces, but I have such a hard time because of the...
12:48everything is all over the place all the time and he doesn't seem to notice and then all of a sudden like after months of this he's like my desk is a mess and he just blitzkriegs his desktop and just tosses things and sorts it out and gets it put away and filed and I'm like oh my god it's so beautiful but it's gonna last for five minutes. We call that rage cleaning. Yeah he calls it blitzkrieg
13:17thing but I pick like a week where I'm like okay the countertop really needs to get cleaned off and things need to get put away and I'm terrible because I'm a cook. I love to cook so I will leave like the coffee bag on the counter because I know I'm going to need it within six hours because I drink coffee all the time.
13:41So there's always a bag of coffee beans on the counter. There's always the coffee grinder on the counter. I don't have a coffee station. I wish that I did, because that would be organized. But I just, I am going through a thing right now where I feel like my house looks like a bomb went off in it. And I clean one thing.
14:02And 10 minutes later, it's a mess again. I'm like, oh my God, this is useless. Why am I even bothering to clean? You know? And it's that time of year. Everybody's outside. It is, it is. It's springtime. We're hardly inside, I feel like. So anytime somebody comes over, I'm like, okay, don't mind inside. We haven't been inside, so. Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like I am never actually clean for more than five minutes. Like the only time I feel really clean is the five minutes after I get out of the shower.
14:32Yes. I'm like, okay, I am going through something right now. I don't know what it is, but I need to get some organization back in my life. And the first thing I need to do is get a handle on me. And then I will know what I need to request from him. Yeah. So it's a thing I go through this about every five years where I'm like, okay, what am I doing? What? Why am I doing it? And what do I need
15:01What am I doing? We try and do five year plans, but I feel like it's just so hard. And it might just be the years of life we're in, I guess, or the stage that we're in where everybody's just constantly changing and something's always going on and the world's fluctuating so much that it's hard to get a good five year plan going, I feel like.
15:30Yeah, and I feel weird about saying we need to make a five-year plan because we're very much still in the throes of learning what we're doing here. So we're very immersed in, okay, so we've got this greenhouse now almost finished. What are we going to do with that? And clearly, a greenhouse is to start seeds in. It is to do maybe potted plants in. We're going to put in a couple raised beds so we can grow stuff quote unquote in-ground this fall.
16:00because it's a heated greenhouse. But my husband said the other day, he said, I think that we should start flowering, hanging plant pots next, next spring. And we can hang them from the beams in the greenhouse and we can have baskets ready for Mother's Day. So people can come and buy them at the greenhouse. I was like, oh my God, how many ideas do you have? He's like, well, I didn't know.
16:29He said, I didn't know the beams were going to be exposed. We'll be able to put eye hooks up there and hang baskets. And I was like, that is brilliant. But, oh, okay. And he said, you're starting to get overwhelmed with this. I said, I am. I said, honey, I said, I spent my years in the trenches raising four kids. And it was constant crazy. I said, I've had about a year and a half of not constant crazy. Cause we finally got settled in here.
16:57I said, and now I feel like we're ramping back up to constant crazy. I said, I can't handle it anymore. I'm going to be 55 in November. I said, I would like my quote unquote golden years to not be nuts. Yeah. Okay. He said, I understand. He said, I, he said, I think that when you see the potted plants, the hanging potted plants, you will be happy that we're doing it. I said, yeah, I think so too. I said, but.
17:25Could you maybe do a little preamble from now on when you're going to generate or share a new idea? I had a thought it would be a good start. I was going to say I feel like that is my husband. My husband is you and I am your husband. And it's not gender specific by any means. Not at all. So now we've talked about philosophy and getting older and chaos and calm.
17:55You have the black chickens. I don't know what they're called. Yes, the I am Samanis. Yeah, those. They do not lay black colored eggs, I read. They do not. I always get asked that, but they actually lay a very light tan almost pinkish egg. But everything about them is black, right? Yeah, yeah. Their meat, their organs, their blood's not, but
18:21Um, the, uh, we actually did get black layers, but those are kaiugas for ducks and they only stay black for the first kind of couple of lays and then it has to reset yearly. Oh, okay. Yeah. I've been reading about these, these black chickens that their, their wings, their feathers are black, their skin is black, their meat, their meat is dark. Yes. Their meat's very dark. And I've never seen one before and I saw that you have them and I was like, Ooh, I need to ask her.
18:50because I thought that they didn't have black eggs, but who knows? No, they sadly don't. We have a lot of rainbow eggs, and black eggs are the elusive. Yeah, I don't, I mean, you said that the one you were just mentioning has a black egg, but it doesn't, they don't continue to lay them. Yeah, they're just the bloom on the outside. So the actual eggs are like, they can be a light blue, but they're more white, and then they just have a...
19:18black dark gray bloom. Okay. All right. Thank you for clearing that up. I thought that was the case, but I thought I would ask. And then tell me about what you're doing with the soaps and stuff. It all kind of just started because we got goats. I knew that I wanted to switch us to, you know, more of a natural lifestyle. And so
19:45was just the first step. We have so much milk. So it's easy, you know, to freeze some and then make a batch of soap. And it kind of blossomed into, okay, well, let's get rid of all the toxic stuff. So now I'm making, you know, tooth powder and healing salves and just all sorts of stuff to promote a more healthy, holistic lifestyle.
20:14It's so, okay, it's not easy to do, but it's simple. It's really simple to do. Yes, yes, and that's something that I'm hoping to get into. I hope my goal is that I can make blog posts to share the recipes, because I want everybody to have access to it, but if they don't have the time or the actual physical things to make the products, then I want to be able to provide that for them.
20:43Yeah, we do soaps, we do lip balms, we do salves, we do candles. And it's really weird because to me all of that is like cooking because it's all chemistry. And I love to cook. So when I first made my first lip balm, I was like, this is very much like cooking. It's a recipe. And I really love the process of cooking.
21:08recipe making it. Yes. We're going to go back to the not chaotic thing again. It is very calming. It is very Zen. It is something that you have to focus on doing and you're not doing anything else while you're making something. Right. Yeah. I think a lot of people probably don't realize how much planning and researching goes into a lot of the formulations. We kind of
21:38when I'm making soaps and stuff. Yeah, and it's fun. Yeah. When we first made soaps, we made unsended soap because it was the easiest thing to do. And it's cold processed lye soap. Hey, I said it right. I usually say cold pressed and then I change it to processed. That one is the easiest to do because you're not messing around with essential oils or fragrance oils. Yep.
22:05And it worked great. I loved it. My skin didn't itch anymore. I, the reason we started making it is because I would get itchy from store bought soap and loved this stuff and our friends and neighbors love this stuff too. So we were like, we need to make more. And I said, I think we should do a lemon scented soap because I love lemon everything. And my husband was like, cool, what, what should we use to put in it to make it smell like lemon? And I said, I don't know. I have to look it up.
22:34So we ended up using lemon grass essential oil. Okay. And oh my God, it was lovely. Yes. And we screwed up the first batch. We over fatted it. I don't know what the word is. There's a word for that. Too much oil. Yeah. So it's very oily soap and it takes forever to cure and it doesn't look right and it's still slippery. And we screwed up the first batch. And so we made that the bathroom sink soap.
23:03because that way nobody slipped in the shower with the oils. And so my hands smelled like lemon for like six months because I would use it every time I washed my hands in the bathroom. And it made the bathroom smell amazing. And then we finally got it figured out and made a batch of lemon scented soap for the bathtub and the shower. And it didn't screw up that time. So we gave that to our friends to try. And they were like, can you make other scents? And I said, yeah.
23:33and somebody said, can you do like a clove cinnamon one? And I didn't know if I could do a clove cinnamon one. So I looked that up too. And the clove cinnamon one, we also put sweet orange oil in it and oh, it's so lovely. So the reason I'm telling you this is the fun part of soaps is if you can find a fragrance oil that's soap safe, or if you can use an essential oil that you've never tried before.
24:02and it works. It's so exciting. It's so exciting. And it's been, it's been cool, just kind of like, not winging it, but winging it with patterns and swirls and stuff. I, I love being artistic. And soap is just kind of an extension of that. It's been fun. It's it's crafting in a, in a different manner. And I
24:30I keep getting told that I'm becoming a grandma already. But I'm oddly okay with that. You are not a grandma already. That's like telling someone who paints that they're a grandma. They're not a grandma. Most people have just lost touch with the simplistic
25:00side of things that anytime anybody goes back to those ways, they're old, you know? Or they're seen as old. Yeah, but you got to have the energy to do this stuff. And that's young. Yeah, it's very young. I climb into bed sometimes and I'm like, boy, how old am I?
25:27Uh-huh, yeah, after being on my feet most of the day yesterday and I'm not on my feet all day every day very often. And I was on my feet almost all day yesterday and when I crawled in bed last night, I had to like stretch before I crawled up and went to sleep. And I'm going to be 55. I am not 25. I do not have the energy that I used to have. And there's something about menopause that changes how your joints feel.
25:56and how your body feels and the energy levels that you have. So I don't have it. I don't have it anymore. You're 32, you said? I just turned 30 this year. Yeah, I've been saying that 30 was gonna be it for me for probably the better part of five years. And so far, it's been all it's supposed to be, or I've hoped it to be. So it's been fun, you know, thinking that maybe I wished this for myself.
26:26I, yeah. Yeah. Um, my thirties and forties were the best years of my life for feeling strong and being healthy and I don't know, feeling like I had the world licked, like, like I knew where I fit. I knew what I was doing. I didn't have to put up with people's crap anymore. Cause I just was like, nope. That makes me feel so good though. Yep. I hit 30 and I was like, okay, I do not have to be nice.
26:56I still have to be kind, but I don't have to be fake nice. If I don't like something, I'm allowed to say it. And so I was just like, okay, I don't appreciate this thing that you're doing. And if you could not do that anymore around me, that'd be great. And if you must persist, then I won't be around you. And that's not how I said it, but that's how I was. And the real cream of the crop of friends came to the top. Yeah. It was fabulous.
27:26I'm finding that more often than not, my friends are coming from extended family. So that's been fun. And it's been interesting re-evaluating myself, I feel like also. But everybody seems so scared to turn 30 that it was hard for me who was excited to turn 30 to be like, yeah, woohoo.
27:56It was the best times because I'm here for it. Yeah. My son who's in the other room who's 22, I had him at 32 years old. And I knew who I was with him. Yeah. When I had him. I had my daughter, my first child when I was 20 years old. And I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what I was doing. It was a constant learning curve. And she.
28:26says that I was the best mom ever, but my son, I feel like my last child, I feel like I had a better handle on myself. And I had already taken care of two babies and a stepson. So I knew what to do with a fourth child. So yeah, there's something to be said for age, but I'll tell you what, I had all the energy in the world for my daughter when I was 20.
28:55Yes. With the last baby I had when he was a newborn, she was 12, my stepson was 10, my second son of my body was four and a half, and the youngest was brand new. And oh my God, I was busy every second of every day. Yeah. I can vividly remember trying to take naps. Our oldest right now, he's eight and then we have a four-year-old and a two-year-old little girls.
29:25and they are crazy. There is not a lot of time that goes by that mom's not being yelled or somebody's not yelling at each other. Yeah, our house was loud. And our house was 850 square feet of living space with my husband, my four kids and me. I don't know how big ours is, but it's not very big.
29:55Uh, we actually part of the house, the original house was just a one room house. Um, and this used to be, I feel like it used to be some sort of like farm yard. And this was just a little farm hand house and it's since been, you know, extinct, like expanded and built on and there's enough room for us, but I don't, I don't know for how much longer. Yeah.
30:22I understand. Believe me, I understand. We had three bedrooms and so my daughter had the small bedroom upstairs. The three boys were in the loft style bedroom off of her bedroom and then we had the bedroom downstairs. And as soon as my daughter moved out, the next oldest boy moved into the small room. And when he moved out, the next oldest boy moved into the small room. So when it was just my youngest at home,
30:52He had both bedrooms upstairs to himself. So one room was for gaming and one room was for sleeping. He was very excited about this turn of events. Oh, I can imagine. So yeah, it's, I don't know, every season of life is different and I am really enjoying this particular season because I'm not raising small children anymore. Yes. It was great while I was doing it. I loved every second of it,
31:22I'm glad that they're raised and they're adults and they can make their own food and do their own laundry and three of them live outside our house at this point. The youngest is still here. So it's kind of great to work myself out of that job as it were. I feel like we're very philosophical this morning. I didn't mean to do that. Okay. So back to Big Whiskey Creek Range. Do you guys, I understand that you're selling your...
31:52natural product stuff. Yeah. But are you selling eggs or meat or whatever too? Yeah. So we've been taking the eggs to the farmer's market. We haven't gotten into selling meat yet just because there's more stipulations. We looked into Iowa past the raw milk is legal.
32:16And we we looked into selling milk, but there's still so many holes to jump through like you have you can't have more than 10 Animals being milked at a time. You have to be testing your milk and the animals monthly It just becomes almost not worth it. It just negates itself. So our
32:41Our milk's all personal consumption and soap's been the easiest outlet for it. But our extra meat animals like rabbits, we sell those. Or our extra goats, we sell those. Okay. Can you use goat milk in a lotion? Yeah. I actually make goat milk lotion. Since it's...
33:07milk. I do use a natural preservative and I always tell people it's best stored in the refrigerator just because it won't be as stable. But you definitely can. It still has like the nourishing goat milk properties. Okay, I didn't know because I've heard a lot about goat milk soap. I've seen goat milk soap for sale, but I haven't seen a lot of goat milk lotions or
33:36It just becomes a little trickier because milk isn't as stable as water. Right. And in the soap, it doesn't matter because it goes through the saponification stage and then it basically cooks it sort of from the heat. Yeah. And the lotion, it doesn't have that chemical process, but chemical reaction that happens. Yeah. I love the word saponification. When I learned that that's what that's called.
34:04I was like, what a beautiful word. And I am a word nerd. I love words. I love reading. I love writing. I love talking. If you couldn't tell, I know. And so when I learn words like that, I try to use them correctly. And I've had so many people ask me about soap. And they're like, how does it work? How does it become soap? And I'm like, well, it goes through a process called saponification. And they'd go, what?
34:33And I say, so, ponification. And they say, oh, okay. Cause I say it too fast. And they're like, what does that mean? I'm like, basically it cooks. It gets hot and then it cools down. And in that process, it becomes soap. And they're like, that's a big word for that. Yes, it sure is. Yes. But there's something so musical about that word that every time I say it, I just grin inside my head. Yeah, it's a good word. I like it.
35:03Yeah, I love serendipity too. I think that serendipity is one of the best words ever invented. Serendipity basically means when everything comes together for the good. And I just, I love serendipity. I think it's a fantastic word and a fantastic promise. So that's my, my education for people day on words. I should do a podcast on books and word, but I'm just not there yet.
35:28Okay, Chebrai, I don't know why I'm so silly this morning and why we're doing Velocity 101, but I guess that's what the theme was for today. That's okay. I appreciate your time talking with me. And you guys have a website, right? Yes, we do. I'm actually today. I'll be getting it back up. We had market this weekend, so I took it down for inventory purposes, but it'll be back up today. OK, what is it? What's the website? BigW
35:58Sweet. So very easy. Yes. All right. Well, I hope that you have a wonderful day and keep doing what you're doing because you're doing it good. And thank you again. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye.
 

The Honeyberry Farm

Today I'm talking with Bernis at The Honeyberry Farm. You can follow along on Facebook as well. 
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 Bernis at the Honey Berry Farm. Good morning, Bernis. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm just great. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the honey berries are growing. Good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota for growing honey berries.
00:28Yep, we've had a week of rain and they're just loving it now that the sun's come out. Cool. So, tell me about yourself and Honey Berry Farm. Well, I grow honey berries along with my farmer husband, Jim, and we've been growing them for, well, about 14 years now. We planted our first ones in 2010 and we really like them. They are so...
00:55tasty and good and good for you. And we also offer, once we got into honeyberries, it kind of led, it was kind of the entry, you know, the gateway fruit drug. So we then got into tart cherries and currants and a whole bunch of other cold hearty specialty berries that we didn't know about, that we found out about just because we started to grow honeyberries.
01:22Nice. Are you up near the Canadian border? We're two hours south of the border of Minnesota with Manitoba. Okay. That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Okay. So how did you, how did you decide to start doing this? Well, it started in the winter of 2010 when I was looking through a garden catalog and I noticed this strange looking berry that was kind of oblong and never seen it. It's a berry like that before. Usually berries are round, you know, but this had...
01:52kind of an irregular shape and it was bright blue, very attractive, and it was called a honey berry. So I ordered a couple and later that spring I got my first two bare root plants. They look like dead sticks. I was skeptical. I didn't think they'd grow. I had never ordered bare root plants before, but I stuck them in the ground and...
02:13actually had 50% success. One of them did not break dormancy, but the other one did. And usually bare root plants are just fine, but once in a while there's a dent in the batch. And so I had my first honeyberry bush growing and then I went to Canada and Googled cold hardy fruit and I found out that the University of Saskatchewan was developing – they had a breeding program for something called Fast Gap and the more I read about it, I thought, wow.
02:42I think that's what I ordered this spring. So sure enough, it's the Japanese name that they use in Canada, Hascap. Whereas down here we call it honey berry just because it's a lot easier to pronounce and it's a honeysuckle. It's the same thing. It's a honeysuckle berry, a blue edible blue honeysuckle. So that's kind of how the journey started, except there was one other key factor. I went to visit a friend.
03:11at a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada there. And we got talking gardening and I said, I asked her, have you ever heard of these haskaps? And she says, well, my brother-in-law got some. She has some planted behind her house. You wanna go see? So I said, sure. And we went and there she had probably half a dozen bushes or more. And they were just starting to ripen. They had just started to turn blue. And I had my first taste. I've had a berry and it just, the skin was so.
03:39tender, it just melted in my mouth and it had this interesting flavor I hadn't ever tasted before and I asked my friend, well, what do you do with them? And she said, nothing, my son eats them all off the bush. Well, that's what you first do is eat them off the bush, but they are so good for so many purposes, for jam and toppings and...
04:07put in your pancakes and anything that you would do with a blueberry basically. Nice. So they don't taste like blueberries, right? Well, there's a much more complex flavor in most of them. But what I have to tell you is that honey berries, they need two parents. Most of them need two parents to produce fruit like apple trees. They need cross pollination. So every child, like humans, is unique.
04:35different. You never know what a seedling is going to taste like. They have a lot of different flavors ranging from very mild, almost bland, to very strong, to put it mildly, even nasty. That's why these breeding programs do a lot of research, tasting their berries to select the ones that taste the best and grow well.
05:05bigger ones that grow vigorously and they breed for, you know, a good size. And yeah, it's just a fascinating area of research fruit breeding that I got to learn about as well. So, okay. So what conditions did they like to grow? Because I grew up in Maine and we had wild blueberry plants all over my parents' property. And
05:30Blueberries really like it kind of dappled sunshine and they really like acidic soil. So what do honey berries like to grow in? That was exactly what drew me to honey berries because we don't have acidic soil. So it was going to be very difficult for us to grow blueberries. Honey berries just need a, they grow best in like a 5.5 to 7.5 pH. So not in acidic soil. They can even grow.
05:59update in half in Canada that they have very alkaline soil in some of the prairie provinces up there, but kind of in that range. And we're just at a six and a half, so we really have ideal conditions and kind of a sandy loam with heavy clay underneath soil. Once they get established, they're very drought tolerant, but like any young plant, it really needs some babying to start off with with adequate water.
06:29And they don't do well with competition from grass and weeds. So if you keep the grass away and water them the first couple of years, then you should be just fine. OK. And how much sun do they need? Well, up here, you know, in zones two to five, they seem to do fine and, you know, actually prefer probably full sun. Well, definitely up in here in zone three, they prefer full sun.
06:58warmer zone, six to eight, they do need some protection from that hot afternoon sun is preferable. It depends what climate zone you're in and also what varieties you're growing. Okay, because I was thinking about getting some honey berry plants and putting them in here. We're in zone 4B, I think, in Lasore, Minnesota.
07:26I just didn't know the growing conditions for it because we have full sun all day where I want to put them. So yeah, that would be great. They should thrive there. Yeah. And I don't want to grow like an acre of them, but just a couple to see how they do would be kind of fun. Yeah. So there's a couple different categories for fresh eating. We'd recommend one that we call Aurora while the University of Saskatchewan released one called Aurora.
07:53Aurora several years ago it's got a large oblong berry that has a very very nice kind of zingy flavor but not too zingy just a very very lovely flavor for fresh eating and you can do anything with it processing as well. If you want a large quantity of berries that are smaller you can go with something called check 17 berry blue.
08:19it can grow up to 10 feet tall and wide and produce a lot of berries that are smaller. So they're not so good for hand picking. You want to shake them off and then make your jam and it has a stronger, more intense flavor. So those are just kind of the two kind of extremes of where you can go with these plants on the size. Oh, the Aurora gets about five feet tall and wide.
08:48They have different, yeah, characteristics. I was going to say personalities, but yeah, characteristics. Very interesting. I didn't know they got that big. Sounds like they're huge plants. Well, that 10 footer is the largest one. But the other ones, most of them max out at five, six feet. The ones from the University of Saskatchewan have the larger berries and a little bit sweeter flavor. And then there are some later.
09:18blooming once they bloom. Well, they're in bloom right now in northern Saskatchewan when the early bloomers are just finishing. So that will extend your season as well, depending on when they bloom. So there's that aspect to consider as well. If you want them all to ripen the same time or you want to plant different varieties that will ripen across the spectrum. Okay, so when do you harvest them?
09:45Up here, we start around Father's Day and go through mid-July. Oh, so it's an earlier summer harvest. Yeah, the earlier ones, those would be the Russian ones from Siberia. They ripen just before the strawberries here. And then the mid-season and later ones would be in early July, early to mid July. Okay.
10:09And of course, the further south you go, you know, in zone four, you would be a week or two earlier than us. And the further south you go, you know, some people in the south have already finished their harvest. So, yeah. So, what do you do with all the honeyberries? Me personally, we freeze a lot. Yeah, we put them on our cereal in the morning, make smoothies. We've made lime out of them. There's just so many things you can do with them.
10:38They are a juicy berry, so if you're gonna make pie, it helps to mix them half and half with blueberries to give them a little bit more body, because they are really juicy. It's like eating jam if you make a pure honey berry pie. And the other difference between them and blueberries is for picking, since the skin of honey berries is so much softer, you just have to be a little bit more careful, like the berry juice can get all over me.
11:08If you aren't careful, the skin will be softer like raspberries. Oh, okay. So that's one of the reasons why you don't find them widespread in the grocery stores because it's a real challenge to, to ship the fresh fruit when the skin is tender. Cause they bruise so easily, I would guess. Well, yeah, the slightest puncture and then you got berry blood all over the place. Yeah. Gets really messy.
11:34So I prefer actually, we have a Yup'ik, we have two acres of Yup'ik and I really encourage people to come and pick their own berries, take their berries home and mess up their own kitchen, make their own jams. But we do have, we do make some jam for sale on site as well. Nice. So you grow cherries and other things too. Do you have people come and pick those as well? Oh yeah. Yeah. Anything that we grow here, we welcome.
12:01the public to come and pick, like I said, from Father's Day through the last fruit that ripens in the summer, it would be the currants, black currants, would be in mid to late July. And yeah, so we start out with the honey berries and then move into raspberries, Juneberries, known as Saskatoons in Canada, or service berries. They're all the same thing.
12:29Makes the best pie in the world even better than honey berry pie is the Saskatoon service berry Juneberry pie and Let's see. What else red white pink and black currants and I Think that's it for the summer fruits. Oh along with the cherries. So the cherries are in About the second week of July tart cherries now these grow on their own roots and they they do sucker so
12:58If you're in a town lot, you want to be considerate of your neighbors because they might not appreciate the cherry suckers coming up. But you can control the suckers by mowing. And these tart cherries are so cold hardy and they just make the best pie or juice. The tart cherry juice is so good for athletes that are needing to heal some of their...
13:27There's been studies done on that, on the health benefits. There's also been a lot of health studies done on the honeyberries, all those antioxidants. Just great berries, great for you and great boosting. Yeah, did I see that you grow aronia berries too? Yes, moving into the fall seeds, we have aronia which has an astringency that doesn't maybe
13:53what most people would appreciate fresh eating, but we have them just about every morning on our baked oatmeal. And I put them in banana bread. Once you bake them, that astringency dissipates and you can eat the whole berry, unlike a choke cherry that has a seed. So the roni is like a really firm blueberry with a little stronger flavor. And the plants are so productive. We can get 30 pounds or more out of one bush that's 10 years old. So.
14:22Very productive. The birds don't even eat them. The wasps would get into them. We've had a few years where the wasps liked them in the fall if it's a dry year. But very low maintenance and very attractive foliage. The leaves turn red in the fall. So that's our favorite fall berry, along with eronia, or I'm sorry, that was eronia. So along with elderberry is another fall ripening one. Grapes we have in the fall. Another one called seaberry.
14:52sea buckthorn, orange, citrusy berries, difficult to pick because there's some thorns, but it's a very healthy once again and an interesting flavor if you have the patience to pick them. Yeah, if you don't mind getting blooded by your plants, it's a good one to have. Okay, so when you bought your first honey berry plants, did you think that this is where you would end up now? Are you kidding? I was barely...
15:21I had a postage stamp size garden back then. I guess we had just started gardening, vegetable gardening, and then moving into getting some fruit bushes. So, you know, I had nothing prepared. I dug a hole in the middle of the lawn and stuck it in the berry bushes. Terrible place to plant them because the grass competes with them. I moved them later, but you know, you got to start somewhere. I guess my attitude is if I can grow them, anyone can grow them. And...
15:51You just start and learn as you go along. So yeah, I had, I came back from Canada. You asked how did we get into it? So I came back from Canada and I was familiar with, you know, Saskatoon, you picks and strawberry you picks. So I said to my husband, you know, I feel like kind of like a couple hundred plants cause they were just something different. You know, I wanted, and I thought, well, how about if we just get a couple hundred? I thought we could have a, just had a little mini you pick and have enough for ourselves. And so he asked me, well, how are you going to pay for them?
16:20And the answer just came immediately. I didn't even think about it. Just, well, I'll sell some, I said. So, so I'm kind of the, the public face of Honeybeer USA where I put up the website and, and, uh, do more of the public interface. But Jim is really the one that, uh, he was the one that had this idea to, to go big with it. And well, big for us. We're just, we're not a huge farm, but you know, we have both.
16:49three, four acres of fruit now, but, and he's, he puts so much of the manual labor in. So it's definitely a team effort, definitely. But yeah, between the two of us, we got my first couple hundred, 120 bushes down and I'd sold, well, out of 700, I was left with 120 and I was happy. And then a month later, he says to me, well, I think you should bring some more plants down from Canada. So that's how Honeyberry USA was born.
17:21Okay, so if you bring plants from Canada to the US, is there like a, I don't know, a tariff or a thing you have to do before you're allowed to bring them in or not? Well, first of all, there's a nursery license for selling them. And so we got set up with a nursery license. And then we got set up with our various propagators in there. And they're the ones that apply for the permits.
17:51the border has to verify that these plants have been inspected and are safe for import into the United States. So yeah, there's a few hoops to jump through, but you just learn a step at a time. And yeah, we source from all over the place. We actually don't propagate the plants, but we have propagators all over that we try and find the best plants.
18:18Yeah, and then distribute them. We do some growing out here as well for larger sizes. Yeah, it just, it's worked. Okay, I figured there were probably hoops to jump through.
18:36Yeah. So you think you're going to get a couple bushes and try it out? I'm going to talk to my husband about it because he is the gardener. He, he just, he's a fanatic about plants and dirt and watering and being outside in the evenings when he's done with work, because it's how he de stresses from his job. And I, we had talked about it a year or so ago because friends of ours in Cloquet, Minnesota have, they grow honey berries.
19:06I keep seeing her posts on Facebook about it. I was like, we should try growing honey berries. He said, what's a honey berry? And I said, it's like a blueberry, but it's not really a blueberry. It's a berry unto itself. And he said, what's involved? And I said, we get some plants and we put them in the ground and we see if they grow. That's what's involved. He says, we should think about that. But we've also been doing lots here for the last almost four years and it just got dropped. So.
19:34I think I'm gonna chat with them about it. When he gets home. There you go, this is the year. We're shipping for another week or so and we'd love to send you some. And along with that, you might wanna consider a cherry bush or two. You don't need a lot because they're very productive. Yeah, we have a couple sweet cherry trees growing. Oh wow, we can't grow sweet cherries up here in zone three. We don't know if they're gonna do anything yet. We just put them in last year, but they did bloom.
20:04the spring. So hopefully we'll have a couple cherries to try. Great. I don't know. We'll see what happens. The YouPick idea, I'm going to run that by him though for our tomatoes. He just put in 150 plus tomato plants over the weekend. Yes, definitely.
20:33farmers market. But it's always too many and he doesn't have as much time this year as he did last year. Last year he didn't have a jobby job he had the summer off. So he had lots of time to play in the garden and pick things and sell them. He's not gonna have quite that much time this summer so I'm gonna tell him that he might want to let people know that if they want to come while we're here and just pick tomatoes that would be great. Hey yeah!
21:01It's such an experience. You know, what I love about the Yup'ik is just seeing the happiness that it brings people. You know, the youngest that we've had here is 10 days old. Of course, she didn't know where she was, but she was happy out in the Berry Patch and the oldest in her 90s, you know, and anywhere in between. So it's just it's a great joy to share our farm with people, as I'm sure it would be for for you.
21:28Yeah, we've had people come in, but they come in to buy stuff that's already picked out of our farm stand shed. And if we're home, they always chat. They always stop to chat and say how pretty the garden is and what a great thing we've done since we moved in in growing a garden again, because nothing had been grown there in like 40 years. It was a pumpkin patch 40 years ago. Oh, wow. Yeah.
21:57so we get told stories about our place. We have a self-serve Yup'ik as well. The gates are open the evenings and self-serve way and pay. So you know, people want to come in after work and de-stress and enjoy it can do that.
22:16Yeah, where did you live before you got the place that you live now? Were you in town?
22:24Well, Jim grew up as a dairy farmer and then his dad passed away and they sold everything. I had worked actually overseas for several years. We met in our late 30s and everything that he owned pretty much fit in the trunk of his car and I didn't have much more.
22:51So we started cutting from scratch and found two and a half acres in his home area here in northern Saskatchewan, northern Minnesota. I'm from Saskatchewan. And built a little log cabin with the helpful friends who were very grateful and two and a half acres and just prayed about what are we going to do with this? We wanted to do something with the land, two and a half acres. And then spent several years doing some building and building houses and stuff.
23:21And then the housing slump 2008 hit, and we stopped building houses. And it just actually started doing some mowing lawns for some of the widows in town. You know, you just do what is put before you, and then this opportunity opened up, and we're just so grateful that it just one thing led to another, and now our land is productive, and we can share it with others.
23:49Yeah, the reason I ask is because we've lived here almost four years now and we lived in town. Like we lived very close to our neighbors in a small town. And when we first moved here, it was so wonderful to get up and go outside and have my coffee in the morning. And it was quiet. We have three acres, our nearest neighbors a quarter mile away. And it was just amazing to me to not hear cars going by in front of our house every five seconds.
24:18and to not hear neighbors making noise and not hear the dogs barking, you know, that kind of stuff. And after having been here, you know how you take things for granted once you've had them for a while? I stepped outside this morning and I was just, I took a minute and I was just listening to the cow that lives a quarter mile away, lowing and the rooster crowing and our chickens cackling. And I was like,
24:47Wow, I forgot how lovely it is here in the morning. It is so good to remind ourselves to do that. In fact, for this podcast, I took a lawn chair out behind the house and I'm doing that very thing. There's a hummingbird whirling around and other birds. Can you hear the birds in the background? Oh yes. Yep, that's not a recording. Yeah, no. No, it's just been a delight to.
25:16to chat with you Mary and reminisce over how we got where we are today and enjoy today and look forward to very season coming up here in about six weeks. Yeah, how crazy do your days get when it's time to start harvesting them? Well, you know, we just do what we can, I guess. Because the most intensive thing about the Yup'ik is to...
25:45explain to people once they learn what a honey berry is and we show them some tips and tricks on harvesting them because if you hand pick them it's very therapeutic but it's very time consuming too so if you need to have a family to feed and you want to make a large quantity we have some we have some tricks like shaking the berries and then blowing the leaves off with a leaf blower and and just to make harvesting more and more efficient because there is a
26:14a limited amount of therapeutic time that we can spend handpicking. So that's what we do for ourselves. We do the shake and drop. But yeah, some people just like to come out and have an hour and hand pick whatever they want to do, you know, accommodate. Well, I guarantee you that picking honey berries is probably easier than getting wild rice from the places in Minnesota where you can actually go and harvest wild rice. I've done it once. I will never do it again. Yeah, we don't have so many worms. I hear it gets wormy.
26:44Um, it does. And you really have to think about what you're wearing because those little tiny kernels will get inside your clothes and they itch like crazy. I had no idea. Yeah, the main thing here is the berry blood. It gets purple. The kids love it. You know, they just smear their hands and they can, they don't worry about it. But yeah, you want to wear maybe something that you don't mind getting a little berry stain on it. So.
27:14Other than that, wear a purple shirt. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Well, Bernis, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. And, uh, I'm going to go check out your website and see about maybe getting some, uh, honey berry plants, maybe. All right. And if you're ever in the neighborhood, uh, stop by and we'll have a meet you in person. All right. Thank you so much, Bernice.
 

The Naked Rancher

Today I'm talking with Ginger at The Naked Rancher. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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 Ginger at the Naked Rancher. Good morning, Ginger. Good morning, Mary. How are you this morning? I'm great. You're in Texas, is that right? I am. The hill country of Texas.
00:26I wasn't sure and I couldn't figure it out from your Facebook page, but then I saw something I was like, I think she's in Texas. Okay, great. Tell me about yourself and the Naked Rancher. Well, thank you. I appreciate you even talking about it. Well, I was married to a gentleman in the army for 40 years and after our divorce, I had a ranch to run and it was my 29th move and I thought I'm going to make this work and...
00:56I had some girlfriends come over and they jokingly started calling me that. I'm not in the nude, so it's not about actual nudity. It's about being honest about trying to run a ranch and everything on it. From that, they suggested that I do stories about it and post about it. I also...
01:25I started doing that and then realized I should get a trademark for it. So I applied for the trademark for the name and the brand and I've been posting for four years now. That's awesome. So if you were married for 40 years, you must be over 50 years old, I would assume. I am. I am 63 years old.
01:50I'm impressed because I'm 54 and when I decided to start a podcast, I had a steep learning curve on all the technology behind it. So I'm impressed that you managed to do this four years ago. Yeah. Well, my children think I've got all adult grown children and they all think that I'm still not there yet. So. Oh, that's always going to be a thing. My 22 year old is like, I can't believe you're doing this now. I know. Isn't that funny?
02:20I'm like, you know what, old dogs can learn new tricks. I actually said that to him this morning. Well, see, and to me, it's all about the learning process. So I'm not the only one out there that's like you, that's learning and trying to make it work in today's world. Yeah, and honestly, the minute you stop being curious and the minute you stop trying new things, you might as well be six feet under. That's my take. I agree with you completely, and I enjoyed.
02:49learning new things and you know, I don't mind embarrassing myself or talking about things that I mess up on and have to redo. Yeah, because that's how you learn and how you teach. Yeah. Yeah. But I was going to say thank God for girlfriends. Your girlfriends helped out and I'm really glad we all have girlfriends because without them, I don't know where we would be. I agree completely. Okay. So I was talking with a lady
03:19at a local, I'm in Minnesota, and I live in Sibley County in Minnesota. And I was talking with a woman the other day who I interviewed, and she is, I don't know what her title is, but she's involved with the Water and Soil Conservation District in the next county over from us. And she was talking about how trying to market what they do has been a bear.
03:46and that they have not been really great at promoting what they do. And it's a county state agency thing. And I said, well, I said, it's a shame that the topics of homesteading and farming and ranching and growing things and raising animals for food or for milk or whatever you're raising them for isn't considered sexy. And I said,
04:13We watch grown men run down football fields and they get dirty and sweaty and people pay big money to see that. And I think there's nothing sexier than watching people work hard at doing something that they love and they get dirty and sweaty. Exactly, I agree with you. So then I happened to watch a couple of your videos on your Facebook page and I watched the one where your pants are trying to fall down and I was like that right there. That's sexy.
04:42Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no part of that is sexy. But you know what? It happens. Yeah, it sure does. And you were working and you were getting dirty and sweaty and your pants weren't up all the way. And that's okay. So you proved my point because people probably see that video and they're like, oh, oh, okay. Okay. What is she, what is she actually doing? And then they're interested. So, so, um,
05:10The lady that I talked to, her name is Holly. I was like, we need to enlist some people to make like promotional videos of people doing the work that they do in the garden or working with the animals or whatever they do and post that and be like, be a doer, it's sexy. There you go, I like that. So I said- It should be on a T-shirt. Yep, so I said on the interview, which will come out in two weeks.
05:38I said, if anybody out there wants to help Holly and I start a campaign like this, let me know. Well, I'll join in. Okay. Well, I'm thinking about it real hard. I haven't quite got it fleshed out, but I'm working on it. I think, no, I think that is great. There's a lot of us out there. It's just like you said, it's not in the forefront of sexy. Yeah. And I'm not sure that the TV networks would be interested in running our campaign because
06:06then all of their high paying advertisers would probably be like, we're not going to advertise with you if you're advertising people do it for themselves. Yeah. I don't know. It seems like a losing battle, but I thought it was a cute story. So I just shared it. I like it. Okay. So what do you do? What do you do at your place? Well, so I am rescue horses and have four that I've had now for five years. And
06:35Besides that, I literally, I do all the physical labor myself, whether it's part of my house, renovating something or, you know, picking up manure or plumbing, septic. I won't do electric. I'm not brave enough to do that. But I mean, you know, there is always something on the grounds or the land, the earth.
07:03that needs something and I literally record almost anything I do because you never know when something interesting will come out of it even if it's as ridiculous as do you turn the lights off when you leave the room or do you leave them on. So you think that's ridiculous but it's content and you know I just want to show basically what I do every day all day.
07:33that I actually enjoy it. And it's such a different life from what I had before being a military spouse. But I love the earth and the land and animals. I couldn't be happier with the horses, they're such a joy. Yeah, I'm gonna say it again. I get real twitchy around horses. There's many reasons why I love them. I think they are beautiful animals, but they are a big.
08:03animal and they are they are I feel like unless I got a Baby horse and raised it from whenever they can be away from mom I don't think I will ever be comfortable around a horse because I want to know What the horse is telling me as its owner? Yeah well, you know that's funny because it really is so true that they know whether you're sure about them or not and You just kind of have to be bossy with them
08:33even though they, like each of mine, have such a distinct and different personality. And they're such social animals. Like I said though, it's selfish for me because I just find it such a joy. And I do ride both English and Western, but do not with these. I just let them basically be law and art in my field and enjoy life. Well, that's some lovely art. I know, isn't it?
09:02Well, my eldest is 39. Yeah. So that's old for a horse. It is. Honestly, I think that the two most beautiful animals on earth are horses and deer. Oh, there you go. So anytime I see a horse, I'm just like, oh, they're so pretty. And then I'm like, I want to go hug it. And then I'm like, I'm not going to go hug that animal.
09:29I want to, but I'm just going to let it be where it is and be pretty. Well, I'm so sorry you had an unfortunate circumstance somewhere. Yeah. I'm sorry. It wasn't me. It was a friend. She got thrown from a horse in front of me. I was little. I was like eight or 10 years old and it made a very, very distinct impression upon me that horses...
09:54would require an inordinate amount of respect and wide berth on my part. Yeah, yeah. But I like them. You're right. They are huge beasts that, and I mean that lovingly, but you know, they definitely are stronger than us. Yes, yes they are. And the thing that scares me the most is that they, if you have one that's friendly, that's awesome.
10:23But if they come up behind you and bump you and you're not expecting it, you're gonna go flat on your face. Oh yeah, you know, you're exactly right. That happens often. So I don't really wanna have that happen, I'll pass. Yeah. But I do love horses and I do have friends that have horses and one of them, her name is Ginger. The horse's name is Ginger, actually. Ginger is quite a popular pet name. Yeah, and so Ginger is beautiful and she's friendly and she's gentle.
10:53and I will have her. But I'm just, I'm good. I like my dog. I like my barn cats who are friendly. I love both those too. But what about cattle? Same with cattle? I don't know because I haven't been around grown cattle. I have been around calves and I love the calves. They're so sweet. But I don't know. I don't think I wanna be around a bull. I think I'll pass on that. But.
11:22Yeah, I'm with you there. I did get to pet the milk cows at my dad's, oh, my dad's friend's farm. And the milk cows, as long as they were in their stalls, they were fine to pet, but I was never around them when they were free to move. Yeah. So, I don't know. It's fine. I just, we don't have room to have cows or horses where we live anyway. So it's not like it's in my face all the time. It's all good.
11:52So do you grow a garden? I do not. I do not have a green thumb. And I have tried repeatedly. And that is one thing I wish I would improve about myself. Because I think it would probably be not only rewarding, but relaxing to work in the earth and do that. Like I said, I've tried different things.
12:23videotape myself doing it and showing the fails that I have had doing it. Even with things that you think would be simple like tomatoes or potatoes or squash. I mean, I don't know. I hear those kind of things are easier to grow, but.
12:43Well, I don't know that anything is necessarily easy to grow. It's just a matter of having the right conditions to grow the thing you're trying to grow. Yeah, that's a good point. I can do cactus. Yep, you're in Texas, yep. There you go, absolutely. It likes the soil, but surprisingly enough, I'm in an area that has,
13:12quite a few vineyards. And in this soil, you'd be surprised, but that and olives seem to grow well. Yeah, it's because it's hot and I assume it's kind of dry. Yeah, you're right. You are right. Yep. And grapes and olives grow fantastically in Italy, so it would make sense that they would grow in Texas.
13:36Well, there you go. And I just started following a site, I don't know if you've heard of it, called Permies. Do you know it? Not yet, but I do now. I'll have to look it up. Well, it is about homesteading and people that are doing it even much more so than me. I mean, I'm just, you know, enjoying a life on a ranch and what comes along with it. But it is so interesting
14:06everything that they're doing. And there's a lot of people that, maybe they could be part of your interest in how sexy it is doing this. My doer campaign, yeah. There you go, it's called curlies.com. I have no connection to it except that I was interested in their homesteading and what they did on there.
14:33Is it P isn't Paul E R M I E S dot com? That is correct. Okay. I think it's from permaculture. Yes. I will look it up when I'm, when I have a minute this afternoon, because I bet you're right. And I bet I could talk to them and they would be like, yes, how do you want to do this? Um, okay, cool. Thank you. I, I absolutely love talking with you and everyone else I've talked with on the podcast, cause I learned so many new things that I didn't know about yet.
15:02There you go. That's why we should all do things like this or, you know, that's why I enjoy whether it's Tik Tok or Facebook or YouTube. There's just so much out there and so many people that are just brilliant at making it work. Mm hmm. Yup. I have.
15:24I have a brilliant husband who is in the middle of building us a heated greenhouse. He's not in the middle of it right this second, but he started it. Oh, how wonderful. Yeah, he started a couple of weekends ago. We got a grant from a Minnesota organization. And so I said, hey, you want to build a heated greenhouse? And he said, I sure do. We don't have the money. And I said, we do now. Oh my goodness. That is fabulous. Are y'all recording the build? Yes. We're taking photos.
15:54And the video, we're not really doing video because there's not much to video, you know, they're in the middle of building it and I'm doing other stuff. So, but it should be done by May 31st. Wow, that's soon. Uh huh. And once it's done, we're going to be able to extend our growing season. I've already talked about this on a couple episodes. I'm sure people are sick of hearing about it, but I'm excited about it. So I'm going to tell you about it real quick.
16:22I don't know what you know about Minnesota, but basically, last frost date or chance of frost date is usually the 15th of May. And it can frost in August. It hasn't happened in a long time, but it can. So we were finding that we were really at the mercy of a very short growing season. And
16:44we got asked by a private school if we could supply them with leafy greens and carrots and radishes and stuff for salads. And we can't grow that stuff past August, really. And so I was like, I would love to do that, but we don't have anything to sell you after August. And when I told my husband about it, he said, we need to build a heated greenhouse. And this was like two years ago.
17:12And I said, we don't have the money to build the heated greenhouse. And so this grant opportunity came through and I basically answered their questions and emailed it back. And I was like, if we get it, we get it. And I completely forgot about it. And then I got an email last October and I rem I remembered the name of the place the grant was through and it said that name and I was like, Oh, I wonder if we got it and I opened it and I went, Oh.
17:42And my husband was in the kitchen and he said, what is somebody dead? And I'm like, no. I said, you want to build a heated greenhouse? He said, I do. I said, good. I said, uh, I said, you want to build it this coming spring? And he was like, did we get the grant? I said, we did. So plan congratulations. That is fabulous. Thank you. So the plan is to be able to put the seedling babies that are on my desk in my living room and my kitchen table right now into the greenhouse.
18:11at once the greenhouse is actually dried in. You know, it's got the side door. And that way we can get stuff out of my house and then they get more sunshine instead of grow lights, which would be great. And then this fall, we're gonna do raised beds in the greenhouse and plant- I love it. Lettuces and carrots and radishes for this school. I'm so excited. That is fabulous. Because Farm to School,
18:38is just as good, if not better, than Farm to Table. And pretty much the same thing. Yeah. So that is great. Long story short, sorry, I'm so lit up and it's beautiful here today. And my tulips and my daffodils are blooming. And I'm just like, yes, spring is finally here. Oh, I'm happy for you. Oh, I'm telling you. It has not been a long, miserable winter. It's been a long, weird winter. And I'm really glad to see it go. Interesting.
19:08Anyway, I don't really know what else to ask you because I didn't know what you did. And I looked at your Facebook page and I was hoping you had a website, but you don't have a website. So I do actually you do. There's no link on your Facebook page. I do. There's not that's because we are in the midst. I mean, it's there, but we're in the midst of adding merchandise and other information to it.
19:34So it's boring at the moment, but it is the naked rancher.com. Oh, well, I should have just typed that in and check cause that would have been really obvious. But I mean, right now, like I said, we're in the midst of morphing it. So it's, it's, um, just a cover page right now, basically with me on it. But, um, yeah, no, I mean, it's there and we're expanding it and hope to, uh,
20:02I mean, fortunately, I've got people that call me to want to ranch it and come take care of their livestock, which is great. And to do some other friends do things at their homes and renovating and ideas. So it's, surprisingly enough, it's growing this late in my life. I think it's fantastic. I don't think that people die at 50, even though they're still alive. I think.
20:31I think the minute, especially women turn 40, a whole new version of your life opens up. You may not know what it is, but you hit 40 and you're like, I have no, I can't say the words left to give. Yeah. And I'm just going to do what comes next. And I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble. I'm going to say it anyway.
20:55You know the old cliche about when men go through midlife crisis is they buy a sports car and get a 24 year old girlfriend? Absolutely. Women start businesses. There you go. That's great. Why would you get in trouble for this? Because I don't want to slam men because I don't think men are that cavemanish anymore. I think a lot of improvement has happened. Yeah.
21:23in the last probably 25 years where men have been more, I don't know, welcomed into cooking and childcare and caring and nurturing. And they've stepped up. I know my husband, when I was pregnant with our son that we have together, we have four kids but two I had, one he had with a previous relationship and then my husband and I have the youngest who still lives here. And when I was pregnant with the youngest.
21:51My husband was all in on knowing everything about the pregnancy, about how it works, about talking to the baby. Oh, that's fabulous. And he just embraced the entire thing. And when he was home, because he was the breadwinner, he was gone 10 hours a day. But when he was home, when Littlest was a baby, he changed diapers and he gave baths and he read stories and the whole bit. Oh, that's wonderful.
22:21people and I don't want to man bash because I don't think it's fair and I don't want a woman bash because I don't think that's fair either. I think there are good people in the world. I think there are not so good people in the world and if you're lucky enough to know good people, keep them. Agree. That's my take on that. I agree completely. But I do. I think that women are so lucky to live in this day and age who are over 40.
22:51and your body is eventually gonna give out. There's no question, no one gets out alive, but while you can do what you can do, we have so many opportunities available to us now. Agree, and we shouldn't bash each other, so you're right. We should support and let people enjoy and start the second part of life or third part of life or wherever you might be and be successful at it.
23:20Yeah, and I also tend to not bash because I feel like the world has a way of dealing out its own, I don't know, rewards and punishment without my opinion being involved. So I'm just like, living well is the best revenge and I just leave it at that. It's just easy. There you go. I like that. That's good. So I try to be positive. Now, I'm not saying there aren't days where I'm like, oh, so-and-so has me so angry, you know, in my head, but I will never ever ever
23:50in public bash anybody because there is no point. It doesn't do any good. No, there's not. And it's a choice. Yeah. So, you know, anyways, well, no, I mean, I've enjoyed it. It's nice of you to even reach out to think about asking about the Naked Rancher who is not naked. No, you're transparent. You're not naked. That's it. Exactly. Yep. Exactly. So,
24:18So what's a typical day like for you? Well, I normally get up at 4 30 and I revise cause I post every morning on my social media accounts by 6 AM and then the horses, you know, they don't care if you're sick or whatever it is, there's, I go out to take care of them and check on them and.
24:48There's always something. This morning I was finishing, I've got a second floor. The home I live in was built in 1874 and was a stagecoach and pony express stop for two counties in Texas. Awesome. So just a wonderful historic home. But anyway, so on the second floor I had sanded and was sealing and repainted the
25:15porch on the screened-in porch on the second floor. And a couple of weeks ago, I did my concrete front porch again and the columns there. So there's always something around. I need to do the window sills. And then there's some earth I need to take care of, because the horses pulled the grass from the roots versus chomping on the top like a cow.
25:43And so I have to reseed and I need to get to that. And fortunately I've got some new growth there, but that's kind of it. It's just what's happening around here and whatever is on my list to have to do to keep up with it. So never a dull moment. No, never at all.
26:06And like I said, firstly, now I'm really enjoying the physical labor aspect of it. And like you said, we won't be able to do it forever, but right now I can. And I can't lift more than about 75 pounds at a time, but that's enough. You're doing better than I am. You know, we end up doing what we can, right? Yep. Absolutely. Um, part of the reason that I.
26:34One of the minor reasons I started the podcast is because I know that at some point I am not going to be able to do all the things that I can do now. And I wanted something that I could do sitting down and just talking with people. I think that's wonderful. And I know you know that, but just how many people enjoy listening to podcasts. And another thing, I do record audio books. And so...
27:03That's something else that I can do in the future, but I have 53 audio books to my name. Wow. In the big picture life, that's not very many. But at least I hadn't been fired. And with my ridiculous Southern accent, people still hire me to read their books. I love your accent. I think it's awesome. I worked. Well, you're generous. Thank you.
27:30I had to work really hard to get rid of my Maine accent when I moved to the Midwest, and I kind of miss having a Maine accent. Well see. Okay, but when you talk to friends and family, does it come back? A little. Not as much as I expected. My dad is 80, and he has lived in Maine basically his entire life. And he had to tone down his accent because he worked in hospitals as a...
27:59I can't remember the name of what he did, but he used to repair all the machines. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so he had to talk to people all over the place. So he really had to clean up his accent so people could understand him. So he had his work voice and he had his at home voice. There you go. And he had the most amazing down east Maine accent. It's the one that you think of when you think of a Maine accent.
28:24Oh, how cool. So he makes fun of me because I say things and I am very careful about trying to pronounce every letter in the word that I'm saying. And once in a while I slip into the big O that Minnesota uses. Like if I say snow, it's usually snow. And he laughs at me and he's like, you have been assimilated. He said, I don't hear any main accent in you at all anymore. Wow. I'm like, well, that was kind of the plan, babe.
28:54Yeah, yeah. I wish I was that good. I'm not. I mean, like I said, I'm on my 29th move, and you would think after all these years I would have lost this accent, but I have not. So, you know, I just got to accept it. It makes you sound like a Southern belle. Ah! That gets dirty. Oh, yes, that gets dirty. Yes. That gets dirty, yeah. Yup.
29:23All right, well, I can't think of anything else to ask you right now. Well, I've enjoyed it, Mary. Thank you. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it, Ginger. Absolutely. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Renville County Soil & Water Conservation District

Today I'm talking with Holly at the Renville County Soil & Water Conservation District. You can follow them on Facebook as well.
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.
00:15Today I'm talking with Holly at the Renville County Soil and Water Conservation District. Good morning Holly, how are you? Good morning Mary, I'm fantastic. How about yourself? I'm good and I'm not quite sure how to start this because I don't really know what you guys do exactly. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Sure. So, the Renville County Soil and Water Conservation District is a local government unit.
00:43And what we really focus on is working with landowners on promoting sustainable use of water and soil resources. So things that are going to have a direct benefit on water and soil for the county and the state. Okay. And does every county have an organization like yours or are you alone in this? Sure. So while I think we are unique and special.
01:13five Soan water conservation districts across the state. So almost every county has a Soan water conservation district. Okay, I'm in Sibley County, which is I think right next to Renville. It is. You are a neighbor. I am terrible at counties in Minnesota because there are so many of them. Yes, there is a lot. But yeah, you're directly east of us. Sibley is a Soan water district that we've partnered with on projects in the past and wonderful team over there.
01:43Okay, so tell me how this works. Sure. So really what a Soil and Water District does is we provide education and resources to stakeholders. And when we say stakeholders, that's anybody that uses water or soil in the state. So the bulk of our customers or clients that we work with on a regular basis are farmers, just because we're in a heavy ag region.
02:12And, but that doesn't mean that we can't help somebody who's got a tree in their yard that they think is sick, or if they want to do something to change water flow through their property, things like that. So, we really can kind of just do anything, like I said, related to water or solar resources. Okay. So if someone has a tree that they think is sick, how do they contact you? I mean, do they.
02:41Do they just ask around until they find out about you or do you guys promote what you do or how does it work? So it's interesting you bring that up, Mary, because even like my whole childhood and going through college, till I was in my senior year at college, I didn't really know what a Swinwater district is, right? And I don't know if we've always done a fantastic job of promoting ourselves. Historically...
03:07In Minnesota, soil and water districts really cut their teeth on tree programs. So if we back up just a little bit, we're a product of the dirty thirties. So what happened is the dust bowl and we had massive erosion and the government, US government created our partners, the natural resource conservation service. And as a result of that federal partnership.
03:36locals got involved and said, it's great, we have this federal partners, this federal money, but we also need local buy in and local support for programs. And so Soin Water Conservation Districts got organized, usually sometime between 1938 and 1960. And again, that varied on kind of those local stakeholders and just momentum of getting those organized. And so
04:05part of that was is our USDA partners would say, okay, you have this massive field erosion, you tore out your trees and you broke up all the prairie to farm it. And so we need to plant some trees here to stop that erosion. And that's really where Soan Water Districts got their feet under them was selling trees and designing and installing that. And then we expanded that to also designing and helping with installation.
04:32of structures out in the field where we would actually move soil to slow water flow or just adjust where wind would blow in a road soil.
04:44Okay. So like last year, we're surrounded by what used to be an alfalfa field. Sure. And is now a corn field. Yay. Um, I'm not a fan of corn. I, I sneeze when it does its thing in. Oh yeah, all that pollen, right? Yeah. Kind of kicks my butt every summer, but it's okay. Um, they put in drained hyle. Uh huh. I can't remember what was last summer or the summer before. I think it was the summer before.
05:15And is that something that you guys are involved in, or is that just something that the farmers just do on their own? So how we're actually involved with Green Tile is on the level of making sure that whatever is installed has no negative impact on what we have today for waters of the state, which includes lakes, rivers, and wetlands.
05:41So our involvement is a landowner wants to install tile. They first start with the USDA Farm Service Agency and say, I wanna put this tile in because the federal side of our partnership has to say, if you put in tile, you won't be impacting any wetlands. And then that request also flows to us because the state has different wetland rules than the feds. And so we need to make sure that locally, they're not.
06:10potentially going to alter a wetland by putting in this tile. So tile, I mean, we're in the prairie pothole, right? Yeah. And just west of you, Bird Island was truly an island. That's why we named that town Bird Island, because it was surrounded by water and wetlands. And now that we've altered and drained it with drain tile, our role in tile is to make sure that we're not gonna put any new tile in that could-
06:39negatively impact what we have left for weapons. Okay, that makes sense. So this is all very sciencey. There's a lot of science here. Okay. All right. All right. So I wasn't sure whether this was going to fit with my podcast, but I think that it does because I had no idea that you guys existed, number one. And number
07:08A lot of people don't know. And homesteaders can be a tenth of an acre a lot with the people living there growing a garden, or it can be a hundred acre or a hundred thousand acre, I doubt that, but it can be a humongous property where people are growing crop things, like commercial farming. So it does fall under that, but I'm not quite sure.
07:38what to ask here. I was going to say, obviously, good soil grows good plants, which means good food, which means good nutrition for people. Good water is extremely important. We all know this. So what do you have to say about that? Yeah. No, and it's interesting you say that because when you had asked if I'd be on your podcast, I then...
08:07hopped on and found some of your podcasts and listened. And to be candid, I kind of had the same cat. I'm like, oh, really different than her other guests. But really where we fit in is kind of like where we started our conversation. We're here to help anybody that is a stakeholder. And if you use water or soil, you're a stakeholder. We might not have all of the answers, but really we would have that network to hopefully find you the answers.
08:35And really where our niche is with homesteaders is that we can provide resources and education on things related to improving their soil health. We can also provide them with resources for potential grant funding. If they're looking, maybe they're a small homesteader and they want to put up a high tunnel to extend their growing season, we can help provide them some of the resources and tools to hopefully find some financial support for that. Or for example, maybe they're having trouble.
09:05with a certain pest in their garden, and we can come out and visit with them and talk about maybe changing that rotation or what are some other less intensive ways to manage that pest and talk about crop rotation and looking at, you know, reducing tillage in that scenario, things like that. So it's all scalable, everything we do. So that's where I think our niche is, is to help people with those resources.
09:32It's interesting you bring that up. I'm actually working with a customer right now that is taking a building site that has been abandoned for seven years. And we're basically mapping out their homestead plan and where they're going to put up some fence and how we're going to manage that grazing system and water development, all of that A to Z is what we can help with on the technical side to give advice and recommendations.
09:58And is that fun for you? Because if I was in your shoes, I would be so excited to help them. It's so fun. It's just energizing and just wonderful to be around that energy of trying something new. And just, I've been in my career a while and working with people that are excited about what they're doing is really fun. And that is a group of people that are usually really energetic and excited about it.
10:26And so it's really fun to be around and just to be creative. Sometimes we don't get to be creative enough and it's really fun to just throw out scenarios about what about this or have we thought about this? And yeah, no, I love it. Especially around the side of soil health. We do on our YouTube channel have several videos that we've done with landowners, just educational tools to share with customers. And it's just really fun to be around that energy and see something improve and change that.
10:56maybe we got to help advise on. Yeah, in you saying that, it makes me think about the fact that when we're doing this, whatever it is, cooking from scratch or growing plants or raising animals or anything like that, it's like when we were five and learning about the world on literally a small scale because we were all small at five years old.
11:25And I feel like homesteading and baking and cooking and raising animals is it really allows that child inside of us to come back out and, and dream and think through. I think that's exactly how I would describe it as well. So I grew up, um, I have a large family and I'm the youngest. And when I was three, my mom had to get a job off the farm. And so I spent a lot of my childhood.
11:53with my dad wherever he was. And if I wasn't with him, I was playing with the cats. I was plunking around in the grove, digging around, climbing trees, and just that excitement and trying new things and turning over a rock and finding a bunch of worms then, it's still thrilling for me now in my career. And so I completely agree. It's just that whimsy, that excitement of new, and also really your encouraging life versus maybe some of the
12:23other conventional systems of looking at making our food in that system. It's really more trying to figure out how to control or kill. Yeah. I guess I'm really glad that I'm talking to you because I have been trying to put my finger on why all the people that I talk with sounds so excited. Even if something bad happens, something good is around the corner and they know it and it's because it does, it brings that.
12:51I don't know that whimsy and that excitement and that why not to the front of your brain again. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Well, and... Go ahead. Sorry. I do want to recap and I didn't mean to cut you off, but you talked about, just touched on the health of what we're producing. One of the other cool things about a Soan Water District is we're governed by a local board of elected officials. And it's really that local impact.
13:20And so our board here in Renville is really creative and really open to just giving the staff the reins and letting us come up with ideas. And what we've been doing locally, just as a team on a small scale, is doing a nutrient density assessment with soils that are reduced till that have a diverse crop rotation, really a healthy soil system versus something that's a monoculture corn and soybean rotation with a lot of tillage. And what we've been doing is we've been growing sugar snap peas in those.
13:49environments. And we have found that local data is that soils that are in a healthy system where we're trying to mimic Mother Nature's historic tall grass prairie with diverse covers and not stirring the soil, we can grow produce peas that have 46.4% higher protein than if we're in a system where we're stirring the soil and doing conventional tillage with a monoculture. Wow. Yeah.
14:18That's kind of great. Yeah. Yeah. And like, it seems silly, but like, that's so fun. It gives me goosebumps every time we talk about it, because it's so fun to see, like, there's our measurement, there's our change, right? Like, we can be healthier, and we can produce less and be healthier if we look at trying to regeneratively farm and focus on soil health.
14:42Yes, and it's a quantifiable number, which is really hard to get when you're dealing with animals and plants. So yay, that's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, we think it's super fun too. Yeah. So I've heard a lot about no-till, no-tilling. And we grow a veggie garden, pretty big veggie garden every summer, and we sell it to farmers market, blah, blah, blah. This is my thing that I talk about all the time.
15:12And we do till because when we moved here in 2020, the yard, field, whatever it is, it's not big enough to be a field, but it's a very big, open, flat space. It was all grass and weeds. And there was no way we were going to be able to plant it without tilling it. And so we tilled it the first year. And
15:37We ended up buying a tiller attachment for our little tractor that we have because there was no other way to do it. What is the problem with tilling?
15:49So the challenge with tilling is what you're doing is you're actually breaking the soil aggregate. So if you think about where tall grass prairie here historically, and so there was always a living root in that system that was creating open pore space, that was creating areas for air and water, all the biology to move through the soil profile.
16:19iron or tillage, we create a scenario where that pore space collapses because we break the aggregate. And then what we end up with is a fluffy, fine, soft textured soil. And really what we want to see in soil is something that looks a lot more like cottage cheese or chocolate cake, some people like to call it too, where it's really erratic. There's lots of open holes and pore spaces. And that's a system that...
16:49is going to be more reactive to allowing things to cycle in more of a natural way. It's also going to prevent wind erosion because if you break the soil, like when you till your garden, I'm sure running the tiller across it, it's really fluffy and light, right? No, not, not especially. No, not unless it's been terribly dry. Sure. And it's like a conventional field. We often see though what it does in that scenario. Is it
17:19creates a system that breaks that aggregate, that soil aggregate, collapses in on itself. And then what happens is the silt, sand and clay particles that are in that soil separate. We're in an aggregate, they're all intermingled and hanging out together and supporting each other in their natural system. But now when they're separate and independent, they can erode and blow and they separate. Okay. So then that leads me to my next question, because I know you know the answer.
17:48How do we not till in a small vegetable garden? How do we not do that? Yeah, so there's not a right or wrong. There's just lots of options and opportunities. Some of the easier ways to do that is to look at planting more of a three sisters approach. Are you familiar with the three sisters? Yes. So
18:13something like that. And that's exactly what that scenario with the three sisters is doing, where we've got a grass from the corn. So you think about that root structure, then we've got a legume that's fixing nitrogen and feeding that corn in that system. And then we've got a broad leaf, some sort of squash or vine. So we've got a corn, a pea and a squash, for example. So we've got different leaf shapes that are photosynthesizing, we have different root structures as well.
18:43and those root structures are doing the tillage for you. Mm. Okay. And so that's maybe like just the first to start thinking about what that could look like. Okay. Go ahead. No, please. So what if we're not doing corn? Cause we don't grow corn. It could be any other thing too. Like in my garden, I tend to kind of just put like all the peas and the tomatoes and everything kind of all together.
19:10and everybody just kind of finds its balance. I also can appreciate though if you're on a commercial setting it's a little bit different right you need to be able to go down the whole pea row pick all the peas so you can take them to the farmers market. Yeah. So what we would look at in that scenario is we try and encourage people to plant something in between the rows that's going to be a low moisture competition or even as simple as like mulching it with straw or we've
19:39customer that's using chop up alfalfa bales to mulch in between the rows. And then basically what they do is they move over their row the next cropping year. Okay. And so they just kind of move in, it might only be four inches, six inches, but they're then not disturbing that soil in that scenario. What we're finding is then everything is cycling, right. And it's breaking everything down to continue to.
20:09remove that residue in between the rows. Okay, that makes sense. My dad has grown a garden forever and his take on healthy soil is when he sticks a shovel in the dirt and pulls a shovel of dirt out, if there's earthworms, it's good soil. Is that true? He's right. Yep. So earthworms are a really easy biological indicator. When we go around and dig around, we can find them.
20:37And what they're doing is fantastic, right? They're taking in residue and breaking it down. And it's now becoming carbon in your soil, which is then nitrogen. So fertilizer for your plants. Um, and so yeah, earthworms he's right, are a fantastic indicator, super visual. You don't need a microscope to find them. But honestly, if you think about earthworms too, sometimes if you find a spot that if you go out into your trees, maybe for example, and dig up a shovel
21:06historically we tend to find more in that undisturbed shovel full versus in an area that's tilled up. Okay. All right. That environment is different. So yeah, that helps. Thank you. Cause I've heard more about no-till and and hugelkultur. I don't think I'm saying it right, but heard about that, heard about spaghetti or lasagna method for growing stuff and
21:35Honestly, my husband tills the garden in the fall after he puts it to bed and then he throws some goat manure or chicken manure or some kind of animal manure on the garden. He lets it sit all winter and then he tills it one more time before he plants it in the spring. That's how he does it. So the other thing is too, as far as those that are no tilling in their garden, instead of doing that tillage in the fall.
22:04They're actually using some cover crops on their garden and then spreading their manure because if you've got that living root, it's going to take up and capture that manure and basically tie it up in its biomass. And then over the winter as it dies and breaks down, it releases that just like what he's doing kind of with the tillage by burying. So yeah, there's lots of ideas. I'm glad to visit with you.
22:31with other techniques or get you in contact with those that are doing other things. Yeah, I just, I never, I never know. He's, he's always watching videos on YouTube and he's like, I saw this thing, it's a new thing for gardening. And I'm like, yay. Because there's so many. And every winter he's like, I want to try this new thing this coming spring. And I'm like, uh-huh. Okay. Have at it. Let me know how it goes. Because
22:59There's so many things he's done and I'm like, I don't think that's going to be good. And he's like, no, it'll be great. And then it's not good. Um, one year he, when we lived at our old house, we had a very small garden, like very small and our neighbor had a bunch of leaves and, and seeds that have fallen from, I swear it was an ash tree, but I could be wrong. Sure. You can be right. And they have those little plot little helicopters at full.
23:28Yeah. And my, our neighbor was like, if you want some of the leaves to put on, you know, on the garden for the winter, come get them. And my husband was hell bent that he was going to do this. And I said, you know, you're going to have baby trees. Oh, it's so full of seed. Yeah. And he's like, no, no, no, they'll, they'll biodegrade. They'll be fine. I'm like, okay. Worst garden of our lives that following year. So
23:56Now when he says, I want to try this thing, I immediately, when he goes to work, I sit down with my computer and go on Google and look it up and see what's involved and what it does. Because I don't want to lose a garden again. It was terrible. Right. Well, and that brings up a really valuable point that you're talking about. Every time you're stirring that soil, you're actually bringing up hundreds and thousands of years of residual seed bank that's in that soil profile.
24:25We know sweet clover seed can lay dormant in the soil for up to 200 years and still be a viable seed. Wow. And so tons of other weeds in that same environment. So that's part of the challenge with every time you till your garden, you're actually creating more work for yourself all summer because now you've brought this seed to the surface, this weed seed, where it can get sunlight and water and grow. Exactly. Yep. And so that's exactly what happened with the leaves.
24:54when you brought in all those ash seeds. Yeah, luckily we don't live there anymore. So it's somebody else's problem now. It would have been nice. Have we not lost, well, we didn't lose everything. It just made it really difficult that summer. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. And then just one pulls out easy and then the next has a little bit deeper root and they're just not even easy to take care of when you're trying to hand deal with them. Yeah. My mom loves holly hot.
25:22and she asked me if we grow hollyhocks here and I was like absolutely not. Oh. And she said, why? They're so pretty. And I said, because they spread like wildfire. I said, I don't need a thousand hollyhock plants. I don't need a thousand morning glory plants because morning glory spread like wildfire too. Same thing. Yep. And she was like, oh, well ours just stay put. And I was like, well, where are they? And she said.
25:50down by the tree line and I said that's a really good place for them to be. So yeah, you've got to be aware of how things grow, not just that they grow, but how they grow and how they spread. So yeah. So we've been talking about a lot about soil. Tell me about water.
26:20is when we started a podcast, I should back up. We started a podcast on Earth Day, actually, April 22. And it's called Armored Soil Podcast. And it's really because everything that we do in the soil still directly impacts water. So if you think about a raindrop hitting the soil surface of the earth, if it hits the surface and runs off, now we've moved water and soil and potentially nutrients if it's a crop field.
26:48and into an environment we probably don't want it to be moved into. If that raindrop falls and hits the soil surface and infiltrates into the soil, now it's regenerating down into aquifers that we're drinking from. So, um, really it all does come back to the soil, everything that we're doing, even though we talk about water a lot. But what we help customers with is, um, access to water.
27:14We can provide support as far as like an advice on if you need a new well, we can get you connected to the resources to get a new well if it's failing. Helping customers find and abandon old wells, right? So we're capping off potential contaminations going into our aquifer. We also can help with if people have erosion on their crop field that has maybe been a result of too much water being in the wrong place. We can provide advice.
27:43and details on, you know, maybe some sort of structure, earthen structure needs to be installed there to slow the water down a little bit and allow it to infiltrate to prevent erosion. So those are kind of the pieces when we talk around water. We don't do much with irrigation. We only have one pivot in the whole county. So we don't regionally, we don't do a lot with that. But we also work with landowners adjacent to all of our open waters.
28:12We have the Minnesota River along our southern border and so we work a lot with landowners to make sure that we're not going to have an impact of water moving too quickly, leaving their property too fast to create erosion or to move things off of the field that we don't want to move like nutrients or soil. Okay. So because you're Renville County, are you limited to helping people in Renville County?
28:42We are not. Part of that is to just, you know, as a state, we all have different local goals and priorities. But as a state, in the last five years, we've moved more toward water planning on a watershed boundary versus a political boundary. So most of us do work in projects outside of our political boundary, but on a watershed boundary. But collectively, we still...
29:09visit with landowners anywhere from around the state and offer advice. It's just we might not have all the resources beyond our borders to know what's out there. If that makes sense? Yep. Yep, it does. Okay, I have one more question for you because I know you have a meeting at 10 and I'm sure you would like to get prepared for that too. This past winter, everyone who lives in Minnesota knows that this was a very, very strange winter. What do you think about that? Because I am...
29:38I am starting to get really concerned about the weather patterns because we've been here since 2020, where we live now. And the weather has been so erratic and it's either been lovely and calm or it's been intense and not calm. And I was told when I was 15 by my biology teacher that, well, our whole class was told.
30:06He said, I am going to step away from normal curriculum today, and we're going to talk about climate change. And I'm 54. 15, no one was talking about climate change in a very direct way. And he said, by the time you guys are in your 50s, you will see the actual effects of climate change. And I was 15.
30:31my classmates were 14, 15, 16, we didn't really know what he was saying. And now that I'm 54, I know exactly what he was telling us. So what do you think about this past winter and how bizarre it's been?
30:50So it certainly has been bizarre, and this is a personal opinion that I'll offer. We have seen and we know that we can have a direct microclimate change on areas, and we've seen it. Say for example, there's a customer that I met several years ago that has a ranch in the Chihuahuan Desert. And by increasing
31:18his stocking rate and starting to mob graze by putting more pounds of beef per acre on his ranch, he was able to increase the amount of vegetation on his soil and increase his amount of rainfall because now he created an environment, a microclimate where he had plants that were then impacting his direct climate because they were photosynthesizing. They were respirating and evaporating moisture.
31:48and created a scenario where he was actually getting seven inches more rain than neighbors five miles away in his microclimate. So I do think we are making some sort of changes. We know we've obviously changed the landscape, right? In an effort to grow crops, we've changed that landscape. And so I think we need to really think about trying to balance that back out, right?
32:18Maybe it's as small as every farm having a few acres of pollinator, right? That's constant green vegetation to balance that out, or maybe widening field borders to have green vegetation growing. Um, but I certainly think that we have made some sort of change in the atmosphere, um, with how we're operating on the planet today that is impacting us. Whether you call it global warming, climate change, whatever, um, we're doing something and I think we need to take a look to see.
32:48What do we need to do to change that, right, or try and correct? So I don't know, did I answer that? It's kind of, it's such a loaded question and it's something we talk about all the time at work just because we see it, right? And we know examples like the one I just gave where we can really have a positive change and impact. Yeah, and I know it's a loaded question, but I really want people thinking about it and talking about it. Yeah.
33:16Maybe in prompting the discussions, maybe someone who we don't even know yet will come up with something that everyone can get behind. Yeah. I want people to be thinking about this because honestly, it makes me upset. Sure. I have kids who one has a kid, so I have a grandchild, and I want there to be a world for my...
33:44descendants and at the rate we're going, it makes me really worry. I can't disagree. You know, we see it just in my career. I've seen fields, farm fields, and I'm sure you see them in your neighborhood as well, that the hilltops used to be black, but now they're tan and gray because we've eroded off that topsoil. And that's left. Where did that go? Right? Is that now in our atmosphere? Yeah. Is that in the river? Where? And so things like that. It is
34:14upsetting, especially on the visual side of things and like you said, extreme weather patterns. So I do think it is a conversation to have. Definitely. I just wish I had the answer. I wish I was the person that had that answer, how to get there. I think it's a lot of little things though, Mary. I think it's a lot of little changes. I think a lot of it's education as well. And just part of the thing that seems like with getting large scale
34:44It's really hard to think about what you're doing and maybe even admit that you haven't been doing it the best. Yeah. And, and then making that change, right? Like as humans, oof, I don't just ask my husband, I don't like to admit when I'm wrong. Uh huh. I certainly don't want to tell him. Yeah. But that's the piece of it too, right? And then changing that pattern. And that's really what we're trying to do here in the soul and water. And I think across the state, soul and waters and
35:12our partners at USDA are trying to do the same thing is really look at large scale adoption of soil health practices where we're not stirring the soil and trying to keep it armored as much as we can to kind of hopefully re-stabilize that entire environment and the globe. Yeah. I think part of the issue is that recycle, reduce, reuse, homestead, sustainability, blah, blah, blah. All those words.
35:42sexy. We need to figure out a way to make it sexy and shiny and new and bright so it gets attention. And it just makes me laugh because there is nothing sexier than seeing people outside in the fresh air working on things. And I don't know why people don't think that that all of this is is sexy and attractive. I don't understand. Yeah, I'm 100% with you like
36:12Absolutely. How do we change that mindset as a society that that's, that's a good look having dirt under your fingernails. Yeah. And sweat on your brow. And part of it is that it's dirty work. You're going to get sweaty and dirty if you're doing stuff. But we watch sports figures run down the football field and get sweaty and gross and they have the black stuff under their eyes.
36:42sexier than somebody outside working in the sunlight in a garden. What we really need is a marketer, right? That's what we need. Yeah. As a marketer. Yeah. To get. And I need, I understand how marketing works because I worked in marketing for a while. Sure. But I also know that it takes an idea and a story and then money to make the thing that people see. So if anybody out there is interested in
37:11Holly put out a really great video about gardening. Let me know. Yeah, definitely. That would be awesome. I doubt that there is. I love the awesome because that's what we wanna do. Yeah. I think it'd be great. Find some really handsome man and some really lovely lady and have them out in the garden planting things and then spraying the water off their faces with a hose. That'd be great. There we go. Why not? You've even got the intro right there. Sure, why not?
37:41Okay, well, I was mostly trying to lighten this up because that whole global warming subject gets real serious real quick. It does. And like you said, I'm not afraid of that either, but it's just, it's a loaded question. Yeah. And I'm going to keep asking it because there have to be conversations going on about this. That's what I say. That's what I think. And it's my podcast. So I can say it.
38:11All right, Holly, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. I didn't know how this was going to go, but I think it was really important to talk to you. Good. Well, I appreciate that. I'm really glad you reached out. I wasn't sure exactly what you were looking for either. So hopefully we got some good content for your listeners. I'm not sure I knew what I was looking for, but I was like soil and water conservation. This is important. How did you find us, Mary? Can I ask?
38:37I think just like I find everything else, I was scrolling through Facebook and it got fed to me in my feed, I think. Oh, cool. Okay, no, I was just curious. I don't remember. I am constantly looking at my phone. I should not be, but to find people to talk to, I kind of need Facebook to feed me more of what I'm looking for. And God love Facebook. I mean, it's probably not.
39:03great in some ways, but when I'm trying to find homesteaders and cottage food producers and crafters to talk with, it's fantastic. Oh yeah. No, it's a great way for them to be out there and marketing. Yeah. So, but that's how I found you, I think. And I was like, what is this? And then I thought, hey, I should talk to them and see if it's a fit. Cool. Well, I'm glad you reached out. I'm glad I did too. And thank you for your patience with my questions and thank you for
39:30walking a fine line on the answers of the loaded question, because I know you need to be careful and it's important. Yes, because I want to keep my job. Please, yes, keep your job. I think you're doing a fabulous thing. All right. You have a fantastic day. Sounds great. Thanks. You too, Mary. All right.
 
 

Crazy GF Cookies

Today I'm talking with Brittany at Crazy GF Cookies. You can follow her on Facebook as well.
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 Brittany at Crazy Gluten Free Cookies. Good morning, Brittany. How are you today? Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm great. Tell me about yourself and Crazy Gluten Free Cookies. Right. So...
00:29Um, I actually just started, uh, I call it crazy GF cookies, but yes, the GF stands for gluten free. Um, and I just started it back in January, but it's kind of been like a slow start. So, but I'm going to be at a farmer's market, um, come next month in May. And so, yeah, it's super exciting journey for me because I've never really done anything with
00:56restaurants or businesses or baking and stuff like that for at a professional level. So it's kind of a fun adventure for me just starting off slow with a cottage food bakery. Okay, so tell me how you got started. I read your About Me on your website, but I would love to have you share why you started doing this. Yeah, so I feel like when somebody asks like, oh, why are you doing the baking? They always are like, because I love to bake.
01:25That is not me. Mm-hmm. It is quite actually totally different. I actually got into it because I see a problem in our marketplace, especially I live in a smaller town outside of the Twin Cities, like an hour outside of the Twin Cities. And so I really don't even, this is even bigger problem where I live. But there's just nothing for people who have allergies and gluten.
01:54being one of those allergies, which a lot of people don't understand what gluten is. It's just a protein in wheat, but wheat products are all over the place. It's pretty much in everything. And so it's very difficult to eat out anywhere or to be safe anywhere. And that's my story because I didn't used to have to eat gluten-free. So I know what it's like to just go to a restaurant and order whatever you want.
02:23But yeah, back in 2012, I was basically told, hey, you're allergic to gluten. And I was like, can't I still eat it? And I was asking the doctor that and the doctor's like, you're going to die if you keep eating it. And so I had to go gluten free and it was awful. I mean, I love my pastas and my bread and the treats and the cookies and everything.
02:52And so for me, it was just an awful realization. And so my passion really lies with, you know, helping people who have allergies like I do, because it's like, we just don't have that many options. If we go to a restaurant, we have to always like ask a million questions. Like, do you have gluten-free on the menu? Is this gluten-free? Does it have wheat in it? Is it fried in the same fryer with everything else? Like...
03:20You know, so it's very difficult. And I just, I saw this as like a hole in our marketplace where there's really nothing that's super safe in our area and like that's dedicated gluten free. And so I was just like, you know what? We need something. We need something in our area. Cause more and more people are finding out that they're allergic to wheat, or they're just going gluten free for just to be healthier because in general, um, most people, even if they don't have an intolerance or an allergy to wheat.
03:50they actually do better when they're off of weight. They lose weight and they are healthier and stuff like that too. So that's really why I started it. Okay. The restaurant thing. The thing I have found if you ask the waitresses or the manager questions about what's in the food is you get one of two kinds of responses.
04:17Either they understand why you're asking and they're really kind and they're really sweet in their response, or they're really short with you because they're like, if you need to ask, you shouldn't be eating here. You know? Yeah, exactly. And I would feel like there's also the response of they have no idea. It's not that they're necessarily short with you, they just are so confused. They just don't know what you're talking about when you say gluten. And it's like, okay, well.
04:44it's wheat. Is there any wheat in it?" And they're like, I don't know, what is wheat? And it's like, that's basically flour. So anything that has flour in it, that's your typical flour that hasn't actually been purposely made gluten-free by picking rice flour or corn flour or something like that, is going to automatically have wheat in it. And so I try to explain it to people. And it's just, it's countless times I've tried to explain it to a waitress going like,
05:12this is what we is, like, and I have to explain it to them. And so then, but then that makes me feel less safe because I'm like, if I'm explaining it to you and you don't know, how do I, how can I trust your response and your answer? Because you probably don't understand still, even though I just explained it to you. Yeah, exactly. Um, I have an allergy or a, I don't know if it's an allergy, but it's a reaction to monosodium glutamate, MSG, and it gives me terrible headaches. And people will say that that's not true.
05:42But it is true. And there was a restaurant that I wanted to order a beef commercial from. And a lot of gravies have MSG in it. And I called to order and I was like, is your gravy house made and does it have MSG in it? And the lady on the phone...
06:02said, let me ask. And she put me on hold and went and asked. And she was like, we're really, really busy right now and I couldn't find anybody who had an answer. So just don't order that. And I was like, yep, that's fine. I'll get a burger. So it can be any food allergy that makes life miserable. So how did you come to find out that you had the allergy to gluten?
06:31So I was bent over in pain, like my stomach and just the center of my whole body was pretty much just in so much pain. And I was sick like all the time. And I went through this through childhood and stuff too. It took quite a few years before we finally identified the problem and it was just getting worse and worse for me to the point where I couldn't stand up straight anymore because it was just that bad.
07:00And then I ended up finding out after going off of gluten that there was other reactions that I didn't even realize were also attributed to it, such as acne, migraines, and stuff like that as well. But it wasn't even an official like they diagnosed me because like the typical way of diagnosing an actual celiac, someone who's highly allergic, is to take a piece of their colon out.
07:28and examine it with a microscope and all that, but I didn't go through that. I just needed someone to tell me, you're probably allergic to gluten and wheat and you need to go off of it and see if you feel better. And that's what I did. And yeah, I felt tons better. I could finally stand up again and all this stuff. So it definitely is a problem. And now I'm like so sensitive that, yeah, I can't walk through the bakery area at a grocery store. So.
07:58I get immediate headache if I'm by the bread or by the bakery. My son, I have a two-year-old son named Joshua, but I brought him over when he was still a couple months. I brought him over to the bakery section. I'm just so used to now if I go over there, I just hold my breath and I just run through real quick to grab whatever I need to grab and then run out. But he broke out in hives just in the area for a few seconds.
08:28And I was like, ah, he has it too. So now it's like extra precautions have to be in place because it's not just me now. It's also my son who I obviously want the best for him. And it's not just eating gluten, it's being around it. Yes. And that's what makes it even harder is because there's been restaurants that my family is like, oh, hey, let's go eat here. They say they have a gluten free option and I'll walk in and I'm immediately sick. And I'm like,
08:57Even if they have a gluten-free option here, there's absolutely no way I could eat it and be safe because just if walking in the environment is causing me issues, then that means that there's going to be what we call cross-contamination where there's going to be crumbs and stuff lying around or flour lying around that got into the gluten-free product. And oftentimes, restaurants call that gluten-sensitive, not gluten-free because there's probably still gluten in it. It's just that it wasn't made in...
09:26intentionally with gluten. So is it that you're breathing in the gluten, the wheat dust or particles in the air? Is that what's making the reaction happen? Yes. And I mean, places like, for instance, like a pizza joint, like they might toss the pizza dough up in the air and they've got all the flour if they're mixing their pizza dough, you know, from there. And so that just gets up in the air and you breathe it in. And so...
09:55My dad even went gluten-free for a while just for my sake, but he didn't have a sensitivity to it. When he went gluten-free and then he walked into a bakery area, he was like, wow, I can smell the bread. I can smell this stuff. He's like, I didn't know it had a smell before being gluten-free for a while. And I'm like, that's...
10:18That's funny, yeah. And I'm like, me either, really, because I didn't notice it either until I was gluten-free for at least a year before I started noticing that I wasn't even feeling good walking through the bakery areas. Wow. I didn't know that breathing it would cause a reaction too. That is good information to have. Okay. So what do you – do you just make cookies and what kind of cookies do you make? Yeah. So I'm starting off slowly. So yeah, I was just focusing on cookies.
10:46Um, so my newest ones that seem to have gotten a lot of attention online right now are the whoopie pies and the oatmeal cream pies. Those are two cookies that I have been missing since going gluten free. And it's been quite a few years. So I was like, why haven't I made these sooner? I don't understand. Like, why didn't I make, try to make them sooner because they are delicious. Um, but yeah, those kinds of cookies are especially what I'm focusing on right now is like the ones that like.
11:14you just don't find anywhere. Because you can find a chocolate chip cookie at different places. And I do make those as well. But it's the more unique ones that you just don't see anywhere. Okay. And what are you using for a flour, a wheat flour replacement in your cookies? Because I would love to know because I would love to make some too. Yeah. So I use the King Arthur brand of flour.
11:42It's a mixture of different flours. It's got rice flour in it, I think primarily, and then it probably has some other flours mixed in. There's tapioca flour and other things that you can get separately as just that flour, but I found that the ones that are mixed together, Pillsbury also makes a really good gluten-free flour mix, but they're just a little bit more expensive even than King Arthur.
12:11They do pretty well. Like you can't really tell the difference. I've had multiple people eat the cookies and go, it does not taste gluten-free. And I'm like, yeah, it's because of the flour that was probably chosen. Okay. So it has the same, I don't know, mouthfeel as a regular cookie? Yes. It tastes the same. It's got the same texture. I try to make sure that my cookies are moist enough to not crumble because that's one of the problems with gluten-free often.
12:40Even gluten-free store-bought stuff, it just crumbles immediately as you're trying to eat it. So when I try to make my cookies, I try to make sure they're moist enough so it's like a regular cookie you're biting into, not something that's going to crumble all over the place. Okay, and then the other question I have is, when you're making something with gluten-free flour, do you have to change the other ingredients or can you just use what you would normally use with wheat flour?
13:10Well, I would say that depends. Okay. Because I can use stuff like eggs. That's easy. And milk, if I'm making a dairy-free item too, because I also make dairy-free stuff, then I'm going to use either almond milk or oat milk or something like that. But there are some things that I do have to be careful of. For instance, like if I'm putting cinnamon or something into it.
13:37I have to be careful with that because even spices, most spices will have cross contamination with wheat or actually have wheat in them because a lot of things are fluffed up like to add. It's like wheat is cheap, so companies will add it into stuff. I mean, you'll find potato chips, which you'd think would just be potatoes and they would have wheat in them. And the same thing goes for spices. So I have to actually...
14:02very carefully look for spices that actually are labeled gluten-free in order to be able to use them and feel safe about it. I feel like you live in a world where you don't trust anything unless you make it yourself and I don't blame you at all. Yeah, exactly. It's really difficult. I mean, and I wish that we had more places that understood the allergies and understood like all this stuff. But yeah. I mean, it's...
14:31there's just not options out there. And that's really why I made it crazy GF cookies. Because it's like, we need an option. You know, I know that I wish there was an option. And I'm like, I know there's got to be other people out there wishing there's an option. Well, yeah, because cookies are their comfort food, their feel good food. And everybody should be able to eat a cookie now and then. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite, there's actually a gluten free food truck.
15:01And yeah, I don't partner with them or anything, but they are amazing. And they actually say on their truck that fair food should be fair. And I'm like, exactly, like we should be able to have gluten-free options, you know, things should be fair for us too, but there's just not much out there. I mean, and other allergies as well, of course. So I don't want to get too far away from what you're doing.
15:29How in the world do you shop for food at the store? Like food food. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of difficult. I mean, and I've, you know, over the years I've discovered more and more things. So I've had lots of problems with getting cross contaminated and then getting sick. And when I get sick, I'm sick for at least three days before it gets out of my system. So it is difficult. I...
15:57even found out a few months ago that frozen fruits and veggies, they sometimes spray them with some chemicals to kind of like preserve them. And in those chemicals is wheat. And I'm like, so I can't even trust like bags of frozen fruit and vegetables, because they could possibly have the wheat in them. And they don't have to disclose it because it's such a minute amount.
16:24that they don't have to disclose it on the packaging. So there are some fruits that I found that did say gluten-free on them, so then I was able to get those. But most items, yeah, no. It's a lot of going to the store, walking through the aisles, picking up stuff off the shelves, looking at the back of it, seeing if it contains any of the ingredients that would be wheat-related or if it actually says gluten-free. And basically, I know I'm safe if it says gluten-free, but if it doesn't say gluten-free, it's like a 50-50 chance. Jesus.
16:54I'm so glad that you were willing to talk with me because I had a vague understanding of people being allergic to gluten, but I have a much better understanding now. That's not fair. I'm really sorry that you're dealing with this. Yeah. And it's hard. I feel like the hardest part is when I'm dealing with other people. So if I'm dealing with people at my church or if I'm dealing with my family because it's like...
17:18I know they don't understand it and I would like to explain it to them and I've explained it to them multiple times, but there's still so much. I mean, like I said, I'm still learning some stuff, like of what actually has we in it. So it's like, it's hard to safely eat with family and friends. And that's the hardest part is because I feel bad because I'm like, I know I'm putting pressure on you guys that I don't want to put on you if you wanted to make us something for lunch or whatever. So I think that's really the hardest part. Yeah.
17:48Absolutely. I mean, the hardest part is I'm sure that you spend a good percentage of your time being anxious about what you're presented to eat. And that's you. And then you have to worry about how your friends and family react to your anxiety about it. Yes. Yes. It's a lot of anxiety. That's for sure. You hit that one right on the head. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
18:16I have to be really careful about when people say, what would you like me to make if we're going to their house because of the MSG thing. I also have an allergy to capsaicin that developed about two years ago and we're going to be going to visit friends sometime I think in June. And the male of the couple asked me what I would like to eat and I was like, well, what were you thinking of making?
18:43And he says, well, I could do ribs, I could do this, or I could do burgers. And I said, no hot pepper anything. I said, unless you would like to have me die in front of you. And he had already heard a little bit about it. And he's like, I don't want you to die in front of me. He said, no hot peppers. I was like, OK, good. I said, how about burgers? I said, burgers are a fairly easy thing to do. And we can just add what we want to them on the bun and eat them. He says, that's the easiest option.
19:12that would be great." I said, okay, thank you. And I thought it was lovely that he asked what we would like to eat, but I always feel weird about being like, I want plain salad and a glass of water. I mean, that's not fun food. That's not something you want to make for guests. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard, especially, yeah, that's rough. I feel like yours would be even harder because at least gluten has gotten more attention in the last few years.
19:42Yeah, you've got more stuff to worry about. I've got a double whammy, but at least I can really, really work around it. If I breathe something that has MSG on it, it doesn't bother me. If I know there's a jar of ground hot peppers, I'm probably not going to go smell it. So I know the dangers and I know what's going to happen and I can work around it. With you...
20:10You may not even know that someone was making pizza dough half an hour before they went to wherever you are and still have the flower in their hair or on their clothes. Yeah. So no, I mean, if we're going to play the who's got it worst game, I'm going to say you on this one. All right. And the capsaicin thing.
20:37I don't really love hot peppers anyway, so it's not a huge loss to me to not eat them. I'm totally fine with that. And bell peppers are fine. I can still eat sweet peppers and I love sweet peppers. So at least if it had to be one or the other, it was the one that I like that I didn't lose. Yeah. And I heard with people with allergies that a lot of times like it's always what they love is what they're losing.
21:03And so yeah, that was what it was for me. It's like, I loved pasta and bread and pizza. It's like all my favorite stuff. And then it's like, that was everything I lost. Luckily I can make it a different way and still have it. But like, yeah, at first it was so rough. I thought I could never eat that stuff again. And I had to only ever eat whole foods. Yeah. Yep. My favorite snack growing up was one of the single sized bags of Doritos.
21:33and half a Dr. Pepper. That was my favorite treat. Doritos has a ton of MSG in it. So I haven't eaten a Dorito in 25 years and I still would give my right foot to eat one chip. I really would. I loved the flavor of Doritos. They came out with a no MSG kind. I think it was the Cool Ranch ones.
22:03They lie. There's MSG in those too. Oh my goodness. It's just a little bit, but a little bit for me still kicks the headache. So yeah, it's just a thing and people have all kinds of allergies to all kinds of things and we just have to learn to work around it, I guess. Yes, yes, exactly. And that was part of the reason I started up my business. I've already had some people go on my Facebook page and like be f***ed.
22:31saying thank you from a gluten-free family and stuff like that. And it's just like, that's really why I started it was because those are the people that I have a heart for. And I'm like, yes, you're my people. Let's do this. We're going to do this together. Singing you the song of your people. Yes, exactly. Okay. So are you maybe thinking of later down the road doing like an actual bakery? Yes.
23:01I have been considering it. I mean, it's over, I don't even know, like the last six to seven years. I mean, I've been talking about like, oh, it'd be so cool to have a restaurant. Oh, it'd be so cool to have a bakery. Oh, it'd be so cool to have these other things. And I think that a lot of it is me just wishing that there was somebody who was doing it and then not seeing people do it. And even some of the gluten-free options that used to be available where I lived was they've gone out of business or they just…
23:31stop making the gluten-free options. And so I'm just like, what we really need is like a gluten-free restaurant. Like the whole restaurant gluten-free. And so this bakery is kind of my way of starting small, dipping my toes in the business side of things. But yeah, I would love to have like an actual storefront bakery or even eventually a restaurant that's totally gluten-free. But yeah, I'm new to business in general. So I'm just a…
23:59trying to dip my toes in it first and do the cottage food bakery out of my home so I don't have like all those startup costs right away. Yeah, because those are the things that will sink your ship faster than anything. Is there such a thing as a gluten-free restaurant in the United States right now? Oh, yes. There are dedicated gluten-free. There's actually in Minnesota, there's a really nice one.
24:26I love going to them there, but they're over in Burnsville. So for me, it's like a 40, 30 minute drive somewhere between there to get there. And they serve breakfast foods. So they have like waffles and pancakes and stuff like that. Their whole facility is gluten-free and they cater highly to dairy-free people as well. And they're sensitive to other allergens. And so they're amazing. So.
24:55I don't know, there's a few more, but a lot of them I feel like are very, they're like really closer to bigger cities. And in Minnesota, most of them are further up north. Because there are some dedicated gluten-free bakeries as well, but they're further up north and I'm further down south. And so there's really nothing down here, which is such a bummer because it's like I don't like traveling to three hours to go get dedicated gluten-free stuff.
25:24Yeah, that's a big ask. Yeah. Yeah, and I've done it. I've done it. It is a lot. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, how is it going? I mean, you said that people are commenting and saying thank you from another gluten-free family, but how is it going? Are you feeling in the weeds? Are you feeling like you have a handle on what you're doing? Are you... Where are you at with it?
25:54I would say in general, I just feel a little overwhelmed right now. But I mean, part of that is just because I have a two-year-old. And so, and I'm a stay at home parent. So it's like, I'm trying to parent him while also trying to get this bakery stuff up and running and I was experimenting with different recipes. So it is a little overwhelming. I've had a few sales. I haven't had that many, like less than I would have expected. But then again,
26:19I also haven't been promoting myself as well as I probably should have been. I just because I've been busy and it's like I turn around and then another disaster has happened in the living room because my son's thrown everything everywhere. So it's like I have to balance between parenting, keeping up with the house and starting this business and making orders for people. So I'm hoping though that I'll get more sales once I go to the farmer's market.
26:48in New Prague and so hoping for that. Yeah, is that on Saturdays? Do you know? Yes, that is Saturday mornings starting in May, the day before Mother's Day. I think it's what, May 11th? That's 9 a.m. to noon. Okay, because there's also a farmers market in Lesor, which is the town that I live in, which is only about 15 minutes from you. And it...
27:17It's really good. It's a really busy, thriving farmers market. So if you discover that the New Preg one isn't for you, you should check into the Lassour one. It's on Saturday mornings as well. Yeah. Yeah, I probably should. The reason I went with New Preg was because we used to live in New Preg. And so I was aware of that. And I have one of my friends, she does homemade peanut butter.
27:44and some other treats like that. And she's at that farmer's market too. And so I thought it would be fun. And I was like, okay, I can go see my friend and stuff too. Oh yeah. At the farmer's market. And yeah, and I just was aware of it because it's right there on Main Street. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm hoping that it's good, but yeah, I should check out that one too, because that one might even be a little bit closer to me than the new Preg one. Yeah.
28:11Yeah, we, my husband, I shouldn't say we, I don't sell anything at the farmers market because I don't go. I get real twitchy with lots of people around, so it's not my thing, but he loves it. But he started doing that last summer and he can't get over how fun it is and how many people actually come through during the day. LaSore is a small town. It's not much, it's not, it may be bigger than Belle Plaine. I don't think it is though.
28:40And so you wouldn't think that many people would swing by and see what's for sale, but they do. So I have one more question for you, and then I'm going to cut you loose because I'm sure that you would like to get back to doing your thing. If you take your gluten-free goods, all packaged up and pretty and lovely the way that I know you do them, and you go to the farmer's market or you sell them at
29:07I don't know, a store that decides they love your stuff and they want to sell it on their shelves. Does it become cross contaminated in a place that isn't gluten free?
29:21Yeah, so that would be the challenge. I mean, I don't know if I can right now with the cottage food bakery laws to sell it anywhere outside of just a farmer's market. I don't think other businesses can sell it off of their shelves. But yeah, when it comes to the farmer's market, I mean, it shouldn't be cross contaminated if it's on my tables, like if I bring my tables and everything.
29:50If there's gluten in the air, obviously I can't help that. But yeah, since the products are already packaged, gluten shouldn't be getting on them. And yeah, there is a slight risk, I guess, with people if they were to come and touch the boxes after touching wheat on one of the other tables. That would be a slight concern that, honestly, I hadn't thought about before, just now.
30:19the goodies themselves as long as they're already prepackaged, they shouldn't get stuff on them. Okay. I was wondering because that's what I would think of because I have a crazy brain that goes places that most people's brains don't go. Okay, Brittany, do me a favor after I stop the recording, don't leave because I need the recording to upload. I forgot to mention at the beginning. I really appreciate your time and I'm so glad that you talked to me.
30:48in a very vulnerable way about what you've been through with this because I learned things I had no idea existed regarding gluten allergies. So thank you. Well, thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk with you. Yeah, absolutely. I want to know more. I want to touch back with you a year from now and see where you're at with your business because I think you're on to something big here. Yeah. All right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you. You too. Bye.
 

Independence Gardens

Today I'm talking with Chonnie at Independence Gardens. You can follow them on Facebook as well.
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 Chonnie at Independence Gardens. Good morning, Chonnie. Good morning. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Good. Fantastic, actually. Good.
00:26I'm actually in Lewisville, Texas. So it's a town a little bit north of Dallas. It's kind of in a North Dallas area. Okay. I thought it was Texas, but I just wanted to make sure. All right. Well, tell me about yourself and Independence Gardens and what you guys do. So Independence Gardens is a local nonprofit that has roots in Lewisville, Texas. We've been around since 2013. And our overall mission is to provide children access to fresh food.
00:55through nutrition-based programs. And it includes sustainability programs. I was actually just recently had an opportunity to be at EarthX at 2024, that was held in Dallas. And I spoke about some of the programs that we had, specifically our Beanstalk project, which is our hydroponic system, which is a fairly new program for us. And so really it's just an opportunity for
01:22school communities to not only grow their own food, but to feed everyone in that school, in the heart of that school. And the program started in 2013. And I tell this story because nobody believes me. It started with a simple school lunch. And my daughter was in kindergarten at that time. And I just happened to be having lunch with her, of course, like everybody wants.
01:51first year of their child's public school years. And I remembered, right, our school lunch. I don't know if you remember your school lunch. Mine was like the best hamburger ever, right? It was the best hamburger I ever had. And, you know, everybody said it was kind of a hamburger, but not really a hamburger because it tasted like meat, but there were some additional fillers in it that made it. It was the best thing I remember when I was growing up.
02:17So when I had lunch with her and went through the line, she had, I remember this because she had chicken nuggets. She got her chocolate milk and it was green beans that did not look like green beans. And it was the weirdest color I'd ever seen. And I didn't really think much about it, but I should have had a warning when I went in to check in and the administrator asked me.
02:46if I brought her something to eat. And I'm like, absolutely not. I'm having lunch with her. And she said, well, maybe next time you can bring her something from either McDonald's or Chick-fil-A. And I'm like, that's odd. So as we went through the line and she kind of, you know, I saw these green beans. It was supposed to be green, but I don't know. I've never seen this color green beans before. She kind of picked her food a little bit, drank all of her chocolate milk of course.
03:14and basically threw about 80% of it away. I noticed that in every child around me as they threw away their food, and there was 80% of everything they had in their lunch tray they threw away. I understood why she was so hungry when she came home because she didn't eat. I left and I was checking out this administrator said,
03:42see maybe next time you need to bring her something else. And so I left that lunch. That's when I think the mission of the organization seeded itself because I could not consciously send my child to a place that is supposed to be the organization, the people that would nourish her mind and body when we can't even.
04:09solve the simplest things and that is what would they put in their body, right? To actually nourish their mind and get them on the path of success. And also, I couldn't believe that adults would actively say, I wouldn't eat that lunch. And then my thought is, then why are you feeding it to my child? So that's really, and I talk about her because she is going to be a senior this year, so she's graduating this year, and Independence Gardens started with her. And so that really just
04:37I surrounded myself with like-minded individuals and having a background in marketing and in health because I always say I started my journey in this sphere of food and health when I worked for the American Heart Association. So I was a marketing manager for them and I led part of the Heart Checkmark program. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's on the...
05:05It's on the cheer-grows boxes and it's like a heart with a check mark on it. And so I was really plugged in with the importance of how food impacted your body. And also at that time as well, the school that she was in was 55% Title I school. So everyone and those children received free or reduced lunch.
05:33in food deserts. So believe it or not, there is still a food desert in the US and roughly, I think back then there was 44 communities in North Texas alone that really qualified for that. So that's really the background of who I am. I'm founder of Independence Gardens. I serve as founder and executive director. We are a fully volunteer organization. I have
06:01My amazing board members, some of them have been with me since 2013. So pretty, pretty long time. Because they believe as we do, right? If we can just give children access to fresh food, then they're able to make healthier food choices as they grow. And I am also on the flip side of that, I lead a pediatric organization locally.
06:31their ramifications when we do not feed our children the right kind of food. That's a lot, right? That's a lot. That's awesome though, because that was everything that I needed to know to keep asking questions. And to share two stories about school lunches. I'm going to share mine. I was in school, oh my goodness, I graduated over 30 years ago.
06:58I did not eat the school lunches because number one, I was a terribly picky child and did not like any foods. I was really skinny. And number two, I knew that if I bought a very fine juice and a single serving size bag of Doritos, I would still have $3 left at the end of each day. And I wanted pocket money more than I wanted lunch. So that worked out slick.
07:26And then the other story is my kids, two of my sons came home from school one day. I think the older one was still in middle school and the younger one was in elementary school. And they both came up to me and said, can we start taking lunches from the leftovers from dinner? And I said, of course you can. Why? And my older one said, because school lunches aren't food.
07:53And I thought, yeah, you can certainly start taking cold lunches to school. I didn't think they'd want to because I thought that they would think it wasn't cool to do that. But we got them some very neutral lunch box, soft sided lunch boxes, and they started taking leftovers from dinner the night before. And they were very happy with that because school lunches are not typically food. Isn't that crazy? That just blows my mind.
08:22I continuously hear stories like that. And it's actually, it's fairly recent too, I mean, because we have been around since 2013 and I've been advocating for ways for us to really address not only the school lunch issue and ensuring every child has access to fresh food, but the obesity epidemic as well.
08:52It's counterintuitive, right? If they don't have access to fresh food, then how are they obese? Well, it's actually interlinked because they're eating processed foods. Because first of all, it's a lot less expensive to purchase for a lot of these families. It's fresh food just basically rots a lot. It doesn't last as long as all the foods that they're buying.
09:19And we always get asked why schools, why even do it in that realm. And I like to kind of say schools are the heart of communities. Elementary schools are truly the heart of communities. They're full from different neighborhoods. They bring a lot of families together, a lot of different cultures. And I think in a lot of these kids, especially if they fall within the parameters of...
09:49free and reduced lunch, if they get SNAP benefits, then that's the only food that they get. Like 90% of what they eat, they get from school lunches. And so, whenever they're throwing 80% of that away, then they're literally not feeding their body anything. And so, as a parent, it really surprises me whenever we get those lovely letters saying,
10:15We're doing testing this week, right? You know, standardized testing this week. Please make sure that your child is getting sleep, that you're supportive of your child before it's successful. And then my pushback is, and why don't we look at whether we're feeding them in the morning? I mean, you cannot expect them to succeed when we're not even feeding them the right type of food and the right combination of food.
10:45to fuel their mind and their body. So that's been, and I mean, it's been an ongoing journey. So I didn't think I would still be here. If you would have asked me in 2013 what I would be doing in 2024, I'd probably say, I don't think I would be doing this. So this is a passion project for me, which is kind of why it's...
11:12My daughter is 17 and my other tier are not even elementary schools anymore, but I am actively still, I like to say, in the trenches and getting my hands dirty. As we're putting together outdoor learning spaces, edible spaces through our Apple project or going and talking and actively talking about the newest initiative, which is the Beanstalk Project, which is our hydroponic systems that we're putting in schools, because we have to be actively.
11:42involved in not only teaching our children the link between food security and water sustainability, because it's so interlinked right now. And it's that our population is just going to get bigger and our water resources shrinking. So we really have to find ways to be able to feed not only the population, our communities.
12:09but also in a responsible and sustainable way. And the food thing for me, by the way, it's not just about the growing because we have our Come and Eat It program, which is our chef driven program that we created in 2014 as a trademark program for us. And I have a lot of chef friends. And so I've been in the industry. So I understand their passion for ensuring and especially creating fresh food. And so since
12:37I think this past May, it's kind of our first post-COVID event that we've done. We had over 825 kids participate. And so we hold it one day out of the year. And this year we just pushed it back to National Nutrition Month, which is March. And so our goal is to really take that program nationally and that it's a program that every elementary school can have access to in the future. So that, you know, that we have, we have a ton happening and it's all...
13:06I really, I love to talk about my board because they're kind of the heart of who we are and without their passion and because there's a lot of good people and humans out there that are really passionate about ensuring children are equipped with all the resources they need to succeed. And part of that is ensuring healthy nutrition that goes into their body as well. Absolutely. I agree a million percent with you.
13:36Not just 100, a million. That's how big. How big I agree with you. Yes. So are you only in Texas or is this outside, is it the whole United States? So we're based in Texas, but our program is national. So we were built, we were founded on the premise that we would be a national program. We are in conversations with some school districts in Arizona.
14:05And that's kind of where our foray is. And we actually, we work directly with the school district, because if we can get the buying from the school districts and then it's easier to get it into every school, right? So it doesn't really cost any of the schools to get our programs in place. They just have to want it. And so we work with them. And it's an easy sell, right? But then you would think it's an easy sell.
14:34But it's the hardest thing to kind of get into schools. And I understand that and I get that because the school gardening, I like to say, is not a new thing. It's been around for forever. The reason that we're a little bit different is we build it on relationships. We're very relationship and collaborative driven, meaning that when we go into a school, we actively build a community.
15:00And we stay for three years. We have a commitment to stay with the school for three years. And that includes funding if it's available for them for the entirety of the three years. And, um, and then we, we continue to keep them in our network until they tell us to leave, right? Um, so we're able to bring this program because our, I always like to say is, um,
15:25You have to think big, especially when you're a nonprofit. Whenever I think whenever you minimize the way you're thinking, you just don't grow as an organization. And they are, I just, I just did this study the other day, cause I wanted to kind of see there's over, I want to say 60,000 plus elementary schools in the country. And we need to be in every one of them. Um, the reason I say that is because if we're in every one of them, then
15:54communities automatically have access to fresh food. And that's really what we are. I'm not going out and saying, you know, a company needs to change the way they do business because we have active partners in Aramark. So Aramark is a food service provider in K-12 here in some school districts in Texas. And there are active partners that we partner with them on ensuring food is readily available. And we're collaborating with Come and Eat It.
16:23And we're actually going to be doing a chef battle. This is the first time we're announcing it in this kind of format. The chef battle is called Food Fight 2024. And a food fight is going to be held at a local elementary school. And we're actually going to be sending out a national invitation next week to chefs to come in for this event. And they will be creating a dish.
16:53that is within the parameters of the National School Lunch Program, even down to the dollar amount that every child gets. There's going to be a secret ingredient because I have a lot of chefs that are competitive. They're going to have about roughly 45 minutes to an hour to create the dish in the school cafeteria kitchen. They get to present their food to
17:23third, fourth and fifth graders, because they're at the end of the day, they're the ones that's going to eat it. The reason we're putting this event is twofold, right? Like I say, you're asking if it's national. The fresh food access is a national problem. We have to really address it. The reason we're doing it is because it's twofold. We want to see if the current dollar amount that is being given to children when it comes in that the food program for in-school lunches is sufficient. Is it sufficient?
17:53Or, I think they just came down with new guidelines when it comes to, I want to say sugar and salt. And so, are those guidelines acceptable? And can we actively work with local farmers, with local organizations that are doing amazing work when it comes to sustainability, food access, whatever that looks like? And can...
18:21Can organizations, companies like Aramark or school districts actively partner and bring in more fresh food for these kids? How does that look like? And then if it's not, and if it's a total waste and these kids say, we hate this food, then we know, okay, then let's start the conversation is how do we increase the per child amount when it comes to fresh food?
18:49To me, it's kind of the cost of not doing that is astronomical because obesity costs, from a healthcare perspective, by the way, because I've seen the numbers, it costs the healthcare industry over a billion dollars in obesity alone. And that is coming from those preventable diseases like diabetes.
19:18heart disease and things of that nature that could be prevented when they're younger. But we don't look at it that way. We are actively doing things to what I like to say to put a band-aid on the problem versus just ripping the freaking band-aid off. Let's look at it. Let's just put things in place.
19:48work and the most impactful solutions are never the easy ones. So yeah, absolutely. So I love what you're telling me and that's awesome. But my next question is with your program, how does this work? Are the kids growing food to have in their school lunches at their schools on their school property or how does this work?
20:18So our Apple project is our, what we call our outdoor edible learning spaces. And we positioned it that way because whenever you say that there is a learning component to something, then teachers tend to buy in a little bit more, right? It's not extra work on them at all.
20:43And so whenever a school comes to us, say, hey, we want one of your programs in our school, I said, okay, and they want the outdoor learning space, the Apple project. We always build to scale. Like if there is a thousand kids in that school, we will build a big enough raised bed system that every child will have a 12 by 12. So each child will experience square foot gardening in their school, right?
21:10And so, and that's because, and we teach those concepts. So those concepts that we teach. So they'll grow it and then depending, it really is depending on partnerships. So in our agreement, we always say that we want them to be able to raise edible, whether it's fruits, vegetables, herbs, whatever. And then they're able to either take that home, they're able to do cooking programs in their school with it. So they're able to work with
21:37either their in-house school lunch program provider or like with Aramark, Aramark does a lot of food tastings when it comes to our products. So they'll do tastings at the school. I think they're going to do one with the hydroponic system, whatever they're going there. So they're going to do food tastings on that. And they're able to utilize that. And it's an active partnership because whenever we started this program,
22:06The school district was really hesitant, right? Because they weren't really sure, like why would we need that specifically? And they thought that it would be detrimental for the kids to be able to use the product. But I'm like, and I couldn't understand that reasoning. And then, but as we act, as we collaborated and our partnership grew, they really understood the importance of growing it, taking it home, and then doing cooking programs. So they do cooking programs
22:36of our products. They can use it if like because our hydroponic systems are located in the cafeteria so they can actively see it. The kids are able to pick off of that and eat it if they choose to do that. And if there is enough of the product is really kind of, you know, the concern is if there is enough product, then they're able to really utilize that in what they are serving.
23:05So, and if they don't use it, then families are able to go into the schools and bring it home. So, it is always a community garden-ish for us. We want to make sure that it's open to the parents. And so, the kids can actively go out there. And if they're out there learning about the root system and they just happen to see a strawberry growing, then they're able to pick that food and eat it, right? That's really the intent of that.
23:34And also, because if we're doing an outdoor space with them, we automatically build, we automatically plant an orchard for them. So we have, it's always six different fruit trees that we plant on their campuses. And so that way the families and anyone really can go in and grab the fruit that's growing. And a lot of our campuses do that. Like they actively will tell their...
24:03students or and then their teachers in their community, they'll send out information to their school community to come and get some food. And so, and then they're actively eating it. So one of our campuses is in Central Elementary. They have a couple of raised beds that they've done and that we've supported, we've actively supported this year. And that one is purely community.
24:30The kids can eat from it. They can use it if they want to in the cafeteria. Their families can come and get that food. We actively say use the food. What they don't use, because it's built into our agreement, 10% needs to be donated to a local food program.
24:58a percentage of what they're growing to a local food program as well. Okay. So who tends to these gardens and to the fruit trees? So we have, we actively work with their volunteers. So whenever we go into a school, we create what we call a team. So one of our board members will always sit on a quarterly meeting with
25:24their principal, a PTA or PTO member, and then the teachers that are either championing this on their campus. And the reason that we do that is because we know that their PTA, PTO members will always volunteer. So we do help them with that. We provide them with guidelines on
25:48This is seasonally what you can plant. This is kind of how when you can harvest. We provide seeds, we provide all of that if we have a signed agreement with that campus. So who takes care of it is the, let's say a fourth grade class will actively have a bed out there and then they'll come out there and they'll plant. And because it just directly aligns with what they're learning,
26:18then they're utilizing it both as a learning opportunity as well as a way to tend the garden. And some of our campuses have had afterschool programs or they've incorporated it in their 4-H program and they're the ones that take care of those gardens or those spaces in their campuses. So the kids are learning life skills, they're learning math, they're learning science, biology, they're learning.
26:45words because they have to be able to read the packages of the seeds to know what they're supposed to do with them. So it's just like a little microcosm of education outside at the raised bed. It is. And I think COVID really kind of gave us an opportunity to showcase the importance of being outside, right? And it's because for a while there, we were just all in inside. And I laugh because when we first put the program in...
27:15A teacher says, oh, great. We can teach our kindergartners the difference in the root system after they go to Google. I'm like, why would you go to Google? Go outside. Go outside and take out a plant and then draw it that way. Draw it and then you can actually actively teach them how to do that. Which is kind of why it's called an Outdoor Edible Learning Space.
27:44They get to do everything out there. I always like to say is, if you're in art class, go outside, draw something. Then you're getting not only that natural sunlight that we always do, everybody's saying that everybody's lacking vitamin D because the lack of sun that a lot of our kids are getting, but they get to be immersive and it's experiential learning. It's always, and they get the concepts a lot faster.
28:13Like they can tell you the root system because they picked the plant, they touched it, they felt it, and especially if it's basil or mint or something that smells great. So all of a sudden, it's sensory learning, right? And you're learning, you're using all of your senses to learn a single concept. And so children learn a lot faster that way.
28:39And we're seeing that, and which is why a lot, all of our programming actually is built on the experiential approach and that it's immersive. And so to us, that's the only way that they will actively embrace the program and they'll have fun with it because you have to have fun, right? I think that fun makes learning a whole lot easier. Yes. So. Yes. Okay. The elementary school that my kids went to. Mm-hmm.
29:08The principal that was there when they were in school, I cannot remember her name and I love her. It makes me crazy that I can't remember her name right now. She started an outdoor garden for the school. It wasn't to feed the school, it wasn't to feed the community, but it was to have the kids have a chance to learn about how to grow food in a raised bed garden. It wasn't as big as what you're talking about, but she started that.
29:37And she also started a backpack program for the weekends for kids that were on the free and reduced lunch scale. And some of the foods that they grew went home in the backpacks for the kids. So I have a tiny little experience with this, of your program on a much smaller scale. And I loved what she was doing and I love what you're doing. And
30:05We actually are going to be doing a farm to school thing on our homestead this fall, I think. I think. A principal of a private school emailed me a couple years ago and said, could you supply us with leafy greens, carrots, and radishes for the school year, for salads for the kids? And I'm in Minnesota. We don't grow those things in the wintertime because it's frozen here.
30:35So I'm not going to get into this too much because I've already talked about it a lot on the podcast, but we got a grant to build a heated winter greenhouse and the greenhouse framing is up. We have to get it sited in and roofed. And then this fall we can extend our growing and grow lettuces and baby spinach and carrots and radishes for the school. So we're doing our little tiny part too to try to help.
31:03When I talked with the principal, I said, you might want to approach some other places that are doing what we're doing because we're not going to be able to grow enough for all your kids. Right. And he said, I already have emails out. I was like, good, keep doing that. So you're not the only one who thinks this is important. And I didn't think that you thought that you were the only one. There are lots and lots of people who want to see things like this happen all over the place.
31:30And you know what I think that, and I've been kind of thinking about this because, um, so I'm very big on collaboration, like so, so big on collaboration. It's not even funny. And, and, um, I, I see the passion and the work that a lot of these nonprofits are doing, like there are so many of them.
31:54And but I've seen this in kind of the corporate world that sometimes we all get caught up in our little silos, right? And then we kind of like, oh, this is my program. This is, you know, what we do. I'm not going to share it because if I share it, then I'll share the additional resources. But what I've found out is, is that when we work together and we work collectively, we could do so much more.
32:24I've been actually thinking about, and maybe we did something that maybe you and I can maybe work on, is there is an EarthX, right? Maybe there's already something like this, and I don't know. I could be like, oh, you're recreating a wheel. EarthX started by Trammell S. Crow here in Dallas, Fort Worth, and it really brings, it started to kind of bring in all of the individuals, all the brains that it's trying to look at sustainability. But I think there's an opportunity to do it when it comes to food access.
32:54when it comes to what we're doing. And so I would like to put together like a conference so we could like collectively see what we could do to kind of move the needle. Because I think that, I don't think we're moving the needle fast enough, right? And I think the reason why we're not moving the needle fast enough is because we're all working individually. Like, and...
33:22I am the first person to say, man, if one of my volunteers, or donors would wanna support what you're doing, more power to you. Because if you're doing things in your world that is going to impact someone, and I think that is more important than having me keep that donor, right? And it's interesting, my board is like, Shawnee, stop saying that. I was like, no, but I absolutely believe that.
33:51that I think that the reason that we are not moving the needle, not only on food access, but on obesity is because we're doing it all wrong. We are literally doing it by ourselves and it's individualistic. And it's really hard for organizations to say, I want to actively collaborate with you. And my thing is, is like, I want to actively collaborate with you. How do I do that? How do I find partnership?
34:20And so one of the things we kind of started that with a local organization here. And I think she, Elizabeth Dry, if you've not heard, she has an organization called Promise of Peace. And she started in Dials for Worth. She moved to Mineola and she's doing amazing things in that little town in East Texas. She reached out to us because she knew she was moving and she wanted us to see what you think, continue her work here. Absolutely. But then we actively started helping support what she's doing in Mineola.
34:49And that was different for us because we're like, man, we're actively supporting another organization. I'm like, well, the reason that we're doing that is because we may not reach where she is in that community, but with our support, we're actively doing and helping her with her mission, right, in that realm. And so she's doing the similar things that we're doing, but we're actively partnering with her to do that.
35:17And then I really honestly think that there is an opportunity for us to get together and just specifically target that one thing when it comes to food access. And there is a nugget and a way to do that. But I'm happy to hear that people, that schools are reaching out to you because I think that's important.
35:47say, let's all get together and like, let's figure this out. And then if we could do that, then I think that we can move the needle a lot faster. Yeah, absolutely. Because the more bodies and the more minds that are aligned and working together, the more things get done. Yes, yes. It's so hard when it's just one or two people trying to do backbreaking, frustrating work and
36:15gardening can be backbreaking and paperwork for an organization can be the most frustrating thing on earth. So if you've got a bunch of people who are willing to balance and share the load, it makes it so much more doable. Yeah. And I think that there are opportunities and so I've been really thinking about that. One of those things that you kind of have to start thinking about.
36:43making choices when you're listening to your head, your heart and your gut, kind of, you know, what is it, what it's saying. And it's been kind of leading me to that point where I'm like, I think we need to actively get together and, you know, and, and, and, and, and partner with organizations that so we can, we can impact each other's mission and we can make an impact on that. So we're actually doing that. And we have an event that we're doing in June.
37:10And it is through a film called A Fine Line. So A Fine Line is a documentary by Joanna James, and she is an amazing individual that's out of New York. And it is actually looking at the hospitality and restaurant industry and how the needle has not moved for executive female chefs.
37:37it is harder for them to get an executive chef role because they're female. And it's called the fine line of women's spaces in the kitchen. And so we partnered with her five years ago. I think we brought Kat Korra in for our coming edit program. And we just ended when all of this was in my head and starting to kind of like, how do we collaborate at the Universal Line and we're bringing the film back here. I think they are going to be, PepsiCo is bringing the film down here for them. And we're doing a co-fundraising event that night.
38:07not only to highlight how they're empowering women in that role, but how fresh fruit access and what they do really aligns. It's in that alignment that I think works well with organizations like that. I'd love to see alignments happen like that all over the place.
38:36courageous enough to say, okay, I can do that. I'm not, you know, we can grow a lot better as an organization if we actively align. And I went to a breakfast where there was a nonprofit consultant there that says nonprofits will only grow if they align. Like, you have to align. I mean, you cannot, we cannot sit in our silos because we can't grow as much as we want to grow.
39:06So I would love to find ways to kind of align with individuals that you have been around. Because our goal is to take this program nationally and we want to be in 60,000 of the elementary schools. That is our goal. And so we're going to reach it and we're going to reach it one way or the other. And if that's through alignment, then I think we have succeeded. Yeah. Yep. Again.
39:35million percent agree with you. But it's hard, right? It's so difficult. It is hard because people are afraid of change. I'm not. I'm really not afraid of the unknown. My husband, on the other hand, is terrified of the unknown. Yeah, so is my husband. Isn't that crazy? And I don't know if it's a male-female thing or if it's just a him thing. But I'm the one who's always like, I was thinking we should do this.
40:05And he goes, no. And I know that he's afraid and I say, okay. And then I just work on him for a little while and I just here and there bring up things that I read about the thing that I think we should do. And so and so has tried this part of the thing I wanted to do and this is how it went. And eventually he thinks it's his idea and then he wants to do it. Wow. Yeah. And then he's not afraid of it anymore. But...
40:33But honestly, people are terrified of change. You get comfortable in the way that things are done and you stay there. And also people are terrified at the work involved in changing their paradigm. Yeah. So that's where the pushback comes from, I feel like. Is, and you know, and I...
40:59When I am sitting in a room of leaders and we're doing coaching and I'm talking about how they grow as an individual, we always talk about fear. Fear is one of those things that a lot of leaders and a lot of individuals will tell you is the number one thing that really holds back their growth.
41:28And so I have, I've read a book on John Maxwell where he's talking about failing forward, right? And so failing forward is a way for you to push through that fear. Because if you know that you're going to, because I think it's not even about the fear. I think it's the fear of not doing well in failure. Like it's, as humans, I think we don't like
41:56the option of feeling. And we intrinsically, as individuals, we say, oh my gosh, I'm failing, then I must not be doing well. But I think that there are lessons to be learned in failure. And so, and I didn't fail, but if you can fail forward and keep moving, then fear is just an afterthought, right? You're like, but it's hard because I, trust me, I wake up.
42:25some days when I'm like, I don't know if I'm doing this right. I don't know if I'm doing this correctly. I don't know why I'm doing this. And those thoughts come through my head. And then I meet people like you. And people like you will actively reach out in moments that I'm hesitating or I question what I'm doing correctly or incorrectly. But I think the universe puts people in your path.
42:55And especially if it's something that God has said that this is something that you will do because you will make an impact and sometimes you just have to stay on that path even if it's hard. It's always about the journey and we forget that sometimes. We always want the end result, right? But I think the fun is in the journey.
43:23But it's always the hardest, right? It's fun, but it's hard and you hate it when you're doing it. But when you're at the end of it, you're like, okay, that was hard, but now I'm here. But you're right. The fear, I think, is one of those things that even as individuals, whether or not we're leaders in our community or kids, like teaching kids to push their fears is really hard and difficult too. But when you garden though...
43:53It teaches you failure when you're like, okay, why is that thing not growing? Or what did I do wrong? And you start thinking of ways to kind of fix it and you start thinking outside the box. And I think that I always like to say is gardening for me and I was just out there this morning because I was planting lavender. I was like, okay, how do I?
44:19know, how do I do it? And you kind of get lost in that zone of, I got to think this through. But what I was actually doing is I got to think through this problem. I don't know what I'm doing. But you're right. Yeah. So fear is fear, but if we can kind of push through it, I think we're better off. Yeah. Gardening is the thing that will teach you the high of success and the low
44:48A failure. Yep, absolutely. And also, I think that people are afraid to make the big ask. I was talking with a lady months ago, and she's a celebrity in Twin Cities, Minneapolis, St. Paul.
45:09And she's on TV. And I had sent her an email because I saw something about her being big into gardening and homesteading and stuff. And I asked her to be a guest on my podcast. And I'm a baby podcaster. I just started this in August last year. And it felt like a big ask to email her cold and just say, this is what I'm doing. Would you chat with me? And she did. She went on my podcast. Her episode's released. Her name is Elizabeth Reese. She is the nicest woman. And she...
45:37I talked to her after and I said, I didn't think you'd say yes. And she said, oh, she said, always go for the big ask. She said, what's the worst that happens? The person says no. Right? And so I like hitched up my big girl pants and I emailed Joel Salatin, who is big in the homesteading and gardening and farming community. And I said, I'd really love to talk to someone from Polyphase Farms, which is his place.
46:06on my podcast about what you're doing. Joel emailed me directly back and said that he would be honored and delighted to be on my podcast. I almost fell out of my chair. I was so excited I had tears in my eyes because I did the big ask and I got a yes and it's out and it's wonderful and he's a super nice man. If you had asked me last year at this time, if I had ever thought about speaking with Joel Salatin,
46:35on a podcast, I would have laughed myself stupid. So it's fear. It's thinking that you're going to be rejected or you're going to get hurt or you're going to die. And none of those things is probably going to happen. No, it's really not. So I tell my daughter all the time, I said, ask. What are they going to do? Say no? Then if they say no, find somewhere else because...
47:03The no is not a no. No is just an unopened door somewhere else. I mean, that's all it is. And so, but you know what though, sometimes that's kind of intrinsically, I was introduced when I spoke a few years ago, somebody says, no is not in her vocabulary. It's true, it's not. And said, but man, whenever I get the, it feels like the 10th no ever,
47:32You're like, okay, maybe I'm doing this wrong. But it's that fear, right? I think we are our own worst enemy all the time. But I'm glad that you took that leap because that shows courage and I'm glad that you did that. So I'm very happy to hear that they're saying yes because
47:58And what it is though is, and you are surrounding yourself with passionate people like you are. I am. That could only be the best thing. Only best things will happen when you do that. Yeah. I am so grateful and so astounded at the number of people who have been like, yes, I would love to talk with you. And it really has nothing to do with me.
48:27It has everything to do with them. People who love what they're doing want to share about it. Yes, but I think more so is that when they share their journey and their passion and other people hear it, it gives those people listening to it the courage to do what they wanna do, right? Yes.
48:50And so, which is, I'm kind of glad that you reached out because I would, like, I can talk about this program all day long, but I think more so is that what I hear all the time is, we hear how passionate you are about your program. And it makes me think about some of the things that I want to do and I'm passionate about. And it kind of gives them that courage to try it, right? Because then they're pushing through the fear.
49:19So I think what you're doing is amazing first and foremost, because you're not only putting yourself out there, but you are giving a platform for individuals to be brave enough to talk about their passion and be open with you on why they're doing what they're doing and how you guys can do it together. So I just wanna thank you for doing exactly what you're doing. So.
49:49Well, you are absolutely welcome and I love what I'm doing and I keep saying that on any time this comes up, people are like, thank you for doing what you're doing. I'm like, I'm doing it because I'm selfish. I love doing this. And it's okay to be selfish. It's okay to do that. It's okay to say, you know what, I'm doing what I love and I'm like, great. So yeah, no, I just, I know how hard it is to get the word out about whatever it is that you're doing. And we went through it last year.
50:18We started a business, we were selling lip balms and candles and homemade cold press, lie process, whatever soap, and selling at the farmers market and selling at our farm stand. And I'm not going to lie, we did not make a whole lot of money because trying to market yourself with a low budget is not the easiest thing ever. And I was like, if I was having trouble getting the word out, I know everybody else is having trouble.
50:46I'm going to start a podcast and let people talk about what they do because that seems like a brilliant idea. It is. And it is a brilliant idea. So it's actually an amazing idea. And I'm glad that you're doing that because then whatever... Because people always ask about the podcast that has been kind of brewing on our end. I'm like, I don't have the time for that right now. Clearly, it's just not happening right now. But then...
51:14I'm getting connected with people like you and then I see the value of that. So I may come and ask you to come be on our podcast to let us know what you're doing when it comes to homesteading because I'm not very familiar with that, by the way. Like homesteading, I need to be more familiar with that. I don't exactly know what goes into that. I can nutshell it for you. Homesteading is wanting to do everything yourself so that you don't have to pay the man.
51:43for what you need. It really is. I honestly we and the thing that I'm discovering is that a lot of the people that I have interviewed, they had a need that needed to be filled that they could fill themselves. Like I talked to a lady who has a kid who has like psoriasis or eczema or something and they couldn't find anything on the market to ease that up.
52:13And so she made her own lotions and her own soaps and it helped. And then people were like, can I buy some from you for mine? And it was just a need that they had that they figured out how to fix for themselves and then other people wanted the thing they made. And I may have to get that from you because my daughter has eczema and it's so, she's had it for forever. So, but.
52:39I love that because my husband and I were just talking about the possibility of like, what about home setting? Because there's a good thing that can you do that? And so I don't know. I don't know if because we kind of live in like a suburban area in North, far North Dallas. So I guess I should go ahead and research what would give us, you know,
53:06homesteading, right? And so, you know, what would that look like? And so, because he's like, you're turning the backyard into a farm. Uh-huh. I said, yes, I am. Can I have chickens too? I don't know. And so, he's like, I don't think we can do that. So, I don't know if HOA will allow to do that. So, I have to look into that because I am, like one of the things that, just from a personal perspective, I want to do is, because my mom is a doctor, by the way, and that's kind of how I'm going
53:36I got into the whole herbal thing, the herbal medication that has been around for thousands of years, right? I want to be able to build that. I want to be able to build it and then take it to a school like, you know, schools in Arizona and say, let's see what the Native Americans in this area were using for thousands of years when it comes to medication.
54:01And so I'm getting all these books because I want to be able to recreate it and say, okay, I don't necessarily, if I have a headache, I can just make this tea and then I can brew it because it's been shown by thousands of years of trials that that's what they did. And so that's what I'm doing. So that's one of my personal things because I'm all about...
54:29seeing if I can impact my health because I, I, I, unfortunately I have, I'm pre-pregnancy dispositioned because of my family for like type two diabetes, heart disease, et cetera, and things like that. So I want to be able to say, okay, I can't believe that there is not something in nature that can help that or even help alleviate it. So I'm not so dependent on medication, right? I just, I don't want to do that. So if you know of someone, because I'm really putting this together and I'm...
54:56documenting it and then I want to be able to put it as part of what Independence Gardens does that we're culturally really exploring how they're impacted, how different cultures have impacted food in a positive way when it comes to health. Yeah. You don't want to know. Let me know. So, I'm looking. Okay. I want you to come back a year from now and talk to me because I want to see what you're up to a year from now. Okay. So, we'll have to do that.
55:25And we're almost at an hour and I try to keep these to half an hour, but I didn't want to cut you off because this was really fun and really interesting. Sorry, I left the talk. You should have cut me off at 30 minutes. No, no, no, no. No, it's fine. If I needed to, I would have. Okay. So, Chonnie, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and I'm so impressed with what you've started with Independence Gardens. Thank you. And thank you for that. And I look forward to talking to you in a year.
55:53Yes, I will. We'll get it on the calendar at some point. I won't forget. I promise. Okay. I guess I should say, if you want to get to know our program, go to inde That would be good, right? Because my team was like, did you even mention the website? I'm like, yes, I did at the very end. I did. I promise. Yeah. And I'll put it in the description for the show too. So it'll be there. I appreciate you so much. So thank you for what you're doing. And if there is an opportunity for me to be able to help you in the future, please reach out and let me know.
56:23I'd be more than happy to do that. All right, thank you, Johnnie. Have a great day. Thank you, Mary. Have a good one. Bye.
 

New Beginnings Farmstead

Today I'm talking with self-described "A-team" of Egidio and Elisa Tinti, and Ryan, and Julie at New Beginnings Farmstead. You can follow them on Facebook as well.
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking to the team from New Beginnings Farmstead. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves? I'm Elisa Tinti. And I'm Julie Noble. Ryan Kuhn. And Jiddy Tinti. Okay. So now that we've done that, I have never interviewed four people in a group at the same time, so this is going to be fun.
00:27Tell me about what you guys do at New Beginnings Farms, Ted. Are you, Alisa? Well, we are about 130 acres in upstate New York, and we purchased this farm in 2015. At the time, we were not married, and we were looking for someplace that was between both of our homes so that we could start a life together. And my husband was...
00:55born and raised up in the mountains and I was born and raised in the city of Kingston. So we had many challenges when we bought this farm. Okay. And so what did you want the farm for? What was your plan? We just wanted a place kind of in between where I was living at the time and where she was living in the city. A true city mouse, country mouse type of situation. I grew up around bears and snakes.
01:24farm folk and firewood and she thought not she did not. That's correct. So when we when we bought the farm, one of the first things, of course, you know, we're walking around looking at the place and it had been a dairy farm for probably over 100 years and sat vacant for about 10 years. And everything was pretty overgrown. And one of the things that I thought of right away with one of our very large barns was to have a wedding venue and.
01:55My husband, well, at the time we weren't married, but he said out loud, who in the world would want to be married in a barn? And little did he know that a year later, he'd be getting married in a barn. But that's how we met our friend here, Ryan Coon, who is now part of our family. Okay. So what do you guys do now? You host weddings, right? Host weddings. And our main...
02:22Agricultural production revolves around firewood and maple syrup. We have a decent size maple collection system in place. Julie signed on that way. That's how she came on. Her current position, full-time job, gives us a tremendous amount of knowledge. She brings knowledge to the farm that, short of us identifying maple trees, a lot of the maple production that we've started with was small.
02:48We still consider ourselves small as compared to some of the other ones, but we're up to over 500 taps and our collection system is running on vacuum. Every year, the four of us go up to a conference in upstate New York and we learn more and more and more and add more and more and more. I think of the entire team, I'm the only one that wants to stop or slow down our production.
03:17the three of them out in the woods with their hard hats on, tapping trees and having a good old time. And you can see the smiles on their faces just thinking about it. And in the Sugar Shack, it's really a Ryan show. He's the one who's got the evaporator under control. Okay, so what's Julie's background? I am a sustainability coordinator, but my background is in environmental education. So
03:43teaching about the outdoors, getting people outdoors. And I had some, I worked on another nature center before this and was doing maple production there as well and teaching about maple. So I came into an operation that was already well run and I feel as though I brought a little bit of fun and a little bit of knowledge and some organizational skills that maybe needed to be upped a little bit here. That's true. Everything's about a checklist, check boxes, whiteboards. We are
04:13very efficient when it comes to planning and test management. There's lots of singing and dancing and having a good time. Right, Ryan? Well, life is nothing without music. That's true. So Ryan is our sugar maker. He kind of took under his wing. So our first evaporator was really an old wood stove that we converted. Lisa and I tried to do it up in, I say the country, but about 20 minutes away from here where my family was...
04:43born and raised and we did some maple. It was fun. She got the bug once she entered that small batch of syrup in our local county fair and won, took home the blue ribbon. And at that point she considered herself a sugar maker and wanted to increase. So we built our first evaporator, old school, took a, you know, everything's about recycle, we knew we'd use. And we took an old oil tank and lined it, put a draft system in it, researched it, talked to a bunch of people.
05:10welded the pants together and started making maple on a very small batch system. And over the time we just outgrew it because they kept tapping trees without my knowledge. And we had way too much sap collected and not enough time to burn it, to boil it. So, you know, and, you know, we still use a wood fire evaporator. So a lot of that is, is, you know, the team you see really cuts the firewood, splits the firewood, stacks the firewood, moves the firewood.
05:38And then ultimately the last person to handle it before it goes into the evaporator is Ryan. And he has a pretty good system in place where he's constantly keeping the heat, monitoring the flame, got a good temperature control. And we've kind of modernized the system over the years. And at this point, I dare say fun, but it can be humorous at times. Yeah. There's an old saying about firewood heats you at least three times. That's right. At least twice we used to hear. Yeah, that's true.
06:07Okay. So you're in, are you in New York? New York. Upstate New York. Okay. And does Ryan want to say anything or is he the child of one of the bunch? I'm not the one that talks a lot. That's okay. That's fine. I just do the work. Yeah. Well, he's got plenty to say. He's got plenty to say. Ryan, Ryan showed up one day with his then fiance and they came here to.
06:36look around because they were looking for a place to get married. And that was in 20 probably 2016 when you showed up. Yeah, the end of 2016 I came down. My now wife said, let's go look at this place. I want to get married in a barn and have a country style wedding. And because she grew up in the country, I grew up in the country. So we roll in and it's it's raining in the driveway. It's a sheet of ice. And this poor guy is just wandering around and.
07:04trying to figure out what to do next. And they kept telling us, we're gonna do so much before you get married and we have all this work to do, all these projects to do, it's gonna be beautiful. So in thinking about it, I said, well, that's a lot of work. And I have a construction background as well. And seeing all the stuff that needed to be done, I said, I'd love to give you a hand. Do you think we could barter on this for the venue?
07:32This guy was a little reluctant because about six months later, five months later, I just showed up one day because Lisa said, he's not going to ask for the help. He just come. So I'm sad today. I showed up with my tools and that's really where it began. I never left. Never left. He quickly became part of, part of the family. We do have a very large extended, what we call our farm family.
08:01which everybody really helps out with doing everything for maple sugar and for the wedding events as well. And what this is what we call the A-Team. This is our core four, actually five, are my brother-in-law. Jeff is not with us today, but he's normally with us quite a bit. And so this is what we refer to as our A-Team.
08:31There's nothing we don't tackle. Electrical work, plumbing work, any type of construction, excavation. I mean, and you know, we don't hire anybody to do anything. We do it. Something needs to be built or moved or, you know, at one point Ryan was tied up on something. We were moving the chicken coop up the driveway. Julie wasn't one tractor and at least in the other. And I'm trying to direct them up this long driveway without falling to pieces and they made it. The driveway got chewed up into a couple of things.
09:00Without chickens in it just yes they are. No chickens were damaged. Yeah and you know we for a long time we had bees unfortunately that's last past winter took its toll on the last hive but we plan on having those back but yeah with you know 100 plus acres part of that about 20 of those acres is a solar field that we put in a two megawatt solar field in the back. We were believers in renewable energy and sustainability.
09:29before Julie entered the picture, but now it's clearly driven by a lot of that. We use, when we can, solar and charged battery backup vacuum systems for some of the lines in the back. And every time we install one, she claps her hand and gets excited and does a little sun dance. But it was... And she does all of our Girl Scout tours. And she is known for her enthusiasm. And people actually ask for her by name now because she is pretty animated with her.
09:59with her tours. We all play a very distinct role here on the farm and none of the pieces would come together if we all didn't work together on it. That's fantastic. They say that it takes a village to raise a child. I think it takes a village to run a farmstead too. That's right. And this is not even our full-time job. This is not what we do for a living. That's right. Yeah, we all have full-time jobs, right? This is all in addition. But we say we put in full-time hours, right? Every time. There's something going on almost every day.
10:28The idea to try to do more is never without suggestion. People come here, and although I refer to my wife as the mastermind, and I suggest, we have quite a few visitors, especially during the Maple Weekends, New York State Maple Producers, their association holds two weekends in March, and they promote Maple Weekend. We have, dare say, thousand people come over those two weekends, and mostly from New York City, since we're pretty close.
10:58And we give them tours, we talk about the process, we have a gift shop set up, and it just amazes me how many people really have no idea about maple production, you know? And if you're raised in the city, I can understand it a lot better now, but yeah, the first time I tapped a tree for my wife, she saw that stuff dripping out, she's like, this is great, but it's kind of thin.
11:21It's not like that. It's not quiet. Yeah, it's gonna take a little while. I still have trouble identifying maple trees. And I joke, when Julie's not giving the tour and Ryan is busy running the evaporator and so somehow my name gets thrown into it. When I give a tour, I start the conversation with my wife's from the city. She doesn't understand. I mean, we got here, she said, hey, is this a maple tree? And I go, no, that's an oak. What about this one? That's a birch. What about that one? I said, that's a telephone.
11:49I appreciate that. There's a lot of camaraderie around here. A lot of teasing. There's a lot of ball-busting. That was fun though. Unless we pick on Ryan. We're trying to get his feelings. You guys definitely sound like East Coast folk. I'm originally from Maine. And the camaraderie
12:19amongst you reminds me a lot of the stuff that I used to have when I lived there too. Do you miss it a little bit? A lot, I do. I do, but Minnesota is not the same, but I call it a lateral move because really, Minnesota has the same weather, we have pretty much the same trees, we have the same grass, we have the same sky. I'm just not half an hour from the ocean and half an
12:49So that's how I breathe through my sadness. But yeah, it's weird because the East Coast has a bad rep. People think that people from the East Coast are rude and we're not very hospitable. Yeah, that's true. And honestly, I...
13:16felt like when I moved to the Midwest, everybody is very nice, but there's not the conversations that start on the East Coast. Like if you stand in line at the grocery store on the East Coast, people are going to talk. Here, no, people just kind of don't talk to each other in those situations. And I was very confused.
13:45I made it my purpose in life to make someone smile anytime I interacted with them just because I could. Yeah, that's true. You have to prepare to go to the grocery store around here. You have to be in the mindset for socializing and it's an event. It is. It's an event. You always know somebody who's related to somebody or you run into, you know, it's a small town where we are in Kingston. Yeah.
14:11Yeah, every time I would interact with someone the first six months that I lived in Minnesota, I would try to get them to look in the eye or say hello or smile or something. And after about two months of this, my husband was like, what are you doing? Stop talking to people. I said, trying to get a reaction. Let me do this.
14:35That was the first husband. I'm on the third husband and third time is the charm. So we think second, so it's true. The two of us. Good. Good. So anyway, yeah, New England and the East Coast are a very different animal from the Midwest. My mom is from Illinois. She was born there and lived there until she was 19 and married my dad and moved to Maine. So whenever I'm like, what is with this Midwest thing, I call my mom and I'm
15:04I'm like, was it like this for you when you were living in Illinois? And she's like, oh yeah, that's how people are. I'm like, okay, good. I'm not crazy. At least not on that front. So yes, I do miss, I do miss Maine a lot, but I also love where I live now. So it all worked out in the end. What counts. Yeah. We were fortunate where we're just a few miles outside the city of Kingston on a major highway, I think, you know, it's actually a state route, right? So for us.
15:33It's easy for people to get here. We're very fortunate that the event venue actually worked out. You know, it was an old barn. The property was vacant for over 10 years and for sale for 10 years on the market. When we initially looked at it, you know, because everything was moved and the operating this dairy operation and moved a couple of miles down the road to a new place, everything was overgrown. If you had taken a look at the barn or the house or the other barn or the road,
16:03It was an absolute mess. And my first words out of my wife at the time, we pulled in the driveway, she jumped out with this huge smile on her face, all the energy in the world and said, what do you think, what do you think, really? What do you think? And I said, get back in the car. I said, I am not rebuilding my life at 50 years old. Come on, this is crazy. This house needs to be torn down. Let's go, get in the car. And we canceled the appointment with the realtor. And I said, no, this is, and it's a hundred and some acres. We can't, there's no way we can afford this.
16:33You want it about 40 acres. Yeah, I'd like 30 or 40. I mean, like you said, I was born in the country and I like my privacy to some degree. And, you know, and I honestly, this is a running joke here. You know, I lived off a county road and I thought that was busy. We're on a state highway here. Holy cow, it never stops. There's traffic all the time, 24 hours a day going down this thing. So it is an eye-opener for me. But what's nice is it is relatively private in the scheme of things. At any point, any one of us, once we're fed up with each other,
17:01can take a walk down the driveway and get lost in the woods. Or, you know, every so often we'll find Julie up in a tree just soaking up the sunshine. And we're on a rock, on a rock just laying there, just soaking it up. But we're very fortunate. Or if there's a wedding, she might be off crying somewhere. It's true. She cries at every wedding. Yeah. You know, and that's the other part of it too, is when we do the farm weddings, you know, we have no control over the weather, but we make the most accommodations. And that one, although you're seeing four of us here,
17:31you know, during maple weekends or even the production of the maple season or the weddings, you know, we've got full family force and it's 12 or 13 people that help us. And they all, you know, we have a certain location on our farm that we kind of stand around in case anybody needs anything. And but, you know, we built hay wagons off of stuff junk we pulled off the woods and we built it. We went out and, you know, she's saying, hey, we can take you in the back on the hay wagons. And we don't pay that. Ryan drives the other.
18:00And then so we make it work and it's very good. It's a very good time for everybody. And there's times of panic. There's certain times when there's changes being made less minute. And of course we try to focus on making it the best day for the bride and groom and their family. But occasionally, you know, things turn. And you know, we had a wedding cake fall down, start to melt. They delivered it early in the morning in this barn. And the heat, you know, it was a pretty warm day in September. And so Ryan and I became bakers.
18:29Right? We had it, we figured out how to put these wooden dowels in it and stand it back up and essentially Ryan saved the day, you know? So he didn't get the first piece of cake that still went to the bride and groom. What are you going to do? Yeah, necessity is the mother of invention for sure. Okay, so what else do you guys do there though besides the wedding stuff? Do you have animals?
18:59I'll speak for Lisa on this one, but you know, the only animal she ever had in her entire life growing up was a small squirrel, pet squirrel, right? Yeah. Dogs. I did. Wait, lookie. I had a pet squirrel. The look of them. See the looks of them. Dogs, right? Yeah, who does that? That's the whole story. Yeah, that's the whole story. Dogs, right? Yeah, that was it. That was it. Yeah. I had a mouse, a pet mouse at one point. I had pet mice too. Yeah, and they're super smart. Love mice. Dogs. Yeah.
19:29But Ryan and I grew up with snakes in the house and bears. No, Ryan did not grow up with snakes in the house. No, I didn't. Ryan has the same feeling I do. There's a snake in the house, you've got to burn my house down. He doesn't like snakes. So for us, the country living was not a big change. But for Lisa, that was a big change when she opened the door to go out front one morning and there was a big bear walking through the front lawn. And at that point, I think when you called me up in a panic saying,
19:59I have, we can't live here anymore. We got to move. Well, the first night the, uh, the power went out. And I, again, I was in the city and we did not have wells. So even if you didn't have power, you could run the water and flush the toilet. And suddenly on first night, I moved in with my kids, couldn't run the water, couldn't flush the toilet. And that whole background come, the reason I mentioned all that is because I pulled into driveway one day and now there's three sheep sitting in a barn. And, uh, I asked her where they come from. And she said, I rescued them from a meat bar. Yeah. And.
20:29So she's named them. Ross, Chams, and Joey. My kids named them. So from the friends show and they have now essentially become pets. Shear them twice a year. They are more pets than anything else. And we did have about 35 chickens at one point, lost a couple to the predators and bees. We had quite a few hives. We had up to 11 hives at one point. Produced the honey, that was pretty good.
20:58And we will do it again. We just, we need to, we need to regroup. Well, the location at the hives were really weren't, wasn't good. We live across from a large field that another farm is at. And it just, the way the wind kicks up, we felt that the hives weren't making it through the winter, but we've done honey. Um, we collect the wool from the sheep. So, although it's not a lot, we, uh, we do that and, uh, the chickens sold eggs for a little while and for a long time, uh, you know, people love that, right? You just have a good farm stand at the bottom. And, but in addition.
21:27Probably the biggest agricultural product for us is maple because it's a year long, even though we produce it for those three or four short months, the work continues on every month, whether it's making more trails or producing stuff with the maple that we did produce, cakes, right? Just cookies, cakes, whatever else you do with them. I try to make suggestions on what she should because we have enough work for these. And mind you, this is all after we do our normal day jobs. We all actually work for the city of Kingston.
21:57And so we do sometimes interact with one another at work during the day, and then we see each other here. So it's very interesting. Wow. That's a lot of togetherness right there. I think we love each other so much. And we all have very different jobs. Yeah. That's true. It makes for a good conversation. But sometimes the jobs intertwine. Sometimes.
22:27Okay, so you guys are a four person team. And so when one of you has a new idea for the farmstead, how does that go? We like, I like to think that the A team doesn't have a hierarchy. It clearly does have a hierarchy. So we, the three of us tend to default with the ideas. So that can be. So usually if I have an idea, I'll like.
22:57I usually talk to him first and he never likes any of my ideas ever, ever. So then I will usually try to get one of them on my side. And if I can get one, then there's a possibility. So there's been a lot of iterations of things that could happen here that we've shut down immediately. They shut me down all the time. Camping, growing Christmas trees, growing hemp. That was a thing for a little while. So one of the first things that Lisa wanted to do when we were talking about
23:26cultural product was to grow hops. Hops, right? Hops. There's a small microbrewery type of environment around the Catskills. And she's like, we have a field, we can do this. And then once we started researching it... Well, no, we went to, we took a class. At Cornell Co-op, right? Yes, we drove like three hours for a class and we didn't get halfway through and I leaned over and said, we're not growing.
23:55So, we're out of here. We had lunch break and we left. It was like, that's not happening. But it's funny because when people show up here- But you don't know until you, you know. I knew, I knew, because all of this involves work. In some cases, unnecessary work. But yeah, so when people show up, they're like, man, this is amazing. If you had, I go, please, please don't say another thing. Don't ask, don't, we've had suggestions about clamping sites and cabins and, you know.
24:24what our property sits at the edge of the O&W rail trail that goes essentially part of the state line really. And so we have people coming off the rail trail through our fields into our property and enjoying the woods and stuff. And we recognize we're just stewards of the land. We own it as long as we're paying taxes on it. But when we came here, we cleaned it all up, took a bunch of trash and garbage from the old farmers that were here for years, took it out of here and cleaned it up. And...
24:53Every so often we come across a tire or an old engine or transmission. And we try to hide it from Julie. But, but for the most part, I mean, just the location is really, really nice. We have decent neighbors. Um, you know, really the, we try to keep it to a minimum. I mean, the only noise we make occasionally is the music before 10 o'clock and, uh, that plays during the events and, uh, chainsaws and that's pretty much it, you know? So everything we do, uh, our meatball operation has included the use of them.
25:22versus osmosis pump so we can reduce both the emissions that the wood burns from the wood burning and the amount of firewood we burn as well. So Minnesota is a maple state, right? They produce it? Yes. So yeah, you can understand. I mean, there's producers around us that use fossil fuel or gas to do it. And just because of the essentially unlimited fuel source through firewood on this property, I mean, there's more debt stand. And we work with a forester.
25:52Lori Raskin and DHW and she does a fantastic job coming out every year and marking out the property and we also work with the DEC, New York State DEC, to maintain a forestry plan. We just got a certification as an American tree farm as well. So you know we're just trying to show the neighbors and everybody around here, anyone who shows up, that we are invested. We're not doing it really. I mean I say for our own pleasure, it is and it isn't, you know.
26:22As much as I will say, I hate to do the amount of work that we've done. I'm amazed by what we've gotten completed only because of the friends and family we have that we've been able to be so blessed. And, but it has, this has now become like the central point of collection for, for all of at least farm and family events, right? Like this is it, right? So, and we're blessed that way. And for us, we just, we just had our first grandchild between us and it was just, he's
26:51I can't wait to get them on a four wheeler and start riding through the woods. Yup. Um, make sure that mom is okay with that for you. Yeah. Yari. Well, she, you know, my daughter had her a four wheeler when she was young. She was fine. I'll give him a helmet this time. Okay. Ryan has a very little one as well. So we enjoy them. Yeah. Um,
27:20my granddaughter, my first son, he's actually my stepson, but he's the first of three boys, is married now. He got married in September. And his wife has a daughter from a previous marriage. And when I met said daughter, she was like eight, I think. And we had had a huge load of firewood brought in, logs to be cut up. And they were really big around logs.
27:51little girl wanted to climb on the logs and it was the first time we'd met that met her, met her mom and it was scaring the living hell out of me to have her get up on those logs and I basically told her to get down because I didn't want to break a leg and spend the last four days that they were here in a cast and come to find out my stepson was irritated with me for telling her to get down but he never told me.
28:20And I was just like, I don't want her to break a leg. That would be a horrible memory from visiting the soon to be grandparents from Minnesota. I'm just, I'm just trying to protect this little girl. And my husband was like, from now on, when they visit, why don't you talk to the kid that is ours and find out what she's allowed to do. And then you guys can come to some consensus about what she's allowed to do. I was like, yeah, that's probably a good plan.
28:49Yep. So that's the only reason I say make sure mom's okay with that. Yeah, I get that a lot. She was fine with it when I was, I was raised. We also had a little girl who was climbing logs and falls down a lot. Well, we were splitting wood and the logs would crawl up. I had to get them down. We were taking turns moving the books. She got them down. Yeah, she got them down. All right.
29:16What I also didn't know is this little girl has been brought up around, um, dairy cows and steers and, you know, the whole bit. And I had no knowledge of this. Had I known, I might've not been nearly as afraid for her. So yeah, mom's, moms are, are one of two. We're either super, super worried or we're like, eh, if they don't break anything, they're probably fine. You're not bleeding.
29:46Okay, so we got, we're almost at 30 minutes, but I have a question for you guys. I have two actually. What's your favorite thing about working at the farmstead?
30:01Um, my favorite thing is really.
30:08not really the working part. I just like being together and planning it. We do a lot of, we have coffee meetings and we plan out what is the plan, what's the next plan, what's going to happen next weekend. So I enjoy that. Okay. My favorite, the reason that I keep coming here is that it gets my mind off of the rest of my life. Although
30:33Although all of us happen to work in the same place and live in the same community, we don't tend to talk shop. And whatever we're doing here, whether it's splitting wood or tapping trees or running a wedding or whatever it is, we need to be fully present and fully mindful and it is an escape from everything else that I do on a normal basis and that is what brings me a lot of pleasure. Yeah. I, I have the same. I.
31:02I'm a task oriented person. I like having a list of things to do. I like to set out and do it. We have everything we need here. As a JDO mentioned, we, we don't sub anything out. All the work is done here. We have all the tools, we have all the heavy equipment. So you just show up and go to work and it just removes you from the world where the news is awful and sometimes the people are awful and you could just come here and forget about everything. Get lost in the woods.
31:31And at the end of the day, feel accomplished and know that you've, you committed yourself to something better and, um, can relax and distress be part of nature. Yeah. I think that's a big, similar situation, right? Because we all have what I consider to be high stress jobs at the end of the day. We can be us, right? We can talk about things here that we normally wouldn't be able to talk about in our other capacities. It just doesn't happen. And, you know, essentially it's sometimes they
32:00they mix and match, you know, people that are from Kingston or the other area, they recognize us from time to time and go, Hey, aren't you them? You know, we get that sometimes, but when they see us, you know, we're all cleaned up now, but I got to tell you, I asked my wife, can I be in my regular farm clothes? And she said, absolutely not. There's a Cameron Bob, who was just a microphone to be different. So part of it is that, and that's what I enjoy. I enjoy coming here and I say, come at home, but coming here and working and really looking forward to working with everybody here.
32:29The plans are different. Certainly there's always, you know, we have four people with four different opinions. Mine usually is the most reserved. Hey, do we really have to build that big? Can we build it smaller? Really? Oh yeah. But at the same time, it's like, that's what I appreciate the most is that there's four different opinions and that's we can bounce off ideas and everybody has a reason why or why not we shouldn't do something or how we should do it.
32:56And I think that's a big part of what we do. That's very important. I love that. Ryan used to say, I just love coming here because it's like one big sandbox. All right. If we have, I have all the machinery, the dozers, excavators, and we started with nothing and we were just fortunate to be able to, you know, even with the machine over here, right, and buy something and say, he's like, man, that's a nice machine. I go, yeah, except the clutch is bad on it. We're going to have to split it. That's why I got a good deal. And we'd spent a couple of nights over the course of, uh, you know, time to.
33:24take it all apart and get the manual and wrench it back together and got it working, you know, and more so than not, that was always the case. So we're fortunate. So yeah, I think we're on agreement, right? It just gives us an idea.
33:37Okay. So is there anything that's a least favorite thing about the farmstead? My least favorite thing is that I get zero cell phone service here, which means people text me all the way. And as I drive home, I get flooded with all this information and texts and phone calls. But at the same time, it's also fantastic because that means I am fully disconnected while I'm here.
34:04Anybody else? I don't have a least favorite. I wouldn't keep coming back if I had anything I didn't like. Some days are better than others. Some days there's some trying ideas that get passed across the table. And some creative persuasion to push those ideas or pull from one side to the other. But it's all good. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. Probably one of the things I like the least
34:33It's January or February and it's really, really cold and we have to go into the woods and I have hand warmers and gloves. Julie says all the time, there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. And I keep trying and trying to tell myself, that's the truth. But that would probably be the only thing that I really don't look forward to is when it's.
35:02ridiculously cold and windy and we still have to go in the woods. It doesn't matter. Yeah. To me, I think we set somewhat of an unrealistic goal sometimes. I know I'm guilty of it. They used to call me all kind of ambitious. We're going to get this set, we're going to do the roof, we're going to put the truss down, get the gutters in, we're going to get it all finished, and then we're going to get trenched. And then at the end of the day, we get maybe two-thirds of the way. Daylight's setting and I'm frustrated because we still...
35:27need to get all this done thinking, okay, one day we got to be back to work and we only have another day to get it. So there's a level of frustration on it. The older I get, the more I realize my mind's thinking one thing, my body's not translating that anymore like it used to. So, but overall we recognize we are absolutely a hundred percent blessed with what we do. We've had some setbacks time to time. In addition to the maple production and the sheep and the bees and everything else, this house and these barns were essentially full rebuild.
35:57The house didn't pass inspection. It should have been torn down. It's on a stone foundation and there was no heat. The electric had to be redone. We did everything. And unlike some of the other people that are fortunate enough to have the funds or whatever, we didn't and we just were able to afford the property and put it all together. So we're very thankful. And every time I look around, I see the amount of work that we did and go,
36:24My wife will forget, Alisa will go, what are you looking at? I'm going, do you remember that that door wasn't there? She's like, oh my gosh, you're right. What do you want for dinner? I understand because when we moved here, there was a huge pole barn. There was a useless two car garage and it still stands and it's still useless, can't open the doors and it's not worth fixing. There's a small one car garage that we use as a woodshed, our house, and that was it. That's what was here.
36:54And now there's an on property farm stand that we had put in for us, because we're not nearly as ingenious as you people, but we love it anyway. And we have a chicken coop and we have a heated greenhouse going up this spring. So I look around at this place now and I'm like, God damn, how did this happen? So I get it.
37:23All right, guys, this was really fun and I don't want to keep you because, you know, I'm trying real hard to keep this podcast at 30 minutes, but I keep creeping over a little bit. So, appreciate your time. Thank you so much and have a great evening. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Yep. Bye.
 

Woodland Worm Company

Today I'm talking with Jonathan at Woodland Worm Company. You can also follow on Facebook.
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Jonathan at Woodland Worm Company. Hi, Jonathan, how are you today? Great, how are you doing? I'm good. I've been looking forward to this interview because I have not talked to anyone about earthworms before. Awesome. So tell me about yourself and Woodland Worm Company. So I am...
00:29I am the owner of Woodland Worm Co. We were formerly Wiggle Worm Farms, but we changed the name just recently actually, because it just kind of better suits where we wanna go and the direction we wanna take the business. So the Woodland Worm Co. is a relatively new name. I am a, I like to say I'm a jack of all trades, but master of none.
00:58I have a really varied background, none of which is actually in worm farming. I'm an accountant, diesel mechanic, drummer, you name it, I can do it, I can fix basically anything. But I found myself in a place where I didn't have anything to be passionate about two years ago.
01:27believe it or not, I stumbled across the Facebook post from a friend of mine that's Liz out in California. And he was just talking about random odd jobs or random weird family histories. And one of the folks, one of his friends,
01:49put up a comment basically saying, yeah, my dad used to be a worm farmer. And I didn't know that was even a thing, to be honest with you. And so he, that guy's father wrote a book with his uncle back in the 70s. And I found the book amazingly twice online and I bought it. And it showed up in the mail one day while I was at work. And my wife said,
02:19earthworms. And yeah, and I said yes, I did. And then a month later, I had worms. And here we are now. So two years later, I'm, I built the business. And we're really, really very in its infancy right now. So it's interesting, fun, exciting, and busy. I bet. So, so tell me.
02:47Tell me how you begin raising earthworms.
02:53So there's, when it comes to raising worms, there's different methods that you can do, but it all really comes down to a few, several key elements, right? The earthworms that I raise and most of the industry raise are composting worms. So they live within the first six inches of the soil.
03:21right, they're horizontal movers, they don't really go up and down, they don't burrow up and down. They burrow horizontally and they eat the dead and decaying material that's on the surface of the ground. So if you know you really just need good food, which is usually for us, we feed compost.
03:47um finished leaf compost and a grain mix or worm chow if you will and uh plenty of moisture and really you just give them a place where they can grow and be happy and not overpopulated and the worms they do their thing. It's really not complicated but it's easy to make it complicated. Okay and then
04:14I guess my next question is, do you have bins that you have them in or do you have them outside in the ground or how does it work? So I tried several different breeds of worms before I actually started selling. My focus with the business is I want to build soil and make the soil great in your gardens.
04:43so we can all eat better and eat healthier. So my focus is on producing the best worm castings there are. The way of which I raise, I use a breed called African nightcrawlers. And where I'm at in the country, we have really cold winters, so they don't survive outside. So I raise them,
05:12temperature controlled environment in my basement and they are raised in three and a half gallon buckets and I stack them about, oh, I got 60 buckets per pallet. So yeah. Wow. Okay. And you're in Pennsylvania. That's why it's cold. Yeah. All right. And then tell me about why the castings are good. If anyone doesn't know, earthworm castings are basically earthworm poop.
05:41exactly it. It's it castings I didn't come up with the name someone did somewhere along the line. It's it's a warm fertilizer. It's just it's a soil amendment. What's good about them is think of it kind of like a probiotic for your soil. Right castings are they are living. There's organisms inside.
06:10in those castings and that fertilizer, what you put into the soil, what happens is those worms break down all the micronutrients that create all this life in their poop and all that life is also breaking down other, it's breaking everything down in the soil.
06:38to a point where your plants can then absorb it through their roots. So the poop is really just a vehicle if you think of it that way, of which you can infuse a lot of good things for your soil environment. All different types of microorganisms are in there that will, they just,
07:07benefits of it far outweigh the work. Okay, so how do you collect the casting? So do you just do you just scoop out the dirt that they've lived in? Or how does it work? So the process that I use it's if you the best way that I can put it is it's I create a manufacturing environment to produce the maximum amount of worm castings.
07:37for the worms that I have in the space that I have. So what I use, I use a mechanical sifter that has two screens on it. It's a quarter inch screen first, and I'll take a bucket and dump that on. And whatever passes through that quarter inch screen is, I'm sorry, what's left on that quarter inch screen rather, are all the worms.
08:06and uneaten food stuffs that are too big to pass through. And so then I remove that screen and then I have an eighth inch screen below that. And the only thing that passes through that eighth inch screen is the castings themselves. The cocoons that the worms have, they won't pass through.
08:33maybe sometimes you get like little tiny baby worms will pass through or little types little tiny pieces of Compost will pass through but it's very minimal And okay, so basically you're mining for gold because because yours
08:51Yeah, yes, actually, if you would search some bigger operations, these guys are using tronels just like in Gold Rush. I don't know if you're going to get any type of copyright thing, but if anybody's seen that show, it's kind of like that just on a small scale, really small scale. Okay. Your place must be a favorite with the local fishermen because you sell the worms as well, yes? I do. I sell fishing bait.
09:21That's not as popular with the guys because right now where I am with the business, it's all about letting people know that I am actually here. That's the most difficult part I have found. The worms are easy and the worms are the fun part, but letting folks know that I exist in their neighborhood, that's really difficult, I have found.
09:48Marketing is always the hardest part of starting a business. Always. Oh, it true words haven't been spoken because it's difficult to do and it's costly and it's an investment that for me, I had to be comfortable with making that investment for not a lot of immediate return. So the first year
10:17was very slow, very difficult, and I was really just keeping the worms alive. This year, it's taken off a lot better than what I had planned to the point that I can't produce enough now. I'm selling out before I even have a harvest. And I harvest every two weeks. So I'm at the point where I have to add.
10:44breed and I have to add more production units to keep up with the demand for castings. Who are you selling to? I mostly sell to home gardeners. They're my biggest customer. And then I have a few commercial gardeners and flower growers in the area that they'll buy much more quantities. They'll buy what I call bulk.
11:11So 40 gallons or more at a shot. So I sell 40 gallon increments and also half yard and four yard super sacks. Okay. Well, it sounds like you got your marketing figured out that I still don't feel like I do. I don't think you ever do really. Um, I have a few folks right recently. I've had a lot of interest in, um, a lot of
11:40marijuana growers have been taking an interest, which is something I wasn't expecting. So that's pretty neat. And yeah, it's been really fun so far. I am not up to date on my laws regarding marijuana right now. I know Minnesota just passed their law back last summer that we can have pot if we'd like it. We can grow it if we'd like it, but they're very small quantities allowed.
12:08What's the law in Pennsylvania? I actually don't really know what the law is. In Pennsylvania, I don't believe you need to have a medical marijuana card. Okay. And you can grow, I believe the home grower can have one plant which can be consumed. Most of the folks that have reached out to me are from New York. So
12:37I think the laws are much, are a lot easier than the commonwealth in New York. Okay. I was just curious because not all states allow it, but more states are coming on board. So yeah, it's actually becoming quite a popular thing now, which is pretty neat. You know, I think there's a lot of benefits to it and not to get political, but I do. I think there's a lot of health benefits that.
13:06You know, it just makes people a lot more comfortable, especially if they're in a lot of pain. I personally know of a guy that's, he use, he medicates with marijuana and he has just a lot of physical and nerve issues and it helps him even just sleep, right? And it's like, wow, like you need this to just live. And so I think that there's a lot of great
13:34benefits. I think there's a lot of potential there. I think there's a lot of trade and revenue that can be generated for a lot of other businesses. And there's just a lot of opportunity that I feel kind of like has to be explored in a way. Yeah, it's a window that's been closed for a very long time. Unfortunately, yes. Yep. Okay. So...
14:02to get off that subject and on to the next. Not that it matters, it's not a big deal. I just was curious because you brought it up. Do you guys have the jumping worms in Pennsylvania that we have in Minnesota?
14:17We do, to my knowledge. I have not seen any. Okay. In fact, I know very little about those jumping worms. I hear they are just terrible for the soil. And I really hear that they cause a lot of damage, but I'm not really up to par with that.
14:42I hear the same thing. I have not seen one here yet. But I'm real, real aware when someone has, let's say, iris rhizomes they're trying to get rid of and they want to give them away. If I'm going to take them, I make sure that I shake all the dirt off the rhizomes before I put them in because the last thing I want to do is put jumping worms in my three-acre property because that would be really bad. Yeah, listen, if there are anything like the worms that I...
15:14they will breed fast. The composters breed amazingly fast. And if you, I can see the, I can understand the fear really, if you put one in there, then it's gonna just be a steady slope, right? If you let them slip in, so super important. Yep, so anybody out there, somebody offers you roots of plants to put in.
15:41and you have jumping worms in your state and it's been confirmed, be real careful. But listen, honestly, it's.
15:52It's an opportunity then to create better soil, right? Like you can then amend the soil. Now I don't know if there's been any studies about this, but I'm sure there's ways to amend it. I just don't know what those ways are. Yeah, I just want to keep our dirt, our soil, the way it is right now. I don't want to mess with it because it's putting out really good produce every summer. Oh, it's fantastic.
16:18I'd like to stay where we are at with that level. Thank you very much. Great. Okay. So, I swear I saw something about horses on your website. Yes. We have, they are pets. And another, one of the benefits of getting into worm farming is that your worms will eat your manure. Mm-hmm.
16:47So I have, going back to an earlier question, I tried three different breeds of worms. I have red wigglers and I also have European night crawlers. Those two I keep outside in outside bins and I compost our horse manure. And that's what I feed those guys. And oh boy, do they love it. They love it.
17:17I would imagine. So I don't want to, you don't have to tell me specifically the answer to this question, but do you have a lot of land or a little land or what? We have currently just under seven acres.
17:35four of the seven are wooded. So there's really not much that I can do with that. The rest is used currently with composting our gardens, our chickens, sheep, and our horses. Nicole Sook Okay, so you are a homesteader too. You're not just a worm wrangler. You have critters.
18:04completely build this into a completely sustainable environment. We want to produce food. We want to be able to feed all of our animals on the same property. Now we can't do that here, right? I don't have enough land to make hay and do all that. But what we are doing right now is
18:31We're making the best of what we can and we're trying to do everything possible that we can to just stay in our little bubble. Yep. And we love it. You know, I truly enjoy it. When you see your vegetables popping up and they're going crazy, it's like, wow. Like, man, you can feed your whole family then.
19:00of tomato sauce and whatever you want to make out of just tomatoes for an entire year. And there's, I just think there's something to that, you know? It's magic. It really is. We have tomato babies, siblings, that are about four inches tall on our kitchen table right now. And every morning the grow light gets turned on and I stand there and look at them and I'm like, you guys are going to be making tomatoes here in about three months. I'm so excited.
19:30Yeah, they will pop, right? Yep. And we have baby basils coming and I've said a billion times on this podcast and I'm going to say it again, I love basil. I use it in a lot of food that I cook. And the little baby basils are cute. When they come up, they're just two little leaves and they're very dark green and I love them. I don't know why, but every time I see them, when we put the seeds in and they sprout, I just stand there and look at them and think, man, this is magic.
20:00May 15th we start putting things into the actual garden and by June 1st everything is in and it's starting to do what it does and I stand there and look at that garden and it just it doesn't look like anything that it's gonna look like in two months and so I take the snapshot in my head of what it looks like June 1st
20:25and then come August 1st, I'm like, you guys did so great. Yeah, it's really incredible. It really is. My wife and I, we were looking at our garden, especially the tomatoes, and we just saw them, they were the biggest tomato plants we ever had. And they were taller than we were, and now we're short people, so that's not much to say. But...
20:55It was, it was just truly amazing. And I just haven't, I was in awe of how much, how much they were producing and how well they were growing and we even planted, we just put seeds right into the ground and they were, they did so well, so well, which is just an indication of your soil's health. Right?
21:24If you have soil that is good, you will grow just the most beautiful, beautiful plants. They really will. It's amazing. Yeah. And not to take away from your business, because I think that worm castings is brilliant for fertilizer, but we use chicken manure and we use goat manure in our garden. And honestly, any manure that isn't...
21:51I don't know, a dog or a cat or I guess any animal that eats meat, it's always great. And I'm not even sure that dog poop is a terrible fertilizer. I don't know why we don't use all manure as fertilizer. Maybe you do. I'm not really sure. I know typically.
22:20You know, you're using horse manure or cow manure, but I believe that's usually the focus because of what they're eating, right? They're eating what we are harvesting from the ground already. And then you're just taking that and you're putting it back into the earth, right? You're taking the nutrients that are in that fertilizer and you're putting that back right into the thing that you're gonna grow more.
22:49and more food for your animals. The ultimate recycling system, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's why a lot of folks, a lot of farmers, especially now, are going no-till, right? Like they don't like tilling up the earth because it just destroys everything. You zap the earth of the nutrients, you kill literally everything in there. And if you go no-till, you're putting a whole lot of fertilizer down. And I think
23:18I think that there's something to that. I really do. And even folks that just do rotational grazing, right? And they're not making hay or they're not doing other crops. They're just rotating their animals through pasture land at the appropriate times. And that is, there's research out there that is just showing that that is such a great way of farming.
23:47It's completely revolving and sustainable. Yeah, and there's so many different ways to farm. I mean, there's the hugelkultur thing. There's no till. There's what we do. We till it like twice in the fall after we pull everything out with our little tractor. And then we put the hay and the chicken droppings on top of it all winter. And it cools the manure down and then we just plant in the spring.
24:16There's so many ways to do it. And I don't know. I don't know if there's a best way or if, if you're just trying your best, good on ya. You know, it's funny. I, I, I purchased my hay from a really good friend of mine. And I had told him that, you know, we have some property at a, at a, at a vacation home. And I have been working this land, trying to get it to.
24:45to grow my own hay and do my own hay operation up there. And I had asked the guy and I said, how do you make really great hay? And you know what's funny? All he said was, I just try my best. And you know what, such a simple answer, but so much truth in that, right? That's all you can do is just try your best. And if it doesn't work, you know what you're doing? You make a change, you make an adjustment.
25:14and you see what happens. I love that. I love that experimentation. I love that problem solving that comes with growing your own food because not everything is going to work and you're going to have ups and downs and you're gonna have mess ups. And I just like that. I like that process of learning. It excites me. Yeah.
25:41I am a lifelong learner. I have perpetual curiosity. I can't stop myself. I can't help it. And so when we bought this place three and a half, almost four years ago, I'm going to start saying almost four years ago, we bought it in August of 2020. I was so excited because we knew enough to not be dangerous, but we didn't know enough to be bored. That's great. That's a great way of putting it. I like that.
26:10And so it was really exciting because there was nothing here. It was a, a, a clean slate for us to start brand new. And this is our fourth spring here and so excited to get going on things. And we're in Minnesota, you're in Pennsylvania, you know, that you can't really get stuff in the ground outside until after danger of the last hard frost. So.
26:36So we still have like a month and a half to go. And my husband's chomping to the bit because he's the gardener. Yeah. Yeah, I totally get it. It's that you never know when, unfortunately when that last frost is going to be. And I tell you what, the past two years we messed that up. Oops. You know, you just went too early and then you get a random cold snap. And you're like, oh no. And so totally get it. Totally get it.
27:06Yeah, that's why we plant our stuff from seed because we stagger plant and that way if we lose some of them, we have more to put in. Right, right. It just saves us a lot of heartache and a lot of money because last I checked at the nurseries I think two or three springs ago, a tomato seedling was like $5 and a pack of seeds is like a buck and a half. So you do the math. You know how this goes. Yeah.
27:36store and I saw tomato seedling for eight dollars. Oh my. Can you believe that? And they couldn't keep them on the shelf. Yeah, and that's because people don't, I think people don't realize they can start them from seed in their house. Yes. It's very easy to do as well. Yep. You know. Yeah, it really is.
28:00So anyway, so what's the plan for Woodland Worm Company? Are you guys gonna stay at the place that you're at and just keep expanding there? Are you gonna eventually maybe look for a bigger place with more pasture land? Yeah, so the dream is to move up to the, where our property is, our vacation property is. We want to...
28:32We want to have a fully, a farm that people could come and visit and be interactive. They can do all the things there, pick pumpkins, you know, apples, everything. We want them to be able to come enjoy themselves. We have dreams of having like a play place there that the kids can, their kids can go, they can grab a bite to eat or whatever, you know.
29:00they can sit down have some lunch and just enjoy themselves. And that's something that we really enjoy going to places like that. And we want to offer that to other people. We want to invite folks to our home and just kind of be part of the family. And that's our vision. So we won't always
29:29The next step is to build the business, the worm casting business to a point that is sustainable enough that we can move and handle that move. I don't know how quite yet, but we'll figure that out. Okay, so is teaching people about this stuff in your plan? Absolutely. Good.
29:59I went to a worm farm down in Phoenix, Arizona, back in January, and it was for a worm business conference, believe it or not. They actually have those. The place that hosted us was called the Arizona Worm Farm. And if anybody has a second, I highly encourage to check them out if you ever visit Phoenix.
30:28totally go check them out. They are an amazing, it's an amazing educational experience. They are the most open people about how they do things, why they do things, when they do things, and they really just love to share the information that they have, and they are just committed to the same thing.
30:58values that I believe you and I have, right? They just want to have a self-sustaining place, and they want to grow great things, and they want to help the people in the city of Phoenix grow just wonderful plants in a place where you it's really difficult to grow, actually. Yes, yes it is. My son just moved to Nebraska from Phoenix back in December.
31:27because he could not grow a hot pepper, let alone anything else on his little property that he had. He tried for like three years and he just was like, we need to be back in the Midwest. You know what? It's, I was shocked. This place is in the middle of a, their neighbors are, they do traditional farming techniques. I believe they farm cotton.
31:57And so you'll have cotton farm on either side of this farm and the soil on those farms, it's just this dry, really light colored, just no health in that soil. And they were working those fields while I was even there. And then you look at the worm farm and what they've been doing with their own compost that they make and sell.
32:25and put into their own ground. And it looks like you would be in a different part of the country. It's night and day different, yeah. Truly the most amazing thing, and it was jaw dropping for me. And I have to be honest, going there gave me the vision and it gave me the...
32:52It let me know that it's possible. Like what I want to do is possible. And if someone in Phoenix can do it, you can do it anywhere in this country. I, I'm convinced of it. Yeah. And I think had he had he had that idea or had seen something about it, he might've tried it, but I also think that they really just wanted to move back to the Midwest, so it's all good. They're only like five, five, six hours away now, instead of.
33:21a day's drive away. So it's great. Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I'm going to wrap this up because I usually try to keep these to half an hour. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I love what you're doing. Keep on keeping on. Thanks. All right. Have a great day. Thank you. You too. Bye.
 

The Minnesota Marshmallow

Today I'm talking with Amy at The Minnesota Marshmallow. You can follow her on Facebook as well.
I was so inspired by Amy's description of the mint cookie marshmallows that I ordered some. Fantastic as a treat and even better in my coffee!
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Amy at the Minnesota Marshmallow. Good afternoon, Amy. How are you? Doing really good. How are you? I'm good. I'm dying to know the story about you and the Minnesota Marshmallow. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for interviewing me today.
00:24Idea originally was something that I always had wanted, uh, growing up through high school. Um, the big dream was to have a restaurant and this was kind of my niche for the, the back and have this really authentic bonfire type setting where people would come up to like a little silver bullet trailer and get some marshmallows and some hot cocoa or, you know, and just kind of enjoy some, some family space and.
00:50you know, providing that in kind of a different setting that just isn't out there yet. And, um, I joined the military right out of high school and I've just been chasing that dream and I wanted to retire. And meanwhile, we got hit with COVID and I was sitting with a friend outside of bonfire one night and I said, you know, I know I've said it a lot, but we should have like a juicy Lucy of marshmallows. Like all these toppings should be on the inside and all warm and gooey. And she's like, you literally can't.
01:18talk about this anymore until you start making it." I was like, well, no time like the present, I guess. I hopped in the kitchen and watched some videos trying to figure out how do you even do that. Within four weeks, I had gotten carried away and started with just a vanilla and a strawberry. Then I started doing orange. Then I started doing hot fudge mamas.
01:47Caramel ones and just the creativity was oozing at that point with excitement and I was bringing them up to the Air Force base and handing them out to friends and I'm like, I have so many marshmallows. I don't know what to do with these. So if you don't like them, you can just throw them away. But if you do like them, like let me know or if you have a suggestion and I should change something. And so I was just peddling marshmallows everywhere I went on base because I had just had so many at that time.
02:15Um, next thing I knew, I was getting messages from friends and coworkers and they're like, Hey, make this one again. Can I get that for the weekend? And, um, another friend was like, you should just make this like a fun side hobby. And I was like, yeah, it has been really fun. So, um, I had just graduated college and decided like, I have a new, new thing where I can like pour my energy into. And so it just kind of focused on that through 2020 and, um, at
02:44After I started the company in August of 2020, I had Mike and Jen's hot cocoa reach out and say like, we should sit down. We want to meet you. And I'm like, me? You want to meet me? I've only been doing this for like four weeks. And, um, that was really exciting and got to sit down with them and they, I'm kind of walking in their footsteps as far as like learning how to start a business and create it. And now here we are almost four years later and 70 flavors and just having a lot of fun with it.
03:14That's fantastic. I do understand the, you want to talk to me question because like a month ago, a publicist for an author emailed me out of the blue and was like, we'd love to be a guest on your podcast, the author. And I was like, okay. And I actually went and researched because I didn't know if it was something that was not good, if it was like spam or a trick.
03:44And it wasn't, it was not a trick. And I interviewed the author and she's a really neat lady. So it worked out great, but I understand that you want to talk to me. Why? Yes, absolutely. That was kind of like, Oh my gosh, like you want to have like dinner with me? And I was just like, that's really cool. I was like, okay. And, um, ever since then, um, it's Dean and Amanda, they've been so, I could not ask for better mentors. Um, Dean started his.
04:13hot cocoa company from, you know, Cottage Food Law of Minnesota, and then was able to expand and grow, and now they're all throughout the United States and Mexico, and it's so amazing to have had them in my corner from the start, just to like, run questions by, or you hit an obstacle, and you're just like, what do I do? You know? So, I was very grateful for them, and having someone to like...
04:38you know, teach you kind of like, or guide you saying like, oh, we hit that obstacle, try this or something. Yeah, I did my homework on you. I went and looked at your website and you were, or you still are in the Air Force, is that right? Yes, yeah. My husband and I have both been in for almost 15 years now and we're both pushing to stay until retirement. So we've got a little...
05:04a toddler in our home now too. Our son Ryder is just amazing and we're learning on how to balance many careers. His career, my career, our business, he also does racing and so we've got a very jam-packed family life. It sounds like it. So are you originally from Minnesota? Yes, I'm originally from the cities. I went active duty Air Force.
05:29three months after graduating high school and stayed active duty for eight years. And when I saw there was an opening here in Duluth, I decided to put all the chips in the center of the table and try something new and see what the guard was like. And I absolutely love it. And I'm very grateful for my military experience and my military family here. Fantastic. Okay. So is the Minnesota marshmallow business, is it a standalone business?
05:59brick and mortar business or is it from your home? So I originally started with the Minnesota cottage food law, but I think we were like maybe six to eight months in when I had reached out to another local bakery and asked if I could rent their kitchen when they were closed. So I originally jumped into a small local bakery to use their commercial kitchen, which allowed me then to go wholesale and work with other companies.
06:26From there, I now privately own a kitchen out in Proctor, Minnesota. And I have partnered with the Proctor Speedway and they have a massive large kitchen area to use which has been so wonderful for our expanding and Christmas time rush and everything because the racetrack here uses the kitchen from May to about October which...
06:52They only use it one day a week, so it's allowed me a lot of flexibility and not having to work really late at night after other businesses are closed or share the kitchen during the daytime. So that's been so wonderful to have this opportunity. Okay. So, you don't actually have a store. You wholesale and ship? Is that how that works? Yeah. Yes. We go to tons of events throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin.
07:18Bayfield Apple Festival, we've got tons down here in the Duluth and the Bayfront Park, Warren's Cranberry Festival. We kind of have jumped around finding like what are our best spots over the last four years and so we do a lot of that. Our original trailer we used for those events along with weddings. We just sold that trailer and we bought a new trailer for weddings and catering and large events which...
07:47is brand new and super shiny and we're super in love with it. We just got that about a month ago and we are in the works right now to create our other first and actual mobile food trailer and we're excited to launch that new idea coming forward. Nice. See, I love stories like yours because you had this dream when you were younger and then somebody said, put up or shut up basically to you. Exactly. And you were like, okay.
08:17fine, I'll make them." And then you figure it out and you made them and then you did it at home and then you found a place where you could have a commercial kitchen and now you're doing this. And I feel like creative people are the ones who say, why not? And who if they meet, I don't know, a stumbling block, they say, how can I work around this? And not everyone is a creative. I'm...
08:44It's fine. You don't have to be a creative, but creatives think differently. Yes, absolutely agree with that. And starting a business is not for the weak. So when they say the support small business, like, man, it's a, it's a fight, but it's worthwhile. And it's exciting. And if you look at failures as learning and you actually grasp for failure,
09:08because that means that you're growing and you're getting better. Every time you find that you fail, it just is an opportunity instead of like looking at it negatively, then you are bound for success. Put it that way. Yeah, absolutely. I agree completely. So marshmallows are not my favorite treat. I'm not going to lie. I do like a s'more once a summer out by the fire. That's fine. And my son actually bought a huge box of peeps the other day.
09:39I had Neet and a Peep in years and I was like, oh Peeps, they're like crunchy sugar and squishy in the middle. He was like, no, they're great. They're sitting on the table and two days later I said, can I try one? He's like, you said you hated them and I'm like, yeah, I know what I said, but let me try one, maybe they're different now. Right. I bit into it and they don't make them the same way. They're very, very soft in the middle. I remember them having more bounce.
10:09to the bite. Yeah. There's really weird now and they were weird then. So, so marshmallow peeps not so much. Um, what I want to know is every time I see someone make marshmallows like on a cooking show or I saw yours and they're the same thing, they're square. They're not rounded on the edges. Is there a reason for that? Yeah. So when you're looking at
10:39typically pour them into a pan or some type of mold. And I always tell my customers when we're out at shows or people are taste testing that sticky is the business. Expect to have sticky fingers. And a large challenge for a lot of marshmallow makers is the sticky factor. And when you're trying to pour them in different types of molds, like you would see a peep or something else, yeah, that's a lot of work. But for us to push out faster production,
11:09When we put them in a pan, it really simplifies our process and allowing us as exact measurements as you can possibly get. I know a lot of other marshmallow companies have really fancy cutters and we've tried some of those different ideas. We hand cut ours still to this day. Once you pour them in a pan and you cut them like brownies, if you were to visualize that, that's how you come up with your square marshmallow.
11:38What are the ingredients in a marshmallow? It's gelatin and sugar and what else? Yeah, so your base for a marshmallow is you're going to have gelatin and water. You'll start with that in your mixing bowl and then for what we call your hot sugar, that's going to be white sugar, the granulated sugar and typically caro syrup. I know some people are in favor or not in favor of caro syrup and there are other ingredients you can tailor to that.
12:06But you'll use caro syrup and water and that is kind of your simple basis start and I call that like my blank canvas and you'll heat those up, mix them together and that's when you can start playing around with your flavors, colors, all that kind of stuff. Once you're finished mixing them, you pour them into a pan and you'll let them sit for about 10 hours and then after that 10 hours you'll, you can pull them out and start cutting them and packaging them. So
12:34It's a lengthy process, very lengthy process. Yeah, and you're dealing with hot sugar, right? Yes, very hot. Yes, hot sugar scares me to death. I will work with it only under pressure, only if I've been begged to make something that requires me to work with it. Oh, yes. Yeah. It's once in a while you get a hot sugar burn when you miss the pot or you're grabbing it, but it's kind of part of what we expect here in the kitchen.
13:04Yeah. And I'm sure that you saw worse injuries or pain in the air force than you probably have in your kitchen. Once in a while. Yeah. Okay. So I saw that you have thin mint marshmallows. How does that work? Oh my gosh. So that was kind of my springtime flavor. I love, love thin mints, love them so much. So I was like...
13:31I have to integrate these into a marshmallow somehow. So I load up with the thin mints and we get them all chopped up and then I get kind of like a minty base for my marshmallow and scatter the cookie pieces throughout the marshmallow and let her set and cut. I really love that one in hot cocoa. If you're a minty person, you can even add that to your coffee. And my favorite way to eat that one is on the s'mores and you heat it up and it's really hard to find.
14:00I used to love those honey graham chocolate graham crackers, but pairing that if you can find a chocolate graham cracker is like icing on the cake. It's so yummy. Yeah, I bet. I loved in mint cookies. I made some back years ago, like 10 years ago, and it was not Girl Scout cookie season. And I desperately wanted a thin mint cookie. I was like, how can I make this happen? I can cook. I know I can do this. And I picked up those chocolate wafer cookies, the really thin ones at the grocery store.
14:29Oh yeah. And I melted some chocolate and I add some, I think it was coconut oil, I think, and some peppermint extract or spearmint. I don't remember what it was. And melted the chocolate all together with the coconut oil and the extract and dipped the cookies in it and put them on parchment paper and just let them sit. And my kitchen smelled like thin mint cookies. I was like, I think I got it. And my kids ate every...
14:57last one of the 40 that I did. That's amazing. That sounds delicious. I got one cookie, one thin mint cookie out of the whole batch. I was like, you guys, you're monsters. Okay. Fine. Eat the cookies. Fine. Made them for me. It's always good problems to have instead of like, yeah, mom, this is good. And then you're left with like 39 out of your 40 cookies. And you're like, yeah, I'm sure it was really good then. Yeah. I had the neighbor girl come over.
15:27And there was one left. I lied. The kids didn't eat the rest of them. There was one left. And I had to come over and I said, this is the last cookie out of 40. I have tried one. You're a Girl Scout. You sell Girl Scout cookies. Taste this and tell me if it tastes like a Girl Scout cookie, thin mint. And she bit into it and she was like, oh my God, you did it. I'm like, yep, sure did. That is so cool. He was probably, I don't know, 10 at the time.
15:53And the look on her face was priceless. I just, I wish I had taken a picture of her biting into that cookie. Those are some of your like most honest feedback when you ask kids, like you might not like the answer they have to say. So if you get a good compliment from like a 10 year old, you're doing really good. Yeah. And if she had said, this is not great. I would have been like, then I will never make them again. Cause I trust you. Oh, that's funny. But yeah, there's nothing like a Thin Mint Girl Scout cookie and
16:21They don't make them like they used to. I'm 54, so I remember when I sold Girl Scout cookies when I was a Girl Scout. And the cookie, the cookie was thicker and the chocolate coating was thicker. They were a bigger cookie. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And now there's these little tiny cookies. I'm like, I can't afford to pay this much money for a little tiny cookie. Holy cow. I know. Yeah. So anyway, long story short, Thin Mint cookies are awesome. I bet your Thin Mint, your Thin Mint marshmallows are fantastic.
16:51Yes, our mint lovers are in love with them. The thing I love about marshmallows is the mouthfeel because they're bouncy, but they're smooth at the same time. Yes. It's funny you mention that because through the past four years, I went from thinking like, I'm going to be the first person to create a flavored marshmallow.
17:16At that time, I wasn't aware. Like there's lots of other little smaller companies kind of doing what we're doing just in their hometowns or something like that. And so I've tried, you know, some of theirs and that, you know, everyone kind of has, you know, like there, I like to say they're different spaghetti sauce and everyone's going to think their spaghetti sauce is the best spaghetti sauce. So everyone has a different unique texture or flavor that they, you know, roll with. And
17:42One thing that I take a lot of pride in in my company, which is it makes it more hard for myself, is I keep a really short shelf life on mine. Like I said, it's a little bit more stressful because you're going to have to make more and rotate them on the shelves a lot faster with your wholesale accounts and stuff. But at the same time, I take a lot of pride in that really, really soft, fresh flavor, that fresh texture.
18:09And I think it's like one of the things that I'm really proud that like helps separate me from some other companies and something I've always stood by there. Because you're right, that texture and that softness goes a long way. That's your secret sauce. That's how you keep your sauce different. What's the biggest batch that you've made of one flavor? Oh my gosh. So I just started using a whole bar mixer.
18:37I still keep it really small. I like to make things difficult for myself. But we got this Hobart mixer and it was able to create four times the amount that I would in a normal smaller mixer batch. So we were able to create around 224 marshmallows in one batch. But as far as how many I've made in one day, I know that we've made, hold on, I have to do some math really quickly here.
19:08me go back. My best day baking, which is like, oh, like 12 hours on your feet, constant moving with mixers. It's quite stressful. 42 batches times my 54 marshmallows. My record has been 2268 marshmallows in one day. Wow.
19:30And did that count wrapping them and everything? Or is that just how many marshmallows? That's just the baking day. Then we get into packaging and stickering and we do all our stickers by hand and it's processed. So do you, do you have a day a week where you can just maybe take a few hours and, and rest? Depends on the type of year or time of year. Earlier in the year, I like to call it my diet season. Sales kind of.
19:56You know, go a little bit slower after Christmas, which I am so grateful for because I love having a break after Christmas season. Um, but later in the year, um, last year, I think we were tracking from around October through Christmas. Um, it worked about 65 days straight to keep up with our demand. So it was pretty, pretty intense then. So we're typically in here for, I'd say.
20:24Maybe on some of those, those days were eight to 10 hours a day, including weekends and events and traveling. So.
20:34You have heard of hobby burnout, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did quit my full-time job less than a year into starting the marshmallows. There was such a demand for them. And when I was working my job at the Air Force, I was working roughly like 7 a.m. to 4.30, and I would get off work and I would go home, and I'd have customers come to my home and pick them up. And...
21:03I'd kind of cut off pickup times around like seven or eight o'clock. In the meantime, I would start baking my marshmallows and I was baking until about 11 PM and then getting up at about three or four o'clock in the morning to start cutting and packaging those before I would go to work the next day. I just kept that going like all week and I think there was just this high of excitement and it's working and I can't believe I'm doing it.
21:30It just never somehow got tired. It was easier by the way, not having kids at that time. Yeah, it just, it was going well. And I just thought to myself, if I'm ever going to take, take a leap of faith, then it's something that I'm just going to have to try it right now. And you know what, if we crash and burn in three months or six months or a year, then like, you can't look back and say like, Oh, I regret never trying. So we just, I just tried and went for it. And here we are four years later. So.
21:59Yeah, I just, I, I, back in my younger days, I would go and go and go and go and go too. Um, just, just a hint. Once you get past 45, that go, go, go gets up and goes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Especially, uh, our son is now like about 20 months old and that's a game changer. My gosh. He keeps me so on my toes. I'm after like, he goes down to bed around eight o'clock. I'm just like.
22:25I haven't the energy for anything. And I always tell people emails my Achilles heel, because I don't want to start reading emails at 8 PM anymore. And soon as we get back up in the morning and drop him off, it's right back to the kitchen and the mixer. So it's a balance for sure. I try really hard not to look at my phone after six o'clock at night, because if I do, somebody is going to email me.
22:50And it's going to be what I think is important. And it's going to be something that gets my brain going. And I'm going to be up until 2 thinking about it. So I tried really hard to stop at 6 o'clock at night. And I messed up the other day and read an email at dinnertime at 5. And I can't say what the news was, but it was really exciting and really probably good for my podcast. And I didn't sleep. Like,
23:19I went to bed about eight and I read, because I usually read for an hour before I go to sleep just to shut my brain off. I tried and I barely slept because I was so excited about this particular news. And my husband looked at me the next morning and he said, you didn't sleep, did you? You laid there all night and thought about this, didn't you? And I was like, yep, couldn't help it. He said, were you up a couple of times last night? I said, yeah, because tossing and turning would probably keep you awake. So I just went downstairs and he's like, oh my God, honey.
23:48He said, you can't let this do this to you. I was like, no, this is great. This is great news. And he was like, yeah, but you need sleep. I was like, yeah, I'll sleep when I'm dead. It's okay. Oh yeah, totally get that. That's, you know, kind of going back to how you open with like the creativeness, once you kind of get that creative idea or that excitement, man, it's hard to shut it off. Mm-hmm, oh yeah. And I...
24:13I wish I could say what the good news was, but I don't want to jinx it. I will be able to talk about it after this Thursday. So I want to share it, but it will ruin the surprise for everybody. So I'm just going to be quiet about it, but it just kept me up all night. I was that lit up about it. So I totally get it. I had another question about marshmallow stuff. Oh, so do you see yourself doing this for a long time?
24:43like for years? Yeah, definitely. We have kind of talked like, what is our five-year plan? What's our 10-year plan? Like, what does this look like? And each year we're learning and growing more. And in the last six months, I have experienced kind of like having employees and that was so nice to be able to like have some help. And so that was kind of a stepping stone for us and kind of going in the right direction.
25:13Um, yeah, there, there's definitely some long-term goals and with this new food truck, I'm hoping, um, we're not going to totally release exactly what we're doing in there yet, but we are hoping with the success, um, once we get that, um, here and get to get started with it and working in the trailer, we're hoping to smooth the wrinkles out for the next two years and then eventually, uh, maybe take that to, uh, the state fair here in Minnesota and put all our chips in the table and see how that goes. And.
25:42from there, who knows what our possibilities are. But like I said, we're going to continue to keep growing and someday I think it would be super, super awesome to be like a household name down the road. But we've got a lot of learning to do between now and then. So we'll just keep doing what we can every day. That's a great plan. And I hope you get to be at the State Fair. I think that you would have so much fun with that. You will also be destroyed at the end of the day, but you're already destroyed at the end of the day. So why not? Yeah. Yep.
26:11Awesome. So I've been to Duluth once and it's gorgeous and it sort of reminds me of the pictures and videos that I've seen of San Francisco because everything is built up the hill. Yes. Yeah, Duluth has been absolutely beautiful. Before I moved here, I think I had visited maybe two or three times in my childhood. So when I came out here, I was like, oh, I
26:38Yeah, I wasn't really sure what to expect. And the funny part was, I don't know if when you visited, you got to go down to like Canal Park or at all. But I did. Yes. Yeah. My first time up here as an adult after I moved here, I got my dog, my German Shepherd and decided we're going to head down to the lake the first day we have to get down to the lake. And I had gotten in really early to Canal Park way down there at the end, which is actually where my husband and I got married this last year.
27:07We, my dog and I are out playing in the water and there's like barely anybody out there and you know, silly outsider. I'm just like, I found the best kept secret and all of Duluth. This is gorgeous. I'm so happy I moved here. People just hadn't showed up yet, but fall here is one of my favorite times and there's so many trees and hiking trails and seeing all the colors change. Like you just can't beat it. Just love it.
27:34Yeah, and it's a pretty big population for the city of Duluth, right? Yeah. I think we're upwards of like 80,000 for our quote unquote small town up here. Yeah. So you've got a built in audience for your marshmallows. So that's great. Yeah, definitely. We've got tons of wholesale accounts, like throughout the Duluth and upper Wisconsin areas here and people are very familiar with our brand, which it make it was
28:00pretty shy. I don't know the first couple times I'd be somewhere and someone's like, wait, you make Minnesota marshmallows? And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, oh my gosh, my kid loves those. And it's just like this like super exciting slash shy, you know, kind of really awesome kind of experience or feeling when you're like, wow, people know me like, oh, that's kind of cool. It's super weird when that happens. Yes. My friend.
28:28listens to my podcast, my friend who lives five miles from here. And she and her husband came over to visit. Hi, Tracy. If you're listening, hi, Tracy. I keep telling them, I'm going to say her name and I figured I should. But they came over for dinner and she was like, your pot, you're keeping me company on the way to work every day. And I was like, I am. And she said, yeah, she said, whenever you release a new podcast, I just listen to it on the drive to work. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, we have, we've had some friends that
28:58We've got accounts out in like Grand Rapids and International Falls and they'll run up there and they'll be out exploring and have no idea that we've got a storefront up there. And they'll be like, take a picture and send it to me. And they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. Look what we just came across. And it's just a cool, exciting feeling. Yeah, it's bizarre, but it's great. It's one of those surreal moments where you know you did the thing, but you forget that other people will see it.
29:27Yes, exactly. Absolutely. Yeah, it's crazy. We have a friend I think last summer too that was doing some house sitting or had visited someone up in I think like north of Two Harbors somewhere and they said, I couldn't believe it. We went in their fridge and they had Minnesota Marshmallows in there. I was like, that's awesome. I feel like we're like on that little tiptoe way to like household name at least maybe for our small town, maybe for us, but it was cool.
29:56Yeah, and on that note, on your website, you ship your marshmallows, right? Sure do, absolutely. At first, we were kind of nervous because sometimes if someone's got a package that's sitting on their steps all day, I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? How am I going to make sure they don't melt? And we've done some packaging changes and everything like that, and we get them down there and it's, yeah, they've made the travels all good so far. So we're thankful for that.
30:26I may have to look at your website and see if you have any thin mint marshmallows and order some. I might have to. There you go. Yeah, we're just about to launch out our spring menu, our spring and summer menu. For spring, we have our thin mint marshmallows, we call them mint marshmallows. We have our Uffta and Uffta is kind of like that Caramel Delight girl scout flavor. So we've got toasted
30:55cookie pieces, the whole lot in there. We named that one Ufta. And we've also got Orange Dream, kind of like a dreamsicle, chocolate chip cookie. We just closed out our Easter flavor for Jelly Bean. I thought that one was so much fun because every time you take a bite and you get a new Jelly Bean, you'd get kind of a new fun flavor. But we'll have Pistachio. Our Campfire Chata is kind of one of our adult flavors. It's a rum chata with butterscotch caramel swirls.
31:23Coming up we've got lemon blueberry donut drizzle. We've got a donut madness We've got strawberry or raspberry lemonade ones for those that have more of like that fruity sweet tooth And we've also got toasty mousse which is Hot fudge and peanut butter swirled together with chocolate chips on the top for our coffee fans we offer a boozy Bailey's and
31:45Our number one seller is, we call it Bigfoot Bites, and that's got Oreos, peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies, and fudge all in one sweet treat. Good Lord. Yes. Yeah, yeah. How big is each marshmallow, like inches? Yeah, they're a little over an inch on each marshmallow, about an inch and a quarter, I think. So they're a bite. Yes. You'll definitely at least get a minimum of two bites, but I have seen people eat the whole thing in one, and it's pretty cute.
32:15Yeah. Wow. You are amazing. I don't even know how you came up with all those different kinds, but I'm sitting here with my mouth watering and I don't even really have a sweet tooth. So if you're making my mouth water over marshmallows, it sounds really good. Thank you. Yeah, I like to blame that on my overactive sweet tooth. Yeah, I really like salt and sour. I really like chips and pickles. You should do a pickle marshmallow.
32:43My daughter would lose her mind. She drinks pickle juice out of the jar. She loves pickles so much. So you should try making a pickle marshmallow. That would be interesting. That would be very interesting. There's sweet pickles. You could do a sweet pickle marshmallow. Yeah. You could call it like the relish the experience or the something relish. Yeah, exactly. I think that'd be really fun. I just gave you a new idea to drive you crazy. Sorry. There we go.
33:12All right, Amy. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and I wish you all the success in the world with your marshmallow making. Oh, thank you so much and I appreciate the interview. This was really fun. Thank you. You're welcome. Have a great day. You too. Thanks. All right. Bye. Bye-bye.
 

The Wegener Farm

Today I'm talking with Rob at The Wegener Farm.
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprises entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Rob at the Wegner Farm. Good morning, Rob, how are you? Good morning, Mary, I'm good. How are you doing? Good, how are things in Michigan? That's a beautiful day here in Michigan, finally. We had a little snow yesterday morning, which always sets you back mentally a bit here, but it's beautiful this morning, so.
00:29We're loving it. Yeah, it's April. Spring is coming. It's going to get here sooner than we think. It's beautiful here today in Minnesota too. So tell me about what you guys do at the farm. Okay, so at the Waggoner Farm, we're an organic, certified organic regenerative farm. We focus really on, you know, you've heard it called probably dirt, farming the dirt.
00:57uh... move away from the idea of uh... feeding plants and rather uh... think about feeding the food web in the in the soil itself so we've been very big since the beginning on treating treating the soil right and it'll grow the plants and uh... and they'll be great and uh... so far so good that we've been at this now this will be our fourth year uh... we started the first year on this property which was new to us
01:24with only 10 CSA customers, just to see, and mostly, by the way, friends and family who were fairly low risk, in case it didn't work. And year two, we went to 50. Year three, we went to 120. And this year, we'll be 130 CSA members, as well as some wholesale relationships and possibly a couple of restaurants. Wow. That is, that's huge.
01:54Um, yeah, anyone who's never run a CSA does not have any idea the work that goes into it. We did it for two years, three years, and we only had nine people at our highest number. And it's a lot of work and it's a lot of pressure because you want things to go right. Yeah, you've, uh, you're right about the pressure because basically, you know, the model.
02:22is such that the people, you know, they've paid you and now you better deliver, you know, and deliver well or the model falls down. Sorry about the dogs. Okay. I have one too. She does the same thing. Yeah. But our CSA members are great. They're people that are like-minded about looking for quality food.
02:51Excuse me, let me just close this. Yeah.
02:58at looking for quality food and not being, let's say satisfied or comfortable, but with the way the food system works and the way commercial farming works. We have a lot of visitors to the farm who I think also realize that USDA organic labeling is nice, but really transparency into seeing how things work is really where it's at.
03:27And we love to have people at the farm. We have some chickens that free range around the house. Kids love them. They're friendly, and they can feed them. And it really is an interesting, at CSA Pickup, a real interesting sense of community as people come to get their boxes every week. Yeah, we had baby bunnies two springs ago. And they were just big enough that the people who came to pick up their CSAs could hold them and pet them.
03:57That was a big hit here. We don't do rabbits anymore. I've already talked about this a billion times, but our rabbits were stupid. They did not understand that they were supposed to make babies. So we weren't going to let them. Rabbits that didn't make babies, I didn't think that it was possible. They were broken. There's something wrong with these rabbits. So we decided that feeding them with no return was not a good investment. So we no longer have rabbits, and that's OK. You were saying feeding the dirt. So.
04:26when you take care of the soil, the soil is fantastic. It grows fantastic food. So the soil is great. It feeds the plants. The plants are great. And then the plants feed us, which is great. Yeah, and I think this is what gets lost in the commercial food system, honestly, now. Two things, I think, make a world of difference. Actually, probably three. One is.
04:55When you are not trying to feed plants directly with synthetically produced fertilizers, plants get what they should be in terms of all of the micro and macro nutrients that the food web creates. These vegetables are just different. They're better for you. They taste better.
05:22We also use varieties that are not bred to be trucked from Mexico. And those varieties that are bred to be trucked from Mexico have been hybridized through the years to be tough. You know, and the result is that the flavor and the nutrition has been bred out of these plants and vegetables. And it's just unfortunate. And
05:51I would say to anybody listening, if you're not already connected with a local farmer, get connected. What you will learn about how things are supposed to taste, and just blow your doors off. Yeah, absolutely. And I am right there with you because we used to wait and wait and wait in the summertime for the tomatoes to come in at the farmer's market.
06:17We grew tomatoes, but our tomatoes were usually later coming in than the farmer's market tomatoes. So about the end of June, we would go over to the farmer's market every Saturday morning and be like, do you have tomatoes yet? Sometimes we got the first ripe tomato out of our little garden, but usually we bought them from the farmer's market because buying tomatoes at the store is something that I only want to do, and I really don't even want to do it, in January and February because they just...
06:45don't taste like anything. It's the reason people don't like tomatoes, I'm convinced. Anybody who doesn't like tomatoes, if I ask them, have you ever had one from a farm, they would tell you, no, I get them from the supermarket. That's because those orange plasticky things in the supermarket are not really, they don't taste like tomatoes. No, and I would pick cherry tomatoes out of a salad if I got a salad at a restaurant because I knew they would be terrible. And I thought I hated cherry tomatoes now.
07:16And then we started growing our own and I tried one and I was like, oh, I can finally have them in my salad again. Yay. Exactly. And you know, I thought I've known that about tomatoes since I was a little kid because my mom always grew a garden. My grandparents always grew gardens with tomatoes. What I didn't realize is it's also true of eggs. It's also true of basically anything that we produce.
07:45intended to live the what they give you in terms of food is just a different it's just a different thing. Yeah. So did you always want to do what you're doing or was was it new? Were you working on it before? Oh, man. So, let's see the the genesis story of the Wagner farm. So by my family generations ago actually came here as German immigrants and they were farmers, potato farmers and
08:14later on, row crop farmers. When I was 12, I was driving massive farm equipment, helping on my uncle's farm and my grandpa's farm, where I worked the summers. But it was never something that people aspired to be. It was the thing you thought of as what you could do if you couldn't do anything else. And I think that's really, really unfortunate. So I spent my life in corporate America, where I still am, by the way. I still work at...
08:43farm career, which I'm approaching hopefully retirement age here before too long. But after years of that, in the year 2020, my 14-year-old daughter passed away from complications from a very, from a rare disease. In January, and then in March in 2020, the world shut down because of COVID.
09:09And the grocery store shelves, you know, started to be empty. And it was really, really, if anyone can recall that time, it was really quite a shock to our, you know, to our thinking about food and health and both spiritual and physical. And at the same time, the business that I'm in also was, became more and more challenging to the point where I thought I just don't, I don't want to do this anymore.
09:36You know, my basically my day job is helping people finance cars that they don't really need. And is that a legacy that I want to leave behind? And I stumbled across actually JM Fortier's book, The Market Gardener, and started to watch some YouTube videos. People like Connor Crickmore and the NeverSink Farm in New York. And a few other examples of farmers that were able to create.
10:06actually a nice living and a nice community around this method of farming, which they basically got from Europe. These 30 inch beds and human scale without a lot of heavy equipment and without a lot of huge capital investment. I just thought that was the coolest thing. So I took some master courses and we started to build up the farm. We started the first shop for property.
10:33We found the property here. We started to build the farm up. There was nothing here. Um, it was, it was an 18 acre lawn basically. So, um, yeah, so that's how we got started. And, and man, it was so much fun that first year I was, uh, we still lived in our, in our other house. So it was a 20 minute drive to the farm, um, every morning and evening to take care of things and I just loved it.
11:00We moved now to the farmhouse which we renovated since. It's a significantly smaller house than we lived in before and made quite a lifestyle change to live out here on the farm. And it's just, it's really been quite fantastic. That is a beautiful story. And I'm sorry about your loss. That's sad, I'm sorry. So yeah, COVID again.
11:26COVID keeps coming up because a lot of the people I've talked to made changes right around when COVID hit. And it really did change how a lot of people viewed their world, not necessarily the world, but their little part of the world. And I know that we were still living in our little house in Jordan, Minnesota in town when everything kind of got shut down.
11:56We had always been kind of aware that it was smart to keep at least two weeks of food, you know, ready to have in case for some reason we had a massive ice storm and could not drive to the store. And so when things kind of got shut down, we were okay. I was definitely anxious about what
12:25My husband actually worked as a, he was outsourced from his job to an account that was a bunch of hospitals. And so he couldn't work from home. So he was still going out into the world, into hospitals every day while all that was going on. Yeah. And he was so worried he was going to bring COVID home to me and the kid. And so he was constantly stressed.
12:55And he said, honey, he said, I'm so glad that we have always lived as if there might be a problem around the corner that we're not foreseeing. He said, because if I had to worry about you running to the store to get stuff and being exposed, he said, I don't know how I would be functioning right now. And I didn't realize how stressed he was until like a month after.
13:21whatever the date was that the government said, okay, everybody started masking up. Don't go, you don't have to, blah, blah, blah. And he was just getting quieter and quieter and quieter with every week that passed. And I finally said, what's up with you? And he said, I just, he said, I don't know what's going to happen.
13:41And I said, oh, that's why you're being so quiet. And he said, yeah, he said, I'm trying really hard to not be panicked by this. He said, but this is a real thing. This is scary. He said, yeah, it really is. So for us, it basically cemented that we wanted to be more capable of growing our own stuff. And we had a small garden at the old house, but...
14:09It wasn't enough to put away stuff for the winter, you know? So we ended up buying a place in August of 2020. And we were really lucky because we were on the beginning swing of the housing boom that happened. So if we'd waited even six months, we would not have been able to go. So yeah, COVID was weird. Well, it certainly changed things.
14:38I don't really want to do it again anytime soon. It was... No, no, hopefully not in our lifetime, right? It's kind of a statistical inevitability. It will happen. So I think it's, I hope that people start to change a little bit the way they live as you mentioned, not thinking about being able to or needing to be able to run out to program or whatever for dinner tonight.
15:08Instead, have enough to sustain for a while. It's good for all of us. Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a Subway sandwich now and then because Subway makes them differently than I would. And I'm not saying everyone has to cook every meal that they eat every day from scratch all the time, but it's really good to know how to do those things. Right.
15:38All right. So what else do you guys do? So you grow produce, you have a CSA. Do you have anything except chickens? We do have chickens. Yeah, we have got, so we have 400 layers. Actually, I had to euthanize our entire flock last year because we got a contracted a disease. No, I'm not going to remember the name of it. It's a very long name. Not, not bird flu, not. And interestingly enough, the state of Michigan.
16:08because of how contagious this particular disease was, we had to euthanize the flock, which was a bummer for sure. We have no idea how it got on the farm. So just a lesson for anyone who might be listening, I think the only way we can sort it is that we bought six hens from a local farmer that was not necessarily a certified hatchery.
16:36you do take a risk. You know, so the only thing, this particular disease only affects chickens, pheasants, and peacocks. So it didn't come in on a wild bird or something like that. So we're pretty certain it must have come in on those chickens. And because some of these diseases that affect poultry can be sort of without any symptoms for a very long time. And then suddenly for whatever reason, they
17:06manifest themselves. Anyway, long story, but we had to euthanize our flock and we just got 400 new hens this year from a place in Fort Wayne that we deal with. So shout out to it's Wayne Trace Farms, by the way, in Fort Wayne. Tracy's great. And she supplies us with all of our hens other than those that I mentioned that we bought that I'm sure was a source for the problem.
17:33She's great and we, so now we have 400 hens that are just starting to lay, which is nice. It was a very quiet period on the farm when we didn't have chickens and it was really a bummer. Now we got them back, it feels right. And also my wife is, she's the crazy chicken lady, so she's turned into this because this is her connection to the farm. She loves to buy exotic breeds.
18:00and raise them. So we're going to get our first batch of those exotic new exotic chicks now here next week. It's not insanity. It's passion. She calls herself the crazy chicken lady so I can call her that. Okay, good. Yeah, I have a hard time with the whole crazy chicken lady, crazy cat lady, crazy horse lady thing.
18:30I love cats and I love dogs and if I had my way I would have kittens around all the time, I would have puppies around all the time because I love them. So I don't have kittens and puppies around all the time because that becomes expensive and takes up a ton of time. And kittens and puppies don't really give back anything except love.
18:56And love's great, but I don't need to be loved by 25 pups and a thousand kittens. I'm good. So, so yes, I think that there are people who might go slightly overboard. I think it becomes overboard when you can no longer handle it and you're never, you're not taking care of the animals in the way that they deserve anymore. That's, that's where it becomes the crazy part. Yeah, for sure. So I, I just.
19:23Every time somebody says crazy cat lady, I'm like, but are they crazy? Really? Well, I'll just give you an example. She's out wallpapering their coop right now. They have to have a pretty place to live. Yeah. I'm sure she thinks I'm the crazy vegetable guy, so maybe that's fair. Yeah. I don't call my husband the crazy gardening dude, but it's close. He loves it.
19:53And right now he and the kid are out putting up the framing for the walls on our heated winter greenhouse that we're building right now. Oh, very nice. Yes, I'm very excited. We've been excited since we found out we were going to do it. And we have baby plants on our kitchen table right now. And as soon as that greenhouse is done, the baby plants are going outside early this year, which is great. Yeah, very good.
20:22We're excited. Congratulations. Yeah, it's a lovely project and it's gonna allow us to extend our growing season this fall. So, don't have enough words and I don't actually have all, I don't think words have been invented yet for how excited we are about this project. It does change the game for sure. We started here in year one with a 30 by 72 hoop house, you know, we went with.
20:50basically full automation. So there's climate control inside and the rest. We bought a speckin' one in year two, so that first one was 70 by 30, the second one's 120 by 30. Last year we added a heated propagation house, so that one's 26 by 36. And now actually I just came in from building our second caterpillar tunnel.
21:18So we keep, you know, there's really, it makes a huge difference to be able to put things under cover even if they're not heated. The sun does a whole lot in terms of keeping things warm. As long as you can keep them from freezing, the sun will keep it warm there during the day. So that's, it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, last spring, I'm sorry, last fall, our barn cat had kittens and
21:47once they were big enough to be out wandering around, she would direct them into the small hoop house greenhouse that we had up because it was warm in there. And we'd go in there and they'd just be playing because it was so warm. It was really cute. Okay. So do you have any other animals or is it just the chickens in your gardens? We don't. We want to. But...
22:17My wife and I both work full-time jobs, so there is a certain limitation when it comes to time. I was fortunate enough here, which this is something else I'm really proud of, that the first second year actually that we did this, I found an intern, a young lady who was a sustainability major at Grand Valley State University, one of the local Michigan colleges. And
22:44She started year one on the farm and just kind of found a passion for farming. So she came back in our, in last year and ran the farm. She was a production manager, you know, 23 year old college graduate, um, starting farming. And, you know, just looking back at what it was like when I was a young, a young guy working on my, um, uncle's farm, you know, and basically being told this isn't what you want to do for a living. I think it's really.
23:11fantastic to try and close that loop and show Riley that, yeah, you can actually make quite a nice living doing this and have a different lifestyle than just heading into the corporate jungle every day. So Riley's back again this year, again, managing production and learning a little bit more about the business side of things. So...
23:36I'm pretty excited about that. I'm looking for Riley 2.0 because I'm sure Riley at some point is on her way to owning her own farm and I'd love to have another Riley at this point to try and help develop their passion. Riley will be ready to run her own farm pretty soon. She understands what needs to happen and how it all works. I'm pretty proud of that actually.
24:03She's part of the group of kids that I refer to as the light and the hope of the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our son is 22 and he still lives with us and he is, he's getting a very nice education in how to build buildings and how to grow food and how to take care of chickens. And we call him the intern who gets paid with room and board right now. There you go. Yeah, it's a paid internship.
24:32Yep. And he loves it. I mean, he'll say that he doesn't. He'll say that he would really like to, I don't know, do something else eventually. But every morning when he gets up and he actually slept, because he's got some insomnia issues going on right now, he gets up and he's like, did dad check the wood stove before he left? And it's a yes or a no. And if it's a no, he's like, okay. And he goes up and
25:01puts on his shoes and jacket and stuff and heads out and makes sure the wood stove is fed. And that's important too on the homestead. So he chips in all the time. And I'm so proud of him because I don't know that he really, really wanted to move here. He had a job at a comic book store that he really loved. It was within walking distance of where we lived.
25:31He loved his job. And sometimes I feel bad that we left because it's half an hour away and he can't drive right now. Whole bunch of stuff about the kid that I'm not allowed to say. There's a reason he's not allowed to drive and it's beyond his control. So sometimes I'm afraid that he feels trapped, but.
25:56He seems to have adjusted well and he really does like helping dad out on the quote unquote farm. So it's working out okay. So do you have other kids? While we had just the two and as I mentioned, my daughter passed away in 2020. I have Matthew who's now 15 who is actually out making sandbags as we speak. So he's maybe not so enthusiastic about it.
26:25Which is, I am hoping that he grows into it still, I guess. And my hope was when we bought the farm that he would, you know, he was enthusiastic when we bought it. And I think he's, well, he's 15. He'd rather play video games than work. So. That sounds about right. Yeah. Makes him, I think, pretty normal. Even though we hope for more, you know? Yeah, but you never know who he's gonna become. I have, I have four kids.
26:55and they all have turned out to be really, really good people.
27:02There's nothing bad I can really say about them, so they're good people. I'm also their mommy, I'm going to say they're good people, but you know how that goes. Okay, so you mentioned video games and stuff here. One of the things that's most interesting to me about this wave of folks who decided to move out of the cities and...
27:30start growing their own food and raising animals and stuff is that every time I talk with them, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to learn what I didn't know. And it is so incredibly interesting to me that we are using this pretty, I don't have a word, intense is the wrong word, this technology that is so high.
28:00tech to learn about old school things and then implement those old school things. Because it sounds like you've done the same thing. You've watched videos and stuff to learn how to do things. Yeah. And I guess I never thought about it that way, but it is interesting how the circle closes, right? And I think it's just I view these channels like YouTube as...
28:29really just democratizing education. And there's a whole lot of people out there willing to contribute because they also have a passion for what they're doing. I think it goes farther. I mean, I think, for example, both JM Fortier who's in Conor Crickmore, who are both kind of pioneers in their own right about this sort of farm approach.
28:53definitely have a passion and want to teach other people. You know, and JM is actually now working on a big research farm, you know, as to try and help find better ways to do some of this stuff. But you can also connect with these folks personally and in exchange.
29:15they make a living doing it, right? So both JM and Connor have master classes, which by the way, I highly, highly recommend. Because if you're going to try and do this farming gig, the systems that you need to have in place to be efficient are absolutely the key. Because it's the whole thing is based on intensive use of space and
29:40and lots and growing lots of stuff. You know, like for example, we grew 50,000 pounds of food last year on our little 1.3 acres. And this year, this year we'll grow another 30% more in the same space. So it is it is a little bit democratizing education, you don't have to go to university anymore to learn this, you can learn it directly from the practitioner, which I think is really great. Yeah, and not end up with them.
30:09hundreds of thousand dollars student loans to pay back to. Right. Right. My basic, I love Elon Musk's approach to it. If this, he says, uh, if you can't learn it on YouTube, it's probably not worth knowing. So, yeah, my daughter has a two year degree in something, just the basic beginner degree, you know, and I had asked her a couple of years ago if she was going to go back to continue and
30:39There she didn't even miss a beat. She was crying immediately and I was like what is wrong and she said mom She said I'm still paying my student loans from the two-year degree that I'm never actually going to use She said I'm never going to spend money to go back to a college class in my life that's that's how much it bothered her and I felt so bad for her and
31:07I don't have the money to pay her student loans off. If I did, I'd do it. She did end up taking an online course to learn computer coding, and she loves it. And she's been doing like freelance stuff with that for the last few years. And that didn't cost her nearly as much money, and it was an accelerated course, and she loved it. So maybe, maybe the idea is that we don't have to spend.
31:36hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education anymore. We just need to know where to learn the information from. Right, right. So. Right. Agreed. Yeah, it was a rough patch for her and she is incredibly bright. And I think that she just felt like she had wasted her time and her money on that degree because she thought she was supposed to get it. So yeah, it's really hard.
32:06when the world tells you go to school, get straight A's, and then go to college and get straight A's and then try to find a job in the field you went to school for because it's not as easy as it sounds. For sure not. So anyway, I could talk about that for months. I have had long conversations with other friends who have kids who have been through the college path and we're pretty much all on the same page.
32:36So anyway, Rob, I'm really, I don't know, I got a lot going on today, so I'm gonna keep this short. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mary. Appreciate it, appreciate you too. Appreciate what you're doing. I'm trying to get you guys' information out to the world as much as I can. Thank you. All right, have a great day. Thank you. Bye.