A Tiny Homestead

Dandylion Farms LLC

Today I'm talking with Christina and Seth at Dandylion Farms LLC.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Christina and Seth at Dandelion Farms LLC. Good evening, guys. Good evening. Hey. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. You guys are in Ohio? Yes. Okay. I'm in Minnesota if you didn't know.
00:30Um, so tell me, tell me about yourselves and what you do. Well, uh, we're just kind of some average people who, uh, kind of started going down the whole homesteading trail, um, quite a few years ago. And, uh, you know, we, we kind of do a lot of, a lot of things, but
00:58Our business right now primarily makes natural healthcare products like lotions, shampoos, soaps, salves, stuff like that. All the good things, yes. Yes, yeah. Yep, we make things like that here too. And Christina was kind enough to send me a lip balm and a shampoo bar.
01:28And I'm probably, I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not, cause it's a new thing, but I, I tried the lip balm today and it's a wonderful, I think you sent me the mocha kind. Yes. That one is her favorite. So I was like, Oh, let her try that one out. And then yeah, the shampoo bar, we haven't released them yet, but I've been giving them out to like a couple of people to try out and let me know what they think about them before we really put them out there.
01:54Well, I have questions. I haven't used it yet because I wash my hair once a week and I had just washed my hair when the bar came in and I was like, um, I'm going to wait. So my question about the shampoo bars is how exactly do you use them? Do you use them like a bar of soap on your hair or do you lather them up in your hand and put the lather in your hair or how do I use it? So you could do either.
02:20but I just put the soap bar under the water for a second and then obviously make sure your hair is good and wet. And then I just lather and it literally feels like there's a huge cloud sitting on my head. It lathers up so well. Yeah, I just scrubbed down. Okay. Like using a bar of soap. Okay, cool. And it looks like there's a lot of moisturizing oils in the ingredients and I am tickled about this because my hair tends toward dry and.
02:48We have a cold front moving into Minnesota as we speak. Today it was 72, tomorrow it's supposed to be 55 for the high. And it doesn't look like it's gonna get hot, hot again until spring. Thank you, Jesus, I'm ready for this bouncing to be done. But my hair tends to get real dry in the wintertime because the humidity drops. So I'm very excited to see how the oils in it work. Yes, so I naturally have,
03:18Like my hair will get, if I wash it too much, which when you said you only wash your hair once a week, I only wash mine twice a week. So it's much better for like the oil production. But I understand completely about your hair being dry because mine is as well. And that's why I packed it full of so many hydrating oils because I always feel like I had that issue. And that was one of the biggest things as to why I was like, we're making shampoo bars because one, all of the terrible ingredients that are in all the store-bought ones, you know, they,
03:47can cause all kinds of issues. But also I was like, no matter what I purchase, my hair is still dry. So I was like, I'm just gonna make my own. So yeah, I made sure to put a bunch of nourishing and hydrating and moisturizing oils into it. So I'm excited to hear what you think about it when you try it. Well, it's probably gonna be tomorrow. So as soon as it dries, I will message you and tell you what it did. I also heard that I read, cause I looked up about shampoo bars, cause I keep meaning to get one and I never do.
04:16And then one showed up magically in my mailbox and I was like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how it works. And I looked it up. And from what I read from three reputable sources, because that's how I decide whether I believe what I'm reading, people's hair goes through an adjustment period and you shift from shampoo to a shampoo bar. Yes, absolutely. So we'll see. Right now.
04:44Right now I wash my hair and I let it dry and my hair is long. It's like mid back and I'm also 54 and my hair is about, I would say two thirds white and a third dark. Cause I started going gray really early. I have my first gray hairs at 14. And I have been saying for the last 10 years, I wish that it would just go white because this is driving me insane, but I don't want to color it cause it'll take forever to grow it back out again.
05:15Point being is that no one tells you when your hair is beautiful and dark when you're in your 20s That when it goes gray those gray hairs are coarser than your your normal Hair is when you're younger. Yeah, and so not only does my hair tend toward dry, but now I have coarse white hairs and They frizz because of the dry
05:39So I'm really, really hoping that this shampoo bar does wonderful things that I would love to have it do. Aw. Well, like I said, we're excited to hear what you think about it. I'm excited. I kept saying, I've been saying for like five years that we should try making shampoo bars because we make cold process lye soap. It can't be that hard to make a shampoo bar. And my husband was like, well.
06:05He said, you're the only one's really going to use it. So can we wait? And I'm like, yeah, I can keep using shampoo. It's fine. And if this works, we're going to have to make a batch for me because I probably can't afford to buy them from you. I would love to, but I don't think I can afford it right now, but we probably have all the ingredients to make shampoo bars because we have all the ingredients to make soap. So. Yeah. It's a, it's.
06:36Pretty much the identical product. OK, awesome. And just whatever oils you think work for your hair, I guess? Yep, absolutely. Just make sure that it's, since you make the cold press, just make sure it's even, you know, your even amounts with lye to your oils so it doesn't end up too, like, crunchy, like your bar is getting crunchy. Or gooey, yeah. Yes, so yeah, as long as you keep that ratio with the oils to lye, yeah, you can tweak it with any oils you'd like.
07:05Fantastic. We have accidentally super-fatted, I think is what it's called, two batches of soap out of probably hundreds of batches of soap that we've made. And they end up being what we call the gardener's soap because they're still great for washing dirt and resins off your hands. But you don't want to use a super-fatted soap in the shower because you will fall on your butt in the shower. That's how slippery it'll get.
07:35So yeah, it's not a good thing to have too many oils in your soap. Okay, so how did you guys come to this? Because not like I keep saying, not everybody's like, hey, let's become homesteaders on a whim. Well, so we've always kind of been sort of outdoorsy people. We both grew up on some acreage.
08:04And it just kind of seemed like the life we wanted. But probably about 10 years ago, I decided to take a course in permaculture design, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with, but there's lots of great resources for it online. And so as I was starting to do that, Christy here started to
08:34of get into herbs and herbalism and crafting and figuring out what she can do with those things. And then our first kid was born and we're like, hey, we don't really want all these chemicals like on our kid. And I had really bad eczema growing up and
09:04throughout my adult years and all three of our children ended up with eczema. And as soon as we switched to natural soap, none of us had their skin issues anymore. And so that just kind of solidified things for us and motivated us to keep going. And, and it's always kind of, we are always the test subject.
09:32And since we have such sensitive skin, if we react to it, somebody else probably will too. And so it's been a lot of trial and error figuring out what works and what doesn't. And, you know, a lot of it was like, here, friends, try this, tell us what you think. And that's kind of how it all started. People started asking for it. And so we've just been...
10:02slowly progressing with it. Okay. That was one of the things that I was going to say about the lip balm and the shampoo bar that you sent me. I could pronounce every single ingredient on the label. I was very impressed. Yeah. I was just talking with my mom about that earlier. She was showing me one of her like high dollar name brand shampoos and she was like, oh, do you think this is good or whatever? And I was looking at the back of it and I told her, I said, if you can't pronounce the ingredients,
10:32you shouldn't be using it. It was pretty much every single ingredient on the back. And I was like, well, that one irritates your lungs. That one is bad for your organs. That one can cause cancer. So she was like, okay, I'm switching. Yeah, for sure. I don't know what all the bad ingredients do. I just know that if I can't pronounce the ingredient and it isn't a word that.
10:57is pretty common in everyday language. I probably don't want it on my skin. Absolutely. I mean, that's exactly what we think too. Like they should be simple ingredients that everybody knows or something that you could easily look up and be like, okay, that's for moisturizing your skin. Yeah. No big words that you are like, what in the world is that? So yeah, we are very simple and to the point, what is in it is on the label and nothing more.
11:27Um, I don't know what the regulations are like in Ohio, but in Minnesota, we have to put every single ingredient, including water and whatever the scientific word is for lye. I mean, we put, we put lye on the label. We say lye, but we're supposed to put, um, high something. What is the, what's the scientific name for lye? I can't think of it right now. Something hydroxide? Correct. Uh, sodium hydroxide. Thank you.
11:56But sodium hydroxide takes up a lot of space on a tiny label, so we just put lye and water. Yes, we do the same. So as far as the labeling here in Ohio, I know that they want you to put everything that's in the product and you need to start with what there is the most of and work your way down your list. So pretty much exactly the same. Yeah. And the reason I bring it up is because not every state has the same.
12:25requirements or regulations. In Minnesota, I keep talking about this, but it's the best example I can think of. We have the cottage food laws here. And it's not a license. You have to have a registration number. So you have to take a little test so that you can prove that you know the food safety practices. And then once you get that registration number, you can make things in your kitchen and sell them.
12:53But there's a ton of things that you can't do. Like you're not supposed to buttercream because quote unquote buttercream is supposed to be refrigerated. Well, I've put buttercream on a cake and had it on my counter in a covered dish for three days and it's been fine. But because it's made with heavy cream or half and half or milk, they want it to be refrigerated. So you can't sell it. Anything that's gotta be refrigerated.
13:21or heated you cannot sell from your home cottage kitchen in Minnesota. Yeah, it's pretty similar this way. Yup. So I got my registration. I still have it. I renewed it this year. And I haven't sold anything because I just, I feel like it's not worth the time that I put into it right now to sell it.
13:47because I already feel bad enough that people are spending so much money at the grocery store for stuff at the grocery store. And to make it worth my time and my while, I would have to charge so much money for four cookies that nobody's going to buy them from me. Right. Yeah. That's something that we sort of discuss quite often. And our whole kind of...
14:16goal is to keep things as affordable as possible. And so like our most expensive product is somewhere right around the $15 range. And even then, you know, you get people who are like, boy, that's kind of a lot of money for that. And it's like, well, it's handcrafted. It's natural. You know, I mean, we...
14:43We milk the goats ourselves, you know, like we're not going out and buying all of these ingredients. I mean, some, yeah, we do purchase, but the main stuff, it's not made in a laboratory. It's made on a farm, you know? And so we do kind of run into that issue sometimes, but we do try to keep things as
15:13be able to use it. It's not so much about us making a profit as it is just doing the right thing.
15:24Yes. And with what you're doing, that makes a lot of sense. You're trying to help people and give them a better alternative to something they're going to put on their skin. With baked goods, it doesn't feel the same to me, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. So, and we try to sell our soaps and our lip balms and our candles and stuff that we make. We try to keep it within reason.
15:54Um, my husband was telling me that he was at a farmer's market or a craft show or something last summer, and somebody was selling a 10 ounce candle for like $30. Because, because that's what it costs them to make it. And I looked into it and technically we should be selling ours for about 25. And we're not, we're selling them for, I think 12 bucks, I think. Right.
16:21And I still feel like that's exorbitant for a candle, but I also know what it costs us to make it and the time involved. So it's really hard when you try to explain this to someone who doesn't make the things. They don't understand why it's so expensive. And with all the things that have gone up in price in the last year and a half, two years, people are already swallowing a very bitter pill just to get groceries. So it's really...
16:50hard to sell anything that feels like a luxury right now. Right, yeah, for sure. And I hate it, I hate everything about it. It makes me so offended. It's the best word I can find, offended at how much just basic everyday food costs right now. It's insanity. Yep. We are down to the last of our half beef that we bought.
17:19a year or so ago, probably a year and a half ago. And my husband wanted to know if we wanted to do a quarter this time. And I said, let me go see how much that's gonna cost from a farmer and a butcher, because you're not only paying for the meat, you're paying for the processing too. And found out that Sam's Club is selling ground beef in our area right now for.
17:48$4.58 a pound ground beef and found out that it was going to cost us almost $7 a pound for beef from the place we got it from last time. So I'm a butcher by trade. And it is the I mean, the prices of everything ever since COVID have, you know, gone through the roof.
18:16uh, somewhere around $6 a pound for ground beef right now. Yeah. But like, if you, if you ordered from us, you're paying for something a pound. Um, but we, we raised the beef that we slaughter so we can control those prices a little bit better. But if you're going out to the farmer and buying his beef and then coming to us and processing, you're going to have more money in it. Yeah. But.
18:46in all reality, you have to understand the trade-off where you're paying $4 a pound for your rib-eyes, whereas if you went to Walmart or somewhere else, you're paying $16 to $18 a pound for rib-eye. So you're paying a little bit more for certain things, but significantly less for others.
19:16And in the long run, it's still a lot cheaper than going to the grocery store every other week or whatever and buying meat. But it is, it's a hard pill to swallow paying all that money up front for beef. That's where I was going to go with this is that I would love to do it, but we don't have the extra money to lay out ahead of time, as it were.
19:44Because for anyone who doesn't know who is listening to the podcast, if you buy a quarter beef or a half beef or a whole beef, how it works is you put in your order with the farmer or the butcher, depending on how they do it, and you pay for all of that beef up front.
20:11farmers and butchers will require a deposit, some won't. And then once you get your beef, you write them a check or you give them cash or you pay for it with a card. And the last place that we got our half beef from, I think it was $1,600 a year and a half ago. And that was pretty good. That was a really good price. Right now it's at least $1,000 more, if not $2,000 more.
20:40And it's not so much the cost of the beef, it's the cost of the processing in this case. Yeah, I mean, where in our area of Ohio, you're looking at probably for a half a beef somewhere around $1,600, I would guess. I mean, there are a lot of variables there, but.
21:08One thing that a lot of the butcher shops in our area are doing now, because nobody can afford to buy a half a beef or even a quarter beef, not a lot of people can. They do bundles where it's like a 50 pound bundle or a hundred pound bundle and it's a set price. That way you're still getting a decent amount of meat for significantly less money.
21:40Yeah, exactly. And the other thing that's putting me off of it, it's not only the price, it's a personal preference. Because it's just my husband and my son and I who live here, we have been eating a lot of beef because a half a beef is a lot of meat. And I am so over it. Like, man, I don't want to see another hamburger for a year. I'm just so over it. It has pretty much turned me into wanting to be a vegetarian.
22:10You can only eat so much of one kind of meat and not get sick of it. Yep. Yeah. Well, so like with, with us, we eat more chicken than beef. And one, it's a lot easier and a lot more cost effective to raise chickens and process them ourselves. Oh, for sure. Yeah. But, but two, it's, you know, our kids are still.
22:39Fairly young. So it's like we just, when we have beef, it's typically ground beef. Yeah. You know, we, we saved the stakes for a special occasion. Um, but I'm not going to go pay top dollar for some beef to get 90% of it ground, you know, like, um, when I can just go to Aldi and buy a couple pounds here and there, um, right. Exactly.
23:08But yeah, we eat a lot of chicken and we're hoping in the next year or so to start raising hogs as well, which I'll process on the farm, so to speak, for our own consumption. And that was actually kind of, it all sort of ties back into the homesteading thing where I was like, hey, I want to know how to...
23:38harvest these animals, if we're going to raise them, I want to know how to do it from start to finish. One thing led to another, and I've been butchering for like 10 years now. It really gives us sort of peace of mind because I know that if anything were to happen with the economy or whatever, I can go out to the backyard and harvest all the meat we're going to need.
24:09Yeah, absolutely. Yes. You know, I mean, it's about being self-sufficient and not needing to rely on...
24:26things that are out of our control. Right, exactly, yeah. So, I have a weird question. If, I have to look into this in Minnesota, but I don't know what it's like in Ohio. If somebody came to you and said, I want a quarter of beef, but I wanna butcher it myself, like I just want you to give me whatever section that is, and I will take it home and cut it up myself, is that legal or can people not do that?
24:57I suppose you could get away with it, but to the best of my knowledge off the top of my head, the animal has to be sold while it's still alive. And also, they, that person would probably have to be there during.
25:25the the time of harvest. Okay. And there there are some gray areas that if the inspectors heard me talking would probably disagree with me. But like, in Ohio, you can legally process 1000 chickens a year for other people without being inspected.
25:55Okay. Yeah. Um, and I have brought that up to our inspectors and they said, yeah, technically, but we're still going to come knocking. Um, so it's like, you just kind of have to make sure that you're keeping good records and, and, you know, it's kind of always best, I guess, if you find yourself in that situation to call the department of agriculture and see what they say.
26:22Yeah, and be like, how does this work? Am I going to get in trouble if I do this thing? Yeah. Yep. I know that we have butchered a hat. We've butchered a pig. We, we bought, we bought a pig. It was basically, um, slaughtered on the farmer's property. It was gutted and cut in half. So we brought the body home into halves.
26:47And then a friend of ours came over and helped us butcher one half and he took that half home because he paid for that. And we butchered the other half and it went in our freezer. We have butchered a lamb that was brought to us basically no skin, no hooves, no head, no tail. It was wrapped in paper and we butchered it on our kitchen table. And my husband hunts, so obviously we've butchered deer before. So
27:16So butchering is, I mean, we are not artists at it by any stretch and I think that a good butcher is an artist. I think that if you're good at it, it is artistry. We're not there. We just wanna be able to cook the meat so we cut it the way we want it. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, all that really matters, if you're doing it for yourself, is that you get something to eat. Yes. You know, I mean, if the world were to end,
27:46right? You're not going to care how nice those steaks look. You're just going to be thankful you don't meet, you know? Yep. Yep, exactly. But if you were going to turn around and try and sell it, then yeah, you want it to look good and you want to know what you're doing.
28:03Yes. And I just, I want to, I want to make the distinction that, that there's a big difference between us cutting up a lamb and you know, it's for us to eat. No one's going to see it. We don't have to care about what the cuts look like. And you as a butcher doing what you do, I'm sure that you take pride in the skills that you have cultivated in your, your butchering career. Absolutely. Yeah. And, but
28:32Also, I've gotten unfair advantage because I've got all the equipment to do it. You know, like, um, when, when you're doing it on your kitchen table, it's a lot different it's let's get this done and in the freezer, you know, like, um, and, but, but yeah, it's, if you don't take pride in what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it, you know,
28:54Yes, exactly. And when we, when we cut up that lamb, oh my God, my kitchen counters look like someone had been murdered. I was like, okay, now that we're done and all the food is put away, who's going to help me clean off the counter and mop the floor? My husband's like, I will. I'm like, good, thank you. And what works really, really well? Windex works really, really well for getting blood off of floors and off of countertops. Interesting.
29:23It's stinky and it's not good for you, but it works.
29:28So yeah, it just, it cuts all the, the yuck. And I was very happy to have two bottles under the kitchen sink. I was like, we're going to have our neighbor who is a police officer stop in just to visit and he's going to be like, who died? Who did you kill? We didn't look in the freezer. See it. It says lamb chops, lamb leg, lamb roast. So yeah.
29:56Okay, well I didn't know I was going to turn a discussion about butchering and I think it's great because I don't usually talk about this and I had just looked up somebody to buy beef from last night and saw the prices and went, we are not ready to buy a half right now or a quarter or an eighth. We're just going to buy what we need every couple weeks and call it good until we're in a better financial position to drop thousands of dollars on a freezer full of beef.
30:24So yeah. Okay, so you said you have goats and do you have steers? Do you have cows? So we are sort of crashing with my wife's parents right now. We recently sold our home and we are building a new home.
30:52And so we're, we're crashing here and my wife's father has had beef since the dawn of time. Okay. So he's got a, a small herd right now of dexter's, um, which are a sort of smaller breed of beef. They max out at like six to 700 pounds. And they are probably the smartest.
31:21cows I've ever seen. And so he's kind of in his retirement playing around with this herd of dexters and eventually one or two of them will end up in the freezer, I'm sure. Okay. So if you were building a house, does that mean that you bought land?
31:51will be the new headquarters of our homestead here hopefully very soon. That's exciting. Congratulations. I know how that feels. Awesome. How many kids do you guys have? We have three boys. Oh my, you're busy. Oh yeah. Yeah. My wife is a superstar. That's for sure.
32:20I'm really glad you said that because my wife, my wife, homeschool the children and does the business and takes care of all of the stuff at home. I mean, she's the unsung hero here. Seth, I love you. Thank you for saying that. It is so important that the partners talk up their partners. And I'm saying partners because not everybody's married.
32:49You know, people don't necessarily just get married anymore. They just, they just live together and they're partnered. They're not married, but, but spouses need to encourage and support their spouses. And it's really nice to hear the male support the female because I feel like females support the males a lot. And most men are really weird about saying, my wife is awesome. I'm so proud of her. She does all these things. My husband says it about me all the time. I don't do anything anymore. I used to,
33:19bust my everlovin' ass, but my kids are now grown. I don't have to work quite as hard or crazy as I used to. Yeah, well, we're right in the thick of it. So thank you for saying that about your wife. Yeah, yeah, no, she is fantastic. I mean, the business wouldn't exist without her and neither would our homestead. Good job, Christina, I'm proud of you. Well, thank you.
33:46Woman to woman, I am very proud of you. You keep kicking ass. Okay, guys, I like to keep these to half an hour. I would love to talk to you for another half an hour, but I'm not going to do it because I'm sure you have things to do. Well, it was really nice chatting with you. Can I ask you how you found out about us? I think I found you on Facebook, just like I find almost everybody. Okay.
34:15Yeah, the best thing about Facebook is that the algorithm feeds you more of what you're interested in. So the minute I started looking at people's homestead and farm pages, it just keeps feeding me people. And I'm like, Tandelion Farms, LLC sounds like an interesting place. Let me get ahold of them. Yeah. I mean, we just try to keep it real and keep it simple. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, me too. That's why the podcast is basically yapping about homesteading and farming.
34:44and baking and crafting because I'm like, it needs to be easy. I don't have the bandwidth for a huge learning curve right now. So it's just a chat with people about what they're doing because I think it's really interesting and apparently other people think it's interesting too. So all right guys, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much. Have a good night. You too. Bye.
 
 

The Gorham Homestead

Today I'm talking with Dawn at The Gorham Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Dawn at the Gorham Homestead. Good morning, or good afternoon, Dawn. It's actually one o'clock in the afternoon here. Right. Good afternoon. How you doing? I'm doing great. You are where again?
00:27I am in Dixon, Tennessee, just about 30 minutes west of Nashville. Okay, I have talked to so many people in the southern states this week that I'm starting to pick up a drawl. It'll happen. If you talk to us long enough, it'll rub off on you. It's the easiest one for me to pick up. So if I do it, I am absolutely not making fun of you. My ears are just telling my brain to gain a southern drawl. That's all. I wouldn't even notice if you did. Where are you located? I'm in Minnesota.
00:56Minnesota, gotcha, okay. Yeah, and I don't sound like I'm from Minnesota because I grew up in Maine and I have worked hard to get rid of the Maine accent and not fully adopt the Minnesota accent. I gotcha. So everybody's like, where are you from? And I'm like everywhere and nowhere. Makes sense. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So my name is Dawn and I'm...
01:23the Gorham Homestead here in Dixon. And we started this farm about four years ago. And we're about 15 years into our natural health journey. I started when my son was young, started learning about natural foods and cleaning up our diet, things that I wasn't taught in like the 80s and 90s. We grew up on fast food and I thought it was fine. We trusted that it was fine.
01:52until my youngest son was born and we thought he was autistic, which I'm still convinced if we hadn't changed his diet that he might have been more on the spectrum. So we started down that rabbit hole, which eventually led to, I quickly realized that I couldn't afford to shop at the organic Whole Foods all the time. There's a reason why they call it Whole Paycheck.
02:17Yes. We started growing our own food as much as we could grow in our subdivision and our little, you know, 10th of an acre backyard, squeezed everything we could into it. And that just, you know, how that starts, you start with chickens and you start with a raised bed. And before you know it, you have 15 raised beds and grapevines and plum trees and whatever you can squeeze into that. And the next step for me was that I eventually wanted a milk cow because we
02:46When he was about two, we also got onto the raw dairy. And, um, you know, I knew I couldn't, I knew I couldn't get away with having a milk cow in a subdivision, like I had gotten away with having chickens and that was contraband and I just, you know, threw a dozen eggs here and a dozen eggs there to my neighbors to keep them quiet. Yep. So in 2020, you know, I worked in the courthouse in Nashville and when
03:11They tried to set the courthouse on fire just during protests and that sort of thing. I had been there for 25 years and that made me realize just how fragile a lot of things were and so that was our calling. That was our time to find our way out and to purchase the farm. So we've been here building it up slowly over the last four years. That all sounds really familiar except that I wasn't anywhere near a courthouse that somebody was trying to set on fire. So I'm real grateful for that.
03:41It was a little scary. Yeah, and not to be a smart ass, but that was what lit the fire on your feet to move. Yes, yes. I mean that plus, you know, listening to some of my favorite influencers, they just kept saying, if you're in the cities, get out, you know, that it's not gonna get any better. And while Nashville had always sort of had a small town feel, it was quickly changing. Like when I moved to Nashville, it barely had a skyline. Now it looks like Dallas.
04:09I mean, it's just crazy how fast everything exploded. And with that, you know, that kind of explosion and population increase comes a lot of the problems that comes with that. So yeah, we were just ready for our own sanity and safety to just get the heck out and live the peaceful life on the farm. Yeah. We lived in a small town for 20 years before we moved in 2020. And it is amazing.
04:39how fast things get built up. I hadn't been up into the town, past the town I was living in, in over a year. And my husband and I needed to run up there a couple weekends ago. And I was like, that's new, that's new. Where'd that come from? When did this change on the highway? What happened? And he was like, you don't get out much, do you, honey? And I was like, I don't want to. I don't either. Yeah, I have no reason to. Yeah, and part of the reason that we
05:09moved is because it was the summer of 2020, the George Floyd stuff had happened. Yes. And we're in Minnesota. My husband worked not far from where all the rioting happened. And he was off work for two days because he couldn't go into work. The building that he worked at was locked down. Oh, wow. And we had some real serious conversations about wanting to not be in town anymore because
05:38What if the unrest actually creeps out into the burbs and then the little towns outside of the suburbs? It it was just making me really nervous and I had always wanted to get out anyway And it just so happened that we were in a position to make the jump and we did and a lot of people did in 2020 I think a lot of people went. I think we need to reevaluate how we're living our lives Yeah, I agree
06:08So what are you doing at your place? My main thing that I do is raw dairy. I have eight Jersey milk cows, three that I'm milking. I'm currently in my dry period. But we milk three, and we will be milking eight once we get them all into rotation. So that's my main thing. But we also.
06:31teach work. We built a building on this property so that I can teach workshops. So I teach canning workshops and cheese making and fermenting and chicken butchering and all of the good old fashioned homestead skills. I do like I call it my workshop season, which normally starts in about May and I wrap that up around September so that I can rest for the winter. But so those are, you know, we do pasture poultry and turkeys and eggs and duck eggs and.
07:01Pretty much anything you can think of, I've dabbled in it. I decided I don't like goats. So that's not a thing here. You don't like goats? I do not like goats, yeah. That was... Okay. You know, you kind of have to try it and see what is for you and what's not. And I pretty quickly bought and sold my first herd of milking goats. They were not here for very long. Well, that's okay. Not everybody has to like the same livestock all the time. Right.
07:29And I have to say it because I always say it when somebody mentions Jersey cows. I freaking love Jersey cows. I think that they're so beautiful. They are so sweet too. That's the one thing that I love about milking. I know it's a marriage. It's basically, you know, you're married to these cows, but you can't neglect them. Um, but I love starting my day with my girls. They just, they're so happy to see me. They come into the stanchion. They're all warm.
07:57And when it's cold outside and the sun's coming up, I can see the sun comes up over the ridge, like right where I'm sitting milking the cows. And it's just, I don't know, it's just a peaceful way to start the day. So I love them. I love them to death. It sounds very zen. Well, it could be hard too. I've had some black eyes and broken toes to go with that zen. But, you know, we, yeah, for the most part, it's really, it's rewarding. I'll put it that way. It's hard work, but it's good work.
08:26Well, that could be said of any farm or homestead anywhere in the world, because you're right. It is good work, but it's hard work. We actually have gotten a reprieve from the quote unquote hard work for the winter. We just called all of our chickens. We only had like 12 and they were only giving us three eggs a day because they're old and they're getting lazy. And my husband said,
08:51I think I'd like to be done with chickens for the winter. I don't want to spend the money to feed them if they're not giving back. And I was like, that's totally fine. I said, are we getting more chickens in the spring? And he said, yes, we are. I said, okay, yep, do what you got to do. Yep. And that's the only livestock we have. We don't have any room for.
09:16goats or cows or anything. So chickens were it. So next spring we will probably get 20 chickens. Got it. That's sort of where I was before we bought this place. Well we have 3.1 acres but it's not set up for grazing animals in the least. Yeah, gotcha. So we grow the things that don't require food. They require water and air and dirt. We grow food. We grow a garden.
09:45Nice. Yep. So, do you have kids that are involved in this?
09:53Yes and no. We have six kids. We have three boys and three girls. My oldest is 31 and my youngest is 17. All of the older five are gone. There's only one left in the house and he is the one that, you know, started this whole journey for us. And he is somewhat into what he will do anything I ask him to do, like anything. But
10:22As far as whether or not I think he's going to continue on with the homesteading lifestyle, I'm not a hundred percent. I feel like he'll go away from it and come back sort of like I did. The girls are into canning and anything that I'm willing to give them. I'm sort of like the little red hand. They want to eat it, but they don't necessarily want to do it. That sounds about right. They don't necessarily want to help a whole, whole lot, but they're just starting to have their babies and you know, and their lives are
10:52wild and crazy right now, but that was the whole reason that we wanted to do this was so that we could provide for our adult kids and grandkids something. That's what Christmas is here. Christmas, they get beef and they get whole chickens and they get homemade butter and they get, you know, all that kind of stuff instead of gifts and money. So hopefully they'll come around. I think that's wonderful. We're going to be giving as we do when we have it.
11:22homemade soap, you know, cold process lye soaps, and lip balms and candles, because we make those. Those are the best. And crocheted cotton washcloths, because people really like them. Oh, awesome. I don't love using them. I don't like that they have the knots in them, they feel weird on my hands when I'm doing dishes with them. But our family really likes the
11:51Homemade crocheted cotton washcloths. I don't know what the appeal is, but they love them So I make them when I'm in the winter time when I'm when it's dark out and it's cold and then I put them in A bin and then I give them for Christmas presents That's precious. That's stuff you'll always remember Mm-hmm. So so I get it, you know give give what you you make because your whole heart and soul is in what you make or you grow and
12:21Absolutely. Do you have, how many kids do you have? I have four. My daughter will be 35 in a couple weeks. Like I think, yeah, like three or four weeks now. My stepson is 33. My other, my son of my body, it's so weird because it's a long story, but I have a stepson and he's the one that's 33.
12:46Then I have my second child of my body. He's 27 or 28 and he was born in 97. And then I have our youngest together here who is 22, going to be 23 and that's bullet. So I have many children. Yes. That is very similar to my situation. My, one of the daughters and one of the sons is step-sons, but I take them like my own.
13:15And then the 17 year old is ours together. So it was yours, mine and ours. Uh-huh. Oh yeah. My husband would call and say, I'm on my way home. How was your day? And I would say, your son did this. My son did that. And our son did something completely different. And he would be like, oh, okay. And it's so hard because I consider my stepson to be my son. Right. But his, his mom, when she was alive, she passed a few years ago.
13:43made it very clear that her son was not my son. And so when I talk about the kids and I talk about my stepson, I say, I say my kids, like the ones that are of my body. That's how I describe them. When I talk about my steps and I say the one that was a bonus child or of my heart. Love it. I feel the exact same way about my kids. Yeah. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not my stepson's mother. And there was lots of words I can't repeat.
14:13in that description and I was just like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna breathe deep and accept the take on this and I'm gonna consider him a child of my heart. That's the best thing I can do right now. Yep, absolutely. So yeah, it was a rough go, but everything is good and he's totally cool with calling me mom and everything's good. So yeah, blended families are a gift and a challenge. Yes, they were definitely a challenge when they were little.
14:42But now, you know, now that they're all grown, it's all good. Mm hmm. Yup. Okay. So what, like, I keep wanting to ask people this and, and I ask, and sometimes I get a really good answer and sometimes I get a sidestep. So I'm going to ask you, what is your favorite thing about this lifestyle that you have chosen and made? My favorite thing is control. Mm hmm.
15:11It gives me total control over what I consume, what I do, where I go, where I work, how I live. All of the things that were out of my control when I lived in a subdivision and worked for the government and answered to other people, because I also retired. And to do this full time.
15:37That is it. It gives me, with it comes a lot of personal responsibility, but it gives me complete say so in what I'm consuming and the chemicals that I come into contact with. I don't have to go to someone else's office where I have no control over that or eat the things that are provided to me in the lunch room at the courthouse. And it's just, for me, that is 100% what it is. I want total control.
16:06I'm not a control freak, but I don't like things being out of my control and blindly trusting because it has bitten me more than once. Okay, that's a new reason. I love that. A new favorite thing. Yeah, that is. I had not heard that before. Control over my life. To live it the way I design it and the way that I want it to be without anyone else intervening
16:36how I go about my daily business and what I put on the table. I am right there with you. I really do love the fact that we are the final say on our property about what happens. And it's so weird to me when someone pulls in the driveway, my first thought isn't, who is that? My first thought is, who is that? Why are they here? You know? I had that happen this morning.
17:067 15 this morning. He was in a vehicle that was marked but still it was 7 15. And he wanted to check my electric pulse. But I was like feathers up, you know, hair raised on the back of my neck when I opened that door. Because I knew, you know, if you're here, you're either supposed to be here or you're lost or you're, you know, something bad's about to happen. Yep. Yeah, we had
17:35We had our neighbor who happens to be a county sheriff stop in a couple weeks ago, midday, in his marked pickup truck. He lives like a quarter of a mile northwest of us. And he's never, I mean, I think he stopped in to say, hey, to my husband the second summer we were here. But other than that, we never interact because there's no reason to. And he pulled in.
17:59And my dog lost her mind because anytime somebody pulls in the driveway, she is a really good watchdog and she was in the house. She's barking her head off. And I thought maybe he was just going to turn around and no, he parked. And I was like, oh God, who's dead? And I thought it wouldn't be a sheriff, it would be a police officer, but okay. So I stepped out on the porch and the window was open and he was getting out of his vehicle and I was like, hi, can I help you?
18:26And he was like, oh, I was just writing you a note on the back of my business card. And I was like, okay. He says, one of our barn cats took a ride in my wife's vehicle this morning. And my wife saw her jump out of the bottom of the vehicle. You know how they get up underneath? Yeah. And she, she jumped out, jumped off and then walked into the ditch. And he said, we can't find the cat. And I said, okay. And he said, it's one of my kid's favorite cats.
18:56I'm like, oh no. Oh man, he's on a mission. Yeah, and he said, so he said, can I leave my card with you? He's got my personal number on it, so if you see her, you can call me. I was like, oh, of course, yes. And then he swung in, like a couple of days later, my husband was out in the driveway, and he swung in because he saw our barn cat, and apparently our barn cat looks a lot like theirs. And he got out and walked over to my husband, he was like, damn.
19:25And my husband said, what? And he says, I thought that was our cat. And my husband says, you can't have that cat. That's our mama barn cat and she's got brand new babies. You take that cat, we're in trouble. And the guy was like, oh. And my husband said, but once she's done nursing the babies and they're weaned, if you want her, you can have her. I feel you on that. So yeah, it's really.
19:54anxiety inducing when a law enforcement person pulls in the driveway for no apparent reason. Yes. Yes. Because I'm not going to lie, law enforcement has its place and I appreciate everything that they do, but if they're pulling in my driveway, it's probably not for a good reason. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. We had that a few months ago, blue lights coming down our road.
20:23And I could see them, like we have trees all the way around us. You can't see our house from the road, but I could see the lights through the trees and I could hear the sirens and it was like 11 o'clock at night. So I thought, they must be going to one of the neighbors. About that time I realized they're coming up my driveway, two lights on, I mean, guns blazing coming up that driveway. Um, so T and I both go out there. And of course, um, we both, we had not gotten.
20:51undressed yet. It was one of those nights where we were working late. And so both of us still had our guns on our heads. Oh, God. But it turns out they were looking for someone who boyfriend had called in said she was going to commit suicide and her last for some reason the boyfriend thought that she was here on our farm. And so they were looking for her. But in retrospect, he and I were both like, you know, we didn't even
21:21We just went right on out there, didn't put our hands up. We had our guns on our hip. And when we're here, we don't conceal them. They're on the outside. Right. Yeah, but it was just one of those. My heart was up in my throat because I was like, why are they coming up here? Dust was flying because they were coming up the driveway so fast. Uh-huh. Well, I think that these little encounters that you and I have just shared aren't all that uncommon. Yeah, I know.
21:51But again, our neighbor is a super nice man and he has his own homestead and he has like a donkey, he has cows, he has a rooster that calls every morning when the sun's coming up. The donkey we can hear it braying, the cows we can hear them lowing and his place makes me so happy because we don't have those things and it's really nice to hear those noises in the morning.
22:17So I have no issues with him swinging by. I just was kind of afraid because my husband and son. Yeah, my husband and son were actually out running errands and I was like, Jesus, don't let my family be dead, you know? Oh yeah. So. Yeah, that'll make your heart stop. Oh yeah. When I stepped out, I was like, please let this not be anything major, please.
22:42So anyway, those were interesting stories. I don't think I've ever told the one about the neighbor and I certainly hadn't heard yours. This is a new thing for the podcast. Okay, so we have eight minutes left to try to keep this to half an hour. What is your least favorite thing about the life you have chosen? It's just a lot. It's not really my least, I don't know that I have a least favorite thing.
23:10other than just having to move chicken tractors. That's one of my least favorite things. Because the meat monsters, they're vicious and little pterodactyls. But my husband works during the day, he's gone. And it's really just me, my son's at school. And it just, sometimes it does feel overwhelming. And so time management,
23:36has been one of those things that I've really had to work through because I was used to in the office like everything had its time. Like I would do certain things in the morning and then certain things in the before lunch and then after lunch and my day was always, well nothing ever goes as planned here. Like I can have things on my to-do list that I never get done because something breaks or something dies or something's sick or something won't start, you know, it's just and so I think
24:06favorite is that things always interrupt me and never ever do I get things done that I want to do unless I get up at five o'clock in the morning and do those things first before I even look at anything else because once I look at something else it's over.
24:22Yup. Sounds familiar too. I just have to close my eyes. Like I just have to come to the milking ports and not see anything else until I'm done milking. And then I go look and see if something's broken or something's frozen or you know, something like that. Yeah, that's how my days used to be when I had four kids who were all the ages I mentioned, only years younger, all the different ages.
24:47because I would get up in the morning and be like, hey, maybe I'll be able to get these things taken care of today. And then one of them would need something and the other would need something else. And it was just like a pinball machine all day long with all four kids. Like literally the other day I had so much on my plate that I needed to get done because I'm trying to get all of my herd share members, all of my contracts done, all of those things sent out, all of my jars labeled because we're about to start back up on November the 1st. And it was all these things I needed to do.
25:17And my son comes and he says, my truck won't start. And I was like, okay, well, I'll jump it off. So I pulled my car up there and tried to jump it off. Well, it was this different set of jumper cables than I've ever used. Because normally black goes to black and red goes to the positive. These jumper cables were blue and black. So I thought that the black was gonna be the positive, or
25:45black was gonna be the negative and the blue was gonna be the positive. Well it wasn't. So when I hooked my car up to it, not only was his car blown, I blew my car.
25:57And so then I tried to pull my husband's Honda Pilot over there. Well, the key wouldn't go all the way in it because it's super, super old. Then I couldn't get the key out to try to start that. And that battery went dead and they were all like, none of them were in their parking spots. They were all over the driveway. None of them turned the right way. So I had three disabled vehicles that I had to deal with within this time span when I really needed to be doing other things. Uh-huh.
26:27And I don't know whether it works. Not funny, but amusing. That's just an example, though, of how my days go sometimes. It's just like, OK, I'm just going to quit for the day and just deal with problems. Yep, I do understand. Not that those kind of problems happen here, but I think that every day is ripe for those kinds of things to happen. Always, yes. And when they do, you either got to laugh or cry.
26:57Yeah. So, I'm going to laugh with you because it happens. Oh, I laugh. Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty good sense of humor. If I can get through that first initial like, oh my God, okay, this is happening, then I'm like, okay, we just got to stop and solve the problem and move on. Yes. I have been listening to a podcast. The lady's name is Charlotte Smith and she is a coach for farmers.
27:22And I interviewed her and of course now that I interviewed her I've been listening to her podcast and she's all about mindset Yes, and her her thing is that every? Emotion is a feeling and you can get through feelings if you let yourself feel the feeling It only takes about 90 seconds to get through the immediate Whatever it is, and I've been trying desperately when things happen to just breathe
27:51through my reaction to stuff. And it actually works. It's crazy. One of our barn cats got hit by a car. Friday? I think it was Friday, last week, Saturday. And he was one of the kittens we kept from the last litter. And he was gorgeous. He was white and like, beige-y orange colored. And medium-haired, he was gorgeous. I wanted to see him become an adult cat.
28:20Not in the cards. And my son texted me because they saw him on the side of the road and I just had a moment. Nobody was here. Teared up, swore. And then I was like, okay, feel it. Just feel it, breathe, feel how you feel. And I did. And I waited. And I waited and I kept breathing. And within 90 seconds, I was like, this is life here. Don't get attached. Love them, but don't get attached. And I went on with my day.
28:49Four years ago, my day would have been wrecked. My next day would have been wrecked. Mm-hmm, I can relate to that. I'm much better at that stuff than I am. And I think farming, I mean, I think living this lifestyle does make you more resilient when it comes to things like that, because at some point, you either have to accept that where there is life, there is going to be death, or you quit one or the other. And so I do think that it, and I think it teaches kids that as well. I think my son,
29:19because he has kind of gone through all of the things like that with us here and where everybody else is gone. I think he understands that more and is more mature than even my older kids when it comes to that stuff. Yes, the thing that has really come home to me in the last four years living here is that the only moment we actually have is now. So
29:47Live in the moment you're in, enjoy everything about it you possibly can. And if it sucks, it sucks. It's the way it is. But get everything out of the time that you're here because you don't know what the next minute holds. So true. That's, that's kind of my biggest takeaway over the last four years because we've lost cats, we've lost chickens, we've lost rabbits, and it just hurts every time.
30:18But you do start to understand that if you have livestock, you're gonna have dead stock and it's probably gonna hurt, but then you keep moving. So. Exactly. And I'm trying not to end this on a downer because I hate ending my podcast episodes on a downer. That's true. So the good news is, is that when you have livestock and if you're stupid like we are and took in a female cat that wasn't fixed, there's gonna be babies.
30:47If you're raising milk cows, you're probably gonna have babies. Oh, I've got two due on October the 31st and I cannot wait. I'm so excited. Yes, and if you love babies, everything is good the day the babies are born and they take the first breath and everything's okay. Yes. So there, I turned it around. Babies are great. All right, Dawn, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. You are so welcome. Thank you for having me on. Sure.
31:16Have a great day. All right, thanks. Talk to you later. Bye.
 

Dancing Gardens Medicinal Herb Farm

Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Dancing Gardens Medicinal Herb Farm.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Dancing Gardens Medicinal Herb Farm. Good morning, Stephanie. How are you? Morning. Great. And you?
00:23We tried to do this a while ago and you were driving and the signal kept cutting out. So I'm really glad that you're in one place right now. Right. And you said you're in Indiana? Yes. Okay, cool. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. My name is Stephanie. I'm married, four children, two grands. Since 2006, I've been on a journey with my own health because my husband is a veteran.
00:53He's had some health issues, so we've decided to look into herbal medicine because big pharma is crazy busy money making junk. Okay, so I want to get into that, but do you grow your own herbs or do you acquire them from people who grow them or how does it work? We grow some, we accumulate some, we trade, you know, whatever works. Okay.
01:23because some people will buy and that's totally fine, but if you're gonna buy, make sure it's a reputable place you're buying from because otherwise you may not know what you're getting. Absolutely. And growing plants in itself is healing, so I always encourage people to try to grow something. Yep. Okay, so what, like I wanna get into the nitty gritty of this, but I wanna be real careful. What kinds of herbs
01:53I mean, I feel like every herb has a use, but I also know that some herbs are actually dangerous. So is there like a common couple of herbs that really do help the body? Well, it depends on what you're looking at to help the body. Like you said, every one of them have different uses. I have found, I believe, dandelion and...
02:22calendula and hibiscus, I believe are most general that I grow outside of that. That's what I know what I grow. I'm learning other things to expand my horizon on knowledge because this is all brand new.
02:47and learning the herbs. I have been already researching things for me specifically, but outside of my realm, you know, I'm still learning that. So that's what I found for a general wellness. Okay. And it's a huge field of herbs, obviously. There's so many. And some herbs are also really good for the body when you eat them, when you use them to flavor your food. And
03:15some herbs are great in tinctures or teas. So there's a lot of ways to make this work. And I always kind of tread lightly because this is clearly a podcast that goes out to anyone who wants to listen to it. And I wanna be really aware of what we're sharing about things here. Right. So how long have you been digging into this? Really, for me, the past...
03:46I've stayed five years that I have finally got to where, oh, look what I grow in my yard and it's been medicinal this whole time. But I have been on a journey with my health since 2006. Health as in I went through eight doctors because I didn't feel like they were listening to me. Here's a pill, that'll take care of it. Here's a pill, it'll take care of it. No, that's not what I'm looking for.
04:15What is the problem? So it's been a journey. Uh-huh. Yes. And I'm going to, I'm going to go on a limb here and say, if you are female, like biologically female and a doctor isn't listening to you, I don't, I, typically it's the male doctors don't really listen, but there are female doctors that don't listen to get second opinions, keep looking because you will eventually find a doctor that is.
04:43and no bullshit will tell you what they think and they will recommend what they think is the next step. And even if they can't do it, they'll find you someone who can. The reason I say this is with my fourth baby, who is now almost 23 and still lives with us, he, I had already had three babies. I knew how, or two babies, I knew how this went. And I knew that.
05:11I could do it without drugs. I knew it. And I also knew that I wanted to do labor at home, most of it. And I just, I had it knocked. I knew what I was doing. And I knew that pain wasn't going to be the indicator to go into the hospital. And I told him all these things. And he went, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought, oh, this is not going to go well. And I was in...
05:42pre-labor, whatever you call it before it's actual labor. For a couple of weeks, that was really fun. And my husband was getting antsy and he was like, we should probably go in and see where you're at. And I was like, okay. So we went in and the doc checked me and I was in labor, but it wasn't going anywhere. I think I was maybe two centimeters dilated. And the doc was like, why don't you hang around for a little while, we'll track your contractions and see.
06:11what we think. And I was like, sure, that's fine. For anyone who doesn't know, if your file is in the room, you are entitled to read it. It is your file. You are fully within your rights to read your own medical file. So I saw the file and I said, Hey hon, pass me that. And I took a real quick glance at it. And I had specifically said, I did not want an epidural. I've had one in my life. I don't ever want one again. And in the chart, it said, it said,
06:41give patient epidural when requested. I was like, oh my God. Okay, so what ended up happening, long story shorter, is I went into labor, I did all the laboring at home, got to the hospital at 10 minutes to seven, gave birth at 7, 12, 22 minutes later. Doctor never even was there. The nurse was amazing.
07:08and she should have gotten paid and she didn't. The doctor who wasn't there got paid. So I have big issues with the medical field to begin with, but you are your own best advocate and if you feel like you're not being heard, you either need to speak louder, speak to someone above the person you're talking to, or find a different person. That's my story Stephanie, aren't you thrilled? This was in...
07:37In 2006, I knew something happened and just a quick story. My husband, I said, you need to go with me. They had done all these tests. We go in there and the doctor says, well, I can't find anything wrong. Everything's okay. You could immediately feel the room temperature change. I walked out of there and I was like, I'm done. He didn't say anything to me for a long time. We were almost home.
08:07I don't understand. He didn't find anything wrong. Why are you so upset?" And I go, that's the problem. There is something wrong and he's not looking in the right places. Yep. I feel like you should not actually go seek medical care unless you can't stop the bleeding or your heart is not beating and you're still functional enough to call 911 or unless something's
08:36If you can avoid going to a hospital at all costs, I would do that. And that's what we do. We do everything we can to take care of things at home before we go anywhere near a doctor. Yes. So that's where the herbs come in because herbs are great. There is an herb that will stop minor bleeding and I can't think of it right now. There's a few actually.
09:01Yes, thank you. I have it growing in my field right now. I was like, I know what it looks like. I just can't think of the name of it. My son, the one I was just talking about having given birth to, sliced his finger open two weeks ago and he sliced it such that the skin would not come back together. Oh, yeah. And so I would have tried Yarrow, but after five minutes of direct pressure and it just kept opening up, we were like, yeah, this is a Stitches situation. But.
09:31had I not suspected it was going to be a stitch situation, I probably would have gone out and gotten some yarrow and smashed it and put it on there. Absolutely. There's just, there's so many plants that have such great benefits and people don't know about them. Yep. My husband, when he was going to the VA for issues, they kept throwing medicine at him. And he finally said, you know what, I'm done. I'm just done. So he's quit everything, which is not the greatest thing
10:01Yeah. But we're working some things in. So we'll get there. He's got some tincture working that I concocted for him that I'm hoping will check all the boxes, but we won't know till December. So. Okay. Well, I'm going to send up smoke signals and positive energy because I'm not a praying girl, but my version of praying is smoke signals and positive energy. So that's what we're going to go with. Thank you.
10:30Uh-huh. Okay, I'm trying to think of stuff to ask you because I know you're a busy lady. I mean you're always posting stuff on Facebook about what you're doing. So other than dealing with medical issues, what have you done in the last week or so that's to do with your herbs or outside or whatever? Well, we last weekend we harvested as much as possible because it was getting ready to get a cold snap, which as a matter of fact it froze last night. Here too.
10:59Yeah, so we got all that in, thank God. And then over the weekend, my husband and I had a touch of the flu. He's still not feeling the greatest. I'm much better. It only lasted a day for me, thank God. So that was not fun. My mom is having some medical issues.
11:22I took her to the doctor and then we went to the store and she passed out on me at the store so it was an exciting evening. So yeah, it's been a little rough. Good Lord, ma'am. Geez. She just needs to be hydrated. I'm happy that you had time to talk to me this morning. Yes. I took the time. Let's put it that way. Yeah, exactly.
11:52Again, I want to make sure that people understand that if you're going to get into the herbal tinctures and treatments and things, do your research and talk to people who have some background and some knowledge on this because you don't want to be playing with herbs not knowing what they do. Absolutely because there's a lot of look-alikes out there that are very poisonous.
12:15Yes, and some things herbs are not going to treat. I mean, I'm sure that your mom needs to go to the hospital for certain things. Yeah, she has to have surgery. She's got a hernia. It won't be solved by herbs. No, I mean, there's things that you can use after the surgery to help with the skin healing, but yeah, herbs won't do surgery. That's not going to happen. Um, one of the things that I made for my kid.
12:45was a, I wanted it to be a lotion. My dog is barking. I wanted it to be a lotion and it looks like it was going to be a lotion and then it turned into a salve. It thickened up and I have since learned that there's something you need to put in it to make it stay thinner, but I don't have it. So it's now a salve. And he needed something for his skin because he's, he's got like really dry skin. And I looked up a lotion recipe, which didn't stay
13:14and it called for either shea butter or cocoa butter. Mm-hmm. Like the butter you get from chocolate. And I bought the organic, you know, not changed cocoa butter. I had no idea that it smelled like chocolate. So he now has this wonderful salve that smells like cocoa, like hot chocolate. Interesting.
13:43And he loves it for his hands, but he hates it on his face because he can smell the chocolate on his face. And I mean, chocolate, I have been told that every plant is an herb by someone who's big into herbalism. So, so the chocolate plant is an herb as well. So, so who knew chocolate's great to eat and it's also an herb. Yes. Yeah. But this, this. I love chocolate. Hmm? I said that's awesome because I love chocolate.
14:12Yeah, and this this salve is so wonderful. Like you rub it in your hands and it's not wet after you put it on. So so you're not like wiping your hands on a paper towel or a washcloth to get it off because it's too much. It's it's just lovely. I want I want to make more to give out as Christmas presents, but I haven't quite gotten on it yet. Right. I'm working on that stuff, too. Yeah. And I've got a whole bin of.
14:42crocheted cotton wash gloss that I need to sort through and pick some out for people. So it's getting to be that time of year. So do you share what you learn about herbs? Um, I'm starting to, um, because I'm learning, I learned about me first. I'm more knowledgeable about me issues. So I'm now expanding out to, Hey, what's going on with you? Hey, what's going on with you? You know, so.
15:13People are starting to, we're starting conversations. Yeah. So I think that will help and, you know, help people down the road as far as I can help them, you know? Yeah, do you get the look of incredulity, incredulity, I think that's a word, incredulousness or the blank stare when you ask, when you say, hey, maybe I should look into this for you and see if there's an herbal treatment that could help? Some people, yes.
15:43No, they're like, really? Tell me more. They're more intrigued and interested more than surprised so far. Good. They're like, oh, OK, yeah, sure. Because I'll say, let me get you a sample. OK, so here's a free sample. Try it. Tell me what you think. Yeah, I have had conversations with people about things that I've learned along the way, and we do.
16:14Two out of five times I get the what? And I'm like, oh yeah, this plant, if you do this with it and you put it on your skin, it will help. And they're like, no. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it does. It works. Trust me. We've done it. What surprised me most is I've been growing most of these weeds in my yard and didn't know it. I call them weeds because that's what I was doing was getting rid of them. They're weeds. So they're medicinal.
16:44Yeah, it's like the the plantain that grows wild on our property has all kinds of great benefits to it I had no idea. I was just like go ahead. Go ahead and mow it honey. I don't need it Don't don't mow that patch that patch right there. That's mine. Don't touch that one Yeah, I've been trying to get rid of it and it's been keeps coming back with a vengeance like I'm still here
17:12Yeah. Did I see something about ground ivy on your Facebook page or was that somebody else's? Creeping Charlie or ground ivy? I don't think so. Yeah. What's good about Creeping Charlie? Because we have that everywhere. I know I can't find a whole lot on it. I'm trying to find information on it because, yes, it's everywhere. What can this do? What can I do with it? So I have not found the research enough on it to know.
17:42Okay. But I'm taking pictures and documenting to see. Good. Um, yeah. And the thing is, I think that Creeping Charlie is really, really pretty and it blooms these pretty little purple flowers. Right. And it smells amazing when you cut it. Yes. And I'm like, why don't people have this for lawns? It stays low. It's pretty. It smells good if you mow it. It's lovely. And our neighbors in the old place over four years ago,
18:12used to get really upset because the boulevard, the part of the lawn that is across the sidewalk was covered in it on our side and the neighbor was very into having a pretty green grass lawn. And he would actually mow our patch when he mowed his and I'm like, I wish he wouldn't do that. Thank you for your help, but please stop. Don't do that. And I tried really hard to be
18:40kind and nice when I said, you know, I really don't need you to do that. It's okay. Don't don't. And his wife was friends with me and she's like, why don't you want him to do it? And I said, because there's violets in my, in the Boulevard in front of our house. And I would like to keep those. Right. Those bloom all year long and they're pretty. I would like to keep those. And she was like, okay. And that was it. So, and, and honestly speaking of violets, violets are an herb. There are things violets are good for, and I can't.
19:09off the top of my head tell you what do you happen to know? I do not, but yes I found out by the way. I'm like seriously those grow all year long in my yard. Yep, and you can actually eat the the petals in your salads if you want to. Cool. My head overloads sometimes because I'm like oh what's this oh what's this oh what's this and then I have so many I can't keep a straight
19:36That's how I am with the guests on my podcast, Stephanie. I am scheduling weeks ahead of time. And I somehow get to a point where I'm like, oh, who am I talking to tomorrow? And I go look at my calendar and I'm like, oh crap, I haven't even looked at this since I booked them a month ago. I should probably go see what they actually do. Right? I should know something. Yeah, it would be nice to have some questions in my head because that's what this is about.
20:03Okay, so we've got like 10 minutes left here. What's what's the plan? I mean, are you gonna try to become an Herbalist for real or you just gonna keep digging at this like a hobby? um Well, I have went and got a diploma from one of them to get knowledgeable but now I'm finding out that there's way more to it and
20:32looking at federal regulations and making teachers for commercial uses. And if I'm going to have to, this is my thought process. There was a whole thing to this that my son would like to do something and I'm trying to foster that. So this was what we could do legally in this state. If I'm going to have to track everything, then I might as well start where
21:02This is my hobby. This is what I want to do. I don't necessarily need another job. I don't need another life. This is something I like doing. If I want to foster what he wants to do, which he wants to grow and be part of that culture, which is fine, but it's not legal here in the state. So we're working towards that. But if we're gonna do that, why not start out with him? Yeah.
21:31You have to, you know, calculate all that and figure all that and document everything about that. If I'm going to have to document everything, might as well start where we got to document anyway. And then this can be kind of like a side hustle of, hey, let me help you out. Hey, I'm learning this. Hey, you know, I don't know. That's, that's, it's all open right now. We're just kind of letting it.
22:02foster itself. The end of this month, we actually have what we're going to call a board meeting. Our whole family is going to have a meeting and sit down and talk and figure all this out and see where we want to go from here. I wish you a lot of luck with the family board meeting. We have a little pod here. We have my husband and I and our son, he's 22, going to be 23.
22:27And when I say, hey, we need to sit down and make a plan for next summer for our business, I get the look of terror. You know, they're like, oh my God, here comes all the fighting because we all have different ideas. And it's not actually fighting. It's just a big discussion about plans and ideas and what's doable and what isn't. And sometimes we walk away really excited and energized and sometimes we walk away going, oh no.
22:57And there's six of us. Yeah. Six of the adults. Yeah. So, and then I'm incorporating my best friend who is so knowledgeable in the plant world with vegetables and fruits and stuff. So this is right up her alley. Some of that she knows. Some of it she's like me where we're learning as we go. Um, so I've incorporated her because A, she is a negotia, not a negotia.
23:28Norm, neutral. She's a neutral party. That's what I want to say. She's Sweden. Yes. Yes. So that she can say, okay, hey, what about this? Or, hey, I hear what you're saying, and I hear what you're saying. Why don't you know, to try to alleviate some of the arguing or discussing? Yes, I try to avoid the word arguing because I think of arguing as actual fighting.
23:57Right. I think of discussion as throwing a bunch of ideas out and settling on a couple. There you go. Yes, I agree. So how old is the son that you mentioned? Mine is, oh my gosh, 27. Okay. I have one that's going to be 28, thinking. And now I have three step kids who are, uh, she's 39, 36, and 34.
24:27Okay. So you've got a bunch of adults who are going to be in on the meeting who have different ideas and different dreams. But they also know that this is mama's dream and they're like, okay, whatever you want. That's that's helpful. And and maybe they'll actually have some great things throw into the meeting and you'll be like, I hadn't thought of that yet. Right. And they they're all learning to they have none of them have these skills. And because of what I've been through with this
24:56last couple years journey, I was on a hellish hormonal journey, let's put it that way. Yep. And then I decided that I needed, I'm having, I had a struggle with death. I lost my dad eight years ago and I lost a bunch of people in 2022 in a matter of three months I lost like five important people in my life. So I had a little rough patch. Yeah. Because of that.
25:25And maybe it's a midlife crisis. I don't care. Whatever you want to call it. I decided that in order for me to continue, I have to show my children how to live in this life without the modern conveniences that are destroying us pretty much. And that's what has started this. And this is what we've morphed into. Well, I hate that that's how it started, but you're, you're on a good path. So finally.
25:54I had to lock myself in the house for a couple years because I thought I was really going to hurt somebody. I was that mad at everybody, mad at the world. And it was all far more... Yup. It's a thing once you get past 50. As a female, you're like, what is going on with me? Yes. I'm like, what does it matter? I don't want to hurt people, but man, you're pissing me off.
26:22Yeah, and I mean, I've mentioned this before. I don't know if I've talked about it on the podcast before or not, but it's really weird how everybody talks about puberty. Everybody talks about childbearing years. Everybody talks about raising teenagers. But once you get up to that menopause topic, people are like, I want to talk about that. I had no idea.
26:48what happens when the estrogen level in your body crashes. And that's what happens during menopause. Yes. And I don't really have a good indicator because my sister is 15 months younger than I am. And she had a hysterectomy a few years back. So I can't even talk to my sister and be like, what are you going through? Because hers is totally different. Exactly. And my mom...
27:16She is 78. She took the hormone replacement medicine when the craziness started for her. So she doesn't really have anything to tell me because that medicine clearly changed things for her too. So when I started going through it, I was crying constantly. I would cry at everything.
27:46Yeah. And my husband was like, are you nuts? And I was like, I might be, I might be crazy. And he said, is this, is this what's going to be you for the rest of your life? I was like, Jesus, I hope not. It took for it took like up until a couple of years ago. So there were like two years where I was just crying at everything. It didn't matter, matter whether I was happy or sad or neutral. Just, I would cry at the drop of a hat.
28:16It was nuts. And I didn't go through the anger stuff that a lot of women go through. I went through that with the periods. Like three or four days where I would start my period, I would just be ready to blow up the world. And my husband is like, uh-oh. And I'm like, yep, just don't talk to me. If you need something, if you need something, please say honey, because I will know you need something. It's important. And the good news is there's herbs that help with that too.
28:46Yes. And if you want to know listeners, you're going to want to go look it up because I don't know what they are because I didn't know until I didn't need them anymore. And I'm working with a wellness coach with mine. So that's where my journey led me to was to her, which started this process too. So awesome. Coaches are fantastic. Yeah, we're working together. Her name is Lindsay Lindsay. Is that not wild?
29:16Oh, funny. And she's, she's wonderful, beautiful lady. I love her. Well, I'm glad you have one that you love and I'm glad you found one that you that you love because it's really hard finding somebody that you're going to click with. I debated looking into becoming a coach like 15 years ago because I'm like, I'm always talking with people and, and they're like, I'm doing this thing and this is what's going on. They tell me stuff.
29:46I'm like, are you venting or are you looking for advice? And they're like, well, what would you do? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I can ask you questions to lead you to your answers, but I can't tell you what I would do because I'm not you. And so I decided that coaching was probably not in my best interest, just being a friend and being like, what do I ask them to lead them to their own answers? That's how I do it. But anyway, neither here nor there. So.
30:15I'm really glad that you took the time to talk with me today Stephanie. I appreciate it so much. Well, thank you for asking me. Yeah. And we're at 30 minutes and I try to keep these 30 minutes. So I'm going to let you go. I hope everything goes well with your mom. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Have a great day. You do the same. Bye.
 

Streamwater Farm

Today I'm talking with Dedra at Streamwater Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Dedra at, I have to look up the name of your place, Streamwater Farm. Good morning, Dedra, how are you? Good morning, I'm great, how are you doing? I'm good, except that I cannot remember the name of people's places to save my life most days. Well, there's a bunch of them.
00:29Yeah, and they're all interesting. So, all right. Well, tell me about yourself. You're in Mississippi. I am. I'm in South Mississippi. I'm actually just a County above the Louisiana line. So we are way down here and, um, my husband and I, we moved here about eight years ago. We were living in the Jackson area of Mississippi before then I am a nurse and we were working up there and we kind of just wanted to slow her lifestyle. So we, um,
00:54We made it down here and we're closer to family, we're closer to friends and just started our homesteading adventure, actually started our homesteading adventure while we still lived in the city, but moved down here and just expanded. So that's what we're doing here. I homeschool my kids and stay home full time and all the good things, so it's fun. Awesome. We started our homesteading adventures when we lived in town, in the small town that we lived in. Before we moved to the place we live in now.
01:24four years ago. And we had a 850 square foot house, four kids, three bedroom house, and it was on a 10th of an acre lot. Yeah. That's less than what we had. We had a fourth of an acre in the city. Yeah. And we had a decent garden. We fed ourselves and then neighbors. And sometimes we even had enough to donate to the local food shelf, which was awesome. That is cool.
01:50The kids would go pick whatever they wanted out of the garden when it was in season and just eat it and they did They loved sugar snap peas Those are hard to grow down here. We have to Actually, this is the time of year We can grow them right before our frost because they do not like the heat so sugar snap peas are kind of a delicacy down here Yeah, and the kids loved them because they tasted like candy. So great Yeah, but then the kids all
02:19moved out except for one, the youngest one still lives here. And we came into some money through some tragedies. We lost two parent figures, which sucked. But they were kind enough to leave us some fundage. And we were like, the best use of that fundage is to live our lives while we're alive. And we bought a 3.1 acre property with a home and a big old pole barn, which is a storage unit, really.
02:46And so we did a whole lot of homesteading skills when we lived at the old place. So we felt very ready to step into a bigger arena, I guess. Right. Oh yeah. Like, I mean, I'm all for like one of my favorite things to tell. I just want to encourage everybody that I can to do what you can where you are. And I mean, because I mean, some of my favorite memories are that sweet little garden in that backyard in the city. Like it was just such a sweet time of learning and really figuring out what we wanted to do.
03:16And so I love like, I love hearing people. I was talking to someone the other day who had listened to my podcast and she's a friend of mine and she used to live in the country and she's had to move to city limits. She's got kids in the school system and things like that. And she was like, you know, I thought I was going to wait until I, um, my kids graduated and I was able to move to my land to get chickens. But you know what? After listening, I think I'm going to just go ahead and do it now. I was like, do it now. Life is too short. Like, you know, yeah, there's some things you can't accomplish, maybe where you are, but there's so much you can do.
03:45And it made me so happy because I was like, yes girl, do it. Just, just fill that side yard up with some chickens and make you a garden. It's going to be just fine. Jump in the pool. Yeah. Um, I mean, I'm going to apologize right off the bat. My dog is losing her mind because they are harvesting the cornfield across the street from us and she, she hates the big equipment. Right. Like she'll bark at a car if it comes in the driveway, but if they're just driving down the road, she's fine.
04:14but the big equipment she just does not appreciate it. So she's downstairs yipping and I can hear her. So I don't know what's gonna come through on the recording. I don't hear her actually. So we're good. Okay, good. I have a dog in here with me too. And if she barks, you will absolutely hear her and I apologize ahead of time. That's totally fine because honestly.
04:34This podcast is real life. It's real time. It's not live streamed, but it's real time. Right, right. And I don't edit out the dog. I don't edit out the trash truck rumbling when it pulls on the driveway because it's just me and where I live. Life, life is real. Yep. So, so I was telling you before we started recording, I was binge listening to your podcast, which is Ink and Overalls. Yes, Ink and Overalls.
05:02I was binging it this morning because I didn't realize you had a podcast until last night and it was too late to start listening to it last night. And people, you got to go listen to Nudra's podcast. It is so full of great information. Like she puts me to shame. Oh, thank you. That's so sweet. I appreciate it. I've had a lot of fun. It's an adventure that's just getting off the ground and very out of my comfort zone, but I'm having a lot of fun. I really am. I love sharing and talking about home settings. So
05:30It's just kind of second nature. It just makes sense to do it. Well, I will make sure to put the link in the show notes because if I'm entertained, I'm sure other people will be too. And is it ink and overalls because you have tattoos? It is. It's ink and overalls because we played around with a couple of other ideas. I, um, there's a man from church actually who has a media group and he kind of asked me to come on board and do this and get, you know, it was something I probably wouldn't have agreed to otherwise, but we had a couple of names we were playing around with and.
05:59you know, ink and overalls, it's kind of something I came up with because I felt like it really embodied who I am. I'm very authentic. Yes, I have tattoos. They're a big part of my story because I didn't even get my first tattoos until I was well over 30 and I have four kids. And it's just kind of been a journey of like, you know, really becoming who I feel like I always was but being comfortable to be that person. And I feel like that's something that I, you know, I try my best to bring to the table is authenticity and
06:27just being original and not being afraid to be who you are. You know, and I just want everybody to feel at home when they're listening, and I just want everybody to feel welcome. Fantastic. My daughter has a bunch of tattoos, and every single one of them is inspired by an event or a story in her life. Is that how you choose your tattoos? Well, my first tattoo was a set of arrows. I have four kids, and so I did, I was like, just gonna get one, you know, these small arrows on my forearm to represent my children.
06:56And I got that and then I immediately booked my next appointment because I absolutely loved it. And from there, honestly, I have one that is a stack of books because I love to read and then I'm working on my right side is I'm working on a sleeve and it's really mostly just beautiful garden, like outdoor nature stuff that I enjoy. It's not really, I'm not.
07:19I'm kind of, I have an amazing artist and I'm kind of like, hey, what do you want to do today? Because I trust him and he knows my style and I'm really just going for, I just want beauty. I just want beautiful things. And so I have a, I've got to be a honeybee and some flowers. I have a chicken and some strawberries and I just added a watermelon. So just all kinds of fun, you know, things that make me think of the garden and make me think of my homestead. So that is so cute. I love it. Okay. So, so since you mentioned bees and chickens and stuff,
07:48What do you do at the homestead or the farm? Oh yeah. We have got, um, we have chickens, obviously that's the gateway drug, right? Everybody's got chickens. Um, but I have dairy goats, um, that I milk and I make soaps and, um, shampoo bars, things like that. And of course we drink it. And I have, um, I have a honey we have. We just actually did our first harvest and harvested three gallons of honey a few weeks ago, um, from that. So I've got a honey be high. We've got gardens. I have pigs. I've got a couple of pigs that are.
08:17pets that are um they're cooney cooney is how i say it i heard it said a lot of different ways but that i actually inherited from a dear dear friend of mine who passed away and they will be here until their day's end because they're just pets and then i also have a breeder pair of birkshire's pigs which are hopefully you know they're the start of a hopefully a production of you know meat pigs for people around here like i would love to be able to provide local people with shares of
08:47probably well over 70% of our own protein, you know, meat from the farm through our pigs and meat chicken. So that's what we do. I wanted to work in honey in this conversation because I discovered a while ago that you gotta be real careful about where you buy your honey because some of the honey they sell at the grocery store and say it's 100% honey, it's not. No, it's not. It's gross.
09:16It is it's I mean they really are able because of food labeling You know restrictions and stuff not really being what they probably should be I mean, it's really easy for them to put something on the shelves that kind of disguises itself as a good product You know which that's with just about everything But honey in particular is really easy to find adulterated honey I guess you could say that's been changed, you know, like things that it may not contain what you think it does So, I mean, you know, I do order when we don't have our
09:45when our hives, you know, aren't, I've had a couple of hives that left me. So I've just really had my first successful harvest. So in the meantime, I do use a lot of honey and I try to get it locally, or I do order from Azure standard, they sell by the gallon, so I have to buy it by the gallon, I'm feeding four children and I use a lot of honey, but.
10:07But yeah, it's something that you definitely, if you can go local with it, that's definitely the best way to go. For many reasons, health reasons, and for being sure of what you're getting. Yeah, I bought honey a little, well, a month or so ago because we were out, and I actually ordered some from Amazon. I will never do that again. I read everything on the listing on Amazon, and got it, and poured it into the oats for the granola.
10:36and it poured out really fast and I was like, this is not real honey. Mm-hmm. I know it's not. It's like something's not right here. Yeah. And I know it's probably not going to kill us so I did use it because we can't afford to waste. And as soon as that, I mean, I don't think it's all used yet. I think there's still probably a quarter to half a bottle left and it's probably going to go in the trash because I don't love it. And so we've gone back to getting our honey from Sam's Club because Sam's Club's honey is actually honey.
11:06honey. Yeah, they do. They have a good, I mean a pretty good product there. Like is it the one with the orange label on it? I think it's like a height. Yes, I think so. Yeah. And it pours really slow and it's really sticky and it tastes exactly like the honey we get from our local guy. He just doesn't have any right now. Yeah, you can taste the difference. You really can. Yeah. So people read the labels and even when you read the labels, sometimes you might get duped. I did. And I didn't think I could get duped on that stuff anymore.
11:36Yeah, it's easy to do because they've got lots of ways of loopholeing their way into good branding and marketing. They can find a way to make it seem like it's something that's not.
11:50Yeah, I was more than a little pissed off about this honey that I got from Amazon. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, I mean, honey, especially honey, any honey you get, I mean, even the nasty cheap stuff is expensive. So yeah, I mean, you spend your money and it's usually a key ingredient if you're using it. I mean, I use it in coffee and stuff too, but when I'm baking, I mean, it's a big part of that. So I mean, you don't want, you know, it's like, I consider it a positive thing when you have a good quality honey. You're adding this, you know.
12:19positive thing to your recipe. My dog is snoring. I don't know if you can hear her. No, I can't. She is snoring like a man and she's right beside me. So if you hear something, it's not me, it's my dog. Oh yeah, I can hear just a little bass there. Yep, that's her. That's adorable. I'm okay with that. She's sleeping really good. She is. She's a good napper. She's a level expert napper for sure. Uh-huh.
12:48We just culled our chickens because they were getting lazy and we were getting like three eggs a day from nine chickens and we were like, okay, we're done. They're older. It's time. And we're going to get new chickens in the spring from friends that have really good chickens. And so I'm down to my last dozen, last dozen of our chicken eggs. And I'm like, crap, we're going to have to actually buy eggs from the store.
13:17The wall of shame for a homesteader. Yeah. And I said that to my husband the other day and he's like, no, no, no, we're not. I said, are we just going to go eggless for the winter? And he said, no, Elaine at the farmer's market, she sells eggs all year round. Yeah. He says she lives just outside of, just on the other side of town. And I was like, Oh, so we're not going to have to get eggs from the grocery store. And he said, I hope not. Right. Once you're used to the good ones, it's really hard.
13:46Yeah, so we have a secret source and she's not actually a secret. She's been selling eggs forever at the farmers market. She's fantastic So I was very relieved to know that we weren't gonna have to buy the not as good eggs at the store Oh, yeah, no, it's the walk of shame I've had to bomb even when I've been feeding chickens before and I really taught real ugly to him when I get home I'm like, do y'all know what I just had to do I just had to go in there and buy eggs and make the walk of shame for a chicken lady and then come home and feed y'all
14:15lazy things. So I know sometimes it works out that way. Yeah it's crazy. I mean it's really weird. Our summer was was hard with the garden. We didn't we did not have a great garden this year because the weather was just terrible here in Minnesota in the spring. And now we don't have chickens and we tried raising rabbits and that did not go well so we stopped doing that two years ago. So we are literally a chickenless failed garden homestead this year.
14:45And I'm like, I was laying in bed the other night, just frustrated beyond recognition, just playing over and over in my head, why are we doing this? Yeah. We could be living on an acre lot outside of town. We could have a nice little garden. We could still have chickens and it wouldn't be as much crazy. So I'm just laying there, just playing on my head. And I'm like, I can't keep doing this. It's a mindset thing. I have to get out of this loop.
15:15And I finally went, the reason we're doing this is because we get to have quiet and we get to have fresh air and we get to have our dog. We love our dog. And I ran all the reasons why we're doing it through my head beyond the fact that we wanted to have a big garden. And we did. We still do. It'll be okay next year. And we want to have chickens and we'll have chickens again next year. And I finally got myself out of that horrible negative loop. And
15:41listening to your podcast this morning, your first six episodes are basically all about why. Yep. And I was like, I think that maybe somebody is trying to tell me something. There you go. I mean, because it is so important. I mean, because it doesn't make sense, right? I mean, and I say that in one of the podcasts, I'm like, you know, it doesn't make sense to choose the hard work to do the thing that's off the beating path sometimes. It's like, why am I doing this? Because
16:08I mean, you know, it's like, it was just about, you know, you can source food at a farmer's market. Like you're going to get your eggs from there, but like what makes the difference between, like what makes us step out from being the person at the farmer's market, which is amazing, you know, buying the eggs versus the person who's producing those eggs. And it's like, the why isn't so important. And you have to reevaluate that just like you did, because like, you know, it changes as you change. And, and you're so right. Like, I mean, I do it all the time. My garden looks a shambles right now. And I'm like,
16:37I don't even know if I can ever make it pretty again, but it'll come around, but that's a really good time to reflect whenever you're kind of in between with seasons and everything, to really reflect on why you do it and then just start again with renewed passion and renewed ambition toward your goal again and just reevaluate all that. Yeah, and once I got past the loop.
17:01I was like, I'm so dumb. We have a greenhouse that we're getting ready to have heat in for the winter. We're going to have a little indoor garden all winter long. Yeah, that's awesome. And then I was like, oh, you just get caught up in the negative thoughts and it's hard to break them loose. Yeah. And with a homestead, you know, one thing that's really cool about it, honestly, is how it does ties to seasons. And so it cycles with the seasons. And so, you know,
17:31One good thing though is if you look at it one way you can say, you know, there's always it's always coming back around, right? We've got another chance. We've got another spring to raise chicks We have another you know, another spring does to start seeds and get in the garden because it keeps coming back around We've got another chance and I just love that about it It's just like a renewal like every season is a renewal like there's a new opportunity in winter Oh, let's reflect on what we can do. Let's grow in the greenhouse. Let's
17:55you know, let's think about next year, let's get excited. And then in spring, let's put boots on the ground, let's get this done. And I love that cycle because it's just, I think it's healthy for us really to be tied to, I think we're supposed to be tied to the seasons. And we live in such a world that's, you know, like a such a microwave society where we don't think about when we're climate controlled all the time, right? So it's, you know, it's a totally different perspective.
18:19when the things you do every day are tied to the weather and the seasons and the rhythm of that. And I think it's a really cool thing. I think it's deep within us to want to do that, but it's hard sometimes to find that and homesteading offers that. Oh, for sure. And one of the reasons we wanted to get out of town is so that we could actually see the sky at night. Oh yeah. Even in a small town, there's so much light pollution. Oh yeah.
18:45And I saw the Northern Lights for the first time in my life this summer because we live where there's hardly any light pollution and it was amazing. And it's up there. I just I fully feel like it's there for us to see. We need to see those things because it does something to us. It reminds us of how little we are, how small we are, and how big the universe is and how like I don't know it's just a beautiful thing. I think it's being tied to nature is just something.
19:13I just believe it's deeply rooted within us. And I think when we return to that, by being able to see the sky at night, to something that simple, you know, it changes kinda, I think it starts to reprogram our brains a little bit to slow down and notice things. Yes, and one of the other things that we really noticed when we moved here is that we can hear coyotes barking and yipping and howling at night, and they don't come on the property because Maggie the dog.
19:39is all over the property so they know there's a dog here and they don't they don't want a hard hunt if they can if they can do an easy hunt they will do that first. Are you in my brain? I'm just wondering why I literally just recorded a predator episode yesterday and I say the exact same thing yeah I was talking about how like
19:59you know, if you make it a harder target, then you're less likely to have issues because, you know, the more you use your place and the more you're there, they don't, they don't want, like you said, they want easy. They don't want to have to work too hard for a meal. Right. Exactly. You're in my brain. Well, at least I know what I'm actually talking about. So that's good to know. Um, and while we're talking about predators and keeping, keeping critters off your property that you don't want on your property, um,
20:26I'm going to say something probably gross that most people who don't live in the country don't know about. I know what you're going to say. If you have deer trying to eat your garden, because we try not to put up a fence in the garden, it just makes it harder to take care of. If you have deer that want to eat your garden, and if you have a tree line where they're coming in from, all you have to do is send the boys in the family out to pee in the trees. I knew exactly what you were going to say before you said it. The deer don't like it.
20:56They do not like the human side and that's as human as it gets. Yeah. And I mean, that's an easy predator control, right? I mean, that's an easy way to protect your garden right there. Yeah. My husband and my son have gone out and peed in the tree line on purpose. And I'm just like, oh my God, I can't believe this is our life. It's like, I can't believe this is on the chore list, but go get it done. Cause it needs to happen. Yeah. Go, go pee in the trees please today. Do that. And sometimes it doesn't work. Um, we planted peach trees, two of them.
21:26What? Hold on just a second. Yeah. Yeah, baby, just go. Sorry, my mom was here to pick up. Okay. Okay, I'm here now, sorry. No, that's fine. I can edit out stuff, it's fine. So anyway, we planted two peach trees last year in Minnesota. They're the winter hardy ones. And one of them grew tall, one of them grew peaches.
21:54We had like 14 peaches on one of the trees this year and my husband brought in six and I got to try one and then they were gone because they were so good, Kyle and Cameron ate them. Yeah, that's fruit for you right there. Uh huh. And he said there were six more on the tree and I was like, cool, you're going to pick them tomorrow. And he said, yeah. He went out the next morning and they were gone. The deer ate them. Oh no. So the deer got a really nice treat. They got a really nice treat, yeah.
22:24But we were very excited that the tree actually produced. And these were like bigger than baseball sized peaches. That's really impressive. So next year, maybe we'll have enough to make a small batch of peach jam. And that would be amazing. Right, that's exciting. That's really exciting. I've not had much luck with fruit trees. That is something that has remained elusive to me at the moment. I've not been able to nurture one to maturity.
22:53as much as I've tried. It's just not been my thing. We have fig trees. They actually, they had something wrong with them and they kind of died back. And I cut them back about a year ago and they're coming back really nicely. But yeah, we've got some fig trees, we've got some blueberry bushes, but I've tried planting a couple of trees. I mostly tried actually at our old place. And so here it's just, I can't figure out a good place to do it, to really start. Cause we have a lot of shade.
23:22And the one area that I can think of that would probably be good for some fruit trees, we kind of drive through there sometimes if we need to get to the garden to unload dirt or whatever. And so I'm kind of afraid to like, you know, I'm hesitant to take that space up. So it's kind of right now a matter of finding the perfect spot. Yeah, we planted cherry trees last year too, and they did not produce a single cherry. They barely bloomed because they were too busy, you know, growing, getting established. So we're
23:51Hoping with everything in us that next year we will have some it might be the year. Yeah, and they're so beautiful That's cool. And they're so yummy I've never had a fresh cherry off. Oh good lord, ma'am. Never had one I don't like cherries like just in general if I get one like on milkshake or something I don't like that, but I've heard that fresh cherries are just a remarkable thing. They're amazing They are delicious. We made cherry
24:19Cherry jam cherry jelly. I don't know a couple years ago. We bought a couple flats of The sweet dark cherries the black cherries From from the fruit truck fruit truck. I think it's I think it's my fruit truck.com. I think it's the business And they brought them in from michigan and oh my sweet. Jesus. They were amazing and That jam or jelly whatever we made was gone that first winter. That's how much we liked it
24:48Yeah, that sounds really good. That sounds like it would be kind of tart and sweet at the same time and probably really, really good. Yep. And the other thing that we've done, we have black raspberry or yeah, wild black raspberries on our tree line. And we tried making black raspberry jelly and one of the batches did not set up. So it became black raspberry syrup. I've done that. I've labeled things as syrup that were supposed to be jelly before I've done that and used it. Yeah.
25:18Yeah and that stuff on top of vanilla ice cream or on pancakes, amazing. Yeah I've done it with strawberry the same with strawberries. I'm like you know what this was a happy accident because it's a wonderful thing to use as a syrup. It really works well. Oh absolutely and I'm certainly not going to throw it away if there's nothing wrong with it it will get used. Absolutely. So anyway uh what else um so you were saying do what you can with what you have where you are. I say that all the time. Yes.
25:48And I know that you're doing it because I listened to your podcast this morning. And so, so if I know what you said, but not everybody else has listened to your podcast. So if you're a beginner getting into this homesteading lifestyle stuff, what is the first thing you would tell somebody? The first thing I would tell somebody is to not be afraid to try and not be afraid to learn like.
26:14I think on my home studying skills episode, I talked about it and I was like, I think, you know, the desire to learn and the willingness to try are two things that everybody can carry with them. Those are like, if you gain those skills, you can use them in every aspect of your life, right? So, you know, I say start where you are. I mean, I said start in the kitchen, if nothing else, most of us have a kitchen, even if we can't have a garden right now. And you know, if we don't have a kitchen, we know somebody who does, so start learning. Start learning how to cook a whole chicken. Start learning how to, you know, how to can things,
26:44Make a homemade cobbler from some fresh fruit that you get from the farmers market with us in season. Just wherever you can, just start. And don't put off doing what you can because you think it has to look a certain way or it should be a certain way because perfect is never going to come. Perfect is not coming and we have today. We don't always, we're not guaranteed years down the road. So start now. Start learning what you can, where you're at. And you know.
27:14while you're in the waiting room, turn into a classroom. And that's a quote from Jessica Sowers, and I love her to pieces with Roots and Refuge Farm. She's got some great books and everything. And that's one thing she says, and it has resonated with me for years because that is absolutely what we learned while we were getting started. And it's something I continue to tell people, like, please turn your waiting room into a classroom. Don't just sit and twiddle your thumbs. Like,
27:39Even if it's just reading about it and learning about what you might want to do someday and setting goals and thinking about that Why you know why you want to do this and where you're gonna head in the next just just get out and do what you can Where you're at? Yeah, and and I was just thinking while you were answering my question I can't tell you how many times my husband and I have gone to a farmers market or the place where we buy apples or whatever and we'll get talking with
28:08the vendors or with the owners. And they know us, we've been doing this for a while. And they're like, so what have you done so far on the homestead, what's new, what's happening? And we get talking with them and before we know it, there's like three people around us who aren't part of this asking questions. Yeah. And of course we're gonna answer them because we love what we do and we've learned a lot along the way and we've had.
28:35successes and we've had failures and there's just always stories. And it's no big surprise that I started this podcast because I've been doing this for the last 20 years in one way or another. It just hasn't been a podcast. Yeah. I mean, I think it's amazing how you really do learn so much. Like people hear you talking and they're like, what are you saying you do? Or what do you, you know, and that's like, I love the community that you can get from.
29:03just talking to because so many people want to try something different. They want to slow down. They want to learn how to grow things. They want to learn how to take care of chickens. They want to learn these things, but it's like, where do you, some of them are like, where do you start? Especially if you want raised, you know that doing any of that. And, you know, especially sometimes when Instagram is not our friend and makes it look like, Oh, well yeah, you can do it if you have a two story farmhouse on 20 acres that has a perfect picket fence. And
29:31you know, and it has to look a certain way. And so they hesitate. It's like they're just kind of spinning their wheels, you know, behind the start line because they've got it in their brains that everything has to align a certain way to get started. And you know, the truth about homesteading is that a lot of times you're using what you have, like you're like pulling together stuff to make stuff work on your feet whenever, oh, I need to separate these goats away from, you know, the babies away from their moms today. Oh, I gotta make a shelter for them real quick. And
30:00you start to, you accumulate a junk pile. I don't know if you have one, maybe it's a South Mississippi thing, but. No, we have a junk pile. You're gonna have a junk pile to pull from. And the thing is, one thing I like to say too, is it doesn't have to be beautiful to other people. If it gets you one step closer to your goals and what you wanna do with your life and what's gonna, the worthy work you wanna put your hands to, then it's beautiful. It's gorgeous, it's amazing. Just go for it and do it.
30:28It doesn't have to look a certain way. Just, you know, and ask the questions. Don't be afraid to, you know, look crazy because I've been doing it. You know, you said you've been doing it 20 years. I mean, I've been at this for right at 11 as far, you know, I was raised working in the garden with my daddy, but not doing anything with the animals or anything like that. But I can tell you right now, there's plenty I still don't know. I'm never gonna pretend to know something I don't, but I have screwed up a lot. So I can sometimes direct you in the right direction and like, I want to tell you what I do know.
30:56And I want to learn from whoever can teach me new things. You know, you got to keep that learning, that learning mindset. You know, also, I feel like that's so important with homesteading. I feel like that's something a lot of people need. Like we stretch ourselves, right? We're always learning new things. So that community, you can all learn from each other. It's really a cool thing. Yeah. I try to make friends with people who know more than I do so that I can, I can borrow from, from their knowledge. And, and it's always fun because.
31:23When I was growing up, I was the girl that the teacher sent the kids that were having trouble with the lesson to. To help them figure out the math problem or help them with their reading. And I really felt like I paid my dues on being the one who was helping on teaching. And now I want to learn more from people. Yeah, there's, I mean, I think there's like, but I feel like it kind of, it's kind of a give and take, you know? I mean, you.
31:53because you do have things to share. And sometimes it's like, I can't, I'm not gonna be able to teach you about, rotationally grazing cattle, because I've never done it before. But so I wanna learn all I can about that. But it's at the same time, I'm like, but if you need some help, learn how to raise some meat birds, I can help you out. And like, we just kind of got that give and take. Yeah, learning is, I love being around people who know more than I do. I love it, because I love to sit back and just take it all in, right? But.
32:19At the same time, there's a whole bunch of people online who need what knowledge we do have to maybe spur them onward so that they can learn more. Yep, exactly. And the thing about everything is not perfect and pretty. When we decided we were gonna look for land with a house on it four and a half years ago, five years ago, whatever it's been now, I had this picture in my head of the pretty farmhouse with the wraparound porch
32:49the already established fruit trees and stuff. You know, I had this vision. And I knew when I had that vision, that probably wasn't gonna be what we actually ended up with. And I was okay with that. The house that we, the property we bought had hostas for flowers. It had nothing else. And I don't know if you know what hostas are, I assume you do. Oh, I know, yeah.
33:17They're like the last vestige of summer here in Minnesota, that when the hostas start blooming, you better start getting things ready for winter, really, because it can snow in September here. That's right. So when I saw the hostas and I saw that there were no rose bushes, there were no fruit trees, there was nothing, I was like, okay, this is going to be an uphill climb. And the house itself on the inside.
33:47is gorgeous. They remodeled the entire inside of the house. I fell in love with it the minute I walked in. The outside is beige siding. It has a silver tin roof and it doesn't look like the pretty clapboard white farmhouse that I was dreaming of. And first thing I said to my husband after we actually moved in was, when can we paint the house?
34:13And he said, why would we paint sighting? And I said, because this beige is so nondescript, it's making me crazy. Right. And he said, I kind of like that it's nondescript. I said, why? And he said, because no one really notices it. We're kind of in the middle of nowhere here, honey. And I went, oh, yeah, OK, fine. He said, what color would you paint it? And I said, barn red. He was like, we're not doing that. I said, oh, OK, fine.
34:43I said, so are we going to get plants to put in so there's flowers in the springtime? And he said, yes, we are. I said, are we going to get fruit trees? And he said, yes, we are. I said, so this place will look kind of like my vision in like 10 years. He says, yeah. And it's starting to really look like my vision now and it's only been four years. So we're getting somewhere. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's an amazing thing to think about. I mean, you know, I'm.
35:11it would be amazing if we could all just, you know, go out right now and buy that picture. Perfect thing we have in our brains, you know, but, um, that's usually not the cards for most of us and that's okay. But like, I mean, I'll be honest with you. I've got a chicken coop that is like a, I mean, is gorgeous. I mean, my husband built it for me. It's, it's white. It's got a big barn door on it. It's like stained. It's gorgeous, but I'm not a lie. Look, it does not look white 90% of the time because it gets dirty.
35:41And that's life and that's real life. And you know, it's just my, my house where we are actually used to be an old dairy farm. And whenever they, one thing I didn't know when we bought the place was whenever they decided that it was no longer going to serve that purpose, they dug lots of holes and buried lots of things that were part of the dairy farm. And so you never know when you're going to hit concrete or what we know when glass is going to wash up. It's a mess. But, um, we have a, there's a cinder block barn.
36:10in the very middle of my backyard. Now that would not appeal to most people. It is an eyesore, but at the same time that was infrastructure that was already on the property we were able to start using for goats and for storing feed and things like that when we moved here. And so it didn't look the way I wanted it to in my brain, but at the same time I looked at it as a blessing because it was saving me from having to put up that extra infrastructure. And so my house is the same way. It does not look
36:40you know, envisioned it. But, you know, I feel being put here was not an accident. And so, you know, I'm doing the best I can with what I have and making it as close to what I want it to be as I can. And knowing that it doesn't always have to be perfect to be good. Yeah, I feel like dreams are what give us the inspiration to go after the thing we want, but they won't. But the thing that you get when you go after the thing you want may not be what you saw in the dream itself.
37:08Oh yeah, and I think you have to keep in mind, I think that that's one place though, that dreams and your ideal, you know, what you have in mind can get in your way sometimes. Like I said before about getting started, if you're waiting for that perfect dream, you know, to come, you gotta, sometimes you gotta give your dreams, you know, you gotta, you gotta give them wings, you gotta give them feet, right? They can't just, you know, knowing things in your brain and doing them are two different things. And yeah, I mean, we all wish we had.
37:36XYZ as far as especially on homesteads and farms and we all want the the grazing ground for you know plenty of cattle and all these things and dairy cow and But you know sometimes that's not the cards and it doesn't mean that your story is not awesome It doesn't mean that your dreams aren't being reached It's just they may look a little different than that original picture And like you said if you use those dreams as fuel to spur you toward as close You know as close as you can get to that that's very
38:03useful thing, but I think sometimes it can be a negative thing if you let those dreams turn into something that you hang on to in spite of what you have right in front of you. Right exactly and I'm going to share a little story about our greenhouse which will illustrate your point perfectly and then I'm going to let you go because we've been talking for like 38 minutes. When we dreamed about having a greenhouse, my husband and I had very different pictures about greenhouses.
38:30He was thinking like high tunnel style greenhouse. Right. I was thinking like pretty hard sided greenhouse with the old windows that people don't need anymore as the glass. And this very eclectic hard sided greenhouse that was one of a kind. That was my picture in my head. And I kept trying to explain my idea to him. And he was like, that's going to be really hard.
38:57And I didn't know how hard it was going to be because I saw all these beautiful greenhouses online that people had paid. And he was like, you don't understand. You got to seal those edges of those window frames together with something. So the cold air doesn't get in the cracks and da da da. I was like, okay, so that's not going to happen. And I must have looked sad and he was like, the purpose of a green house is to shield, protect, and keep warm.
39:26the plants you're growing in it. He said, the purpose of a greenhouse is not to look like a fairy tale. And I said, thank you for reminding me. And I said, so how are we gonna do this? He said, we're gonna start with high tunnels. And I said, okay. And then I watched one get blown over with seedlings in it. And I was like, high tunnels don't work on the prairie because the wind takes them over. So I applied for a grant last year for a greenhouse.
39:56we got the grant. Oh, that's exciting. And it was a decent amount of money. And I said, hun, can we please do a hard-sided greenhouse so that it doesn't get blown over? I can't cry my eyes out every spring or every summer when it blows over. And he said, exactly, that's what we're going to do. I said, okay. So the greenhouse got built this May. And it is basically wood and tin and polycarbonate.
40:25panels for the light to go through. So that's what is what passes for the glass for the greenhouse. It's 40 feet by 30 feet maybe. Wow! And I am in love with this thing. I really wanted an eclectic fairy tale greenhouse but this this very rudimentary functional greenhouse makes my heart sing.
40:53The lady from the county stopped by the other day. We live in Sibley County. She stopped by because she is the assessor for new construction here. And I stepped out on the porch and the window was open. I was like, hi, how can I help you? And she said, I'm here because of your greenhouse. And I cocked my head and said, what do you need? And she said, I just need measurements. She said, it looks great. And I said, thank you.
41:19She said, I have to tell you, she said, I drive by your place every day because I work at this place, so I have to go by here. And I was like, okay. She said, I am so impressed with your stewardship of the land since you bought it. Oh, that's awesome. I almost cried. I would cry. Yeah, that's amazing. And I said, well, we're not doing a heck of a lot, really. We're growing a garden and we have chickens. And she said, Mary.
41:47And she knew my name from the application for the permit for the greenhouse. She said, Mary, she said, you guys have made this a functioning farm and a home. She said, and it is clear that you love what you're doing. And I was like, we do. Oh my goodness. That's so encouraging. I love that. So it was really neat. Cause usually if an assessor shows up, you're like, Oh no, it's going to be a money thing. No, it was not a money thing. That's so cool. That's encouraging. That's really neat. We all need that some days.
42:17Yep, and then I asked her if she needed any kittens because we have five barn kittens right now. She was like, oh no, no, no, no. I was like, well, I tried. And she said, well, if we needed kittens, I know where to go. She said, if I know anybody who's looking for kittens, I will send them your way. I said, thank you so much. So you can have this beautiful picture in your brain of what you want things to look like when they're finished. And sometimes they don't look anything like the picture in your brain.
42:46but they are functional, they work, they're amazing, and it still looks good. Yeah, well, I mean, it's like, you know, really, if you had the luxury of being shown the future and you were like, okay, you can have this homestead, this farm in your brain, or this life in your brain, or you can have this one for real. Like, what are you gonna choose? You know, like, it's like, you can think this and have it, you know, keep it in your brain forever, this perfect house, or you can, you know,
43:16go here where you can be planted and you can grow something beautiful from something that may not look like your fantasy, but what would you choose? I mean, you're probably going to choose what's the actual concrete thing that's there, like over what's in your brain. So you can sit here and think about it for the rest of your life, or you can have this and make it the best that you can. Uh-huh, exactly. And...
43:44The biggest thing I have found with homesteaders and farmers in this year or so that I've been doing the podcast is the fact that homesteaders and farmers are ingenious and they make things work and they are so curious about how things work and they are masters at finding resources. Well, I think it's a resilient spirit, right? I think that's like the origin of that the whole homestead idea.
44:13even if you take it back to its origin, right? Like you got this, I mean, resilience, we're just, we're supposed to be resilient people because we're like, we are doing something off the beaten path and you do become resourceful. You do learn to do so many cool things because there's nobody else to do it. You gotta be the one to do it, you know? And it's a cool thing. It's a cool journey. I think it's, like I said, I think it stretches people and I think it gives us all something that challenge that we need a lot of times.
44:40Yeah, and I would love to get into the community aspect of this, but you covered it in your podcast better than I possibly could, and I'm running out of time. So if you guys want to understand the community part, you got to check the show notes and go see GoToInc and overalls because Dedra talks about community and how that works with the homesteading community, and it's awesome. Thank you. So that's all I got.
45:05Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. You are so welcome. I enjoyed talking to you. I'm sorry for in my mouth too much. Oh, no, no, you were great. I just, I've got things I gotta get done today too. So, all right. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you too. Bye.
 

Whispering Homestead

Today I'm talking with Darlene and Leon at Whispering Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Leon and Darlene at Whispering Homestead. Good afternoon, Darlene, how are you? We are great. We are excited to be here with you. I'm really glad. Is Leon there too? Yes, he is. He just walked away for a minute. Oh, okay. All right, cool.
00:30Okay, so you're in Alabama, right? Yes, we are. We're on Sand Mountain. Oh, so you're on a mountain. That's awesome It is we're on the mountaintop. There's a nice flat plateau up here and it sounds like it's supposed to be an amazing place We just moved here a little over a year ago and we are loving it. It's beautiful weather here The soil is amazing
00:53We bought a little 20 acre property here that we want to grow produce and have some animals, chickens, goats, we have some sheep. Keep expanding our herds of things and growing a lot of good, healthy, chemical-free produce. Fantastic. There needs to be more people like you in the world. We're trying to be like you too, so I understand. Yeah. Okay. So I have not talked to anybody in Alabama yet.
01:20This is the first Alabama conversation in over a year and a half of doing this. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Well, we don't know a lot about how to grow things here. We're learning. It's our first year. So we've talked to different people on what to expect. And we've just been having fun trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't. How was your summer growing season? It was good.
01:47We were very happy. There was some crops that didn't do as well in the heat in the middle of summer that I think we probably won't grow them as late in the summer. We'll probably start them earlier. We definitely could have planted things a lot earlier than we did. And definitely there's some things this fall that are growing better than they did this summer. And we're thinking of ways of how we could grow things better in the summer. Definitely we dealt with some bugs
02:18didn't have other places we've lived. So we definitely had more bug, oh, what do you call that? We had a lot more pest pressure away with certain types of bugs in certain crops. Yeah, and you're always gonna have that no matter where you live. We have it in Minnesota too. Where did you live before? I grew up in Wisconsin. Oh, okay.
02:48Then I met my original roots are from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My folks would have grown up there. They moved to Wisconsin to dairy farm. And then I went back to visit my grandma and spend some time in Pennsylvania. And I met my husband there. And so we got married and we lived in Pennsylvania for almost 20 years. And then we moved to Wisconsin. First of all, I was taking care of my folks and they passed away, sadly.
03:18And then we've been looking to move south further for many years. We've been kind of looking around to see what's available or what a good area would be. And then so we moved with a couple of church folks. We decided on Alabama. One of the fellows, he was a truck driver and he kind of knew some areas where there's good crops, where they can grow good crops. That's what we're looking for. We wanted a place where we can raise our families and grow food and not being such a
03:47polluted populated area. Pennsylvania was getting very, very populated where we were and it was hard to find parcels of land that weren't outrageously expensive. So we found Sand Mountain, Alabama. Well, I think that's a fine thing to do. I think Alabama is probably a lovely place to live. It is and with being here on the mountain, we're up in the Northern corner. So I don't know if I'd want to move any further south where it's any hotter.
04:14where it's any more muggy, but it's beautiful up here. It's a very, very nice area to live. Yeah, and Alabama doesn't have the market cornered on muggy. This summer in Minnesota was one of the stickiest ones we've had in a long time. Yes, Wisconsin, I've heard two different people talked about how Wisconsin was a lot hotter this summer than it normally is. Uh-huh, oh yeah, it's been really strange weather since this time last year.
04:43Minnesota and I assume Wisconsin too. Yeah, Wisconsin was beautiful last summer when we left there in August but it was nice here when we got to Alabama in August it was actually not as hot as I thought it might be but we are really enjoying the long summers just living outside all the time just you know barefoot and don't worry about shoes and that has been amazing because living in Wisconsin you wear shoes most of the year so here we don't. Yep.
05:11It's almost like an extreme weather difference versus Wisconsin. Yeah. Let me say I miss the beautiful snow. Like I love seeing the snow. It, Wisconsin definitely has an edge on beautiful snow. Well, it's about 45 degrees here today right now. Okay. It's a little cooler here. We've had some cooler weather this week, but definitely in the fall like this, we have 65 right now.
05:41So it's gorgeous weather. Yeah, we had a very hard frost overnight. We are so thankful for our greenhouse right now. Yes, last year we didn't get frost till sometime in the middle of November, which is kind of normal for years not to get a killing frost in the middle of November. So we're still having fun growing things. Yeah, absolutely. I saw the pictures on your Facebook page of some of your produce from the summer and it looked beautiful. Oh, thank you. We've had some really
06:10really definitely peppers we grew peppers till we were about sick of picking peppers we've been drying them we've been canning them we've been freezing them and selling as much as we can and then whenever we don't sell we've been making different things with them we've canned some sweet pickled peppers hot pickled peppers we've dried them and made pepper fusion mixes where we've blended all the different peppers we have that has been a pretty
06:39good selling item for us this summer. It sounds like a Peter Piper tongue twister on your end. Yeah, it is. Yep. Okay. So, so you sell from your property. Do you sell at farmers markets and stuff? Yes, that is where we started. We started at local farmers markets.
07:04There's a trade days close here that a lot of people everywhere come to and we did really well there. Then we expanded to some actual farmers markets that are just vegetables and things that you grow and raise yourself. So we've been doing a few of those Fridays and Saturdays. We had done a few more around here in Alabama. There's little pop up farmers markets in every little town everywhere. Yep.
07:31And so those have been fun. We've done some of those, some done really well and some did not, but we've done that. And so then we opened at the farm here just a couple of weeks ago. Oh, we haven't had a lot of business here yet. We're working at a SetAmba website so that people can order and we have drop points. They can order ahead of time and pick it up at the market. So that's what we're working on right now is to get that. People seem to really like that. Cool.
08:00So how big is the farm? 22 acres. Nice. That's fantastic. Our homestead is 3.1 acres. I'm mildly envious of you. Well, we lived on a one and a quarter acre in Pennsylvania for many years, and we tried out a lot of different things there. We tried wood chip gardening, and we really, really loved that process. We loved how the food tasted. We tried to do a lot of
08:30companion planting and raised beds and try to grow more in a smaller space. So that has went along with we tried a lot of different types of natural bug control, you know, using different herbs and things. So we definitely have to up our game with 22 acres because there's a lot more ground to cover. Yes. And do you have animals? Yes, we do. We have.
08:59half a dozen goats, Nigerian, they're the Nigerian, or the dwarf, Nigerian dwarfs, like I always forget. The Nigerian dwarfs, and then we have a couple of fin sheep, and some rabbits, and we have about 300 laying hens. Oh, my, okay. So we use the laying hens for bug control, we rotate them around the property and wherever we've had crops.
09:25that are finished, we put them on there so they can scratch and eat and eat all the bugs and let them manure there and fertilize it for us for the next crop. You must never be without eggs. No, pretty much not. We usually have so many we don't know what to do with. We sell a lot and then we keep a lot. We've been canning them, doing like pickled eggs. So we've done a lot of that.
09:55We like to have that around. That's a really handy snack to have when we're out working and we need some quick to eat. That's a really good thing to open up. So we always have eggs and we sell a lot of eggs too. Nice. Do you donate anything to the food shelf in your area? We have not. We have talked about it. It is something that we need to check into that we want to do. So far we've been working at building a Marine house is the thing we're working on now.
10:25So get a greenhouse up so we can grow lettuces and, you know, veggie crops inside in the winter. Uh huh. We're in the process of finishing off our winter greenhouse right now. Oh wow. That is awesome. Yeah. My husband and my son have been putting up plastic on the inside walls and, um, like the silver, silver coated insulation sheets. So they're shiny. Oh wow. And
10:55And then we just picked up four IBC totes. So I don't know if you know what those are. Yes, I know what those are. Okay. And we're gonna, they painted two of them flat black yesterday. And once we have the other two painted, they're going in and they're going to be filled with water. And supposedly the plan is that the sun will heat the water during the day. And then the water will offset the heat into the greenhouse at night overnight.
11:22Yes, that is supposed to work. We've never tried it. It's on our to-do list, so someday we want to try that. One thing that we've done already in Pennsylvania, we had a green, it was a white plastic we had done. We had done it to raise broiler chicks, so we could raise them out in the field in tractors. Then we had, quit doing that, but then we had rabbits in there in pens, and then we had big, we had chickens in there as well in the wintertime, and we had a big...
11:50mulch pile that we made to cook. So we made this ginormous big pile in the back corner. And as it heated up, we would stir it and that would release heat into the greenhouse and it would have made a nice room space for the chickens. They love to sit on that mulch pile, compost pile at night to stay warm. So that's another way to kind of get some heat in your greenhouse.
12:19The ammonia smell can get rather strong, so you have to have a little ventilation for that. Oh yeah, definitely. Well, this is the, we got the greenhouse built. It's a hard-sided greenhouse. We got it built in May. So this is our first winter. So this winter is an experimentation year on Yes. on how this is gonna work and what we can actually make grow in there. So it's gonna be really fun. Yeah.
12:46That's kind of, this is the first time we've ever grown anything in a greenhouse in the winter time, so we, this is an experiment for us as well. Yeah, well it was 33 degrees here at 530 this morning, and it was 40, 40 or 42 in the greenhouse and it doesn't even really have a way to heat it yet. So the stuff that's in there right now, we have some herbs and some strawberry pots and things like that and nothing.
13:15burned or froze. So we're hoping that we'll get through the next couple of nights where it'll stay above freezing so we don't lose everything in there. And then hopefully by next weekend, everything will be set up so that it will be able to heat with that warmed water and maybe nothing will die. Maybe. Yes. Well, we had pretty good success. We always with our compost pile in there that we did.
13:44It always was a number of degrees warmer in there. And it's wind still, so you don't have the brunt of the wind. Inside the greenhouse, that always helped. But definitely, even in the coldest part of the winter, we would go in there and working in there, taking care of our rabbits and our chickens. You take your winter coat off to be in there. It actually got warm enough in there for last. Yep, it's very exciting. It's funny because most people be like, eh, it's a greenhouse, how exciting can it be?
14:14But it really is. If I talk to people who know what I'm talking about, they're like, oh my God, that's so cool. Yes, well, we enjoy, and you know, at Greenhouse, it's exciting for the people that love to grow things. And my husband and I have enjoyed growing food ever since we were children, and it was a passion we had together. After we got married, we just loved gardening. We just loved growing our own food. Yes.
14:43I used to love gardening. I don't love gardening as much as I used to, but my husband is a fanatic. So he has a hundred foot by 150 foot garden that he putters in and babies and loves to be in from April until now. And then he puts it to bed for the winter and he spends the rest of the time planning the next garden.
15:10We had a very small greenhouse in Pennsylvania the last couple years we lived there and it was kind of nice in February to go out there and start, you know start seeds and have little plants and transplanting It made the winter not feel quite as long if you had something to do in the dirt and I really enjoyed getting out of the house and Getting in the greenhouse and starting my next year's stuff Although for a number of years I had been really ill
15:38And so I wasn't able to do as much of the gardening and I would have given it up and been like, well, I can't do it physically. I had Lyme and also fibromyalgia. So I was in a lot of pain. It took everything I just do my normal household activities to take care of my children. And if it would have been for my husband, we would just gave up gardening. But he took it over then. I mean, he helped a lot before that. He did a lot of the main work, but he took it over then and him and the children really got into it.
16:07They took it over and kept growing things. And so that's kind of what we're doing now is he does, I help a lot more than I did. I'm a lot better than I was. And that someone said to me in the process of that, why don't you just quit gardening and buy all your food? And I said, but if I'm gonna get better, we need to eat healthy food. And I know if I grow it, I know what's in it and what's been applied. Yes, exactly. Why go backwards? You wanna move forward. Exactly. And I believe
16:37Our food should be our nutrition as much as anything. I mean, Yes, there's a lot of great supplements out there. There's a lot of great pills and so on But I think the biggest thing is to eat healthy food food that is nutritious And not been sprayed with chemicals and junk and you know that we put nutritious and not chemical fertilizers either but animal manure and green manure like
17:06help me out honey. Like alfalfa and those types of things planted cover crops. Yes. Planted and then tilled in to have a nutritious product. Yes, for sure. And one thing that we noticed that makes the plants more nutritious, the vegetables more nutritious and a lot juicier, full of nutrition, you know, not just a... Okay, so let me back phrase that. My husband hates peppers.
17:35He never liked peppers. He couldn't stand the aftertaste that they had. To one year we were growing, we were doing the woodchip garden. We were experimenting with it. And I started some seeds. I gave some of the plants to my mother-in-law and I planted some. She planted hers in dirt. I planted mine in wood chips, in the dirt. And we compared peppers. She brought me some peppers that she had and her peppers, the pepper wall was, you know, normal. It had the aftertaste that the husband doesn't like. We,
18:04picked my peppers, they had thick, juicy walls. Like the pepper was a very juicy pepper. And it did not have that aftertaste. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. The aftertaste that you're talking about to me is sort of bitter. And I want my sweet peppers to be sweet, damn it. Yep. So. So definitely we have noticed a big difference in using wood chips.
18:33And gardening and we want to get to that on our farm here again, although it's, um, we've been having a little trouble finding wood chips in our area because of all the chicken houses. Um, from what we found out, um, when they trim trees along road sides, it goes to a local place where they chop it up for, um, for sawdust for chicken houses. So we're part time getting a hold of wood chips. Huh? Um,
19:03So where are you in Alabama? Like are you on the border or are you in the middle? Now we're- Northwestern corner. Yeah, we're about an hour from Tennessee and an hour from Georgia. Okay. I assume it would cost a lot to have wood chips brought in. Northeastern, northeast. Oh, sorry, northeastern, I'm sorry. Uh-huh. Northeastern corner. Okay. But it would cost a lot of money to have wood chips brought in to you. Probably if we can get a hold of them. Okay.
19:33Because we've talked, we've heard some people that, well we talked to a few different people and it seems like all the wood chips are being allocated to the chicken companies. Huh. Well, that's not fair. It's not, but there's a lot of big broiler houses here. Yeah. All around us. Okay, well.
19:56I don't have any solution ideas for that one. I'm sorry, I was digging, but I can't think of anything right now. Our next thought is we want to purchase a wood chipper ourselves. And then there's some local people that want their woods cleaned up and so we can come in to clean it up and we can have the branches and things. So that's our next step that we want to eventually do here is get a wood chipper and do it that way.
20:21I was going to say something like that, but I figured that it would be too expensive, but I'm sure you guys can figure it out if you want to do it. Oh, absolutely. That's our next plan. But first, when you get the greenhouse up, get seeds growing for next year. Yes. And since you mentioned that, one of the things that we're planning on doing is growing bedding plants, seedlings to sell to people who want to get stuff in their gardens next year. Yes.
20:49And we want to do that as well. We want to start enough of our own and then have some to sell. Yep. Cause ours, my, ours for our friends and neighbors and yours for your friends and neighbors will be better than the stuff from the local hardware store or home depot or whatever. Yes. And you know, right here where we live on sand mountain, I'm not sure why, but there are not very many greenhouses around. A lot of the places that have plants are like Lowe's and
21:18And some of the local, there's one local store that has them, but they're very expensive. So we would like to provide an outlet for local people to come and get them at better prices than having them shipped in like they are. Yes, and stronger and healthier too. Yes.
21:48The last time we did it was six years ago. And all the basil plants that come into Lowe's and Home Depot and the different stores that sell them, they all end up with that powdery mildew in the last few years. And we talked to our favorite nursery that they grow their own basil and they've been having trouble with it too.
22:13And so we finally said, forget it, we'll just grow our own. We have not had powdery mildew on our basil since we started buying seeds and growing the seedlings ourselves. Interesting. And what, what do you think is causing that in the, in the bought ones? Well, I don't want to disparage anybody who grows basil seedlings and sells them. But I was told that some of the places down south where it gets hotter sooner, they were having issues with it and they were just selling the plants to be shipped anyway.
22:43And if you put them with plants that aren't already exposed to it, it just jumps to the other plants. Oh, interesting. Yep. And so I love basil. I've said it a billion times. I'll say it again. I love basil in everything when I get my hands on it in the summer. So not having basil plants is a not going to happen thing here. Yes. We love to have our herbs too. And that's another thing I was hoping to start this summer.
23:13which is moving here, there was a million and one things that we wanted to do. And so we decided there's some things I have to wait for another year, which was starting my herb garden. And we had a nice in Pennsylvania, around my vegetable garden, I had done herbs the whole way around two sides of it. And we had herbs growing everywhere. And I felt like that helped attract a lot of good, good pollinators.
23:40Pollinators is what I want. I kept thinking bacteria. I'm like this is the word pollinators. Good pollinators for the garden and it also help repel some of the bugs that we were having trouble with. So that is something we want to set up again for next year. Start growing herbs and planting them all around our gardens. Uh-huh. I didn't have an herb garden this year. I had herbs in pots in the greenhouse. Well, I guess that works too. Yeah. My husband...
24:09told me last summer he was going to cut the herb garden down, like he's going to start from scratch again. And I said, please leave the time. And he said, there is no time. The weeds have taken over and they died. And I was like, oh, okay, go ahead. And then it rained for a month and a half straight this spring. And so no herb garden got put in, but he did buy herbs and put them in the greenhouse that I would have some. God love him. Thank goodness he did that.
24:39Yes, I bought pots. I bought several plants different times and we never got around to planting them out and they died on me and I said this is not okay. I said we're going to have to wait till next year and hopefully over winter here we'll have time to work up the ground and get it ready for next spring which spring comes sooner here in Alabama. Yeah, like March? Oh absolutely, yes. I mean people are planting things out. I think people plant their potatoes by Valentine's Day around here.
25:09Wow. So that is really exciting because we... I gotta feed my bees before Valentine's Day because the red maple is a good honey flow around here and that starts right around Valentine's Day. You guys have bees as well? Yeah. Oh. I won't do without my bees. We have five hives we started with this year. Nice. Is that new or is that something that you've been doing before?
25:37I had some in PA and then Wisconsin, we didn't have any. Now down here, I have some again. Nice. That's awesome. One thing different between PA versus here, I'm going to be treating my bees with essential oils instead of the chemical treatments that they have for the mites and high beetles and stuff. Uh huh. We've been researching that a lot because.
25:57We're really about, a lot of beekeepers told us there's no way you can do it without chemicals and we're determined that we can. We've done everything else without chemicals, so we wanna do this. So we've done a lot of research the last couple of years and we wanna try different essential oil products. So what have you come up with? What have you found out that might work? A mixture of essential oils. Well, actually like spearmint. If you feed your bees spearmint,
26:27in with your sugar water, like your sugar syrup, they will feed the larvae with that and the mites do not like any larvae that had been fed with the spearmint. Somehow the spearmint changes something in their bloodstream and the mites don't like it. Well, awesome. So it is a mite repeller. And spearmint and peppermint in and of itself is a repeller for the...
26:57hive beetles. So I made myself some hive murder sauce that I found from a guy in Ohio. And they've been doing it for quite some time and he finally for the first time shared his recipe that he's using.
27:18So yeah, there's a lot of info out there if you really search it. I started with searching it on YouTube with just essential oils for bees and there's a lot of info out there of different mixtures. I think the first time we heard or we kind of really got introduced to it was at the Homesteaders Conference in Virginia that they have every fall.
27:47I think one of the homesteaders there was talking about it. Homesteaders of America.
27:53Okay. It's a group of educating different things. They have a, they have a homesteaders conference every fall and I think it was just this past weekend and they have a lot of different speakers come in talking about different ways to raise crops and, and animals without chemicals or pesticides or anything like that. So that was the first time we introduced it. So we've been slowly researching it and trying different things. Very cool.
28:21I'm impressed. I didn't know that peppermint and spearmint would do that. That's fantastic. They are very good bug repellers depending on what bugs you're trying to get rid of. Yeah. Bee balm is a very good pollinator that the bees really like. So yeah, there's a lot of that kind of stuff that goes across state lines that will grow in a bunch of different states that is actually a bee honey source.
28:50Well, and I think from what we've been learning, the one fellow that we've been kind of working with from Pennsylvania, and he said that a lot of what the bees feed on is being mowed down along road edges and in wood, you know, along along woods and things that stuff is being killed off that our bees don't have what they need to actually make good honey.
29:20That's okay. I love little voices. We have our food stand here, or vegetable stand here. And so it's not been real busy yet, but every now and again, a neighbor will pull in with their local, with their gators or their forage-lers and things and come and buy them some things. And that's great. That's what you want. Exactly. So our goal is to eventually
29:49not have to go to market as much, have drop points where everything is sold before it leaves the property and we just take it and drop it somewhere, meet the customers, give them their order and leave again. That would be so great. That is what we're aiming for. We would really like to be able to do that because it can just be so frustrating sitting at a market and you take all this stuff along, you have no idea if it's going to sell and you spend all that time and it doesn't sell or you know, sell some of it and what do you do with everything when you bring it home?
30:19So we'd like to be able to work with subscription boxes, produce boxes, and just everything that leaves the farm is already sold. Fabulous. I think that you have a very good plan going on there, ma'am. I think it's going to be great. All right. So we're at 30 minutes and 29 seconds, and I tried to keep you to half an hour, so I'm going to let you go. But it was really lovely talking with you. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great day. You too.
30:49Bye.
 

Ironstone Creek Farm

Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. Good morning, Carri. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. Thank you. You're in Pennsylvania? That is correct. Okay. What's the nearest city to you?
00:27Um, and most people are familiar with either Reading, Pennsylvania or Allentown, Pennsylvania. We're kind of in the middle of that, those two. Is that the Allentown in the Billy Joel song? Do you know? I actually do not know. I'm not sure. I'm willing to bet it is. Okay. So, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Um, so, um, we have.
00:56a multi-faceted farm, I would say. We have a little less than 20 acres here, and we, number one, raise some animals for meat. So we raise Berkshire pigs, chickens, and turkeys. We also have some sheep that we do raise for meat as well. And then the other side of our farm is our pet animals. So our.
01:25Pet animals include pet pigs and goats, bunnies, and we have a little mini cow. So we do some on-farm events here, and then we also have a mobile petting zoo. Fantastic, I love it. Okay, so tell me how this started, because not everybody in the world goes, hey, I'm gonna buy a farm and share the animals with the whole world. Right, correct.
01:54Um, so I grew up in Southern Lancaster County. I was surrounded by farmland. Um, growing up, I spent probably 95% of my time outside barefoot, playing in the creeks, um, around animals. And I've just always loved animals. Um, so I didn't have a farm for, um, many of my married years, um, but it was always the goal.
02:20So we had been searching for a farm for probably about 12 years and finally, you know, came upon this one here in Boyertown that seemed to be the right fit. So we went ahead and purchased it and we spent about 10 months fixing up the house in order to move our family in. And then once we were in, we started with 12 chickens and two goats.
02:47And it just rapidly expanded from there. I wasn't planning on having a petting zoo. I wasn't planning on really any of this, but it just happened organically where our herd expanded really quickly. I fell in love with the animals. I was getting a ton of joy out of spending time with them. And I just figured, why shouldn't everyone else enjoy them?
03:16So I started really small just with like, you know, a little mini petting zoo and it's just grown exponentially over the past couple years. So I don't know how to ask this without sounding weird. How many people have been to your farm do you think to see the animals? You know, I don't know the answer to that question.
03:44I'm not open to the public. We are open by appointment. And then we do have several public events throughout the year where we open the farm up. And those are kind of paid events where we have other vendors coming in and lots of activities for kids. It's always geared toward kids. But, I mean, there have been.
04:10been events where we've had a lot of people. Our fall festival is always very popular. And I think last year we had somewhere around 1,000 people for that particular event. So I guess over the past couple years, again, I don't know exactly how many, but several thousand. Yeah. Reason I asked is because back when I was younger and our kids were small.
04:40We used to go to places like yours, only in Minnesota. And we'd take our kids to see cows and sheep and goats and stuff. And the kids absolutely loved it. And so did I, for that matter. Yes, absolutely. And now that we're not the parents of small children, and we live on a homestead that we love, we don't really go to farms anymore because we're too busy on our own property to have time to go.
05:09A friend of mine had a puppy socialization event yesterday. She has nine little Australian shepherd pups that they breed, Australian shepherds, and she needed to get them familiar with new people and new sounds and new voices. And we would have gone, but we had too much going on here yesterday to attend. Our dog is a half sibling to these new puppies. Okay.
05:34So we just don't go to these things as much as we used to. So I think gearing it towards kids on your side is a brilliant idea because parents want stuff to take their kids to that teaches the kids, that gives the kids something to enjoy and basically to give the kids something fun to do so you're hitting all those marks. Correct. Which is amazing. So what...
06:03What continues to drive you to do this? Is it just how much fun it is? Um, yeah, I've heard from, um, directly from some children who have visited and then also from parents, many, many parents saying things like this is the first time, um, my child has been able to touch a bunny or has interacted with a goat, um, or seen a cow in real life. And for me,
06:33That's really special to be able to provide something like that for people who are coming from all over the place to be able to experience that for the first time. And then I have repeat customers or guests that come here to the farm and they come all of the time because they've fallen in love with the animals that we have here. One little girl, she can't wait until she's old enough to come and volunteer here.
07:03Their family comes to every event that we have and she just is in love with the piglets. And she spends so much time with them and just enjoys that so much that she wants to come and work here when she's old enough. So you know, that's the kind of thing that it feels good to be able to, you know, provide that for kids. It was something that I was immersed in when I was a kid growing up, so I didn't necessarily realize.
07:33Um, you know, how much kids would maybe miss out on something like that if it wasn't provided. Yes. So, um, okay. I had a thought and just, it just went by. Uh, damn it. Can't remember what I was going to ask you. Um, um, um, um, okay. I'll ask you something else. Okay. Do you have, do you have a another job or is this, is this what you consider to be your job?
08:04Yeah, so I do have another job. I work at a local restaurant. That kind of supplements my income. I have definitely made it a goal to work myself out of my other job. I really do want the farm to be my full-time gig, but it's a very slow and difficult process making the farm
08:33profitable. So I have to come up with new ideas all the time and, you know, just try to grow and expand as much as possible because it is very expensive to feed animals. And the more animals we have, the more it costs to, you know, maintain the property and care for the animals properly. So the answer is yes, I do have an outside job.
09:02Um, but I would like to not have that job eventually. Yeah. That's the answer I get from a lot of people I talked to on the podcast. They're like, I love what I do at home, but I can't quite afford to just be home doing the thing I love to do. Yeah. Um, okay. So I saw on your website that you do fluffy friends sleepovers. Tell me about that. Yeah. In addition to the mobile petting zoo, we have a lot of different offerings.
09:30One of them is the Fluffy Friend Sleepover, where people can have bottle baby goats, a couple bunnies, some piglets, chicks even. You know, they can bring them to their house for a sleepover essentially, and then I, you know, come back and get them the next day. It's a really nice addition to sleepover birthday parties for kids.
10:00I've, you know, a lot of people have really enjoyed that. Um, they don't have to commit to an animal full time. They can just borrow it for a night. Yes. And that leads me to my next questions because I'm always worried about the liabilities of things like this. Um, does Pennsylvania have like rules about you doing this or, or do they not care? Um, that particular, um,
10:29You know, the sleepovers, I don't believe so. You know, we have a liability waiver through the Department of Agriculture that we have everyone sign. And they receive a pretty in-depth care packet. And of course, I'm always available if anything would come up that they could, you know, reach out to me and say, hey, I have a question, can.
10:56the bunny have a carrot or whatever it might be, I try to make it as seamless as possible. Yeah, that's what I was wondering about because number one, you don't want the kids getting hurt. Correct. Number two, you don't want your animals getting hurt or killed. Right. I'm sure there's a whole lot of planning that goes into having your animals visit someone overnight. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I provide all of the setup required.
11:26you know, the playpen and the floor mat and their food and water and their bed, you know, where they sleep. All of that is provided by me. And then again, the care package, which kind of is, you know, a multi-page paper that goes over it's, you know, frequently asked questions and answers and, you know, just general type things that would help people get through the sleepover without much trouble. Okay.
11:55Then the next question I have about this is, do you have parents that surprise their kids with this particular event for their party? Oh, yes, absolutely. And do you have stories? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's always very well received by the kids. I do have parents who the next day they're like, yep, we can officially say we do not want to have a piglet. But the kids are always like, ecstatic and, you know, love the whole experience.
12:25Of course, mom and dad are the ones that are cleaning up after and things like that. But these surprise type sleepovers have always been very well received by the kids for sure. I bet the photos and videos that get taken at these parties are amazing. Oh yeah, definitely. And I love receiving them because, I mean, just the smiles and the...
12:54You know, the excitement from the kids is the whole reason for doing it. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I remembered my question from earlier when you were talking. When you have people come out to visit, do you teach them about the animals? Like do the kids that don't understand that milk comes from cows, do you explain this stuff to them? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't have...
13:22you know, a scripted lesson or anything like that. But when people come to visit, if they, you know, are looking at a particular animal and they have questions, I'm happy to, you know, let them know whatever I know. And I'm still learning too. But, you know, a lot of people ask things about goats. Oh, the boys have horns and the girls don't.
13:50So I'm able to say, actually, both male and female goats have horns. Some of my goats don't have horns, but that's because they are naturally pulled, which means they're born naturally without horns. So that's a genetic thing. And so that's the type of thing. It's kind of organic where if they ask questions, I try to answer as knowledgeably as possible.
14:18Like I said, I don't have a scripted lesson or anything like that. My favorite answer when people come here and ask us questions is I don't know the answer to that, but I know Google does. Yes, absolutely. And I'm a stickler about Google. I have to look at five or six different, quote unquote, reputable websites before I decide that there's an answer that I am comfortable giving to people.
14:46Sure. Yeah, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Yeah. And you've got to be careful. Like when my kids were in high school, not too long ago, I was in high school a long time ago. My kids, not so long ago, they were told they were not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source on papers they wrote because it was not, it was not reputable enough to use as a source. Sure. I suspect that that may not be the case now.
15:16But yeah, they were like, nope, you're not allowed to use Wikipedia. And there were some teachers who actually made them go to an actual library and have the librarian help them find information to put in their papers because librarians know what's reputable and what's not. Sure. Absolutely. Big shout out to librarians. They still have jobs. They still are experts in everything they do. I love libraries. So.
15:44I want to make sure that people know that you can actually still go to a building that has actual books in it. Yeah. It's not a thing of the past. No, and I hope it never is. I really hope that libraries are in existence well beyond my grandkids' lifetimes because libraries are a place of safety and peace, I think. Absolutely.
16:09So I don't usually talk about libraries and I thought I would throw it in there because they're hard. Okay, so how hard is this job that you have built for yourself? It is extremely hard, harder than I ever would have imagined. Well, just physically.
16:35You know, I'm a smaller person. I like to think that I'm strong. But this is a very, very physical job carrying feed bags and stacking hay bales and straw bales. And, you know, just in general, working around the farm is very physical. So that aspect of it is definitely hard. And even with the mobile petting zoo, you know, we load up. And when I say we,
17:03My family helps as much as they can, but my children are in school and my husband is a teacher. So I would say, you know, the majority of it does fall on me and that's fine because it's what I built and it's my job. But with the mobile petting zoo, you know, I load the trailer with all of the supplies and pens and everything that's needed.
17:29Then load the animals and head to the location and then unload and set everything up and unload the animals and do the multi-hour petting event whether it's Sometimes it's one hour, but mostly two to three to four hour long events And then load everything back up in the trailer Head back to the farm and then unload again. You know, that's a full day of physical labor, so anybody who thinks it's
17:59easy or you know cute. It is it is cute but it is it is not for the you know faint of heart. Yeah how many how many events do you do a week? Um I have mostly on the weekends it's mobile events um so I do try to fill my weekends with um you know two or three
18:26outside things and then during the week I have people come for visits. We do baby goat bottle feeding and baby goat snuggling and cow snuggling and piglet snuggling and so I do have people coming and going at the farm throughout the week but it just varies. The fall is a very busy time of year. This summer is very busy. Over the winter it slows down a lot because obviously it's cold so we don't want to have the animals outside.
18:56Um, so it varies. Yeah. All I can see is a calendar on your wall color coded for all the stuff you have going on in the summer and the fall. I absolutely have that. It's the full year calendar. It covers it's maybe, um, I don't know, two feet by three feet or so. And it's got my scribbling all over it. I'm probably the only one that would understand it or be able to read it, but everything's there. Yeah. And
19:25It's funny because all our cell phones and our computers have calendars in them. And I keep all the upcoming interviews that I have scheduled in my phone because it's the easiest way to do it. But I really get itchy to have an actual planner. I have not bought one yet. But I really want to buy like a big one and just set it on my desk open to the week that we're on.
19:52and have like little stickers that represent what each place does just because it's fun. Sure. I haven't done it, but I want to. Yeah, I use the digital calendars as well. I have the calendar on my phone and obviously the one that links to, you know, different apps that I use and things like that. But visually, I'm a very visual person. It's much easier for me to see the full scale.
20:19calendar where I can see from month to month to month and everything that's written in there. Just taking that glance at that calendar is much easier for me than going through my phone. So that's just personally how I am able to operate. Have you ever double booked yourself for an event? Yes, I have. Have you really? Yes. I would say probably not by accident.
20:47I do have a close friend, actually met her through the restaurant that I work at, but she has a very entrepreneurial spirit just like me. She's kind of willing to get down and dirty and dig in and do anything necessary to help out or gain a little bit of cash here on the side or whatever. So I have in the past had multiple requests.
21:17for the same day and time. And I'm able to make that happen with the help of people like her. That's amazing. I love that. I have double booked myself for interviews, like three times now in the year and a couple months I've been doing this. And I feel like an idiot every time I do it. I'm like, why do I keep doing this?
21:41And what it is is that I get so excited that people say yes, that I'm just like, oh, cool, I'll get that in the calendar. And then I look a week later, I'm like, ah, crap, I gotta change time. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I understand that. I actually have some scheduling issues with my outside job, where in a restaurant, it's a little bit different with scheduling. You don't have the same schedule every single day.
22:09week, you know, it's not nine to five every day. So I'll plan events and then I'll request off knowing that I have that event coming up. But they can't always honor a request based on what other people are doing and what you know, if there's a big party or they need extra workers or whatever it is, that has come up a few times where I've gotten scheduled to work and I've already been booked for an event and I'm like, now what do I do?
22:38So thankfully, I've never gotten stuck in a situation where I couldn't find someone to cover for me, but that would be bad. Yeah, that would not be great. Okay, so you have a couple events coming up here in the near future, yes, at the farm? Yes. Or not at the farm? Yeah. Well, our next big event here at the farm, open to the public, is our Halloween Spooktacular.
23:07So that's on October 26th and I'm so excited for this event. It's going to be so much fun. We're asking kids if they want to come in costume. It's going to be a very kid friendly Halloween. So with this event coming up, we're obviously going to have our petting zoo, all of our animals out for viewing and petting. We're also having a bounce house and a face painter.
23:37We have barrel carts that we've invested in for the events here on our farm. So we'll have our barrel carts out to give rides. That's super fun. We have a few food trucks coming. And I'll have a pumpkin patch set up with some pumpkin decorating activities. And I actually just last night had a friend of mine who's involved in a Jeep club ask if they could please.
24:05bring their Jeep club and do a trunker treat at the event. So that's a new addition. And so it's just, it's ever evolving and it's gonna be a really fun Halloween party for kids. Wow, that's a lot to keep track of. It definitely is, yes. Okay, and how do people get to be at this thing? So I am primarily on Facebook.
24:33So I have our farm Facebook page. We post events there, and then I share them out through my personal page and to different groups. I'm involved in a lot of different mom groups in our areas. So, you know, that's a great way to kind of let moms know, hey, this event is coming up. It's really great for the kids. And then they just, you know, kind of click the link and get all the information off of our farm page.
25:03So that's my main mode of, you know, kind of getting the word out at this point. I am the first one to admit I am terrible with technology. So I do have an Instagram. I don't understand it. I'm terrible at using it. I know that it's something that I need to invest time in and learn. I just haven't done it yet. So.
25:33That's one thing that I have, you know, that I struggle with a little bit, but I do plan to try to get better at. I also am trying to revamp the website because right now our website is specific to the mobile petting zoo. But there are so many other facets of our farm. So I really want to completely redo our website at some point and, you know, have different tabs.
26:03people who are interested in purchasing quality pasture raised meats because that is one thing that we do here. Another tab for the events here at the farm and then the mobile events, another tab. So that's all, it's in my head right now. Getting it to actually happen is, that's...
26:30It takes time and money and all of those things. So I'm sure you understand that, but. Oh yes, I do understand. So if people want to come to the Halloween event, how do they just show up and pay at the door? Is that how it works? Yeah, yeah. We try to make it super affordable. So we charge only $5 for adults and then $10 for children.
26:57Everything, every single activity is included in the cover, in that entrance fee. The only thing that is a separate payment is the food, if they wanted to purchase food from the food trucks. But, you know, for me, I have kids. So, I know going to an amusement park and spending the, I mean, what is it now, $60 to $80 for a ticket.
27:26To get into an amusement park is not necessarily doable for me Especially with my four-year-old because you know, there's activities that they can't even yeah Participate in being that age. So I try to make it you know Affordable for parents to bring a toddler. I feel like you know ten dollars is is doable and you do really get a lot of
27:53spend for your buck at these events, like I said, with all of the different activities that we're offering. And you can spend as much time, there's not a time limit. So you could stay for an hour, you could stay for three hours, whatever you want to do. And so yeah, you just show up at the door or the gate and pay and have a blast. That's amazing. So I have a question about weather.
28:21Does weather impact this, your events at the farm? Yeah, it does. We can't necessarily do rain or shine events. If it's a little sprinkling, it's not a big deal, but if there's rain, it does impact it. And we have field parking. So we have to be careful if there's a lot of rain about driving, you know, doing parking on the fields.
28:51And then just the activities are all outdoors. So you don't want to be on a bounce house in the pouring rain. You don't necessarily want to, you know, be petting animals in the pouring rain. Nobody wants to pet a soggy bunny. So we do have a rain date, which is the following day, the 27th. But that is something that, you know, has been an issue in the past with, you know,
29:20completely outdoor event. Yes, exactly. I was just wondering if you had a rain date scheduled because in Minnesota it's been known to snow on Halloween. Oh my goodness. I think it snowed a little bit last Halloween and there was a huge storm here back before I moved here. We moved just after the Halloween storm. Okay. It was 91, I think. Okay.
29:47And Minnesota got socked with like three feet of snow on Halloween. Wow. And so you're in Pennsylvania, you're a fairly Northern ish, your state. So it could snow, who knows? It could, who knows? I mean, it would be unfortunate. I would be sad to have to, you know, postpone or cancel the event, but, um, it is something that is on my radar. Yeah. Um, luckily I'm not pre-selling tickets for this event.
30:17So we wouldn't have to get involved in, you know, doing a bunch of refunds or anything like that. But I'm so looking forward to it. It's going to be so much fun. I would hate to cancel it. Yes, exactly. And I'm not trying to be a downer here. I'm just saying that sometimes you have the best intent and plans and hope.
30:41The universe goes, not today. Not today. But we're going to hope. We're going to cross our fingers and our toes and everything that you have beautiful, warmish weather for October for your spooktacular because I think that the kids are really going to enjoy it. It sounds really fun. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. We'll see what happens. All right, carry well. I tried to keep these to half an hour and we're at 30 minutes and 55 seconds. So I'm going to cut you loose.
31:09Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. This was really fun. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. All right, you have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Andy's Little Homestead

Today I'm talking with Andy at Andy's Little Homestead.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Andy at Andy's Little Homestead. Good morning, Andy. How are you? How's it going, Mary? It's going great. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. I don't know what it's like in Michigan. It's beautiful, but the cold's starting to get here.
00:27We were down about 29 degrees last night Yeah, we've had two mild frosts in the last two weeks and the the hard frost is probably coming next week So yeah, my wife was my wife was showing me on the weather report I guess next next week is our first chance of snow for the year, which is about average, you know middle of October Well, at least we're not in Florida today Yeah, yeah
00:56That was a big reason that we had kind of looked at Michigan initially coming from Eastern North Carolina was there's no hurricanes. Mm-hmm. Yes. I don't want to live where the creatures want to kill me and the weather wants to kill me too. Yep. I'll pass. I'm not into alligators and poisonous snakes and spiders. I like Minnesota because we have none of those here. So...
01:26Anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, um, I, uh, the short version of the long story is that, uh, at, um, at 30 years old, uh, my, my life hit a, hit a big restart. Um, it was all centered around, um, or more or less centered around when I, when I got sober, I was pretty bad alcoholic for a long time.
01:55and moved up to northern Michigan and from eastern North Carolina and lived in a camper and I started filming. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a little over 700,000 followers on Facebook, though I'm kind of trying to push everybody over to YouTube.
02:25on a piece of raw land that's got nothing here basically when we bought it and doing it on a pretty tight budget like many people are out there. Yeah, so that's what I do. I make videos. Fun, and a good way to make a living. I have no complaints about that. Yeah, exactly.
02:51As I've said on the podcast before, I do not love doing video unless it's just the quick little thing on my phone outside when the kittens are being cute. Because video does require setup and thinking through the shot and trying to find something that people will be interested in seeing. And it has to be watchable and I don't have the patience. So I don't do video. Oh yeah, no. There's a lot that goes into it. Every angle.
03:20every little change, you know, I um, so when the channel started to grow, I did a little bit of research, just like, I literally watch videos about making videos. Just to kind of figure it out. And, you know, one of those things that's not really thought about very much is that if you ever notice on my videos, I never have a single camera angle that lasts more than like six to 10 seconds.
03:49and that's intentional, that's to keep everything visually interesting. You know, a lot of people have short attention spans, so that's, I don't want to call it a trick, I mean they've been doing it in movies and TV shows for years. But it's one of those things that is extra, it makes the projects take longer, it definitely adds quite a bit. And then on the back end, I've got, you know,
04:16Each each individual video usually ends up with about 80 to 100 individual clips that have to get put together and the audio synced and You know putting what they call be roll footage over top of it That's you know, all of it has to kind of work together in a way that that makes sense one of the things that is you know,
04:41I started making videos partially because I always liked and respected the guys who took the time to put something together to teach other things and I try and embody that spirit with what I'm doing. But one of the problems with most of the videos that have like it's just a lot of hard information, a lot of times...
05:03you know, it's a guy who says, okay, now we've got to undo these four bolts from this manifold and he will keep the camera on and he's undoing four bolts from the manifold for the next two and a half minutes. So, you know, trying to make it all work in a way that flows is a challenge, but it's kind of fun.
05:23Yeah, and for me, I'm a writer. I really do love to write, and I actually have to get on an article here for Homestead Living soon because they want it by February, and if I don't get started on it, it's not going to get there. But writing takes a lot of thinking through and how is this going to come across and what is exactly the right word for what I'm trying to get across to people. And I would rather write than do videos. I'm sure that you would rather do videos than write.
05:53I've always wanted to write a novel and I sound like plenty of other people out there. I mean, for the number of people who like the idea of writing a novel versus the number who have actually done it, I mean, there's a big gap there. So like the much larger, rest of the much larger group, I've always liked that. I've actually, I started on one and...
06:21It's, you know, where motivation dies, discipline has to take over. Yes. And with so much going on in our day-to-day lives, I've only got so much discipline for so many things. So it just hasn't happened. But I enjoy, I enjoy spending words because I like reading. So you like to read, you like to write. I was going to say that's okay though. You have time. You have time before you died and maybe write your book. So it's okay.
06:51Yeah. So what else do you do besides doing videos? I mean, you're doing stuff that you're videoing. So what are you doing? Well, so, uh, we've got a we've got a 20 acre piece property up here. Um, Like I said, the only things that existed here when we bought it were an old house that is not Really salvageable for much um, and a shop, um, so when I say everything
07:21I mean, everything. I've personally I've punched two wells out here at the property. One of them is on a hand pump and one of them is on an electric pump down in a pit. I've run the water lines from the well to the camper that we're living in. I have ran power lines back from the camper to the well so that we can
07:48we can the the generator that we have is actually remote start so I can start the generator from inside the camper to cut the water pump on 400 feet away. Wow. Okay. And you know building the road that's to where we are so like our property I really like the setup of it because it's it's 20 acres it's fairly narrow it's only about 330 or 350 feet wide but it's half a mile deep. Okay.
08:17where we're building and where most of the things are happening is actually at the back of the property away from civilization. So it's not that there's much civilization at the front of the property. I mean, we're the closest Walmart does is about 45 minutes away. So nothing's close. But you know, so we're doing that. We're in the process of building our house out here.
08:44I've got a sawmill, an old circular rig from my best guess is sometimes in the 60s. Every scrap of lumber that's gone into building that house, when I got it, it was a log. So all the way down to doing that. We've got the house framed and we've got the siding on. I, we're really pushing to try and get.
09:12get everything finished up soon, but you know, especially up here, a lot is, excuse me, a lot is dictated by the seasons. So you know, the snow is coming. I've got plow trucks that got to be ready to go. Nobody's coming to plow my driveway. It's me. Yeah, winter is definitely coming. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a, that was a new experience for me. But when I, when I moved up here four years ago.
09:41But yeah, so everything, building fences, building pastures, trying our best to grow our own food with varying levels of success.
09:57We've got chickens and pigs and goats and taking care of them. And there's, there's always something new to build. And on top of all that, uh, everything that I own breaks, um, cause I use it. And, uh, so like all, all of, I've got a few tractors, they're all the saw mill. Like I said, it's from the sixties. I've got a backhoe from the seventies. My daily driver truck is from the eighties. So it's all, you know,
10:25stuff breaks and I fix it and generally I kind of you know I find the thing that week that I'm like alright well you know this could make a good video and teach somebody something and so I turn the camera on and start talking. Sounds like a great life to me. You were saying before we started recording that you guys are completely off-grid and that we would see how long this interview lasted because you use Starlink. Tell me about Starlink. So Starlink has been fantastic
10:54We have a solar setup, 400 watt panels, and then we've got four 80 amp hour deep cycle batteries. Not the fancy lithium phosphate ones, we got like the trolling motor boat batteries. But they've worked pretty well. The only problem that I've had with Starlink is the power draw. It's...
11:23There's a disconnect between what it seems to be drawing and what it's reported to draw. So it definitely uses quite a bit of juice. So being completely off grid, it's all just a balance. You know, I know like certain times of the day, I have a certain amount of sun on the panels I've got.
11:47you know enough to do this or that and other times of the day it's like okay well we're gonna have to run the generator for an hour or two but as far as connectivity I mean I can I can upload a you know 10-15 minute video in 10 or 15 minutes which is about three times faster than what it had been you know at other other points so it's really it's been great
12:14Well, I'm honored that you're using your solar power to take the time to talk to me because you're probably using it for something else. So I have a really dumb question because I don't know how this satellite thing works. I actually saw the Starlink satellites for the first time in the sky about two weeks ago. And I was like, oh, what is that? And I looked it up and I was like, oh, that's Starlink satellite, okay. I'm in Minnesota and it was dark so I could see them in the line. It was very cool.
12:44Um, so when the satellites are not on our side of the earth, cause they orbit the earth, does that mean you don't have signal? Nope. I've had, I've had signal every time I've turned it on. Okay. So it's not just one. Yeah, I don't know. It's not just one set of satellites. It's a huge. Nope. And it's all magic and I don't know how it works. And, uh, that's, that's about it. I'm kind of like.
13:13Yeah, my knowledge base is not very deep into that kind of stuff. You want to work on an old engine, I got you. But you want to know how we can bounce signals off of objects in the outer space and talk to each other. Yep, that's a good question. I have no idea. Well, Google knows everything. So if I really want to find out, I'll just look it up later today. It'll be fine. I was just curious. I had no idea how it works.
13:43just regular old internet connection here because we're not off grid. So okay so you said you have chickens and pigs and goats is that right? Yep and one horse. Oh my okay is the horse just for fun or does it have a job? No the horse was a rescue. No you know just a real expensive lawn ornament really. She's a she wasn't all that well taken care of and and we ended up acquiring her.
14:12She had a leg injury that we got fixed up and then, you know, she likes to injure herself again, because she's a horse. And that's what they do. But she's cool. She's got a great personality. She's a little sassy. I got the hat, but I'm not a cowboy. She's there. We've worked with her a little bit.
14:41Um, but, uh, with so much else going on, any, any sort of recreational activities are pretty much minimal. Okay. So do you have the chickens for eggs and meat and do you have the pigs for meat? And do you have the goats for milk? Uh, the goats are my wife's idea and they make her happy. So we have goats. Okay. That's the extent of their usefulness.
15:11Um, the, the pigs we've got, we've actually got a breeding pair. Um, they're, they're still little. Um, but we, uh, we plan on using them to breed and, and using the raisin, um, you know, whatever they have as for me. Yep. And then the, uh, the chickens are, are primarily layers. Yeah. Um, we did, uh, we've done meat birds, um, but to do that economically with the Cornish crosses.
15:41if you're if you're able to free range them you can offset the cost but i did the math backwards on it and raising um raising meat chickens almost costs as much as buying chicken uh now the obvious benefit of that is that you know exactly what they've eaten and the conditions that they're raised in but um but as far as as cost goes um you know buying the cornish crosses
16:09uh, and then raising them to, to, um, processing weight is, uh, it's almost a wash. So we're kind of looking into, uh, we're looking into that, but really the animal side of things, my wife is considerably more knowledgeable than me. Um, and she says, Hey, we need to do this. And I'm like, okay, yeah, we'll do that. And then I, yeah. So I build things and fix things.
16:35Well, you must really love her if you're like, okay, yeah, because I say, honey, I want to do this. And he goes, let's talk about that. Well, no, I mean, that conversation does happen, you know, for a minute before I ultimately kind of just go with it. We, the, the running joke is that we have a unofficial agreement that for every three animals she gets, I get a new piece of equipment. It's a really good way to stay poor on both sides. Um, it's not, uh,
17:04And it's not the exact agreement. But you know, we kind of just, we look at everything with, you know, from a view of like, okay, well, what does this provide? You know, what is it cost? What is its value? Sometimes the value is my wife is friends with the goats, so we have goats. Then sometimes the value is okay, you know, we're able to get this out of it.
17:32you know, ultimately makes sense. I like I like the useful animals, you know, chickens are useful. The amount of protein that you get from a cost perspective, especially with free ranging them to what you get out of it, you know, that makes economic sense. And the eggs are delicious. So it's a win across the board. The conversion rate of
18:02Excuse me. Sorry, I've got all kinds of drainage going on today. Uh-huh. It's that time of year. But the conversion rate with, you know, with pigs, the amount of feed you put in and the amount of protein that you get out and fat and everything else, it makes sense. Uh-huh. So it's kind of, you know, the conversation just happens. We talk about direction and, you know, the thing is we're really just making this up as we go.
18:32Neither of us are experts in any of this kind of stuff. We kind of learn as we go along. So mistakes get made along the way. I mean, in a perfect world, we would have had the land, put all the infrastructure in, build the house, moved on in, been nice and comfortable and gone on from there and then worried about building barns and pastures and clearing trees, all those things. So, you know, but.
19:01But sometimes excitement takes over and it's like, oh, I want pigs. And so the time and energy and resources will go towards that. But I think sometimes you have to do that. Like, otherwise it, like, it should be fun. You know, I mean, it's a lot of work doing this kind of thing is more work than I've ever done. And I owned a roofing company back in North Carolina. So, you know, 60, 70, 80 hours a week is not new.
19:31And I'm doing probably more work now, but all of that is going towards something. You know, it's not just making a living, it's building a life. Yes, and I liken it to renting a home versus owning a home. When you rent a home, all you're doing is giving someone else to build equity in that property. But if you own a home, you're building equity that you have access to. So if you can afford...
20:00If you can afford to own a home, you're building equity for you, not for somebody else. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and the other thing too, is where we're at is, and I'm never really all that specific with our location for privacy reasons, but we're northern part of the lower peninsula. So top of the men. Somewhere, you know how they in Michigan, they hold their hand up and point to a spot?
20:30So, you know, top section of the pointer finger, that's where we are. Okay, yeah. But we, oh no, excuse me, I held up the wrong hand. Top section of the ring finger. Yeah, that would have been good on video. It would have been, yeah. The, where we are is a pretty economically depressed area. And nothing's getting cheaper.
21:00things are difficult for a lot of people. And a lot of people, like especially up here, housing is a struggle. You know, when you've got people who are, you know, working in a factory or working in construction or something, you know, they're making 20, 25 bucks an hour, but your average like two bedroom home rental is like 12 to 1400 bucks a month. You know, that's just not sustainable. So there's, we're not the only ones around here who are
21:30staying in a camper, you know, and, and that kind of, we'll call it an alternative lifestyle is, is actually by necessity for a lot of people who live around here. You know, people are going to find a way they're going to find a place to live. And sometimes that means violating building codes. And sometimes that means modifying a shed that they were able to get no money down.
21:59no credit check financing on, those things are real. And people are going through that right now. So in a way, what we're doing, when I'm putting in a water line or I'm punching my own well on the property and showing like, yes, this can be done. This is not an impossible mountain to climb.
22:30you know, we've what we've been doing has been put out there publicly. And, and I feel blessed to be able to to share that because there's a lot of people who are struggling. Yeah, absolutely. They are. The inflation that's been going on for over a year now, the really bad inflation has been going on for over a year now is so
22:59I would use the F word but don't use the F word on my podcast, but I'm thinking it real loud offensive to me because we're fairly okay. Like my husband has a good job. We have a 3.1 acre property. We have a nice home. We have a dog. We have barn cats. We had chickens, but they were being lazy. So they have been dispatched and we're going to start with chickens again in the spring. We're okay. And I so worry about people who...
23:29aren't okay right now because they weren't okay five years ago and now they're really not okay. Well and they're being gaslit into being told that oh it's not that bad like dude I've been to the grocery store like I'm not that that to me is a problem too like it's not that it's not that bad bullshit I'll use bullshit on the podcast yeah I mean it is and
23:57and people are...
24:02People are needing to find alternatives, you know, is what it comes down to. So sometimes that alternative is, oh, you know, you can't afford rent on this place, but you know, you can get a $4,000 camper. That's what we paid for this. This is a 38-foot park model. We got it for four grand. Oh yeah. Only had one leak, fixed the leak, we're good. You know? Like, people are going to find a way. The...
24:31To me, it's tough because I have the ability to fall into a doom and gloom view of things. And I also try and keep a big picture perspective because there have been many other times where things looked a lot worse.
25:01Here's the best example that I could give. I just got done reading a book called Redneck or Rednecks. It's a fiction book, but it's based around the, in May-June West Virginia, the May-June Mine War, that I don't know if you're familiar at all with this, but essentially the large fight between the union, its private.
25:27detective agency that I hired that was essentially a private army. How the US Army actually got dispatched to break up this. It was a big riot. And essentially the coal company was they were kicking out people from their homes because the company owned the home and the money was fake. They were using script that could only be sent.
25:57at their spent at the company store. Yes, yes, yes. And people were being kicked out with nothing. Like literal nothing. No safety net, no backup plan, living in tent camps in the mountains.
26:16We're not there yet. Um, I think that, I think that mankind finds a way. And I think with a little bit of faith and a whole lot of work.
26:31our definition of what's comfortable, what is kind of the baseline for existence has gotten pretty soft. Yeah. Little things that are often...
26:51are often taken for granted. When that gets taken away by whatever circumstance, I think we look at it different. You know, when I moved up here, the camper that I was in, I mean, I had no power, I had no water. I was bringing water in in jugs, and I had a gas space heater.
27:12that in the worst parts of winter could maybe get the inside of the camper to 40 degrees and it put out so much condensation that the walls were sweating. It would drip on me in my sleep.
27:25but I was surviving. And...
27:30From there, the perspective changes. And it kind of hit me, not very long ago, I was washing dishes and just looking out the window at everything that we had kind of built up to this point. I'm like, holy crap, man, I have hot water. I turn on this faucet and hot water comes out. That is a damn miracle.
27:59Yeah, it's really funny how your perspective changes. It really is. Yeah, so I think that exposure to discomfort, whether voluntary or involuntary, has the ability to build character and to build resilience. It's not, we're all pretty soft, honestly.
28:29you know in a in a global perspective we're all pretty soft in a time in history perspective we're pretty soft.
28:45But, you know, circumstances change. My kind of underlying goal with all this stuff is essentially to build a life to where, should things get worse? Should whatever happens outside of my little piece of dirt that I'm not affected, you know? Yeah. I don't necessarily fear something terrible happening, and even less so because I am good to go.
29:15But I like having the peace of mind of knowing, hey, we've grown our own food. I can hunt. I can take care of these things. We've got what we need. I've got a hand pump out there that'll pull water out of the ground 365 days a year. It could be negative 30 outside. I can pull water out of the ground. That's amazing. You've got the basics covered and really that's the most important thing.
29:42Yeah. You know, and it's a process, you know, it's, it's all, it's something that we're, we're kind of working towards, which is, uh, it seems kind of strange to some people, you know, a lot of people like the comforts that exist and in normal day to day life. But you know, you, you match that up with the rates of depression and mental illness and suicide. And I, um,
30:13I don't need to take a pill to fall asleep at night. I'm exhausted. But I know that I was working towards something good that day, even if it was something frustrating, even if it was an unplanned repair on a piece of equipment. I worked towards it and we're moving forward. So I think, you know, everyone chooses how they wanna live and this is what we've chosen.
30:38Yeah, the best sleep ever is when you're exhausted and you're satisfied with the work you did that made you exhausted. Amen. Yup. All right, well on that note, Andy, we're at 30 minutes. I'll try to keep these at half to half an hour and we're there. So thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Awesome, yeah, it was great talking to you. You too, thanks again. Have a good day. All right, bye. Bye.
 

Females In Farming

Today I'm talking with Anthea at Females In Farming.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anthea in New Zealand at Females in Farming. Good evening, morning, whatever it is for you, morning. Anthea, how are you? Good, thank you. How about yourself? I'm good. Your today is my yesterday.
00:29Or your yesterday? My yesterday? My today? I can't do it. I had it straightened out earlier and I screwed it up. It is like 6 o'clock here and what time is it? Is it in New Zealand? It's 12 o'clock lunchtime, like on Friday. Yes. Thursday. Thursday, yes. I'm sorry. Again, it's like the TARDIS from Doctor Who.
00:58So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do at your place. Yeah. Well, I am a single homeschooling dairy farming mom, and we live in the North Island at the moment of New Zealand on a 400 cow dairy farm. We milk once a day. I've been part of the dairy farming industry for the past 16, 17 years now in various roles and areas all around New Zealand. So I love it.
01:27Can't get enough of it So it's not just you milking 400 head a day, is it? No, no, these are team. These are team. So yeah, there's three of us on this farm Okay, cool Alrighty, um, my daughter just messaged and said they're doing fine for anyone who doesn't know my daughter lives in st Petersburg, Florida and the hurricanes getting closer and closer. So that's why I had to check I
01:54Rarely check messages when I'm doing interviews, but this one was important. Okay. So how old is your little one? He's 11 now. Okay. He's already yeah, he's been on farm since the day he was born nearly And yeah, I mean we haven't been all the time on farm I said I step back a little bit for the first bit but at some point of Each season we've been out there doing stuff. So
02:22Pretty much since birth he's been on the farm and he also loves it which I'm so pleased about because some kids don't but this one definitely does. Yes, it would be really hard if he hated it. I can't imagine trying to do what you're doing and having your child despise it because that would make life really difficult. So tell me about the beginning because I read your about part on your Facebook page and you weren't always a country girl.
02:52No, no, I was brought up in the city in Auckland. And yeah, it was just a city girl through and through, I guess. I didn't even really know you could work on a farm until I was about 24 years old. So, it was quite a surprise to find myself working on a farm, but here we go. Fast forward, what, 17 years, and there's just no way I would ever live in a city again. So, it's amazing how life can change sometimes.
03:21Yeah, without any notice sometimes. Um, so, so here in the States, it, it was not easy for women to become accepted in farming for a long time. And there is a YouTube channel that my husband watches cause he's very into all the machinery and her name, her, her YouTube channel is Laura Farms and she's probably only in her early twenties. And.
03:50She works her ever loving heine off on her farm. And she drives all the big machinery and she has a barn cat that she loves. I can't remember its name. And she is so about proving herself. And I'm all for it. I really am. But I don't feel like women should have to prove themselves. I feel like they should just be able to do it if they wanna do it. So- I know.
04:18Yeah. My point in sharing the story is that, has it been accepted in New Zealand for women to step into farming or has there been pushback? I think there is still that it's a man's job kind of a feel. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I'd say that women definitely don't get the same opportunities as what men do. All the same recognition. You'll see one of my posts, I'm not sure how far back you've looked, but...
04:46One of my posts is about how women aren't just helpers on the farm. And a lot of my followers shared stories about their responsibilities and what they do on the farm and their frustrations at that issue of not really being seen for who they really are. So I don't think that we're fully accepted. I mean, we're accepted and it's okay to be there, but like we're not fully seen for what we do sometimes, I think. Yeah.
05:15And I always find it very interesting because women, I can't remember the exact wording, but men are strong until they're not. Like I feel like they gas out quicker than women do. Women tend to be, there's a word, I can't think of it. Women are better at long-term physical activity, I think, than men are. Oh, right.
05:42Yeah, more sort of like longer endurance, I guess. That's it. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Endurance. And and that makes sense to me having given birth to three children because it's it's it's hard work. And the first baby you have one. So you haven't had more yet. The first baby is scary and you have no idea what it's going to feel like. You have no idea what to expect. And and it hurts. You know.
06:10It hurts to whatever your pain tolerance is. When I had my third baby, I did it no drugs. I went into the hospital. I got there at 10 minutes to seven in the evening and he was born 22 minutes later. No drugs, no nothing, never screamed, never swore, never even growled. Wow. I was just like, I know how this goes. I'm gonna do it. It's gonna be fine. And then. Yeah.
06:39The nurse said, and the doctor didn't even get there in time. And the nurse said to me afterwards, she said, she said that was the most controlled violent birth I've ever seen. And it scared me when she said violent. And I said, what do you mean violent? And she said, it was so fast. She said it wasn't violent as in somebody died or got hurt, but it was just, you showed up, your water broke and there he was. She said, but you were so calm.
07:06And I said, well, I did all the hard part at home. I said, and I knew he would be coming shortly or too sweet. And he did. And that was it. And she said, I have never seen a birth like that before. She said, you were a, you were a tiger. And I said, well, thank you very much. So, yeah, I mean, it just goes to show how much of a mental game life is. So, isn't it? You know, like we, we do the work at home, like you say, like we get ourselves prepared. We think, right, this is what we've got to do. And we just.
07:35you know, you down tail up and we do it. Yeah, and I feel like women are incredibly strong. And I think that in the old days, we used to teach our little girls to like push that down and be softer and sweeter and nicer. And I think you can be soft and sweet and nice and strong at the same time. Oh, 100%, yeah, I completely agree with that. I couldn't say a bit of myself.
08:05Yeah, and so when I saw your Facebook page and the name of your Facebook page, I was like, oh, I need to talk to her. I think we share the same heart on this. My daughter is 35 and she has been in some iffy situations with people and by people I mean men. And she has dealt with it in the most, I don't know, matter of fact.
08:35way. She told me a story that she was at a concert. She was walking up the stairs into the venue and some guy grabbed her butt and she said she she turned around looked at him and said does that belong to you? And he on her he turned on his heel and walked the other direction. I was like who taught you that? She said you.
09:03Yeah, yeah, they get that from somewhere. So girls don't have to be victims. They don't have to be weak. They can hold their own and they can do almost anything a man can do. Oh, and more, I think, and more because we have to do sometimes. Yeah, I mean, half of the men, I don't know if I should really say, but half of the men that farm out there, they have somebody.
09:32to cook for them, to clean for them, to look after them, to take care of their house and their ad man and all the other bits and bobs that go along with farming and life. And then they just wake up and they just do what they have to. Like they do the easy part, whereas women have to, a lot of them have to do everything. They take care of the farms, they take care of the kids, they take care of the house. And I mean, that in itself is a full-time job, isn't it?
10:01get everyone's food ready, get the bills paid on time, get everything clean, and it can be really full on, but I don't know, women tend to just be able to handle more, I think, and fit more into their days. Yes, exactly, and I do not want this to be bashing men, I want this to be pro women. So we're doing this as pro women, women are amazing. I also think that when
10:31when you're coupled, whether you're male-male, male-female, female-female, I think when two people are running a household, it clearly makes it easier because there's two people bearing the burden of their lives. Absolutely. Everything's easier with more than one head. Yeah, I'm really lucky. My husband is fantastic. Actually, I told him I had this interview this evening and that I wanted to eat my dinner at like 3.30, which is really early.
11:01because I wanted my food to settle because I still get a little anxious about interviewing people. And he was like, well, you pulled out the burger, right? And I was like, yeah, it's in the fridge. He said, okay, I will make something with the burger for me and the kid, the kid that's 22 who still lives here, our son. And you can go do what you need to do to get ready for your interview. And I was like, thank you so much. You're being supportive. I love it. So yes, having a partner is amazing.
11:31That's so good though, but I mean, it's just about having a good support, like good support all around you. I mean, whether you're at work, at home, anything, you know, when you've got that good supportive, healthy individual around you, then all people team around you, then it does make life so much easier. Yes, exactly. Okay. So now we've been very pro women and couples make things easier and blah, blah, blah. Um, so you have, you have, I'm sorry, cattle, milk cows. Yes.
12:01Deer cows, yep. Okay. So do you, I don't know what the laws are in New Zealand. Do you have to sell it to a co-op like we do here because raw milk isn't exactly the most welcome thing in the United States? Yeah. So there are different places that they can sell their milk in New Zealand. The most common place is to sell it to a dairy company.
12:31There are a good handful or more of smaller farms that register with MPI, which is the Ministry of Primary Industries, and they sell their raw milk at the gate. So that's really cool because raw milk is accepted in New Zealand. I know that around the world, some places it's not, but we're very fortunate here. So we can buy it at the gate, but most farms sell it to a dairy company. So the tanker will come and pick up the milk daily.
13:01And can you get raw milk at a grocery store or is that roundupon? Uh, no, it's not that, um, no. So the ones that sell it, you have to go to the farm and they generally have a vending machine and you can purchase a glass bottle and you just, you know, just like a can of Coke, you just put your money in and put your bottle there and it fills it up and away you go. That's awesome. We don't have that here. Here we have.
13:29Here in Minnesota, raw milk is legal, but only if you go to the farm where the cow lives, where the cow has been milked, and the milk is in a tank, and the farmer has to be very careful about how he dispenses the milk into the container that you bring. That's how it works here. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds pretty similar. Yeah. I mean, I did buy some milk down in Tamarou a while ago. And yeah.
13:59Filling out my bottle there, I could look through the window and I could see the cows milking in the shed there. So it sounds similar. Yeah. In the state that I grew up in, which is Maine in the United States, you can actually buy raw milk at stores. And not every grocery store carries it. There's a general store, as it were, down the road from where my parents live, and they sell it bottled.
14:26And when we bought it from them, I was like, so what's the story here? Because it didn't used to be like this when I lived here. And the girl behind the counter said, where are you from? Cause you know, Maine's real, it's a very tourist state. And if you're not from Maine, you get treated slightly differently than if you're a native of Maynard. And I said, well, I live in Minnesota now, but I grew up in Maine until I was like 21 and she's like, oh, okay. So when was that? And I explained.
14:55And she said, Oh, it's been legal to sell in stores for a few years. She said, but you cannot advertise that you sell it. Oh, I was like, Oh, okay. So there's different, yeah, there's different laws for different states here because the United States has regulations on everything and they're not always the same from state to state. Yeah. Well, you're crap.
15:21over there, whereas we're just small down here. We just have one government that governs everything and one set of rules applies to everyone, so it makes it a bit easier. Yeah I was going to say it must be nice, but it also must be really weird. I would find that so bizarre because having grown up in the States and I'm 54, I think I would be very confused for the first year. Yeah, I don't know. It's okay.
15:48Years ago, I found one end of the country and then I moved a few years later down to Southland, which is right down the bottom. And my neighbor was my old employer from at the other end of the country. So it can be quite small here in New Zealand. They say there's only two degrees of separation between everyone, which rings very true sometimes, but it's okay. It's all I've known. So I couldn't imagine living in somewhere.
16:18I would love to visit one day, but yeah, the size of America is quite enormous, really. It's gargantuan, yes, compared to New Zealand for sure. Okay, so what kind of predators does New Zealand have that might hurt your cows? Nothing. Nothing, okay. Absolutely nothing. That's half of the reason why I love it and I stay here. Because I have seen... Excuse me.
16:48I have seen in some Facebook groups in years gone by that, you know, our farmers over in the States have to carry firearms because they have these creatures that come and attack the animals. And I'm like, I couldn't handle that. Having some cat or wild dog or I don't know, snakes, anything like that. Bears, yes, yeah, anything like that. I don't think I'd be able to leave the house in the dark if I knew something like that was lurking around.
17:17So you guys don't have poisonous snakes in New Zealand? No. Oh, okay. So is it Australia that has all the scary things? Yes, definitely Australia. Australia has a lot. I lived in Australia when I was young, around 20, for about four years. And yeah, there's lots of snakes and spiders and scorpions and all sorts over there. But we...
17:44Fortunately don't have that over here in New Zealand. So yeah Awesome. I'm coming to New Zealand Exactly, okay, well that shoots my my predator question all the hell Yeah, so if you have if you have dairy cattle, then you must breed them Yes, so we run a yearly system so most farms
18:13We carve once a year in spring. And that means that as our grass starts to grow and the animal needs to be fed, the grass is there, ready to be eaten. So we carve once a year and then after carving on usually the second or third cycle, like the cow cycle, we will start mating. So usually, well, we start mating here next Monday, so in a few days time.
18:44up to 12 weeks, every farm is really different. It depends on the system and their goals as well. So yeah, and then some farms also carve and mate twice a year. So in autumn, they will carve again and they're the winter milking farms. So they'll milk all year round. So they sort of carve a smaller amount during autumn just to keep the milk supply going through winter. Okay, and a cow is pregnant for a year, is that right?
19:13Nine months basically. Okay. Yeah, just like a human. And she cycles every 21 days. Okay. Cool. See, I don't know much about cows. I just know that I'm in love with the calves. I always have been. I know, they're so cute. Our calves are still being fed at the moment. So it's a good job getting to go and see the calves.
19:41Yes, my grandpa lived down the road from family friends that had a dairy farm and they had babies in the spring. My parents would have us stop in when the calves were two days old to a week and a half old. The guy would have us kids go out to see the calves. My fondest memory of the calves is he would be like, you can go in with them.
20:09and they weren't that big, you know, it was fine. Yeah. And they would suck on our fingers and it was just the cutest thing and the weirdest feeling and it was just adorable. I loved it. I wish, I wish that video cameras had been a real common thing when I was that age because I wish that my parents had gotten video of us kids in with the calves. Yeah, it's really cool. My son loves it. Even at a leave-in, he still loves going to see the calves.
20:39And he's always in there and they suck him and like his clothes and all sorts of stuff. He just loves it. They're so sweet. I mean, every spring when we're out running errands, we live in a countryish area. Clearly we're a tiny homestead. So we live in cornfields and soybean fields. And there's always somebody with cows. And I watched all April and May for the calves to show up.
21:07And the first one I see, I'm like, it's a grass puppy. And my husband's like, you have seen a billion of them. I'm like, it doesn't matter. It's a grass puppy. Exactly. No, it doesn't matter how many you see. They're always so cute. And it's always an exciting time of fun when you start carving. Yeah, absolutely. And people who don't understand the joy of the first grass puppy in the spring or the full moon every month or the smell of cut grass are missing out on life, I swear.
21:36Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you can't slow down and appreciate the simple things, then I think you're living life in the fast lane. And it's, yeah, that's not where I live. I like to take the time and smell the roses, so to speak. Yeah. One of the things that I had never seen that I saw this summer was the northern lights, because it was low enough in the state so I could see the northern lights. And that was so cool.
22:04That was probably the same time I saw the lights down here as well. It was a really strong display. Yeah. And yeah, it was, I'll bet you it was the same time. It was amazing. I was down south at that stage actually. And so they've got a dark sky reserve down in the Mackenzie district. And I went, I don't know, probably 40 minutes from home, up into the middle of nowhere. And
22:31It was just incredible. It was amazing. I think I cried at one stage. It was so amazing. It's always been on my to-do list and the display was just breathtaking. Yeah, the solar flares are not a great thing to have happen, but boy, they produce some really beautiful visuals. Yeah, yeah, they sure did. And anyone who was in the city couldn't see them. So I'm glad I live in the country and I'm glad that you are a country girl now because you got to see them too.
23:01No, yeah, it was amazing. Yup. Um, okay. So I don't know what else to ask you. Um, you love what you're doing. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I'll be doing this for the rest of my life, I think, or as long as I can anyway. What's your, what's your favorite part? I'm sure that's going to be like choosing a favorite child, but what's your favorite part?
23:29Um, oh, I don't know. Yeah, I couldn't really say. I just like all of it. You know, you just, at the start, I used to have bits that I didn't like and bits that I really liked. But I don't know, you just sort of get to the point where you just know that everything has to be done. And it just is what it is. So I just enjoy all of it. I just chose to just enjoy all of it, you know. Yeah, I feel like once you get into this, whether it's gardening or
23:58raising cattle or goats or sheep or whatever is your raising, it just becomes routine. It becomes the way you live your life. That's right. People say that dairy farming isn't a job, it's a lifestyle and that's so correct. You know, you can do this if you didn't enjoy getting up early and having the spontaneity during calving of not knowing what time you're going to get home.
24:25You just, you have to embrace it all, don't you? Yeah and I mean I've said this a few times, well maybe more than a few times on the podcast, but any kind of farming is hard work, but it's good work. It just takes a certain kind of person to embrace it.
24:43Yes, absolutely. And I think I wish that more people would sort of think about where their food came from and what went into their food, you know, the hard work, the dedication, you know, the knowledge and physically what goes into your food, you know, because not all food is created equally. Because it's really important. And we only seem to have sort of a small amount of the population these days that actually produces the food for all of us. So
25:12Yeah, it does take a special kind of person, but it would be good to see more people getting into it. Well, the good news is there's a huge movement of people in the world right now who are very interested and who are taking steps to get into it. So I'm doing all I can to encourage it by talking to people like you and other people on the podcast. And everybody's like, yes, it's hard work, but these are all the great things that come with it.
25:41Yeah, the rewards are so big, so huge, and it's so satisfying. Yeah, I, um, our, our, our garden, our farming this year has not been very satisfying. Um, we had a terrible growing season all over the United States. I don't know. I don't know what kind of news you follow regarding United States, but the weather has been freaking crazy here since April. Oh no, that's no good. For us.
26:10It rained for a month and a half in the time we were supposed to be planting the garden. Oh, oh no. Yeah, so our beautiful, gorgeous garden that has produced beyond measure for the last three summers did all summer long, it did nothing. Yeah, oh my gosh, imagine the farmers because they'll be facing the same things except on a much larger scale. Uh-huh, yeah, it's been...
26:39It's been rough. A lot of people have had a hard time. And then there's people like the guy who grows the cornfield around our property whose corn did great. They just harvested it yesterday. It looked fantastic. I'm like, why? Why did your cornfield do so great? But our garden just fell apart. Yeah. Oh, that's that's that's not really too fair, is it? But hopefully you get a bit of growing through the next year. I am.
27:07I'm not a praying girl, but I'm praying. I might have to hit my knees in February and be like, could we please have tomatoes and cucumbers this year, please? Yeah, exactly. So we'll see what happens. It's just been crazy. My husband will be putting the gardens to bed in the next week because there's some tomato plants out there that did produce and that's about it. It's a big humongous, humongous, can't talk.
27:35weed bed right now. So he's going to be doing all the getting things closed down for winter in about two weekends now. That's right. Because you're in autumn, aren't you? Or fall. Yep. We're just going to kiss this one goodbye and pray for a better one next year. Yeah. That's what you can do sometimes, isn't it? Yeah. It's been awful. I can't believe how crazy this has been, but it's okay.
28:04We're not dependent on it, so it's okay. But I'd really like to have my canned tomato sauce back next year, that would be great. Yeah, I always taste so much Bito when you make yourself. It sure does. All right, ma'am, I'm being silly because I am out of questions because I have already talked to people about cows, but I wanted to talk to you because women are amazing.
28:28And I don't know who says it to you, and they probably don't say it often enough, but I'm proud of you for being an accomplished young woman trying to take care of your cows and your kid and have a life. Thank you, thank you. That's very kind of me to say. It's hard, I know it's hard, and you need all the encouragement and I don't know what the word is. You need all the encouragement you can get, I think.
28:56Absolutely. It's always nice to hear because you do just kind of plod along in life and yeah people kind of forget what you do sometimes but that's okay. I'm not doing it for them so I'm doing it for me and my son. Well keep doing it because you're doing an important thing. Thank you. Yes I am. Thank you so much for your time and Thea I appreciate it. It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you. Have a great night. You too. Bye. Okay see ya.
 

The Home Grown Collective Update!

Today Hayden Caraway of the Homegrown Collective is catching me up on progress since we last talked. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Hayden Carraway. I love his last name. At the Homegrown Collective. Good morning, Hayden. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing great. Hope you are. I am.
00:26I'm a little twitchy today because my daughter lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. And at the moment that we're, we are recording this, there is a huge hurricane called Hurricane Milton barreling its way toward Tampa Bay, which is right near St. Petersburg. So I am sending out prayers and positive energy to Florida right now, like you wouldn't believe. Well, we will, we will join you in that. I couldn't imagine what that feels like.
00:53It kind of sucks, but she's okay. She promised me she'll keep me updated as much as she can. So. Well, good. I will be contacting you later on, maybe tomorrow in a couple of days, just to check in on that. That would be great. Thank you. All right, so I have questions, Mr. Carraway. Tell me, tell me what you're doing first and then I'll ask the questions. Yeah, sure. So I, several years ago, I started a project.
01:22called the Homegrown Collective Nonprofit. It was started due to a lot of different factors. One, realizing how our food system was being operated and certain personal immune and digestive issues that I wanted to get worked out and cure, not just...
01:46not just deal with it. So I've been doing a lot of research and hoping to create a platform that allows people to come together and push for a locally produced, responsibly grown food system. Okay, cool. And last we talked, you were just getting it going, all the publicity and stuff. So,
02:15I think your answer to my first question answered the first question, which was what led you to start the nonprofit? Well, I've actually, it's a little different than that. I've been blessed to be able to travel with family and for work. So I've experienced how other countries ate and understanding their quality and processes. I realized that America's regulators had led us off a cliff regarding our food system. Then you combine that with the immune and digestive issues I spoke about.
02:44And it's almost too obvious to correlate the two. And that's what led me to help start this mission of personally eating naturally produced food. Okay, cool. And how does it help the people who grow the food and the people who consume the food? As busy as consumers and especially farmers are, we make it easy to connect.
03:09support and learn from the producers whose offerings you deem worthy of feeding your family and The tools that the producers have access to only help them save money on marketing You know ecommerce tools marketing tools and local pickup alerts allows them not to miss somebody coming by while they're working So it really helps them save money and gain new revenue streams Awesome so so have you I'm I'm
03:38I'm going off scripted hitch. Hayden and I have a thing here in emails back and forth about what we're gonna talk about. So what's happened with that? I mean, last I talked to you, you were working on getting the website up and I know that people have signed up because I've looked at the website since, since it's up and running. So what's new with that? So at the beginning, when we first spoke, it was only a mobile app.
04:06that was only accessible through your phone. And that was our mock trial. We wanted to launch that first to see if we got traction, if people were on board with this and if it would be a good decision to push forward. And so we went on with creating the web version. So now you can access it on your computer. We added new features and we paid to have anything that we discovered causing issues during the mobile app mock trials to be fixed. And
04:36much more user friendly moving forward. So do you have any, I don't know, stories from people who have talked to you about using it? Yes, we've actually had a lady who logged on. I think it was in Pennsylvania who was actually able within the first month, so the full platform launched this last month and we've already had people saying that they were able to find some things in their area. We have hundreds of you.
05:05producers logged on across the country and thousands of consumers have logged on just in the first month. And I know it is a little disappointing when it's not fully, I'm current, you know, it's difficult when it's not fully, we don't have all the producers up there in every community quite yet, but, uh, with this kind of growth in the first month, I feel really confident, uh, we'll have a great selection of options for many communities throughout the United States. Uh,
05:35very soon. Yes, and it takes a little while for people to get wind of what you're doing and sign up and want to be part of it. So I think you're doing great. Great, yeah. I think it's going to be mostly word of mouth. I'm making personal phone calls to small farms that either reached out to us or contacted us, or either I found them on a directory and was able to reach out to them. But I'm getting great responses from people
06:05with the business model that we've put together. Awesome. I'm so glad. I love that you're doing this. I think this is fabulous. Like we have a thing here, I told you last time, we have the Minnesota Grown website, and it's the same kind of idea where the growers list themselves and then people can find them on the website. And it is through the state, but they're very good about keeping track of it. They don't
06:34They don't just let anybody sign up, you know, they don't want bots or just people being dumb using it to try to do something bad. So we love our Minnesota grown community too. Right. And so that's the great thing about our platform is we have to approve the producers that get on there. And we have full control, being able to go in and have full control of that.
07:03Most of the state directories are listed up there. I do, but they don't give you that extra, they don't give you the e-commerce tool, they don't give you the marketing resources, and they don't give you the local pickup alerts tool. So I noticed a lot of those state platforms, they don't get you to that last final step. They don't make it easy. Hey, there's that person, that's where they are. That's how you can contact them. Anybody can do that on Google. I like to be able to do that and give them the option.
07:32you know, drive straight to them, call them right now, or buy from them directly immediately after asking them a few questions if you want to connect and get to know them better if you plan on making repeat purchases, which is what I think will help grow this idea of a food system is by continuing just to push people to these responsible growers. Yes, exactly. Okay.
08:02what stage are you currently at in the process of the startup? But I think maybe you've covered that. Yeah, we did great. Your question, you're a natural interviewer. That answered my- Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And the next one was, what are your goals for the platform? So is there more that you wanna do? Yeah, well, there's personal goals. So it's, I want people to understand what my thoughts behind it are. They know what the goal for the, for the,
08:31for the business and the company and the platform is, and that's the society goal, our goal is to show that people can provide food for our nation in a more nutritious way while still maintaining a variety of options regionally. Another current goal, which is more personal, is as our user base and revenue grows, is to hire someone in the head of operations positions with more agricultural experience than I have.
08:59So I can focus on user support, directly communicating with our users about the platform. And as the user base grows, the premier business program will grow and our sponsors will pay us more for the views and the traffic that we provide, leaving it free for producers and consumers in the future. Okay, cool. All right, so I have a couple of questions of my own before we get to the last one that we talked about. How old are you, Hayden?
09:29I turned 30 last January. Yeah, I thought you were young and I'm 54 coming up on 55 next month. And I couldn't tell from your voice last time how old you are because you have a timeless voice. And so I was like, I think he's young. And you are your young pup compared to me. I'm 30 but I you could you would think I was 20. Yeah, you could look at me and think I'm 20. Yeah. So is the Homegrown Collective your job or do you have a jobby job?
09:58I currently have not been able to draw any salary from the nonprofit. I've been working on it for three years. I've been living very minimally at my grandparents, have a modular home out very far east in North Carolina, so a kind of rural, cheap area. So I've been living minimally, trying to catch as much of my own fish as I can to eat, to eat healthy and locally. But I...
10:28I was fortunate enough when I didn't complete four years of college, but I was able to go get out pretty early and go work in construction. That was some of the way I was able to travel. When you travel outside of the country, I worked for a company that worked for the Navy, and we renovated some of the bases for them, the hotels and the bases. I was able to save up enough money to put down payments on two rental properties.
10:56in Greenville. And so I have two mortgages. I live for free at my grandparents modular home and I live off of the little bit of money I have extra after my mortgage is paid. Okay. The only reason I ask, I'm not usually like overly nosy, but I'm assuming that the Homegrown Collective has taken some of your time.
11:20like a good percentage of your time to get it going. That's all I do. I'm focusing on this until somebody call, until I have to fix something at a house to keep the renters in, which is very rarely. I sit here and I make phone calls. I try to connect with people. I try to learn what they're going through and how I can best serve them in the future as we grow. So I am fully dedicated to this and hopefully one of my future goals is to one day.
11:48gain some kind of salary that will allow me to work remotely for this nonprofit as the head of support under the head of operations position. Okay, cool. All right. So now I have questions that aren't really directly about the Homegrown Collective because you're in North Carolina. How did your area fare with the last remnants of the hurricane? The northeast did okay. I think we got some rain. Our outer banks and some of the outer islands got...
12:17flooding, but they're, I think they're used, they're kind of used to that out there. They, I mean, they're playing it for it every year, just to be sure. But it was the Western, my cousin's a power line worker up in the Western part of the state right now. And I think their team is just out there working on pro bono, whatever y'all need kind of stuff is I think, uh, some of the guys up West when they had issues East.
12:45came and helped for, you know, without expecting anything. So now they're returning the favor. But from what I've heard from him, it's, they're not getting much help outside of the locals that can get up there and people that can find a way to drive up there. And, uh, they're really, they're really doing a good job, I think, you know, starting out, but they got a lot of work ahead of them. We're hoping they'll be able to keep their land is the biggest, is the biggest thing.
13:15Yeah, because I talk to people who have farms and homesteads, duh, I was going to ask a place like a week ago if they wanted to be on the podcast. And I saw where they live and I had clicked on their Facebook page to contact them through Messenger and saw the first post about they don't have anything left because of the storm. And I'm hoping they, I don't know how insurance works, but I'm hoping.
13:45You know, like Florida, they don't got insurance. They don't have, you're not allowed to have hurricane insurance. I'm hoping up in the mountains, they let you have flood insurance. Yeah. I hope so. I bet there's just some weird stuff going on with insurance. I'm hoping people can. I'm hoping people had some things in place that would, you know, get them through these times. Yeah. I know, I know that Asheville and I don't know if that's North Carolina or South Carolina. I assume it's North Carolina. Um.
14:14They got pounded, they got ruined. And I can't ask anyone in that area to be on my podcast because they don't have any time for themselves right now, let alone to talk to me. But I just worry, I worry so much about these people. I have a buddy on the ground around Ashfield actually, and he has Starlink in his little camper. In his little camper, he like gets vans and renovates and lives in them and sells them, whatever.
14:42But he has Starlink in it, so I've been communicating to him through Facebook Messenger at this time and he's just running around backpacking, sleeping outside, going back to his van when he needs to, trying to help people. But if you want me to, when we get off this call, you send me an email of the area and I'll contact him and just see if I can get you any kind of word. Yeah, that would be fine. I'm just making the point that there are very...
15:12There are much more important things right now in North Carolina than my podcast. I agree. And I didn't even think about it. When they said that Helene was going to hit Florida, I was like, okay, I don't have anyone in Florida that I'm supposed to talk to soon, so that's good news. And then it went north and I was like, oh God, I hope none of the interviews I have scheduled for the next two weeks are in those areas because I probably won't be doing them because they're going to be too busy or won't have any connection.
15:40Well, I couldn't imagine the hurricane prep for a small farm. You know, for a house, it's still a lot of stuff you got to get done before it comes. I couldn't imagine having animals, uh, you know, just acres of, of food, uh, being just out and exposed in this or greenhouses. Yeah. I mean, there was, I can't imagine the amount of work there. They would have had to go through the prep for this thing. Yeah. And honestly.
16:09the thing that you're doing with your homegrown collective project is really important because people don't understand that things happen without any warning. Hurricanes you get some warning, but there are things that happen with no warning. And what your project does is allows people to connect with growers, which means that they can buy produce and preserve it for things that happen.
16:37God forbid the internet actually goes down. Our whole food system works on internet-driven stuff. You know? And so if they already have connected with a local grower and have bought produce and have canned it or frozen it, and hopefully they have a generator at their place, they have at least some food to get them through until things get figured out. Right. You can't...
17:03You can't rely on going to the store every day. I mean, I'm not saying don't go once a week, but going to the store every day to get the food you're going to eat that day is a bad plan. Right. I agree completely. I think you should always have at least a cupboard full of cans for, you know, every year, I think you should go get a cupboard full of cans just in case. I mean, especially in North Carolina or coastal areas that see these kind of
17:33acts of nature constantly or yearly. Just go ahead and have a safety bucket up in your attic full of canned foods, dehydrated stuff, beef jerky. I mean, a big part for me about starting this was the educational side of it. I wanted to learn as much as possible and you're hitting the nail on the head. That's brilliant.
17:58Yeah, and I'm in Minnesota where it gets very cold and it can be and it can blizzard like you literally can't see across your door yard. You cannot drive in that. And so we always buy two weeks worth of food at a time. And when we have the funds, if we haven't grown our own produce, the summer was terrible, by the way, for growing produce at our place. But we buy stuff from other people and we can, you know, we pressure can we water bath can and
18:27We have a whole thing of tomato sauce and jams and jellies and preserved fruit and stuff so that if we can't get out, we're not screwed. And honestly, I could imagine there are some people's houses you would be living like a king if you got snowed in there or stuck there for a few days. There's some people that would just pull out, you know, just amazing meals for this kind of food.
18:55for these kinds of situations and anybody could hopefully learn to do that for themselves. Yeah, and the thing is, it's not that hard. I was supposed to talk to a lady this morning, but I suspect something came up because we didn't get connected. And she is all about the homesteading, canning, baking your own bread stuff. And I'm hoping to reschedule it because I feel like she has a lot of good stuff to say and to teach. But
19:22I've looked at her Facebook page and she is all about canning and I'm like, I am, I so want to talk to her because there's stuff I don't even know about canning. She cans cream based soups. I assume she pressure cans them and she makes the soups herself from scratch and then cans them for the winter. You put them in the freezer or? No, no, no, no. Once you pressure can something, it's completely safe. The cream. I'm just wondering about the cream. If a factory...
19:52If a factory can do it, a person can do it with a pressure canter. I guess. Yeah, I guess I don't eat much canned cream, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I make a killer cream mushroom soup. So I want to know how she's doing it. I can do it. I love I love some good. I've been getting into lion's mane and some of those are very useful mushrooms. We recently made some lion's mane steaks that were really good. Yeah.
20:18Yeah, nobody realizes how good mushrooms are for you. Well, I shouldn't say that. Not, I shouldn't say nobody, but, but not as many people as you would think know how good mushrooms are for you. You're right. Indeed.
20:33Yup. So you mentioned a number back when you were talking about your producers that have gotten themselves listed on your site. How many now? 200. Last night when I looked at it, it was 230 something across the country. It jumped from around 100 to this last month. We've gotten on about 130 more. And I didn't start my personal phone calls until
21:03We had the full platform launched, but personal phone calls are really Helping people to gain confidence, you know in in the in the in homegrown collective and in the platform Yeah, and did you I I'm sorry. I'm so I was so distracted when you were talking so thinking about my kid Um, so it does it cost the producers money to be listed or do you say it's free? No, it's free. All they have to do is they send in a thing. It comes through approval
21:32We check them out online. We might give them a phone call if it looks a little, but we just make sure that they are who they say they are. They are a local food producer. And it's simple like that, but it's easy if somebody gets on, somehow gets through our filters that I can just take them, I can delete a producer immediately if someone says, oh, they said they were selling organic and it wasn't. They're buying grocery store stuff.
21:59and selling it to us or like whatever. And I haven't dealt with that yet in this process, but I've been able to speak to every single producer on the phone and make sure that they're in line with our goals and are okay with us serving them.
22:26Do they just go to your website or they have to like email you or call you to be cleared? You're right. They can just go on to the website. There's a create profile or login up on the top right and they can go in. They'll create the profile. It'll send the profile to me. I'll look it over. You know, like look up that if they put an address in, I'll look up the address to make sure that business is where they say it is. Just little things to make sure that.
22:54Nobody's trying to get on there and cause disruptions. Yep, you're vetting them and that's important. Right, right. Yep, okay, cool. So let me see, we have eight more minutes to go, which means I need to figure out a question that'll cover four because the last question is gonna cover four. Go ahead, tell me something. Hey, don't let me tell me. Do you still have my last question about where I see them? I do, yeah. Okay, well, I'll let you put that where you want to, but I trust you, what questions you got for me? I don't know.
23:26I don't know. What do you want to tell me besides the answer to the last question? Okay. I can tell you about, my cousin just recently started an oyster farm down here. So we've now got, we've gotten up to herbs, corn, okra, potatoes, and oysters now. So he's, my cousin with a Carraway Oyster Company is close to having his oysters out here freshly pulled out of the water.
23:56Nice. Very nice. I'm getting excited about that. I miss seafood so much in Minnesota. Seafood is not the same as on the coast by any stretch of the imagination. No, and having grown up on the East coast in Maine, I know what a pulled out of the ocean lobster tastes like the same day. I believe you. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, it's tough. I miss seafood so much and I'm actually not, I'm not a, an oyster.
24:25um clam, kind of girl. I don't really like those but I love shrimp, I love lobster, I will eat fried clams, they're not my favorite but I'll eat them. And the other thing that's been harder to find here is salmon, really good salmon at the store. Can't find it, it's not great. How do you feel about farm raised salmon? I'd rather not. Right, I agree. I've been doing a
24:55It's scary the way that companies can market now and say, oh, fresh wild-caught salmon, and it'd be the name of the company if they want it to be, and kind of be misleading. But I'm agreeing with you. I would much rather fresh-caught, wild-caught salmon. The way it used to be, yeah. Yeah, just regular salmon, how it used to be. We have one of the only caviar.
25:23farms in the country in North Carolina that pumps water out of the ocean and constantly pumps it out to keep it fresh. Really? That was something I recently looked in, looked, did some research on. Well, that's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, I think it helps clean, cleans the water and gives the, gives the fish nutrients and feeds the, all the vegetation around
25:52You know, the water pumps and stuff. So I hadn't found anything wrong with it yet. Oh, that is fantastic. All right. So now we can get to the last question. The last question is where do you see this platform in five years, sir? Well, thank you so much for asking my questions for me. I have information. I want to get out to people. Uh, but you're, you're great at, obviously you got most of my, you did it already for me. So, uh,
26:21But I have a few goals to make within five years. I hope we will have a much larger board of advisors across the country with many different unique and different perspectives so we can continue to serve the people who are a part of a sustainable and healthy food system. I think that's the knowledge of all these individuals guiding us is what's gonna help us go for a long time and be able to really serve a purpose.
26:50I hope our staff will also grow while maintaining a minimal operating cost. You know, keep everything remote. You know, salaries when you're working remote can't be too extravagant. We don't want to be, we don't want to be seeming like we're trying to get rid of off of this. It's really about getting the farmers and consumers recognition and changing our food system. So, and then last, hopefully we can, we'll be able to give back to local food operations
27:20few educational resources that are already currently doing good work across the country. Any nonprofit can get on our platform and say, hey, we're doing this in our state. And hopefully when we start gaining more revenue, we'll be able to just start donating and really fueling this movement by fueling the people that are already doing it, enhancing what we're doing and benefiting our users with more features and more.
27:50more beneficial resources. So full circle. Yes. Everybody, I'm hoping everybody can find a beneficial initiative to support this, this nonprofit. And, uh, I hope I've seen, I hope I seem humble being able to step down and allowing somebody with more experience than me, uh, being the head of operations. Uh, cause I really do want to focus on, uh, dealing directly with the, with the users.
28:20Yeah, and it's always better to have someone who wants to be doing the job doing the job. You know? I mean, yay that you're heading this up and doing this right now, but like you said, you'd rather be doing the in-person or contact with the users and the growers. And I think that you're really good at communicating what you're trying to accomplish. So that's what you should be doing. And having someone who's just in charge.
28:48of the operations seems like a better idea if they're more suited to that. Does that, did I say that right? Yeah, I understand it perfectly. You're exactly right. Okay, good. Sometimes I get on a roll and I'm like, where was I going with what I was saying? What always ends up being a very beneficial and informative for me. So I would never think of cutting you off or stopping you. Okay, good. All right, Hayden, this was fantastic. I'm glad that you came back to talk with me.
29:18Yeah, thank you for having me. I think what you're doing is great. Uh, spreading, spreading the word and, uh, helping people, uh, gain more resources on education in this field. Yeah. I'm going to keep doing it and keep kicking ass and taking names. Well, sweet. We'll do it again. Uh, when I get to some next stages. Yeah. Maybe in the spring. Cause I figured you're going to be real busy this winter. Well, we will have a sweet steaks coming up and we'll have some money to give away for, for a spring, uh,
29:47for farmers in the spring. That'll happen in November. We'll talk again. All right, awesome. All right, thank you Hayden for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, bye. Bye.
 

Hidden Brook Ranch LLC

Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. Good morning, Christine. How are you? I'm good, Mary. How are you? I'm great. You're in New Jersey? Yes, we are. We're in Blairstown, New Jersey, which is Warren County.
00:27Okay, I've said this before on the podcast, so I'm gonna say it again. I was born in New Jersey, but my parents moved to Maine when I was six months old. Oh, nice. What part of New Jersey? Um, I don't, I don't know for sure. It was the Fort Dix Air Force Base. Oh, okay. Got it. That's like South Jersey. So I think the town or the city is Burlington, but I'm not positive. Got it. Yeah.
00:58small little state, the garden state. But yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So my husband and I own an alpaca ranch. We produce fiber producing alpacas, as well as conduct a agro tourism business, where we get to educate people on alpacas and llamas, because we do have some llamas as well. About...
01:27their care and their habits and how we use the fiber to produce products. Yes. Okay. Do alpacas and llamas get along? Is that why people who have one usually have some of the other? Well, typically, yes, because alpacas and llamas are both part of the camel lid family. And I say that kind of, it's kind of odd.
01:56Most alpaca owners don't like llamas. Most llama owners don't like alpacas. So it's almost rare, actually, to find someone who has both. But we find that it's nice to have both, because we also use our llamas for protection. So our llamas guard the alpacas. Oh, OK. So I know that llamas and alpacas are different.
02:26Alpacas you can use their fur hair or whatever it's called for for fiber for yarn or I don't even know but llamas not so much, right?
02:40So alpacas, the fiber is definitely better than a llama's fiber, but llama's fiber can be utilized. It just tends to be a bit more coarse. So if you're making something to like a wearable, you would make something that is not going to be close to the skin.
03:08All right, that makes sense. So it's kind of the difference between wool and man-made yarn because wool tends to be itchy depending on the breed of sheep. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, definitely. Cool. So how did you get into this? So we started about 2019. We were looking for a piece of property where, you know, we could
03:38not necessarily farm because farming wasn't our thing, but raise some animals, you know, to produce something because New Jersey's very expensive. So having a farm and producing a product from your farm helps you tax for tax purpose. So we were looking for something that would be at least five acres.
04:07and have some ability or capability to raise some sort of animals. So we found this piece of property that right backs up to Jenny Jump State Park which is a really big park here in New Jersey and it fit all the check marks. The check marks were all checked off and they happen to have been already
04:37for alpaca. And we tried to learn as much as we could and we decided that we were going to keep the four alpaca that the previous owners had and our one llama at that time, Stella, and raise alpaca. So that was the plan. That's how we kind of started. And then COVID came.
05:06So COVID kind of gave us the opportunity to get to know our land and our animals more. And I always tell people alpaca are kind of like tattoos. Once you get one, you kind of end up getting more. So we kind of dove into learning as much as we could about their care and then decided that we wanted a couple of more. So
05:35We bred initially because we knew what the result of a previous breeding with those two alpacas would be. And now we're, you know, producing show quality fiber alpacas. Yeah, so it was almost a mishap, you know, well, maybe not a mishap, but definitely something unexpected.
06:05You know, initially, as far as animals, we would get a property we could have horses on. But we just kind of fell in love with the animals, the alpacas and the llamas. So that's how it started. So when you bred that that pair and you had that first alpaca baby and is there a name for a baby alpaca? Yeah. So baby alpacas are called creas. That's what I thought. Yeah, it's one.
06:33Pretty is names for a baby animal I've ever heard. Yeah. Were you just like in love with this new baby? Oh my God. Yes, she was adorable. So alpacas are very interesting animals and especially when the female is bred. You know, I think she knows you're watching to see when her baby's going to be born. So they tend to try to have a baby when no one else is around. And yeah, of course.
07:02my husband was home and I was the one with all the birthing and reproductive knowledge because I had Decided I was going to take a course from a very well-known vet on reproduction and birthing and I was not home. I missed the entire birth. Oh, but it was captured on a fantastic video for me and Yeah, she it was just it was amazing
07:32So the birds though tend to make me a little bit nervous, but generally we've been pretty successful at that now. So we have three currently who are gonna give birth next year. Fun, fun. Yeah, birth is always a scary time and it doesn't matter whether it's a human or an animal because things go wrong. Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of signs for them.
08:02But yeah, I can remember being pregnant with my last kid. And I waited a very long time to go in because I knew that if I went in too early, I was just gonna be stuck and I could do most of the laboring at home. And I got to the hospital at 10 minutes to seven in the evening and he was born at 712. So 22 minutes later. Wow, yeah, that's kinda close.
08:29Yeah, and I can remember saying to him on the drive up to the hospital that if anything went wrong and it was a choice between me and the baby, choose me because I already had three other kids that needed me. And he looked at me and he was like, are you sure? And I said, well, do you want to be raising three kids and a newborn by yourself? Right. And he said, not especially. And I said, okay, if the choice needs to be made, that's the smart choice.
08:58And he was like, you sound very sure. I said, I am very sure. And he said, okay. Luckily, Cameron, the youngest, was born really easily, like no epidural, no nothing. Everything was textbook and he was perfect. So it all went well. But when people tell me they're expecting, my first thought is that's exciting, congratulations. But in the back of my head, I'm like, I hope everything goes safely and well.
09:28Yes, very true. And it's true of animals too. We've had a barn cat have three sets of babies in the last year. And every time we realize she's pregnant, I'm like, huh, I wonder how many of these are going to make it.
09:42True, very true. Yeah. So I'm going to be a nervous wreck next May. Yeah. It's really hard because you want everything to be okay. You want mom to be okay. You want the babies to be okay. Speaking of babies, do they have just one or can they have twins? They typically just have one. So twin birds are successful twin birds of alpacas are becoming, I'd say maybe slightly more common.
10:11Um, that those are successful. Um, but you know, a few years ago, you know, none of them were surviving, you know, um, none of them were making it out. So, um, I think people, um, camelid special with camelid specialties, like veterinarians with camelid specialties, um, are a little bit more equipped now to handle those twin birds and, um.
10:40They seem to be more successful, so that's good. But for me, I'm just hoping for one good healthy. Yeah, I just didn't know if they were like goats, because goats have twins and triplets, and sometimes quadruplets. Oh, yeah, no, no, no. Thankfully, no. OK, good. I don't know if I could handle that. Yeah, so OK, so alpacas, they are camelids, which means they're related to camels. Yes.
11:08Are there other animals besides llamas and alpacas that are related to animals or is that it? So alpacas were domesticated by the Inca and they were domesticated from the Vaikuna. Okay. And the llamas were domesticated as working animals and they came from the Guanaco. So all of those are found in the
11:38the Andes, so mostly Peru, where they have like six billion. And Bolivia has alpacas and guanacos and vicuña. But yeah, that's what they came from. And they had similar purposes then than they do today. So it's very kind of interesting.
12:01Alrighty see I know nothing about alpacas when I realized that's what you did. I was like yay something I know nothing about I get to get educated today So I know that people will drink camel milk Is there anything that the alpaca milk is good for besides feeding the baby alpaca? No No, so they only Supply enough milk to feed their baby Okay
12:30Yeah, so unfortunately not. Yeah, you can't drink it. So you can't make soap with it. Can't do any of those things you could do with like goat milk. And it's the same for llamas. We have not bred llamas, though, because if you do use llamas for guarding purpose, it's best that they've not either, you know, been a mom or
13:00for males they need to be gilded. Yeah. Okay. So I don't want to ask an offensive or gross question, but people eat sheep's meat, they eat goat meat, do people eat alpaca meat? People do eat alpaca and llama.
13:24Some farms, I'd say in the US, have a meat component to their farming plan. Here we do not eat the meat. But yes, it is certainly in Peru acceptable to eat both alpaca and llama meat.
13:49Okay, like I said, I know nothing about this. I'm going to ask all the questions. Yeah. Okay, so how many alpacas do you have right now? So we have currently 20 alpacas, three separate herds. We have a female herd that all live together, and then we have two separate male herds. We have an adult male herd, and we have our juvenile male herd.
14:19Um, yeah. So the juvenile male herd, um, consists of our babies from last year. So, um, we had two males born last year and one female. So the males and the females have to be separated, um, from each other. Typically about eight months, really depending on their, their activities. Yes.
14:46Um, but yeah, our males were separated by eight months and they also need to be, uh, to be secure in a herd. Um, they need to be in groups of three. So we only had two males last year. So, um, we ended up getting two more juvenile males so that, uh, they could be more comfortable and less stressed because they stress a little bit. So you got them some buddies. Good.
15:15Yeah, they got some cute little buddies and it's nice because they are rotational sleepers. So alpacas are pretty much defenseless animals, which is why we have llamas, but they're rotational sleepers. So one is always up kind of keeping an eye on things while the others are sleeping. So if you have only two, they're not really well rested, right? Yeah.
15:45That's a good size, but they unfortunately cannot be co-mingled with the adult males. Yet, it might take a little while to get that situation worked out because, you know, the adult males have a hierarchy and the little males don't fit into that picture right now. So they would fight a lot. Yeah. So why are alpacas defenseless, but llamas are really good defense animals?
16:15So, the opacas, their defense really is just to flee. So they don't really have the ability to bite. They have a split upper lip with a palate, and then they have bottom teeth. So they can't really get a good grip in that kind of situation. They do have...
16:43toes with pads, but you know, they're not really strong. So their legs are very long and they're not really very muscular. So I don't know if they have the strength to defend, which is why they flee. But llamas are very big. So llamas tend to be upwards of 300 pounds, where your average alpaca is about 150. Oh. Yeah. And llamas, they're
17:13They say llamas defend to the death. So llamas instinctually just know that this is my job, especially if you get good llama guard stock. You want to look for llamas from proven guard stock. So what they do is they will charge a predator, they'll grab it with its front legs, and they'll pull it underneath its body, and then they'll pound it with the back legs.
17:43Um, and you ever get kicked by a llama, it's not fun. So, um, generally that's how they eliminate predators while alpacas are just going to run around screaming, you know, looking for a place to go. And obviously since, you know, they're here on our farm, they don't really have very many places that are not fenced to get away from a predator. Right. Yeah. So, so llamas are fighters and alpacas are lovers.
18:12Yes, uh-huh. Yes. Well, they might fight amongst themselves a little bit here and there, but generally they're very peaceful and calm animals. So, cool. So did I see something about alpaca yoga on your face? Tell me about that. That's a lot of fun. So, you know, goat yoga is a big thing. People love to go
18:42do goat yoga and I was like, why don't we do alpaca yoga? And it's nice because with goats, they go to the bathroom all over the place. They don't have a problem, you know, stopping right where you're sitting. Where alpacas are communal. So they all go in like generally the same area.
19:06So it's nice for yoga because we could keep them interacting as they're grazing or maybe eating a little bit of grain from your hand. But generally they just graze around you while you're doing the yoga. So there's no jumping on anybody's back. My llama actually really loves yoga. He will lie down and eat grass right next to you. It's very, very cute. And I think too, like alpacas...
19:35Like most animals are, um...
19:41They feed off your energy, right? So yoga is peaceful and calm generally, right? And you're in this mindset of peace and calmness that really the alpacas enjoy. So it's a nice combination and no one's jumping on your back, so that's good. Uh-huh, yeah, I can't imagine 150 pounds on my back when I'm trying to do a yoga pose. That would probably not be good. No.
20:09Okay, so I have two questions. They'll probably eat up the 10 minutes left of 30 minutes One of them is are alpacas an easy keeper animal the other question I want to know about your agritourism because that's a big deal for a lot of people right now. Yes. Okay, so We always tell people alpacas are like cats. In fact, I've kind of coined them as pasture cats where cats are kind of okay, you just
20:38clean up after them, give them some food and some water, and generally that's it. There is more to it depending on what area of the country you live in. So here we're in white tail deer area, so we have to worry about meningeal worm, so that adds a little bit of extra care for alpacas. So for us, daily care, we primarily feed them
21:07grains twice a day. So once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then we clean up their... my alpacas are on dry lot. I think that that helps to reduce their exposure to parasites. And then we only graze them for... well we rotational... rotationally graze them, but we only allow them to graze when the grass is dry.
21:36that helps also to reduce parasites. But once a month they all have to be weighed. So we have to harness everybody. We have to get them on a scale, which is a lot of fun. The more you do it regularly, they're more used to it. We weigh them and then we give them a shot of ivermectin. And ivermectin is to prevent parasites, right? Sweet.
22:01Basically, you're treating them all year long like they have parasites, even though they may or may not. But we like to keep things really clean. So because I'm a little crazy about that. That's okay. So yeah, my first, the fall season drives me nuts because of the little leaves.
22:27The leaves are just falling from the trees, they're wet, you never know, they might have a slug on the back of them. You know, one eats a slug and the next thing you know, they're sick. So we also do FAMACHA body scoring, which a lot of people with sheep or goat would be familiar with, but we're generally checking their, popping their eye to check the membrane.
22:53to check the color of the membrane, to see if there's any signs of illness. We also body score them, so we weigh them and then we get our hands on them. And we will check to see whether they're maybe eating too much, because we do have an agrotourism business. So people do come and they do get to feed the alpacas, and the llamas actually.
23:22So we'll check their body score to see if they're too heavy or maybe too thin. You know, because if they're thin, then we want to bulk them up a bit because the one thing about camel lids, especially alpacas, is that they do get sick and when they do get sick, they go down very quickly and they can lose weight very rapidly.
23:45So we like to be on top of that by maybe keeping a little bit of extra weight on them so that we do have a chance to get them back to a healthier weight sooner if they're not already skinny. The other thing is we're really careful about what we feed them because they are borderline diabetics by nature. So we don't.
24:13like to give them anything that's like molasses based. We also don't like to give them any cracked corn because a lot of people like to feed cracked corn. The cracked corn could cause dental issues for them. They don't do very well under anesthetic. So we wouldn't want to have to do any major dental work should they break a tooth or a molar.
24:43due to crack corn. So that's generally their
24:53their maintenance schedule, but we also have to shear them once a year. For us, we prefer to have a shearer come and do it rather than attempt to shear on our own. We prefer to let professional shearers handle that. At the time of shearing, they will trim the toenails. They'll check the teeth. They'll trim the teeth if need be.
25:23And the males, because Lord knows why, but the males have extra teeth in their mouth that the females don't have, which are called fighting teeth. So those fighting teeth, the points have to be taken off, but they can grow back. So we check them from time to time to make sure the males don't grow new fighting teeth. But that's pretty much their care in a nutshell. And then your other question, the agrotourism.
25:53Yeah. So we decided during COVID, since everybody was pretty cooped up and we're pretty close to the city, that we were going to provide an educational but fun experience for people to come to that was outdoors. Because you know, you couldn't really do anything at the time that was indoors.
26:22Yeah.
26:26We decided to start, well, I found Airbnb experience. Unfortunately, I don't think Airbnb is now hosting new experiences, but that was the platform we chose to book through initially. And what would happen is if somebody went on vacation and stayed at an Airbnb locally, they would be suggested to come here.
26:57as one of the things to do. And since there were very limited things to do, we were quite successful with Airbnb initially. And now we primarily generate visits on our own through our own marketing efforts and our own booking platform. So we've moved to that, but it's fun. So what we do is we have a few different types of visits. You know, you mentioned the alpaca yoga, that's...
27:25One of the things we do like an evening event where people come and we have a little campfire going and they get to see the alpacas in the dark, which is kind of cool, because they actually feel different at night than they do during the day. I don't know why. It's just very weird. We make s'mores and hang out and tell stories about the alpacas. And that's a lot of fun, but generally we do guided walking tours.
27:53where we are allowing people to come in, meet, greet, feed, and feel, learn about alpacas and llamas, and then we take them on a guided walk. You know, we're, we keep that to a minimum. We don't like to have too many people, and we don't like to have too many availability, because you know, we don't want them to.
28:22be stressed with visitors all the time too. So you have to balance the business side of it because that's what provides the funds to care for the animals properly. And not having them be overworked or having too many visitors because that could be detrimental to their health because they would be very stressed out.
28:50So we limit our groups to like 10 and we space it out so that the alpacas are getting a rest in between. And we don't really force the interaction. We know which ones will walk, which ones like to go on a little dotted walk and which ones are like, no, not me. We also don't force them to eat.
29:18It's totally up to them if they want to engage with the people while they're here then They'll come on over and if they don't then you know, we just let them hang out and observe So we try to keep it nice and calm for them too. So That's a nice vibe. So basically you don't want the alpacas to get overwhelmed is what you're saying Yes stresses them out. Okay. Yeah. All right, and then my last question
29:47because we're almost at 30 minutes, is do you ever get tired of talking about alpacas? Are you just so in love with what you're doing that you're like, I can talk about it 24 hours a day, seven days a week? I don't get tired of talking about alpacas. No, I don't. They are so cute. If you have alpacas...
30:14and you treat them well, they treat you well, and it is just such a joy. You know, we just, they know their names, they come when I call them, they give me little kisses on my chin. So, I mean, they're really cute. And I think for us specifically, like we don't mind talking about alpacas nonstop, especially if people have questions because...
30:41I think it's important for people who are considering alpacas to have the knowledge and not just like go buy one or go buy a bottle baby or you know, that kind of thing. So we'd like to educate people, I think so. I mean, that's primarily what we do when we're talking about alpacas is giving them information they didn't have.
31:11Very nice and part of the reason I started the podcast is because I was like there are so many people interested in starting homesteads or farms and there's so much to it that people don't know. And I thought, huh, maybe I can find some people to talk to me about what's actually involved. And, huh, talked to over a hundred, actually probably 200 people at this point. Wow, that's fantastic.
31:38Yes, and I've had people come up to me and my husband and say, I love the podcast. I have learned so many things from it. And every time somebody says that, I'm just like, yay, it's doing its job. Good. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Now it's nice to have that feeling. Yeah. People want to know. People are inherently curious about what other people are doing. It's just the human condition, I think. So.
32:04All right, so Christine, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and thank you for teaching me all about alpacas. Oh, thank you, Mary. You have a good day. You too. Bye. All right.