A Tiny Homestead

Working Aussies Homestead

Today I'm talking with Jordyn at Working Aussies Homestead.
You can purchase Jordyn's book at https://sawdustpublishing.com/product/herding-on-the-homestead-start-where-you-are/
And you can listen to Jordyn and Jill Winger's chat here .
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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 Jordyn Kelly in North Carolina at Working Aussies Homestead. Good morning, Jordyn. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I am going to preface this entire episode by saying if you don't want to hear about
00:29Stop listening now because I am so excited to talk to Jordyn about what she does. Do you want to tell me about yourself and what you do, Jordyn? Yeah, absolutely. So we operate on an acre and a quarter in North Carolina between Raleigh and Fayetteville. And we raise working Australian shepherds. We use our dogs on our homestead to rotation and graze our small flock of Gulf Coast native sheep, as well as our chickens.
00:57But over the past few years, we've also had pigs and we still have rabbits. We've had goats before we had ducks. So a little bit of everything, but primarily our focus is working with our Australian shepherds. I wrote a book this past year. So herding on the homestead, start where you are. And I do public speaking and give herding demonstrations across the country to really help inspire.
01:26anybody to get started where they are with what they have using a working dog on their small homestead or farm or even a large farm. But just to really help showcase the versatility, all the ways that you can use a good working dog and how they're probably the best addition you can make for your homestead or farm. Fantastic. I'm so excited to talk to you. My first question is, can you tell me what
01:56that an Australian Shepherd puppy is gonna be good for herding right off the bat. And the reason I ask is because when we got Maggie, ours, she's a mini. And the lady that we got her from, who's a good friend, said that she was, that the breed is very people oriented, like they wanna be with their people, they wanna please their people, they want to love their people. And...
02:23Maggie was trying to herd us by walking behind our ankles and doing the diagonal walk from three days after we brought her home. So can you tell that they're going to be a good herding dog from the get go?
02:38I'm going to say yes and no. So with our puppies, we actually do instinct testing at five weeks old. So I will put them in with our stock. We've used turkeys in the past, and then we've also used our sheep and goats. And we do this to really help us determine which puppies need to go to a working home versus puppies that can go to more of just like an active family. Um, so yes, you can tell. But.
03:07There's a couple other factors that come into play to say, yes, this is going to be a working dog versus no. That's where the Australian Shepherd breed has started to become a lot more popular, but people want to breed them to be more like your golden retriever, where they just are like good in a family home versus the workability.
03:32Kind of a big controversial topic with some of the old timers and people who have been in the breed since the breed began 30 years ago is a lot of people want them to be watered down in terms of their workability. And so you don't see working Aussies as much anymore as you do like more pet Aussies that don't have that drive. So yes, you can tell. But I think.
04:01that it's important to.
04:05to especially like find breeders that are focusing on maintaining the workability and the breed if that makes sense.
04:14Sure, yeah. We did not get her to be a herding dog. We got her to be a watchdog. And as I've said on the podcast episodes many times, she is an excellent watchdog. She is the weirdest Australian Shepherd I've ever seen, met, hung out with. She's very calm in the house. And the minute she's outside, she's all go. So.
04:41We lucked out huge because we didn't want a crazy dog in the house all the time. And I know that you can train them to not be crazy, but we were a little concerned when our friend told us they could be kind of problematic with being bored. That they, that they would chew or they would destroy things. And she has been really good. And I listened to the podcast that you did with Jill Winger this morning. And.
05:10You are so incredibly knowledgeable about all of this. I really enjoyed it. So if you get all the way through this podcast, guys, go listen to that one too. I'll put it in the show notes because it's really, really great. So do you consider yourself an expert on the Australian shepherd breed? Because I have a couple of questions about the breed itself.
05:36I am a super humble person when it comes to dog knowledge. I've tried to make myself as knowledgeable as I possibly can. I don't know if I would label myself as expert. I have not been in the breed for 30 plus years. So that would just be my main downfall with that. But I have tried to really research and be knowledgeable in every aspect of.
06:05the breed itself and dog. So you're more than welcome to ask questions. I'm sure I have an answer for you. Okay. So the Australian Shepherd breed, what, how did it come to be? Do you know what, what dogs they're, they're from? Yes. So the Australian Shepherd breed is newer. And even though the, the name is Australian, it is a breed that was founded in the United States.
06:35In terms of the breed itself compared to other breeds, it's a very young breed. And it's only been around, you know, between 30 and 40 years. It's very young in comparison to like your German Shepherd that's been around for centuries. The Australian Shepherd is relatively new. And the name came from using these dogs to herd Australian sheep.
07:05The dogs themselves are comprised of several different breeds. That's how any breed of dog is really formed is they take qualities that they like of this breed, qualities that they like of this breed, and combine them together. And then breeding those dogs together, initially you have a lot of line breeding and inbreeding to create the standard for the breed, the characteristics that you want to stick.
07:35You have a little bit of collies, you have a little bit of cattle dogs in there for the bite inhibition that you want in these dogs because they do need to have a bite in their back pocket if needed. But there are certain traits that were bred into the breed for the purpose of the climate and conditions that they were used in. So these dogs were primarily used out in the Western United States.
08:05So you have, you know, big, open, you have a lot of open land out there. And so one quality, one characteristic that these dogs were bred for was to have taller in height than length in body because they needed to cover ground. So that's part of the breed standard is ability to cover ground.
08:35the length of their body. The natural bobtail was also bred into the breed because when you're out in that environment, you have a lot of thick brush and cacti. And typically the Australian Shepherd, if their tails are full in length and they're not docked within the first few days of birth, they are long and thick.
09:03And so can easily get caught, can easily get stepped on. And so that's why that was a part of the breed standard was docking tails or breeding dogs for natural bobtail gene. So there's just a lot of things that were bred into them for the purpose to be a nice versatile dog. So can cover ground, has a natural bobtail so that the tail's not getting caught in brush or stepped on.
09:33but then also has the ability to read the stock and use a bite when needed, but not, like that's not their first go-to when it comes to moving stock. So having that little bit of healer, but not so much that their first instinct is to go and bite the livestock in order to move them. Now the difference between like how collies work versus Australian shepherds is really the eye
10:02the use of the eye for moving the stock. The Australian Shepherd is referred to a loose-eyed, upright working breed. So they don't typically crouch when they're moving the livestock and they're not going to stare their stock and apply that pressure that way, which I find very useful on our small homestead because my dogs can get right up next to the livestock if I need them to.
10:28without applying so much pressure that it pushes my livestock through the fence. So really just kind of a little combination of all things good and put into this form of beautiful dogs with different colored eyes that come in four different colors. And then their coat is meant to be a medium length and so that they have that double coat, that undercoat.
10:54Um, a lot of times they're referred to as a wash and wear breed. So they're meant to be able to go out and work in the rain and then come in and be dry within a matter of minutes. Um, and I find that a lot more with my working line bred dogs versus like some of our dogs that have more of the show lines in them, um, that have the longer coat takes them longer to dry out versus. My shorter coat dogs, they, you know, dry out.
11:24very quickly, which is nice. You know, if they go out and get money, they come in and it all just falls off. So I can just vacuum it up. Um, so it's, it's really cool how the breed was founded and then how it's kind of transitioned into like this really cool working dog.
11:47Okay, that was a lot. Thank you. I'm sorry. No, that's great. I just didn't know when to jump in, so I just figured I'd let you tell me exactly what you needed to share about the dogs. So our dog has the fluffy curly coat on the top of her back, and then along her ribs she's got the short coat, so she looks really funny a lot of the time. And she dries off probably in...
12:16half the time that your working dogs dry off. The other thing I was gonna ask you about is these dogs are really athletic and they can be shown doing like tricks and stuff, yes? Yes. Yes, Maggie is terribly athletic and it confuses me sometimes because she's such a loaf in the house but her favorite thing to play is frisbee.
12:45And she catches the frisbee out of the air like she's been doing it her whole life, like somebody taught her how to do it. And so is there, I don't know what the right way to say this is, is there a market for show Aussies? Like is it a thing that people are very into because I don't know? Yes. So that's kind of where we see, especially recently, there's a huge breed.
13:15lit. And, you know, of course, being an Australian Shepherd enthusiast, I'm a part of a lot of different like groups on Facebook and whatnot. And we're a part of the Australian Shepherd Club of America, so ASCA. And they're just, there's a lot of controversial conversations, especially recently. There's kind of a lot of drama going on with
13:44the Australian Shepherd Club of America as of the last two to three years, but especially recently they've had a lot of issues with the board. But with that, there's been a big focus on should there be different classifications within the breed? So the working Australian Shepherd versus the Australian Shepherd in terms of like a show dog specifically. So that's, there's some breeders.
14:14pedigrees, that's where there's so much that we can dive into just focusing on the breed itself is there are breeders who specifically breed for dogs that are going to win in the show ring, but not necessarily ever step foot out at a field trial. And so the controversial thing is you should have a dog that should be able to do both go and win in the ring, but then also go and win high and fast.
14:44a herding dog triangle. So there are people who specifically want the fluffier, cuter looking Australian Shepherd. And there's a lot of people who look at my dogs and go, what breed is that? Because I have more of the working line bred. So I have the shorter coat dogs that maybe look a little lankier. And it just, it really is where I encourage people if you're wanting to.
15:14um, has a working dog, that dog needs to come from working farms. And there's really just that, that difference. There is a market for the show or fluffier puppies, but those are really going more to like pet companion homes, uh, versus going to working farms. Yup, exactly. Um, Maggie's parents are both working dogs. They work the farm or
15:40Her dad actually passed away a year or so ago, which we're very sad about, but mom is still kicking, still around. She just had puppies Monday morning at 4 a.m. so Maggie's a big sister again. And yeah, oh pictures, oh just kills me. I want another one, but I really don't want another one. Maggie's perfect. We're sticking with her for now. I understand. But her dad was
16:07He would have heard the sheep that they have. He would have heard the cattle they have. And he was a really thick, stocky, mini Australian shepherd. He probably weighed 35 to 40 pounds. And that's on the high end of a mini. And he did a great job. And mom does the same thing, but in a slightly different way. It's really interesting. You can have two working dogs that are a basically mated pair. And they will.
16:36they will do their jobs differently. They will have their own style from what I saw. Yeah, and that's another thing is like, there's a lot of controversy over the Mini Aussie is really supposed to be the miniature American Shepherd because it's like a different breed. Whereas the Australian Shepherd is not supposed to come in a size variance. So there were some breeders
17:06breeding for larger Australian chakras, who have 65, 75, 70, 80 pound dogs. They're not meant to be that large, but they're also not meant to be smaller than 30 pounds. They're meant to be a medium breed. And so that, you know, it's so interesting to watch those conversations take place because there are people out there who are like, oh, my Aussies are bigger boned, they're taller. There's, you know,
17:34There's a breed standard that says they're not meant to be smaller or bigger than a certain height or a certain weight. But the thing is, part of the standard too is size. If you have a quality dog, then the size variation is kind of not considered as much. Right. Yeah. We keep saying that Maggie is probably just a small standard.
18:03Australian Shepherd because she weighs 35 pounds and she's just below my knee and I'm five foot nine so if she's a mini American Shepherd, she's a big mini and My girls are 35 pounds. Yeah, I have 36 pounds. Yeah, so she's she's right in the right weight to be a smaller standard and I Know that my friends have the papers from Maggie's
18:33grandparents. They didn't parent, they didn't paper Maggie's parents, but they have the papers from the parents of Maggie's parents. Wow, that was a lot. Sorry. And they are, they are certified or officially called on the paperwork, many Australian shepherds. So it gets real weird with the American versus Australian shepherds. Yeah. And that's where like there are some
19:02not as, um, not as consistent with their record keeping. And so there's some registries that are, um, like not just not taken seriously. If that makes sense. And so there's a lot of controversy in the dog world with that as well as, um,
19:26you know, if the dogs are not registered through the parent club, like the Australian Shepherd Club of America, then is the registry valid? If that makes sense. Does it mean anything? Yeah. Right. Whereas, so like the Australian Shepherd Club of America, in order to have your dog registered with them, your dog must be DNA genetically verified to be a purebred Australian Shepherd.
19:52Which is different than any other registry because they don't always require that. And the other thing is it just depends on whether it matters to the person who is going to take care of that dog for the rest of its life. For us it didn't matter. We just wanted a puppy. Our friends happened to have these dogs who we had met who had great temperaments, who were healthy, who were strong.
20:20When I found out that Daisy was pregnant with Maggie's first litter, which was Maggie's litter, I put my hat in the ring and said, I would love to be the owner of one of the pups when they're ready. And will you trust me, basically, to take this dog on? And my friend was like, of course, of course. And we had no idea how to raise a dog from puppy. My husband and I had never had a puppy. So it was very much a learning experience for us.
20:50if you're looking for that papering or certification or classification or whatever, I guess you just have to do your research. Yes. And some of that, really, a lot of people will say, well, the registration doesn't matter, the papers don't matter. It costs $25 to register a dog. So it's not...
21:15necessarily the cost that's involved. It's more of like you are breeding to register dogs that adhere to the breed standard to maintain the breed standard. That's a big thing with a lot of puppies that come in and people will say, oh, I have an Australian Fepard and looking at it, you're like, I'm not so sure that that's what you actually have.
21:46And the purpose of going through a breeder who has their dogs registered, has done genetic health testing, has done ORFAs, they have done everything to ensure that those dogs are absolutely sound so that the puppies are not born into automatically having issues later on in life. And that's where just kind of the...
22:15the mindset is of, it's not necessarily does it matter, but it's what quality of puppies are you producing? If that makes sense. Yes, and when I say the way I'm using matters is to us, it was important that we knew Maggie's parents and what kind of dogs they were, but Maggie is never going to reproduce. She's not going to show.
22:44any of those things where that would be required. And so I guess what I'm saying is if you're going to show your dog or you need them to have that clout of being papered and that I'm not using the right words. You said it's more record keeping is really what the registration is. It's the record keeping. These two dogs had these puppies.
23:14issues come up later on, like that is where that you can track through a pedigree, you know, dogs that had specific genetic issues or genetic markers for whatever. And so that's really just the importance of the pedigree is that record keeping that ability to look back and go, these characteristics came from this dog or, you know, especially like in border collies, it's really important to know which lines carry epilepsy.
23:43So that you aren't breeding those lines into your program. So that later on you're not having issues with two and three year old dogs getting epilepsy because that's a huge issue in the breed. So that's really just the primary importance of the pedigree and registration is just more of the record keeping. Okay, yes, exactly. Thank you. I was getting way, way in the weeds there. Sorry.
24:10I'm, it's terrible because I have done a lot of research on my dog because I love her beyond measure. But she's a quote unquote mini Australian shepherd. So I haven't really looked into the Australian shepherd stuff as far as I probably should considering she's probably actually a standard and just on the smaller end. So I need to do some more research on Australian shepherds. But my parents have a border collie.
24:40It's really interesting to me how much the border collie faces and the Australian shepherd faces look almost identical. The shape of their nose, the look in their eyes, the shape of their ears, their head, they look very much alike and they are not the same breed. Yeah, and that's really where it just comes down to the characteristics too. Yeah.
25:10Um, like a lot of people think one of my dogs looks like a Britney, uh, just primarily because of her coloring and she has the little ticking on her nose. But you know, a lot of times, like one of our younger puppies that we have, she, both of her ears go fully forward and a lot of people ask if she's a Labrador mix. And just because of her ear set. And so it's just.
25:39It's so interesting how similar different breeds look alike for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Um, our dog, basically I have been with his dog since she was one day shy of eight weeks because I'm an at home person. So I have been the one with her the entire time. And as I've watched her grow and change, I have seen like hints of beagle.
26:07to her the way she looks. I've seen Corgi, I've seen Lab. So you know it's just how you see other breeds and then you you sort of superimpose that on your dog if they show any any likeness to that other breed. And I told my husband I said we should have named her Bandit not Maggie after she'd been Maggie for like six months. And he said why and I said because she's got this thing about her face where if you see her 30 feet away
26:36she looks like she has a mask. We should have named her Bandit. And he says she's not a raccoon. And I had not seen raccoon in her, but the minute he said it, I was like, oh yeah, I could see her. I could see raccoon in her and hadn't even thought of it. So it's all perception and perspective, and they look different to you when they're up close. Like, I don't think she's a big dog.
27:05When she's next to me, she seems small. But if she's out in the yard running around, she looks twice her size. And I'm like, why does she look so big outside? It's just weird, I don't know. Anyway, we've been talking for 27 minutes, Jordan. I haven't even asked you about your book. Tell me about the book. Yes, so the book I really wrote, because of course I've read a lot of different hurting books, but...
27:32Getting into hurting can seem really intimidating. There's a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to getting started. A lot of times if you're wanting to get into it, you know, there's this advice given over here, this advice given over here, there's online series, but there's also, you know, we live in the day and age where you can access anything at any time, the roofing or chips. The thing with hurting is you
27:59to put the miles on. It has to be something you do in person. You can't just read about it. You can't just watch a video, go out and be good. And the thing with that is it can be very intimidating because you don't, you know, you're taking this dog out that is technically a predator and teaching it how to move prey. And so it can be very intimidating, especially like if you are a failure person like myself.
28:29And so I really wrote the book in order to help inspire people to just start that, you know, I was that fear of failure person where I waited until I had a one year old dog. And then I went to a very well known trainer in our area. We attended, you know, hurting lessons once a week, we would go and it, you know, it was a two hour drive one way. And so it was a whole day thing for us to go to a hurting lesson.
29:00And so, but I did that with her. I did everything the right way. I took her to trials, you know, she did great. And then with her daughter, I started when she was 10 weeks old, working on stock. And a lot of times people say, Oh, well, you know, don't touch a dog until it's at least a year old. So that way it's mentally and physically mature enough to work with stock correctly. But I wanted to just share my experiences.
29:28and say, you don't necessarily have to do that. If you have somebody in your area that does herding training, that is worth what you pay them, absolutely do that. But if you don't have that, that's okay too. So my book is titled Herding on the Homestead Start Where You Are, and I share a lot of experiences, but I also tried to kind of cover all of the bases of this is why different breeds matter.
29:55This is why and what you would look for in a puppy. This is what your foundational training looks like. This is what teaching working manners looks like. This is what life's junk introduction looks like. And then this is what your initial lessons that you're gonna do with your dog looks like, but then also how animal husbandry plays into that. So it's really like a great book for anybody who wants to get into herding someday.
30:23or even if they have a dog or even if they're ready to do it now. So is it like a primer sort of? Somewhat but then also, you know, for somebody who's already getting into it to just help to just help really be encouragement. You know, I share a lot of instances where things did not go well with my dogs and how I worked around that.
30:52A lot of times, if you are working with your own livestock, you've got a lot on the line. There's a big risk because you're working with a dog that could potentially kill one of your animals just if the situation was wrong in any capacity. There's always that risk. But also, if it seems like too much.
31:22That's where I wanted to be encouraging and say, this is what you can do to help with a lot of these different behaviors. And you heard me talk about some of that on Jill's podcast of, you know, there's a lot of tools in your tool belt that can help with a variety of things. Yes, exactly. I feel like the puppies in this breed are very much like...
31:47toddlers, they are like sponges. They want to learn, they want to do what you're teaching them and asking of them. And so why is it a bad idea to start training them as puppies? I mean, that's what I keep hearing. And I'm like, we taught Maggie to sit and lay down in like three minutes with a couple of treats when she was nine weeks old. Like it took no time at all.
32:17So if you have stock that can be rougher on a dog, like that's where you could put a puppy in with, you know, the wrong goat and that puppy loses all confidence to work because it gets head butted by the goat. And so that's really like when you're working with a puppy of herding breed, I'm not putting them in a ring and expecting them to go do anything.
32:44I'm going to walk around the ring with the livestock, with the puppy, and just be there to help ensure a smooth interaction. But I'm not putting a puppy in with a bunch of goats and letting my goats just invite the puppy to the greenhouse. So that's kind of like where that comes with is it takes a lot of management to work with a puppy that is one day going to work with livestock.
33:15A good example of this, last week I had my sheep out, they were just kind of free ranging. And my husband and I were working in the garden. And so we had our two youngest puppies out there, three and a half months and four months old. And they were just hanging out watching us work in the garden. And so I was like, you know, the sheep are fine to be out. They didn't know where the sheep were. Well, we hear a commotion and I look over and my sheep are just running to the barn. And I was like, what in the world?
33:45And I look and Snips, the youngest, who's three and a half months old, is just over there hurting them by herself. And I was like, okay, girlfriend, come here, come here. We don't need to work them. Like the sheep are being fine, out grazing by themselves. But that is where she has watched her mom and her big sister Rogue put the sheep in the barn. And so she has learned that behavior from watching the other dogs do it. But I'm not.
34:14expecting her to be able to do that by herself. Not at this point at the age that she is. Yes and the one thing that I tell everybody who's considering getting this particular breed of dog, whether it's a mini or a standard, is these dogs are incredibly intelligent and they really do learn fast and whatever they see they will they will try to copy it.
34:45Oh yeah, absolutely. Sometimes we, uh, we'll, we'll share our experiences raising puppies is like, we want them to be problem solvers. So we encourage that a lot, but sometimes we have to really get creative on how we think ahead of them of if we even have one little inkling of, Hmm, they might get into that, odds are they probably will.
35:10And that is one thing that we really like vouch for with new puppy parents too, is they'll complain, oh my gosh, they chewed up another pair of shoes. Well, were the shoes out in a place that your puppy had access to them? Okay, then they were not set up for success. And it's really, you have to set those puppies up for success because they're going to be smart, they're going to check things out, they're going to figure out, ooh, this is really fun to chew on and pretty tasty.
35:38But if you don't give them access to that, then they're not going to learn that behavior. Right. We say Maggie's too smart for her own good all the time. And we try not to set her up to fail. And we were really lucky because we got her very shortly after we moved into our new home. And we hadn't really gotten settled into the new home yet. So there was no clutter around for her to get in the middle of and chew on and get in trouble with.
36:08So I tell people if they're gonna get a puppy, make sure they have a space that the puppy can be in and set them up for success. Don't leave your shoes where the dog can chew them up. Don't have cords from your computer or your cell phone hanging around because they will eat them. And it's not- And if you have a destructive puppy and you're like, man, I've tried everything, try a kennel. Try just a crate. It works wonders.
36:38I will always be an advocate for crate training. If you're anybody but Maggie, it works great. We did that. We did that for six days in a row when we brought her home. What has been the issue there? Well now she loves her crate. She's three years and a month or so old. But we basically would sit down with her and let her go in and out. And she liked her kennel as long as the door wasn't shut.
37:07And then we would put her in the kennel at night and she would cry and bark and whine all night long. And then you would let her out, wouldn't you? No, we did not let her out. Didn't even go check on her, which was probably part of the problem. But after six nights of no sleep, we were like, never mind, she can just sleep with us because we were walking zombies. Now, she trains you well. Yeah. Now she loves her crate and she actually has the run of the house at night. And she
37:35She sleeps on her kennel or she sleeps on the chair downstairs. She's totally fine having the run of the house, but she's also, like I said, three years old. She's not a puppy anymore. But we didn't have much luck with crate training at all with her. Yeah. With puppies, you have to kind of get some thick skin with it and say, nope, we're going to do this. We're going to go in there. That's where...
38:01You know, a lot of times these dogs are so smart, they'll train you. And sometimes you don't realize it. And, you know, until they, they do something specific that gets a specific reaction or a specific response from you. And that is a great example of those dogs have learned if they do this, they get that response and that was the response they wanted.
38:27Uh-huh and we tried not to do that and we failed. I don't know what we did wrong, but we failed And i'm not gonna lie not gonna lie having a five pound cute little fluffball In you know on your shoulder when you wake up is is not the most horrible experience. So we weren't upset about it But the only issue then is if you have a pushy dog that does that then when it's 50 pounds And it's not as cute and fun anymore
38:56So my advice is always if you don't want them to do that as an adult, don't let them do it as a puppy. Yeah, we lucked out because she's very good now about not jumping on us on our bed in the morning. She doesn't have to. She's asleep when I get up at 5 a.m. So she doesn't have to come yell at me. If she's yelling at me, if she's jumping on me in the middle of the night, something is very wrong. Yeah, well good. I'm glad that she's worked out for you.
39:27Yeah, she's fantastic. Like, the minute I found out what you do, I was like, oh my god, another person who loves Australian Shepherds probably more than I do. We have 10, so it's a little bit of a bias at this point. Uh-huh. If I could have 10, I would have 10, but number one, that's a lot of dogs, and number two, I can't afford to feed them.
39:53So we don't have that. We feed them partially from the homestead. So that helps a lot. Yeah. Yup. I can't imagine having 10. Like, Maggie is one. And she's so loud when she's watchdogging that I can't imagine having five of them barking at the same time. It would kill me. Yeah. It does take a lot of training.
40:19And it takes a lot of management, but that's where, like, especially with having 10, if I, and these dogs are smart enough. So if I say, Hey, if you do that one more time, you're going up. That's, that's all I need to say in order for them to be like, okay, I'll stop doing that. Um, and we will board friends and families dogs. And so we might have 15, 16 dogs at a time, but
40:46Honestly, like having 10 feels like most people's five. Like if we had different breeds of dogs and we had five dogs, that's what our 10 Australian shepherds feel like because they just, you know, like you said, they want to be wherever their people are. And so we have 10 dogs that love to be wherever we are. So it doesn't seem like a lot of dogs. Yeah. The, the friend that we got Maggie from warned us that they are Velcro dogs.
41:13And I didn't quite understand how serious she meant that because Maggie hates not being with us. Like, we'll let her out of the house on her lead. We live on a very busy road, so she does not have the run of the property without being tied because she would end up dead and that is not a good ending for her. But if she's outside by herself, she kind of goes and checks out the cats if they're out there. She goes potty.
41:39She's out for maybe five ten minutes by herself and she is right back up on the steps doing the bark that lets us know That she misses us and wants to come in because we're in the house So yeah, they're very Their people centered. They don't want to be with other people. They want to be with their family
42:00or at least in our case. So what do you love best about these dogs? Because clearly you love them, but what's your favorite thing about the Australian Shepherd? Honestly, their goofiness and the companionship that they give. They just, there's not a single day that goes by where they don't make us laugh. But then also like their intuition.
42:28with us in different situations. You know, that's one of the things I talk about in my book is just how smart these dogs are that they learn the routine of everything. So that's what makes them such a great working dog is they go, well, that's out of place, that needs to go back up. And you know, being so in tune with their people, you know, when we have like a sad day.
42:57they give us a lot more attention and they really want to help cheer us up. Obviously, having livestock, you have dead stock sometimes and I'm the emotional person and so all of our dogs will come and just push themselves under my arm so that I am focused more on them and give them more attention. But then also just...
43:25if there's something going wrong, like they try their hardest to figure out how they can help make it better. And I just, I really appreciate that, you know, and when, when you're homesteading, when you're farming, it can be a very lonely thing. It's hard to find people that have the same interests, have the same passions as you that live next door, you know? So most of our friends are at least an hour, hour and a half away. And
43:56it can get kind of lonely. And so it's nice to have such smart dogs that want to be wherever we are doing what we're doing and have just that companionship. Because you know, they're smart enough dogs, you can have a full conversation with them and they understand. Yes, and they will have conversations with you too. I did not know that dogs can actually talk to you with their body language and their faces and their movements.
44:26until we got Maggie. Oh yeah. And Austrian Shepherd, they're not subtle about it. She... No, no, and she... I keep trying to explain this to people, and people who don't know this breed do not quite understand it, but Maggie has these head tilts that she does when we are talking to her, where you can just see she's trying to pick out the words that she knows, and the minute she hears one that she
44:55the head comes back up because you're like, oh, that's not an important word. But if she hears treat or she hears frisbee or she hears dad, because she loves my husband, my husband is dead. Her head just goes aside like, yes, I'm listening. And there's a routine at dinnertime because we refused to have a dog that begged for people food. And so the routine at dinnertime is that she gets her food, she gets water.
45:21And then we eat our dinner, she eats her dinner, so she's not interested in what we're eating. And then when we're done, our vet recommended we put her on a joint support supplement because her legs are short, because she's small. And these dogs have issues with their joints. And it's all good stuff, it's all natural. And I've read the label, I'm very cool with giving her this stuff. And so she gets half. Which is so interesting, because for a three-year-old dog, I wouldn't.
45:49anticipate putting her on a joint supplement at that age? She had, she hurt herself at like nine, ten months. I do not know how it happened but she was holding her back leg up and we of course panicked and took her to the vet because you know we're new puppy owners and the vet said that because she's, she's got short legs and a fairly substantial body and she's not fat.
46:16but she's real solid that she was concerned about a joint issue or a congenital joint issue I guess and that these joint support supplements tend to help. And I was like, is it going to hurt her to give them to her? She said no. I said, is it going to hurt her to not give them to her? And she said no. And I said, okay, well, let's give these to her and see if it helps. And she was back to normal in a week. So she was fine.
46:46But I figured that the ingredients aren't gonna hurt her and they're actually gonna help her because I know what they are and know what they do. So she gets half of one of these tablets after dinner and she gets her dental life for her teeth to keep her teeth clean. Because she's not chewing on bones, she's not doing that. And so she knows that she gets these things after she eats her dinner. And if we are busy, she is right under the cabinet where her joint support supplement tablets are.
47:15and she's just sitting there prettily waiting. And then as soon as she gets that, she goes right to the pantry closet door and sits and waits so she gets her dental aid. They are so directed by routine, it is crazy. And obviously you have a routine on your farm, they are working dogs, but they are just in general, routine driven animals.
47:37Yeah. Definitely. And with as many as we have, I always say that dogs are also better not knowing the true routine. So like being unpredictable can also be beneficial for dogs like this. Like the routine is the same with the chores. But life in general, you know, my dogs don't know what the usual routine is because our life is not the same routine every day.
48:06Yeah, but if you do have a routine, they pick it up really quickly. It's frightening. So anyway, I could literally talk with you all day about your dogs and about Maggie. I, we could be here till midnight tonight, but that's not going to happen. Jordan, I am so happy that you took the time to talk with me. And I know we didn't get real in depth, but I mostly just wanted to, to talk about the
48:32how great it is to have these dogs because they are fabulous and I think we covered that. So absolutely. All right. And if you guys want more information about the actual ins and outs and the details of the working dog part, go listen to Jordan's interview with Jill, what is Jill Winger because it is really good. I'll put it in the show notes.
49:00If there's anything else that you have questions about, you can go to our website. It's just work We also have a YouTube channel and then we're on Facebook and Instagram as well. Awesome. I will put that in the show notes too and that way people don't have to try to remember it from the last part of the interview. All right, Jordyn, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day. You too.
 
 

Thunder Ridge Ranch

Today I'm talking with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Ranch.
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 chatting with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Farm Ranch. Good morning, you guys. Good morning. How are you? We are well and yourself? I'm good. You're in Kentucky? Eastern Kentucky. Yes, ma'am. Awesome.
00:28I have never been and I've talked to a lot of people there and I feel like I should make a trip someday because it sounds really pretty. The site certainly has a lot to offer. Yeah. So, tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. Well, we are a military family. I spent three years in the military. A year of that I spent away from my family overseas in Afghanistan. Got back and things just didn't quite seem right.
00:57which kind of led me down a series of rabbit holes and kind of pushed us as a family towards a bit in a sense self-sufficiency and whatnot and that that path itself has kind of led us to more of a community sufficiency mindset and so we really wanted to
01:20be able to provide our own food and make sure that everything that we're eating was whole and good for us and none of the toxins that you find in a lot of foods that you find on the market shelves these days.
01:35Awesome. So number one, thank you for your service. I'm sorry that you got injured in Afghanistan. That sucks. And without getting both of us in trouble, what kinds of things did you notice when you got back? It just, it just didn't feel, it almost felt like a prank. It didn't really feel like the States. It felt like we had landed somewhere else and it was some sort of a test. Just, I guess because I had spent the year away.
02:05coming back, the atmosphere was noticeably different. It felt darker, it didn't feel like the free, happy place that it used to be. And then I started realizing that we've been under a lot of propaganda and indoctrination, just to put it as loosely as I can, without like saying that's in trouble. Yes, thank you.
02:31I really want to know more but I don't want to get into it on the podcast because I have this awful feeling that it would not go well for either of us. Okay. So yeah, obviously growing things yourself and raising animals yourself, you have control. You know what you're putting on your produce or in your dirt or feeding your animals. So yay, that's a good thing. So what do you raise?
03:02We started off in 2021 with 10 chickens. And as you know, chicken math. So we now have over 50 or 60 birds now we've kind of lost count. 2022 we added in a honeybee hive. We're now up to three. And we also added heritage breed turkeys. And then
03:30Let's see, that would have to 2022, 2023. 2023, we focused more on clearing up the land and preparing it for a lot for bigger livestock. And then 2024 this year, we added ducks, quail, hay sheep and pasture pigs. Very nice. We had friends over yesterday and
03:59They were talking about how they're going to be getting some poultry birds Next spring and they're talking about it and out of the blue They're like do you guys want to go in with us on it and we can keep them at our house and you guys can Come over in Butcher and once time and we all win and I was like yes, that would be amazing Cuz I don't I don't want to deal with poultry not poultry birds. I'm sorry meat birds. I said it wrong
04:25But I don't want to deal with meat birds at our place. We don't have a lot of room, but they have more room than we do. So if you can do it all yourself on your property, that's great. But the other thing that works is collaboration with like-minded people. Absolutely. And that's where that community sufficiency kind of kicks in is working as a community to work towards common goals and everybody wins as a result. Yeah.
04:51We gave them a whole bunch of stuff last summer from our garden for their goats because goats love leftover stuff from the garden.
05:03Absolutely. So that's one thing that we do is take our fresh scraps and feed them to the hogs. And sometimes the sheep will get some as you know, let's say for the sheep. And we like to try and garden extra produce that isn't necessarily for us to eat, but is good for the chickens or for the sheep or the pigs. We like researching what's good for them, what are the benefits of everything and
05:32On that note, we've also studied just the plants and whatnot that are on our property and we're still learning this kind of lifestyle. We were always learning. Once you stop learning, you stop growing. Yes. So we've tried to really learn about what is around us. How many different ways can we use it? What's the benefit of it? Is there a benefit of it or is it something that we can get rid of and focus on more important things?
06:02Yeah, so is this an all day, every day kind of thing for you guys? More or less, I'm medically retired. So I'm basically, I was home with the kids and we homeschooled them as well. So they're usually done about this time. And then they have the rest of the day to play, take care of chores and help out around the farm. The wife, she recently...
06:28was able to step down this year down to three days a week. So that's been a huge blessing. That brings her home now four days of the week to help out on the farm. So we've been able to do a lot more this year than years past. But that's exactly what we're working for is just basically living on the farm, working on the farm, and helping up the community and then just taking care of our basic needs. Wonderful. I love that.
06:57Um, so were you interested in this lifestyle before you went into the military? Uh, actually not. Um, I grew up out in the country. Um, my parents were bird farmers. Uh, my wife, uh, she grew up, uh, she, she was born in, in, uh, in Idaho and her parents raised, uh, horses, cattle, pigs, uh, chicken, her grandmother garden. Uh, my mom tried to garden. She did not have the green thumb.
07:28And then my parents and I used to play through a different live, or excuse me, poultry. So we both kind of grew up with the lifestyle. But as far as wanting a farm, my wife always wanted cows ever since I first met her. I was, me growing up, I was told my mom, I'm not a country boy. I met for the city. And so the first thing I did was I moved out and about a month after I graduated high school, I moved up to Denver, Colorado. And.
07:57started going to college up there and started doing the same thing and very quickly found out that I'm not, I can survive in the city. I'm definitely not a city boy. So I've also moved to smaller and smaller communities and then now being at the military and having a little bit more freedom to kind of do what we wanted to do. We've kind of just kind of navigated down to this path, especially with the in mind of the rabbit holes I mentioned earlier.
08:27Yes. Okay. Jenea, I'm right there with you about cows. I freaking love cows. Me too. I think that they are adorable, number one, especially the calves. We call them grass puppies here because they're, they look like little dogs out in the field in springtime. And I, I like, I really like milk. I like milk to drink. I like milk for what we can make out of it. I would love to have a cow, but we don't have room for one. So.
08:56right there with you on the loving cows thing.
09:00That's one thing I don't know if you wrote too much notice in our logo or not. That's 1 animal that we have on our logo that we haven't quite attained yet is the cow. 1 of the cows we're interested in getting is the silence. And then we would also like to have a product of Jersey or just any kind of breed.
09:22Yes, for butter and cheese and yogurt. Oh my God, and ice cream? Yes. One animal we thought we would never want or have interest in is actually goat. However, we are actually considering adding goat to the farm as well. For the milk itself, you can make cheeses and whatnot from that, but our main focus of why would we want the goat is for their milk to make.
09:52homemade soaps. Yes, have you done it before? We have not done it before but we do have a really good friend who's got a couple two three or so years experience in it and she's given us that note note note note charge just graciously and generously given us all the information that we need to and continue to support once we once we go down and navigate that road.
10:20We do know we want to do it with beef tallow, the goats milk, and then we have a wood stove we burn in the winter and we'll burn just hardwood in the wood stove, you know, when we burn the hardwoods. And then we'll take that ash and we're collecting it right now so that once we get started, we can make our own lye using that ash. Awesome.
10:49cold process lye soap yet. I'm going to give you a couple hints because we make it. Number one, be really careful because lye hurts when it gets on your skin. So pay attention because it does sting like crazy and it can really, really hurt you if you're not careful. Goggles are a great thing so it doesn't splash up into your eyes. And if, God forbid, your soap seizes, we've had our soap seize like twice when we're stirring it, which basically it
11:19clumpy and it doesn't stir anymore and it will not become the soap you want. You can melt it down and keep going but it's kind of a pain in the butt. So you got to make a choice whether you want to deal with the pain in the butt part of it or you just want to toss that batch and start again. So those are my hints for you guys for soap making. Thank you. We appreciate that. Yeah and I love our soap. Homemade soap is the best soap ever.
11:48It's really... We've grown to love it. It's basically the only soap that we use throughout the house. We have goat milk and beef towel soap, stays in all the sinks. It's all that we use in the showers and the tub, even for our youngest. That was one thing that we were really shocked to kind of experience. We had our youngest, and we would experience where she would eat foods with say like red 40 in it.
12:16and she would just be off the wall for 24 or 48 hours. And then we leaned her off of that and we stopped buying anything that had the dyes in it. And then every other day we would notice that she would spike back up and do the same thing all over. And we're like, we took all the foods out. I don't understand why this is happening. And then one day the wife was bathing her in the tub and she just happened to turn the children's body wash.
12:43over and read the ingredients and there was red Florida Lake right there on the back. And we were just astounded that you know it's not just it's not just the foods but they're putting it in just about everything. Yeah, there's bad stuff in everything unless you make it yourself and and you got to make sure the ingredients you're you're getting if you have to buy ingredients that you didn't make you got to make sure they don't have bad stuff in them too. Right. So.
13:13It sucks. I don't have a ton of allergies. It does, but at the same time, it's not being able to return to the roots.
13:23I'm sorry, you blanked out there. Say it again. I was just saying, what did I say now? It's a real blessing in a sense, you know, it does suck, but it's also a blessing that we're able to return to our roots and kind of live like our ancestors. Oh, for sure, yes, absolutely. If we didn't have the old fashioned alternatives, I don't know what a lot of people would be doing. Exactly.
13:54So I'm right there with you. You're preaching to the choir this morning. So, I'm trying to think. Did you know that you can use the tallow to make bombs for your dry skin too? We did. There's actually, there's quite a few different things that you can do with the beef tallow. And then likewise with, since we have the honeybees, we can use the wax for a lot of stuff as well for the bombs and sands and. Yeah.
14:23All sorts of candles, all sorts of different things that we can. Yeah, you just got to do research and dive in and be ready to explore and learn new things.
14:39Yeah, and you got to have time and it sounds like you have time. So that's a blessing right there. Yes. That's the problem that everybody has is either everybody has time, but they don't have the money or they have the money and they don't have the time. Yeah. Understand where we're at that point too here because my husband had last summer off, he quit his old job and was looking for a new job and we got so many things accomplished last summer and then discovered that.
15:08what we were doing wasn't gonna support us enough, so he had to go back to work. And we haven't gotten as many things accomplished this summer as we did last summer, so we're trying to figure out how to make this place work better and more efficiently so that he can go back to not having a jobby job. Because jobby jobs suck your time, suck your soul, and it's a necessary evil right now, but we're trying to figure out how to make it an unnecessary evil, like he doesn't have to keep doing it.
15:39Yeah, that's the struggle that we all face. We're very blessed in the fact that I am disabled and I do draw the check from the VA. It is of course, it is a negative, but at the same time, I'm still able to do some things. It might take me longer to do it than what it would otherwise take me at this age, but it's a blessing to have that income so that the wife can afford to step back from working a real job.
16:09and we can all work together on the farm. And we've also, this year was our first year with the farmers market, and that's helping out a good deal as well. Obviously we're not getting rich at the farmers market, but it is additional income, and it's the first year that we're actually generating income from the farm. So that's been a real incredible experience this year as we continue to move forward. Do you enjoy doing the farmers market?
16:38We do. We like, you get some random people, you know, throughout the summer, but you do get your regulars and you see the consistent people who are coming week by week or every other week or whatever they might be doing. And you build these relationships with these people and you get to know them some. Then, of course, there's the vendors that you work with as well. And so you're forming all these, you know, these relationships with them. And then, you know, you can learn.
17:07all sorts of different tips and tricks of the trade from people that have been doing it longer or maybe even some from some that just got into it, but they've had a different perspective and a different walk that's revealed to them things that even people that have been going at it for a few years like ourselves haven't experienced. So we can all learn something from each other. Yes, that's the beauty of having reasonable human beings in your life who want to know you and wants to want to share their experience with you.
17:38Absolutely. Okay, so what's your favorite thing about your branch? What do you love the best?
17:53Um, there's so much to pick from this. It's really hard to narrow it down to just one. Okay.
18:03Um...
18:10I guess I would say that the beauty of the land that we've been blessed to live on, we have a beautiful 24 acres, basically rolling hills. We live basically on the top of a ridge and the property kind of rolls down towards the bottoms and so we have at the very, not the very bottom, but towards the very bottom in the back 40, we got a spot we like to call the low aces and we have a little waterfall and a little spot where the water pools above the slate.
18:39And the kids really love it in the summer. They can splash around and cool off in the winter. They pull the icicles off from the rock wall. So that's one thing that we really enjoy. It's a real peaceful and serene environment. I would say for number two, we also have a sawmill and I would say that's probably our second favorite thing here on the farm is.
19:09just the ability to drop trees and then throw it on a piece of machinery and turn it into lumber that we can use to craft building, bridges. I built a toy box. On the agenda is to build the kids a new bunk bed, and we're also discussing even building ourselves our own couch. So just really neat to be able to have these kind of technological advantages and tools to provide.
19:39for ourselves and then we can even use it just as much for ourselves. We can use it for our community and our friends and neighbors.
19:50Yeah, it's really funny. My husband and I needed some small cabinets for our laundry room in the old house that we lived in. And I had been asking him for months and months and months if we could build cabinets and put them up on the walls. And he was very much dragging his feet on building these cabinets. And after about six months, I said, why do you not want to build cabinets? And he said, I'm afraid I'm not gonna get them square. That was what was holding him back. And I said, okay.
20:19I said, I'm going to help you. I said, you figure out what size you need, you get the pieces cut and I will help you build them. And he was really, really anxious about building these cabinets. And he finally got the first one built and he did the diagonal across the corn from the corners with the measuring tape. And he his shoulders came down, he blew out his breath and he said, I'll be damned. And I said, what he said, it is completely square. I said, see.
20:48I knew we could do it. And it was just so fun because he was so worried about screwing it up. And when it came out right, then we were at it for another two weekends, making the rest of the cabinets, cause we knew we could do it. I can actually relate with that. Um, 2016, two homes ago, uh, we got ourselves into ducks and we, we went down to Lowe's and we bought Tiva floors and we bought plywood and
21:18we put ourselves together a very crude duck cut. And we've gone back since then and tried to pull up pictures or videos or something to show people just how atrocious it was. But apparently it's so bad that we didn't even want to take any sort of video or photographic evidence of it. Since then, I've had a lot of people throughout, you know, over the years in and out, I've had people kind of give me their...
21:46Share knowledge with me and teaching me how to properly build with woodworking because I've never done that in high school I had woodworking or I could do metal shop and I decided I wanted to learn how to weld So I never had any woodworking experience so I've been blessed to have people my life who were in the industry and could teach me different tidbits and so from that I was able to build a Chicken coop and it wasn't perfectly square. But for a chicken coop it doesn't really have to be
22:16I got it down to, I think it was about a quarter of an inch off square. But that was a very big accomplishment for us. Yeah. And it seems so simple, but it's, it isn't, it isn't. There's, there's a whole science and geometry that goes behind building things. I'm terrible at it. Like the only thing I did with those cabinets was helped, helped him hold the pieces of wood so he could screw them together. That's the only help. But.
22:44I was also the biggest cheerleader and the encourager that he could do it.
22:50And that makes a big difference as well. Just having the support. Yeah, and I really needed cabinets for my laundry room. So I was like, I'm gonna cheer him on until this happens.
23:02So it worked out great. And the other thing that's interesting about my husband is he's really good at woodworking and always has been. He was just worried about this particular project. He's also a really good baker. He made homemade cinnamon rolls yesterday morning and oh my sweet Jesus, they were so good. I picked exactly the right man for me because he can build a cabinet and he can make cinnamon rolls. It's perfect.
23:30Vinny is the baker between us. She's really phenomenal. There's not a whole lot that she can't bake. Was it this year, last year he started into the sourdough? Last year. Last year she started out with the sourdough and she's getting it down pretty good now. She'll even make it around Thanksgiving time. She'll make a sourdough bread but it would be shaped like a roasted turkey. All fun.
23:57And then throughout the years, I'm a big cheesecake fan. That's kind of how she stole my heart. So ever since then, most families, they'll do like a birthday cake. Well, in our family, for the most part, we do cheesecakes. And so over these years, we've been married for coming on 13 years now. She asked me what kind of cheesecake do I want? And I'm like, okay, well, what cheesecake can I stumble with this year? And I've yet to be been able to do that.
24:27Uh-huh, I love cheesecake. I don't make it very often because it's very fattening and I don't want to eat a lot of it. But I love cheesecake. And people think that cheesecake is really hard to make. I bet Janaye doesn't think that cheesecake is hard to make.
24:47No, no, it's not that hard. I love that you can just get really creative with them and you can make all sorts of flavors with them and it's fun. It's like a blank canvas. You can just go crazy for it. You can do a bunch of different kinds of fruits or make them really decadent and rich or anything you want. Yeah. Janaye, do you have a favorite flavor for cheesecake you want to eat? My favorite is key lime.
25:16I like, I'm not like him. He loves like this for his birthday this year. He wanted a Swiss roll cheesecake. He likes that sweet rich. And I'm like, no, I love a lot of fruit and citrus. I'm more, you know, not, I'm not the big, the sweet tooth like he has. Yeah. My two favorites are raspberry or lemon cheesecake.
25:38Those are good ones. Yeah, that was probably the first one that she made I had her make a white chocolate swirl raspberry cheesecake was either my first or second one that I requested first one Yeah, baby. That's a good one Okay, so you had mentioned something in that string about food and I can't remember what I was gonna ask you I Had a question then you brought cheesecake and I was gone on cheesecake So
26:07So what's the future look like? You guys just are gonna keep growing and trying to be more and more self sustainable until you don't have to go to a grocery store ever again? Yeah, that's the plan. It's already getting pretty sparse when we go down to the grocery store. If we were spending the same, what we were, if we were buying the same things that we were buying even two years ago, it would easily be a $400 trip every week with the way that the prices have risen.
26:34Fortunately, we've been able to put ourselves in a point where we can raise a lot of our own food, support other farmers that are local to kind of offset that cost some. But that is the goal is raising our own food, being able to provide for a community as well, not just not just being greedy about it and keeping it all for ourselves, but we want to help the community. I actually run a Facebook group.
27:03four homesteaders, family farms, and off-gridders here in Kentucky. And we call ourselves the Kentucky Homestead Coalition. And what we do with that is we just try and motivate and help and share on everybody and just kind of help people. People learn how to live in this lifestyle. You know, I need help with my chickens. I've never done chickens before. Okay. Well, this is what you need to know. Or, you know, what exactly are you struggling with? And then we can work with them in that manner.
27:33We have people that have been, we have multi-generation farmers in our group, and we have people that they've just left the city, they've never done anything like this before, their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, well maybe not great grandparents, but you know what I mean, their family for the longest time, they've always just been in the city, and so they're just absolutely disconnected from the lifestyle, and so they're all just brand new, learning everything.
28:03So we have everybody from all sorts of walks of life and different stages of experience working together and helping everybody else learn and grow strong and create these relationships. We encourage building local networks just within everybody's counties. And we highlight community sufficiency, especially by means of a broadening and trading. You might not.
28:32feel like you have something, but even time is a valuable asset. Yeah, time and energy to contribute to a project.
28:43So we try and just kind of motivate everybody and build everybody up and teach everyone that even though you wanna have this idea of self-sufficiency, you can't truly be self-sufficient. We all need each other at the end of the day. For example, we might have a really bad year for let's just say corn. Our corn didn't do so well, but we are swimming up to the ears in potatoes. Well, our neighbor down the street
29:13He might not have had the same luck with his potatoes. And he's just up to his ears in corn. Well, now we can take from our excess and trade, and now we're good with corn and taters as is our name. And we're both strong as a result of it. Yes, absolutely. We're doing the same thing with the garden that we grow and our friends that are gonna let us have the meat chickens next summer with them.
29:39So yeah, anything you can do that benefits each other is fantastic. It's a great way to run your life. Absolutely agree. All right, so Sven and Jania, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost there. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Absolutely, it was really fun. Have a great day. You do the same. All right.
 

Aunt Katie's Community Garden

Today I'm talking with Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden.
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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 Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden. Good morning, Orran. How are you? Good morning. Glad to be here. Good. Tell me all about Aunt Katie's Community Garden.
00:26Okay. Um, so and Katie's community garden was started about 15 years ago by my director, um, Mr. Michael Jackson. Um, he was a lobbyist for, um, non-smoking designated areas, um, back when that was a big column issue. And so after being kicked down from passing these bills, he, he, he, he transitioned into.
00:55healthy living. And so that started a community garden, which was named after a childhood lady of the neighborhood, Aunt Katie. So he created the garden, started with a few raised beds. And over time, the community kicked in. He got donations, funding to build out the garden, starting with a small greenhouse.
01:26100 beds and five high tunnel houses. So that's kind of a brief history of the community garden. Okay. I'm really excited that you were willing to chat with me this morning because I'm really trying to find all the different places that help communities have good food for them to have access to and I've decided on making it my mission to find somebody like you.
01:56in every state before the end of 2025 to talk to. That's awesome. Yep. Because people need to know where to find food. It's the inflation prices have been so bad that people are starving. People who shouldn't be starving are starving. Yes. Um, that's, so that's one of the main, um, focuses of the garden is to grow nutrient dense vegetables. Um,
02:25I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but the things you get off the shelf are pretty subpar when it comes to nutritional value. So what we grow using our compost, our special compost mix, it allows us to have a lettuce or a leafy green that tastes the way it's supposed to taste and also gives you that nutritional value that we all need in order to, you know, health of your living. So
02:54That's our main focus is growing top, you know, top-notch vegetables. And the public, they really, they really grasp onto the concept, especially during COVID. So, you know, we got people, we got people who you never think eating bok choy. Now bok choy is a popular plant that we grow. And so, you know, during the off season, everybody's, when's the bok choy coming? So it makes me excited that we can.
03:22you know, change people's taste palates and have them eat more healthier. Absolutely. So you're in Alabama. Where are you in Alabama? Um, we're in, we're in Dothan, Alabama. It's, um, South, Southeast, um, the very bottom of the, of the state. What's the nearest big city to you? Uh, Montgomery, we're about, uh, two and a half, two and a half, three hours from Montgomery. Um.
03:50four hours from Birmingham and five hours from Huntsville. Okay, so do you know if any of the big cities in Alabama have anything like what you're doing? Absolutely, so me starting my work at the garden, it's a pretty cool story, I can tell you that, but I'll go into, so what I do now that I'm a director at a community garden, everywhere I go before I...
04:19arrive, I look up community gardens and I either call or drop in and try to do a tour just to see what these different parts of the state have going on. And of course, I'm from Huntsville originally, so we do have two great community gardens, which one is Oakwood. It's a college. They have a great, great community garden and they also have a grocery store.
04:46which is very state of the art. I love it. It has self checkout. It's very small, but it's really neat. You should check that one out. And also my alma mater, Alabama A&M, they're starting their community garden process. So it's exciting to see and exciting to, you know, come back around to what I started and then see it. You know, now I see community gardens everywhere.
05:15Okay. So how did, okay. What does aunt Katie's community garden do? Is it that you guys grow food for the community or is the community coming in and growing food at the community garden? Okay. So what we do is kind of multilayered. Um, I think I have a diagram that I drew. So it's like a, it's like a three-legged stool and one is
05:42Nutritional education and outreach to the community. That's from kids to adults. That's one part the second part is community gardening Which allows people to come in and grow and learn how to grow and we have bed subscriptions so people can subscribe to a bed for a year and they can either work their bed or We'll do it for them and at the end when it's harvest time we can we'll reach out and say hey you can come pick up
06:12a basket or sometimes they just, they give it away to somebody else, which is the other part. And then one of our new things since I came on board is we do value-added product production. So I make like 13 different products. When I arrived at the garden, I just saw this food, food, food. And so I began making
06:41hot sauce, Verde sauce, I make lip balm, I make hibiscus tea, I make all these different value added products. And they just gained popularity and it began, people started requesting it and coming and I was selling out, you know, like in two days, I will make, you know, six, seven cases of hot sauce and they'll sell out in two or three days. So I was like, man, I'm really onto something, so.
07:08That's leading us to work on a future processing center where we can have more capacity to produce, but that's the three things that we really focus on. Okay. So when you say people buy us or get a subscription, do they buy a subscription to the plot? Yes, ma'am. We have corporate sponsorship and then sponsorship for, you know, just individuals.
07:36families with two different price points, but that's the way we do it. And we also offer discounts to people with EBT. They get like a, I want to say 50% discount. So people with EBT can also subscribe. So the subscription, Camp Talk, is not a bar to people being able to do this. People who aren't.
08:05Flush with cash can still subscribe to be part of this. Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome, I'm so excited. I love it when people come up. Different what's up.
08:18Go ahead. Yeah. Different walks of different, different, um, walks of life. Come to the garden and you know, there's elderly people, um, where lady comes, she'll say, what can I get for $5? And I'll say, Hey, just give me, give me the five. I'll hook you up. Um, and you know, I always give a little bit extra love. That's just the way we do it at the garden. Yes.
08:42Extra love is the best thing ever and I get it because we ran a CSA subscription for three years from our farm to market garden and we always threw in extra stuff because we were like People want it and we have it and it's just gonna go to the chickens if we don't share it with the family So why not just why not add some to the to the box? Yes, and so we're
09:09We're focused on upcycling food, so nothing goes to waste. And like we do, I do have chicken farmers that we give our scraps to, but I also have a couple of restaurants that we bought or in exchange. I work with a pizza shop and they buy from us, but they also, if we have a load of peppers, I know it's a chef life, it's a window. So I say, hey, can y'all use some jalapenos this week?
09:39They'll say, yep, we won't order from the truck. We'll order from you. And that offsets the cost for that week, just whatever they're spending on that, we're giving them a greater market value. And also I noticed they always give us praise, like, oh, these bell peppers lasted so long. The ones that came from the truck were already starting to rot and we got them. So we really appreciate the quality.
10:08There's a big difference from picking from the garden and going directly to the restaurant. Um, you get a longer shelf life, you get a better quality, better taste, um, all of those, you know, points from that. Yes. It's amazing how the stuff from the garden, the produce from the garden lasts longer, but if you make homemade bread, homemade bread doesn't last as long as store bought bread because store bought bread has conservatives and stuff in it.
10:37Yes, that, that, that, um, but once, once you, once your program, the other way, um, working at the garden, it, you know, I, I don't, I see differently. So when I go into a grocery store, I, uh, I kind of, I kind of skim past the produce section on different from certain times of the year. I really know I do check the quality sometimes and compare, but now that I'm eating
11:05you know, from the garden, it's a lot more, I don't rely on it as much and it feels better because you don't have to accept what they give you.
11:19Yeah. Um, so do you, do you actually feel better? Do you feel healthier eating from the garden? Absolutely. Um, so I'm, I'm, I was a healthy eater anyway, and I also grew my own things in the backyard. So, um, part of, you know, you have to be, you have to represent what you're doing. You know, you wouldn't sell a product if you didn't use it. So, um,
11:47I'm always cooking at the garden, doing pots of soup, you know, making fancy salads, pickles and whatever. And I eat, I eat that daily. So it's, it's a part of my lifestyle. It keeps me going. And, um, we have a lot of people that come in with health issues and they begin to eat better and feel better. So I'm a, I'm a testament of that. It works eating healthy and cutting the meat out a little bit. Um, during the week I do, you know,
12:16three, four days, no meat. And then, you know, on the weekends, I'll have a barbecue or something, but I try to do everything in moderation. Yes, absolutely. So how many people do you think that Aunt Katie's Community Garden has helped since it started? That's a great question because I was thinking about that last night. I think she made... So we serve thousands of people.
12:46Um, I did have a number of the pounds of vegetables. I don't have it right with me, but like, like on an average day, you know, 10 to 20 people coming by yesterday, probably, probably more like 30, 40. Um, so, you know, so on a yearly basis, I think we serve, you know, thousands, we serve, you know, we're in a, we're in a, we're in a low income community. So we serve all those people.
13:15And then we serve the people outside of that area, all walks of life. So it's, you know, it's up in the thousands.
13:26Yeah. Do you guys donate any of the produce to food shelves or anything like that? Absolutely. We, um, we donate, we donate to the food bank. Um, we also have a free days where people can come and pick. We have church groups and, um, boys and girls clubs and different nonprofit organizations. Um, we give them a day where they can come, they come help us, um, finish projects.
13:56weed beds, clean up and organize our seed houses. And then in exchange, they get to pick whatever they want, pick a basket of produce. Fantastic. So I feel like the whole thing is your favorite thing about Aunt Katie's community garden. But do you have a favorite story that you could share about it? So yeah, I love to tell.
14:26the story of how I found the garden. So I was driving along, minding my own business and I kind of coasted by these raised beds because I was building my own raised beds and I saw like 40 or 50, I was like, what is this? And so screeched on the brakes, errr, backed up. So I parked crooked because I was like,
14:54I gotta see what this is. And I saw this lady in the garden, bending over, working. And so I ran towards her and was like, what is this? And she was like, welcome to NK this community garden. My name is Miss Belvie. She's the queen of the garden. So I was like, I grow vegetables, I'm a da da da. Just going on and on and on, talking fast. And she was like, yeah, we've been here for several years. And
15:23Um, this is what we do and and Katie, she was still alive then she looked at Katie lives over here and, um, so fast forward. So every Saturday I get up, I go to the garden and hound Ms. Bell via, uh, my tomatoes aren't producing. What am I doing wrong? And she's like, do you prone them? Like, no, I'm like, this is not growing. She's giving me so many tips. And so I know they were like,
15:51this guy, he's never gonna stop coming. So it was like I was stuck in the garden. And so about a year later, I got a call from the director. He was like, hey man, I need your help. You know, I'm going through some health issues. He's like, and I need somebody that is passionate about this, you think you could fill in? I said, sure, I'll do a couple of days a week, you know, volunteer, whatever. And it ended up turning into a position.
16:21He made me the deputy director and I've done, you know, so many, the garden is involved so much since then, um, not bragging about me, but you know, I, once I got in there, I just started putting in work, putting in work, creating new products, um, and then all my followers, people that, you know, in my network start coming, so it created a new influx of people too, as well. So that's the like.
16:50kind of my history of being involved with the garden. That's amazing. I love it. I am so excited for you. This is great. So do you guys do any classes? Do you teach people about produce and growing and stuff? We do. Yes, we do. We do greenhouse workshops. So people, so the high tunnels are becoming a new wave in
17:19our area, there's probably 80 plus that's been coming up in the past couple of years built by Mr. James Curaton. He's the builder. So they're popping up everywhere. The USDA is involved with assisting with the funding. So we have workshops where we come out and show people how to grow in those houses. We also show them how to grow in raised bed situations.
17:48We have cooking and canning classes. I did a pesto party class. It was just like a, I made pesto kits and we just blended up the basil and garlic and cashews and everybody made pesto. And then I showed them the different things you can dip, used pesto vegetables, you can dip in the pesto, pesto pasta, just different.
18:15The versatility of Pestos is great. I love Pestos. So, we do Pestos classes, we do herb classes. We do sound healing. Or we have an herbalist that does sound healing. So, in the greenhouse, we'll have a sound healing session. And it's the most amazing thing because you see people just so relaxed, tears streaming down their face. And when they done, it's like, oh my gosh, I feel so happy. Like,
18:44Sound healing is a great, it's a great, great session. I would encourage everyone to try to do a little sound healing. It's very, very relaxing and empowering. Wow. Okay, so you guys aren't just about food, you're about overall healing and help. Yes, ma'am. Oh my God, I just, I was so excited to get hold of you guys and now I'm even more excited because this is amazing.
19:17What you guys and yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Nope. Say what you're going to say. Oh, yeah. I wanted to also talk about, um, cause I'm an artist. I'm a, excuse me, my voice. Um, I'm a classically trained artist. Um, I've done, you know, painting, ceramics, pottery, all that kind of stuff. Um, as well as photography, but, um, last year. Well,
19:46Two years ago, I filled out for a grant, the Verde Art Grant, and I won. And I was so excited. So what I did, I did a project called Cultivating the Community. And what that entailed was I went out and did portraits of these people that were connected with me through the garden. Um, I didn't realize that until after the project was done, cause all these people I either met through the garden or they came.
20:16to see me at the garden. So I shot my friend Charlie and his wife there homesteaders. I shot a farmer. I shot Spencer our herbalist with his herbs. I did these black and white portraits and I did a greenhouse exhibit inside of one of our big tunnel houses. It was like one of the first that I've ever seen a art exhibit in a greenhouse and it was spectacular. It was so many people came.
20:46I had lo-fi music in the background. It was just a total vibe. I had some of the panes were suspended from the beams by wire. And so you could see just the panes were like kind of floating in the air and it was great. As an artist, it was like a form of completion for me. It made me feel like I finished the project and the public really enjoyed it. And I had it up for like a month. So it was great.
21:14It was great. It was time to garden in with my art. You are brilliant. And anytime you can bring creativity into a one focus thing, like, like growing plants is a one focus thing, but there's so many other things around it that you can bring in to get people's attention. Absolutely. Yeah. So even, even with growing, um, when I first started at the garden and it was trial and error,
21:44I begin to grow things that, because I'm an artist, so colorful things. So I discovered purple basil, which is beautiful. Thai basil, which is beautiful. Um, there's so many varieties of lettuce that I went crazy. I probably spent about $300 on seeds out of my own pocket. And. I.
22:11I was able to grow the specialty lettuces and I grew them in patterns in the greenhouse. So you got red, green, speckled, you know, like the frilly kind of lettuce. And it's just the textures and the variety in colors, it's art in itself. So I'll have to like inbox you some of the pictures of how it looked, but it's art. And people are like, this looks like you. I was like, thank you.
22:41So you can express yourself through growing too. Just step outside the norm and grow some rainbow beets. People love those. You slice and you see all these rings on the inside. It's pretty cool and artistic. Yeah, we grew the peppermint beets, the ones that are white and red on the inside. Yes. And we grew red romaine lettuce and we sold them at the farmer's market. And my husband kept telling me that people would be like,
23:11They're so beautiful. I've never seen this before. Yes. And they taste great. Um, there's, um, what, what are, what are, what's the newest thing? Um, it's the purple pea flower. Okay. Um, King tut beats. I mean, no King tut beans. So they're like the, they're like the, they're like the, um, snap, not snap, but the sugar snap peas.
23:38but they're purple on the outside and when you crack them, they're bright green on the inside. Those are beautiful and they taste good. They're good on charcuterie boards. And what's the other? Oh, there's a lettuce called flashy trout back. It's a red and green speckled lettuce with like broad leaves. It's one of our most popular lettuce varieties. People love it. It tastes good and it's great.
24:05in my spring mix. I do like a spring mix and those are some of my favorites right now. Well since you're an artist and I assume that you cook, there's so much artistry in cooking too. Oh yeah, I'm actually working on a cookbook. I have a lot of recipes I've been developing over the years and I finally sat down and made a list and categorized my recipes and
24:33I'm the resident chef at the Garden light. And I've done a few cooking shows, segments with another one of our local cooks, Mr. Woodall. And I also cook with, we have a chef named Chelsea Gisleman. She's a good friend of mine. She actually beat Alex Garnaschelli on the Food Network. Oh my. Yeah, right here in our hometown.
25:02She beat her on a food competition. So I'm really big on the chef scene. And I have a specialty pizza coming out September 23rd at Firestone Pizza. I developed a Jamaican jerk pizza with a Jamaican barbecue sauce. And it is phenomenal. We did the test run and I let the crew, all the chefs.
25:30in the restaurant, they try, they say, man, you, you, you knocked it out the park. So that'll be featured for Dolphin restaurant week and the proceeds from that dish will go back to the garden. So we're, we're working together, man. I'm so excited about, um, reaching out and locking arms with these community, you know, community businesses. You are a busy man and you completely understand networking and marketing.
25:58I'm so impressed. Thank you so much. So what's the, what's the future look like for this? Just, just keep growing. Yes. The future, the future is looking, um, I'm excited. So, um, I can, I can say we've the city and the CBDG grant. Um, they awarded us, um, some money.
26:26I'm not sure if I can say how much, but it's a nice piece of change. So my plan is to get those funds matched because I want this project to be completely funded and built out to completion. I don't want to piecemeal it. I want it to be so the future for Aunt Katie's is a commercial processing center with coolers, you know, shelf.
26:55places we can process and bag and cut our produce and put it in bags and jar it can it whatever we need to do and this processing center would also allow our small farmers to be able to use our facility to process their you know if they get a ton of tomatoes they can bring it to us and come use our kitchen maybe rent it maybe a small fee maybe not I don't know but this kitchen will be for the small farmers which we're
27:23deeply connected with, they'll have a place that they can process their food and eliminate a lot of waste. So that's coming soon. I wanna say, in the 2025, 2026, I'm hoping that'll be done. Wow.
27:46I am just blown away. I am so glad I got the chance to talk to you today, Oren. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me. I'll just, um, I'm just excited and, uh, I'm not a big talker, but when I talk about community gardening and what we're doing, I can, you know, freely speak with confidence about that type of thing. Any other subject I might be fumbling around, but this is a passion of mine. You can tell. And.
28:16Um, I just get worked up every time anybody that's interested wants to learn. I'm just here to talk about it. Awesome. I, it's so funny. When I started the podcast, I was like, I'm just going to talk to people who homestead and garden and make things and cook. And then I found out that there were all these topics adjacent to it. And I have met so many amazing people doing fantastic things that helped their community in the last year.
28:44And every time I talk to someone like you, I walk around just smiling all day long after, because I'm like, wow, there are amazing humans in the world still. Oh yeah. That's what I was talking to my friend, which he's a homestead of yesterday. And I w we were talking about, you know, the temperature of things today with the politics and all that type stuff. And I was like, but I said, people like me and you, we just, we're, we, we're living in our own kind of normal.
29:14quote unquote, we're just normal people that want to grow food, take care of our families and just be regular in my opinion. And it's really encouraging to see these across these platforms, you see all these people kind of like-minded that's doing the same thing, kind of just trying to make the earth a better, the earth, not just America or where we live, but the earth, trying to make the earth a better place to live.
29:43and take care and be just be kind to one another. And there's things that I can help you with. There's things you can help me with. So, you know, bartering is a big, it's a broad subject. We barter, you know, anything from goods to even just services or even just encouraging each other is bartering, you know, exchanging information is the same thing. So I'm real, I'm real confident that we as a people can, you know.
30:12keep this thing going, you know? Yeah, what a great way to end the episode today. Thank you, Orran, for your time so much today. I appreciate it and good luck in the future. Keep doing the good work. Oh, thank you so much. Have a great day.
 
 

WhoopsyDaisy Farm Followup - Benefits of Sheep's Milk

Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
If you order a copy of Rachel's book, The Guide to Homestead Dairy Sheep, she'll sign it for you!
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 Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. Again, because last time we were supposed to talk about her book and about sheep's milk, and we talked about everything but I think. Good morning Rachel, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good. You're in Kentucky, right?
00:29Yes. Okay. All right. So let's try this again. I would love to hear all about the benefits of sheep's milk. Awesome. Well, you know, a couple of years ago, even just talking about milk as a health food was really weird, you know, because there's been such a push in our culture against the benefits of dairy, you know, nut milks and other protein milks have really been pushed forward.
00:59If we return to a traditional source of our protein, a lot of us are seeing these autoimmune and chronic health issues are just kind of melting away. So there's groups like the Weston Price Foundation who've really pushed the benefit of raw milk especially. And with sheep's milk, pretty much everything that is beneficial about the cow and goat milk is in sheep's milk, but you multiply it by two or three.
01:26So it's as beneficial as all the other raw milks, just more so. Okay. So I have questions. Number one, how much milk can you get from one sheep in a day? Well, it depends. There's, there's a couple of different factors that play with the amount, you know, and it's the same thing with cows and goats too. So you, the factors are breed and feed predominantly.
01:55you know, there's some breeds of sheep that can give up to a gallon a day, especially the East Frisian sheep, which is like the whole steam of the sheep dairy world. But if you want to milk a non-dairy breed of sheep for, and there's a couple of reasons why you would want to do that. Sometimes you get as little as a cup of day, but usually more like a pint or a quarter a day. Okay. And I'm, I'm guessing that she, she being, uh-huh.
02:24milking a sheep is not a whole lot different than milking a goat. Correct. Sheep teats are more on the side of the udder. So I haven't actually milked a goat. I have milked a cow. We, we own a Jersey cow. And it's very different milking a sheep than it is a cow because cow teats are on the bottom of the udder. You're not moving the udder. You're just squeezing the teats and just collecting milk that's automatically pooling there. With a sheep, you actually kind of have to
02:51guide the teats and the udder toward the teats are facing whatever you're collecting the milk and if you're hand milking. Now they are starting to make attachments on mechanical milkers that will fit sheep. But if you can't find one specifically for sheep, you can use attachments for goats as well. And you know, sometimes there's a little bit of a difference in the udders there, but it's pretty compatible between goat and sheep. Okay. Now the next question I have, I don't even know how to ask it correctly, so bear with me.
03:21Cows give a metric butt ton of milk when you milk them and clearly sheep don't. So how does this become financially viable? Does it? Yeah, so gallon for gallon you're going to get more cheese out of sheep's milk than you are cow or goat. And there's a lot less waste. A lot of cheese makers.
03:47Traditionally, they raise pigs and the pigs would eat the whey and get fat off of it. Some homesteaders are starting to experiment with fermenting grains with the whey for like their chickens or pigs and that kind of thing. But for the most part, modern cheese makers just dump the whey. Either they discard it down a drain or, you know, some of the more creative ones will spray it on their fields as like a fertilizer probiotic. But I mean, there's not a lot of uses in our culture today for whey.
04:14And so having a milk where there's not a ton of that whey waste is, you know, appealing if you're going to do a cheese making enterprise. I mean, the other thing too, is that, you know, when my husband and I started off, we really didn't have a use for three to eight gallons of milk per day from our cow, which she doesn't give that much. But I mean, like if you have a dairy cow, like you're looking at gallons per day, not cups or quarts or whatever. So.
04:40To have a smaller amount of milk to play with and learn what to do with was really appealing for me. The other thing is that, you know, some people see this as a con. I saw it as a pro that my sheep will milk for only about six months in a year. So we had a six month break where we weren't milking every single day. And I mean, if you're in a commercial operation, that's not necessarily appealing, but if you're a homesteader and you want to like,
05:07go someplace for the holidays or you just don't want to go outside because it's nasty out, having that break can be appealing. Okay. There's a couple of things I want to ask and I'm going to forget, so I'm going to ask you to remind me the second one. The first one, tell me in layman's terms why sheep's milk is good for you to drink or eat in things.
05:30The second one is I think sheep's milk is really good in soaps and lotions. So if you could talk about that, if you know the answer to that too. Yeah. So the first benefit of sheep's milk is the fat. Sheep's milk has two to three times the amount of fat as cow or goat's milk. And the fat is actually differently shaped. It's smoother and it's smaller in shape, which means that minerals will pack more tightly to it.
06:00Like I said, it's a lot more smoother and so the smoothness factor is beneficial because if you have any kind of leaky gut issue, if you have any digestive issues, those smooth fat globules will actually go through your digestive tract easier and it will help repair your digestive tract as it goes through. The next thing is, did I say fat or proteins? Fat. Fat, okay.
06:27The protein in sheep's milk is A2A2, which if you're familiar with that, it's a specific kind of protein that is easier to digest than A1 proteins. But the sheep milk A2 protein is again, differently shaped and it's more, your body can assimilate it easier. They're studying a particular chemical in milk fat and I can't remember what it's called offhand.
06:53but they're finding that it's actually kind of toxic. And if you have too much of a buildup in it, your body can turn it into a radical, like a free radical and it causes issues. Sheep milk has that, but it's bound. And so it just passes right through your system. Whereas cow milk, it doesn't do that. And then sheep milk has the lowest amount of lactose of cow and goat milk. And so it's a lot more similar to human breast milk. The milk that has the
07:21lowest amount of lactose that is the most similar to human breast milk is actually camel milk. Which we've actually purchased camel milk in the past to help some gut healing stuff and it's like $100 a gallon. You can get it here in the United States and sheet milk is more like $40 a gallon. So if you need that kind of low lactose milk, it's a much more affordable version of it. And the low lactose basically means
07:49that it doesn't ferment very quickly. So a lot of people who say they are lactose intolerant, it's not that they're lactose intolerant, it's just they have sluggish digestion. And so as the milk is going through their digestive tract, those sugars are fermenting in their gut and the gas is a byproduct of the fermentation process. So like if you think of when you make sauerkraut or kombucha, like a lot of people say, burp your ferments, because you're letting that gas go out into the air. And when you have gas after eating,
08:19Milk, it's the same thing. It's just, you know, you're not opening a glass jar, you're farting or belching. So. Yes, exactly. You have a low lactose milk, you're getting all the benefits of the probiotics, the enzymes, the fats, the proteins, but it's not fermenting and then you're not embarrassing yourself if you're in public. And again, since it's ferment slower, it's doing a healing movement through your digestive tract. So.
08:48And then there's plenty of enzymes, there's probiotics that we're learning more and more, we just desperately need on a daily basis. So there's a study currently being done by an overseas university and they're finding that cow milk when it's raw will either contain or create betaine in your body and that's a digestive enzyme. And so it's a self-digesting food.
09:11Sheep milk actually contains more than enough to digest itself, so it's actually helping you digest other foods as well. So that's your crash course on sheep milk and digestion. Thank you. Okay. So I know that people use sheep's milk in soaps and lotions. I didn't forget. I knew I thought I would forget, but I didn't. So I'm assuming that it's really good for your skin too. Yeah. You know, with the human genome problem.
09:40project and discovering the microbiome and all that gobbledygook like we're we're realizing as a society more and more that not all germs are bad and we do need to have other beasties besides human cells playing with us nicely so you know when you're using antibacterial products all the time you're actually just destroying the the biota on your skin and so when you use a natural soap like sheep milk or goat milk that's made with natural products you're actually
10:10rebuilding that on your skin and it actually like lends itself to a more healthy immune system overall in your body. So you know there's that dynamic and again the fats are really absorbable. You know there's proteins, there's enzymes, there's sugars that your skin can just automatically take and assimilate so you have a healthier skin or healthier hair. Nice, okay.
10:37So if the sheep's milk has such a high fat content, does it make amazing ice cream? Oh yes. Yeah? Very, I mean that's sheep milk ice cream or sheep milk yogurt are typically the two entries people have to it as a food product. Okay, the reason I ask is I am not a huge ice cream fan, I never have been, but I like really good ice cream if I'm gonna eat it, the real smooth.
11:06I don't know, decadent ice cream. Yeah, I'm the same way. And they don't know if that's because the higher end ice creams use a higher fat content or if they put all kinds of things in it to make it do that. Well, there's a couple of factors at play. I mean, cheap ice cream, some of the ingredients used for the flavoring are the same ingredients they use for like washer fluid in your car. Okay.
11:34So if it's a higher end ice cream and you're paying more for it, typically they're using more real ingredients than the cheap ones. So that's probably part of it. But the other part is too, yeah, when you have a higher fat content, for some people, like I am German, Polish, Welsh in my ethnicity. I mean, there's a couple other Northern European genes in there.
12:03in the mountains or on the coast, very poor peasant people. And so they were not having fruit loops and Twinkies to get through a days of hard work. They were eating really, really hardcore proteins and fats. You know, I don't know that there was a single vegan or vegetarian in my family tree ever. So I need more fats on a day-to-day basis. So with the sheep's milk,
12:28you know, that actually really helps my body digest other foods. Like if I'm going to eat a vegetable, I need it to be drenched in butter. And that's not just for flavor. It's it helps my body digest it easier. And butter's yummy. I love butter. Butter makes me so happy. It does. It does. My son asked me this morning, he sent me a recipe for a double chocolate chip cookie. And he was like, do we have the stuff to make this? And I said, um.
12:56everything but the butter. I said you'll have to see if there's any in the freezer because I don't think we have enough butter handy to make them. He said can I make them if there's butter? I was like, please do. I would love you to make me some double chocolate chip cookies. Exactly. He was like, oh, oh, okay. He said I was thinking of making them. He said I was gonna make them for you. I said I'm kidding. But yes, I would love a double chocolate chip cookie. That'd be fantastic.
13:24Yeah, but I mean, if he's using your kitchen, then he's got to pay tax, right? Yes, absolutely. So that's my little aside for butter content this morning. That's the only thing I can pull in. Anyway, so you wrote a book about sheep's milk and nutrition and the benefits. Is that what the book is about? Yeah. So the first couple of chapters are about the benefits and nutrition of sheep's milk.
13:50To be honest, at the time when I was writing the book, I had to scrounge for any information on the health benefits of sheep milk. It was really hard to find actual data. Most of what I found was like, sheep's milk has more nutrients, so you should try it. And I was like, well, that's not helpful. I need to know what nutrients I need to know, you know, something besides just there's more. So
14:17there's one chapter that's solidly just sheep milk nutrition. Since writing the book, I have started finding more resources that are more in depth on the nutritional benefits of sheep milk. So I do have plans to write another book or two. But the book overall is basically how you can raise sheep and get sheep's milk from them and not lose your mind. Because in our country, sheep have lots of rumors and...
14:46slanders and reputations and most of them are not true. I'm actually finding through research that there was a proactive push in our country against sheep and shepherding so that the cattle industry could become a lot more predominant. So, you know, a lot of the things that quote everyone knows unquote about sheep are just not true. Like I've had people come up and be like, sheep are stupid, right? And I'm like, no, they're not. They're like, no, but they are. I'm like, no, they're not stupid. They just don't make good humans.
15:15So like I talked about that like sheep do have species specific psychology and if you learn how to work with that it's a very enjoyable experience. I go into a lot of information about the sheep's nutrition because that directly affects breeding and lambing. You know animal husbandry is really key with sheep to have an enjoyable shepherd and experience and the problem in our country is that we're so inundated with bigger, better, faster, fatter, cheaper, leaner. As Joel Saliton says.
15:45And sheep don't thrive in that kind of environment. So, you know, I've done a lot of pushback from some shepherds because I don't recommend breeding your sheep in their first year. I really recommend strongly that you wait till they're at least a year and a half before you breed them. So they're two years old when they land. And there's a lot of pushback against that because, you know, you're cutting in on your you're cutting your profits and you're increasing your cost when you wait. However, when you wait till a sheep is larger, you
16:13don't have the need to assist in lambing and lambing season is not the nightmare that it has a reputation for being. You know, with just a simple animal husbandry trick is just wait for them to become full grown because most sheep take two years to become full grown. They don't mature in their first year. So you know, I talk about that and I talk about training sheep, which again, you really need to understand sheep psychology to in order to train them because, you know,
16:40You can train a sheep to pull a cart, you can train them to walk on a leash, you can train them to do tricks, but you have to earn their trust. And you can't just walk up to a sheep and be like, trust me, you have to understand that to them, you're a predator and you have to basically convince them that you're a sheep. And I don't mean walking around on all fours and buying, but like you have to really spend time in non-threatening ways to convince them that they should trust you so that they'll do what you want. So I talked about that. I have a few.
17:08recipes in the book. So it's basically the book I wanted to have when I started shepherding and couldn't find anywhere. Yeah, I swear that's why people write books. They're like, the book that I want to read isn't out there. I'm going to write it. Yeah, basically, I've heard that from so many people, like, this is the book I wanted to read when I was starting out. And I'm like, oh, I thought that was my idea. But no, I guess it's not. Yeah. And the big difference is there's lots of people who are like, I want to write the book that I want to read, but they're not writers.
17:38Yeah. And so if you happen to be able to string words together in a reasonable manner that is readable, then you should write that book because then you have the book you wanted to read and you get to make money off of it too. Exactly. Although just a spoiler alert for everyone, the whole starving artist dynamic does come into play with being an author as well. I am not rolling in cash because of book sales and I'm doing really good book sales. So yeah, it doesn't.
18:07It doesn't necessarily pertain to podcasting either. Yeah. But it's still enjoyable and you do make some money. So it's worth it. It's just, you're not going to go on a cruise just off of podcasting or authoring. So. Yeah. I actually looked at my, my monetization cause I just monetized it like three weeks ago. I've made a whopping just under $4 in three weeks. You can get a Starbucks coffee now.
18:34Probably not because I want the medium-sized one and I want the fancy one. So now I'm gonna buy that Okay, well next month maybe I could I could maybe get a terrible Burger off the dollar menu at some fast food restaurant, but I don't really want that so no I'll pass. It's good. Yeah, but yeah, no artist gets rich quick unless
19:00Unless by some miracle they have connections in the industry they're working in, then maybe, but not always. But that's okay. So is the book self-published or is it through a publisher? It is through a publisher. Sawdust Publishing is a brand new publishing company by homesteaders, for homesteaders. The founder of the company, Janet Garman, has actually published.
19:29several books. So she's done it through a traditional publisher, she's self-published, she's used, you know, she's done ebooks, she's used independent publishers. So she's kind of done the whole gamut. And she was like, I want to make this accessible to new authors. I want price points to be accessible to readers. I want authors to actually get paid what they're worth. So instead of writing the book she wanted to read, she made the publishing company she wanted to use.
19:58So again, it's very small, but all of the books are very practical, very easy to read, very plug and play information for people wanting to do the topics discussed in the books. So I was really happy I got to work with them. And you know, a lot of people have asked me about self publishing, you know, and I don't think there's anything wrong with self publishing. I will say having an editing staff is...
20:26worth their weight in gold because I have done a couple ebooks and the experience of hitting up some friends saying, hey, could you edit my work? And they'd say, sure. And so you send them the file. Like they just, they're not going to be as effective as someone who's paid to edit, who doesn't care about your feelings. And so it's going to be ruthless. Like I really think like
20:49My traditionally published book is a much better quality piece of literature than the stuff I put out myself just because I don't have that feedback of the people who are paid to make it better. Yeah. Your friends aren't going to tell you to kill your darlings, but the editor that gets paid is going to tell you to kill that darling. Right. Yeah. Like the editor straight up said, you're rambling here. Like, this makes no sense. And my friend was like, you know, I maybe tighten that up a little bit.
21:19It's just different and I do better with direct up frontness. Like a friend was like, oh, maybe you should edit it some more. And I was like, no, that's why I sent it to you. So you tell me where to edit it. Um, you know, so. Yes. And I actually did help people publish their books many years ago, maybe 15 now. And it was really hard because I won't mention who it was. I only did four.
21:48Cause it was a lot of work and a lot of time involved to do it. But, but I was like, you, you need to rewrite this section. And the person was like, okay. And then they would rewrite it. And it was the same thing. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to fix this and this and this and this. And I actually wrote it down for her and it just never came together. And I was like, okay, this is how you want it to be. So we're going to go with this.
22:18It's really hard to be in that business. And especially if you're just a really avid reader who's really good at editing. Like, I got into it because a friend wanted to write a book and I was like, you should do that. And then the friend did it and they were like, can you help me self-publish this? And I was like, sure, I'll set up an account and you know how to do it. And I did it. I don't wanna do it anymore.
22:48It's too much for one person. So, but is the book of, is your book available on Amazon for people who like to buy their books that way? It is if you are in the United States. I'm trying to convince my publisher that she needs to do Amazon overseas. We just, right now we don't have the demand to justify that through the publishing company. So if you are in a different country listening to that, you can contact me.
23:17on my website or my email and I will set up international shipping for you. Just you will have to pay the shipping cost to get it to you, which I shipped a couple books to Australia and New Zealand and apologize to those purchasers up one side and down the other because it is very steep shipping to get it over there. And we don't have a digital version of the book at this point. We might in the future, but right now it's just the hard copy. Oh, okay. That was going to be my next question. So cool. Yeah.
23:46Is there a reason why and there's no digital copy yet? Basically, the publisher would have to hire a whole new staff and it would be a whole new learning curve. Like it's not as simple as just you upload a file to a website. You have to do formatting and then you have to make sure the formatting is translatable across different readers. So like Kindle is not the same as your iReader. So you have to make two different formats and that kind of thing. So it's basically.
24:14They're just not large enough at this point to justify the staff for that because most of our customers are in the farming or homesteading community and we may not all wear tin foil hats 24-7, but we have them somewhere and so we want hard copies of books just in case. So the demand more is for hard copies anyway. So to hire a whole new staff for the few people who want the digital version, it just doesn't justify the cost right now.
24:41Okay, that makes all the sense in the world. I was just curious because everybody's so about e-books these days and I would die hard. I don't want an e-reader back when they became a thing. And now I read every night on my e-reader, my tablet. Because I don't have to have a light on in my room to read it, I can actually just read it with the light from the screen. Right. Well, and I mean...
25:07I don't know, I can definitely see it both ways. I have a really good friend who is, it is her vendetta in life to get me to read on something digital. But, you know, for me, there's actually studies being done that if you hold a hard copy and turn the page, you retain that information better than if it's an electronic device. And then, you know, there's all kinds of studies being done on blue lights and EMFs and all that kind of stuff. And where my, and my husband's systems are so messed up, we're healing them on a daily basis.
25:37I'm just like, you know, I will just buy a hard copy. It's healthier. And then my grandkids can enjoy it versus, I don't know what they're gonna have, you know, down the road. They may not be able to use my e-reader. So there's my reasoning. I mean, I don't have an issue with people who want digital copies. It's just, we don't have that available right now. So- Well, maybe, maybe sooner than later, they'll be available. That would be great. Yeah. Okay, let me think. I had questions when I began this and then we get talking and now I don't know where they went.
26:06They flew away. Okay, so when, we have five minutes left, when your sheep have lambs and you're milking your sheep, do you let the lambs get what they want and then do you continue to milk the sheep after they've gotten what they need or how does that work? Yeah, so that's a animal husbandry topic that will elicit bloodshed on the sheep boards.
26:36Oh, well, I wouldn't worry about it. No, no, no, I'm just saying like it's a lot of people. When people ask me that, I'm like, you I know what I do on my farm, but for other people wanting to decide, it's like you really need to look at the data and decide what works best for you. My flock is is I have East Frisian genetics, but my dairy crosses are all East Frisian is crossed with another heritage breed. So what works for me is I will separate the lambs for 12 hours and then milk the ews at the end of that time and then put the lambs back with the ews.
27:05And then that way the lambs can nurse off the ewes for the next 12 hours and they're getting nutrition that way. I do let my lambs stay on the ewes exclusively for two weeks right after they're born. So they're getting all the colostrum. Some of my more heavier producers, I will go ahead and milk them once a day just because they're producing so much. They need that extra taken off. That way I have colostrum in the freezer just in case something terrible happens.
27:30And I'm keeping their milk supply up. But for like the Gulf Coast native heritage sheep, I just let the lambs stay on them because they, they're not producing an overabundance. They don't need that pressure taken off. So with some of the heavier producing breeds, like the purebred east creations overseas, you can let the lambs have all they want to, and they still produce enough where you can get a harvest. It's not a huge harvest, but you know, you can do it. So most people separate lambs.
28:00for some amount of time to harvest milk. And again, there's different reasonings behind each of it. When I was doing my research, the study showed that if you let the lambs have the milk exclusively for a month and then took them off and did either put milk in a bucket from whatever, they had a lower butcher weight than the lambs who were.
28:25given the colostrum exclusively for two weeks and then were separated for 12 hours. They, at weaning weight, were less heavy than the lambs who had, you know, access to the milk for three months solidly. But then once the 12-hour separated lambs were given, you know, food and nutrition that was for adults, they caught back up to the same weight as the other lambs quickly. So for us wanting milk and wanting healthy lambs,
28:55We've decided that separating for 12 hours at a time and the milking is the best setup for us. But, you know, there's reasons to do it different ways. Okay. That's what I was wondering about. And I'm going to cap off this episode of this podcast by saying something I've wanted to say for months. I am so sick of people thinking that they know what's best for other people. And you just touched on it with the people on the boards.
29:23And honestly, life is a learning curve. Yeah. And you cannot say to somebody, you're doing it wrong. If you know that they're doing the best they can and doing the research as they can to do the best they can. It makes me so crazy. Yeah, same here. Well, and it's like the whole point of us doing small farming and homesteading is to find what works for us.
29:51to have food that works for us, to have a lifestyle that works for us. And yeah, I mean, every single farm is different. Every animal conglomerate on every farm is different. Every human running the farm is different. I mean, both my husband and I have scoliosis and he has kyphosis and he works in emergency services. We're not going to raise Cornish Cross chickens because their tight schedule does not work for us. But my friend up the road, Cornish Crosses work.
30:19Perfect for her. So great. She has fatter chickens than me. It's fine. So I really think the Battles being fought amongst us about well you do you feed your you know, you're ruminant some grains Oh, no, I do only grass-fed grass-fed stupid. How dare you use chemicals. It looks like stop everyone stop We're all doing the best we can we're all learning
30:45We're all having learning curves. And what I do this year may not work next year, and it certainly didn't work two years ago. So just everyone take a deep breath and chill. Yeah. And consider other people's perceptions, perspectives, and maybe learn from other people too. Yeah. It really, it just chaps my ass when people are like, you're doing that wrong. It's like, okay.
31:07Right. I might be, but I guess I'll find out if something actually goes wrong with it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep trying to learn how to do this. I think asking people their why behind their choices is really important. Like I have a friend and she is really, really up like in people's face of feed your cow grains and stop judging everyone and stop forcing grass fed. And so, you know, it's like her why is she's seen cows die from starvation. And I get that,
31:37The person who's like, you can must do it only exclusively grass fed. Well, the milk from a cow who only eats grass is molecularly different than a cow who's fed grains and she has health issues where she benefits from exclusively grass fed. I don't think either of those two friends are wrong, but neither of them are going to learn from each other and they both irritate me when they get all up and about what to feed your cow. And it's like, breathe. We're all doing the best we can. We all have our cows. We all love their milk. It's fine. Like it will be okay.
32:07Yes. And the same could be said, you know, the up in your face thing. It's a big deal right now across the board in the world on many, many things. Yes. I had a friend over yesterday who I love to death. And I said, did you watch the debate the other night? And she said, she said, can, can we have a discussion about politics without becoming a battle? And I was like, of course we can. Because, because apparently her husband is the opposite.
32:33party than she is, which makes their discussions about politics really interesting at home. Oh boy, yeah. And I said, I think that we just need to get through this election cycle and remember that we are all humans, we're all doing our best and try to respect each other. And she went, I love you. Yeah. So let's just try to remember we're all humans, we're all doing our best and try to respect each other every day. And maybe things would be a little less combative. I 100% agree with that.
33:02And that's all I have to say getting anywhere near politics because I do not talk about politics on the podcast because it's a bad plan. But just be a decent human people. It makes things so much easier. It really does. And you know, I think working with sheep and seeing when you're gentle and polite and calm and peaceful, you have a really good shepherding experience. And when you're fast and loud and demanding, those sheep say,
33:30Absolutely not. And there's more than one reason why the Bible compares us to sheep all throughout the entire book. And it's not because we're stupid. Mm hmm. Yes, exactly. And really gentle and patient helps in a lot of situations. So no surprise that sheep are like that. So I know when people come up to me all loud and waving their hands and scary, I'm going to back up. Yeah. So.
33:59There you go. All right, Rachel, so we actually talked about the thing we were supposed to talk about. I'm so proud of us. I know, me too. All right, thank you for coming back. I appreciate it. No problem, my pleasure. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Honey Friend Farm LLC

Today I'm talking with Kristin at Honey Friend Farm LLC.
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 Kristen at Honey Friend Farm LLC. Good morning, Kristen. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. You're in Michigan, yes? I am. Is it beautiful there? Because it's gorgeous here in Minnesota this morning. It is.
00:30Little warm for fall weather, but that's okay. It's gonna cool down soon, I know it is. It's gonna, a promise. Yes, absolutely. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So I am a mom of three kids, and I work at the high school that they go to, but I also run a farm here at the house. We're trying to become more
00:58independent I guess. We've got chickens and turkeys and a garden and I make a lot of our food, our bread. We try to buy from the farmers and not the big stores and that's I mean it's just it's a busy busy life. We just my husband works full-time and obviously so do I and then we do
01:26all of the other things in the evening when we get home. Okay, cool. So it's always interesting to me because when I ask women to tell me about themselves and if they're a mom, almost invariably they say, I'm a mom of however many kids and then the rest of what they are. When I ask men, they tell me what they do, not that they're fathers of six or two or one. Right.
01:56There's the difference. Yeah, it's really interesting how different men and women are. Yeah. You know? And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that the men don't immediately say I'm a dad of, but it's just different. Right. It is. We are built different. Yes, exactly. And that's what makes life really interesting every damn day. Absolutely.
02:25Okay, so are your kids littles or are they teenagers or? I've got an 18-year-old, almost 16-year-old and a 13-year-old. And are they all in on the homesteading stuff you're doing? They resist occasionally when it's hot out, but for the most part, they're pretty good at helping. My youngest loves to help with the baking part. He loves to cook. And then my oldest, he typically does a lot of...
02:55the strenuous work or the heavy lifting, I guess. And then my daughter, she helps with all like the household chores. She makes the house run when we are doing all of the other things. That's a hell of a team there, ma'am. I'm impressed. It is, yep. We, you know, it's rough sometimes, but for the majority of the time, we all figure it out. Awesome, I love that.
03:20We didn't get our homestead till most of our kids had moved out, but I suspect that had we gotten our homestead when they were younger, they all would have been all in. Yes, they love it. Kind of wish we'd been able to do it sooner. Absolutely. So why is it called what it's called, the honey friend? The honey friend, okay. So that is because my husband and I were having an adult night and I usually call him honey as a joke. And then one night...
03:50I just said honey friend and it kind of just stuck and we're like, I don't think there's any other honey friend farm. So that's where the name came from. That's adorable. I love it. Yeah. So it's fantastic. It has nothing to do with honey. It's just what we call each other. Oh, and that's fine. I think that's beautiful. So, okay.
04:16Tell me what an average weekend day is like for you on the farm because I ask people this and they don't usually tell me. So I'm just curious if I'll get an answer on this one. So typically, so we run a roadside stand as well. So typically the weekends are full of picking the garden and loading the stand and baking bread and bagels and cookies and all of the things for the community to come in.
04:45share a part of that. We do a lot of pay what you can events for the community so people can eat healthier and have a healthier option if they're not able to do it themselves or whatever the case may be. So we spend a lot of time in the garden and filling the stand and doing cutting the grass, feeding the animals. That's typically when we do like
05:13clean out for the coupes and refill the food and, you know, just spend a lot of time outside bonfires at night. And we just hang out and just kind of work all day and then relax at night and have family time, dinner together. We like to barbecue a lot, like grill out. So that's typically what we do.
05:44That sounds like a beautiful way to spend a weekend. The bonfire part is the best. That's my favorite part. Yes, absolutely. We have had maybe five since we moved in four years ago because it's been too busy up until this past, this past summer hasn't been as busy, but that's because it rained and rained and rained and our gardens didn't do anything. So we never even pulled out the fire pit or the.
06:10benches or the little table or anything this year because it just kept raining. I know. I know it was a very wet, wet year. Yeah. So not so much on the fire pit thing this year. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and then I guess on Friday nights we have Friday night football. So we do that now in the fall. Do the kids play or do you just go catch the game? Both boys play. So.
06:38The oldest plays Friday nights and then the youngest will start playing on Tuesday nights this coming Tuesday. Okay, so you got a Friday night lights and a Tuesday night lights thing going on there. Yes. Yeah, okay. Awesome. That's wonderful. Okay, so I saw something on your Facebook page about a festival that you're a part of this weekend. Is it something that you throw or is it just that you're gonna be at it? No, we're just gonna be at it.
07:06We're going to be doing jams and sourdough bread and bagels. I've got a bunch that are shaped like pumpkins and pumpkin flavored and apple cinnamon flavored and all kinds of good yummy stuff. Is this an every year thing or is it a new thing? So it's kind of new to us. We just started doing these festivals maybe within the last six months. And we just kind of go and it's...
07:35a great learning experience because you see what other people do and you get to meet a lot of people and it's just it's fun and the kids love it they love to go and they do all of the activities and you know it's just it's a good bonding time I guess family time and we can go and hang out and sell some stuff and make some money to put back into the homestead um and then yeah that's
08:04what we do. We're there and then we have a craft show in November and then that's it besides our roadside stand. We do that every weekend. So do you do crafts too or is it? No. Okay. No, I just, I wish. I don't have time for that. But yeah. I was gonna say I don't know where you would fit in crafting and I was gonna be duly impressed if you were like, oh yeah, I make dishcloths and I make sweaters and you know.
08:34Yeah, no, I wish, but maybe when I retire, we can add that in. Yeah. Um, my husband and I laugh about retiring a lot around here because we're in our mid fifties and so we've got a good 10 years to go and the joke, the running joke has been for about 10 years now that there will be no, um, social security payments by the time we retire. So we're just never going to retire. Right. Exactly. Yep.
09:03That's what my husband said. Yep. He's like, I'm going to die working. I'm like, probably. But, uh-huh. Who knows? I figure anyone, I figure anybody over the age of 35 right now will probably be working until they die. Yes. So. Unless they have good inheritance or something. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yep. I worry about my parents because my parents are still.
09:33with us there, 78 and 81. And my mom gets slightly panicky when there's talk of a government shutdown because she thinks that they're not going to get their social security checks. And I keep telling her that that would be a very rare thing to have happen, but that I understand her panic when things get brought up like this because it's really important for them. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
10:01when they paid into it for how many years? Mm-hmm, exactly. Yeah. Yep, and then I crack the joke that they're lucky that they get it because Kyle and I will never see Social Security payments and she's like, yes, you will. Like, yeah, I don't think we will, but I don't think so. Yeah. Probably. So anyway, I don't even know what to ask you. I'm not quite with it this morning, sorry. So did you say turkeys?
10:30Yes, we have turkeys that we're growing for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Okay. And are they just for you or do you, do you grow some others to sell?
10:41So it's for us and then a neighbor and then a couple of my cousins. Okay. All right. Then I have questions about turkeys because I have never talked with anybody on the podcast about turkeys yet. Okay. Are they as easy to raise as chickens because we have chickens and they're pretty easy. No, they are not at all. Like we started with 14 and we're down to 8.
11:09Okay, tell me about that. Tell me about raising turkeys. I, you know, I really, I don't know much about it. We just were kind of winging it. This is our first year doing it. And we've got meat turkeys, and we've got a couple of heritage breeds that we're going to keep just to because my youngest wanted a couple turkeys to keep. And so we're just kind of winging it, honestly. They're with the chickens, and they're just
11:38a lot more fragile. The meat ones, the heritage breeds seem to be a little bit more hardy, but the meat birds seem a little bit more fragile, which I guess is the same with meat chickens. I don't know if you've ever done those. No, I have not. They are pretty fragile too, along with quail. We had quail for a little bit. Those were not super great. But the turkeys, I mean, they are easy and they're actually they're
12:08and they run to you and they like come and cuddle with you. And when they like when they do their bird talk or whatever, it almost sounds like they're barking like a dog. But they're really cute and they're really sweet. And we'll see how it goes. Okay, so when you say they're really fragile, have they just killed over and died for no reason or are they? Yeah.
12:37Like, I'll go out and check on them and there'll be one dead. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I don't know what the issue is because, I mean, they obviously have plenty of food, water, shade, whatever. And they get along fine with the chickens. And so I don't really know what the issue is. I guess it's just a learning curve. And I know nothing about turkeys. I was hoping that you would have more to tell me, but that's okay because you're brand new.
13:07I am. I think next year maybe we'll separate them from the chickens. I don't know if maybe that's the issue, but I mean all the research I did said that they could coexist. So that might be the issue. So next year we will probably separate them. They'll have like their own coop to go in instead of coexisting. So we're going to try that next year. We're not going to give up because we love fresh turkey for Thanksgiving. It's delicious.
13:37Yeah, tell me the difference between a fresh turkey that you've raised and a store bought turkey because I have never had a not store bought turkey. So like a farm fresh turkey is they're not typically in cages so they like free range and they they've never been frozen. I mean obviously the one at Christmas time will be frozen but for Thanksgiving they'll be fresh so they'll never be frozen.
14:06They are so much more juicy and tender and they are just delicious. And I would say that the juiciness is the biggest difference. The juiciness and the tenderness, yeah. Like you know how turkey is typically like dry, like, oh, I got to drink something. This you don't. It's just really, really delicious.
14:29I've only had one turkey that I've cooked in my whole life that was dry and it's because I cooked it for too long. Oh Yeah, yeah, but yes, I would imagine that that with them being that fresh. They would be really really good Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna say this my favorite thing about turkey It's the gravy that you make from the drippings from the pan. I don't Oh, yes, I don't love love love turkey, but I love turkey with the turkey gravy. Yes. Yes and on the mashed potatoes
14:58Oh my god. Yes. Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite things on earth at Thanksgiving. Yes. I love any kind of potato anytime of the year. You would have loved the ones my son made last night. He made oven roasted potatoes. And he put, I guess I can use name brands on my podcast. I'm the one that makes it. He used the garlic and herb Mrs. Dash that we buy. Oh, okay.
15:24and I don't know the brand, but it's a smokehouse maple seasoning. And bake them for like half an hour at 400 degrees or 500 degrees. They were so good. They caramelized up. Plus they had all the seasonings on them. I was like, you can make these anytime you want to make these. Right. That sounds delicious. It was really good. And I'm, I'm not really great on oven roasted potatoes, but these were perfect. Good. That sounds delicious.
15:53I love it when the kid cooks. It's nice to know that he was raised by a mom who was like, you will know how to cook before you move out. Yes, and do your laundry. Clean the toilet. And make a dessert that you're proud to share with your friends. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I just mentioned this earlier. I did an interview at 10 o'clock this morning too, and we're talking about butter.
16:19My son had asked me if he could make this recipe, their double chocolate chip cookies. And I was like, he said, do we have everything to make those? And I said, other than butter, I said, you might want to check and see if there's any in the freezer because you don't want to start making it and find out you don't have any butter. Right. And he's going to make chocolate, he's going to make double chocolate chip cookies next week. And I'm just like, oh my God, please make them soon. Right. Can you make them today? So yes, he can do cookies too. Which is...
16:48Yeah, no, I don't want them. I got a lot to get done if I eat them. If I eat them, I will be asleep. So I have to wait till next week. I have too many things to get done this afternoon. Oh yeah, absolutely. But it's amazing when you have plans for your children when they're born about what you hope for them, and you give them the tools and they actually learn and they do the thing you hoped for them. Yes, absolutely. It's wonderful. It's amazing.
17:17It is, it's good. Okay, what else can I ask you? I am, oh, I was gonna ask you how you got into this. I don't really know. It kind of all, I think the chickens were the gateway to all of this. So we used to live in the city and then we moved when COVID happened out to the country where the kids were going to school and doing all the things. And while I would love to homeschool,
17:46I do not have patience for that. It would just not be great. So anyways, we needed to come out somewhere where the kids were back in school. And so we did that. And then I was like, well, we have property now, we're getting chickens. And then the kids love the chickens and I love the chickens and my husband. And then I was like, let's start making our own food. And it kind of just snowballed from there. Like it just, it just kind of happened.
18:15I guess we just started reading labels and looking at things and the way the world is going right now. You never know what's going to happen. So we want to be able to be self-sufficient and know how so we're not caught with our pants down, I guess. So yeah, it's been four years in the making. We're still clearly very new to this.
18:43We're just taking it day by day and learning something new every day and trying to teach the kids better, healthier habits and doing stuff like that. So I have a question. Do your kids have their friends come over and hang out? Yeah. And are these kids that are like-minded or are they kids that are living in the city? Both.
19:13I don't think there are any other friends that homestead, but they, but like we live kind of in a rural area. So a lot of people like hunt and fish and do all of that kind of stuff. But I don't think, and have a little backyard garden or whatever, but I don't think a ton of people make their own foods and buy just from the farm and everything.
19:42But I mean, everybody comes over and they love it. And they get excited about, like all the kids, they love to go play with the chickens and show their friends the chickens. And we hope to get goats in the fall, so we can do goat, or in the spring, so we can do goat milk and stuff. And so they're all really excited to show their friends about that. So I don't know. And honestly, a lot of people around here have chickens too, just for eggs and whatever. But I don't think anybody's like.
20:11makes their own jam and makes their own bread and does all that kind of stuff. But they all love it. They come over and they're like, can you bake us something? Can you bake us something? Cute. And shit. Okay. Well, the reason I asked is because I was just wondering how their friends perceived their lifestyle because it is a different way of living. Oh yeah. It is. It is a completely different way. And I'm sure that if like their friends
20:41from when we lived in the city came over, it'd be a different story. They'd be like, what are you guys doing? Why don't you just go to the store? Why don't you just go out to eat or whatever, you know what I mean? But because I think we live in a more rural area that a lot of people kind of ish homestead in a way, because like I said, a lot of people hunt and fish and do all that stuff out here. So most of their friends.
21:10do all that. Okay and do the boys try to enlist their friends who are boys to help out with the chores? Oh yeah. Yeah. Anytime somebody comes over and we need something done we're like come on let's go we got some big guys here let's go. Yep. We moved to our homestead in 2020 as well. Okay. And my son who still lives with us he's 22 so he's still pretty young.
21:38And there's reasons he still lives here and they're good reasons. He had a couple of good friends who he used to play video games with online and he still does. And they had come to visit, one of them had come to visit when we lived in town, in the small town that we lived in. And he had grown up with my son, so he knew that we made food from scratch and we had a garden and we had backyard chickens. And so when he came to visit the new place, he, you should have seen his face.
22:07His eyes were the size of plates. Aw. He was like, you weren't kidding. This is a farm. Yeah. And my son said, well, it's not a farm because there's no goats or sheep or cows or horses, but we still have chickens. And my son's friend was like, yeah, but look at all space you have. And it's not that big. It's three acres compared to a tenth of an acre. So yes, it seems like a lot.
22:33But his reaction was just priceless. And I've known this kid since he was like eight, I think. And I was like, so what do you think? When he came in, he was like, oh, I'm so happy for you guys. This is what you always wanted. So clearly he'd been paying attention to my to to us as well as my kid. And then the new friend came to visit because the new friend wanted to learn how to shoot a gun because my son is a really good marksman.
23:01And so we have a berm where they're allowed to target practice. And my son's friend had never shot a gun in his life. And this always makes me nervous because there are, I feel like there's two types of people in the world. You give them a gun, you describe what it does, you explain the parts, you show how to use it, you teach them everything for them to be safe. And they sighted it on the thing they're trying to shoot and they shoot it and it makes loud noise and they either drop the gun.
23:32Or they just drop it slightly, hang on to it and go, oh, that's what that's like. Yeah. Yep. It's the drop the gun. It's the drop the gun part that scares me because you never know how that's going to go. Right. Oh, I know. Yes. So my son's friend got put through his paces and was taught how to shoot a gun and he really didn't enjoy it and he hit the target a couple of times. Like, I'm good. Yeah.
23:59My son says, you don't like it, do you? And the guy says, it's really loud. He said, the shotgun kicked my shoulder super hard. And my kid was like, well, yes, that's how that works. And his friend said, I don't want to do it anymore. So that was the end of that. Oh, yep. That's usually how it goes. Yep. And then my husband and my son have been cutting up big old logs and splitting wood for the last.
24:27over the last month for the wood burning boiler. And, and like, he'd keep sending pictures of the, the wood pile getting bigger to these two friends that I'm talking about. And one of them messaging back the other day and said, you need to take it easy. You're going to kill yourself. And, and my son said, um, you have met me, right? You know that I'm really strong, right? The guy was like, yeah, but geez, you've been just busting your hump on this. And he was like, yeah.
24:57I know because we need heat in the wintertime. That's how we heat our house. And it's the first time I've heard either of his friends kind of forget that this isn't for funsies. Yes, this is way of life. So that's my experience with my one child who still lives here as friends. Seeing how we live.
25:24And I haven't had a chance to ask anybody because I hadn't thought of it yet. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a good question. Do you guys have pets along with your critters?
25:37Oh, we have a dog. Yeah, just a dog. Yep, his name's Axel.
25:44What kind of dog is Axel? He is a half pit and half rot. He's a big boy. He weighs like 145 pounds. Wow, that's a big mix. Yeah, he's a big boy. I bet no one comes on your property not looking for permission to be there. Right, yeah. But you know, he sounds mean, but as soon as you say hi, and then he starts wagging his tail and all he wants to do is kill you with kisses.
26:12Yeah, and I wasn't assuming that a pit brought one that's mean, because I don't think any dog is mean unless they're raised to be mean. Yes. But that's a big dog. I love dogs and I would never walk up to that dog without making sure that he was going to be friendly. Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. He sounds mean, but he's a nice boy. He's a big baby.
26:42Yeah, we have a little dog. She's 35 pounds. And when she sees people who she's never seen before, she's all teeth and bark. What is she? She is a mini Australian shepherd. Oh, that's what my husband wants next. And so, so people are actually, they back up the minute she's outside and she sees people come in. She's, she's all teeth, but she's never going to bite anybody.
27:12Mm-hmm, and she's really loud if you get one you will know it's a really sharp shrill bark Okay, and that's why we got her we wanted a watchdog and she is excellent at it The problem is people think that she's going to eat them alive even though she's small They don't see the back end where she's wiggling her nubbin her tail nubbin So her face is saying I'm afraid
27:40and I need to defend my property. Her rear end is saying, but I want to be your friend. I have to get through this to be your friend. Yes, absolutely. So that's what you have to look forward to, probably. Yes. The other thing that I will tell you is if you get a puppy, one of these dogs is a puppy, and you want them to be friendly, make sure you take that puppy everywhere you go.
28:08or make sure you have people come over a lot and interact with it. Because we couldn't socialize Maggie because of COVID. Oh yeah. That's why she's so afraid of people. So if you want your dog to not react to what Maggie does, make sure they get socialized. Okay. That's a good tip. Yeah. We wish we had been able to, and it was just impossible. We weren't seeing anybody. We weren't going anywhere we didn't have to go. And we sure as heck weren't spending a lot of time in a store when we did go to a store during COVID.
28:38Right. So exactly. Real hard to socialize a puppy when there's a pandemic going on. No kidding. No kidding. But anyway, so you said turkeys, you have a dog, you have chickens. Is there anything else I forget? Nope. We're hoping to add goats and bees in the spring. Okay. Then you'll actually be honey friend farm. We will.
29:08Are you going to tell a child friend story about the name once you have honey? Oh yeah, maybe. Probably. All I could think of when you told me the story is the Huckleberry. I'll be your Huckleberry and you can be my honeybee song like Shelton does. Yes. Yep. That's funny.
29:37All right. Well, we're not quite at 30 minutes, but I am literally out of questions. Kristin, I'm so glad you took the time to talk with me today. This was really fun. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thanks. You too. All right. Bye. All right. Bye-bye.
 

Bean's Bounty

Today I'm talking with Maggie at Bean's Bounty. Buy Maggie's cookbook, The Reluctant Cook. All proceeds go to two different dog charities!
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 Maggie at Bean's Bounty. Good morning, Maggie. How are you? I'm good. Good morning to you, Mary. How are things in Georgia this morning? Actually a lot cooler right now, but I hear the heat's coming back, so.
00:28Is this hurricane that's approaching Texas gonna bother you guys at all in the next couple of days? It doesn't seem like it, but if anything, we might get a little rain from it, which I'll accept. Yes, definitely. So let's start this off with, I did not name my dog after the Maggie I am talking to. It just so happens they share the same name. And that's awesome because I love the name Maggie, always have and always will.
00:58So tell me about yourself and what you do at Bean's Bounty. Well, I don't know what to say about myself. I'm not originally from Georgia, but I moved here in 2007, and I started gardening in 2008. And once I tasted what a fresh tomato tastes like, I think I was hooked. So my husband and I garden together.
01:27for about four years maybe and I mean we rarely went to the grocery store. I still rarely go I've been doing the garden myself since then and What we don't get here will get from local farmers and then What I can't get from them then I'll go to the grocery store and that's just for incidentals like toilet paper paper towels things like that
01:58but I love gardening, I love eating what we grow. And then of course, Beans Bounty is also where I bake. So I'll make homemade desserts for people, but they're not like all these fancy cakes and stuff you see there from very old recipes. We have over 300 cookbooks and they date back to the Civil War. So if you wanna know what an old fashion recipe tasted like, then that's me.
02:28Wow. I made some kind of cookies years ago from an old, old, old cookbook. And I think there were only three or four ingredients and the main ingredient was egg. And it was like eating a crepe cookie. That's awesome. Really? Yeah. They weren't that great, but I suppose back in the very old days, anything that was a treat or a sweet.
02:55was probably really special. Exactly. It really was. They couldn't afford much, you know. So whatever had any kind of sweetness in it, that's what was popular. Yeah. So you and I talked many years ago. I don't remember why. Why? I like a lot of it. You know, they're not really sweet. They're not, I don't know. They're just, I like a lot of it. Yeah.
03:25You and I had talked many years ago, I don't remember why, we talked on the phone, and you said that you were in suburban, whatever your town is or your city is, and that you had a garden, and we talked about that for a little bit. So tell me how that's changed, how that's expanded. Well, we are in, we're in one of the suburbs north of Atlanta. So I have an acre and a half.
03:53So the garden took up quite a bit of space. I mean, you don't normally find an acre and a half in Roswell, Georgia, but this is a very old home. It was built back in the 70s. So the only way it has changed is that as I have aged, I've had to cut back on the gardening. Before it was huge. And now I brought it up closer to the house and
04:22take care of it from there. So I just have little sections all around my house that are growing different things. And it's easier for me because I'm getting up there. Yeah, we're all aging. As we get older, we're all aging, obviously, but we're all meeting new milestones in our lives every year. Yes, ma'am. And I understand, because ma'am, 20 years ago,
04:48I would have been out in the garden with my husband every day of the spring, summer, and fall, and now it's his baby because I don't want to do it anymore. Yeah. Well, my husband is the same way. Well, he works a full-time job, so that's why he had to stop. So now I take care of it. Yep. The podcast is My Baby, the Garden is My Husband's Baby, and this is about the only time they meet is when I'm talking about him doing the gardening.
05:15So what do you grow? Do you grow the usual suspects or is there stuff that's special that you grow? Whatever we eat, I try to grow. So I do potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, sweet and hot, squash, zucchini, well I guess that's a squash, pumpkins for the fall, lettuces, onions, I do onions and garlic. So whatever we use the most of.
05:44And then we also eat seasonally. So whatever is growing in the garden is what we eat. So like we're done eating tomatoes until next year. And it's kind of sad, but you know, if you've ever tasted any from the grocery store, it just doesn't even match up close. Doesn't even come close. So, and I think it's healthier to do that. I know that sounds crazy, but that's how
06:13People used to eat, you know, they didn't have everything available like we do a grocery store. So whatever was growing is what they ate. And I like it that way. Like in the fall, I'm making or I'm growing garden stuff again, the lettuce, garden stuff, spring stuff again. So there's lettuces growing out there, the straggling of the tomatoes, the hot peppers are still coming in. And then, you know, now we're getting
06:42the pumpkin and the watermelons. And I like it that way. You just revolve our dishes around what's growing. Yes, and it's funny. I read a book under the Tuscan sun years ago, and it's about a lady who buys a villa, basically sight unseen, in Italy. Oh, nice. And she has never been to Italy. And everyone eats seasonally.
07:08in Italy throughout the whole book. And there are little recipes, I think, added into the book. And I enjoyed the hell out of reading that book because Italy sounds like a beautiful place to live. But I also enjoyed it because it was so fun to read about people eating directly out of their gardens. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an experience. It took me a while to get us used to it. But...
07:34It's an experience because you're not always going to have everything. Now our meat comes from local farmers as well. So we get all our meats from them. But so you'll always have a meat because I get it from them, but you know, what you're using as your side or as your carbs or whatever is coming in. Sometimes you don't have any carbs. So you're eating just vegetables or, um, you know, different, different things like that. You're, you come creative with the sides that you do when you have the same things growing out of the garden.
08:04Oh, for sure. Yes. Yes. And I'm telling you, I am at the point where I don't want to eat carbs anymore. Every time I eat carbs, all I want to do is take a nap. It does get you lazy. But some are good for you. Some are good for you. And they're filling. In the wintertime, you know, sometimes that's all we have, you know, like we have the turnips growing and beets growing. So sometimes
08:31potatoes. So a lot of the things coming out of the garden, you know, they're all healthy. They're not bad. I think the misnomer people get into is that certain things are bad for you and that may be true, but moderation is the key. As long as you don't overload yourself on what you're eating, that's the key to having a balanced diet.
09:00I'm making pasta alfredo tonight because my husband really likes it and we happen to have all the ingredients on hand today. And I have some broccoli in the freezer that I'm going to warm up and have with my alfredo because otherwise I will be sound asleep five minutes after I eat it. Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. You just have to, you know, I love pasta. Pasta and bread, I'm addicted to both of those. But I just had to learn not to eat so much of it.
09:30I just had to learn, you know, if I love it that much, then maybe one meal a week was enough, or one meal every other week is enough of that. It depends on what your body can tolerate, but you just don't go nuts. And you definitely don't go to fast food places for food. That's just going to kill you in the long run. Yeah, although once in a while, that craving gets to be unbearable. And you're like, I really want a dive bar burger.
09:57Maybe so, and I used to get those Mary, I swear to you. I used to have to go like once a month just to remember what it tasted like, but I can't tell you the last time we went. And it goes away, the feeling goes away I guess because once you're eating things that are good for you and you're moderating your diets, something like that just weighs really heavy on you and you don't feel well. Once you get your body used to not having it.
10:27At least that's been my experience. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. So, I saw something about apples and cherries. Do you grow fruits too? I have, I do. I have cherry bushes and I have three apple trees. We also have two pear trees, two plum trees, two peach trees, an almond tree, an apricot tree, mulberry trees because it keeps...
10:55the birds away from my elderberry bush. I think that's it. Oh, and walnuts, oh, not walnuts. What are those things that they grow, they warm up in the wintertime up in New York? I don't know. Oh, chestnuts? Yes, we have two chestnut trees. Yeah, I was thinking hazelnuts, but that wasn't it. No, that wasn't it. I couldn't think of it for the second bit. Okay, awesome.
11:23So let's talk about the cookbook that you just got copies of, because I love books and I love cooking. So this was going to happen. This was going to come up. Well, it started two years ago. A friend of mine, I put all the things that I make for my husband on our private page. And my friends started asking me for advice on how to make those recipes. But they were friends who don't cook.
11:53So they had trouble with it. So I started sending them pictures as I was working in the kitchen and, or little videos of how I was doing something. And because of those friends, particularly one, Lisa from Michigan, she got me into the idea of the cookbook. So, and it's called the Reluctant Cooks Cookbook.
12:20because I was reluctant at first as well, and my husband taught me how to cook. So I thought I could teach other people or have simple recipes. It's not so much teaching as it is, they're simple and you can make them with, most of them within 30 minutes. So you could come home from work, whip it up real quick. I know that's the last thing people wanna do because I worked since I was 11 years old and I know how that feels.
12:48So I know it's the last thing you want to do, but once you start tasting the stuff that you cook and you start realizing how little it costs to cook at home as opposed to stopping by and getting something from a fast food place or stopping by a restaurant and getting it, which now is the price is outrageous. And once you start that and then you feel proud when you put the food on the table once it's done.
13:18I think 30 minutes, I mean, think about it. You have to place the order, then you have to go to the restaurant, pick it up. I don't know how far that is out of your way from home, but then, you drive home and I think the 30 minutes is included in all that you have to do to get it from a restaurant or a fast food place. I think it's gonna take you 30 minutes anyway. So I think it's a good trade. And...
13:45You know, and then the more I can get people to buy from farmers, the happier I'll be. So, and that's in the introduction of the cookbook. I just want people to start cooking at home more. We used to, you know, we didn't always have fast food restaurants. And I know they think that there are progress, but I don't think fast food places and restaurants are progress. I think they took us away from a healthy environment and a healthy diet and a healthy home.
14:15Yes. Um, I did a deep dive a couple of years ago into how people used to eat in the bad old days. And basically I found out that in like the UK area, back, back 200, 250 years ago, if not more, people didn't cook their own food. They had to go find food that someone else cooked and buy it from them. Yeah. And the only people that, that had food.
14:44readily available, cooked and ready to eat for them were royalty. It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. And when you went to buy food, it was basically meat pies because people could buy them at like a street cart and eat it walking away. Right. And I was like, man, the things, more things change, the more they stay the same. You know? That's true. It's true. There's really nothing new.
15:12I firmly believe that. I think we just regurgitate things that happened in our past, excuse me, and try to change it. You know, maybe saying it's new and improved or whatever. But most things have happened already. And the food carts, yeah, those have been around forever. Yeah. Forever. Yep. Yeah, I was so curious. I think I was more, I think the search started because I was thinking about how people don't really cook in their fancy kitchens anymore.
15:42And I was like, how were kitchens back in the bad old days? And there weren't really kitchens. There was a hearth. That was it. Yeah, and a table. Sometimes just a very small table. So yeah, there really wasn't a kitchen. They would have shelves on the wall where you could have your incidentals for cooking. But that was it. Yeah. Yep, it's really interesting. I love history. So anytime I'm like, how did that work back when? I go digging, because I got to know.
16:12I like it too. So did you self-publish the book, the cookbook? I did. I did because it's for charity. So the less money I spend, the better it's going to be in the long run because I'd like to do another. And so if I can recoup the cost of the cover and the printing and stuff and then give the rest to charity, I'm happy about it. We've been blessed with a pretty good life. And
16:39I just haven't had enough to give to the charities that, and they're puppy charities, they're dog charities. Yay, good. Yeah. So if I'm able to help them out, which I've always wanted to do, then I'm the better for it, really. It just makes me a better person to myself, just in my eyes. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, so. So is, is, is, bleh, can't talk. I hate it when I do that.
17:08Is it available as an ebook as well or is it just hard copy or just back print? And, uh, I do have a place to purchase it. It's called the reluctant cook dot big cartel.com. Uh, so big cartel is B I G C A R T E L and then reluctant people have trouble, uh, with that word. So.
17:36but it's the Relu Okay, and how much is it? It's $19.99, of course, plus shipping and tax. Okay, awesome. What kind of recipes are in it? What simple recipes did you put in there? Oh, a very old recipe of sloppy joes, which I love sloppy joes, and it tastes so good. Easy, a couple of easy pasta dishes.
18:06One of my favorites is shrimp scampi. So you can make that in 30 minutes and it's wonderful. Another one is macaroni and cheese. It's a Southern recipe. There's one in there to smoke a brisket in your oven. Now that is a longer recipe, but great for the weekend because you can just pop it in the oven and then three hours later it's ready and it doesn't take much prep work at all. So.
18:35another, what's another famous one? Oh, my tuna casserole. I don't know why that has become so popular, but it doesn't use the canned soups that you buy at the grocery store. It's actually just made with cream and butter and it is so good. But I didn't think that would be the one that would be the most popular. That's kind of weird. But we love tuna casserole here.
19:04by using an older recipe and just adding a little more spice and a little more taste to it. Okay. So those are the things, those are the things I think that, but there's not plenty, but it's just, it'll get you through a couple of months of cooking meals and you'd be the better for it because it doesn't take long, they're gonna taste great, they're gonna be better than anything you can buy. And it's a beginning.
19:33It's a beginning to moving to the more, I don't wanna say gourmet, more difficult recipes. Yeah, so if you wanna move after that to something more complicating or start, you know, putting your own spices into it, you know, changing it so that it's something that you like. I just think I'd like to get more people who don't cook now to cook.
19:55Sure. Tuna casserole. I grew up with a mom who made tuna casserole. Tuna. And I didn't like tuna at all, but I liked the actual rest of the casserole. And it's funny because I now live in Minnesota, but I grew up in Maine. And on the East Coast, it's a casserole. But in Minnesota, it's a hot dish. That's true. If you call a hot dish a casserole in Minnesota, people immediately know you're not from Minnesota.
20:25So the thing is, my husband and my son that still lives with us, they don't like hot dishes or casseroles. And so I rarely ever make them because I'm the only one who's going to eat them and I'm not going to eat them for a week straight. That's true. I'm trying to figure out how to make a small, a small casserole, you know, just for me. And it's just, it's not worth my time. Well you can.
20:55You could actually just take a recipe as like this tuna casserole and cut it in half. You know, don't, don't make that much. Just take the recipe and use half of everything it says there. But I did have a, a woman who, uh, put a comment on our private page, which is David Maggie Bean, um, on Facebook. And she said her husband hated tuna casseroles and he ate this one.
21:23Yeah. For some reason, it's just, it tastes better than, well, I mean, I know why it tastes better. It doesn't have those canned soups in it. So you're not tasting, you can still taste the tuna kind of through, even with the soups. And in this one, you don't even know it's tuna. That's the cool thing. Yep. I was a very picky child and my mother used to say, I hope you have a kid just like you someday.
21:53Cause it drove her crazy. And my husband is the kid that, that she wished upon me because he's terribly picky. And I got so sick of not eating the things that I wanted to eat that I would make things and I would be like, just give it an honest try. If you hate it, you can eat something else. And he has decided that he actually likes about nine out of 10 things that I make from scratch that he used to hate eating. Well, you know, people's tastes change as we grow older.
22:22You know, things I hated as a child, I kind of really like now. So I think we just change. I mean, things I ate in college, I don't even eat anymore. So you know, it's just weird. I don't know why we change, but as the years go on, our tastes change. Well, I have a minor answer for you on that. When you are a child, you actually have more taste buds in your mouth than you will ever have in your whole life.
22:51So I didn't know that. Yep, so anything that's an intense flavor, either you're gonna love it or you're gonna hate it because it's such a big flavor that you're tasting. Wow. And as you get older, you lose taste buds. And so things start to taste more bland and so that's why we crave more salt or more sugar in our food. That's interesting. Yeah, I did not know that. Yep, I read it.
23:17I don't know, a while ago, and I was like, well, that makes all the sense in the world. No wonder I hated everything. Well, my mother was from Central America, so we had a lot of beans and rice, but she did make tuna casserole and other things, spaghetti, things like that. But, but it was mostly Latin American food. Yup. And was it spicy? She made.
23:45spicy for my father and not spicy for the rest of us. So she was, and there were six of us. So she had her work cut out for her. Yes, it's really hard to balance things when you have more than a couple of kids. I raised four. Oh yeah, I had two. Yep, and trying to balance it so that everybody
24:15at least once a week was a trick. Absolutely, absolutely. So I just put it on the table, they could eat it or starve. So that's why I looked at it with my children. Well, because I was working too. I mean, I worked a lot, a lot of hours. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I made food and if they didn't like it, they didn't eat it. But I tried every week to make something that I knew one of the four kids really loved.
24:43Yeah, because I think that was the best I could do I didn't have four but I did the same thing
24:50And birthdays, every birthday, I was like, what would you like for your birthday dinner? And I made sure that I had everything on hand to make it. And I asked them what they wanted for dessert. They want cake, they want cookies, they want brownies for their birthday. So that's what we did. No, that's good. That's what we did. So that was perfect. Yep. And they always loved it. And to this day, if...
25:15I think the last time I asked one of the kids what they wanted for their birthday, which was the youngest who still lives with us, he said, I don't want anything. He said, I pretty much get stuff all year that I want. I don't need anything special. And I was like, yes, I'm doing it right. Yes, ma'am. That's true. And I talked to my son. He has similar sentiments. So I think I did my job okay. Yeah.
25:40Being a mom, I've said it before, is the most thankless and most wonderful job on earth. Yep, it surely is. It surely is. Yep, I can't. I had real fear about when my kids moved out that that was going to be it. They weren't going to need me anymore. They call me all the time. They're like, hey, I'm thinking about this. What do you think? Or I'm having a bad day. Can I talk it through with you? It's nice. It's nice to still feel needed. Do you have advice? And I'm like...
26:10Yeah, I'm like, do you really want my advice or just want me to listen? And they will tell me, they're either like, I just need to vent or I need your advice. So yeah, it's nice. It's nice. It's really great. So how many, I don't know if this makes any sense. Do you have many copies of your cookbook to sell or just have a first run first print? I have many. But even if I needed them.
26:40I think it printed and shipped to me within a week. So, so I don't anticipate ever running out of them. And I will be going around town. I'm not going to market it. Um, on the internet and on Amazon, like most people do, because I decided to take a. More old fashioned marketing route. So.
27:06I already have four people that I've talked to for businesses that will allow me to come sell them at their establishments during some of their events or whatever I can sit there and sell them. And because it's for charity, I'm not really getting many no's. So if I can continue that, I know that sounds nuts, but if you're on Amazon, most of the feedback I get from authors is they have...
27:34these trickling sales, well, that's not going to help me with my charities. I want to give them lots of money. So selling it on the internet is, is difficult. I don't know how to say it other than there's a lot you have to go through and a lot I have to learn and I'm in my sixties. So I don't want to learn all that. And I don't want to phase people out. Like on.
28:03On Instagram, I'm told if you use hashtags that are popular, that you'll get tons of people to look at it. Well, I don't want tons of people to look at it. I want tons of people to buy it. So that's not gonna help me. And Facebook is really the same, other than I have quite a few followers on Facebook, for me anyway, I have about 1,500.
28:29You know, the amount of them that had purchased them in the last two days have made me extremely happy. So, I mean, I'll be able to send out my first check next week, and that makes me happy. That's awesome. Yeah. So if I can continue that by going around town, and I live in the Atlanta area. There are millions of people that live around here. So if I can continue that and start giving them out or selling them out from different businesses,
28:58I think it'll be a success and I'll get the money I want for the charities that I support. So great, great. Well I'm gonna, I'm gonna promote you on the podcast here. I think that if you want to support charities that Maggie supports, you should buy her book. And you said it was for it was for dogs charity. Yes, it's for two charities. One is the Trio Foundation in Chicago. And the other one is Frankie and Andy's place.
29:28here in Georgia and they take care of senior dogs. So senior dogs that are no longer wanted or very ill or have been abandoned or abused, they take them in. They have this huge property in different cabins for different dogs. It's a beautiful idea. Absolutely. So like I said, if you wanna support Maggie and her support of these two charities, go check out her book. It'll be in the show notes. You can go right to the link and click it.
29:57Thank you so much, Mary. Yeah, for sure. I have a dog I love beyond measure, so I am all for what you're doing. Oh, thank you so much. And she shares your name. Go Fig. Yeah. It's destined. Yeah, she's behaved admirably today. We are expecting a package that actually has her dog food in the mail. And the mail hasn't come yet today, so she hasn't barked in the background. Yay. Good job. Yay. Yeah, that's right.
30:25All right, Maggie, it is 30 minutes and 16 seconds, I'm sorry, 18 seconds in, and I try to keep these to half an hour, so I'm gonna let you go. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Mary, very much. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye-bye.
 

Misfits Homegrown LLC

Today I'm talking with Amy at Misfits Homegrown LLC. You can also follow on Facebook.
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 Amy at Misfits, I'm sorry, hang on Amy. Misfits Homegrown LLC. It's already been a Monday and it's barely Monday, so. Yes, I agree. Our barn cat had kittens last night, so.
00:30I got a photo from my husband this morning and I was like, yay, more kittens. Woo. Yay, just what you need, right? Yeah, there's six. We'll find homes for them. It will be fine. There you go. And they're very sweet. They're adorable. So it's been the Mondayest of Mondays in the best way possible. That's a good thing. So tell me about what you do, Amy.
00:59Misfits Homegrown, we raise our own beef, pork and chicken and farm fresh eggs. We raise them from start to finish. Nice. So how did you get into it? Well, my partner and I, we've been in the, excuse me, the agricultural industry forever. He's managing a 2,500 cow dairy over...
01:26And then I'm going to say Reedsville, Wisconsin. And then I was herdsman on a farm out in Valdez for years. That's how we've actually met. And, uh, we moved in together and we started out with three beef animals, just three steers we had. And as a word got out that we were raising beef, people started buying quarters and haves from us. And.
01:54That was back in 2017. We established the farm in 2018. And with that, um, I had met some people who didn't have freezer space for a quarter or half steer. So I started doing individual cuts and I got a license through our county to sell individual cuts of meat. So now our clientele base has just grown. So when people need two pounds of ground beef and a roast, they can get two pounds of ground beef in a roast.
02:23Awesome. Yeah. You guys are, how do you pronounce it? Manitowoc? Is that how it's pronounced? Yes. Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Yes. Yes. Okay. I interviewed a lady months ago from that area and I can't remember which business was hers, but she said that it's beautiful there. It is. It is. I actually left Wisconsin for about five years and came right back. So you get, you get a little bit of four seasons all in one day.
02:52And sometimes you actually get months of each season, which is a blessing. So.
03:00Uh-huh. Yeah, Minnesota's like that too. So yeah. Yep. We're neighbors. So, uh-huh. Hey, neighbor. So, so I saw on your Facebook page that you guys have a building now on your property. Yes. And you can, it's basically a store. Yes, we built. So basically what happened in the past, oh gosh, since 2018 and during the pandemic in 2020, people really realized
03:30where their food came from and they wanted to know more. And that's where our clientele had tripled. So with that, I started doing the local farmers markets and I started, you know, advertising more. And we are now to the point where we built a small country store on our property and we're selling our meat and our farm fresh eggs. And then I have other local vendors in the neighboring area.
03:58who does honey and maple syrup and produce. And we're pretty much trying to make this a central hub or a country farmers market. Well, congratulations on that. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a challenge. It's been a long year and a half since we started everything, but we're very blessed. We're actually opening the doors this Saturday, the 14th for a soft opening. And the 28th is our grand opening.
04:28fantastic I love country stores my parents live in Maine and there is a there is a basically a country store down the road from them and we were back to visit we were back to visit in 2014 I think and we stopped by that store and it's stocked with the stuff that the people that own it grow and stocked with local producers yes things and
04:57You walk in there and it's so cute. Yeah. The thing I don't like about grocery stores these days is they're very slick. They're very shiny. They're very colorful. They're very loud. Yes. There's always a radio station or whatever playing and I walk in and I'm like, I forgot what I came in here for because my brain is overloaded with, with what I'm seeing and hearing and smelling and country stores. You walk in and it doesn't do that to me. It's just like.
05:27Oh, this is really calm and nice. Yeah. So I love country stores. We actually, so when Bryce bought this property in 2017, it was his great uncle's farm. So he actually, it's a family farm. And when he purchased it and when I moved in, we had a lot of repairs to do. The barns were falling down and it, you know, it was neglected for years. So we've put a lot of heart and soul into this place. And we originally,
05:57wanted to have a little store in the greenery that was in the middle of the property. And I didn't want to lose that. So when we decided to do this, we literally picked the greenery up, we moved it, poured a foundation and put it back on. So when you walk into the store, you are walking into the greenery from 1910.
06:17Awesome. And we stripped all the barn boards off of that grain room. We used them on the walls of the store. So it's all incorporated. Yeah. We're really excited. I love that. That's so fun. Yeah, it is. And, you know, so we have his family history here and then some of the shelving that we built, um, we took from my grandparents old house and we built shelving with my family history. So
06:47nice country store. It really means a lot to us.
06:53Yeah, I imagine it does. And I'm sure at the end of the day on the 22nd, you said, for the real grand opening. 28th. At the end of the day on the 28th, you're going to go home or walk from the store to your home, walk in the door, sit down, and be like, yes, we did it. Yeah, I know we're getting excited, but I don't think the reality is setting in yet. Because we're both just kind of like, OK, we're just trying to make sure that all of our eyes are dotted and our T's are crossed right now.
07:23Uh-huh. You know, and I think once we actually can sit back and take a look at everything, we're going to be like, holy man, we did it. Yeah. Yeah, and don't be disappointed if it's not quite as climactic as you think it will be. Right. I'm going to tell you, it's so weird. The older I get, the less impact things have in that huge emotional way.
07:53We bought our place four years ago in August, and I was very excited about this. We had been living in a small house in town for 20 years, and we bought our new place, which is over three acres and has a really nice house on it, and it's in the middle of nowhere, and we are so in love with it. But I really thought that I would have that crazy high that you used to get when you were young when things happened. Yes.
08:22Yes, I agree with you. And I didn't. I was just like, okay, so we did it. Now what? Now what is always the thing I think after we accomplish something. Yeah. Okay, what's the next thing we can challenge ourselves to do? Yeah. And I don't know. I just, I don't know if I'm just too old to have the energy to get that high anymore from when things happen or if I'm just like, well, we've done other things before. So of course we made this thing happen too. I don't know.
08:52It is weird. And I kind of feel that way too, because I have so many, like some of my friends and my, you know, my sisters are like, well, aren't you excited? And I'm like, yeah, but I'm not like bouncing off the walls excited. You know? Yeah. I don't know how to explain it. I think people expect me to be more, all right, we're doing this. And I just, yeah, it's been a long journey and we just want to open the doors and give back to the community that supported us while we're doing this.
09:20Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So, so what are you going to be selling? You're going to be selling chicken and pork? Yep. And we, um, I, well, um, I have steers and pigs going in every month. I do chickens seasonally. I usually don't do it in the dead of winter because it's too hard to raise baby chicks. Um, too cold and I won't. So my season, my last batch of chickens goes in October.
09:49So that'll be my last group of chickens until next spring. But yeah, we do have pigs and steers going in every month. And then along with that, my eggs, and we have our neighbor who does maple syrup. We have, it's in the wood sugar bush. They're supporting, they're putting maple syrup in here. We have another family that does raw honey. I don't know if you've heard of Debbie, or Otto's pumpkin patch.
10:18I think I have heard of it, but I haven't talked to them yet. Yeah, she does like, she does all of her own produce and she does like a big pumpkin patch for the kids to come out and pick your own pumpkins and all that. So I'm getting some of her produce and some of her pumpkins and gourds for fall. I have another lady growing mums and succulents, you know, and these are all our neighbors that
10:45We really didn't know what we were doing. You know, none of us really knew each other until now. So it's kind of a neat way to keep it close to home. That is fabulous. I love that. And then this winter, because I've been active in the summer markets and the winter markets, but because I have the store opening, I'm actually helping alleviate the stress for the city of Manson. They do an indoor farmers market in the winter.
11:13And we can't always fit all those vendors in that space. So I'm going to take some here for the winter. So we'll do like two Saturdays a month where I'll have vendors come in and sell their product throughout the winter. Oh my God, that is so great. Yeah. So like I said, we're just, it's, we're one big community. And until you really start doing this and get to know each other, there's so many neat, amazing farmers out there. And
11:42It's really a cool thing that we're doing. So, yeah. Yes. Yes, it's stellar. I don't get to use that word very often, but it's a stellar thing. We are, not we, my husband sells at the farmers market here in Lesor. And they're looking for a place to have a winter market. It got brought up a couple weekends ago. And it sounds like they're having a little bit of trouble finding a place to do it. Yes.
12:11And I suggested one of the churches because they could do it on Saturday. And my husband was like, yeah, but what if there's a wedding on Saturday? I was like, oh yeah, I didn't think of that. Yeah. See, we used to do it. I don't know if you've heard of Grow It Forward out of Manitowoc? I have not, but I will put it on the list. Grow It Forward is a, it's a food pantry and they were donated a church when they first started to start their pantry up. And we used to have the indoor market in there.
12:41But with the way they're growing and the needs for their pantry, they don't have the space for the vendors now. So it's been put downtown, man, it's walk into a cafe and you can only have four to five vendors per Saturday. And there's like 10 to 15 that wanna do it. So I talked to Amber from Grow It Forward and I asked her, I said, would you mind? And she's like, no, go for it. So I'm like, okay. Nice. This way, you know.
13:09Some people can sell out here, some people can sell in downtown. It'll work. Yeah. It's just, yeah, everything you're, everything you're telling me makes it sound like this was one of those meant to be things for you. It feels like everything is coming together for you. It is. And this is where I, I, I take my faith into a court and I'm, I am so grateful and I'm so thankful every day. It just.
13:38This has always been my dream to have my own store. I used to just want a coffee shop. And then when you can incorporate your passion of life, which is farming and coffee in the store, it's kind of a neat thing. It's really exciting. Well, coffee is my passion in life. So I got one half of that covered. Yep, so I am gonna have like a coffee and donut bar. Not that I can sell it, but I can have it there for customers to come in and then just leave a donation.
14:08because I do not have that conditional use permit. Because that's a whole nother ball of wax. Yeah, that leads me to my next.
14:18Yeah, I was going to say that leads me to my next question. How hard was it with the regulations and stuff to get this to happen? Oh, Lord, it was. So originally, we were just going to put up a country store. And basically what we're doing now was our main idea. But then as people start talking to us, they're like, well, why don't you do this? And why don't you do that? So we actually inquired of how we could make it more of a commercial store.
14:46And it went into zoning and planning and they wanted to change our zoning. And we said no, because they wanted us to go residential or commercial. But you can't have livestock. I said, that is the whole business. That is why we are here today. So no, thank you. Yeah. It's been, it's been a challenge, but we've gotten through it. So this Wednesday, we actually go to our town meeting.
15:12and present, you know, that we're opening this Saturday and hand out flyers for the grand opening. And if there's any concerns, because we want to make sure that our community is okay with this, you know, because it is going to increase traffic and bring more people out here. So we just want to address any concerns that there might be and, you know, keep it as a local community. Just make sure we're all open and honest with each other. Yes, because that's the only way it's going to fly. Right.
15:42And I don't mean fly like fly under the radar. I mean fly like fly like an eagle and be successful. Right. And that's why we're trying to incorporate our township as much as possible for our grand opening. Actually, our local fire department is going to be frying out our burgers and brats and serving beverages for our grand opening. So trying to incorporate everybody.
16:06I am smiling huge. Like I am literally sitting here, my face is broken open with a smile. That's great. Yeah. I'm excited for you. Thank you. I'll tell you a little bit more. So my daughter is a high school teacher at Keele and she's the egg teacher. She, you know, she does dairy science and runs the FFA program. And actually her FFA students and some of another community's FFA students are gonna be out here that day running the petting zoo.
16:35and the bouncy houses for the kids. So we're trying to incorporate those, you know, we're trying to take in our local kids and, you know, give them some experience in this crazy world we call farming. I could not be any happier for you. Like, I say this all the time, my heart gets too big for my chest when people tell me their stories. I'm right there again, this is awesome. So you-
17:04You had mentioned the pandemic back in the beginning of this. Yes. I keep wondering when I'm going to get to the point where every other interview doesn't mention COVID or the pandemic, because a lot of things were born out of the pandemic. Yes. So I wonder if it's going to be like another three years before it's not every other interview where somebody's like, yeah, it was a COVID baby. Right.
17:30And I, you know, I don't really have any issue with the COVID babies. I think a lot of COVID babies are really starting to find their feet now. They're toddlers. Yep. And yeah. And I think, I mean, just going through that whole, where we didn't have food in the grocery stores, you couldn't get it in and people were looking and actually realizing, oh, there are local farmers out here raising this stuff. Oh, maybe that's where I'll get my food. And then it took, that took off for a lot of people.
18:01So as horrible as the pandemic was, it was a blessing for some of us. Yes, exactly. I keep saying it was a double-edged sword. It was absolutely a tragedy for a lot of people, but it was also a huge opportunity for people to figure out what they wanted to do. And it gave them an open door to step through. Yes, absolutely.
18:27When we went through it, we moved in the summer of 2020. And first thing we did was get a half beef in our freezers because we knew that supply chains were starting to get screwy. Yep. And we happened to have the fundage to be able to do it. Right. And we had always, I've talked about this before, we had always shopped like for a month at a time on
18:56staples like toilet paper and paper towels and I don't know butter we'd throw it in the freezer and we always had three gallons of milk in the fridge because we always drink milk we have our coffee we I make cream based soups from scratch you need milk for those and so our way of living and shopping was already kind of set yeah and so when the supply chain started to get iffy
19:24We really did have a stockpile, not because we went and bought out a store, but because that's how we had shopped all along. Right. So I think I've mentioned this the other day. The only thing that frustrated me was that I could not get the dish soap that I really, really like for a year. And I had to use all these dish soaps that I did not love. Like they didn't, they didn't work, number one, and they smelled awful to me.
19:54And every time I go to do dishes, I'm like, oh my God, I can't wait until that dawn green apple soap is back. Cause this is driving me insane. And it was, it was the stupidest thing. Like it was the least major issue of COVID ever to be talked about. But it was the thing that I really noticed. Right. And it's the thing that you really liked and you use and you depended on. Yeah. Yep. And.
20:19we were really lucky because we made our own soap, we made our own lip balms. I know how to make hand balm, you know, for dry skin. So, I wasn't, we weren't in trouble on a lot of things because we already were making it and had it. And so that's why I'm so grateful that we had already been, I don't know, practicing homesteading skills because it really saved us on a lot of the supply chain stuff. Right, I'll see even to...
20:48Even now, when I take a trip to town, I make sure that I go and I get everything I'm gonna need. Mm-hmm. Because I don't want to have to drive to town every other day. No. And that's how we are too, like our staples especially. Everything that we grow, whether it's because I have many gardens, I don't have giant gardens, but like tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and onions and this is stuff we use every day in our food. Yeah.
21:18I don't know, I just, I totally understand that we, when we go to town, we make a trip. We don't make several. It's a trip. Yeah. And I don't know if you're like, we used to be, but when we lived at the old house, we knew which, which stores had the better deals on things. Yes. So we would sit down and go through the, the flyers that you get in your local paper and see who had the best deals on what. And we would make like a loop.
21:47We'd start at home, go to wherever was closest for the thing we needed that was the cheapest, and then just keep going and we'd make a loop and then come home and not have spent as much money.
22:01Right, right. And that's, and the money, the expense of everything right now is just insane. It just, you know, you wonder how, so you wonder how a single mom can raise three kids on her own. Look at the cost of living right now. It's insane. I do not know how anyone under the age of 30 right now is surviving. I don't know how they're doing it. Let's see, my, so I have three children. My oldest lives here in Wisconsin. My other two
22:30moved to North Carolina. And the cost of living there is horrendous compared to here. And they're still there, but they struggle and they have good paying jobs. And they're like, mom, I can't believe how expensive my rent is. And my house payments this and groceries are this. I'm like, yeah, you got to learn to budget. Yeah, it's definitely a different world than when I was their age. Yeah.
22:59I don't want to date myself, but you know, a couple decades ago. Oh, I'll just date, I'll date myself and then you can feel free to. I'm 54. So I figure we're probably close. Yep. I'm 50. Yep. Yeah. And honestly, my husband has a nice job. He's got a decent job. And we were really counting on selling our produce at the farmer's market this year to kind of supplement his income.
23:28Our gardens did terrible this year. So, so there's not a whole lot of supplemental income this year. No, I have raised garden beds and that has been a blessing. We're, we're definitely thinking about that for next year. Yeah. My brother actually made these for me, but I was like, thank you. He saved my back on weeding and I just put fertilizer in there and compost and it grows beautifully and my fertilizer is chicken poop.
23:58So yes, we have, we have chicken. That's amazing. And we're going to, we're going to, oh my God, chicken poop is the best fertilizer. Our friends have goats, our friends have goats. So we're going to pick up some goat manure sometime the next two weeks as well. Let that, that works great too. So that is something we're adding to the misfits family. I have four pig meat goats coming next week. So nice. And
24:27They're not for butchered, they're gonna be my pets. I'm sorry, they're just cute and I want goats. You're getting dogs with messed up feet and broken barks. Right, right. Yes. And I have black labs so they can become best friends, it's great. And they will, they will become best friends. So one quick thing about the inflation stuff. Yes. With the way that food is just.
24:56I mean, some of it's come down, but it still seems like everything is just exorbitantly expensive. We have been doing a lot of cooking from scratch at home because to buy anything that's already made, it's not worth it. It's so much more worth me spending my time than our money right now. Yep. And like, we don't eat out, rarely we eat out because well, we'd have to drive into town. Yep.
25:26everything we do here too is from scratch. Homemade chicken soups and chilies. When I can tomatoes, I use all the juice and you know, I have that throughout the year. That's how I make my spaghetti sauce and chili and lasagna. Yeah. Yep. I made French onion soup the other night for the first time since last fall. And I always forget how much I love it until I'm eating it. And I was just like, I don't know why I don't make this more often.
25:55Right. And my husband was like, because there's nothing to it. He said, he said, the thing that makes French onion soup great is the bread that we eat with it. And I was like, liar. I like the soup. You like the bread. But yes, making soups is amazing. I, we make soup all winter long. Yeah. I'm looking, okay, that sounds terrible. Cause I know we don't get much summer here, but I'm looking forward to fall. Now it's been a really hot summer. As the summer has
26:27I think I just talked over you. I'm sorry. It's okay. As there's a lag happening and so it cuts out and I can't tell if you're still talking, but it comes back and I'm like, oh, I just talked over her. Oops. As sucky as this summer has been, I am so excited. We're rolling into fall. Me too. Me too. I am. And so are my animals like just the cool nights now, just the relief and the calves and yeah.
26:56It's just a big difference and it's good for everyone. It just kind of clears, it's fresh air now. It's not stale and sticky. Gross. Gross is the word I've used all summer. Oh yeah. I don't know if you guys are going to get this, but we're supposed to have a week of hot this week. Yep. That's what they said. You'll get it first and then it'll head this way. Yeah. And of course the cat had kittens last night when it's going to be hot all week. I'm like, great. That's awesome.
27:25Well, you know what that means. You'll have to spend extra time with them. Well, they're in the barn and they're in some hay bales. That's where she has her babies. OK, OK. And it's all shady and they and the kittens know, like even when they're only a day old, they know to move away from each other if they're too hot. So I think it'll be OK.
27:49better than minus 20 because they probably wouldn't survive it.
27:55Chickens too just right now. They're comfortable now, but This hot week is going to be a stress around them, too Mm-hmm. But yeah, that's what we do when we farm Uh-huh. It's all the seasons Yeah, I think the worst thing about this week is my dog has been loving this cooler weather She's a mini Australian Shepherd. She weighs like 35 pounds and she loves to go outside when it's cold
28:25or cool. Right. And she goes out and she just rolls in the grass, just rolls herself over six times, throws herself around, scratches her back. You can just see her being like, oh, this is so much better than all the heat we've had. And so she's been just wanting to go outside all day long. And today is supposed to be okay. I guess Wednesday is supposed to be 90. Yeah.
28:48She's gonna be one unhappy pupper all day Wednesday. Yes, and my labs too, they love playing ball. Everything is ball, ball, ball. And when it's hot, hot, they won't even go outside. They'll stay in the house. Yeah, Maggie is frisbee. She loves frisbee. See? I just, all my kids grew up and moved away and I got another puppy, so. Yes. Yes, that's what we did too.
29:16We call Maggie our fifth baby. Yeah, yeah. And actually my kids always say, you love her more than me. Well, she does not talk back. It's kind of nice. So you know, as we get, how is that saying? As we get older, our parents get smarter. I think that's, yeah. So I'm waiting for that day to happen.
29:41Yes, I have had all of my children come to me at one point or another since they hit 20 years old and say, you know, I remember when I did this thing. I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. My oldest is doing that now, but the other two, not yet. So I know it's coming. Yeah. Um, my stepson back years ago, we, we had a rough and rocky relationship for a while. And.
30:11He was a hard kid. He was a good kid, but he was a difficult kid. And he joined the Marines, and he went into the Marines, and he came back to visit for leave about a year or so after he joined the Marines. And he purposely came back to visit before the other kids got home from school and before dad got home from work because he wanted to talk to me. And I was like, okay.
30:39And so he got dropped off at the house and he came in and gave me a big hug. And he said, before you say anything. And I was like, Oh, he says, he says, I love you. I'm sorry. Oh, I said, sorry for what? He said, for being such a pain in the ass. I was like, Oh, okay. Well, yep. That's what kids do. And I love you anyway. And then we just sat down and talked. It was beautiful. Yeah. Those are.
31:08beautiful moments actually. Bryce has four children so that's why we got the name Misfits. I was gonna ask. We have seven kids between the two of us. All about the same age and you try and mesh them. We just started calling ourselves Misfits and that's how we got the farm name. It's stunning. It was a joke that's stuck. So it's kind of...
31:32Yeah, I was going to ask you before we got done talking. And so I'm glad that you brought it up. Yeah. Everyone asked me, I say we're a modern day Brady bunch. Yep. And so were we. Um, none of our kids have the same last name. Oh, wow. Four kids. Cause I had one from my first marriage or one from my second marriage. Husband had one from a previous relationship and then husband and I had the youngest who still lives with us. So.
32:01So they all have different last names, but it's Cassandra, Cody, Cameron, and Ken. So they all have the same C at the beginning of their first names. Wow. And that was not planned. Well, it was meant to be then. Okay, so Bryce has an older boy. He lives in Texas, older girl who lives here in, I'm gonna say Kelnarsville.
32:28And then he has two younger ones actually, 12 and 11 from his second marriage. So, yeah. Yep. So it's, yeah, that's why we got the name Misfits because we were just a modern day Brady bunch and there was no other way to explain us. Yeah. And you shouldn't have to, well, I don't mind the term explain, but I always feel, I always felt like I had to defend the fact that our kids had different last names.
32:57And I finally realized when they got older that I didn't have to defend it. It didn't matter. No, it doesn't matter. And family doesn't always have to be blood. It's what you make. Family is created with the people around you. Yeah, exactly. Cause we all have that black sheep in our family, you know? I think I'm the black sheep of three kids. I think I am. Yeah. I'm good with black. I wear black all the time.
33:26Me too, black and gray. Those are my favorites. Wow. Yeah, I'm getting more fond of rich, deep brown as I get older, but I still like black. Yeah, me too. So, but anyway, I feel like- Yeah, now we're getting sidetracked. I was gonna say, I feel like the last few interviews I've done, it started off about the homestead and then it ends up being about raising kids or pets or favorite things.
33:55and that's totally fine, but we're at like 33 minutes and I try to keep this to half an hour. So we're good. All right, well, yeah, no, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you, I'm so excited for you. I can't wait to see photos on Facebook about the grand opening. Yeah, it's coming, it's coming. I got all my mums out. I have to get them in planters now, so I'm excited. Yes, thank you so much for your time, Amy. I appreciate it. You have a wonderful day.
34:24You too. All right. Bye.
 

FarmRaise

Today I'm talking with Isabelle at FarmRaise. 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 Isabelle at FarmRaise. Hello, Isabelle, how are you? Good, how are you, Mary? I'm good. You said you're in Missouri? Yes, I am. Okay, well I'm in Minnesota. I don't know if it's a pretty day there, but it's really pretty here.
00:29Oh my gosh, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous these past few days. Yeah, I always start the podcast interviews with talking about the weather because our weather is always crazy. It's either strikingly gorgeous or it's terrible and it feels like there's no in between this year. So it really, it really is like that. And I know that a lot of people think that talking about the weather.
00:59is kind of shallow or small talk, but in agriculture, I think it's a form of kind of like a love language or like showing that you care about somebody because the weather just really impacts our ability to do what we do. And so the weather is just a vital part of our lives. And so I think that
01:26In other industries, it may just be small talk, but in agriculture, we love to talk about it. We love to talk about it. We love to predict it. We love to complain about it, but it's a real thing. It's a really integral part of agriculture. Yes, it really is. It is. But we could definitely use a shot of rain where I'm at, but we'll probably...
01:53A lot of people will start harvest here in the next few weeks that are in the traditional line of agriculture, but I mean, I have zucchini coming out my ears. So if I get any more rain, I don't know what I'm going to do with it all. So yeah, we don't have anything coming. Well, we have tomatoes coming in finally.
02:18but it's been a terrible growing season for us. And I don't want to talk about it at all because I've talked about ad nauseum on the podcast and in real life and I just give up. It's a wash to next year is gonna be better. Yeah, I've heard that from quite a few people. I was talking to my cousin on the phone the other day and she said that, you know, she had a horrible year for sweet corn and peppers. And so she was really glad
02:49they had an overabundance from last year, still in the freezer and still canned from last year because they just had a horrible year. Sorry, what was that? I was going to say it's been rough all the way around. Yeah, this was my first year kind of doing a really, really large garden by myself.
03:16in Missouri. I grew up in Nebraska and I did some small stuff after my husband and I first got married. So I was just thinking it was just me, but turns out it wasn't. It was kind of a rough year for everybody. So that made me feel a little bit better, but next year will definitely be better for everybody. Keeping my fingers crossed.
03:45Okay, so tell me about Farm Raise. Yes. So Farm Raise was started by three people who were at Stanford University and they saw a need for farmers to kind of simplify the FSA records process. And then that moved into simplifying the grant application process.
04:14and then moved into, well, actually what farmers, homesteaders, ranchers really need is the ability to track their records. And so with FarmRays, we have a farm accounting software that helps you to track your records for your schedule F, track your inventory.
04:40and on the app and then create invoices to be able to send to your customers. And then prepare to apply for loans or grant programs. So we have a really great software that can really help you to see where am I spending money on my farm? And maybe where can I cut back on some of my spending?
05:08That's not making me as much money. And then another piece of what FarmRays does is we have some B2B software. So we host applications for climate smart farming programs. So we currently host the application for...
05:35the Mizzou Climate Smart Regenerative Crops and Livestock, and then one for blue diamond growers as well. So we help create applications and then reporting features so that it's easier for farmers to apply for those programs, get the money dispersed to them, and then report the sustainable practices that they are doing back.
06:03to the organizations to get that USDA funding. So Farm Raise has a lot of different software solutions, not only for farmers, but for businesses who are hosting grant applications for farmers as well. Okay, what does FSA stand for?
06:30Yeah, so FSA is the Farm Service Agency and they are a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture. So they're in the umbrella under the USDA. And so they are the ones who have different microloan programs, they have different emergency
06:56assistance programs, as well as disaster programs that farmers can apply for in times of needs, as well as underserved farmers, such as farmers of color, veteran farmers, and beginning farmers to get their farm off the ground, to purchase a farm, or...
07:21to get started. So FarmRais is currently a cooperator of the USDA and we host the FSA educational hub. So we have a ton of resources where you can come learn about the FSA and learn about how you can potentially start your funding journey with the FSA, apply for loans, apply for different disaster programs.
07:49So say all of your honeybee hives got taken out this year by variromites or through some different type of disease. There's funding out there through the FSA and through the USDA to help you get back on your feet. Awesome. So Farm Raise is a national thing. It's not just Missouri. Yeah. So Farm Raise, we are a completely remote team. And so there is 12.
08:19of us. We have three of us on the farmer success team, and then we have four software engineers, and then some people on the design team, and then our leadership team. So there's 12 of us, and we're all throughout the country, but we help farmers in every single state manage their finances. So we
08:47are so thrilled to be able to do that here. I feel like farm raise takes the pain out of bookkeeping and paperwork if you're in ag. Yes.
09:02Yes, it really does. It really does. One of the awesome things that our engineering team is, is one of the best because not only do they know what they're talking about when it comes to computer science, but they have experience with agriculture. One of them has a farm and they have all
09:30done farm tours. Every year, our team, we go out and we visit farmers to be able to see what it's like. And we do tons of farmer interviews every year to see what farmers are needing. And so we make our features to serve farmers. And so our engineering team this year has really done a lot to improve.
09:59our reporting features to make it super easy for you to export your transactions or to get a custom report of your data, of, you know, find out what, which of my products is making me the most money. How can I spend less in this category?
10:26And it's really awesome to be able to see how far we've come in that. And then also, you know, being able to send an invoice directly from the app and have it connected to your inventory. It is really cool to be able to help you not only manage your, your inventory bookkeeping, but also manage all of your invoices in one place.
10:56and kind of be able to take a deep breath and be like, oh my gosh, this is so easy and painless. Because, you know, bookkeeping can sometimes be the hardest part when you're running numbers and crunching numbers. So making it really easy to be able to track it all.
11:25Quicken and he uses spreadsheets to keep track of our inventory and our expenses and our income and we are a tiny little homestead. We want hence a tiny homestead, but we have a farm to market garden that we sell produce from at the farmer's market and at a farm stand on our property. When we have produce to sell? This year not so much. The last three years, yes.
11:54He is really good with numbers. He actually was a bookkeeper for a few years in his younger years. And he doesn't mind doing it. But I'm telling you, if anything happened to him, I would have to take it over. And I hate math. I'm good at it, but I hate math and I hate spreadsheets. So a program like yours would help me a lot. The question is, is the FarmRays program
12:23that you guys do. Is it for even little tiny people like us?
12:29Yes, yes, of course. We have, we have farmers, we have homesteaders, we have ranchers, we have people who have all the way down from 800 square feet that they are farming all the way up to over 25,000 acres. Wow, we have so many different types of farmers as well.
12:57We have people who are raising oysters. We have traditional crop farmers, vegetable farmers. We have people who raise honeybees. We have all sorts of different farmers. And so one of the questions that we get a lot is, is farm raise right for me? And...
13:26Or is it a right fit for blank operation? And my response is always yes. If you file a schedule F to report farm earnings or farm expenses, then yes, you can definitely use farm raise tracks. And the best part of it is, I hear that a lot Mary is that,
13:54Oh, we're coming to Farm Raise tracks because our bookkeeper passed away or our accountant isn't helping farmers anymore unless they do, unless they start using a software program or something like that. And the great thing about Farm Raise is that if you categorize your expenses to the Schedule F categories throughout the year.
14:20It'll calculate your line by line totals when it comes to tax season. And then all that has to be done is it has to be plugged into your schedule F PDF form. Um, and so it is just so simplified and it is, it is so, so easy, um, come to tax time or creating a balance sheet if you need to apply for a loan or a grant.
14:50Um, so it gets, it doesn't have to be difficult. And that's one of the things that, that we want to do is we want to help farmers save time so that they can focus on what, on what they do best, um, is farming. And then secondly, you know, spending time with their family. Um, cause because we know that's important to them as well.
15:18Yep, it sure is. So you sound like you love what you're doing. Like I can hear it coming through your voice. Yes, yes. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. And after graduating college, I worked in higher education for a little bit.
15:47before my husband and I got married. And, you know, then we decided to move back to his family's farm. And so I've been with FarmRays about a year now. And I, you know, I was applying for jobs trying to figure out, you know, how am I ever going to find a job that I love? And I just kept waiting and applying and interviewing and just nothing. And, you know, after college, I had
16:16I had applied for so many jobs and interviewed for so many jobs and I had like 10 job offers. And then just three years later, I had applied for 100 jobs, interviewed for 10 and had no offers. And so I was like, this is just, I was beginning to lose hope. And I...
16:41then applied for the job with Farm Raise and I had my first interview with them and I realized how passionate I was about the work that they were doing. Because not only do they care about helping farmers become, you know, more better at tracking their finances, but they also wanna help farmers
17:08you know, become more sustainable, be able to find sustainable practices that work for their farm as well. Um, and so, yes, I love my job. Um, I'm very passionate, um, about agriculture and, um, farm raises values really align with mine. You know, building farmer trust is our number one, one value. And, um, you know, that, that was really important to me.
17:37And being authentic is one of our values, or, you know, building authenticity and executing. And those were all very important things to me. And so when I started here at FarmRays, it just felt like a great fit right away because of the value alignment. And so.
18:00Being able to help farmers with their finances this last year has just been so rewarding. And I can't speak highly enough about our CEO, Jace Hafner, and our COO, Sammy Teletun. They have done a wonderful job building the culture here at FarmRays and making sure that we stay true to the mission and vision of supporting farmers.
18:31Super. I'm going to share a little thing about how important it is to be able to get behind your job. When I got one of my first jobs, I think I was 17, I worked at a bookstore. And I love books. I am a lifelong avid reader, have been since first grade. And I applied for this job as a cashier at a bookstore in a town that was like,
18:58two or three towns from where I lived, so a good half an hour, 40 minutes drive. And, uh, I applied because it was a bookstore. I wanted to go to go to every bookstore on earth at that point. And I didn't think I'd get the job because I was only 17. And I went in for the interview and the guy interviewed me and he was like, you are really well read for 17 years old. And I laughed and said, yes, because books are my best friends. And.
19:27He was like, great. He said, and clearly you can read. He said, you wouldn't be in here if you couldn't read. And he was just laughing. And he said, can you file? And I said, I know the alphabet. I'm pretty sure I can file. And he laughed again. And he basically sent me on my way and said, I'll give you a call in a couple of days. He had called my house before I even got home and talked to my mom and said, don't tell her.
19:55but I want her to work for me. I wanna tell her. And my mom, of course, told me. So I called him back and I said, "'Say you want me to work for you, huh?' He said, "'Your mom wasn't supposed to tell you.'" I said, "'Well, she couldn't hide her excitement.'" So I worked there for like a year and a half and I loved that job beyond recognition. We were allowed to take home any book and read it as long as we didn't damage it. I had my own
20:24personal library of new releases for a year and a half. It was amazing. Wow. Yes, so if you're lucky enough to find a job that involves something that you truly love, go for it because it'll be the best thing you ever do.
20:45Yeah, it is. It truly is amazing. I think I can count on one hand the number of bad days I've had at work this past year and two weeks that I've worked for Farm Raised, which is such a blessing to love your job that much. And really being able to meet.
21:13the farmers that we get to help, get to hear about their operations, get to see their families, getting to hear about their wins and about their losses too. It really is cool to be able to build a relationship with some of them. And you know, these are farmers that
21:40frankly, I don't know what they look like. I've heard their voice over the phone before. But really cool to be able to help them organize their finances and to be able to help them. We have one farmer who, she said that the membership paid itself off because she saw how much she was spending in places that she.
22:08She didn't need to be spending. And so she adjusted her spending habits. We had a farmer whose accountant won't take any farmers except for her because her taxes are so organized because of farm raise. It's so cool to be able to see those success stories.
22:37through the work. And also, I'm also a really big reader too. We're remodeling a house right now, so I don't read as much as I would like, probably only like 30 minutes to an hour a day. But have you read, what's the latest book that you read? I have no idea.
23:05I read every night before I go to sleep to stop my brain from spinning. And I just basically read mysteries because I know who did it by the second chapter. And then I just read it to figure out who did it. I mean, how they explain who did it. So I don't really know what the name of the book that I'm reading is right now. And I have a hard time with the digital versions because there's no real book cover.
23:34to memorize anymore. So I can't tell you what I'm reading right now. I just can tell you that I read every night before I go to bed. If I'm going to read something I need to remember, I read it during the day, because otherwise I will forget if I read it at night. Yes, yes. So I have a book in my dresser drawer right now that is basically a gardening guide that I got as a review copy a year ago.
24:04And I looked through that. I should actually get up and get it. Hang on one second. I'm going to grab it so I can tell you the name of it. Okay. Oh, awesome. Hang on. I had to walk across my room to get it. I will edit out all that silence. Um, no, you're fine. It's called the backyard homestead guide to growing organic food. And it's by Tanya Dinkla Cobb. D E N C K L A. And it is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen.
24:33for helping people grow a garden in their backyard basically. It is so, it's laid out so well. It has an appendix, it has an index, and it's all the usual suspects you would grow. And I interviewed her months ago, and that's why I got the book. And she's so smart. Like, I was talking away with her, and I'm like, I am learning so much just from this podcast. Yay. So that's the last one.
25:03That's the last one I really got my hands on that's a real book. Oh, awesome. Yeah. My, I, once I filled up both of my bookshelves, I made the rule this year that I couldn't buy any more physical books. Um, and that I could only buy on the Kindle because I had too many books.
25:29on my shelves that I needed to read first. So I need to get all the books on my shelf read first. But this one looks great. I'm definitely gonna have to check this one out. And honestly, the gardening and homestead books, and I have a bunch of cover crop books and soil books.
25:55I think that those ones are great to have hard copies of just so that you can take them out to the garden with you if you need to compare one of the pests or something or one of the diseases, one of the pictures in there to outside in your garden. So I think those are always great to have physical copies of. Yeah.
26:20When I started the podcast, I didn't even think about interviewing authors because writers are not gardeners, I assumed. But some writers are gardeners and some writers write about homesteading and things like that. Who knew? I'm dense. I hadn't even thought about interviewing authors. And then I got approached by somebody who is an author who raises chickens to interview her and that got the ball rolling.
26:48I'm going to actually approach some more authors who write about the things I talk about because I really love books and when I got this one I was like, oh, I could be getting review copies for free because I want to read the book before I talk to the author. Duh, this is a great plan. Yes, that is a great plan. So yeah, it just never clicked until this lady approached me and I was like, I could be doing two things I love. I could be doing the podcast and I can be reading books by the people that I...
27:18that I talk to. That would be great. I have not written a book yet, but if I write a book someday, I don't know what to think. We'll talk again. Yes, we'll have to talk again. I don't know what I'll write about. I have all sorts of things I could write about up my sleeve. I'm actually interviewing a lady on Friday this week who wrote a book about sheep's milk because she raises sheep. And she's very, very into the nutrition.
27:48um, part of the sheep's milk. And I interviewed her a couple weeks ago and we talked about her sheep and we talked about other stuff. We never actually talked about her book and the nutritional parts. Oh my gosh. I did not even consider her. So she's coming. She's coming back. She's coming back Friday to talk about the thing we're supposed to talk about weeks ago.
28:13Oh my gosh, I never even considered sheep's milk, but I mean, we have cow's milk, goat's milk. I mean, they have camel's milk in the Middle East. Why wouldn't we have sheep's milk too? Yup. So that'll be out next week, so I can always send you the link to the interview.
28:42You know, even people just getting started, if they want to track their expenses, you know, if they are selling at a farmer's market, track that revenue. Because you know, for some grants, you have to be able to show the profits that you have made. Even if it's minute, you do have to have you do have to show the profits that you've made. If people do want to apply for grants someday.
29:09you know, whether that is to put in shelter belts or to start regenerative grazing with their goats or, you know, the livestock or their chickens that they have. You know, tracking those finances no matter how large your homestead or your farm is, is really important when it does come to applying for.
29:37for financing or grant programs even. And so, you know, we can get you, Mary, a referral link with a code for 20% off for your listeners. Yes, please send that along. And would love to be able to help some of your listeners to be able to.
30:05get started on their tracking journey, especially if they are filing a schedule F for their taxes because, you know, different states have different rules. But if you, in some states, even if you have as little as five acres, you can be counted as a farm. So in some states, they don't have any acreage requirements.
30:35notation to know when you're a homesteader and filing taxes. So. Yes. And on the grant subject, we were going to apply for a grant like a month ago. And I read through the application and everything. And I said to my husband, I said, I'm going to need these numbers from you. And he said, oh, okay. And he looked through the stuff about what they needed for information. And he was like,
31:04I don't even know what that means. I don't know what they're looking for on that one. And so we basically decided not to apply for that grant because we thought we were in over our heads. You know, it was beyond the scope of what we're doing. And so I'm assuming that maybe Farm Raise would be able to explain what that number was supposed to be if we were part of it. Yeah. And so we have...
31:33We have a huge farm funding library. And while, you know, farm funding isn't our focus anymore, you know, if we do have an equip application, like equip streamlined application for our premium members, if you have not yet set up FSA records, we do have a streamlined FSA records.
32:01application on our website as well for our premium members. And if you want to find out if you can qualify for some of the value added processing grant or the Equip grant, we have some surveys that can help you find out if you're even eligible to apply. So you don't even have to do the hard work to figure out.
32:30Hey, I don't even know if I should apply for this. Well, we can tell you if you should with some of the resources that we have for our premium members. So, I can kind of help you figure out how to find a grant writer too, if you weren't comfortable writing it yourself.
32:53We've got a ton of resources too and we will help out our premium members. We do not write grants, but we can point you in the direction of some people who do. I was going to ask you that. Good. Awesome. Thank you. So how many tiers are there for the cost for this? Currently we have one tier, well, I guess two tiers. So we have a free membership.
33:22So that is just gives you kind of a basic access of the tracking app on your phone and then the funding library on the web browser. And then we have our premium which is $40 a month.
33:51or $432 a year, but we are going to get Mary a 20% off code, which customers can keep for the lifetime of their membership. So that's not just a one-time thing. You got to keep that forever once you get it. So
34:15But then that includes schedule F generation, balance sheets, inventory tracking, invoicing. And then if anybody actually does have, you can also track your personal expenses on it as well. Or if you have another business, you can track another business on there as well with our custom categories as well. So, and then you also do get access
34:44to tracks on your laptop with our premium access. So lots of different options and really cool new features coming out here soon for our inventory. And we did just release a payroll pilot for anybody who does have employees. Awesome.
35:12I love what you're doing. I mean, it probably seems like I'm sitting here doing a commercial for your business, but I'm not because I know how hard it is to do this when you're first starting out. How do I do the books for my business? And if you've never done it before, it's a lot. It's a lot to figure out. Yes, it is. It is. And that was, you know, when...
35:38when you're a small business or a small farm, it can be really daunting that first year of how do I categorize this for taxes? Or how do I know where this goes? Or how do I know how to track my different products? Or should I even track this? And those are things that we can kind of help you figure out.
36:08and get started. And that's also another thing is, you know, we're a small company and we're farmers, we're farmers kids, and we all love agriculture. And we also have a customer service team that is based here in the United States. And you can call, text, chat, email us.
36:38And you're always going to get a real person. We're not switching over to AI. No matter how big we get, we always want to make sure that you get a real person. And you don't get that with some of the other accounting softwares, even if you're just tracking your personal expenses. So one small business to another.
37:06Let's help each other. So yeah, I love it. I'm so glad that I reached out to you because this is really, this is very interesting to me on my geek side because it's all numbers and magic. And I like it when numbers and magic come together because numbers don't lie. And the magic is that it's not going to make you crazy trying to figure out your bottom line. Yes, exactly. Exactly.
37:34And I will say when I ran our balance sheet for the first time, it was kind of like, oof, I didn't realize that that's how much debt that we had. And now, you know, my husband and I have been able to look to be like, okay, how can we pay off some of this debt faster to reach our goals faster?
38:01And so some of those reporting features have really been a help to us personally too and helping us start our farm. So we're really excited about that as well. Yeah. I feel like farm raises a win-win. As long as you can afford the cost of using the program, it's a win-win. Yes. So.
38:28All right, Isabel. Well, I tried to keep you to half an hour. 38 minutes.
38:36Say it again. So sorry about that. No, that's okay. What were you going to say? I was going to say we do have a seven-day free trial to help to see if it's right for your operation too. Okay, awesome. Okay, I'm going to try it again. Thank you so much for your time today, Isabelle. I appreciate it. Yes, thank you for having me. Absolutely. Have a great afternoon.
 

Shady Hill

Today I'm talking with Ashley at Shady Hill. You can also follow on Facebook.
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 Ashley at Shady Hill. Good afternoon, Ashley. How are you? I'm doing great. It's about low 70 degrees here in Virginia, so it's feeling really good here.
00:26It's a little warmer than that in Minnesota where I am. I think it's probably 75, but it's also overcast. So I'm hoping it does not get hot today. That would be great. All right, so tell me about yourself and Shady Hill. Yeah, so Shady Hill is very new for us. My husband and I, you know, I just turned 26 this year. I feel like I'm getting up there in age now, but I'm 26.
00:54My husband is 25, so we're considered young farmers in our area. Um, but we always wanted to farm, but didn't grow up on farms. So after we studied agriculture at Virginia Tech and kind of grew up throughout FFA, which is an agriculture organization for youth, we were like, okay, now what, like, how do we start farming? You know, we got the education. We've kind of been a part of community groups that have tried to help us and encourage us to start farming. But.
01:24It wasn't that easy. Um, I started off teaching as an ag teacher. He started off working at a community bank as an ag, uh, loan officer, portfolio manager. So we were still really plugged into the agriculture community, but we didn't have any money to just buy a farm. Um, where we ended up living and moving is where I grew up. And so around here, most of what it looks like to farm is cropland and minimum of like a hundred acres of it.
01:54Small farms around here are probably about 50 to 60 acres big. So it just wasn't feasible realistic for us. So that's really where Shady Hill came about was, you know, after I left teaching, I worked in marketing for a little bit and then I had a baby and stayed home. And with that extra time and just getting tired of making excuses for not being able to buy a farm, we found ourselves, you know, we lived on one and a half acres, so why not just start where we are. And so.
02:23Shady Hill was born because we live on a hill with a bunch of shade trees. Um, and we mostly do everything on one acre, but that's Shady Hill and a little bit about us. You can do a lot on an acre and a half, just so you know. And it's a lot, and it's a lot better to start farming young than it is to start farming old. I can tell you that from experience. Well, we had the most of the encouragement we got from older farmers was to start small.
02:52and to start because we kept saying, you know, oh, we can't afford, you know, especially now. I mean, I remember when I graduated college, we were seeing an acre of land for about $6,000 to $7,000 an acre. Now you see, you know, if someone has a nice house sitting on 10 to 15 acres, you're paying nearly a million dollars just for that. So we always just had this dollar value on farming and homesteading and we thought we just couldn't afford to
03:22do it. But then we realized homesteading anyways isn't even about making money. It's about just being more self-reliant. We didn't have to take out any big loans for this and we're learning a lot now. So kind of the advice from those farmers that we got about starting small that we used to get annoyed by, because the world is not set up for farmers to start small to be honest, was actually some of the best advice because now in the future, depending on...
03:50where this takes us and what opportunities come up with land, we now have experience for some loans or depending on what that even looks like. Because before we didn't have any experience to prove that we would be able to farm the land that we were going to buy. So we just didn't look good on paper to begin with. So it's been a blessing to learn and get the experience now, but it's by far not the easiest thing we've ever done.
04:18Yeah, and honestly, it probably wouldn't have been the easiest thing you've ever done, no matter when you started it, because it's all learning and experience and trying new things and failing and then trying again. I have been where you are and it's so much fun. The beginning is so much fun, but it's really scary too. Yeah. Yeah, we have so much of, should we keep doing it? Should we not? And I think too, I forgot to mention what we do at Shady Hill is...
04:46We grow cut flowers. And everyone thinks I've got these acres of flowers. You know, at a farmer's market, they're like, oh, how many acres of flowers do you have? And I tell them like, you know, our beds are 50 feet long, four feet wide. I've got four of those. And we pasture raise chicken for meat, and we butcher and package it all ourselves. And we sell it direct to consumer. And we sell out of chicken before we even get the chicks here. Like people, the demand is so high.
05:16that we don't even have any to take to farmers markets when we go. We just have to ask people to pre-order. So doing all of that, the very first time we butchered chickens, my husband injured himself really bad. And we ended up going to the ER after we were 40 minutes in, like starting the whole process. And that was a big, should we even be doing this? Like this is, this could happen again. You know, it was kind of a freak accident. It wasn't
05:46our fault. And so just, that was the first time that we had this, ooh, is this worth it? And we just started, but we just, we take these lessons in strides and we don't take it as a sign from God saying, don't do this. We're like, no, this is like a lesson to learn so we can keep doing it. So a lot of like these humbling moments keep coming up. Cause there's this.
06:12I always come across these memes on social media for stay at home moms, now that that's kind of my life, that says when you were working, you just wanted to stay at home and figure out how to homestead and make more money only to realize that staying at home and homesteading costs you more money and you've worked harder than you ever have before. So that's kind of like where we're at right now of just all these trials and very intensive labor for us.
06:41but it's been great for our daughter to grow up around that. And she's, we've seen that come out in her. She's one and a half just with how advanced she is and how independent she is because of the type of work that we do together.
06:56That's awesome. I love that. And I love that she's a little girl and she is independent and advanced at one and a half. Oh yeah. She's a little woman really is what she is. One and a half going on 40. Yeah exactly. She's more mature than me some days I feel like. Uh huh. Yeah. Until she throws a tantrum and then you're like, I don't get to throw tantrums. Damn it. I know. No, I think about all the time.
07:25how acceptable it is for toddlers to do literally anything and how adults, we have the same needs. Like we need naps when we get cranky. You know, like when we're upset or cranky, we either need a nap, water, or we're hungry. Right? And for a kid, it's very acceptable for them to have a tantrum about it. Adults not so much. So I know that I'll get to enter that space again when I'm very elderly, but right now I'm not allowed to have tantrums.
07:56No, I always try to remember the acronym HALT, H-A-L-T, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Because I live in a two bedroom, one bathroom house with my husband and our youngest son who is 22. The house is like over 1400 square feet, but it's not laid out well. And so it feels like we're always kind of in each other's space. And if
08:24Somebody in the house is acting like they might need a nap or like something's wrong. I always try to remember the hungry, angry, lonely, tired thing. And I will literally ask them, are you hungry? No. Are you angry? No. Are you lonely? No. Are you tired? Yes. And I'm like, good, go take a nap. That's like, I need to remember that. Yeah, the HALT acronym, I heard it a long time ago when my kids were little.
08:54Because as a mom, you know that the first thing you do if your baby is crying is you check to see if the new diaper changed. You try to feed them. If those don't work, you rock them because they're probably too overtired. Same thing with grownups. Yeah, we live in the overtired space a lot. And I have to remind myself too that she needs to play because it's so we have so much to do around here.
09:23the farm tasks that she just follows along and does things with us. Like I'll cut flowers for her that don't look awesome. Or sometimes she picks the awesome ones herself and I just lose those. Uh, and she will be okay for a little bit playing with the flowers, but then she needs like to play with me as her mom. And so I have a lot of moments where I have to slow down and remember that. Things are just going to take a lot longer or not be as.
09:50pretty or perfect because, you know, it's the farm is not at the expense of how our family grows. It's more for it to be the thing that helps our family. So there's been some moments where we've had a pause and realize like, oh, it's kind of coming at the expense of our family, whether that be the stress or the time versus the thing that's actually the reason why we started. So she's been able to help us slow down and
10:19Um, remember that our family is more important than what's at stake with farming, but I'm glad that she's around to kind of teach us these lessons now. Yeah, it's amazing what you learn from your kids. I had four in my house at one point in time and I learned so much from my kids. The other thing that I will say is that farming is not a perfect endeavor. You know, people see all these pictures on Facebook or Pinterest or
10:49All the other ones, I can't even list them off today, I'm too tired. I'm tired too. And you see all these beautiful pictures and it all looks so lovely and so perfect. But if you actually go to a working farm, probably the first thing you're going to smell when you get out is cow shit. And you're going to see a bunch of animals all muddy and dirty because they've been rolling in the mud and it's not perfect. So there's no reason to expect.
11:18that your life on your farm should be perfect. Your life with your husband and your child should be wonderful.
11:29Yeah, we've heard of people, because homesteading is kind of a movement right now. People move in from the city, you know, Biden the little rancher, and just you think you could do all your stuff. But then the second thing that's trending that I saw after this on social media was people leaving homesteading or they're hiring people to work on their homesteads. Because
11:55they don't realize how much work or even death for that matter that happens on your homestead like with animals. There's just a lot of upsetting or tragic things that happen that's out of your control as a farmer or producer. We've had chicks that just, we don't know why, but survival of the fittest, don't make it. Or we spend eight weeks pouring into a flock and then...
12:22something on butcher day doesn't go like as planned with like partying that like after the process of Butcher, you know, like when we're plucking the feathers off if something perfect doesn't happen. We're like, okay. Well now we can't sell that chicken Um, so there's a lot of things that's happened along the way. It's like you work so hard, but it's still not at our will of what really what's the final product that we get from that and a lot of what why we started homesteading was to
12:51get us a more, just to know more about our food and what's going into it and have better products and just be more self-reliant in that way. And so on not a lot of land, chicken was the answer for me, for us. And so we get upset when we mess something up or if it doesn't look perfect for a consumer, but we're like, well, it's really for us and we don't need it to be perfect. So.
13:17There's been the, we have to remind ourselves to slow down and not sell all of our stuff. Because one time we sold all of our chicken and we didn't have any for our family. And we were like, oh, like we got so excited on the business side of things and how it was growing that we didn't remember to check and make sure that we had what we needed. So we've had to adjust a lot of things because even though we started small and there's so much potential to grow and more people are asking and businesses are asking about our products,
13:48have that scale right now. Like we just can't do it. And that's been so disheartening to have like say that but it's like we're not really turning us like a salary off of this, you know, and we're also still very new and very fresh. But I think that's a big frustration that people have with farming and starting out. It's like you realize, oh, it's not profitable to do it for myself only. So now I need to like do this for consumers. But then...
14:16you start scaling up and now you have this whole business that you've scaled up and you can't go back. We've seen that a lot, kind of where we're at of people getting too big, too fast. Mm-hmm. Yep. Drowning in their success. Yeah. So it's kind of, it's like frustrating for us, but we're also like, there's no way we could have taken on more right now. We just don't have time. Yeah.
14:43And it's true of everybody. You have only a certain amount of numbers or hours in the day. You have only a certain amount of energy. And when you run out of both, you're done. That's it for the day. Yeah. So I think it's amazing what you're doing. And I'm gonna, I'm going to tell a secret that I haven't mentioned on the podcast ever when we bought our place four years ago, one of the things that we made sure of is that it didn't have to be a homestead.
15:12It could just be a home. Because my husband and I, well, I will be 55 in November. My husband turned 55 in June and we're not getting younger. We don't have the energy of 20 year olds or 25 year olds or even 30 year olds at this point. And so when we looked for a place, we made sure that we found a place we didn't have to remodel. Number one, cause neither one of us want to do that again for a while.
15:40because we had a house that needed to be repaired all the time for 20 years and it was awful. And we found a place where we have a huge pole barn. So if we wanted to, we don't have to do a garden, we don't have to sell eggs, we don't have to have animals. We could literally rent out the pole barn for people to store their boats and their trailers in for the winter. So we tried to find a place that would work on many levels when we looked for it.
16:10So we have done the gardens, we have done chickens, we have sold stuff, and I'm telling you, I think we're probably gonna be scaling, or not scaling, pivoting in the next five years to other things because I don't know that we're gonna be able to keep up with a 100 foot by 150 foot garden in five years. Who knows? So home studying is...
16:35a lifestyle. It is not about a land. It's not about whether you're selling stuff. It's about how you're living your life.
16:45Yeah, I 100% agree.
16:49So, you grow flowers and sell flowers, you have chickens and you sell chickens. What else do you do? We have Christmas greenery. So that was kind of the first thing that I ever started. I was still working at the time, but we have evergreen trees on our property. So I was throwing together some Christmas wreaths and I did probably only 20 my first year. Well, last year.
17:19was year two. And I said yes to doing a fundraiser for a school. And then everyone else wanted Reeves and I never changed my prices because I didn't know better. And I was up till like 2 a.m. for about two weeks just making Reeves because our daughter was six months old at the time. And we were mostly still breastfeeding as well. And you know, I couldn't get work done until she went to bed at night.
17:47So we were up so late just cutting greenery in the dark, bringing it down to our garage. Everything happens in our garage, by the way. We have a half garage so we can't park a car in it so we create everything in our garage. But we sold over a hundred last year. So I went from experienced, in quotes, saying, oh, I can make all these wreaths. Yeah, it's great. And then we sold over a hundred and made over a hundred. I think it was like a hundred and eighteen maybe.
18:16Um, and so now this year we're trying to plan ahead, but it's tough because you can't really separate your time when you're doing something like greenery, uh, for the holidays, because the holidays, it's a calendar event. Like it, it doesn't go longer or shorter. Like people want it all at the same time. So you have to just power through and do it. And we're not at a place where we're paying employees to help us. And even if we have friends that we trusted to help create something like Reeds with us. Um.
18:46It's like, well, then how do you value their time? Because it is a lot of work. So we just, we're like, we're not at the place to do that. So we do it all ourselves and we just kind of say, you know, we have a week or two out of the winter where we know we're going to be a little tired and power through. And a lot of others who see everything we're doing or who actually know how hard we're working and they question like, Oh, how do you do all of this? Like you shouldn't be.
19:14doing it all. One of our family members says, we're human beings, not human doings. But when my husband and I look back at this and we're like, yes, we're really tired, but we enjoy this. And kind of to your point of like, you guys are going to start scaling back because you're getting older and that's just something you want to do. It's like...
19:35We're not 20 year olds going out to clubs and partying in the city. We're the 20 year olds that are spending all of our time and energy kind of being crazy doing things like this instead. So it's almost like we're the, you either get this type of 20 year old or you get that one and we're the, the ones that are just kind of overspending our time and energy right now on, on learning and just doing all of this business stuff. So yes, it's exhausting, but it's not, doesn't last forever. Um,
20:03And the older our daughter gets, the more kind of helpful she gets too. And it's a little more independent and doesn't need as much of our attention. But, um, that's been one of my favorite things of our homestead is the greenery, just cause that was the very first thing we ever started. The chickens came out of, because I used to work for a chicken company when I was in marketing, but it was a commercial company. Um, so I learned a lot from that. And then the flowers, I worked in a flower shop in high school and it was my project in FFA. So I learned a lot.
20:32from my boss there and I was her first and only employee. And then now I actually, she reopened her shop in my hometown and I'll go in and see her and tell her some of the stuff we're doing. And she bought flowers from our farm a couple of times. So it kind of just all stays full circle, but we're really involved in the community even outside of our homestead too. So we spend our time.
21:02canning portion of our homestead where this year I just kind of had women coming over who wanted to learn how to can foods. And I just taught them how like we, they paid for their produce and jars and they just came over to the house and took notes and canned with us. And I think there's more potential for that to be more of like a workshop in a commercial kitchen next year. But for now, it was just personally me testing waters on how something like that would go.
21:31But we're always brainstorming for the next big thing that we're going to be doing.
21:38Yeah, absolutely, because you're growing. You're growing your home state. You're growing your business. You mentioned FFA. You were part of FFA when you were in high school. Oh, yeah. So my FFA has about a million members nationally now. When I was in FFA in high school, there was about 600,000 members. So on a national scale, it's grown so much in just such a short amount of time. But
22:03I was blessed to have a middle school chapter. So there's not a lot of middle schools that have FFA and mine did. So I was in FFA starting in sixth grade and didn't grow up on a farm but heard that I can make friends and have a lot of food at meetings if I joined this club so I did. And my teacher like still today is a friend of mine now but became such great mentors from middle school through high school. I was a state officer.
22:31with FFA and so was my husband and that's how we met. So we were like leaders for our state here in Virginia. I moved on and tried to run for national office and didn't get it but stayed plugged in after that. And now I actually train other state officers with national FFA. So we're FFA nerds. We're trying to already plan how our daughter is going to be in FFA when she's in middle school. But it's really big around here. So we help out a lot with the chapters as much as we can.
23:00so that we can kind of try to pour back into those teachers because I know it's hard being a teacher for FFA and Ag and those students still need community support so that those programs stay strong. We're also involved in Farm Bureau too here locally. So we just try to stay plugged in because really if it wasn't for us staying involved with these Ag organizations, we would not have had the support that we needed to start this business.
23:30because we had never farmed before. So you can't just come out of water with no network and just sell to your community. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It does not. We tried that. We failed the first year. We finally figured out that if we didn't meet the people in our area, we weren't going to sell anything. So the reason I asked about FFA is because I interviewed a lady from FFA.
23:58for the podcast months ago. And she was fantastic. She was great. She told me all about Future Farmers of America and how it's not just Future Farmers now, it's the science of farming and all kinds of stuff. It was just a great informational chat. And I haven't really talked to anybody. Yeah, as I say, yeah, it started in Virginia. And so it started with just six,
24:27six men at Virginia Tech here who wanted to start an organization for farm boys. So the only people who were allowed in FFA when it started in 1926, technically 1925 on this, like it was called Future Farmers of Virginia. So you had to go to Virginia Tech and you had to be interested, and to get into Virginia Tech, you had to be interested in the military and agriculture mechanics.
24:52So you had this really small group of folks who were even allowed to be in it. And over time, like in the 60s, women were allowed in the FFA. We merged with New Farmers of America, which was an ag organization for African-Americans. So a lot of changes that happened, honestly, really late in our history as an organization. But yeah, now it's, I mean, in the 80s, they changed it to where it wasn't Future Farmers of America anymore,
25:21turning away people who weren't farmers, but were really great for the agriculture industry. So yeah, I mean, I hope you nerded out over that because it's really cool about how it's changed over time and all of the things that it's doing still now for students. It's crazy. Oh, yeah. I asked her every question I could think of because I was not part of FFA when I was growing up because there were no classes at the school that I went to.
25:48But what I was going to say is I haven't talked to anybody who has actually been in FFA in school. So I'm really glad that you brought it up. Yeah, I took, when you start out, you take these really introduction classes that teach you about animals, plants, and mechanics. But when you get a little deeper into high school, like after you take those intro classes, you get to pick.
26:17like if you really like mechanics, then you run with the mechanics class. If you really like plants, then you run with like the natural resource classes. So I ended up taking a mechanics class, which I ended up not pursuing that. I was terrible at it. Um, and then I took some more plant science classes and my project was with floor culture. So it ended up paying off like what I had learned back then to right now. Um, and now I have, like, there are students that are in these ag classes.
26:46that can do so much with small engines that I'll never know how to do. You know, and they're in high school. So that helps them learn more about careers they're gonna be interested in, whether it's college or not. So once they're gone, they're gonna be a productive human that knows about food, knows about the environment. You know, like I said, I did not grow up on a farm, but after my FAA experience, I was on like a national team that judged soils.
27:11I sit on the national team that for Envirothon is what's called for the environment. So it's just like these contests and incentives that happen that reward you for just knowing more about the world that we live in. So it's definitely worth it to be an organization to invest back into whether that's time or money. If anyone ever comes about FFA, it's ultimately making good humans that will live around us. So.
27:40We hope that our daughter chooses to be an FFA. We won't force her to do it, but I think naturally it will just be something she's interested in because of how she's gonna be growing up. Yeah, my granddaughter, who is, I think, 12, it's hard for me to keep track of her age because they live in Nebraska and we live in Minnesota and we don't actually see her a lot. So she is in...
28:06The very last year of elementary school, or she's in the first part of middle school, I can't remember right now. And her school is tiny. And she just got involved in 4-H. And my son called. And he was like, yeah, she's going to join 4-H. And I was like, yes. And I almost said, do they have FFA? And then I was like, they probably don't have it for elementary school, because that's not where it starts. But if they do, I suspect she'll be in that too.
28:35Her classroom size is 10 kids. Wow. Yeah, you know, my high school was about 700 people. My graduating class was about 150. So when I went to college and I learned that some people had a graduating class of 1,000, and then some had a graduating class of 10. And I was just like, OK, I don't know if I'm in the middle or what, but I just never knew such things existed.
29:04of having such a small group of people that you are going to grow up with. But we've been considering homeschooling our daughter. So that's the only downfall about FAAs. There's no FAA for homeschoolers. But just, you know, I was a teacher only for a year and only for a year for a reason. And I just am like, I don't know. I don't know if I want her to sit inside a school all year, not going outside other than for 30 minutes of recess.
29:33But you know, my husband and I went through public school and we turned out fine. So I know it's not the end of the world, but we're just trying to figure out what we value more with school and kind of the lifestyle that we're trying to, to live here on what we're going to do. But we've, we have a little bit of time, a little bit of time, just like one and half, so we don't have to pick anything right now. Don't stress yet, mom. Don't borrow trouble yet. You've got lots of time. Yes, we do. Yep. Um, my kids went to.
30:02a small town, elementary school, middle school, and high school. And then a couple of my kids actually did homeschooling for the last four years of their education, you know, the high school. And I don't know which is better. I honestly don't. The fact that they were home with me the last four years of high school made me feel better because I didn't have to worry about their school being shot up because they weren't there if something happened.
30:29that they were not at that building if something happened and that made me feel better. But they also are very antisocial and I don't know if that's from them being home schooled through 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade or if they just get it genetically because I'm terribly non-people too. I'm not terribly social. That's not my husband. My husband is like that.
30:57Yeah, so I don't know. My husband is-
31:04Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was interrupting you. My, my husband is very antisocial and I am not so much. Um, but what I've learned from working with students, like through FFA now, um, but even this college age group is that just typically this generation coming up is being called the pandemic generation because of COVID and just how that's affected them like now developmentally. And just a lot of.
31:33this younger generation is very anti-social or has a lot of imposter syndrome, mostly because of technology, are very good at putting on a face in public, but then behind, like when they're behind closed doors, they're like really down on themselves. And so that's really hard to hear when, cause we get trained on this so that we have more just situational basic awareness of this population that we're working with primarily. And that's not the case for everyone.
32:03Um, but, you know, unfortunately, especially I was in doing public school, um, during the pandemic. When school was mostly virtual and we saw some students who just switched to homeschool and they were doing really well. And then some who just didn't have that choice and family members were still working while they were having to get, like be responsible for themselves to get on the computer, to go to class. Um, and these are middle schoolers, elementary schoolers.
32:31uh, that are having to have this responsibility really early on and just not doing well with learning. So I, I, I feel like it took four years to get back into the routine of normal school quote unquote normal school. But then you have this group of children who had three or four years of not normal socialization, not normal education, trying to figure out what new normal is, is very dangerous territory.
33:01organizations like FFA or families who are more plugged into their community through farmers markets, through organizations like Farm Bureau, you know, you just don't see that. You just don't see people caring about where they live or what they eat or who they know anymore. And I think that makes me very worried about my daughter going to school in the future and the people she's going to be interacting with. So it's unfortunate when people say the world's not the way it used to be and it's really not.
33:31So that's where it's like, I don't know why we just don't take matters into our own hands and work to create this like home that we want to create and this community we want to create. It's not like you have to change the world by any means. Um, I just don't know why we don't care anymore. So yeah, that's kind of a big reason why we try to switch some of our mindset to kind of be more independent, but still be plugged into our community, you know? Um.
33:57So we'll figure out what we'll do with school, but I think it's just a generational thing that we have antisocial kids, you know? I think that's very normal now.
34:07Yeah, and I'm going to tell you when I was growing up and when I was in school, I got teased and bullied a lot and school was not fun for me. I loved learning. I loved my teachers, but I did not love the social aspect of school. And I think that's where my, I'm not really comfy around a lot of people started. And so now I get to curate my life, which means I get to have people who I really appreciate being around.
34:37around me. It is such a beautiful thing that when I say, Hey, would you like to come over and have coffee with me? It's because I genuinely appreciate the person that I'm inviting into my home. So I'm not, I'm not anti people. I'm just anti. I don't like people that don't act like human beings who are good. Yeah. Does that make sense? And it's so, yeah. And it's so hard, you know, cause like you want to tell like,
35:03a kid that or a student in high school is a little easier to grab on to because they're going to graduate soon. But you want to be able to tell students who have a hard time that it gets better because when you're an adult, it's not like this. But at the same time, you have to be able to process the trauma you went through as a student. A big reason why I left teaching was because it was emotionally taxing for me. I would have been able to do
35:30come home exhausted from the emotions I was carrying for my students because of just what they were dealing with at home. It was a lot. It's like I couldn't just, I couldn't be a teacher. I first was usually like counselor mode, which I'm not trained in to do. And I like, it's just being a teacher is a lot more than teaching content, which I already knew that, but just the issues of the world today really got to me.
35:59And I had students who were bullying me as a teacher, just the disrespect that was happening in the classroom. And so, you know, I hope that over time, the world tends to shake out when you become an adult and you, like what you're saying, like you have more control over what you wanna do and I'm still learning that as an adult now. But.
36:21It's kind of sad to see what students have to go through. So yeah, that's where I've seen these, I have homeschool groups in our community where I've got to see how they're taking their kids through homeschool or these smaller schools. Like we have a private school across the road that's pretty small. And just seeing the hearing from those parents, the positive things that are coming from their students' experiences there. And I'm like, I think that's more of the route that I would want my daughter to grow in instead of feeling a little more limited.
36:51Um, but I just, you know, I say, Oh, we turned out fine. We went to public school, but it's like, well, public school is different now. So, yes, yes, it is. Absolutely. But like I said, you have lots of time and you get to watch your daughters grow and become who she's going to be because the, the one and a half year old that she is right now is not the five year old. She's going to be. Yeah. That's sad to think about.
37:21She's going to grow up. Yeah, she is. She's going to grow up and she's going to become a fabulous young woman. And you're going to be like, wow, the days are long, but the years are short. And thank God I did all the things I did for her because she's an amazing human being. That's what's going to happen. My daughter is 34 and she's brilliant. And she entertains me every time I talk to her. So you have wonderful things to look forward to.
37:51Yes. Yes. 34 and your youngest is 22? Yep. Do you only have two kids? No, I have four. I have four. That's right. That's right. You say you have four. Yeah. My daughter is 34. My stepson is 33. I think he just turned 33. And my son after that of my body is 27. And then the youngest is 22. And that's a boy too. So my daughter is the only one out of the four.
38:21as a girl. Wow. Yeah, we don't know what will happen next for us with kids, but we hope to have at least one boy, but we don't really get to pick. So yeah, the thing that's funny is everybody when I talked to them, they're like, how many kids do you have? And I say four and they say, how many girls? And I say one and they say, where does she fall? And I'm like, she was the oldest or is the oldest. And they're like, oh my God, she must have been hell as a teenager. And honestly, she was the easiest one of the four.
38:51and she was the girl. The boys were harder for me. So, yeah. He just assumes that- Our girl is so sweet right now. Yep.
39:04Yes, baby girls are adorable. I really wanted my last baby to be a girl and then I found out at the ultrasound that he was a boy and I cried for five hours straight. Oh my goodness. Yep, sobbed. And then he was born and I locked eyes with him and I went, oh, you're all right. This is okay, I can handle another boy, it'll be fine.
39:30So, I cried for five hours for no reason, because he's a wonderful young man, and I love him just as much as I love the other three. It worked out great.
39:39Yeah. So, anyway, we got way off homesteading stuff, but we definitely talked about choices that wrap around homesteading lifestyles like homeschooling. So that worked out fine. Ashley, I tried to keep these to half an hour. We're at 39 minutes and 45 seconds. I'm going to let you go. Thank you so much for your time today. Yeah. And, um...
40:03We encourage people to follow along with us on social media. We're Shady Hill VA for Virginia. And so we post kind of everything we're doing. We've built most of our equipment and things that hold our flowers and chicken. So we have a lot of folks like ask us questions about where we buy things. We're like, well, we built it. So we try to share that experience on social media and on our website so people can follow along there if they're ever interested in pasture raising chickens or growing their own flowers.
40:32Yes. And your Facebook page is beautiful. It is loaded with so many gorgeous photos. Yes. I worked in marketing. So I've got the, what do we need to do to actually show up and be a brand online? And so we've invested a lot first there with marketing. And it pays off when you have your products looking great and tell your story the way you want it to be consistent.
40:59So really that's kept sales going for us is just being present online. Like all of our sales have been online. Um, so it's definitely worth the investment. So check us out on social media. Cause from time to time too, I give tips, um, from my, when I used to be a social media manager on like how to kind of be better about the little things you can do on building your brand online. Awesome. All right. Well, I will put the links in your, in the show notes for this. And thank you so much for chatting with me. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much.
41:28All right. Have a great day. Ashley. Bye.
 

Fostich Farms

Today I'm talking with Elisabeth at Fostich Farms.
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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 Elisabeth at Foss Stitch Farms. Good morning, Elisabeth. How are you today? Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you. Good. And you were saying you're where? We are located in central Missouri. So that would be where...
00:29Our very small town is called Edwards, but it's the Ozark area in Missouri. Okay. So I've heard a lot about the Ozarks. I watched the series on Netflix or whatever it was with What's His Face and What's Her Face and all the crime and stuff. I'm sure that that is not true. So tell me about the Ozarks because I keep talking to people from the Ozarks or that area, but I don't actually ask about it. What...
00:58What is special about the Ozarks? Well, a lot is special. It's a beautiful, beautiful area, gently rolling hills. There's lots of beautiful rivers, bluffs. It, contrary to that episode, or that series, the Ozarks, I think a lot of that is fabricated. Oh yeah. But it absolutely is a beautiful area. And we love it down here. We have...
01:28We actually lived in this area for about four years and we moved down here from, we had a farm in Oryk, Missouri, which was like about two hours north. So we do, we love it down here. And also there's like the Ozarks. Okay, I was just curious, I've never been anywhere near it. It's very beautiful. Yeah. I've never been in that area at all. And I keep saying to my husband, if we take a road trip, we should head that way sometime.
01:58Yes, so of course my parents always want us to take the road trip to Maine to see them So that takes precedence every time and that's totally fine with me because Maine is beautiful, too Okay, so tell me about yourself and about Fossage Farms, okay So we my husband and I both grew up on farms. We'd be considered like second or third generation farmers but we're
02:24first generation using regenerative practices, which is what we kind of have focused in on our own farms. So after I left home, I continued farming on a small scale. I went to college, I'm an RN in the ER since 2002. My husband and I got married, realized that conventional way of farming really wasn't for us. It wasn't long-term.
02:51what is healthiest for the land or our livestock. So we started researching alternative ways to raise our livestock. And so we started with cow-calf pairs and then we started with small scale meat production, just like word of mouth, things like that. And then, you know, as mentioned earlier, like we grew up on a conventional farm. So we used, our families use conventional methods.
03:21And both of our families had small ruminants, so sheep and goats. And then also we had, my family had a dairy farm, Jersey cows. And then my husband's had Angus for the most part, cows. So okay. I love Jersey cows. I don't love them because of the milk that they give. I love them because their faces are so sweet. They are adorable.
03:47love them. Every time somebody says Jersey cow, I'm like, aww. Okay. So did I see something about hair sheep on your Facebook page? Or was that somebody else? Yes. No, we love our sheep. So what we got into after we kind of moved toward the regenerative
04:16are bred specifically for meat, so we do not shear them. So we pride ourselves on like excellent genetics. We have Sancroix, which is a breed that is parasite resistant. We have Catodin, which are excellent mothers. They have a beautiful, good hair coat that sheds really well. And then our rams are Lewis White Dorper genetics, and they actually are out of Oregon.
04:45But this combination of genetics, which we've kind of fine-tuned, I guess, over the last several years, end up being really good mothers, no hoof issues, they're parasite resistant, and then when we wean them, they have excellent weight. Their weight is really healthy and good. So that's kind of the direction we went to. We also have...
05:12Angus cattle and so what we do is we do rotational grazing. So our livestock, our sheep are moved behind the cows. Sometimes they're moved together, it just depends. About every three to five days and then it allows the lamb that they were on to rest and kind of return to its, helps the biological ecosystem kind of return to normal, helps microbial growth and then it...
05:42Basically, we don't use any pharmacological interventions because we have animals that are never in the same area for any length of time. They're constantly moving. So that's what we focus on. We basically, like I mentioned earlier, conventional farming is fertilizers. I'm kind of letting the animals and livestock roam freely throughout your property and supplementing with grains.
06:11finishing with grain and we don't do that. We are grass-fed from birth. They're grass-finished. If you want to call it finished, we don't really change their diet. We use rotational grazing system. Like I said, giving pasture time to rest, regenerate soil health. And so what we have seen over the years is that our
06:39The land has really come back to life and our livestock are so healthy. We have return of life, beautiful native grasses, pheasants, quail, we are with plenty of deer. And then this allowed us to have what we call stockpile. So we have extra areas to graze, especially through the drought years that we've had.
07:08our sheep have literally come out unscathed when we were in drought years, so. Fantastic. Every time lately I hear regenerative farming, the thing that pops into my brain is back to basics farming.
07:27Because it feels like it feels like everybody's going. Yeah, it feels like everybody's going back to the way it was done over a hundred years ago and, and it's the best thing for the earth and for the animals and for growing things. So, so I keep thinking back to basics every time I hear it and I'm like, it's not basic, but that's how it, how it translates to my head. Yes.
07:55You know, it really is. It's going more of a natural direction where you aren't, you know, feeding your animals grains and things like that. And they have, like I said, they have more of a natural diet and they are able, we do supplement with minerals, of course, and we work very closely with...
08:22vet out of Bolliver, Missouri, which is he's like about an hour away from us, but he's specializing in small ruminants and He is you know, we make sure our animals are healthy and they have what they need based off our Geographical area as far as minerals go but over time, you know That will even improve as we continue to rotate and the ground gets healthier so Okay
08:50So I have questions about hair sheep. I think I talked to somebody a few months ago about them, but I didn't ask this. Is it H-A-R-E or H-A-I-R? Well, for H-A-I-Rs, I think the way you spell hair. Okay, I didn't know what you were. I'm not a great speller, but I'm pretty sure that's, that would be it. Well, I'm sure if somebody types it in either way, it's gonna end and has sheep after it, it'll probably bring up what you're looking for.
09:19Probably. So I know that their fur, hair or whatever isn't technically wool. You don't use it the same way that you would use wool from the curly haired sheep. Right. But can you use their hair to like, I don't know, stuff a blanket or a pillow? Does that work? I have heard people have different uses for when they shed their coats. And
09:48Some breeds have a heavier coat than others as far as hair goes. And so you'll kind of see, you'll literally see a coat of hair in the pasture where they have shed. I have heard people, you know, place it on the ground in between their garden rows to help with, you know, weeds and things like that. I haven't heard of uses like
10:16stuffing a pillow because it truly is a hair coat. And what we have found with really good genetics, we don't have a lot of, we don't even see them shed. It's just like, I don't know if you've been around horses, they're, you know, once a year they might, you brush them and they get real thick on the curry comb or whatever, and they shed their coat and it's, you wouldn't, you couldn't peel it off. You wouldn't even know. So, and so they're very, very different than
10:45wool sheep in that sense because wool sheep it truly is wool and you shear it off and you have a big coat of wool that you can utilize for shearing. But these hair sheep, they're specifically bred for me and ours we want them to shed without any issues. We don't want them to have a big leftover coat on there. Okay. Yeah. And then the other question I have.
11:13And I've said this a billion times on the podcast already because I, I talk about the same things all the time. Um, we love lamb as a, as a food source and we don't have it very often because it's expensive at the stores and we don't happen to know anybody raising sheep right now. But have you, have you compared your hair sheep breeds meet with, um, the other wool sheep breeds?
11:41for the taste or the texture or whatever of the meat? So I have not. I have compared breeds of hair sheep, but I have stayed away from wool sheep as far as meat goes. I'm sure you could try it. I'm sure you could, you know. However, we have done white dorper, which are kind of the angus of the...
12:11sheep world, if you want to call it that, and they are fabulous. That's half of the rams that we process are half white dorper. And the cod has also a very wonderful flavor. However, the sandcroy are a leaner breed, so they grow a little slower and they don't have as much meat
12:40very good as well. So I've compared hair breeds but not wool versus hair. Okay, I was just curious if there's any real big difference in the meat itself. Yeah, I don't know. I know that as far as hair sheep, they are specifically bred for meat. So we look at, especially wean weights, we look at how much they weigh and how they're growing on grass.
13:10not all breeds and not all genetics are equal, obviously, and you can have very poor genetics will not produce, you know, high wean weights and sheep that grow well and maintain their body weight on just grass. So we do look at that because we want healthy sheep on grass.
13:39So, okay, so do you sell to sell your meat or do you just do it for yourselves? No. So what we have done and it started through word of mouth. I was working in Kansas City for a long time and I started, you know, we started with grass finished beef and then basically through word of mouth is how we've developed our customer base. We
14:09We like to have a relationship with the customers who buy our product. We love that. Um, as a matter of fact, some of them come down to our farm and, um, see the farm and how the sheep are raised and how the beef is raised. Um, and so, uh, it's mostly word of mouth. Um, I have a Facebook page, the Fostage Farm Facebook page, but I do very minimal advertising. Um, I re I wish I could stay ahead of orders, but
14:39Basically we lamb in the spring and I fulfill orders in the October timeframe typically and we also try to have a reserve throughout the year for individual cuts. We do use a USDA inspected butcher for our orders, especially when people want individual cuts and not a whole lamb.
15:04And we sell all throughout Missouri, Kansas. We've done sales in Arkansas. My son, he actually kind of delivers our orders when they're large enough. But a lot of times we have just individual orders. Somebody wants lamb chops, and we're just thrilled that we can provide that to people. And so we're super thankful for our new and returning customers, and a lot of them are
15:34our current and former coworkers and colleagues that both my husband and myself. Okay, cool. So tell me about a day, a weekend day on your farm because I ask people this all the time. They're like, eh, and they don't really tell me anything. So what can you tell me about a typical Saturday on your farm? Okay.
16:04We have, I make a plan for the day. We will either be building our next area for rotation, which is we use poly wire and stakes. And so we kind of estimate how much we need to fence in. So we build our enclosure and then we will move the sheep or the cows, whichever we're moving. And that.
16:32takes time, obviously. Water's a huge deal. We always make sure they have clean water. And if it's pretty far away from the house or from a well, we do have to haul water. So that's time consuming. But basically we are always planning for the next rotation. Even today, we're planning for the next rotation. Yeah. And then we...
17:00It's kind of a, we have three kids, it's kind of a joint effort. We build our next rotational area. Sometimes we build two or three enclosures ahead of time. So we're, which is really nice because then all we do is just move them. But we'll move the livestock. We'll make sure they have fresh, clean water and mineral. I always check the health of the animals. That includes the.
17:29cows as well because we've started calving actually now and then we lamb in the spring. And so we always check the health of the animals, make sure they're all you know looking good, their body score, and then so obviously that takes time. And then we have another area with our rams that are being, well we call them just they're just being grass-fed, finished, whatever you want to call it, but basically that's a separate area so we
17:59have to move those as well and we always check their health and how they're doing as well. So it's a lot of fence checking, especially if for some reason that our voltage on our polywire is not the greatest. We have a lot of wildlife, so occasionally the polywire will get hung up on a barbed wire fence or a stick or something or a tree or fall. So there's a lot of fence checking, a lot of moving of livestock.
18:27And then we have maintenance things like making sure we're head on, then roll and fixing the tractors and trucks. My that's basically what my husband does, but there's a, I focus on the animal health side of things and, um, that consumes quite a bit of our tour time. So, um, like I said, we don't do grain. Um, but if, if for some reason we have to
18:55We see something that needs treated, which is pretty rare. We'll actually take like four, like a gated little corral thing and do it wherever the animals are at so we don't have to move them up. They are bucket trained. I mean, we could put gravel in a bucket and shake it and they'll come. So they're bucket trained, but they're not getting grain. So.
19:23But as far as like their temperaments and stuff, they're super chill. And they know, I love sheep because they know they're shepherd or shepherdess in this case. So they're very, you know, good with familiar faces and stuff like that. So, like I said, it's just mostly building fences and moving and checking. And we also have other animals. We have horses and chickens.
19:53I have milk goats and you know, cause we would like to be as self-reliant as we can. We like to grow our own food. We love to garden and things like that. It's a good plan right now. It's a great plan. So do you guys have herding dogs to help or is it just you guys pushing the cattle and the sheep? We have livestock guard dogs, which are a big Antolian Shepherd.
20:22Pyrenees and acbash actually, that's their breeding. I will tell you that we would be dead in the water without them. They protect that flock and do not leave the sheep. We have several of those dogs that are with each herd of sheep. Then I call them my fancy breeding rams. They're actually up here close to our house.
20:52because I don't have an extra dog to put with them. So we kind of rotate them around the pastures close to our house so that we can keep an eye on them. But we, because of wildlife and, you know, just coyotes and different predators, sheep have, you know, pretty much three issues, be your predators, your parasites, and your parameter, your fencing.
21:19And if you can get that, if you can master that, you've pretty much, like my vet says, if you can master those things, you've won the war. And we worked really hard. And I feel like, you know, that we have a good system in place. I'm not going to say we've mastered anything because as far as like predators, especially, there could, but again, we have wonderful livestock dogs and we could not serve.
21:48We could not have sheep without them, period. And they have significantly minimized our losses even with the cattle with calving, because we're pretty far out here. And there is black bear out here in Missouri and there's lots of coyotes and stuff, but we just don't have predator issues anymore thanks to those dogs.
22:12They're doing their jobs. I love it. Right. And we also, I will say we do have a blue healer, but he only works with the cows. We don't stress those sheep at all. They are very gently handled. We went and did a beef quality assurance cow-calf certification on our farm, and we just try to handle everything as gently as possible. And like I said, if for some reason we can't, you know, this...
22:40our blue healer needs to get in there and help with a cow being naughty. Then we'll use them. But we try to do everything just by walking and hurting them that way. They're very cooperative. I will tell you when cows and sheep are trained this way, they move themselves. They know it's time to go. So they just follow along. It's pretty amazing.
23:11Well, you know, it's very, it's almost intuitive. I've been doing this my entire life. As a matter of fact, my very first degree, I was a vet tech and then I went and got my nursing degree. But I think it's experience, you know, you anticipate what can go wrong. And if you don't love it, you're not gonna get in tune with it. And I think, you know, I love it and there's nothing else I would rather do. And I'm.
23:40I'm thrilled that to speak with you and to have customers that want our product, it's just exciting to me. But as far as skills, that's from experience and messing up. And it's very, very intuitive, I think. And like the animals know you and the livestock know you when you're out there and you spend time with them. They get your routine. They
24:06They have a routine. They know when it's time to move. They, you know, it's pretty amazing. And it's also amazing to watch those livestock guard dogs take care of those sheep that that is incredible. So it really is. I, I have seen videos of livestock guardian dogs doing their jobs and it is beautiful to watch them just know that that's, that's their charge.
24:35that they have to take care of the animals that they have been given to watch over. And they just do it. Yeah. And what's amazing is when we move them, when we move the sheep to a new pasture, they, one is in front, one is in the back. As soon as they get in, one stays with the sheep, one runs the perimeter. And it's like they clear the area.
25:00And so, yeah, it's incredible. We've found very interesting things that they've, you know, taken care of or killed over the years. So, yeah. We don't really have a whole lot of scary predators here where we live in, I guess, southwest Minnesota. I know up north there's bears, but we have never seen a bear down here. We have coyotes who tend to hang out.
25:28probably a good quarter mile away. They don't come on our property. Partly because we have a dog and she's, she's around all the time. So she's always using the bathroom outside. She's always yipping. She's always playing. So her scent is everywhere. And I think that's part of why the coyotes don't come on our property. And there, there are foxes in the area, but I've never seen one on our property.
25:55I will tell you it was not about eight weeks ago, my daughter and I were up in a pasture pretty far away from the house and we couldn't believe what we were seeing. We saw a couple black bears and the two, one of the big, big livestock guardian dogs just took off after them. We've never seen them since. And I don't think, I think it was just a fluke. They're not in our, on our properties.
26:25often there's no dens here or anything that I'm aware of. But it was pretty amazing that for the distance that they were, they sensed that and it was just amazing how he just bolted and they took off. We've never seen them since. I love your dogs. I do love your dogs. I'm glad they take care of your animals and they take care of you. Yes. We have...
26:54It's interesting, we have skunks in our area. Oh, yeah. And in the spring, they amble out of wherever they're hibernating and they make sure that we know they're around because they stink. And then this time of year, they start kind of showing up again in the area because they're eating everything they can to get ready for hibernating again. And
27:18I woke up at one o'clock in the morning the other night and our window was open. I was like, oh yeah, because somebody either hit a skunk or one walked through the yard and said hello. And so my idea of predator is not something that's going to kill my dog. It's something that's going to spray my dog. Make him smell for a couple of weeks. Yeah, I really don't want that to happen when she asked to go out at five o'clock in the morning. It was still dark. I was like, do you really need to go out or can you wait until it's light out?
27:47And she looked at me and I opened the door to our porch. She stuck her nose in the doorway, sniffed, and she was like, nah, I'll wait. She walked right back in the house and laid down. I was like, oh, so we do know what a skunk is. Okay, that's good news. But we don't have any livestock. We have chickens and we're going to be dispatching chickens this weekend because they're old.
28:13and they're getting lazy and we're feeding like a dozen chickens and we're getting two eggs a day. Oh no. So it's time for them to meet their demise and become chicken stock. There you go. And then we're going to get more chickens in the spring so we can restart our egg supply. It's going to be very weird buying eggs at the store. We have not bought eggs at the store in over five years. Oh wow. Yeah, you're going to have a, you'll have to get used to that.
28:39Yeah, I mean, I don't eat a lot of eggs, so it's totally fine. But it's just going to be weird to be handing money to a cashier for a dozen eggs, because we have done that forever. Yep. So take it that your kids love being part of the farm. They enjoy what they're doing too. Yes, I think they do. I hope they do.
29:03They know nothing else, honestly. They have been born and raised on the farm. So when my son turned 16, we kind of told him he's an official employee and he's been extremely helpful. So, and our kids are definitely heavily involved with from, you know, FFA to, I would say, I'm very proud of them, but.
29:33They know a lot more about livestock than probably most of the kids these days. Yeah, and FFA is Future Farmers of America, right? Yes, it is. Yes. I interviewed a lady from FFA. She was great. Oh, great. Yes. It's such a wealth of knowledge they learn and opportunities for leadership and agriculture and things like that. And we have it through the high school the kids go to.
30:02So both of them are involved with that. My daughter more so than our oldest son, he's a huge runner. So he does track and cross country, stuff like that. But she loves the animals, our middle child. So absolutely loves it. She actually helped with the state fair, took some of our sheep up there so that people could see them. And so it was a fun opportunity for her.
30:33So very nice, very nice. So what what I'm hearing from you, what I'm inferring from everything that you're telling me and how it sounds and how you how it feels when you talk is that you have built yourself a beautiful life that requires some hard work. Definitely. It's very hard work. It's very labor intensive, but it is so rewarding.
31:03Like I said, we absolutely, there's no greater joy than when people buy our meat and love it as much as we do and we know they're getting an exceptional product because it's, you know, there's probably nothing quite healthier, you know, honestly. And we don't, and we raise it in a way that the animals are cared for, it's affordable. You know, we're not, we don't have to, you know.
31:32Mark up the price crazy. They're born here. We know how they're raised and it's it's just we love it. So and we do I think my favorite part. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I think my favorite part of having sheep if I had sheep would be lambing season like the rest of the year. I would not care but lambing season. I would be like, oh my god, babies. It is my favorite time of year. It is amazing.
32:00that all our sheep are born outside in beautiful clean pastures with no assistance. We have twins. Our new mamas have singles sometimes. Sometimes they have twins. We have triplets. We've had quadruplets in the past, but it is absolutely amazing. And it's like popcorn because I put the rams in in November and then in the springtime around April.
32:29we'd start lambing and it's just, there's babies everywhere. And it's incredible. That's why I say it's like popcorn, because they just keep popping out. They're just everywhere. And they're so healthy and strong. And that's what we've worked so hard for as far as the genetic side of things, is they're so healthy, so strong, and so vibrant and get right up and suck and the mamas accept them and it's just, it's incredible.
32:57Yeah, and I'm sure that you have had moments where things haven't gone right and that has broken your heart. But I think that you have worked really hard so that things don't go wrong. Right, right. And you know, it's just, it's a, we know that that's life. And it happens. And I will tell you, you know, just even a little situation that happened this spring.
33:23We had one mama that had triples, so she already had two babies, and I didn't see the third one because her placenta had landed on the third one, and the baby couldn't get up. So it did pass. And so it was sad, but I was like, you know, she still has two beautiful babies, and she's feeding the babies. And it's such a rare thing that that happens.
33:52long as you are out there and kind of you know what to watch for you know when to intervene if Necessary but as far as helping them lamb pulling lambs, that's extremely rare Maybe afterwards just assisting with you know them latching on again extremely rare but we Went the more you do it the more you know what to look for I guess and when you have a pretty big volume you do have to be on it you have to be on top of things be out there, but
34:22It's probably, like I said, my favorite time of year, but extremely rewarding to see all the babies. We worked hard just to kind of identify what could go wrong, and that's what we look for. Yeah, I saw a picture of one of the lambs. I think it was 12 days old on your Facebook page.
34:47He has, he or she has the smushiest face. I just want to like lean in and kiss it through the screen. So that baby was actually 12 hours old when I took it. Sorry, 12 hours old. That's right, yeah. And so they are amazing because when you do, if there's any intervention, so this year we had a very minimal, we've had bottle lambs in the past, of course. They're your best friend forever. I mean,
35:16The lambs always remember the shepherd or the shepherdess's face and smell. And they're the most affectionate animals. And people don't realize that. They think they're a dumb sheep. But they're so affectionate and so sweet. And especially with the kids and my husband. Yeah, they know who takes care of them. We have a group that were bottle fed over.
35:44years that are probably some of the sweetest sheep. And it really is amazing because a lot of animals, if they are bottle fed, you know, they always kind of show a little bit of a deficit here or there, but not with sheep. They still grow very well, very nicely. They still catch up with the group. They're still able to be bred. So they're pretty remarkable animals.
36:13I lied. I misspoke earlier. We have friends that do raise sheep. We were over at their place for something a couple years ago. They have seven kids. One of their younger boys was going to go get mom or dad. I think we went over to get chickens. He had walked up the road from where the cattle pasture is to see who had pulled in.
36:40We had gotten out of the vehicle and right behind him trotting along was this probably three day old lamb going, going baa baa at him like it was barking at him. And I said, I said, that's a really interesting looking dog. And he said, it's not a dog, it's a lamb. And I was like, yes, I know it's a lamb. I was being silly. And he said, oh, he said, I thought you didn't know it was a lamb.
37:09I said, no, honey, I know what a lamb is compared to a dog. I said, apparently my humor doesn't go over well on the farm. And as I'm saying it, my friend had walked up behind me for the whole thing and didn't, I didn't know she was there. And she tapped me on the shoulder. And she's like, yeah, she said farm humor is different than not farm humor. I was like, well, I tried and she's like, I thought it was funny. So, but it was his best friend that whole summer. Oh yeah. There.
37:40It's pretty amazing. Love it. Yup, they're really fun. I would love to have sheep. I think that would be really fun. But as I've said a billion times already, we don't have any pasture for them to graze. So it's not going to happen where we live. But I love living vicariously through you and everybody else I talk to because I get to hear all the fun stories. Oh yeah.
38:05And so does everybody else and everybody else is like, we have pasture, we could get livestock, that would be great. Yeah, it is wonderful. There's nothing better in my opinion. Yeah. All right, Elizabeth, we've been talking for 38 minutes and 13 seconds and I try to keep you to half an hour. So I'm gonna let you go, but thank you so very much for taking the time to talk with me this morning. Oh.
38:31Thank you for letting me be a guest on your podcast, Mary. I appreciate it so much. Absolutely. I need all the people and all the stories I can get, or I don't have a podcast. So thank you so much. Have a great day, Elisabeth. You too. Thank you. Bye.