A Tiny Homestead

Aussie Rescue of Minnesota

Today I'm talking with Laura at Aussie Rescue of Minnesota. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Laura at Aussie Rescue of Minnesota. Good morning, Laura, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you? I'm good, it's a really grody day in Minnesota this morning. It is. For anyone who doesn't live in our area,
00:29It is very, very gray and the fog in LaSour is like pea soup. I don't know what it's like where you are, Laura. It's raining here, which is always miserable in the winter.
00:41Yeah, it's really weird. I'm not loving this winter so far because it reminds me an awful lot of last year. Yup. All right, so tell me about yourself and about what you do. So I joined Aussie Rescue of Minnesota in 2012 because I had heard such great things about Nancy and the organization, Nancy Anderson, and the organization that she had started with another person like 30 years ago.
01:09And so she had started, she saw the need for Aussies to find Aussie appropriate homes, because Australian Shepherds can be special. They can be high energy, definitely, but also they're very smart. So sometimes smart isn't easy to live with, because they find lots of things to get into and to do, and if you don't give them a job, they find their own job, which is generally something you didn't want them to do.
01:36And so she saw a lot of Aussies being re-homed because of that. She saw a lot of Aussies being re-homed because people, maybe their lives had changed. The dog didn't get along with a new baby or they'd lost their home or, I mean, there's so many reasons that people's lives can kind of go topsy turvy. So she started rescuing and a few years later made it into a formal nonprofit.
02:04and she's been sailing this ship ever since. And I was looking for a way I could help and had heard so many good things about the reputation of Aussie Rescue of Minnesota. So I got on board and kind of got sucked in pretty heavy. I went from just fostering one dog to fostering multiple dogs, to being on the board, to adding roles as I went. So...
02:34Aussie Rescue of Minnesota has been around for a long time, 30 years. And they pride, we pride ourselves on good matches with people, not just finding a good home for the dog, but finding a dog that really fits that family. And then we are with our dogs for the rest of their lives. So if anything happens, they come back to us. If the new owners have
03:00behavioral issues or, you know, vet issues or anything like that, we're there to help them or assist them in any way we can. So that's what we pride ourselves on is the long relationship and the quality of our adoptions. Wow. Okay. This is why I wanted to talk to you because I need to know more. Number one,
03:30because sirens were the mermaids that would suck the sailors in to basically dying. And Aussies suck you in. There's something about her little faces that you're just like, oh, I am yours forever now. I am your human. You are not my dog. And I know this because we have one and we've had her for a little over four years and I love her to pieces. And I've talked about her endlessly on the podcast. So.
03:58I may throw in a couple things about Maggie today, but I want to know more about the process here because as you said, Aussies are a very special breed and they will get into trouble and they do need a job. And they also bond really, really tightly with their owners. So it must be incredibly hard when they're surrendered to you guys. Yeah, it can be. Although, you know, dogs live in the moment.
04:26So as much as we'd like to believe that our dogs would shine away for us forever, if given up, they do tend to just bond with the next person, unfortunately for our egos. They really live in the moment and they're looking for that bond, like you said. Having an Aussie is more like having a partnership than having a pet. And I work with my dogs a lot, my own personal dogs.
04:53I do a lot of competitions with herding and agility and obedience. And so that bond becomes even stronger since we spend so much time training together. But even a dog coming in that's just met me within a couple days, they'll pick the person in the house and it might be myself, it might be my husband, it might be one of my kids. But they actually have an opinion on that. They don't, you know, you can't get an Aussie and say, well, this one's going to be my dog because it's really up to them. They pick their person.
05:23and you can't change their minds. So yeah, that bond is very strong. Yes, and they will pick the person that is not at home all the time. I am at home all the time. My husband works seven days, well, not seven days a week, five days a week, and he leaves the house about 7.15 and he gets home anywhere between four and 5.30. And Maggie is very sad by four o'clock if he's not here yet. She thinks that he's her person,
05:53when he's been out of town for more than a day or two, she pouts on the back of the couch looking out the window for him. And then within a day or two, she's right back, to mom, will you feed me? Mom, will you play with me? Mom, I love you. So, so yeah, they are very much, they very much want to be with a human, but as long as the human they're with is kind of them, they adapt pretty quick. Yeah, and the breed was bred to be very adaptable, right? The breed was developed in the Western United States.
06:23and they were used for like everything you needed on a farm. So they were sheep dogs, they were cow dogs, they were, you know, the dog that was supposed to get rid of the rodents on the farm. They were playing with the kids, they were, you know, jumping in the truck to go to town to protect the trucks so nobody could approach it. So they were a little bit of guard dogs, so we see some of that guardy behavior in them sometimes.
06:49They were really the all-purpose dog on the ranch out west. And so there's good things and bad things to that also. I mean, when a breed has been developed for certain tasks like that, sometimes putting them in suburbia doesn't work if they have some of those strong instincts. Sometimes it does. You know, the aloof with strangers is right in their breed standard. And we see a lot of that.
07:17but we just adopted a dog named Boone up to a YMCA camp in Northern Minnesota where he's going to greet, you know, hundreds of people every summer. And he will love that because he was a little bit more golden retriever in an Aussie body type of dog, which isn't something we see a lot, but that was him. So he is adopted to a home that is perfect for him.
07:45Yeah, they're incredibly smart. I just got Maggie to learn shake. I've been trying to get her to do shake, shake her paw for four years. And the other day she was trying to get me to pet her and I took her paw because she was pawing at me. And she let me hang onto her paw for the first time ever without pulling it away. And I was like, shake, good job. And she put her paw down and that was it. And the next day she came over to me and she wanted me to pet her
08:14pawing at my arm and I didn't touch her, I just said shake and she picked her paw up and let me take it and I was like oh so it took four years for you to learn shake but you learned everything else really fast. Right. Had to be her idea. Yep and now if we can just find her off switch for barking when people pull in our driveway that would be great. Yeah yeah I'd love to give you that off switch but I don't have it myself. Yes and on that note these dogs.
08:43I would love an Aussie that was actually friendly with strangers. We did not get one. She must make her opinion known that there is someone she does not know on the property or in our house for at least five minutes. And then all of a sudden she's like, well, maybe I'll go sniff them and see if they pass the sniff test. And then if they do, she's fine. She's their best friend the entire time they're here. And so...
09:11One of the things that I would tell people who are considering getting one of these dogs, whether it's a toy or a mini or a standard or whatever size you want, you really have to commit to this. You do with any dog, but these dogs are really a lot. I mean, she's wonderful. We love our Aussie, but they have things that are also important to note, like they can be prone to epilepsy.
09:41And the flea and tick and heart guard, or not heart guard, heartworm medicines can cause them to have seizures too. So there's a gene that these dogs can have that makes them prone to having seizures. And that's no fun. Our dog didn't get it, thank God, because I would be heartbroken. Yeah, and so it's called the MDR1 mutation. And so all dogs have the genes. There's two genes.
10:09But Aussies tend to have a mutation that's passed down genetically in one or both of the genes. So if it's a fairly simple genetic transmission, so if one of the parents has both mutations on both, a mutation on both genes, then they will for sure pass one down to the puppy. And if the other parent is clear, we call it clear if they don't have the mutation, then
10:38that puppy will have one mutation on the two genes. And so if they have one mutation, they can have reactions to certain drugs. And those are drugs that would enter, that would cross the blood brain barrier. So they get into the brain tissue. And the dog, because of the mutation, has trouble clearing that drug back out. So that same drug in a different dog, say a lab, would still cross the blood brain barrier. Sorry, that's hard to say.
11:06And would, but then the dog would be able to clear that drug out of the brain easily because of those two genes. And in the Aussie, they can't, so it builds up. And that's why they have not necessarily seizures, but neurological issues when those certain drugs, ivermectin being a common one that we see a lot build up in that dog. It's...
11:30Fairly easily managed. There's a list of drugs on the University of Washington State on their website and they were the ones that discovered it and described it and they have a list, very complete list of drugs that you would avoid with dogs that have that mutation. They also have a blood test. It also is in all the genetic testing that a good quality breeder would do anyway on a dog.
11:56And so you know whether your dog has it or not if you buy from a quality breeder. Um, so, you know, cause oh, I have, um, you know, multiple Aussies in my house. They're clear. I can treat them like any other dog. They can have the same drugs as any other dog because they don't have those mutations. Yeah. Maggie does not either. Thank goodness. I swear to you, Laura, if anything was wrong with my dog, I would be heartbroken. Like she.
12:22She was out playing frisbee with my husband yesterday, the day before, and she got a snoot full of snow. Like she must have inhaled a whole bunch. Yeah. And she was coughing and coughing and coughing. And I was like, please don't let her get pneumonia. Please don't let her get pneumonia because that happens when you inhale water or food into your lungs. It can make you sick. And so I watched her like a hawk all day yesterday. My husband got home. He was like, did she cough today? I was like, not a peep. She's good. He's like, you look...
12:50He said, you look so relieved. I said, honey, I said, I'm telling you, anything happens to this dog, I'm gonna be a disaster for a month. I love her so much. So that's how sick I am about this dog. We never should have gotten her, it's terrible. Yeah, I hear that a lot. And I know, I've had other breeds too, but yeah, there's something about the bond between an Aussie and their owner that's just so strong. It's ridiculous.
13:17If anyone had told me I would be this obsessed with her, I would have just laughed myself stupid. And now I just laugh myself stupid because I am this obsessed with her. So the other thing I was gonna say about getting any dog is that you can't just go get a dog and do nothing. You have to really want to take care of a dog to be a good dog owner. And right now, the care for dogs or cats or any animal is exceedingly expensive.
13:47We just took her for her well checkup thing back in October and it ran us almost $260 just for the checkup and her shots. And I was like, it was $160 a year ago and the vet tech was like, yeah, inflation hit us too. And I was like, wow, okay. Everything is more expensive. And also, pet medicine has become more like human medicine and that we have access to
14:14ultrasounds and MRI machines and all the, you know, which is all great. I mean, I've used some of that stuff, right? And when you have a dog that you're looking for what's wrong with them, to be able to have access to all those tools is awesome. But it's also increased the cost, just like human medicine, because they have access to all that stuff. So you have to pay for it. Yeah. So what I'm, what I'm getting at is that these days, if you want a pet, it's like adopting a child.
14:41because you are going to have to do the things to take care of that pet. Almost like you are adopting a child. It's not cheap, guys. It's money. And if you're not in a position to have a kid, you're not in a position to have a pet, is my take on it. Yeah. Well, I see a lot of young couples getting a dog or something, you know. And you know, I love those adoptions because they have all the time in the world for that dog, right? They don't have...
15:09kids to run to school or to soccer practice or whatever. And, you know, I mean, we can all look back in our early years and think, oh my gosh, look at all the free time I had and I didn't even realize it, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, I have a, you know, so we adopt two apartments. If the dog is suitable, obviously, if you have a big barker who doesn't like people walking by in the hallway outside, that might not be the best for that dog.
15:36But if it's suitable for the dog that we're adapting, we adapt to apartments. We just make sure that, yeah, they're getting adequate physical exercise and even more so mental. So a lot of people when they have an Aussie who's out of control and crazy like this new little foster I just brought in last week, she's just exploding with energy. She's young, she's been in a kennel at an animal, local animal control, and she's just exploding with energy.
16:06And she gets adequate exercise, but mostly what she needs is mental stimulation because that's what she's been missing. And so we're doing things like stuffing Kongs for her. So when she's in her crate, she has a Kong that she can, you know, unstuff and get all the goodies out of. We're letting her play with other dogs, which is great mental stimulation while they figure out the social aspect of it, which she's not that great at. So I've got her with one of my own dogs.
16:35loose in the house together so that they can, she can learn a few social niceties and the other dog can teach her that they can play without her getting offended by, you know, whatever the dog just did. And so when we go on walks, I put her on a long line, she gets to sniff. So sniffing is a great mental stimulation. So instead of just, you know, if you're a runner, maybe running a dog miles.
17:00They'll actually be more tired if you take a slower walk and let them sniff a lot because that uses so much of their brain. So anything you can do, like you were talking teaching tricks with your dog earlier, that's a great mental stimulation and it's fun for the dog and for the owner. Yes, and one of the things you can do is, my husband does this all the time in the evening for her dinner time. He will take her kibble and we have a blanket that is just hers.
17:30and he will toss the kibble in the folds of the blanket, like crinkle it up. And then he just puts blanket on the floor and she has to figure out where her food is. She loves this game. She thinks this is great. So that makes her think about, oh, I still can smell it. Where is it? Yeah. And hunting for food is a very instinctual thing for them. So yeah, they enjoy that a lot.
17:54Yep, and she's a sucker. She finds every piece, but there's always one that's buried in the middle somewhere. And she'll stand there and like paw at the blanket and cock her head like, I know it's in there. Where is it? Right. She finds it eventually, but it's very fun to watch her because you can just see the wheels turning in her head. Yeah, I always recommend to people who have wild and crazy, especially young dogs.
18:17There's a couple toys that you can put kibble in and then they knock it around. The Buster Cube is one that I've had around for years and years. The Dog Pyramid, which is very similar to the Kong Wobbler. But the Kong Wobbler has a bigger hole, so it doesn't take them as long, where the Dog Pyramid has a smaller hole in it. It's like a, it's one of those Weeble Wobbles, like we had when we were kids, that you could put it and it'd pop back up. It's built like that. You put kibble in it. It's a little, you know.
18:46eight inch tall little toy plastic and then they knock it around and the kibble comes out one or two pieces at a time and so it'll take them like 45 minutes to eat their supper or breakfast out of that instead of you know three and a half seconds to gulp it out of a bowl. So similar to your blanket trick it's just slowing them down making them work making their brain work and it just leads to a more contented dog.
19:12Yes, and they sleep a lot better at night when their brain is not spinning constantly. Oh my God. Yep. When she was a puppy, she did not sleep well at all. And as she got older and her grown-up teeth came in, she wasn't teething on everything. And she grew into her crazy, I think is how I would put it. Yep. So, yeah. And we were warned. We were warned. Our friends are the owners of Maggie's parents.
19:41Mrs. Bratz told me, she said, she said, she's a, they're Velcro dogs and your dog is a very licky puppy. And I thought, well, all puppies are licky. That's not news. Well, no, this dog is still a very licky puppy at four years old. So, right. Yeah. So I was warned, but I did not understand. I had no concept of what we were, we were stepping into and that's fine. We love her. We're not getting rid of her.
20:11So how many dogs do you guys rescue a year do you think? Is it an average? Do you have an average number? Yeah, so 70 to 80. Um, and We're around there. We've done more we've gotten closer to a hundred in some years Um, it really depends on how many foster homes we have because we can only rescue as many as we can put into foster homes and um, I have four dogs of my own and then I try and limit myself to one or two fosters at a time But you know, that doesn't work so well. So right now I have three
20:40Oh, wow. And so we try not to, you know, put too many, you just can't put too many dogs in one house. You can't take adequate care of them if you do that. So I get to seven and I'm still okay. I get to eight and I'm like, all right, this is too much. And I have acreage to walk the dogs on and I have ways to separate dogs in my house a little bit. Not everyone has that. So most of our foster homes, you know, have the one foster with their own dogs.
21:10And so yeah, it just depends on how many foster homes. And then, you know, some dogs stay with us for a long time. I've got Marty here, he's on our Facebook and our website, and he has been with us for a year and a half. It'll be two years in March, actually. And, you know, he's just, he came from a hoarding situation. He's very skittish about being touched. And so I've slowly been able to touch him, pet him more and more.
21:38And so now he's comfortable, very comfortable with me touching his head, his chest, his back. But I still, you know, can't like slide down his leg or, you know, trim his nails or that kind of stuff. It's just been a very slow process because he's just been very, very damaged by his fast. And he probably came out of a puppy mill. And then he went into a hoarding situation and it's, you know, sometimes it takes him a long time to recover from that.
22:08Other dogs, we just had a dog last couple weeks ago named Mac, came in, delightful dog, friendly. The only reason he was being turned in was because his owner was moving out of his country home and into a small apartment in town. Physically, couldn't take care of the dog anymore. So we got him in and he was adopted. We had an approved application that was already waiting for a dog.
22:35And we asked, are you interested in this dog? And they said, yes. And he was with us for only five days and then off he went to his new home. So it really depends on the dog and what kind of work they need, what kind of vet work they need. Some of them need a lot of recovery if they come in in poor condition before we even list them. So we have a couple of dogs sitting in foster right now that we don't even have listed yet because they need more training or more recovery time before they're listed.
23:05Yeah, so last year we did 80 dogs. That's one of the things that I love about what you guys are doing is that you aren't just getting a dog in, getting them up to date on their vaccinations, making sure that they're physically okay and then sending them out the door. You are actually taking the time to get them prepared to go be with another family. Yes. Well, we want to get to know them.
23:31We want to know that the family that we're placing them with is a good match, both for the dog and for the person in the family, because we don't believe that a family should, you know, change their entire life around a dog. You should place a dog in that family that fits with their lifestyle. So if the, you know, one of the people like to run marathons and they want to take the dog on a four or five mile run every day, we're not going to place, you know, a couch potato.
24:01dog with them. And if we have a person that likes to come home from work and curl up on the couch and watch Netflix, then we're going to put the couch potato dog with them. So getting to know them is key so that we can make those good matches. Awesome. So we got all messed up on timing here because your phone got messed up. So we have like, I'd guess maybe eight more minutes to make this a 30 minute interview. So
24:29I had questions and I just said all that and now they're gone. So does it have to be an Aussie breed dog for you guys to take it in or just have like part Aussie? So we do take Aussie mixes. People are very visual. We're a very visual species ourselves. So we try and get the dogs if they're an Aussie mix that look like an Aussie a little bit.
24:54at least. Some of the times they come in and they probably do have some Aussie in them, but if they don't look Aussie, they tend to linger people. When people come looking to us, they're looking for something that looks like an Aussie. And so it's not that we don't take them. It's just that we recognize they're going to be with us longer because we're looking for that certain person that doesn't care what the dog looks like, which is more rare than you would think. And so...
25:20Even though we try and tell everyone, you know, as you're living with the dog's temperament and the personality more than you are, what they look like, that's just a human trait, you know? So we do take, you know, obviously Aussies and then Aussie mixes. And that leads into, I know the minis and what people call the toys are getting more common. You know, we try and educate people that those are not Aussies. Some of them have a little bit of Aussie in them, but they're definitely mixes.
25:48The breed doesn't have a size difference like, you know, like for instance, poodles. They have different size poodles and schnauzers, they have different size, but they actually don't in Aussies. The breed is an Aussie. And then when people are making the small ones, they're mixing them with small other breeds to make those. And so we would just list them as mixes, but we also take them.
26:13But we do have a under 20 pound rule that I try and stand by. Once in a while, we get one that's smaller than that anyway. We're suckers. That's why we're in this business. And so we take the dog that needs help. But we've genetic tested enough of them to know that they generally don't even have any Aussie in them. We had one little guy. He was so cute. He was black tri. He had his tail docked just like an Aussie.
26:41And he was a toy Aussie supposedly, he was like 16 pounds. And we had him genetic tested and he had like three different kinds of terrier and a couple spaniels in him. He was all little dog breeds and he didn't have any herding dogs in him at all, any breeds in him at all. So, you know, but you see a picture of him, you're like, oh yeah, he looks like an Aussie because his coloring was right and his tail was docked. So there's a lot of scamming going on by puppy mills, that kind of thing. So I guess, you know.
27:10The big thing to tell people is get a puppy from a reputable breeder who does genetic testing, does hips, elbows, and eyes, and get a rescue dog from a reputable rescue that's willing to take their dog back if it doesn't work out. And that they're there for the purpose of placing dogs in good homes and helping the dogs and not there for the money because there are disreputable rescues just like there are
27:39reputable breeders. And so yeah, we are also willing to help people with that aspect of it. If people are looking for a dog and we don't have the dog that they want, we refer them to other rescues that we trust and we work with. And we'll help them find a good breeder too. We are 100% supported by our breeders in the area. They do fundraisers for us. A couple of them do grooming
28:09dog that needs to come in to rescue right now and we don't have a spot for it. We've used them and they don't even charge us. So yeah, we are very lucky that the local Aussie breeders are behind us and helping us and we're actually gonna have a big fundraiser put on by the Upper Midwest Australian Shepherd Club, which is a lot of breeders are part of that. They do a big raffle for us in March. That's one of our big fundraisers for the year.
28:38We are very, very lucky how supported we are by the quality breeders we have in this area. That's fabulous. I love that. I didn't know that you guys were supported by the breeders too. Yup, yup. So if anyone wanted to donate to you guys, is there a thing on your website that they can just, I don't know, send money? They do, yeah. Yup, we have our address for if you have, we wanna send a check or else we have PayPal on our website and that's www.ossierescuemn, as in Minnesota,.com.
29:09And then obviously our Facebook is pretty active. We try and share if someone's adopted from us We always encourage them to send in pictures and updates and we share that and we always have our adoption photos and our new dogs That are coming in that are available for adoption On our Facebook Yes, I was I was actually looking at your page yesterday evening And I showed my husband a couple pictures of the dogs that are available and he was like we are not getting another dog One is enough
29:39I said, oh, but honey, honey, I want that one and I want that one and I want that one. And he said, no, no, no. And I'm like, okay, fine. But they are very- Aussies are like potato chips. You can't have just one. Yeah, we're trying to buck that. We really are good with one. She definitely takes up our time and our energy. The last thing that I would say regarding these dogs is that if you get one, be prepared to lose your heart. It'll be gone.
30:08I swear to you, had no idea, but it will be gone. It's like having kids, you know, they say that having children is like taking your heart out of your chest and letting it walk around in the world without you. And I swear it's the same with these dogs too. Yeah. Like I said, they're more of a partnership than a pet ownership. Yeah. You don't own an Aussie and Aussie owns you. And I think that's pretty much it. I just...
30:37The reason I wanted to talk to you is because Aussies tend to be farm dogs and my podcast is about homesteading and stuff. So I was like, there's a tie in there. It's okay. Yup. They're great dogs. They're great dogs for farms. They're great dogs as pets. They're just all around. They're a good dog. But like you said, they all have very different personalities. So if you...
31:01If you want a couch potato, you kind of need to know that it's a couch potato. It can't be a dog that wants to go herd sheep and you don't have sheep. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, mine are spend a lot of time with my, I have sheep and so I rotationally graze and so I move my sheep from spot to spot. And so I have two of my four that I own that are trained to move the sheep and put them where I want them. And they're very calm in the house, but they're emotionally.
31:30mentally and physically satisfied dogs too. So that's always the difference. They have a job and they do their job. And then they come in and they're like, I'm tired. I'm gonna take a nap now. Yep. Uh-huh. And the other thing I was gonna mention is you were saying that you kind of like the dogs that you guys take in to look like Aussies. The biggest thing that I have seen with looking like an Aussie is a border collie. My parents have one.
31:59And she's like four years older than our dog, I think. And she's a black tri border collie. She has the pretty brown markings. Yep, yep. That an Aussie would have, a classic black tri. And when we got our dog, my dad was like, you got the same dog as we have. And I said, no, yours is a border collie and mine's an Aussie. And he's like, they're the same damn dog. And I was like, I don't think they are. No, they're not.
32:29And he said, okay, well, they look very much like they could be border litter mates. And I was like, yes, yes, they look a lot alike, but they're not the same breed. Yeah. We got into kind of a, I don't want to say piss and match about it, but we got into kind of a little debate about it. So, yeah. So, and they act different. I have a half border collie, half Aussie foster right now, Nico. I'm about to post him actually. He's been with me about a month and a half because he needed some.
32:57needed some training before we could post him. Probably still need some more, but we're going to try and find the home that can help finish that training. And he, they act different. So when when they come in, even if they look like an Aussie, my husband will say that one acts really border collie. And I'll be like, yeah, he kind of does. And you start watching them move. So they move different definitely. When the two breeds heard, they heard very different. The Aussie is
33:27So they don't do that direct border collie stare. Most of them, there is some of that in there. And that, you know, there's probably common ancestries, maybe some breeding of border collie into the Aussie at some point in their lineage. You know, we don't know for sure. Back then people were breeding the good cowdog to the good cowdog to get more good cowdogs, right? They weren't really concerned about papers or there weren't any papers back then when they were developing it. And so,
33:56There's, you know, all breeds came from somewhere. But the, and the, you know, the border collie was developed over in northern Europe and the Australian shepherd's parentage, well, that's not the right word, ancestry came from like Spain and that area. So those aren't too far away. So there was probably some intersection back there somewhere also.
34:22But definitely the border collie when they heard you can see the difference. They're more crouchy That's not the right term, but they crouch down and and they have this very intense lots of eye contact with the sheep Controlling with a lot of presence And then the Aussie is more up close and personal They'll go in and do more close-up work, and that's what they were bred to do Also, they were bred to be in the chutes and the corrals at the ranch
34:49and do a lot of the close work where the border collie was bred to be out in big open fields with the sheep. And there's plenty of people that use border collies now on cattle also, but those are very different looking border collies than the ones you'll see working sheep. Even in the breed, you'll see the differences. So it's very interesting. Yeah. And I mean, this is going to sound dumb, but...
35:12What you were just saying is all very accurate. I did some research. I believe everything you're saying. I sent the research to my dad and he was like, okay, fine. Yes, they're different. But the other thing I've really noticed is that with my parents' dog, when she barks, when she's on alert, she sounds like an 80 pound German shepherd. When my dog barks, she has that high pitch yipe that the Aussies have. Okay. And, and, um,
35:41I was saying to my dad something a while ago about how big his dog is. And he's like, she only weighs like 35 pounds. I said, oh, I thought she weighed like 60. He said, no, she's not a German Shepherd. And I said, she's the same size as our dog. I said, and our dog goes, hi, hi. And your dog goes woof, woof. And he was like, yeah. He said, you said they're not the same dog. He said, I believe you now. They are not the same dog.
36:11I was like, okay, good, and she's barking right now. God love you, Maggie, you're a good girl. All right, so anyway, I think we're good. Laura, thank you for talking with me about your rescue because, well, it's not your rescue, but the rescue, because I worry about my dog. If anything happened to us, I would want her to go to somebody like you. Yep, that's what we do. I hope we give people peace of mind.
36:39when life goes horrible and they don't have any other choices because we get a lot of that. And I hope we give them peace of mind that we will, you know, we'll follow that dog for the rest of their lives and make sure that they're safe. I think you will. And I think you're doing a fabulous thing. Thank you so much, Laura. Have a great day. Thank you. All right. Bye.
 

Brookhaven Mill Farm-North Carolina

Today I'm talking with Cheryl at Brookhaven Mill Farm-North Carolina. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Cheryl at Brookhaven Mill Farm, North Carolina. Hello Cheryl, how are you? Hi, I'm doing well. How are you doing? I'm great. I was looking at your website and your story is so cool, so tell me about yourself and what you do.
00:29Okay, so let's see, I'll just give you the brief rundown. At age 60, I purchased a farm, my first farm, and I am now 66. So I have been running this farm for the past five and a half, almost six years. I am in central North Carolina, right outside of Greensboro, and I diversify a bit as far as the farm model goes. Because I...
00:58physically do not grow crops. I decided to grow livestock, and I am now centralized around growing sheep. I started with East Friesian sheep, and now I've diversified into a different breed that's a little more parasite resistant in this part of the country. And it's a Catawdin-Dorpor cross. Right now, I have about 30 head. But raising sheep is kind of boring. It's like golf. If you don't do it, it's kind of boring.
01:29So what I do on the weekends is I open my farm for an agritourism destination. So I get locals from Greensboro and visiting to come out to the farm and not only see the sheep, but to see some of the other animals I've added. Sheep get along really well with goats. So I've added some goats and a couple of donkeys for a guardian, a couple of...
01:57dogs, a lot of cats, and chickens, ducks, and geese. And it just makes for a wild menagerie of animals for people to feed and just get excited about learning. Awesome. I have two questions. I'm gonna forget one of them if I don't ask both at the same time. One is about the cross-breed of your sheep and one is about the fact that you started this at 60. So we'll start with the sheep one. The cross-breed that you have. Catodin is a hair sheep, right?
02:26Yes, that's correct. Is the other one also a hair sheep? Yes, Dorpher is also a hair sheep. And you know, it's really just a bunch of mutts out there, but they have had four lambing seasons coming up on my fifth lambing season, Valentine's Day. We're expecting lambs. And each lambing season is getting more and more specific to the Katahdin look, the fine features, the sweet face, the little smile.
02:56and just easy to handle, very docile, very good choice for meat. And not so much milk that I can tell. I'm going to try to milk some of my ewes in February. I morphed into this mutt breed of mostly Katahdin now, but some dorper, because the sire, the ram, is a dorper. But he's also a cross.
03:26So he's a Dorper St. Roy cross. So these girls have all been lambing.
03:36Some have been lambing for four years, some have been lambing for three. This year I've got a couple of first time moms, so it's gonna be interesting to see what they're offering exhibit as far as the traits that I'm trying to get to, which is worm resistant, hair, completely hair, because the original seven sheep I started with six years ago when I bought the farm were all German breed, East region, and they were wool.
04:04So I've just about bred the wool out of the lands now. Okay, that was what I was gonna ask you about because I haven't actually talked to anybody who's bred a hair sheep and a wool sheep and how that works, because I have no idea. Is it just like any other animal that you breed with a different variety? That's why it's.
04:27And then you get wool sheep or hair sheep or like maybe a wool hair sheep. I don't know. Yeah, you get a wool hair sheep and that's what's so funny is because it's taken a couple of generations now of lambing to get to the point where all the lambs are now starting to look like hair lambs. The first experiment, the first lambing when I crossed the dad with the, you know, the
04:57lambs. Some of the lambs had the nubby, woolly texture. Some had sort of a half and half fill. And now they've been bred back to their father. And their offspring now exhibits very little wool nubby. But sometimes you'll get one that looks like it's... Where did this one come from? It's got almost like Velcro.
05:26fleece, which is really hard to shear. So not only have I saved money for the farm by going to hair sheep, because it's quite expensive to shear, have a shearer come and shear 30 head of sheep. So this year, the shearer is only going to have to shear six sheep, which are the half and halves, but they still need that wool taken off.
05:55how to be comfortable in the summertime. Okay, that's what I was wondering about. And the only experience I have with breeding anything, and it wasn't like on purpose because we're dumb, is our female barn cat wasn't spayed. And she was an incredibly long haired cat, like ridiculously long haired. We called her Floof because she was so long haired. And her last litter, she had seven babies, and three of them
06:24were long haired and four of them were really short haired. Like, not hairless cats, but really short haired. And we capped one male from Malitter and he is a dilute orange. So he's like beige colored. And his hair is as long as his mama's. And he's gorgeous. And we adore him. And I call him fluffy butt because he's so fluffy. But.
06:52I've never actually bred an animal on purpose because that's not my job. I don't do that. But it's weird how genetics work and it's always really interesting to see what happens when you do cross different lines. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's the adventurous and exciting part of breeding sheep is what am I going to come out with because you're putting some thought into it. It's not just willy-nilly. I keep one ram because I know he's proven.
07:21I do sell my other ram lambs once they've been weaned from their mom. But the downside of it is you also have to be very conscientious not to keep sheep that are going to be genetically flawed. And like they get worms, they have prolapsed uteruses, they have toes that constantly have to be trimmed.
07:48It's just me that runs this farm. And so I have learned, and it's been a very hard lesson, that I don't want those moms breeding again, because they're passing on a trait that's high maintenance for me. Yes, undesirable traits are called undesirable traits for a reason. Yeah, that's right. OK, so that leads me back to my second question five minutes ago. So you said you did this at 60, and now you're saying that it's just you.
08:17You must be in fabulous shape. I'm not, my cardiologist will tell you that I am 60 pounds overweight. I'm morbidly obese according to the medical definition, but I feel great. I live a healthy lifestyle. I don't smoke. Of course I drink wine, but you know, I have a healthy outlook on life. I've been widowed for 18 years. My husband passed away unfortunately.
08:47Um, three years into our marriage, he was my second husband. And so he would have loved this place. Um, but I just decided I've always been a risk taker. I've, I've grown up working in aerospace and department of defense, uh, as my career hat, and I just retired after 43 years of working, um, as a contractor for the government, I was in the Navy for a short time, but my, my day.
09:17job for the last 43 years has been very technical. And I've always had a side hustle. And this farm allows me to let my creative juices and my business acumen come out because I also run a bed and breakfast. And so I get, and I have a farm store. So I get a chance to do a little retail, do a little hospitality, do some animal husbandry. And I just love it.
09:45So it's taken me, I'm sorry that it took me so long to figure all this out. But I think everything happens for a reason and at 60, it just all fell together. I'm right there with you on, sorry that it took so long to figure it out because I have been doing this podcast for a little over a year and I love it. And I wish I had started it when I was in my forties, not when I was 54. I hear you. Or 53 or whatever it was. So yeah, but you never know.
10:13all the things that you spend your life doing become the next thing you're going to do, I feel like. Absolutely. Dead straight on that Mary, dead straight. Yeah. So do you have a great perinase? Because I hear a dog in the background. Yeah, I have. So I've partnered with a food bank and so it's taken me time to do that. Let me see if I can shut him. Oh, no, no, it's fine. I don't mind. He's barking. I just hear him.
10:41Well, I, so this food bank gives me, you know, we have a lot of food waste in our country. It's, it sounds like a good problem to have, but all this food goes into the landfill. And I've been able to partner with the local food bank that gives me boxes and boxes of food that is not for human consumption. Maybe it's gone past the expiration date at the grocery store. And so they, they give me a truckload of food and I just came in from my pickup.
11:11I have a pickup every week at this food bank and I share it with my neighbors because a lot of this food is actually very good food. Like if you can imagine a bag of lemons and maybe one lemon is bad, they throw the whole bag into my pickup. And so it's ridiculous not to share that with my neighbors and that's a neighbor that's just pulled up, which is why my dog's barking.
11:36Ah, I see. Okay. And was I right on the breed? Is he a great Pyrenees? No, I chose not to go with a great Pyrenees because they have a terrible habit of wandering. They sure do. Helps to find their boundaries. This is a Romanian sheep dog. He is bred to protect his flock from bears and wolves, which we don't luckily have a lot of here in North Carolina, but we do have coyotes.
12:06Thankfully, I have not suffered any losses from coyotes or neighbors dogs with him around. Nice. Is he big? He's huge. He's 120 pounds and their breed will get up to 200 pounds. He won't reach his full weight limit because he had some challenges with his hips and bone structure when he was born. So, he has a bit of a handicap, but he's topping the scales at 120.
12:35And he looks a lot like a St. Bernard, but if you're curious or anybody's out there curious, it's a bucovina shepherd dog. Okay. The reason I thought it was a great Pyrenees is because friends of ours, hi Tracy and Paul, Tracy listens to the podcast all the time. They have two great Pyrenees and the bark on your dog sounds very much like the bark on their dogs. So that's why I asked. Oh yeah. Well, I hope their Pyrenees stick close to home. I was just afraid to take a chance and have mine wandering.
13:03Um, they've told me that they do wander, but they don't wander far because the neighbors send them home. They tell them go home and they do. So, okay. So it's, it's okay. I don't think the dogs have been lost for any real amount of time. So I think it's fine. I think that, I think that the dogs, um, Lagatha and I can't remember the male dog name, male dog's name.
13:28But anyway, I think that they know where they belong and they find their way back pretty quick. And the other thing is that as I say all the time, we have a dog, but she's more like a person in a dog suit. She's a mini Australian shepherd. And so when she barks, it's this very arf noise, not the big woof noise that yours is doing. Interesting. I'm always curious because I am very sound driven and thank God I have a podcast because I get to hear all kinds of different tones and tenors.
13:58voices all the time, but I also do it with animals. And it's always very interesting to me how you can recognize certain animals' sizes by the sounds that they make. You would have made a great sonar person on a nuclear sub because one of the traits they look for is someone who can identify a school of shrimp versus a ship. Oh, funny. Funny. Yeah, I have been told so many things that I missed my calling on. I could have been at least a hundred different things at this point in my life.
14:29But this is where I've ended up. So, okay, so I can't believe it's just you doing all of this. You must have like a huge wall calendar that you have stuff on so you can keep track. Yeah, so one of the, in my professional life, part of my job was managing and organizing documents and software. And so I think that that is the skill that I put to use here at the farm. I do keep a calendar.
14:59I have a lot of bookings for kids' birthday parties. I have to make sure, and my biggest fear is I'm going to overbook. That's just, you know, same with the B&B. I have to make sure that I'm managing these reservations very carefully and giving everybody the experience what they're looking for. So that's a lot of PR involved, but a lot of behind the scenes stuff as well. So I've had to wear a lot of hats, just like any entrepreneur out there, especially in agritourism.
15:28You are the bookkeeper, the financier, the marketer, everything. You're the face the public sees. And, and so it's the biggest challenge I've had doing this for six years now is. Setting boundaries, you know, just now, right before this podcast, uh, earlier this morning, I had opened up our little snack bar and I have a set time on Tuesdays where people can come and pick up fresh milk and.
15:56I have to adhere to these schedules very strictly because I've got other things on my plate to do, which was being this podcast. And so I closed up the snack bar at the time. And just before I came online with you, somebody pulled up and wanted some milk. Now they were 35 minutes late. And it's been the biggest challenge is when is the customer always dry and when is this is a farm and I have to keep a schedule.
16:26And a lot of times I find the latter works better. If people really want the milk, they have to come when I'm available. And it's a terrible thing to say when you're dealing with the public, but it is just me and I can't, I can't be constantly stopping what I'm doing and running out and helping somebody because maybe they heard I had fresh eggs. So I do open just on the weekends to the public to come and shop for things at our farm store or at the snack bar.
16:57or go into the petting zoo, but I absolutely keep the gates closed during the week, unless it is a private appointment, like a milk pickup.
17:08Yes, and don't feel bad that you have a schedule that you need to keep because your time is as valuable as anyone else's. Yeah. That's been a hard lesson because I am now supported. The farm is supporting me now. I don't get a paycheck. So it is hard to remember that I am still an employee and ambassador of the farm. And it's just, it's going to be interesting at tax time. That's all I could say.
17:36There is no W-2 to show my accountant, so it'll be fun. Yes, we actually had to do that last, well, this year in 2024 for 2023, because we had a CSA in 2023. We were selling things at the farmers market and just stuff. And my husband was like, I'm bringing our tax person this file folder of all my spreadsheets. Do you think it'll be right? And I'm like, I think that he will be very happy to see that.
18:06And when we walked in and the guy was like, okay, so what's the deal? And he took my husband's W2 from the job that my husband had for like three months of 2023. And then he was like, what else you got? And my husband was like, well, here's what we've been doing. Here's all those spreadsheets and handed them to him. And the guy looked through them and he said, I am so impressed with you. You would not believe how many people start businesses and bring me every receipt from the year.
18:36And it's like a box. Yeah. No, I go through my box and put it on a spreadsheet as well. I just don't have any W-2s. So how do you, maybe we can talk offline, but yeah, it's going to be a challenge because I don't pay myself. So this is going to be an interesting tax year. Yeah. Gotta love it. Taxes are hard. I think even if you are rich, taxes are hard. It's just how it is.
19:06But anyway, I wish you all the luck in the world with that. And yes, we can talk about that afterward. We're done with the recording. Because I don't know if I can help you, but I will try. OK. So tell me about the history of the place that you own. Yeah, so this is my dream property. I thought my last property in Lake Lure, North Carolina was my dream property. My husband and I purchased that in 2004. And it was a vineyard.
19:36He was from California. It was just an amazing piece of property. Lake Lure is such an amazing place. It's so sad, the devastation that it's just gone through with the storm. But we were living four miles from the lake and had 10 acres and a guest cottage. And it was gonna be our retirement home. And unfortunately he passed the following year. So I kept the home as a Verbo for 12 years while I worked on different contracts for the government around the country. And
20:04And the Verbo was a great thing to have, tax-wise, but it kept me from feeling grounded. And so I finally came upon North Carolina, the central part of North Carolina, and saw a farm that was an 1800s historic farm. It was just incredibly beautiful. The house sits upon a hill and it's 23 acres and it had the barn. It had all the infrastructure. I wouldn't have to do anything.
20:34because I'm winging it at this point. My husband's not here to build stuff and fix stuff for me. So I found that it was on the market for 200 days with nobody putting in an offer. I figured it was either haunted or it was just in such bad shape. Nobody wanted to deal with it. But when I took a tour of the house, there were renters living here. I was so impressed with how it was already set up where it would be a perfect B&B. It was just...
21:03It was just the house of my dreams, two story, 1882. It's just incredible, the architecture inside, the original wood floors, everything was just beautiful. I just kept pinching myself. So I got it at the price I needed to have it at. And from that point on, it was just learning about the house. Old houses have noises in the night. It certainly is not haunted.
21:31If anything, there are very good ghosts here. There's been a very long history of a family passing it on to its generation. And so I have some really good provenance with this house. Three doors down is a 93 year old lady who was born in this house. And she can tell me all sorts of stories about what her father and his father did growing up here. Both were born here.
21:58So she was the third generation to be born here. And it's just so incredible to hear history coming from her lips. I mean, so I have a lot of provenance with the house. I've got a real spiritual connection to the house. And it's just so funny because I don't know any of these people. But I have their pictures in the hallways. It's like when you come in, everyone always asks, oh, are these your ancestors? And it's like, no, it's the ancestors who built this house.
22:28So people who stay here really all seem to enjoy stepping back in the past because I do serve a traditional breakfast on China and the house is furnished in 1930s and before turn of the century type furniture. So it's just been like living in a doll house. I just love it. You sound like you just love it. The joy is coming through the headphones.
22:56Yeah, it's really interesting when you buy a house that old, or property that old, because back when that house was built, it probably wasn't as big as it is right now. I'm sure that they added on to it. And back then, I'm pretty sure there wasn't electricity. Yeah, you are absolutely right in remnants of how life was back then. I discovered the outhouse my first year living here. Someone had parked it.
23:24behind an old shed and it is certainly an outhouse. But yeah, you're right. It has become modern with each generation that has lived here. You know, it's funny that you bring up the outhouse. Back, oh my goodness, it's gotta be at least 10 years ago. My husband and my youngest son and I went for a hike and there's this beautiful hiking trail.
23:52about at least half an hour from where we live now. But back then, we lived about 15 minutes from this trail. And there was an old, old, old brick house. And it was like a, I would call it a mansion for the time it was built, because it was probably built about the same time as your house. And red brick, and it had a brick outhouse. Oh, no kidding.
24:22that horse or that bull is built like a brick shithouse. And I had never actually understood that they made those, that a brick outhouse actually existed. And we came around the corner of the house after wandering around the outside of the house and yep, brick outhouse. And I just laughed myself stupid for like 15 minutes. My husband's like, why are you so tickled?
24:48And I said, because brick shit houses actually exist, honey. I had no idea. Oh my gosh. It, you know, I guess that was the way you could show your wealth back then, you know, because I've never heard of a brick, Johnny, Johnny house. That's what they call it here in North Carolina, Johnny house. Yeah. So it was just funny. And I was actually thinking about it the other day, cause I have photos from that, that hike and we took a picture of the brick outhouse. So.
25:18But either way, very funny to me, probably no one else will giggle, but I thought it was a riot. And the other thing is that I'm assuming that your home went through the whole transition from hurricane oil lamps, whatever you want to call them, and candles, to gas lamps, to electricity, to where we're at now. And you write on about the original structure I learned, again, from my 93-year-old neighbor.
25:47who learned from her father that the original structure was pre-1880s. It was just a two-room farmhouse that her grandfather grew up in. And you can feel the transition when you're walking from that part of the house into the addition that was built in the 1930s. When the family was expanding.
26:16And they needed additional bedrooms and living quarters. And so that's what I love about this house is because, you know, you can put an egg on the floor and it'll roll. It's just crazy. Not very fun when you're trying to retile a kitchen though, because they did have to level my kitchen because it was so off kilter. Then, you know, so that's not fun when you're in that type of remodeling, but gosh, the
26:44the little nooks and crannies where they put, they actually took the original house and attached another structure to it. And you know, nothing matches up perfectly, but that's what I love about it. Character. Absolutely. It oozes character. Yeah. Our home that we live in now, that we moved into a little over four years ago, was completely remodeled before we ever set foot in it.
27:14And there used to be a bedroom downstairs and it was probably just a small bedroom. It was big enough for a twin bed and maybe a side table and possibly a small dresser, but I doubt it. And the house now is a two bedroom and both bedrooms are upstairs. And what they did is they opened up that bedroom and it's part of our living room. And then a side of that bedroom is a walk-in closet for coats and things. And.
27:42At first I was like, this is great. It's, they set it up almost like open concept. It's really pretty. And now having lived here, I kind of wish they'd left that bedroom downstairs alone. Because number one, it would have been a great place to have as a guest room for my kids when they come home.
28:04And number two, my husband snores and it would have been a great place for me to go at night if he's keeping me awake, but no, the bedroom is no longer downstairs. So it's interesting how people change the inside of a home, but the outside tends to look the same for a long time. Yeah, the parlor, what I use to serve breakfast in, it has the only working fireplace in the house. There were four fireplaces in the house.
28:33four flues where a parlor stove might have been hooked up to it. And three are non-working and one downstairs is working. And I learned from my neighbor that that was her parents' bedroom, that they had the heat and they all used to gather in the parents' bedroom when they needed extra heat. But they had working fireplaces or working stoves. And she said that the fireplace was always the warmest spot in the house.
29:03That is now my parlor. So the only thing you can tell that it could have been a bedroom at one time is there is a closet, which I'm turning into a powder room. I just need a place for guests to wash up when they're downstairs before I serve breakfast. Normally, they're upstairs in the bedroom, and that's where the bathroom is. But you're right. Every time a generation has been here, they've added something to it. Also, I learned that.
29:32With their family, they only had one bathroom, which was an unusual back in the early days. But the bathroom was upstairs when she was growing up, which would have been in the thirties. And so they had indoor plumbing then by then she said she never used the outhouse. But in the thirties upstairs was the bathroom. They added a bathroom downstairs. So I actually have two bathrooms now, but I want to add a third, a half that just to have.
30:00guests be able to go in and wash up downstairs. I love that we're talking about this because this isn't about growing plants or growing animals. This is about growing a house. I think that's amazing. You brought it up. No, I think it's great and and you're using that home as part of your agritourism business. So it fits. Yes, and I have to watch when people come out to the farm that they don't wander inside because they know it's a bed and
30:30So sometimes, you know, there are strangers, complete strangers walking around, which is a little unnerving, but I guess it's to be expected when you come across a house like this. Yes. And I mean, there's a lot of history there. And I think that you probably are a history buff and so am I. And we are not the only ones on the earth that love historical buildings. So I'm not surprised to be like, I wonder if I can just go take a peek.
31:01So, all right, well, Cheryl, we have been talking for 30 minutes and, oh, actually almost 31 minutes and I tried to keep this to half an hour. So I appreciate your time so much. Thank you. It's been very, very rewarding to be able to talk to you and share about not only the house but the farm as well. And I appreciate the exposure and the time you took as well, Mary. Thank you. Oh, for sure. I love doing this. You have a great day, Cheryl.
31:30You too. Bye-bye. Thanks again.
 

Hart Farmstead

Today I'm talking with Salina at Hart Farmstead.
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 Salina at Hart Farmstead LLC. Good morning, Salina, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good, bet it's not snowing where you are. No ma'am, I think it's actually like in the low 50s so far.
00:29Well, I'm mildly jealous but not really. It is snowing here in Minnesota this morning. Oh, I bet it's beautiful. It really is and I would be perturbed except that last winter we only got like maybe six inches total for the whole winter and we've probably gotten about four this morning. So I'm very excited to see white stuff falling from the sky. That is awesome. We haven't had snow here and
00:58Almost three years until two weeks ago, we got like a little dusting. That's the first side of snow we've seen in three years. Wow. Okay. So you're in North Carolina. Where in North Carolina? We're in like the central area in North Carolina, just south of Winston-Salem. Okay. Cool. I just talked to a lady, uh, today's Thursday yesterday, who was from East North Carolina, and I don't remember where, but E-N-C is part of their.
01:28their business name. Okay. So, I get to talk to two people from North Carolina in 24 hours, it's kind of great. That's awesome. Yeah, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do. So, we have been homesteading for over a decade now. I was raised by my grandparents who grew everything and or hunted everything for our food.
01:57My Nana did a lot of preserving, whether it was dehydrating, pressure cannon or water bath cannon. So I got to kind of be hand in hand with that growing up as a kid. My dad and my grandfather both enjoyed hunting about anything that you could hunt. So I've eaten most different types of wild game. When I met my husband in 2009, he is a farmer.
02:26He does a lot of small grains. And I moved here a couple counties away when we got married. It used to be a dairy farm that started back in 1947. And they sold the dairy cows when he was five years old and his dad changed over to run in strictly beef cows at that point. When we got together, being able to live on a farm kind of...
02:56really pulled me to continue what I grew up doing, whether it was hunting or raising our food. So we have a really big garden, and I started with just that, but then over the years it has expelled to three really big gardens, multiple raised beds. We have a variety of animals. And about two years ago, we started milking our first dairy cow. It was supposed to...
03:24only be like for our family's milk. And we had my best friend who was currently buying raw milk down in the central part of the county. And so she started coming and getting some from us. And now we have 10 dairy cows. We currently are milking six. So our biggest thing now is raw milk products.
03:52and we still have beef cows. So I keep a lot of their beef fat and I render it into tallow and I make a variety of products and then some other organic clean products that I've used for years and people started asking me for them. And so we've just kind of continued to grow in that aspect. And then I've added, you know, I do the sourdough and the kombucha.
04:22and all the good fermenting. My husband calls them my science experiments. They are spread out around our home. We joined the Homestead community with Homesteaders of America about five years ago and started going to their conferences in Virginia every year. And we really have enjoyed meeting new folks that have the same passion as we do.
04:52And, you know, even though it's a state away, so many of my close friends and our family have grown to want to learn more, especially when COVID hit. When COVID hit, people started to reach out and they're like, hey, can you teach me how to can, can you teach me how to grow vegetables? And it's just continued to grow over the last few years.
05:20people wanting that knowledge of knowing where their food comes from, what's in their products that their family has in their home. And it's just kind of always been my passion and it's really all that I've ever known. We do both work off of our farmstead though with goals to eventually at least have me home probably in the next year or so.
05:47Um, running the, the farmstead with a little store. Um, you know, we, we have found our niche and we have found what truly brings us joy and, uh, the dairy cows are just a whole different level of happiness that I didn't even know that I had. Um, and so we just, uh, we continue to want to learn anything that we can. Um, not just
06:15for offering what we have to folks, but for our family. So it's been a big reward to share what we know with people. And we butchered some chickens recently with some friends. I'm growing some more pasture chickens for my best friend who's never gotten to do this before. And she does more like a apothecary side of things. And I do more of the gardening and the livestock.
06:46So that's kind of the quick gist about what we do. And with what we, our jobs off of the farmstead, I am a landscaper. I have a horticulture degree that I earn later in life. And so that really helps my job, but it also helps me what I do here in doing things more organic and safer for my family.
07:14Yes. Okay. Wow. You are deep in the trenches of homesteading. I love it. And if we don't have, we don't have livestock because we don't have room to have them right now. We have three acres, but we don't have any place for critters to graze. So if we did, and if we had a dairy cow, my husband would have a hell of a time pulling me away from that critter because I love cows.
07:43He would be coming to find me wherever the cow was and he would find me hugging the cow probably nine hours out of the day. Absolutely. I love cows. I think cows are beautiful and they're not beautiful in the same way as like a horse, but they're just, they're so pretty. Their eyes just, they make me happy. Yes. And we have a couple that...
08:09All of our cows are super friendly. They love to be loved on. And they weren't all that way when they came here. So it's been a lot of time of many hours out there, loving on them, getting them used to being, because a lot of them came from like commercial dairies. One of them I raised from a bottle. So I'm all she knows. So she thinks she is like a dog and not a cow. But their personalities are just amazing and they are beautiful.
08:38And their eyes, there's two of them, that when you look into their eyes, they're just like old souls. And you can just see their happiness and their passion. Like, it's hard to explain, but it's soothing, just to look deep into their eyes and see their personalities and their hearts. Yeah, and I think the only thing that is close to that feeling is when you have babies. Like when you have your first baby
09:08They really look into your eyes and you just fall. You just fall in forever and that's it. And cows' eyes are like that too and it's a really weird analogy to make, but it's the closest I've come. It's pretty, you're pretty correct there. Yeah, I have three kids that I birthed and I have a stepson. And my last baby is a boy. He's...
09:35He's not a baby anymore. He's only 23 at the end of this month. But he was born really, really fast. I got to the hospital at 10 minutes to seven and he was born at 712. So 22 minutes. Wow. And the doctor wasn't there. The nurse helped me birth him and she didn't even have time to break down the bed in the hospital. So basically he was born onto the bed.
10:02I sat up immediately because it was so fast and so easy. I felt fine. And I sat up because he was laying between my knees. And he was wide awake, eyes wide open, and just looked at me. And I just, I have never had that experience in my life, even though I've had two other babies. The other two, they were taken away from me right away because they had swallowed the
10:32but it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life and I always remember it. So there's something really important about connection with another being. Absolutely. So that's my story about my kid. So I have to tell you, I was looking at your Facebook page and your Instagram page and you have a video of one of your dogs.
11:01And you have the background music as that's just my baby dog. I love that. I saw that like last year and I have a dog I love too. And my parents also have a dog they love. And I sent them the clip of whatever it was that had that background song. And my dad called me. He's like, that's the dumbest thing, but it's so funny.
11:27I was like, yeah, he says, I'm gonna be singing that's just my baby dog for a month. I said, thank you so much for the earworm and I was like, you're welcome. So I knew we were gonna be fast buddies on the podcast because you had that as your background music for that video. Yes. And to think how fast from since I had video that she's grown and you know, she's full grown now. But when I'm playing with her out in the yard, sometimes I still sing that because
11:55It is pretty catchy. But when she was a puppy, she was, she just had a hilarious personality from day one and she doesn't come in the house, but I wish she would because her personality, it's, it was amazing. She would walk herself with her leash and you know, that was supposed to be our son's oldest dog, but you know, every, every one of them ends up becoming mom's dog.
12:22Yeah, I wish that that song had been out when we got our dog. She's a little over four years old now. And had that song been out when she was a puppy, oh my God, I would've been singing it to her all the time. Cause she was silly too. So it worked out great. But either way, I had a good giggle when I saw that you had it and I was like, Oh, I love her already. Um, okay. So you are.
12:49You are like born and steeped in homesteading from the sounds of it. Yes ma'am. Is it weird to you when people aren't in homesteading? Yes, because some people that I meet that aren't into homesteading, I feel like they look at me like, what is this lady talking about?
13:18I'm like, man, they'll start asking questions and they want to know more. And then a year later I received text messages with, we went down that rabbit hole. So I love it. I'll actually really do like meeting folks that don't have that background because they quickly get very intrigued by it. And I like being able to guide them and help them to grow into their own journey with it. And
13:44probably 90% of them end up doing some scale, even if it's just backyard gardening, you know. Everybody has to start somewhere and that gives them their happiness and their feeling of they're producing their own food with what they have available to them. So it's quite rewarding. Yes, I understand. And the other thing that I have found in what I've learned about homesteading over the last...
14:1220 years learning about it, doing it, is I know stuff that I don't realize that I know. A friend of mine has a very shady patch in her yard and she was like, I'm trying to figure out what I should put there because I want some kind of ground cover, but it's really shady. And I said, well, did you try hostas? And she's like, I'm so sick of hostas. And I said, okay. I said, what about wild violets?
14:39And she said, wild violets will grow in the shade. And I said, yeah, they grow in the woods all over Minnesota. I said, and I'm sure somebody you know probably has a patch. They'd be happy to split. And they spread like wildfire. I said, do you want to walk over whatever the ground cover is? And she said, no. And I said, well, with violets, you can walk on them. They won't die. You know, you may crush the blooms, but they won't die. She was like, I'm going to do that.
15:08I didn't even think about the fact that the reason I know this is because my husband's mother gave us some violets from her little patch of woods from her old house when she moved and we put them in and they just grow anywhere. Right. And I was like, wow, I know more than I think I know. This is kind of great. Oh, it is. I'm kind of like that with, my favorite one is Dandelions.
15:37And that's where it comes into, it's like at work where with being a landscaper and I work on state grounds, you know, when we are, we have to spray out pre-emergent to keep weeds from coming through in the grass on campus. And it breaks my heart because, you know, you're getting rid of all the dandelions that I could go pick the blooms and go home and make me some jelly. But yeah.
16:04Or, you know, I can make sabs with them. There's so many different things you can do with them. And people are like, how do you know this stuff? And I was like, it's just stuff that you learn over time. It's a weed. And I'm like, no, technically, you know, the, the definition of the term weed is anything planted where it's not supposed to be, I said, so grass is technically a weed as well, you know, so some people don't, they don't get that, but I love knowing little things like that.
16:30Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up dandelions because I read in two different places. Don't quote me. I don't know if it's true. That some woman brought dandelions over from Britain to America. Dandelions are not native to America, apparently. And the reason she brought them is because they're considered flowers over there, and she really loved them, and she brought some with her. That's interesting. Supposedly.
16:58I've read it in two different places. I need to read it in about three more before I believe it. But, but I kind of hope it's true because people are like dandelions suck. And I'm like, no, no, no. Dandelion leaves are great in salad if they're, you know, fresh brand new, almost baby dandelion leaves, they're yummy. You can eat them. You can make coffee, a coffee substitute out of the roots. And it's really good. Dandelion tea is really yummy. And like you said, you can make jellies out of it. So.
17:28They're not, they're not like the scourge of plants or anything.
17:35No, and I would probably, I would like to look more into where they came from like that because I could see that being true because over there, things that we consider weeds and stuff here are something they use every day in their life over there because they live, you know, over in Europe, they live a completely clean lifestyle. You know, there's stuff there.
18:01foods cleaner, their products are cleaner, they don't have all the fillers and fake stuff and they love teas and using herbs and I think that's pretty cool. Me too and I'm one of those weird people who absolutely loves coffee but I also love herbal teas. And when people are like coffee or tea, I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, what do you like better? And I'm like, I don't like either better. I like both.
18:30Yeah. And I'm like, you're weird. And I'm like, yes, yes, I am. I'm very proud of being weird. Absolutely. And that is okay. Yep. My favorite tea on earth is mint chamomile with honey in it. That sounds good. Just thinking about it. It's really good if you're trying to get some sleep because the chamomile definitely will make you drowsy. It works great. So, okay. So you said you have animals. What do
19:00We have meat chickens and we have lane hens. We have dairy goats. I have Nubians. I used to have Nigerian dwarfs, but I recently changed over to Nubians in the last year, year and a half. We have beef cows, dairy cows. Let's see, we have guineas. We did have ducks. We no longer have ducks.
19:30They are messy, but I did love baking with their eggs. They would 100% make cornbread rise, your cakes rise better. We have pigs, we raise pigs. We normally grow out our hogs about four to six months at a time and butcher them for our family. And then we do offer it some to friends and other family members.
19:59Um, we had quail. We recently got rid of our quail. Um, it just wasn't suitable. And that's one thing when you go down the homestead path, you know, there's some people that prefer chickens over quail or quail over chickens. Um, some prefer ducks and they all have a different reason for being on the homestead. Um, some people prefer sheep over goats. I prefer goats over sheep, you know. Um.
20:28But we have a variety of things. We still have, we have donkeys and we still have a horse. We used to ride horses quite a bit before we started farming so heavily that we really just don't have the time to ride anymore. Um, and when our children were young, you know, they would ride some. And then, um, we just, we kept one. She's like 20 now. Um, but that's the variety. I don't think I missed anything.
20:56We did have rabbits. We had some meat rabbits. That was a trial and error. One thing that we realized we would prefer chicken over the rabbits. Yes, us too. We did the same thing. And what I want to say about what you just said about all those animals is number one, when you have to say um, and stop and think, when you're listing off your animals, you have many, many animals. And number two, when, when you try something new,
21:24on the homestead and it's not working for you, you don't have to keep doing it. You can change your mind. It is totally okay to be like, rabbits are not really working for us. Maybe we don't continue to raise rabbits. Absolutely. Or goats or sheep or whatever it is because all you're doing is shorting yourself and continuing to do something that isn't working. I agree 100%.
21:52You know, and some folks are like, 100% it's gotta be rabbits. I'm like, hey, whatever works for your homestead or your farm and your family is the way that each individual needs to be able to go through. You know, and we tried these different things and some worked and some didn't. It was fun. You know, it was fun to learn because it gave us different experiences that when we have friends that ask us.
22:21different questions or for guidance. You know, some, they actually raise quail to release into the wild for hunting purposes around here. And I think it's cool, you know, we'll be at the milk barn and they'll fly in and land on the ground and you know, that's cool and unique to watch. But it's what works for them. And so we've actually gone out there and butchered some quail with them and brought some home to eat. But it just wasn't something suitable for.
22:51for our farms, Ted. So it's been fun to learn and try new things. Yes, for anyone who doesn't know, quail are really small little birds and they're really pretty. So if you ever, you're saying that they'll come in and visit basically. And they're adorable. I don't wanna raise them, because I've heard horror stories about what a pain in the butt they are to raise, but they're really pretty.
23:21They're smaller than a chickadee, I think. And they have little peeps, right? You know, they just do a little tiny call. Yes. And it's a pretty cool sound too. Yeah. And it's, you know, when we actually, when we started with Quail, we had gotten some eggs from a friend and hatched them in our incubator. And it was more like an experiment for our boys. Yeah. And they are so tea tiny when they hatch.
23:48I mean, probably the tiniest animal I think I've ever held. I mean, they are just like the size of a quarter. And to watch them grow through their stages and raise their own, you know, and start having the eggs for you. And it was quite interesting, but they are, they're really small. They're really pretty. And I think it's fun to see their different colors, their different markings. And for them to feel comfortable enough to come around is, it's pretty cool. We had a.
24:18A white one, I think she was all white, that we released ours out whenever we realized, you know, this just wasn't working. We released ours out because we knew there was so many around here that they would be able to be on their own. And this white one continued to follow us in the yard. It was almost like a puppy and she didn't want to leave. Something eventually ate her because we never saw her again.
24:44But every time you went outside, she would come within a foot of you and she'd follow you wherever you went. It was, it was a pretty cool experience. That's so cool. Um, okay. So we've got like about five more minutes where we hit 30 minutes and I try to keep these 30 minutes. So because you have been doing this kind of stuff basically your whole life, what would you tell somebody who is just looking into getting started in Homestead?
25:13I would tell them to find somebody in there, if they aren't local to me, I would tell them to find somebody local to them and try to find a community where you can have your hands-on experience. But I would tell them to start small, start with one thing at a time. And resources such as books, YouTube videos, social media accounts.
25:42That is how I continue to grow all these years. You know, I didn't do social media, especially like not Instagram, until a few years ago. And you know, that's how we stumbled upon several different homesteaders all across the world. And you get to learn different things, but the biggest thing is to start with one task. But continue to want to grow your knowledge.
26:10and having somebody local to you to be a mentor, it's a big help because it does take community. I also feel like when you have a community and folks that have the same knowledge that you can help learn from one another, they bring different things to the table. Some may grow plants better, some may raise chickens better, you know, and in that if you can't do that on your home set at the
26:39You can barter what you are doing with those people to still get those products that you need for your family, even if you can't raise them. So even if you live in an apartment, you can still raise your own things best you can and what you can't do there, find somebody local that you can trust and in your community support by buying their items and being able to still have that on your table.
27:09Yes, and in doing that, you make connections with people who might become mentors. And mentors are so important. The thing that I have learned about having mentors is that it brings your frustration level down by 50% because you can always call them and be like, what am I doing wrong? Before it becomes, I don't want to do this because I suck at it. You know? Absolutely. You know, when you start something new, especially with the homestead.
27:39You know, everybody's gonna have heirs, we're humans. You know, we're gonna try things and it doesn't work. And if you have somebody that can help you with that, you know, they have tips and tricks and you learn along the way so that you're still gaining your knowledge, not just from your hands-on experience, but having those folks that can help and guide you. And a lot of these homesteaders that I have met at like the conferences, for example,
28:07and following them. I actually have reached out to a few of them if I learned something from one of their speeches or one of their posts and I have questions because we all live in different areas and everything's going to grow different or produce different. Even all the way to sourdough, how you keep your house, the humidity levels, everybody's places are different and there's so many different folks out there that can help you answer those questions to figure out.
28:35why something isn't working properly to help you succeed, to be able to continue wanting what you do because if you fail, you're not gonna wanna continue to grow. So don't give up is the biggest thing. Exactly. And the other thing is that if you do get to the point where you are so frustrated that you want to stop, it's okay to stop. Stopping is not necessarily giving up. Stopping is taking a break.
29:02But if it's something that you really, really wanted to learn how to do and you wanted to learn how to do it right, you can always come back to it and try it again. And stepping away from things gives your brain a chance to think without really thinking about thinking, if that makes sense. And so it's not giving up, it's taking a break. If you don't ever come back to it, then you've given it up. And if that's a conscious choice, that's way cool.
29:29But if you're just giving up because you're frustrated, that's not, you don't have to be in that forever. Right, take a step back and regroup. Mm-hmm, exactly. All right, Selena, thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Yes ma'am, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thank you so much, have a great day. You too. All right, bye. Bye.
 

Heaven On Earth Homestead

Today I'm talking with Sami at Heaven On Earth Homestead. 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 Sammy at Heaven on Earth Homestead. Hi, Sammy, how are you? I'm good. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. So I was, I found you on Instagram.
00:27And I was looking at your Instagram page and your Facebook page and you and I could have been really good friends about 20 years ago. Oh, wow. Because, because 20 years ago, I was doing the same things that you're doing right now with all the preserving food and stuff. And I'm still doing it, but just not as heavily because my kids are grown and it's only a couple of people in the house now. Fair enough. So we could have gotten together and roasted squash and bagged it up and
00:57homesteading and preserving, it would have been really fun. So tell me about what you do. So we are on just about an acre of land. It's actually quite small, but we try to utilize it the best we can. So we started this journey maybe about 12 years ago, when our oldest was almost eight years old. And we're having a...
01:25They were having a bunch of health problems and we were seeing a ton of specialists and taking a ton of medicine. I work in healthcare. I'm a respiratory therapist by trade. And so I was just really concerned and we were at another gastroenterology appointment, I think, for reflux and all kinds of other things, autoimmune related. And I was just kind of airing my frustration and saying, you know, like, I don't understand why my eight-year-old is on eight medicines twice a day when...
01:54You know, my 80 year old grandmother is not even on this much. And he's, he kind of said, you know, well, the only thing I can really offer as a physician is to add another medication for these problems. And I was just so disheartened, but I just wanted them to feel better. So I said, well, you know, is there any
02:16anything non-traditional that we could try. And he said, well, I have a couple of patients who have Crohn's and IBS and other things that have tried an anti-inflammatory diet and they've seen great success with that. So he gave me the name of a book and we bought the book. I read it overnight and my husband went to work the next day when he came home. I had all the food in the house boxed up. He said, we're going to try this for 30 days. We're eating nothing.
02:46that could cause inflammation in the body, we're going to reset all of our immune systems, I bought into it a thousand percent." And he was like, okay, how are we going to do this? And I said, we'll figure it out. I don't, you know, it'll be fine. We'll figure it out. And so we, for 30 days, we ate very strictly anti-inflammatory, no sugar, no dairy, no gluten, no grains, you know, it was no beans. It was all kinds of things that we couldn't have anything of.
03:13And after 30 days, my child went from taking eight medications twice a day to taking an inhaler as needed for asthmatic symptoms.
03:23Good job, mama. And I realized I was inadvertently poisoning my kid with just regular standard food and I was so frustrated. And then it kind of, that's kind of where this journey began and it kind of spiraled into all this. So it's been a long time coming, but we finally, we relocated so we could have some more land and be in a better climate. So we had a longer growing season. And so where we are now.
03:51We have a very large garden. We have laying hens and we do meat birds in chicken tractors. And we have a very beautiful little community here where we live of friends that we've made who are kind of of like mindset. And so we have friends who do beef and friends who do pork and friends who do lamb and goat. And so we kind of all work together to make sure all of our families have what we need and support each other. And it's been just a...
04:20beautiful journey. So it's nice to meet other people who are of like mine because sometimes you kind of get the hairy eye when you explain things in public. Yes, absolutely you do. And we've gotten it too and I just ignore it now. I'm like, you don't have to do what we're doing. You keep doing what you're doing. We're all good. Absolutely. So I'm really impressed that you asked the doc for
04:48different solution and I'm really impressed that the doctor said hey you could you could look into this because a lot of our medical professionals don't don't give you answers like that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Which is why I said good job mama because you were a great advocate for your kid. I'm so proud of you because it takes a lot of guts and courage to stand up and say I am
05:15not okay with the answers I'm getting, I need a different answer to the question I'm asking. Absolutely. And then, you know, once you're on something, you get side effects, and then you're going, is that a symptom or a side effect? And, you know, they just kept saying, well, we could add this medicine or we could do this thing. And really, the only thing that really did help long term were allergy shots. And that was just because they were allergic to everything, grass, trees, pollen, you know, just every single thing.
05:46And we were just astounded when we got the allergy test back. So we did do that and that has seemed to help quite a bit. And so we're happy now they're at college. So it's a little, it's a little bit nerve wracking because we're trying to kind of, you know, we had to pick a college that had, um, you know, anti-allergen dining and you just kind of have to plan, but as long as you, you know, what you're up against, then you, you know, are just diligent about it.
06:15you can make it work. And you know, they wanted to go away to college. So we made that happen. Awesome. Awesome. I love that you've worked this hard for your child. And there's a reason that I say that, um, my parents and I were talking yesterday about the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. That happened. My dad, my dad is 81. My mom is 78. Okay. I'm 55. They raised me and my two siblings. I've raised four kids.
06:45And we were talking about why this stuff keeps happening. And we came to the conclusion that a lot of parents don't parent, daycares parent. And my dad, he's a really smart man and he's very opinionated and I love him to pieces. And my mom is following in his footsteps. She was very shy when she was young, but she's gotten a lot more outspoken as she's gotten older.
07:13And I said to my parents, I said, you know, I said, when I was a teenager, I didn't appreciate you guys watching every move I made. I said, but having been a parent, now I really appreciate the fact that you parented me. So, so I'm going on a limb here, but I feel like if you're going to have kids, maybe you want, might want to actually spend some time with them and, and care for them and not put them in daycare and spend, you know, maybe 12 hours a week with them.
07:42And that may piss people off, but I'm sorry, it's how I feel. Well, I mean, I absolutely agree. I just feel like if you're going to have children, that's the biggest responsibility of your life is that's your legacy when you leave this earth. You know, and if you don't pour into them everything you can, you're you're missing the mark.
08:03Yeah, and kids are amazing. Like the joy of my life was watching my children learn and become functioning humans, you know? It still is. Absolutely. It still is. Absolutely. And my daughter is the oldest and she's 35 and she called me the other day and she was like, I love my job. She just got a new job like a couple months ago. And it's not a fancy job, it's a job. And she is having a ball.
08:31with this new job and her voice was ringing and she sounded so happy and she's learning new things that she's good at. She was already good at them, but now she's actually putting them into practice with her job. And I was just so filled with pride that she's really coming into her own, you know? Absolutely. And I think a big part of parenting, especially in today's climate is...
09:00Teaching your kids that happiness isn't keeping up with Joneses, happiness is finding happiness where you are with what you have, and that having it all really isn't having it all anymore. No, and the thing is, they used to say, especially about women, you can have it all, you know, when women finally got jobs and had the right to get divorced and to drive and to vote and all this stuff. And the big thing was, you can have it all. You can do it all. No.
09:30Not all at the same time. Not unless you want to be in an early grave from exhaustion and anxiety. Exactly. And I do think. So you're right. Absolutely. And I think that we find a lot of peace and joy in a slower lifestyle, in the homesteading lifestyle. Like I think if I didn't enjoy cooking and I didn't enjoy gardening as much as I do, this would be very difficult.
09:58but I find peace in it. The reason we're called Heaven on Earth Homestead is because when we moved here, my husband is phenomenal at carpentry. It's just a hobby of his. But he built my garden, he built our chicken coops, and he's kind of engineered this, so I tell him he's the engineer of my dreams. But the reason we call it Heaven on Earth is because he would say, what are you doing out here? I'm just hanging out in my little slice of Heaven on Earth.
10:26And that was just kind of our thing together, you know, and I find a deep connection religiously in the garden. Like when I'm struggling and I have questions, I go in there to kind of ruminate and it helps me really think and it gives me that kind of relaxing calm and I'm getting things done, but I, you know, when the beans aren't growing and I'm wondering why aren't the beans growing and I hear, you know, well, the beans aren't growing because you're not nurturing them. I'm like, one of my kids is struggling. I'm going, why is my kid struggling? Well, you're not.
10:56It's kind of the same thing, you know, you kind of get answers through the little things. And so that's kind of where heaven on earth came from. I'm glad you told me that because I was going to ask. I didn't even have to ask the question. You just volunteered the answer. Thank you. So I have questions because I have been where you're at with this whole homesteading thing because we started homesteading on a tenth of an acre. Oh, wow.
11:25over 20 years ago with a little garden and we had flowers and stuff and taught myself to crochet so I'd make my kids scarves and hats and things. And the first time I had something come out right that I did with my own brain and my own hands, I was so happy and high for like a week. And I told everybody, I told my mom, I told my kids, well my kids knew because they were there. I told my mom.
11:55told my mother-in-law, told my neighbors about, you know, oh, we put away, I don't know, 25 gallon bags of butternut squash that we grew from seeds, da da da. And everybody was like, oh, that's really nice. That's cool. And that was it. Right. But I was so excited about it. So when you first did something like that, did you have that same feeling about it? Absolutely.
12:24Absolutely. And I was so excited to talk about it. And I would go to work and at the hospital, and I'd be telling people, I got these seeds from the seed company, and they all germinated. And I was really worried because I wasn't sure if I got the seed mix right. And I would just start going off. And if somebody would ask a question, it was polite conversation. I would go off on a TG, you kind of see their eyes glaze over, like politely listening, but really not interested. And I would get so bummed out. So then when I found
12:50You know, you find your people, the people who are really interested in it and you can geek out together. It's just so rewarding. That's why I started this podcast because I don't have a whole lot of people to geek out over things with right now. And luckily we made some friends who are doing kind of the same thing we're doing and they live five miles away. So, so when they come to visit, it's really fun because they're like we got piglets and we're like what kind and what do you do?
13:17and what do they need and how big are they going to get? And they're like, oh, and they just talk and smile and laugh. And it's amazing. So yeah, having, I don't want to, I mean, I do want to use the word fellowship, but I'm not saying in a religious way, I'm saying in a commonality way is so important.
13:38Absolutely. And it really has, especially where we are now, we moved five hours away from our closest family member to be where we are, so we could have land and be in the right climate and all the things. And it was really hard because we both have very large families to kind of make that jump and just do it. And so when we got down here, we knew nobody. And then we had a baby as soon as we got here. So it was like, we don't have any family, we don't know anybody. And it was so great.
14:08to kind of have people come out of the woodwork and just cultivate a community of friends and kind of turn them into our local family here. And it's been a really cool journey to meet people of all different places in life, all different ages, all different backgrounds, and everyone's interested and we're all learning from each other. And did you see this and you should try this? And it's exciting and it's fun. I absolutely agree. It is.
14:35I don't know about you, but when I get talking homesteading or podcasting, because podcasting is my new baby. I've only been doing it for a little over a year, so it's still new. And I get talking with people who are into those things. It's so fun. And like, my heart gets too big for my chest. You know, I just, I feel like I'm swallowed up with happiness because, oh, somebody gets it. Exactly.
15:03So it's been really neat doing the podcast because I get to talk to people at least three times a week, if not five times a week for at least half an hour about things that I'm interested in, but to people who are doing it differently than I am, which was kind of the point of doing the podcast in the first place. Right. And I learned all kinds of things. And there are a million right ways. Uh-huh.
15:29Yeah. And I learned so much from everybody because I don't necessarily do things the way everybody else does. So they're like, we, we do this. And I'm like, I need to do that that way and see how it works because we're doing it a different way and it's not working great. So Right. I definitely understand that. When we first started doing our laying hens, my husband built this beautiful mobile chicken tractor that had a great nesting spot and it had
15:58like indoor perches and all these things. And we ran them on the grass, just thinking we really don't have enough space to put a stationary coop and, you know, just kind of making the most of what we had. And we realized very quickly that we were going to need chicken math. We were going to need way more. We were going to want way more chickens than we had. And that there was no way in a 32 square foot, two story, you know, mobile coop we were going to be able to get.
16:27the volume that we wanted for what we wanted to do. You know, we have to make our own pasta and we have to make, because what we found out was that our child was allergic to basically all food dyes and all food preservatives. And so we kind of, that's kind of how it all started and kind of how we got to where we are was we had to learn very quickly how to do it all ourselves. Because in 2009,
16:582010, there was really not a ton on the market that you could get that was organic and didn't have food dyes. And that kind of became trendy later. And so we needed more eggs. And so after it painstakingly took months to engineer and build this, we used it for a year and realized, oh, we could better utilize these chickens in a stationary coop with deep bedding to make compost for our ever growing garden and alleviate the middleman.
17:29We live in pine country, so we can get wood chips free at any point in time. They'll deliver them right to your driveway because they, you know, any of the leftovers when they're milling in an area, they just bring it to us. Nice. So it ended up working out, you know, for us to have a stationary coop. So we use the mobile tractors now for our meat birds. But so, you know,
17:51And we thought at first all, we'll just have a couple on the grass and it'll be fine. They'll get fresh grass every day. And they're very happy, but we needed more chickens than it could sustain. So I definitely understand you kind of sometimes you have to work through it and find out what works for you and you don't make it work. Yeah. I feel like homesteading is an ever evolving process. Yes. It's never done. It's, it's a, it's a running document of ideas. They get tried out when they need to get tried out. Yes.
18:22when it becomes a necessity to change the procedure, then you change the procedure. Yeah. Honestly, the way that you are doing your life is beautiful. I mean, we definitely don't eat the way that you eat because we're not in that situation. We don't have a child and we don't have any food aversions or allergies or reactions that would require us to do what you're doing.
18:50We definitely utilize the stuff that comes out of our garden in the summer because it's really good food and we're going to use it. Absolutely. So, I was also going to ask you about the little wreath ornament that you have the picture of on your social media. I made those when I was younger in Girl Scouts and I saw it and I was like, oh, I've made those. So, where did you find out about that?
19:20undiagnosed ADHD until I was 35. But hindsight is 2020. So I realized when I was about six years old, both sets of my grandparents, I spent a ton of time with both of them. I had two working parents and I was a latchkey kid. So I would, you know, my choice, I didn't want to be home alone. I'd spend a ton of time with my grandparents. And so I realized now that I'm older, I had so much energy and I was bouncing off the wall. So both of my
19:48needle craft. So I learned embroidery, I learned knitting, I learned crocheting at a very early age and it's just kind of been a passion throughout my life, you know, and it's easy to pick up and put down as you need it and I enjoy doing it, especially in the winter when there's not a ton to do outside. But
20:06Probably about the same time that we started doing all this, we started going on, I started going on medical missions trips with the church that we were at at the time. And so in order to fund that, I was making baby blankets anyway for the girls at work, but they said, you should make hats and scarves and fingerless gloves and all these things and sell them. So we started making hats and gloves and scarves and selling them. And that was how we would fund the missions trips.
20:34And so it kind of became a thing amongst all the people that knew me was, Hey, if you need something as Sam, she can make you a baby blanket or a hat or a scarf or a gift for someone. And so when I started doing this, I was kind of going, okay, well, at certain times of year, I don't really have much to post. We're not really doing a ton because the preservation is over and we're not quite ready to seed anything and there's not a ton going on. So.
20:59I was asking friends at work, you know, what do you want to see now? Like, because we started the page because especially during COVID, we had already been doing all of this. And so people were getting very nervous and scared and they were saying, you know, well, how do you do this and how do you do that? And how do you do this? And I was repeating myself at nauseam at work. And the one nurse practitioner at work was like, you should just start a YouTube page. And I was like, I don't know anything about YouTube. Like I watch YouTube, but I don't know how to.
21:26I don't have a fancy camera and I don't know how to edit. It just seemed like so much of an undertaking. And she said, what about photographic posts on Instagram or Facebook where you could kind of say how you do things or put up a recipe or however, information. So if people are interested, they can kind of get a bite of information every day. And I was like, oh, that's a great idea. So we kind of hemmed and hauled over it a little bit. And finally I said, all right, I'm going to do it. And so that's kind of how it all started. So I was saying, well, what do you want to see now? And they were like...
21:55You never post anything about your crochet. So I kind of take pictures of stuff as I do it. And on those days that I don't really have a ton to post, I'll pull one out and kind of put it out there. And so, um, one of my friends has a stall at a farmer's market. And, uh, she was saying, you know, this time of year, we don't, they don't have, they, they sell grains and beef and other things, but they don't really have a ton coming out either in their stall is year round. So she said, I know you make beautiful stuff. You know, if you have anything you want.
22:23to put up, I'm making hodgepodge and craft stuff right now for Christmas. So she said, if you want to, you know, add anything, let me know. And so I just kind of got a huge inspiration and I was like, Oh, let me look online and see anything I could find. And so I've been making all kinds of different baubles and things for the tree. And I found a picture of that and I was like, I could do that. I have a ton of old rusty canny lids that I have no nothing to use them for, but I've been holding onto them. So I'm like, this is
22:52a great way to utilize those and not waste them and then.
22:57someone else can enjoy them. Yeah, we made them with the actual rubber seals that they used to have for the canning jars. Oh yeah. That's how we did it. And it made them kind of bendy, which was nice. And the other difference in how we did it from what I saw on yours is my mom was co-leader. So she picked up some of those little tiny jingle bells. Yes. And she had us sew three jingle bells on the wreath so that when they got knocked, when you walked by the tree, they would ring.
23:27That's so cute. I love that idea. Yeah, and the minute I saw it I saw the picture. I was like, oh my god I remember making those I think I was 12 and It was the first time I'd held a crochet hook in my life was when we made those and girls to make those that's so neat Yeah, and they're so cute and they're so easy and yeah Grandparents love those kinds of ornaments Absolutely, absolutely
23:56So they're very old fashioned and very homesteadish. So I think it's just great. I do. I love that aesthetic. So we kind of, we didn't really buy into it for a while, but now I've just owned it. There's mason jars everywhere and braided garlic and the whole nine. Yes. Mason jars are the best thing ever invented. I swear to God, I use them for my peony bouquets in the springtime. I use them for spruce vows at Christmas time. They're just, they're just the most
24:27What's the word I want? I can't think of the word I want. Versatile. Versatile, yes. They are the most versatile container ever known to man. Absolutely. We just, well, my husband just canned 34 pint jars of tomato sauce from the tomatoes that we picked from our garden and froze. He just did that this weekend when I was working on podcast things. I was so impressed. I'm like...
24:55I'm like, you know, if you could just wait till next weekend, I can help you. And he was like, I got it. Go do the thing you love to do. I was like, okay, perfect. I'm going to go do podcast stuff. And I came downstairs and he had 34 jars. Well, I had, he had the sauce cooked down for 34 pint jars. And I was just like, Oh my God, I love you. You're the sexiest thing ever. Right. And he just laughed. I love language.
25:20He just laughed. He said, yeah, he said, we're both 55 years old and the sexy things are hard work. I'm like, yes, yes it is. That's exactly right. Absolutely. Absolutely. The other thing I was going to say about Christmas ornaments is one of the other things that we did in Girl Scouts, because I of course went down the memory train when I saw the wreath. We took Christmas cards and cut like a house shape out of the picture on the Christmas card. Oh yeah.
25:50And then we took little toothpicks and made a little roof and little walls around the edges. And those were really cute too for Christmas. That sounds adorable. My kids would love that actually. Yep, and they're really cute on the tree. And if you get one of the Christmas cards that has the metallic stuff on it, the glitter or the paint that is shiny, when the light hits it, it glows. So they're really pretty.
26:18That's cool. We're definitely gonna have to try that Yeah, and I swear we have lost so many neat things like that in the last I don't know 30 years I feel like it. Oh, I feel like kids don't get encouraged to be creative anymore No, they just sit in front of the TV and watch somebody else do it And it's so sad because I feel like
26:45You know, we were made for creation. Like, I just feel like that's, I think that's why I enjoy this so much because it's so cool to, you know, plant a seed and see it grow and come to fruition and make something out of it. And, you know, it just, it's very rewarding, but at the same time, when you're eight or 10 or 12 or whatever, you know, something as little as making something, it gives you fulfillment. It gives you that happy, joyful fulfillment. And at the same time, it gives you great memories for later.
27:14Your kids aren't going to remember watching YouTube or, you know, watching somebody else do something, but they're going to remember when you sat down and made shrinkadinks with them or, you know, made a wreath or something. Yeah, there's, I feel like kids are lacking a sense of personal accomplishment in the smallest ways these days. Absolutely. Like my youngest son still lives with us and he'll be 23 at the end of this month.
27:43And he and his dad, well, his dad was building a greenhouse this year, hard side of greenhouses past May. And he asked for our son's help. And my son was like, sure, of course. And they basically built this greenhouse. It's like 40 by 20 feet. They built it. We had a friend come over and help one day.
28:08And he was not very experienced. He was, the help was very much appreciated, but he was learning as he went. So he helped, but my son and my husband basically built this gorgeous greenhouse. And my son came in just smiling, you know, just like, wow, that was really hard work, but it was really great. Absolutely. And my husband came in and he was like, thank God we had that kid late in life because we need his back. I was like, yes, we do.
28:37It's very helpful, that is for sure. So even when they're young adults, just being involved in getting their hands on actual work and doing it and seeing the result, there's such a thing that happens inside their brain and their heart. Absolutely. My mother's parents had a farm, and so I spent a ton of time on their farm as a kid.
29:06primarily vegetable farming. And we would spend all day outside. We never went in the house. There was no air conditioning. And so you didn't wanna go in the stuffy house. And it was just an unconscious thing. You just went with them and did whatever they did. And you helped and you learned and you weren't in imposition. And at the end of the day, you were tired because you worked and you slept well and you woke up the next day refreshed and ready to go. And I feel like the...
29:35kids today don't really get that. They get kind of parked in front of something so we can get something accomplished fast. Because I feel like today is about efficiency and productivity and all these things where before it was pouring your knowledge into the next generation. And so I think we kind of have, my husband and I kind of have a unique, maybe not unique, but less road, less traveled kind of background. Because my husband spent a ton of time on his.
30:04sister's in-laws farm when he was a kid. He was a late baby in life too, so but his siblings are a lot older than him so he spent a ton of time with them. He was young doing work on the farm as well so I think we kind of both have that in common. Yes, and I realize that it sounds like we're trying to convert the world to doing it the way we're doing it and I don't necessarily think that. I just, I feel like if you have
30:33the capability to maybe slow down and think about what you really want out of life and then make a plan to get that, then maybe you're inclined to do homesteading or gardening or baking or whatever and make that a thing. If you're not inclined that way, that's okay too. You know? Absolutely. If you want to be a double income family and you want to have your kids be in daycare,
31:02and you want to try to give them things that you didn't have as a kid and you spend time with them on the weekends, that's fine. But that's not how we did it. It's not how you're doing it. And it's not how a lot of the people that I talked to on the podcast are doing it. So I don't want to alienate people, but I also want to be compassionate about everybody's place in their life, that they're doing things the way they do them. Absolutely.
31:32And it doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. You know, if you don't have any desire to garden and you don't like bugs or heat, you know, because the reality of gardening is it's beautiful in the spring and it's great in the fall. But in the summer, when it's a heat index of one hundred and eight, you don't want to be out there. You know, you have to want to do it. You know, if you just want to do some sourdough in the house or you just, you know, you just want to try something, it's it's rewarding. Try it. You know, baking or.
31:58You know, whatever, you don't have to do it all. It's, you know, I have some friends at work who were talking this weekend and they were like, I just want to learn how to make butter. I'm like, okay, go to the store and buy some cream and here's the post. And here's how you can do it. It's so easy, you know, and they're like, wow, I didn't even realize that's how it was made or brown sugar or, you know, just something easy. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing, but it's very empowering to have that little bit of knowledge and just know I can do that if I wanted to.
32:27Yes, and the thing is anybody can try anything. And even if it fails, there's value in the trying. Because you learn from your mistakes. Absolutely. I didn't walk out of the gate gardening of 2,500 square foot garden without some losses. You know, the first year I guarded, I put all of my eggplants like eight inches apart, and then I put my zucchini like a foot apart and they were
32:55all over each other, they were riddled with disease. I couldn't find them. And then when I found the zucchini, they were like 10 pounds zucchini. You know, what if you do it? This, you know, it's just kind of, that's just life. And you kind of have to laugh at it and go, well, next year I'll play them further apart. There's always next year. That's the best part. There's always another try. So even if you fail, laugh at yourself and try again. You just, you just made me think of something. Back when I was in junior high and high school,
33:24I was pushed real hard to be perfect on my tests and my homework. Like if I got A on a test, like if I got 100%, I would get the question, why wasn't it 110%? And I don't think I'm the only kid in my generation or the next couple that got that. I wonder if we have been programmed that if we can't do it right the first time, it shouldn't be done.
33:53I feel like that is definitely a lesson I also learned later in life. I think there was a big shift in the 80s and 90s to, you know, where manual labor was kind of looked down upon and you have to go to college and you have to get a power job and you have to push yourself and, you know, kind of like you said, that was when women were two income families and everybody's working. And I feel like that was definitely a big, a big thing. Set yourself up for success. And you know,
34:22start out strong and all the things. And I think a lot of people kind of are accepting the slow down now as a result of burnout from that. And realizing that there is value in working with your hands and creating something or learning a skill and it's okay to be proud of yourself for making a mistake and learning from it.
34:46And I think that's just the symptom of society that I think a lot of people are finding joy in these simple things because they're tired of the difficult and the, I don't even know what the word would be, the competition. There was always competition. Everything was so much, you have to be the best and why aren't you the best or whatever it was. Even among my friends in high school, I remember it always kind of felt like a competition.
35:15And it never had to be. And I think that was a big lesson I learned having kids and raising them in the way that I wanted them to know that it was okay not to have a competition. And you're just running your own race. And as long as you're happy with where you're at, that's all that really matters. Yeah, exactly. And again, you're pointing out something else that I hadn't really thought about until I talked to you today. I don't feel like there's a whole lot of competition
35:44between people who are doing what we're doing. I think it's more lifting each other up and teaching each other and being there for each other. Absolutely. And the wonder of learning, you know, there's 25 ways to do every single thing that we do. And even more, if you think about all the different climates and the different places and altitudes, and you know, kind of all of that, there's so many different ways to do something. So there's always a cool, different way to see how someone does something and learn from them.
36:13or just get excited for them. Like you said, you're doing what you were doing, what we're doing 20 years ago, and you can be excited for what we're doing now. And I can look at you and say, man, in 20 years, my husband and my son might be building me a 20 by 40 greenhouse. And that would be so cool. And that's a joy. That's a cool part of this. Yeah, it's amazing, because I look back at the things that we were doing.
36:4020 something years ago and we were just doing them because it was interesting and because my husband's mother said, would you like some of the irises and the lilies from my yard because she was selling her house. And we didn't have a garden or anything at that point and we put them in the little area in front of our bedroom windows that run it on the sidewalk and they grew and they were beautiful and I was like, this gardening thing is kind of cool. Right? It is.
37:09And I said, could we maybe try growing some tomatoes and cucumbers next spring? And he's like, where? And I said, in the backyard. And he said, but it's all grass. And I said, can't eat grass. And he laughed. Right. And we ended up tilling up that whole backyard and growing basically in every square inch of dirt we had so that we had tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots. And I don't even know green beans and rhubarb and herbs.
37:37and stuff and we started out really small and really slow. But by the time we moved four years ago, we had enough food to give our neighbors garbage, not, not, not, grocery bags of produce because we had too much. Absolutely. So it's, it's really interesting how the things that we do are cumulative in impact.
38:05You know, you learn to do one thing and you have some success and then you're like, huh, I did that. Maybe I could do more or different or bigger or whatever a year from now. And you just keep growing, just like plants keep growing. Exactly. And there's always something new to learn or try. So you stay fresh, you know, it stays exciting. Yeah.
38:39I think that's one of the coolest, I just think that's one of the coolest things about it is that it stays exciting. You know, like I said, my grandparents had a vegetable farm. My other set of grandparents were first generation immigrants. My grandmother was from England and they met during World War II. And so she had a very unique way of doing things that seemed very alien to me when I was young. But I loved it. I thought it was super cool. You know,
39:07she always harvested rainwater because they didn't always have a hose. And she always composted because England was a small island and they weren't bringing a lot of things in. So if you didn't compost, you couldn't grow your victory garden. And she always had a victory garden, but she had this beautiful stair step flower garden.
39:33which was such a difference from my mother's parents who just had vegetable fields everywhere. There was no flowers in their yard. There was no, if you couldn't eat it, they couldn't grow it, which is what made me think of that. But my grandmother would grow, you know, she had berry bushes and she had, you know, she had a little greenhouse and all the things, but her primary joy was to flower garden and have just beautiful landscaping. And so it was cool, cause I kind of got both sides of it. My grandmother just did the things that she did
40:02my father's mother did things that she learned growing up in England during that time because that was just her normal. That was her comfort. And so I learned a lot of that as a kid just because that's what she did. Whereas my mother's parents were growing more for production and sales. They had a roadside stand and we sold produce. And so it was kind of nice to get both sides of that and see it.
40:32And so when I grew up, I, you know, we were in that Excel, Excel, Excel. I had no desire to garden or any of that. I was going to school and I was going to get a good job and I was going to work and I didn't have time for that. And I just kind of, we kind of hit that, that wall with our oldest. And I was like, you know what? I'm so stressed out and I feel like maybe if I just had a little bit of home with me, it would be cool. And I just put it in a little garden and that's kind of...
41:00where the piece of the garden came from for me. But I, so I never vegetable garden or I never flower garden until we moved down here. And it kind of started for me as there was a few flowers and bulbs in the landscaping when we bought our house here. But I really wanted to encourage pollinators cause we grow organically and we don't use any pesticides or herbicides or anything like that. And so
41:28I wanted to encourage pollinators. So I just started planning any, I would get wildflower mixes and I would get any kind of cheap seed packets I could find and just started throwing flowers all over the landscaping. And now the flowers are a must. Like if they, I might not have enough room to plant all the vegetables I want, but we're going to definitely have the flowers because they bring me so much joy and they're so nice to just have a little piece of them in your house and just smile at them when you walk by and you know, when the
41:57Sunflowers are eight feet tall and staring at you in the evening. It's just very cool. And it wasn't something that I, I set out to do, but it was, it just kind of evolved with the process, but something that small could just start. You know, you could just, like you said, just throw some bulbs in and, and enjoy cut flowers from them or, or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. We didn't have any flowers here when we moved here four years ago. There were hostas.
42:25And I keep saying this on the podcast episodes, but there were hostas here. I don't love hostas. They're fine, but they're not the prettiest flower I've ever seen. And as soon as, as soon as I realized that there were no flowers here, I was like, honey, we have got to get some kind of flowers here. We had brought peony roots from the old house. So I knew we would eventually have peonies. So we got those in and we got some, uh, lily bulbs from somebody for free. And we put those in and we bought tulip.
42:54and daffodil bulbs and those came up the following spring which made it a lot easier. But the thing is in the springtime nothing's really growing yet you know and we bought crocus bulbs too because they're the first thing that really comes through in Minnesota because it's cold here until April. Oh yes!
43:16And so when the crocuses came up, I had never seen a crocus in person. I thought that they were a bigger flower. They are the daintiest little flower I've ever seen. And my husband came in and like, I think it was the first part of May, very first part of May. And he was like, there's little tiny like lavender and yellow flowers out there. What did we put there? And I was like, I don't know. Did you take a picture with your phone? And he said, well, of course I did. And showed me, I said, those are the crocuses.
43:44He said, they're this big. And he showed me with his fingers. He said, they're tiny. And I said, yeah. I didn't know they'd be that small, but how cool is it that we have flowers first? Right. And the other thing is that when you garden, I had no idea that potato plants have the most beautiful blooms. Yes. They're gorgeous. They look like flowers you would cut and put in a vase, except they're really short.
44:14And the sunflowers. Oh my God, we planted sunflowers two summers ago. My son wanted to plant sunflowers. I was like, sure, we've got an acre of garden we can put in sunflowers. That's fine. And they are so joyful. Like people joke about, you know, sunflowers being happy. They are. They're a happy flower. They are. They really are. So I understand what you're saying about
44:41you know, even if you don't have enough room for everything that you want to put in that you can eat, you're still going to put in flowers. I can't not have flowers on my property. I have to have something homey. So I get it. All right, Sammy, we've been talking for almost 45 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour. So I'm going to let you know. And thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I've had so much fun talking to you. It's been great to meet you. You too. Have a great day. Thank you. You too.
45:11Bye.
 

Muddy Roots

Today I'm talking with Jess at Muddy Roots.
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 Jess at Muddy Roots in Boston, no, near about Boston, Massachusetts? Yes, Boston, Massachusetts, but located in Dorchester. Okay, cool. Yeah.
00:24Awesome. So what's the weather like in in Dorchester? Because it's really gray and overcast and kind of chilly in Minnesota today. Yeah, looking at my window, it's about the same. I mean, we had like a pretty delayed start to our winter. So that was great. But yeah, it's gloomy. It's cold. You know, we're probably get snow soon. And that's what it is until, you know, till March, April. Yeah, I understand.
00:50we're actually supposed to hopefully get a little bit of snow because really we haven't had any and we are coming up on Christmas next week. And I'm like, okay, if it's got to be gloomy, can we at least have pretty snow falling? You know? Well, that's what I said. I said to my kids at work, I was like, God, like, have you had like, have you had a snowy Christmas yet since you've been born? And they're like, no, you know? So, hopeful for that too.
01:13Which is insanity because I grew up in Maine and I don't remember not having a snowy Christmas in the entire time Until I moved out of the state when I was 21 22 So Just the fact that that new england is not having Consistently white christmas is so weird. Well, it's not and I moved here almost four years ago and since then like
01:41you know, the warmth of our winters and the fact that we really are like compared to what it used to be, barely getting any snow. I mean, we used to have 12 feet of snow, six feet of snow, and now we're lucky, you know, now we're lucky if we get a couple inches snow, you know, and I grew up in New York in Long Island, and I remember being little and small and going out into the snow and it coming up to my to my chest, you know, and growing up having these
02:10you know, massive snowstorms every year that you kind of got to look forward to. You get to take them from school and, you know, with the way the climate's going, that's just not happening anymore. Yeah. And there's lots of people who don't believe that climate change is a real thing, but I think that climate change is real. I think that it's definitely here and I think it might be a little too late to fix it, so I'm, I'm kind of worried about it, but
02:37I'm going to make the best of every day that I have alive on this planet. So that's where I'm at with that. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Sure. I mean, so we started or I started Muddy Roots. I mean, I started Instagram for myself to find an online community of what I was going through, which was chronic illness at the time that was undiagnosed and being a woman and just how long that was taking for me to understand what was happening. And so I sought.
03:06community and I found a bunch of young women going through similar things, right? Just being young and it taking so long to get where you need to be. So in that time I had started that for myself, but was also at my wits with you know medicine in general and I've always been a gardener. My last name is gardener. My dad always used to bring us outside to our yard, force us to garden every year and do a vegetable.
03:33Garden and plant all the flowers and just say, you know, your last name is Gardner and you will do this And you know, this is in Long Island, New York And I so I grew up like that right your parents Sometimes force you to do these things and you grow up and they just become part of who you are and you continue them You know, you don't start to stop doing them You learn to love them and appreciate them and you know, thank your parents for it later so when I was going through the midst of my illnesses and things like that and
03:59you know, there really was no medication from me to help my pain, I, out of pure desperation in order to function and have some semblance and quality of life, went to my garden. And I started going herb by herb for what I was growing. Sage, rosemary, oregano were like mainly the three things that I started with and noticed that like, they helped my pain significantly when other things weren't. And that kind of led me down this rabbit hole.
04:29Like if I was never taught about this, if I didn't know about this, if people don't talk about this, and this was almost 10 years ago, what else don't I know? What else can I find just by growing more, experimenting, being inquisitive, you know, and trial and error, really, you know? I wasn't like, I didn't go to school for this. It just was happenstance and desperation that I fell upon this. So yeah, muddy roots kinda.
04:57started as a way for me to treat myself and also connect with a community of women and help people advocate for themselves and their body as I was learning to do that for myself and help women gain access to not only Western medicine, but other holistic options that I saw effective, you know? And we would kind of piggyback off each other, you know, because all of us were young and wanted to have a life worth living, you know?
05:25Yes. And when you say oregano and sage and rosemary, do you mean eating them or do you mean teas or do you mean tinctures or all day above? I started with tincturing and now I, so yeah, it really depends like what I'm going to use it for, right? If I have a UTI, I'm going to use a tincture. If I have gastric upset, there's other herbs I'm going to use and I'm going to use that mainly like from a tea.
05:53Yes, or you can put these things in salves and use them as muscle rub. So it really depends how I'm going to make it for what part of my body I'm going to use it for. Okay. Yeah. I was just curious because we did not have an herb garden this year. We didn't even really have a garden this year. The weather was horrible. All of May and June, it rained and rained and rained, and our garden was just a sad mess this year. But up until this year...
06:21For three years straight, we had the most beautiful herb garden and we had rosemary growing, we had thyme, we had sage, we had, oh my God, I don't even know, all the usual suspects. And what I do with that is I cut them and dry them and put them in my pantry and we cook with all those things. Yes, yes. And so we eat a lot of our good for us herbs. For sure. We don't really do tinctures or teas. That's like such another way to just, an easy way to incorporate.
06:50these things into a daily diet, right? They're not just seasoning. Yes. So yeah, for sure. Yeah, we do that as well too. We dry, you know, we have our garden in the back and we're lucky we live in Boston and we have a yard and my husband made me a garden last year so I can start using. So what we try to do at Muddy Roots, or I try to do anyway, is we set up our garden, we grow everything and we
07:19shutdown shop for the most part when we're done with our garden for the year. That way we don't source out and unless somebody personally comes to me like, hey I like this product can you make it for me? Like you know then I'll do it but that's for the most part except for our skincare we keep that going. Fire cider I do all year round. But salves and tinctures normally stop probably by March and then start again come June. So it's a short window that it's not going on.
07:49Okay. Yeah. All right. So I have a very specific question for you because you live in Massachusetts and I live in Minnesota and every state is different when it comes to the rules and regulations about what we people who aren't factories or businesses, you know, big businesses, can make and sell. So what do you have to do to be legal to sell the things you make? I mean, mainly as far as skincare, it's all good as
08:18as far as you're accurately labeling, now it's tricky, you know, when it comes to fire cider and things like that. You know, that we can't sell at pop-up shops and things like that and I don't. You know, if people come to my house, they want a fire cider, I'll sure I'll make it for you and you can have it. But we don't sell that without a license. Okay. Yep. It's very tricky sometimes when you're trying to help people but the government is like putting handcuffs on you and saying,
08:47No, no, no, you have to pay for this license and you have to take this test to be sure you know what you're doing and blah, blah, blah. So. No, I read, you know, and obviously like for sure things need to be regulated, but you know what? You know, they also regulate, I mean, you know, it's also the Twinkie, you know what I mean? The FDA approves the Twinkie. So. Uh huh. No, I know. I know it's so. It does need to be regulated. People do need to stay safe and they do want, they do need to know what they are ingesting and they have the right to know and you know, all that, you know, so I get it.
09:17Yep, I just here in Minnesota, we don't really, we have to label everything. Like we make soaps, we make lip balms, we make candles, and even the candles sort of have to have a basic label that says what the candle was made with. And that's only because of fire hazard. But for sure, soaps and lip balms, we have to put every ingredient on them. Well definitely. And...
09:42If anything, I mean many reasons, but for one being allergy purposes, right? Like sometimes sunflower is used or other oils and there's lots of kids. I work with them with sunflower allergies, you know. So it all depends. Yep. It's just all part of having a business and playing by the rules and trying to honor and respect and have compassion for the people that are going to be using your products. Now anybody with that being said is a...
10:12welcome to come into my home, sit down, have a cup of tea and pick my brain and I'll give you any advice you want. I'll set you up with a plan, you know what I mean? And you know, go from there, you know. I, um, which is what I do for like most of the things that I sell, whether it be a T or tincture, you go home and I ask that you journal and you tell me like, how do you feel on this? What is your differences? And I want to know for like the next month, whether we continue or not, or do you need something else, you know?
10:40That's amazing. I love that. I can't say that everybody does it, but I do. But that's how I learned herbs, right? Because you think of, well, when you get to know herbs that are aside from your garden and your pantry, and you learn that there are thousands other out there to kind of experiment with and learn about, it's kind of like a daunting task, right? How am I gonna learn?
11:04all these things and I feel like I'm still pretty early in that even though I've been doing it for 10 years and researching and experimenting for 10 years there's always more to know and how the herbs interact with each other and all that and it's like just super daunting. So I read like about a couple of years ago you take one herb and you just try to really focus on that herb and you get to know that herb and experiment with that herb alone without adding it with other things and see how that makes you feel you jot it down before you start doing combinations and all that because then it's like you don't know.
11:33It kind of all gets muddled. Yeah. It's kind of like when you start, well, you don't have kids, but I do. It's like when babies start eating solid food, you start them on one new thing at a time so that you can see if there's any reaction to it. Right. Yep. Cool. I am impressed. I think that that is wonderful that you say that the people that you help should keep a journal of how they're feeling. Because number one, it makes it easier for them.
12:02but it gives you some feedback on what really works and what doesn't. And if they do have certain symptoms arise, I can probably find out why or what is it, are you someone who naturally runs low energy, high energy? If I'm going for an example of, or even heart rates, like if you're someone who is naturally a tired person and you don't tell me that and I give you Hawthorne.
12:28you're going to be sedated. So these are things I need to know so I can give you a different herb for maybe the same thing we're trying to treat that's just going to make you feel different while doing the same job. Yes, because someone who's naturally not high energy and you give them something that's going to make them sleepy, that's not really a great plan. It's not gonna work. And there's so many, there's so many herbs, luckily actually, that kind of do similar things, right? So if one doesn't work or you have this effect from this one.
12:58and we're trying to work on like blood pressure and things like that. So and you're taking it and you're sedating, there's a bunch of other words that we can use that's going to maybe even boost your energy, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm gonna throw this in because it's one of the things that I learned about an herb and it has nothing to do with people, it has to do with cats and dogs. Catnip, catnip. Oh yes, it grows wild in our yard and we've had like.
13:25stray cats coming and we have a dog but we've seen this stray cats in our yard. One of them I know from like a mile or two down the road and it's found my yard. So you know. Yes, catnip makes cats crazy. It makes them hyper and crazy and stoned and it's really fun to give some to your house cat. But did you know that it's a sedative for dogs? It calms them down.
13:51Yes, and it's great for their GI tract. I started using herbs on my dog, one of them being catnip too, when he was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel. I just started thinking, oh my God. And I asked my doctor in a holistic about what can I use and the things that were told to me I had in my cupboard, things I use on myself. Yes. But yeah, catnip is great and it's great for humans. And it grows wild here. I mean,
14:20Wild, I mean, when I plant it. I don't know if it's native to here at all, but it does grow crazy in my yard. It grows wild here when we're not in a drought. Yeah. If it's dry, it doesn't grow. But the reason I discovered this situation about the difference between how it affects cats and how it affects dogs is we had our beautiful favorite dog, Spade, three years ago. And she was...
14:48about three and a half years ago, she was about six months old. And they gave me some medicine to keep her calm because she's a mini Australian shepherd and they're freaking crazy. And the medicine they gave her, one of the side effects is hyperactivity. I'm like, you gave her something to calm her down and it might make her even worse. And so we gave it to her and she was, she was being her normal crazy self and she had a spay incision that was fresh. And she actually ripped a stitch.
15:17We had to take her back in and make sure that it was okay and they fixed the stitch. And so I looked up things that I might have in my home that she could eat or, I don't know, drink that would calm her down. And I found out that catnip would work. And we had catnip and she had tried it before because she got some from when we gave it to the cats. And I put some in my hand and she smelled it immediately, came over and licked it off my hand and ate it.
15:47And within 10 minutes she was laying on the floor, completely calm, tongue hanging out, just relaxed. I was like, huh, herbs are great. I love herbs. They're wonderful. And one thing I do notice, I mean, with some of them, you'll notice pretty immediately how it's going to make you feel. And I'm not anti-prescription or anything like that. But I know that if I take rosemary and I want to treat low energy brain fog, I know
16:17or ADHD symptoms or things like that, I know that within an hour, I'm good. You know, I can feel the difference from just a strong rosemary tea and how it affects my mental alertness and my energy and my brain. Yeah, peppermint and spearmint do that for me. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, it clears my brain immediately.
16:45I don't know why. It just does. Well, that's the thing too, right? I mean, well, same with medications is like how it interacts and how your body metabolizes. It is so different. You know, I spent, I spent, I guess a little like brief, I'll get into it a little bit, but I spent like the majority of my childhood and young, a young adulthood on things like Ritalin, Biobans, Adderall.
17:09Prozac, Wellbutrin, like, you know, all these things, right? And then when I was 27, I decided actually the year before I got into herbs, you know, I decided I'm going to for like the first time since I'm like literally four years old, clear myself and get off all these things and like kind of see what happens for the first year. It was like super difficult. And, you know, literally the detoxing that went on with me from things I didn't even abuse was horrific.
17:37and I'm not gonna tell somebody not to take these things, but for me that was like my experience and it really freaked me out, you know? And I started looking into my herbs and thinking like, what can I do to replace this? Because it's crazy that we grow up. The issue that I find mainly is that Western medicine and things like this are not combined and they should be because it's opening so many other doors for people.
18:06to treat themselves, you know, and make choices for their body. And when one thing fails, you have a million others. And it's not like that when we're not educated, when we don't know that these things are available and may work for us. Yes, I think that they should go hand in hand. And I was just talking with someone else on a podcast episode a week or two ago about the fact that Western medicine and...
18:35our doctors don't like your general practitioner isn't going to say I think you should go visit an herbalist unless they've had experience with an herbalist. No and what led me well actually what I'm not sure I first seeked my first herbalist maybe like
19:00six years ago, I want to say. And it was such an eye-opening experience. And then years after that, like maybe four years ago, a couple years after that, I started getting really bad GI symptoms. And I was somebody who had IBS. It wasn't severe or anything. But what I was experiencing was like dropping weight.
19:26I couldn't eat anything, my stomach was in so much pain, and I kept running to my GI, and I kept saying, like, this is not normal for me, and I literally cannot function. I borderline almost have to leave my job to give time to myself to figure out why this is happening, because I can't do both, and to be in that position, not for the first time in my life, but to run and ask for help and have nothing to hold onto and no hope.
19:54you know, when your life is suffering. And I went and I saw a naturopath and it changed my life, right? He changed my life with food. He changed my life with the supplements and the herbs that I was taking. And in six months, you know, I was fine, you know? And in that time, it took also my doctor six months to believe me and to run, or no, eight months I was fine, but two months before that, it took him the six months to run a test I was begging for with upper GI scope. That's all I wanted. I wanted...
20:24And answer, of course, he kept telling me I was fine. And what did he find? Erosive gastritis, you know, with pre, like, you know, precancerous like things in my stomach. So I was just like, that really led to me to, I don't wanna say not trust because every practitioner is going to be different, but to be very open-minded to when you're not getting help, go seek it elsewhere, you know? You have to advocate for your body because not everybody's going to do that for you. Yes, absolutely.
20:54and especially as women. I have talked about this a couple of times in episodes. I'm not gonna get into it too far, but if you are a woman in this world, especially in America, if you're not getting, if you don't feel like you're being listened to, definitely look for a second opinion. For sure. And I had a, so after they found like the precancerous cells and the changing in the erosive gastritis, he's now, you know, then he's like, all right, now you need a scope every one and a half years.
21:22I go to my next scope, right? I had been on herbs this whole time, you know, and was pretty like non-symptomatic in my upper GI. Everything was good. They do my scope and they tell me everything's back to normal. There's nothing there. Nothing there, no pre-cancer, nothing. And they said, what did you do? I said, herbs and fire cider. And they said, what? And I said, herbs and fire cider. And they said, okay, we'll see you in a year.
21:50I mean, in a year and a half, right? We'll do it again just to make sure. And if you're clear then you don't have to come back unless you develop issues. And I said, is this normal for this to happen? And they said, no. I'm like, all right. So even if you tell them this is what you're using because they're not trained in it, there's nothing they can do. There's nothing they can say. They can't even say like, they can't even recommend it to somebody else, right? It's not regulated. So they, you know, it's to them, it's like, oh, you know.
22:17you know, good for her, but when the next person comes in and they're struggling like I was and they, you know, and you know, they don't have help. They need to be trained in both modalities. I stand by that. They have to be. Well, maybe in 50 years, that'll be the norm, but right now it's not. And isn't there a line, patient heal thyself? Yeah. And I think part of that comes from the fact that we know our own bodies.
22:45best of all, right? We may not understand what's going on or why it's going on, but we know when things are not normal. I should tell my doctors, I've lived in this body X amount of years. I know when something is not right. And it's so hard when you know that to be sent home and to be told constantly to come back in two weeks if it doesn't go away, you know? Like, especially now after COVID.
23:12I mean, I saw a drastic decrease in the level of care I was getting. Forget about wait times with specialists and things like that. I'm talking like being able to get tests. I'm talking the time I get in their office or anything like that. Like it's been really, really difficult, you know, for me to find proper PT and other things that I used to have that helped me, you know, a lot of things I do come out of pocket, unfortunately, now so I can receive.
23:40good care. But I really do think like the more people podcast about these things, the more women speak up, it's going to be forced to change somehow one day. Yep. And I, this is going to sound really dumb. My podcast isn't necessarily about health in particular, but it's about all the things that kind of support health, if that makes sense. Right. Yeah. So what you're saying is important.
24:09What can you do with the things that the earth gives you to help yourself? Right and there are so many things like Raspberry red raspberry leaf tea is one of the things that I heard about a lot when I was pregnant with my kids Yes, and elderberry for supporting your your respiratory system and
24:34There are so many simple things that don't really cost anything except your time to learn how to use them, how to prepare them, and the time it takes you to harvest them. I think because we're not raised to be like this, right, quote unquote, homesteaders, which is such a vast word in how you choose to go about what you do with your land and your time and your resources. You know what I mean?
24:59It does seem daunting. It seems daunting to me, and I'm sure it seems daunting to a lot of people who are not raised like this to go out from the way we are expected to live in society and go attempt that, right? It just seems even though making these things is, it's pretty easy once you learn and you know, it's not hard. But the idea of it seems like I can never do that. Yeah, but people go to college and spend
25:27hours and hours and hours cramming information into their brains to spit it back out on a test and find out they're never going to use that information again. For sure. I went to college and I dropped out after six years of like trying to get this degree and finishing 80% and leaving and moving to another country and living there and just trying to figure out, you know, this is not it for me. I need to, I need to figure something out. I need to, I need to.
25:56I need to do something else. You know, I didn't, it's funny too, because years ago in high school, they make you take those aptitude tests, right? And I went to college for fashion and on my aptitude test for like what career you'd be best at, it came back as nurse and a farmer. And I was really pissed off because I had just was getting about to spend all this money. And I had been interning for years even in the fashion industry before I got into college. And I was like, well, this is not correct, you know? And if you think about it, what I'm doing now is,
26:24Am I a farmer by any means? No. Do I garden? Yes. Am I a nurse? No. But do I help myself and try to help any woman who comes into my path asking for it? Sure. So in its own way, it was kind of correct. You were a caregiver and a nurturer and the tests showed that. Sure. Yeah. Great. I love it. I took those tests too. And for me, it was singer, writer.
26:53or broadcasting. And now you're broadcasting. Yeah, and I actually write too and have for years. You know, I've been publishing a couple magazines and... That's amazing. Stuff. So, the aptitude tests are sometimes they're pretty dead on even though you don't think so. It's crazy because, you know, I say like to myself personally, right, when I think of myself as an 18-year-old entering the world and you think sometimes. And maybe people, some people...
27:23know more about themselves than I did, right? But I decided to go to FIT. I went to school in big New York City and I was somebody who hated big cities and didn't like to be around a lot of people. And still, you know, there's so many times in my young adult life where I knew things about myself and I didn't listen to what I knew about myself and just did what I thought. I'd make money, give me some level of prestige.
27:53um, whatever that be. And then you grow up and you realize, man, like, it's hard, man, sending an 18 year old to college and telling them, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? You need to figure out within the next couple of years and hopefully stick to it. It's difficult. I don't advise it, right? You know, I don't know. Yeah, I did not go to college and my teachers were very upset with me. Really?
28:20Oh, I told my English teacher, my senior English teacher, that I was not going to college. And the teacher I'd had for two years in a row, the two years before in AP courses, advanced placement English courses, the lady that had been my teacher for two years in a row, she said, so where are you going to college? And she said, there's a school in Maine that you could go to that's really good for writers. I will write you a reference letter. And I said, I don't need one because I'm not going.
28:49I remember. Oh, yeah. She had tears in her eyes. She said, Mary, why you're so smart. And I said, because I know myself well enough to know that sitting in a lecture hall for the next four years is not where I want to be. Yeah. And I didn't know these things about myself. Like I knew certain things, right? But I didn't understand a bigger picture here of like many, many things.
29:17And it's interesting because so much of growing up, in my opinion, is kind of growing up, evolving, and then for me specifically, unevolving, right? And getting back to the root of who you are and the things you love. My garden. You know, being in just empty spaces, taking walks, and trying to, the best I can in this society, to slow everything down. Yes. I've been trying.
29:46And you know what is really hard? Like we live in Boston and I want so badly to get out of the city more than anything. And, and I have an Oasis where I live and I'm so lucky, but I know I'd be better off with. Space and land and less people and less noise and traffic and yeah, just a different type of life.
30:10Well, you don't sound like you're old, so you have time. Sure. Yes, I'm 37, so I've got time. I've got time. But sometimes, you know, when your jobs are here and this is here and that is here, it feels hard sometimes to just bite the bullet and leave. For us, it would mean like starting over in many ways. Yes, and that's really hard. And what I will tell you, because we sort of did it on a small scale four years ago.
30:39We left our cute little tiny house, not tiny house like tiny house, but our 850 square foot house, sold it and moved to a 3.1 acre place in the middle of corn fields and soybean fields about half an hour from where we used to live. And it wasn't a huge change because it was only half an hour away from where we used to live, but we don't have the option of having food delivered to where we live, no one delivers this far out of town.
31:09Um, if we want to go to a real place to go shopping, like a Sam's club to stock up, we have to drive half an hour one way or 40 minutes another way where it used to be 15 minutes away. Um, there are, there are big things that happen when you move in a big way. Like if you move across country, that's a huge change, but even half an hour away to a place where
31:35our nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away. That was a humongous change for us. Yeah, I mean, going from Long Island to Boston, I didn't think it would be such a big change, but I didn't grow up in the city. Yeah. You know, so.
31:51So it's been a big change.
31:56But yeah, yeah, it's, I'm ready to get out of land and, you know, make more herbs and make more things. And I think back to three years ago, and like even, yeah, three years ago, I didn't know how to make a single thing. I knew things about herbs, but I didn't know how to make a single thing. And I just randomly started experimenting. Not even for medicinal purposes, I started with soap.
32:23Oh my goodness, is the dog okay? Yeah, I see.
32:33He hates steps, so he cries. Is he a hound? No, he's a poodle. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I hope that's okay. No, I don't. I can always edit it out, it's fine. Oh, good, oh God, that's like not the first podcast that I've been on where he just like is quite loud. No, I love dogs. Anyone who has listened to the podcast knows that I adore dogs because my dog is my favorite thing on earth right now. Same, yeah, my dog's helped me through. He's just come with me everywhere he's helped me through.
33:03through so many things. Yeah, it's so silly because we have the most beautiful home. We are so happy where we live. And we got this dog like a month or so after, well, two months after we moved in. And she was eight weeks old. And she was the cutest, sweetest thing. And she has just continued to be the cutest, sweetest thing in my life. And I feel like the crazy dog lady, not the crazy cat lady.
33:30Yeah, I'm the crazy poodle lady. I always say this is going to be my last poodle and then I get another poodle. Well, this was the first puppy I've ever owned. So, so it's been a very big experience for me having a puppy that I have grown into the most wonderful dog ever. So it's a big thing for me. I love her and I talk about her way too much. So we have been talking for like half an hour and I really do try to keep these to half an hour. But.
33:59I want to go back to the college thing real quick. Yeah. I think that if you are really interested in becoming a doctor or a lawyer or something that requires a huge amount of education to acquire the dream, college and university are incredibly important. Totally. But I feel like if you're not going down that road, it costs a lot of money to get
34:28an education beyond high school. And if you can't ever pay back that money with the job you get, it's kind of pointless to do that. Yeah, and I think about, you know, when I was 18 and I went to college or 17 or over old, I couldn't see myself doing anything else but fashion and it was what I loved, you know, until I did it long enough and...
34:54It kind of hit me like when I decided like, listen, I've been in college six years and I'm not I'm 80% done. I'm not gonna finish this degree. For me, it was like, coming to this, I didn't know how I was going to do it. But I didn't want to be in an environment. And it's interesting how it ended up working out. But I didn't want to be an environment who where you help women by addressing their outer appearance. And that's like, what really hit me when I chose like
35:23I'm having such a hard time getting through this. And that was like the nail in the head for me to, and that started with like how I felt in the industry with myself and how difficult that was. And I saw how that was affecting me and my mental health and my body image and things like that. Like I can't sit here and be healthy and do this. I guess I can finish my degree, but if I do, I'm still gonna go elsewhere.
35:49So for sure, I think like, listen, if you have a passion and it involves college and you really wanna do it, do it. But okay, and I feel like many people don't, not many people say it's okay if you wanna take a break or you don't wanna go that route or you wanna try something else and see how that works for you. And there's no shame in that because you just never know what's going to happen. I didn't think that me saying that I wanna help women and myself by not focusing on their outer appearance.
36:17appearance would lead me 14 years later making, you know, tea from my garden, skin care from my garden, fire cider from my garden, helping women when they reached out to me with their diagnosis and, you know, finding them good doctors as I found them for myself. You know, like I didn't think that was where it would take me. I didn't know, you know, what would happen. Yeah, life is a wild ride. You never know where you're going to end up.
36:47I'm going to tell you, I have met some incredibly beautiful people doing this podcast. I see people, they show up and they're on camera and I tell them they shut the video off because video never see light of day. And I've met beautiful people in real life who do grow gardens or who are homesteaders or farmsteaders or farmers or whatever. And I'm not saying beautiful as in aesthetically pleasing. I'm saying they know who they are.
37:16They don't give a crap about what other people think unless those people are in their corner. That's right. Beauty is literally on the inside. And so I can see how with you trying to help yourself and other people, that outside beauty kind of lost its luster for you. Yeah, it really did because it's so interesting. Like, you know, we just got married in September and, you know, that was the first time in however long.
37:46that I dress up, that I put on makeup, that my hair is done, that I'm not in my sweats and my boots and, you know, just chilling where so many years ago, my sense of fashion and how I creatively portrayed my sense to the world was so wrapped up in my overall being. And now it's not that I don't love it, it's not that I don't have it inside or that I'm not a creative person, but I don't hold onto that and say, if I don't portray this to the world, right, I'm not good enough.
38:16Yeah. So you know, like planning my wedding for me really was like my everything I left behind in that way of being creative, right? With fashion and style and we didn't use a planner, you know, I did all that. You know, kind of giving that to the world and then that's over and going back, you know, to how I am. Sweatpants, sweatshirt, glasses, messy bun in my garden, making stuff in my kitchen. Uh-huh.
38:44I think that's gorgeous. I think that's absolutely wonderful. All right, well, I'm gonna let you go because we're in like 38 minutes. And Jess, keep doing you. Do what you love and do what you're good at. All right, thank you so much for your time, Eda. Oh, you're welcome. It was a pleasure. Thanks, have a great day. You too.
 

O'Connor Family Acres

Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres.
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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 my friend Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres. Good morning Tracy, how are you? Good morning Mary. I'm doing well. Thanks. Thank you. How did you guys fare with all this crappy weather yesterday? Yeah, I stayed home.
00:28We were supposed to go somewhere and I was like, nope, I'm going to stay in the house. Paul went to work though, so he had to venture out, but he did well. He just took it slow as we do in Minnesota. Yeah, no doubt. So this is yet another hyper local episode. Tracy lives like maybe five miles from me, maybe in Le Sueur. So I have to tell you, we're doing homesteadish stuff today.
00:58Who? What are you doing? Well, I started that, that black garlic thing. That's the fermenting thing. And that's been going for three days. So my kitchen has smelled like garlic for three days. And it's got to go at least another couple before I can even open it to check it. And Kyle and Cameron are downstairs, um, basically heating up all the tomatoes that we froze to get ready to can them into sauce. So.
01:27My house smells like an Italian restaurant right now. Oh my gosh, I love it. I love canning tomatoes was new for me last year was the first year I did it and absolutely love the smell. And I'm excited to hear how your black garlic turns out because that sounds super interesting. I was listening to your episode where you talked to the guy about black garlic and I was very intrigued. So yeah. Yeah, I will have to give you some so you can try it.
01:57Awesome, I would love that. Yeah, I think there's 15 heads of garlic in that machine right now. So if it works, I'll have some to share. Nice, nice, nice. I will reciprocate with, you know, well, something. Goat milk in the spring would be awesome. Absolutely. That's a, well, that's a hopefully a for sure. We have a new buck this year. So.
02:22And he's pretty young, so hopefully he did what he needed to do so we have babies in the spring. And that would be wonderful. And on that note, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at O'Connor Family Acres. Yeah, thank you so much. So we are, you know, a small homestead. We have about almost six acres. And we moved here to the homestead. This is going on four years now.
02:51We started with ducks and we actually started with ducks in the city-ish. So city-ish. We were in Medina at the time on an acre and we started with maybe six ducks. And it was during COVID, of course, because we didn't have anything to do. And we're like, we had been talking about when we buy our forever home, getting
03:20you know, some animals and really kind of not completely being independent, but controlling at least some of our food and how it's being, you know, handled, processed, what goes into it, all the things. And so we started with ducks. And then when we moved to where we are now, O'Connor Family Acres, those ducks multiplied greatly. And we also got goats.
03:49And this year we added pigs. So we're kind of we're not really at a point where we're you know Consistently selling we'll sell something here or there But we're almost to the point I would say this next year if our buck did what he was supposed to do will be at kind of a tipping point where we can maybe start selling some stuff and the idea is to you know provide for us provide for our family and
04:18you know, maybe offset some of the feed costs and, you know, the money that we're putting into it by selling some of the abundance, if you will. So. Awesome. I'm glad that that's the case because I don't, it's fine if you just have a homestead or a farm or whatever and you're just doing it to provide for yourself. But that never quite works that way because some years you will have an overabundance and you're like, what do I do with all this?
04:47Oh, for sure. Absolutely. I mean, in the spring, because we do have so many ducks now, I'm literally trying to give eggs to people. I'm like, Oh, it is so nice to see you. Thank you for visiting. Would you like a dozen eggs? Yeah, we used to do that with the chicken eggs, because we just had so many we couldn't use them before they would go bad. Yeah, exactly. Duck eggs and zucchini. Zucchini is the other one I'm always having abundance of from the garden. We do have a garden too.
05:17I'm always like, oh, would you like some zucchini? It was actually amazing to me this past summer when Kyle was selling at the farmer's market in Lesour that people bought zucchini. I was like, are you serious? You don't have neighbors who are just putting it in your car or in your porch? Well, and not everybody does, right? So that's kind of the beauty of it. And you guys have amazing vegetables. So I always love coming in and seeing the...
05:47the garden and now the greenhouse and all the things. And of course seeing you guys too, but. Yeah, it's just the stuff. It's not. Kind of like when you have kids, right? And they're like, I come to see the kid. Well, also you too. But then when you have a homestead, it's like, I come to see all the animals in the garden. Oh, and you too. Yep, exactly.
06:12So our garden this year, you know, did not do real well. We had some zucchini for a while and we had tomatoes after the third planting. And I'm very excited about the fact that we actually did get some tomatoes to make sauce out of and we're doing that today. But keep your fingers crossed that next summer's better because man, this was a very depressing year for the garden. Yeah, it was a rough, it was a really rough spring.
06:41And I think our saving grace was that we had the raised beds, which can be a positive and a negative. It was nice that it wasn't white. I mean, we still had some stuff that struggled for sure, as we do every year. And part of that is just we're still learning too. I've always had at least containers. When I lived in the city, in the city, I had a little salsa garden with
07:08containers of tomatoes and peppers. And then when we moved to Medina, we added some raised beds and now we're here. We have two, four, six, eight, about 12 raised beds plus some space. I plant pumpkins on the side. There's some asparagus, rhubarb, some of the things that you definitely put directly in the ground.
07:36So long story longer, that was kind of our saving grace this year. It does limit you, I think, a little bit on the quantity because you leave space and there's only so much room. But for controlling drainage and things like that, it is definitely helpful. Yeah, my heart broke for you guys this spring for sure.
08:01Yeah, ours too. It was very sad. Like we shed some tears over that four or five weeks of rain. Yeah. So I have a question about your asparagus, but I also want to ask you another one after that that has nothing to do with asparagus. Yeah. Was there asparagus there when you moved in or did you guys put in crowns? Yes and yes. Okay. So this was actually kind of funny. So Paul tilled the garden.
08:31How did this go? He tilled the garden, said he had to buy a torch so he could burn the garden, tilled it again, and then I planted asparagus. And it's so funny because where I planted it is kind of, of course, on the edge of the garden because I know asparagus spreads like wildfire. Oh, yes. And just to the left of that was...
08:54asparagus coming up that spring. I'm like, first of all, how did that survive our garden Armageddon? And then also, yay, I have extra asparagus. So that was kind of cool. And so that asparagus that was there, were you able to harvest some right away? I think not the first year. And I don't know if that's because we went crazy on the garden or if it was because...
09:20Um, it was newer, like maybe the people before us just put it in. Um, but last, this last year was the first year we were able to really get some asparagus. So it took, it was the third year. Yeah. I keep hearing that it takes three years for it to get established. And I have the same experience. This is the first spring that we've been here that we've gotten more than like, you know, eight stems. So nice. Nice. It is though my, um,
09:49Grandma's, my grandma's place, which is now my aunt's place, has an asparagus patch that's been there probably 50 years. I mean, I remember getting asparagus as a kid and my aunt still gives the family asparagus every spring. So it's a, I mean, once it's established, kind of like rhubarb, I know you had a really awesome rhubarb plant. It stays.
10:18Yeah, we actually haven't gotten a whole lot of rhubarb from the stuff that we put in when we put it in the fall. We moved here for years ago, 2020. But the rhubarb plant that was here when we moved in, the one little rhubarb plant they'd put in, we got some this past spring from that. And it was pretty good. Cameron ate a bunch of it with the, you know, dip the stem in the sugar and bite it. Oh, yeah.
10:44Oh yeah, that was one thing we planted too a couple years ago when we moved in was the rhubarb plant. And the first year it did not do well. The rhubarb plant was like, no thank you. But then I replanted a different one the next year and that one came back last year. And I'm hoping this year we'll get to harvest some stuff from it. So fingers crossed because I love rhubarb.
11:10I do too and it's how I know string is actually here when there's enough rhubarb to cut and put with strawberries and boil with sugar and make a compote and have it either on toast or on ice cream. That's when I know string is officially for sure here. Oh yeah, so lovely. Yes, and we do it every spring. If I don't have rhubarb growing, I will buy rhubarb just to make it. Yeah, it is. Yes, yes, and all the yeses.
11:40Okay, so my other question is, and I ask this almost of everybody, were you, like, I don't know your upbringing, I should, we've been friends for like, two years now, but were you brought up around farming or gardening or whatever? So we, I grew up in the suburbs, so directly no, like our family didn't, we didn't even really have a garden, honestly.
12:10trying to think back, we grew up truly in the suburbs. Around, it was Hamline, so it was north suburbs and it was kind of a development that was built around farmland, if you will. So I've always been farm adjacent. And my grandparents on my dad's side were farmers. So we would go down to the farm.
12:36you know, a few times a year, a couple holidays, and then sometimes we'd go and stay with them for a week in the summer. So I did have exposure to farming from that. And then when I started my container gardens and growing tomatoes, I got more and more interested in it. And so it was kind of always, I had a childhood dream to have a small farm.
13:03at some point in my life and then, you know, life kind of does what it does and you know raised my child and then you know, I got married. Paul and I just celebrated our eight-year anniversary and then we moved to our forever home and that's really when it started to take place. We started to talk about it as we were, you know,
13:30talking about getting married, it was like, where do you wanna live? What does our life look like? And I had really started to get into understanding more about where our food comes from, sustainable farming, and just really eating healthier and being healthier. And so that's really what drove it. Okay, did Paul have any background in it beforehand? No, ma'am. Okay.
13:57He is from England, the northeast of England, so kind of a harbor area. And he played professional soccer from the age of 16. So he was very much playing and traveling and doing all the things and then coaching. He had small gardens as well too in his adult life, but nothing, no exposure to farming.
14:26you know, as we know it. Okay. Yeah. Um, so I'm going to poke a little bit of fun at Paul just for a second. Paul would have been part of this interview, but Paul has the thickest British accent ever known to man. And when he's excited, he talks really fast and it's hard to understand him. So that's why he's not talking. He's also working right now, but yes, he has an extra. Yes. He does have a very thick.
14:56British accent that he has kept for sure. And it's northeast, so it's not what people traditionally think of here in the U.S. when they think English accent, they think more south. South England, so more London area, the posh south, they would say. But no, he has very, very northern English accent for sure.
15:24Yes, when we were talking about this the other day, I told you he sounded like he had an English accent mixed with a Scottish brogue. Yes. And his voice is fairly deep. So it's really easy to listen to him when he's talking slowly, but when he's excited, he just runs all his words together. I'm like, what? Yeah. Well, and we have a, I mean, we would probably run over if I gave you the full story, but
15:52We met when we were kids. I mean, I was 17 and he was 19 and then had separate lives. And then through, you know, kismet, fate, whatever, reconnected probably about 10 years ago. And listening to him speak was, I've always just absolutely loved his accent, loved the, you know, tenor of his voice. So anyways. Yeah. Yeah. And he is
16:21He is a really nice man. And I think that his accent is really sexy, but that doesn't help me if I can't understand what he's saying. Yeah, you don't have to understand. You just have to listen. Yes, and if I was in the market and he was single, I would probably listen closer. But since he's not single and neither am I, and I love you and I love my husband, I'm not playing that game. So.
16:49Agreed and agreed. Love you and love my husband and love your husband. We're one, I mean, just really great people. It's always nice to connect with great people. Yeah. And I was so thankful to find you because when we moved here, it was during COVID. You guys, I don't think you guys were here in 2020. I think you moved to your place in 2021, right? I think that is correct. Yeah. I'd have to look back, but yeah, I think so. Yeah. And having moved from small town, Jordan,
17:17you know, half an hour northeast of us. Yeah. In town, that quiet and not really seeing anybody was very welcome for the first year or so. Yeah. Yeah, I listened to the episode about community and it's so true. We have amazing neighbors, which is just super wonderful. You know, and then also to have...
17:41Connected with you. I mean I consider you a neighbor even though we're you know five ish miles apart Yes, that's how you are in the country right my neighbor For my vegetable farmer neighbors is what I is when I do your full title what I said Yes, my friend Kathy who lives like two miles away calls me Csa Mary because that's how she's oh there you go. There's the full title, right?
18:07Yep. Yep. She has three Marys who are friends of hers. So she's like, I have CSA Mary, I have whatever Mary, I have the other Mary. And I'm like, okay, I'll take CSA Mary. That's fine. That is awesome. And I think you call me my friend with goats, right? Most of the time. Yeah. But it was funny because I was on Facebook and stumbled across your page and I was like, Conner Family Acres. Okay. And then I...
18:34you know, scrolled through the page and I was like, I need to meet this lady. I need to reach out and say hi. And I did. And here we are two years later. Yeah, I was so glad. It was really nice. It was nice to connect. And it's been nice because we're both, I think, you know, learning in our journey, which is awesome. So it's kind of like, Oh, did this work for you? This worked for me. What are you guys up to today? You know, what's new? And I know
19:02Paul and Kyle connect a lot and talk about structures and farming and how's this going to work out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's really nice for Kyle to have someone to talk to who is male and gets into that stuff because he talks to me about the wood burning furnace and I'm like, as long as it throws heat, I'm good. Exactly. Kind of like, why don't you give Kyle a call?
19:32Talk shop with somebody who has the same parts as you do. It'll go better, I promise. Exactly. Yes. So anyway, a big mutual admiration society going on here. Sorry listeners, but this is what happens when friends have a podcast episode recording. So I was looking at the description on your Facebook page and it says Nubian slash Kiko
20:00So does that mean that they're a crossbreed? Yes, we have. So we have some Nubian Sonins actually, and then we have a purebred Kiko. And so we have a little, kind of a little bit of both going on. Our buck had papers, but he passed this last summer. He was a purebred Nubian. And so his son is now our main breeder.
20:29um, and is a Nubian, he'd be two thirds, no, two, three quarters Nubian and a quarter Saanen. I had to do the math there. It's not my strong point. It's okay. So what's, so what's a Kiko goat? Yeah, the Kiko are more meat goats. Um, and honestly looking at her, you probably wouldn't, I mean, she just kind of looks like the other goats.
20:57I think we had her when you were over last. She's the all brown one with a little bit of black socks. Yep. And literally she looks just like the other goats, but she's more of a meat goat where the Nubian and the Saanens are more of our dairy goats. But we bred her this year, so I'm super interested to see how she does, with the birthing first of all, but then also what her offspring look like, and do we get...
21:26some decent milk from her. I'm interested to see all the things, which is kind of fun. That's the fun side of homesteading is getting to kind of go, how does this work? Yeah, absolutely. Homesteaders are incredibly innovative. You're like, what would happen if we did this? Absolutely. And we're certainly obviously not the first people to crossbreed.
21:53Nubians and Kiko by any means I think that's fairly common because you kind of Get you're supposed to get the best of both worlds, right? So you get dairy and you get meat And so it's kind of a good combo of goat But our Kiko Miss Mabel was a little bit of a runt and so I'm interested to see if her offspring are gonna be full-size
22:19you know, will they give good milk, which that we won't know for a few years yet. But it's kind of fun. It's kind of fun to think it all through. And then Paul and I had conversations about do we breed her, do we not breed her, because she was kind of a runt. But she's a good size runt, if that makes sense. She's not like 100, I wouldn't say she's 100 percent, but. And from what I've read, because I do a lot of research online, you know.
22:46Sometimes they can have full-sized babies and sometimes they produce other runts. So we'll see what happens. Well if you end up with a runt or two, maybe I can talk to Highland letting us buy them from you. Oh my gosh, that would be so fun. I don't think I can, but I would love to. Yeah. Okay, so I know you guys got piglets back.
23:12last spring was it? This spring, yeah, absolutely. So that and that was kind of the cool part, the goats, we were finally at a place where I'm like, okay, I think we can sell some of these goats. And we had been talking about getting turkeys and pigs were the next things we wanted to add to the homestead. And I was talking with a lady online about what I was talking to a guy about turkeys. And I was talking to a lady about pigs.
23:40and she wanted to trade some of the baby goats for the baby pigs. And so I was like, perfect. I love, love when we don't have to come out of pocket cash for buying new livestock. Barter is fabulous. Exactly, barter is definitely the way to go. So we bartered some baby goats for some baby pigs and we now have Magna Lista pigs, two of them. One male that has been
24:09no parts, and then we have a female. And so the plan is to keep the female for breeding and the male will be at some point processed. Food, he'll be food. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so how old were they when you got them? They were probably six to eight months. I'd have to look back at the dates, but they were about six to eight months and the goats were about the same age.
24:35Basically, at the age where you can, you know, where they no longer need the mama. Yeah. Okay. So, they weren't little baby tiny piglets when you got them. No, they weren't newborns by any means. Yeah, it was kind of funny because when I said we were bringing home pig, you know, baby pigs, they're big. These are big pigs. They should get up to upwards around 300-ish pounds. And, I mean, that's not...
25:00in the world of pigs, that's obviously not the biggest, but it's big for us on our little homestead. I'm like, oh, these guys are going to get huge. And we went to pick them up and we saw the mom, the mamas and the daddies. I was like, oh goodness, these are going to be, yeah, these are, these get big. Um, but they are so sweet. Like I have just been with the grand, we have a grand kid who is four and he was just in with them the other day, um, petting them and you know, kind of.
25:29checking them out and they're still at a size where he can do that. They're probably about the size of a lab right now, like a really gigantic, chubby lab, but you know, lab body size or height, I should say maybe. So he was still able to do that, which was kind of fun. Cool. So the reason I asked how old they were when you got them.
25:54is because it's really hard when it comes time to put down an animal for food. And if you need me to come and stand with you or hug you when it's done, I can do that because I know you're probably going to be sad. Thank you, Mary. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely losing an animal, any animal, the ducks, the goats, it's not fun by any means,
26:24you know, it's part of the circle of life. And, you know, I always, people always ask me if I'm getting, you know, like an ostrich or something. And ostriches have their place, but you know, everything on our farm is, maybe ostrich isn't a good example, like mini, mini, you know, mini horses or something. And I'm like, everything on our farm has a purpose, right? They're either guarding, de,
26:51rodenting. The cats are little, you know, de-rodenters. They produce food or, you know, they have a job. Everybody has a job or a purpose on the homestead and that's why we're feeding them. So, but thank you. I would, I love that. It is hard to lose animals. It's especially hard when it's not planned and it's predators or something else that can be.
27:20challenging and difficult, you know, and frustrating because you feel like, you know, you're setting everything up for success and then, you know, there's always mini setbacks which are, you know, just an opportunity to learn and change the way you're doing things. So we've definitely pivoted a few times on the farm. Yeah. And it's hard even when you don't feel a particular connection to the animal. Yeah. We had...
27:48four or six, I can't remember, chickens at the old house years ago. And it was time for them to no longer be part of our yard. And we were going to eat them. We were going to call them and cook them, but they were not meat chickens, so they were not worth cooking. And we, I made myself go out when they were dispatched.
28:13I made myself go out and watch the process because I was like, if I'm expecting my husband and my sons to do this, I should probably at least be here for it. And I didn't cry, but man, that first chicken, I teared up. And I had that big thing in your chest where you feel like you're going to really sob, but you don't. And I don't even like chickens, Tracy. They're not my favorite creature on earth. So it's just...
28:41it's hard when you see something lose its life. It doesn't matter what it is. Yeah, no, I fully get it. The first few ducks that we dispatch are always a struggle and then you kind of get in the swing of it. But, you know, it is emotional and it's really hard when it's not planned. And you know, I think...
29:06to your point, even when there's not a connection, you know that those animals are in your care and you're responsible for those animals. You know, kind of like we talk about barn cats a lot, right? Even though we know that the, you know, the success rate of a barn cat is probably not as high as some other animals, you still are sad when something happens because those, they're in your care, you know? So yeah, it's interesting.
29:36the joy of baby kittens and baby goats and baby ducklings and hopefully one day baby piglets. It'll be a few years, but I'm kind of excited for that too. Well, you know, it definitely overshadows the trials and tribulations. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like living in Minnesota. We live it. We suffer the winters to enjoy the spring, summer and fall. I think it's the same kind of perspective.
30:03100%. Yeah, sweet. Yeah. Well, and there are, I mean, there are people who absolutely love the winter time in Minnesota for sure. But I am on your perspective there with I tolerate the winter because spring, summer and fall are great. Although Paul got me a pair of snow shoes two years ago, which was kind of not perfect timing because last year we had no snow and this year we're struggling a bit.
30:32Yeah, still waiting to get those snowshoes out there. Yeah, absolutely. So we're at 30 minutes, but I wanted to share a thing that I did yesterday for listeners. I made a designated website for the podcast yesterday. I love that. I'm so excited. Congratulations. I'm going to have to go check it out. Yeah, it's a tiny Very original.
31:00But I'm going to be doing blog posts about every episode. And that way people can get a little bit more background on the people, you know. And if there's stuff that gets mentioned like the Kiko Goats, I can do a little aside in the blog post about what a Kiko Goat is or whatever. So it just gives me a little leeway to play and to get back into writing a little bit. So if you guys wanna check it out, it's atin And it's got the whole list of episodes on the...
31:30the episode page, like it's all there. So you can just click and listen. Awesome. I'm so excited to go check it out. Thank you, Mary, for sharing. It's super cool. The particular website platform that I found is so user friendly. Oh, nice. I think it's Webador is the name of it. And I opened it up and looked at it and went, oh my god, this is easier than any other one I've ever used. I'm so excited to dig into this. Nice. I'll have to check it out because we do have
32:00I did a little of that with Paul's coaching to set up a website because he's an independent contractor and the one we used was also very user-friendly but had some limitations and so I'll definitely check out the Webador. That's very cool. Yeah, I'd never heard of it before. I think it's actually Weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y, but it's Webador is the thing that shows up when you actually sign up for it. Okay.
32:28But I'm very much in love with the way it worked. And it only took me like an hour to get it set up. Nice, well congratulations, that's awesome. Yep, and I'm gonna be screwing around with Instagram over the next week to start promoting the podcast on Instagram because I'm bad at Instagram. I don't quite understand how to use it, but my daughter loves it. So I'm gonna hit her up for a couple hours this week and be like, can you show me how to do this?
32:56Yeah, I wish I could help you with that one, but I too am bad on the Insta. And I know, I know it's extremely popular and I know it's really good for your business. Um, and I, I need to, I need to get into it both for my jobby job and for my, my farm life. Yeah. I just, I don't know how people do all the fun things I see. And I'm like, how did they do that? I don't even know where to find how to do that. So.
33:21My daughter does all kinds of stuff with Instagram, so I'm just gonna be like, hey Sandra, I need your help. Can you help your old mommy with some new technology? Kids are the best. And once she shares with you, then I'll pick your brain. I do know, I do know there's a way to kind of tie some platforms together. So when you post on one, it posts on multiple, which is really nice. It's helpful, it sure is.
33:49Alright Tracy, I want to talk to you again this fall after the summer. Yeah. And oh yeah, we're going to be making the duck that you gave us next weekend. Good, good. Oh good, I hope you love it. It's yeah, it should be good. Let me know. Keep me posted and I would love to talk to you again and we can update how our respective gardening season was. Yes, and we can talk about the dispatching. No, we're not going to be dispatching the pigs for a while.
34:18The mail will be this coming fall. So yeah, if we talk again in the fall, it's about 18 months. And so we would have had them about 18 months. So I'll give you an update on whether that has happened or not happened. Yeah, exactly. I think that would be really good for people to learn about because it's a process. For sure. Thank you so much for your time, Tracy. I really appreciate it.
34:46Thanks for having me, Mary. It was great to talk to you. Have a great weekend. You too. All right, bye. Bye.
 

WoodFlower Farm

Today I'm talking with Emily and Clayton at WoodFlower Farm.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
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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 Emily and Clayton at WoodFlower Farm. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. We're having kind of a terribly gray yucky day here in Le Sueur, huh? Yes, yes we are. It's that snow sleet.
00:29kind of mix today. It's really gross. My husband and son would normally be outside doing anything to not be inside and they actually decided to clean out our closet and our pantry this morning. I was like, oh, please do that. That would be great. That's a good task for today. I would love that because I have things I need to do. So you guys find something to keep yourselves busy and do something really productive. That would be great.
00:54So Emily and Clayton live not even a mile from me, I don't think. And I didn't even know about you guys until I saw you on Instagram, which is crazy. I should have known, but I didn't. So tell me about yourselves and what you do. Yeah, well, you probably didn't hear about us because we're pretty small and this is, I think, our first official year. We're just a small husband and wife farm and homestead, and we are in Le Sueur, Minnesota.
01:24And we started our farm with the goal to grow flowers and also some veggies, maybe pasture raised meat and farm products for our local community. Okay. And have you lived there long as well or is that new too? Yeah, that is, that's kind of a story. We so I grew up in Le Sueur. That's where I'm from. My parents still live here.
01:54but we have only lived here for, I think this is our second year. Yeah, our second year, yep. Okay, cool. And I don't wanna ask a rude question, but do you have like an acre or do you have acres? Yeah, we have technically right here where we are. This is my parents' land. So we moved back.
02:21to Minnesota, well, back for me, first time for Clayton. He's from Wisconsin. We moved here after living in Colorado for a little while. And when we moved back, we thought we would move into this house because my parents own the house and that it would be very temporary. But after living here, I think it was about a year that we decided that we like it here. We were really struggling to find
02:51a house, it's a very competitive market. We were also struggling to find a house in Denver. So when we weren't really able to find a house, like with some land here, we thought, well, why don't we just settle in? And there's a, so the land that we're on is about 40 acres. That's my parents' area. And then there's little woods.
03:18And then on the other side of that woods, there's another like 36, 40 some acres. And that was also in the family. And we bought that land. So technically, we're landowners now. Nice. That's awesome. And you're young. I assume you're in your late 20s, early 30s, or even that old. Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right, cool. And what I want to say about where we, in quotations, live.
03:47because we live on the same road. This highway that we live on, this area is so pretty. And it's also so flat. The further you go out highway eight, the flatter the land gets. Yeah, the further west. Yeah. Funny that you say it's so flat because actually what separates our land from her parents' land is this really deep ravine that has a little creek running through it that leads into the Minnesota River. So we actually have some
04:17topography differences between the lands. So that adds a little bit of something unique, which is kind of fun. Yeah. We feel pretty lucky that of the acreage that we own, I think it's 12 acres is wooded. And that woods is really pretty. And the whole Minnesota River Valley really is a gorgeous area.
04:40Yes, Minnesota is a really beautiful state. And part of the reason that it's so beautiful is that it does have so many changes in topography. I grew up in Maine and I've been living here for over 30 in Minnesota for more than 30 years now. And I went kicking and screaming from my home state to here. And after 20 years, I was like, oh my God, I actually love it here. It's really pretty and it's not that different.
05:09You know, the land isn't that different. The things that grow here aren't that different. The only big difference is no mountains, no ocean. Well, I can travel, it's fine. And so I came to really love it here. And I really love spring. I'm not a huge fan of high summer. High summer is way too hot for me. Really love fall and winter's okay. Like it's the break that we need as people who grow things to regroup and plan for the following growing season. So.
05:37So Minnesota's not a bad place to land. Right, yeah, and we came from Colorado. So I mean, the competition, you're competing with the Rocky Mountains, right? But there's something about Minnesota. And the part of Colorado that we were, we were living in Denver, it felt like there was not as much of the seasonal change. And I think we are just seasonal people. We love the shift from spring to summer, from summer to.
06:06fall and then fall into that quiet winter time where we get some time off and we love the snow and all of that. So I think Minnesota, we're Minnesota people too. I'm Northern Tier State people. If it hadn't been Minnesota or Maine, it would have been Wisconsin or Pennsylvania as it were. Pennsylvania is not really a Northern Tier State, but Pennsylvania, New York, that area. Anything in the top states would have been fine with me. Yeah.
06:36So, okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page and your Instagram page, and I saw the photos of the tulips and the peonies, and I was just like, oh my God, they're so pretty, and it's a wrong time of year to be wanting them. Yes, yeah, so we did do, our first year was really full of trying everything. So of course we tried the tulips. We were lucky enough that there were, I think like 50 year old.
07:04peonies here that my great grandmother planted. So we had some well-established productive peonies to play with. But after trying a little bit of everything, we kind of thought this year we're gonna focus more on the summer flowers and we're not gonna do tulips because I would be doing tulips right now. If we had planned on doing tulips, I would have already planted them, but.
07:31I think we just want to put more of our time and our money into the summer flowers because that's what really sells well. Perhaps we'll explore tulips when we actually have a high tunnel and kind of force them to come up a little bit earlier. We found that they kind of came up later than we wanted to and at the end of the day they don't necessarily bring in as much money as you necessarily want them to. Well, because they're a one time.
08:01You know you pay if you're not buying huge amounts you're paying almost a dollar a bulb and then wholesale You can't really get much for him So it it's not a it's not a great option for us with the size we are and then yeah like Clayton said without a high tunnel They're they're blooming pretty fast and they they blow out like they start to crack and then it's like you know Less than a day before they're all the way past picking
08:30Um, scrambling a little on the sustainability side, which is kind of the road that I'm starting to go down and learn more about, uh, tulips in general, just don't seem like a very sustainable product to me because you have to, you purchase them. They're probably coming from Holland or somewhere overseas and then they have to cross the ocean and get to you. And so, you know, you're looking at the emissions that come off from trying to get these bulbs in the ground. It just doesn't seem.
08:59Doesn't seem very friendly to the earth to me. So if we can move towards the things that grow native here, that we can focus on, you know, keeping in this closed loop circle in Minnesota, then that's definitely more of the direction we'd like to push. So, yeah, awesome. I love it. Um, and if you're like us, you probably have critters that are under the ground that eat the bulbs too, because we planted 150 tulip bulbs the second year we were here, we've been here for.
09:28And there are not 150 bulbs in that ground anymore. Not even close. I think we must've got lucky because we did not lose a lot of stuffed predators. I think what partly helped was that we planted our tulips like in our backyard in a pretty big garden area and our dogs definitely patrol the area. So I'm sure that our livestock herd dogs that we have.
09:58that aren't actually livestock or dogs, but they might have helped. Yes. And the peony thing, anyone who's listened to the podcast that I've been doing for over a year now knows that I am in love with peonies. I think peonies are the most beautiful flower ever created by God or the universe or nature, whoever made them. I love them. And we put in a whole bunch over the last few years because when we got here,
10:26There were no flowers except hostas and hostas are not my favorite thing. So, so last year, last spring we had tons of peonies bloom and I was talking to my husband about it and I was like, can we put in more? And he said, well, yes, if you find them for free. Oh, sure. Well, okay. Facebook marketplace is an incredible thing. People are getting rid of stuff all the time and separating their peonies or like.
10:56My dad, he's landscapes and often they rip out peonies and they move them to new spots and sometimes they have extras. So we'll bring them home for us. Yup. It's much less expensive to do it that way because peonies are very expensive if you buy them at a nursery. For anyone who doesn't know, they used to be about 25 bucks a pot, but I haven't bought any.
11:22in over a year, they might be closer to 50 to 60 a pot with inflation now. I don't know. Yeah. And if you're buying them just the root, which is how you would buy them if you were planning on starting them, the root itself is like $15 wholesale. So yeah. And then you have to wait three years before it actually produces anything of size. You're supposed to prune them back their first couple years so they can focus on growing their root.
11:51Which I never do. I never do it. If there's a flower, it's going to grow, it's going to bloom, and I'm going to cut it. And if it takes another year past that three years to really produce, I don't care. That's how much I love the blooms. And it's really funny because people think that all peonies smell the same. They don't. No, we only have, I think we've got Sarah Bernhardt
12:20I mean, that is an incredibly fragrant. It's an older variety. They're amazing, but I have seen some wildly different, and I assume they smell different too, peony bags. They do. Sarah Bernhardt is my absolute favorite, and it's because it smells so pretty, but it's not like in your face overwhelming. And the purpley ones, the magenta colored peonies.
12:48I can't stand how they smell. I think they're beautiful. But I don't like how they smell. Yeah. And my second favorite is the festive of Maximus. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but they're white. They're pure white with a little bit of yellow down in the middle, little stripes of yellow. Such a good bridal peony. Uh huh. Love those too. We also bought some yellow. Ito? I-T-O-H? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that one.
13:18I think it was Bartzella, but I'm not positive because it was like three or four different yellow ones that all pretty much look the same. And those actually bloomed last spring and they were gorgeous and they don't really smell like anything. They're not a really heavily scented peony. So I'm a fanatic. My grandma on my mom's side loved peonies. I didn't know that until I started talking about peonies with my mom and she was like, you're your grandmother's granddaughter.
13:48And I said, well, yeah. And she said, no, no, no. She said, your grandma adored peonies. She grew them in her garden. I was like, why did I never see them? And she said, because we were never in where they lived at the time of year the peonies bloomed. Yeah, yeah, they're short, short season. Yeah, we would usually go end of June in the first part of July from Maine to Illinois. And so by then the peonies were done and I didn't know what peonies.
14:16worse, I didn't know to look for the leaves at the time. So I get it honestly, that and my love of shoes. I don't love shoes as much as I used to because I can't wear high heels anymore because it makes my feet hurt. But apparently my grandmother really loved pretty high heels as well and so did I. So it's a thing. So anyway, you said you have dogs. What kind of dogs do you have? Yeah, they're both rescues. They're both mutts.
14:45So they have a few different breeds and then they're they're big dogs Okay, God people All right. Well, I'm a small dog person I don't know if you've listened to the podcast but I have Maggie the the mini Australian Shepherd which We don't think she's actually a mini we think she's a small standard, but it doesn't really matter We love her and she is kind of a she's supposed to be a farm dog if we had she or goat She would probably hurt them, but we don't sure we don't have any animals right now. We have two cats and a dog
15:14our chickens got culled a month and a half ago because they were getting old and it was time for them to go and we'll get chickens in the spring again. But right now we're down to two cats and a dog on 3.1 acres. How sad is that? Yeah. Yeah. So I, a lot of people I've talked to have chickens. Chickens are like the gateway animal into homesteading, right? They sure are. Most people have chickens. We have chickens.
15:43We have just some laying hens for ourselves. And we call them the anniversary chickens because on the weekend of our second wedding anniversary and our first month of living back here in Minnesota, we got a gift of money that was intended to be spent on a romantic night out. And we spent it on pullets. So we got, we have three ISA Browns.
16:10four Bef Orphanedons and a couple of Wyandots and a Bard Rock. And they were just about to start laying. Some of them were already laying and they were less than a year old. And we still have a few of those in our flock, but we have many additions. So it's quite the barnyard mix. We've had a lot of trouble with predators over the last couple of years. Um, our biggest one being our own dogs.
16:38We do have a chicken killer. So, so much for the livestock guard animal. Yeah. Cause he does more damage than good, unfortunately. So that's been a pretty big challenge for us. And it, our chicken coop has kind of just turned into Fort Knox trying to keep him or the raccoons out. We had a raccoon that was really wreaking havoc for a while there until I was out. One day.
17:06saw some beady eyes looking down at me from the tree. So took care of that problem, which was good. What you gotta do. Yep. We don't have raccoons because we don't really have any cover for them. We have a small tree line. We've never seen a raccoon here. Really? No. Well, let's go for your future chickens. Yeah. We have possums and we have skunks. We've seen, we had a skunk.
17:36that was actually in the pole barn the day we moved in that was dead. That was fun. The pole barn smelled really nice that day. Yeah. And then this, this spring we had a skunk in the pole barn. My husband went out to get his van to go to work and he smelled skunk and he was like, uh-oh. And he walked toward the back of the pole barn and he has his cell phone with him and had the flashlight thing on.
18:05And he saw two eyes and he was like, hello. And it moved and he could see it was a skunk. He didn't start startle it. So it didn't spray. And he came in before he went to work and he was like, um, we're going to have to make sure that if there's cat food left in the cat bowls out there to dump it before the end of the day, I was like, why? He said, cause we have a skunk visiting again. He's like.
18:30So we got the cat food out of there. You know, as soon as the cats would finish eating in the morning, we take the cat food out and Skunk went on his way. Never had to shoot him. He just moseyed on and I just free his way. That was it. That's good. Yeah. I hate having to kill animals when they're just trying to survive, but if they are a pest, it's a problem. Yeah. So do you guys have any, I don't know, pigs or goats or sheep or anything?
19:00No, we do not. Well, okay. Yes. Yeah, I forget about Kevin. Okay. So yes, we do have, um, he's not really our goat. We help take care of her mom's goat and horse. That's literally, I can see them from my back window right now. Yeah. So I grew up with horses, um, here in this house and, um, my parents still have, they had
19:29a couple of horses. We had an older horse that we had to put down. And then the other horse was lonely, of course. So my mom took on a goat, which was, it was my cousin's 4H Project goat. He's just a little Alpine goat. And he's been here for a few years now.
19:58He broke his leg, actually. He shoved it. We think he shoved it in the fence gate, um, which has like vertical bars, shoved it in there and twisted it somehow and broke it, uh, because when we found him out in the pasture, he was limping really badly, but our vet, the Minnesota Valley vet is incredible. And she was like, I think I can probably, you know, cast this and he'll be okay. And so he walks with a limp now, but he is.
20:28Still out there. And he's got a little bit of a bow in that leg. So he looks a little hobbly and pieced together, but he's still kicking. He's still a happy goat. So. Yeah, so we do have a goat on the farm. I wouldn't call him our goat and he's definitely not a productive goat. He's an inside goat. He would rather sit in the barn and be happy, just mowing on whatever haze right in front of his face and actually go be useful in the field. So.
20:57He has a little jacket in the winter. He's got short hair and gets cold. Yep. I'm glad you brought up Minnesota Valley vet, because we take our dog and cats to them. They are fantastic people. They really are. Yeah. We took Maggie there for her first puppy checkup when she was, goodness, 12 weeks old. And she's four. And.
21:24four years and a few months old now. And she's gone to see them for every checkup since. And she loves going to the vet because they have the squishy treats, squishy dog bone things. We don't buy those specifically because she knows she gets those at the friendly place where they give her her shots. Yeah, they really are incredible. They, for a small town vet, they're so friendly and they, you know, they're
21:54They're busy, but they always make time for us. It feels like, and we've been taking our dogs there too. They've been taking care of the horses and everything. They're great. Yeah. They're a small animal and big animal. And that's great because trying to find a vet that does both is nigh on to impossible sometimes.
22:18but I love them, the techs that they have, not the actual vet doctors, but the techs that they have are fantastic. Maggie loses her mind when she sees the techs. She wiggles, she's got the wiggle butt, obviously she's a wiggle butt dog, and she loves them. But the vet walks in and she knows, she knows that that is the actual doctor of veterinarian medicine.
22:46And she growls in the back of her throat. She's, she has nose. And so this last time when we took her in for her checkup and to get her rabies shot, I asked if, uh, if maybe the vet could, if the tech could just take, take Maggie back in the back to the vet, get everything done and then come back. And that way she wouldn't feel like she had to protect me. And that's exactly what they did. And when they brought her back in, she, the vet and the tech walked in.
23:15And Maggie came over and sat down and was smiling and wagging her tail like everything was great. I said, okay, we figured out the trick here. This is good. But no, they're, they're fantastic. I love them. And anyone in the area, our area who has animals need to be checked out by a vet. Minnesota Valley vet is the place to go. They are really, really good at what they do. Yeah.
23:39And I don't, I don't, they don't sponsor me or anything. I haven't even asked, but I just want people to know it's a great place to take your critters. So just an honest plug for really. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. So you, I know that you sell your flowers to the co-op in St. Peter, but what else, how else do you sell your flowers? Yeah. So we, yes, we sell at the St. Peter food co-op.
24:07and the local farmers market, primarily Lee's Sewer and St. Peter. We have been also selling wholesale to florists. And I did do a wedding last year, and I have room for one more wedding next year doing floral design with our locally grown flowers. We have been thinking about a CSA program. Yep. But we're
24:36We haven't really jumped into that yet. We're also probably going to be starting a little farm stand on County Road 8, which would have some bouquets, maybe eggs when we have extra. Any leftover produce that we grow from our garden that we're not canning or eating ourselves. Yeah. And then in the near future, not sure when, we are planning on moving the flowers out to the land that we.
25:06bought and starting a you pick. Oh fun. So that's the plan for the flowers. Very nice. The video that you took of the was it was it zinnias that had gotten frosted? Oh yeah. That is so cool. I had never even thought about the fact that taking video of the flowers when they're done would be would be that interesting, but it's really pretty.
25:33They're beautiful. Yeah, I think the designs that happen with the frosts are really pretty. So, some videos of that. It's a little sad, you know, cause you know it's the end, but it's also really beautiful. Yeah, when I saw it, I did a double take cause I was scrolling through when I was like, what is that? I stopped and clicked on it. I was like, oh my God, Zinnia's frosted. That's gorgeous. Yeah. And I had taken photos years ago.
26:03of roses with snow on them here in Minnesota in Jordan. We lived in Jordan at the time and it had snowed and we still had a couple roses blooming. And I was like, okay, so we just went from summer to winter overnight. This is great. Yeah, yeah. And really pretty, really pretty photos. I bet, yeah. So, okay, what else can I ask you? We have like four minutes left.
26:29What would you like to share if I haven't asked the questions that you needed me to ask? Yeah. Well, yeah. So we obviously are growing flowers and flowers are, they were kind of the start of our farm. But we're also doing, we're going to be trying to do some other stuff this year. Maybe chickens. Yeah. We recently went to a regenerative egg conference, Acres USA.
26:57They hosted it in Madison, Wisconsin. It was about a week ago. And so from that conference, it kind of inspired us to look a little bit further beyond just flowers. Just doing flowers is great and we're really excited about it, but it doesn't necessarily leave room to give back to the soil, doesn't necessarily leave room to just grow in different directions. And so we're kind of looking.
27:26at our farm and growing it more into a regenerative full circle integrating animals into what we're doing, doing a little bit more perhaps down the road of like a market garden, possibly turning that into a you pick. So we have a lot of ideas as far as where we want to grow our farm. I know that we want to get.
27:53more than just chickens on our land. But the struggle with that is just infrastructure. We don't necessarily have all the money in the world to throw at fences and all that good stuff. So for now, we're just gonna take it slow and steady and pay off some debt so we can set ourselves up to succeed, because I mean, farming is a hard one to make money in, it's a hard one to be profitable in. And so as much as you can focus on, you know,
28:23monthly expenses down so then you don't have to worry about money as much is kind of where we're at. So there's a lot of exciting things to come. It's just taking the time to let it happen.
28:38Good. And you guys have so many doors that are open to you right now. You're young. You have land. You have ideas. You got to go to a conference that I would have gone to when I was your age. Did you meet Mr. Joel Salatin? We met him all. He signed our book. We gave him a You Can Farm book and he signed it. Yes, you can. So that further lit the fire under our butts.
29:05get this going. We got to meet Will Harris as well and see Gabe Brown and all the big names were there. So, fun. Yeah, it was really cool to get to hear those leaders in the regenerative ag world speak and share their wisdom and we absorbed as much as we could. Awesome. I'm so excited that you got to go. That sounds like so much fun. And honestly,
29:34The regenerative movement that's been going on makes so much sense if you actually look at it and read about it and learn about it, because why wouldn't you want to have nature do what nature does? Yes. Right. Yeah, and that's exactly what it's about. It's, you know, so many farmers right now are working against nature, and regenerative ag is really just about letting nature do the work, you know, and working with it.
30:04you know, to succeed. Yeah, and it makes it easier on you. And that means that you'll have the energy to keep doing it. Exactly, yep, exactly. Because this lifestyle takes a lot of time, a lot of patience and a lot of energy and it's good work, but it's still work. Yeah, and the big focus of the conversation that we took away from the conference was to make regenerative farms profitable
30:33you know, being regenerative, putting less into the land and letting nature do its work, that allows for you to save a little money in certain places. And also consumers are beginning to crave food and products that connect them with nature again. And words like organic and pasture-raised and sustainable, they're words that most consumers are aware of and there's definitely a hungry market out there and we just have to figure out how to tap into it.
31:03Yep, exactly. Well guys, it was amazing talking with you. And since you only live down the road by about a mile, we should set up a time for you to stop by this spring. Because my husband is like big into the gardening and being outside. And we put up a hard sided greenhouse last spring. And we're going to actually have like a high tunnel style greenhouse also. And we're going to be growing bedding plants in the greenhouse this spring because
31:32to do that. Yeah. And then once they're big enough and it's warm enough, they're going in the high tunnel so people can just come and buy bedding plants for their gardens. So you should, we should set up a time for you to come chat with him because I'm sure he would be thrilled to talk to you about the greenhouse and the high tunnel. Yeah, we absolutely need to do that. All right, awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Yeah, thank you. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Finny's Farm

Today I'm talking with Peer at Finny's Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Peer at Finney's Farm. Good afternoon, Peer. How are you? I'm doing well, thank you. How are you? I'm good. I'm so curious to hear the story on what you're doing because you have a lot going on there. So tell me about yourself and what you do.
00:29Well, I yeah, I do have a lot going on. We started this project. Couple years ago I was I've always been into horticulture and and just plant biology and stuff and actually went to school for it. But about three years ago, two or three years ago, I was diagnosed with some
00:59issues which were health related to other, you know, environmental things. So I spent a lot of time really researching just growing food, consumption of food, the things that are in the air, the soil that were contaminating, and my, to go back a ways, my
01:27education was in sustainable food and farming, although I went off on a different career for 30 years. So about two years ago when I was diagnosed and had to change diets and change everything I did, and I kind of backed away and semi-retired, but I can't sit still. So we decided to, I'm on two and a half acres here, and we decided to
01:56kind of start doing it ourselves, homesteading to a degree, mostly food. And kind of ended up here where I said, again, I'm a busy body, so it was like, let's try this. Let's try a co-op. Let's try garden-ready plants. Let's try a CSA. So that's kind of what brought me to where I am right now.
02:27really trying to kickstart it and get things out there so I can help other people just localized, you know, so. Yeah, and you're in Mankato, Minnesota, right? Correct. Okay, so do you go to the farmers market in Mankato? I go to the farmers market, as a vendor, you mean? Yeah. We will be this year, so yeah, I haven't in the past, but the person I partner with,
02:57has had experience at the farmers market and doing that kind of stuff. So I'm kind of working with somebody else on that portion. So.
03:11Very nice. I hear great things about that farmers market. So I wish it is. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. A lot of good ones around here. You know, we're Mankato. I'm not sure where you're from and what, but Mankato is very, um, agricultural. So it kind of, it kind of brings two sides to what I'm doing because I'm surrounded by monoculture and
03:37you know, no matter what you try and do when they're spraying pesticides, it gets in the air. And, you know, so it's there. I'm just surrounded by things. So it's kind of tricky. And we, you know, are trying to find different ways to make sure that everything that comes out of our garden is healthy and pest free and chemical free and all that. So.
04:02I understand. I'm in Le Sueur, Minnesota, so I'm about half an hour northeast of you. Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, my husband actually works in Mankato. Okay. Yeah, and we are surrounded by corn fields and soybean fields, so I feel your pain on the pesticides spraying. Right. Because we grow a fairly hefty garden as well. And we try really hard to use organic practices,
04:31you have drift, you can't be organic. So exactly. And that's one of the things that I'm not going to brand label myself as, you know, because it just, it's too difficult in this area where you and I are just because of the drift and everything. But, um, but you can do what you can do. And that's what I'm trying to bring some people. Yep. Exactly. Um, so I was looking at your website, which is beautiful, by the way.
05:00And I saw the online co-op and marketplace tab and it says, it says vendor information, and then it says project Green Haven, and then it says community garden benefits. Is project Green Haven yours or is that just an example that you put on there? Well, it is, it is something, it was basically my kind of final paper thesis.
05:30when I was at the University of Massachusetts. And I kept it all these years. So I'm in my 50s, went to school a long time ago, but went back in like 2015 to kind of continue my education with, like I said, sustainable food and farming. That was one of my things. So I put it up there. And I don't know where I'm gonna go with it, Mary.
05:59But I just, I spent so much time on just researching it and finding ways that people can live healthier lives and embrace the environment and be stewards of the land. And so, so to answer your question, I don't really know where I would go with it. I wish somebody would.
06:27know, a developer would say, hey, that's a good idea. Let's take it to place. But I just kind of put it up there to see what kind of response I get. Yeah. And I didn't go to college, so I didn't have to write a thesis about anything. Thank goodness, because it seems like an awful lot of time and energy that I probably wouldn't have wanted to put in. But I know that when people write theses, or thesai, or whatever the plural is, they really don't ever necessarily do anything
06:56body of work. It just is a thing that you do to get your degree. And so I think it's great that you put it up because you're allowing people to learn from what you learn. Right. I appreciate that. And again, it was, you know, a lot of time spent just researching. This was really probably, I want to say 10, 12 years before we, I mean, people were conscious of what was going on.
07:25with the food that we were taking in and stuff, but the way to live it was not really there 10 or 12 years ago. I mean, you did have some people, but it's becoming more and more just relevant around us. So yeah, I was kind of proud of that paper just because it was a long time ago and I thought I was ahead of the curve and kind of looking at that. So again, put it up there just to kind of see what kind of feedback I'd get.
07:54And maybe someday when the time is right, I can go out and present it to somebody. So, but that's, that's kind of what project Green Haven's all about. Okay. It's actually using the wind and basically permaculture, you know, the sun, all that kind of stuff and regenerative agriculture to, you know, live together with.
08:23you know, what we have on Earth here, you know. So, yep. Well, maybe you can turn your thesis into a book. Maybe that's a good idea. I might, I might have to look into that. You've already done half the work. You might as well go further and turn into a book and then you can actually make some money from it. Um, okay. So you guys also offer a CSA and is that just in the summer or do you offer things for the winter too? Um, we are.
08:53So I've lived in Mankato for two years and when I was living north of the suburbs I had a small one. You know I only had about 15 people. So this is going to be new down here to us. I already have some clients but I'm hoping to get like 25. So this would be new.
09:22going into next winter, I'm not sure what we would offer. And, but potentially it would be an off season type CSA as well. But again, trying to just bring people foods and gifts and, you know, healthy things, including, you know, soaps, honey, all that kind of thing. So it, it's just starting, Mary. So
09:49At this point, I don't have an answer for you. We're not doing it this winter, but that might change next year. Okay. Cool. I am really excited that you're offering a CSA because we did it for two years in a row and we did not offer it this past summer because people were hesitant to lay out the money at the beginning of the season, not having a guarantee that there would be anything to show for it.
10:19And we're really glad that we decided not to offer a CSA this summer because our gardens did not do well because of all the rain this spring. So we are right in the middle of trying to decide whether we want to offer one next year or not because we're real concerned that the weather patterns are going to be the same next spring and summer as they were this past. Very well could be. And that does, you know, I mean.
10:48with the customer at risk and the farmer as well. But yeah, it's one of those kind of risk reward things. And I get what you're saying as far as people kind of hesitant because, oh, 400 bucks, what if there's a drought? What if there's too much rain? And I'm getting two tomatoes and an apple.
11:15an apple, my basket each week, you know, so I'm hoping we have a better, better spring summer because this will be our first attempt at it. And like I said, I did it up north and it was real fun because you meet a lot of people that, you know, just are on the same page as you and really kind of understanding the last questions and stuff. So, so it's
11:45through and out of semi retirement to do something that's passionate to me. I love talking to people about it. I love, you know, I don't know everything, but what I can explain to a customer about, you know, why you should do a CSA or why you might want to, um, change your garden patterns or habits and your food and stuff. So, so it'll be, it'll be interesting and hopefully we'll have success. We're not looking for a time. We're just looking for.
12:14like 25 people to get started. So. Yeah, and it's really nice to be able to teach people about what you're doing. But the thing that we found in the two years that we did it is a lot of the people that were our subscribers to the CSA had small gardens of their own and they were growing things we weren't growing. And so they taught us some stuff about what they were growing too, which was really fun. Yeah. That's neat. And that's a kind of what
12:45you know, the organic kind of networking can do, you know, it's really in that that's what when I decided to really kind of localize this. That's what that's exactly what I wanted, Mary was what you just described was, was people helping people educating and hey, I have a home garden and I'm growing Brussels sprouts and they're, you know, they're not
13:14they're not popping, they're, there's, you know, so have you ever, you know, it's, it's exchanging ideas. And I think that's really cool and, and important. Yeah. We're not just growing gardens. We're growing friendships and relationships and growth is good. It doesn't matter what it is other than if it's like cancer. Cancer is terrible. We don't want cancer to grow, but, but good healthy growth is good for everybody. Right. Yep. Absolutely. Okay.
13:43So, you said that you are in your 50s. So is this your retirement plan? Is this what you're going to do until you die? Do you love it that much? Yeah, I actually do. So, like I said, I grew up in the city's area south of the city's went up there. My parents were very, even though they were both in the medical field, they were both my mom was a
14:10outstanding horticulturist. My dad had a huge garden and that was their hobby. And, you know, as a kid, I, you know, would grow a tomato plant or grow whatever, you know, out on the porch when I was very small. But so it was kind of in my blood. And yeah, when I chose to go to school, it really kind of stuck out. But then I kind of went into I went into a sporting career.
14:40after that kind of stumbled into it and yeah it was something there's just always been a passion so to answer your question yeah I would like I would like it to be successful I do not you know need it to explode and cause chaos and all it all it's about is money but yes something to kind of take me through retirement so I'm just in my mid-50s but
15:09um yeah decided to retire semi-retire when i was diagnosed with some stuff and um and so yeah this would be a long-term thing for me i absolutely love it you know i'm already ordering seeds i'm already looking i spend so much time online just reading articles and stuff so it's definitely in my blood and something that i very very much enjoy it's your life and that's amazing
15:36My husband said to me last night, we're talking about the fact that we're going to be growing bedding plants for our community, you know, for them to buy, because we built a hard-sided greenhouse this past spring. And I said, so when do we need to have seeds planted so that people can buy them in time to put them in their gardens? And he said, the answer to that is we need to start looking at seeds now. And I said, but we don't really have any extra money, right?
16:06now. And he said, no, he said, but you have a podcast, he said, and you have connections to people online, and you can let them know what they're what we're doing. And they can put in their orders for what they want. And they can pay for they can help out with the seed costs. And I was like, like a CSA for plants, not produce. And he said, kinda.
16:31He said, I don't know if that's what it's called. He said, but do you think that would work? And I said, I don't know, but I will ask a couple of people and see if they're interested. So that's the next thing on the list for tomorrow morning is to get hold of a couple of my friends and be like, would you be interested in buying bedding plants for your garden? And would you be willing to kick in a couple of bucks towards seeds? And if they say yes, then I'm off to the races. There you go. Yeah. And it's, I used to buy organic seeds from
17:00uh high mowers is it high mowers high mowing and they actually have what do they call it a seed well it's a csa for seeds and they kind of do it as well um on on their website so so the idea that you and your husband have is great and and you know it again just kind of brings back that portion of everybody's investing
17:28you know, even though you're doing the growing, they're a part of what's going on. Get to that, you know, and I'm doing, uh, garden ready plants as far as you call them bedding, but yeah. You know, I've already got a contract through a few churches for fundraisers and stuff. So looking at what you're, you asked your husband, it's like, okay, if they want them April, when do I gotta do it? How am I going to pay for what am I? You know, so.
17:57So it's a lot more difficult and a lot more. Um, what I would say is just. You have to sit down. It's not just a matter of planting a seed. You have to plan this out. You have to find the right stuff. You have to find tolerant stuff. You know, you're just looking at, um, for me, I look at it when I'm buying seeds is, you know, what diseases they might get, what, um, you know, they're crossed with what.
18:26um pests all that kind of stuff so it is a full-time job you know trying to to make sure that you got the best product and when people get involved with you i think that's really neat yeah and my favorite part of spring is seedlings i love going to the nurseries and walking in there's all the herb the herb seedlings and you run your hands over them they smell so good so so what we're gonna do is we're gonna grow the uh the
18:55the seedlings in the hard sided greenhouse. And then we have like a high tunnel style greenhouse as well. And so we're gonna put tables in the high tunnel once the seedlings are started, like they're green and coming up, we're gonna put tables in the high tunnel and people can actually just go in and look and see what they want to buy. So they'll get that experience of running their hands over the plants and being able to smell them and stuff too. So yeah, this spring should be really fun and it's not necessarily
19:24weather dependent because we have the greenhouse. So we can grow, we can grow and not have to worry about the stuff getting flooded out or not getting enough water because we have a little bit of control because of the greenhouse. Right. And that's kind of where I'm in the situation where I had a, I got a little spot of a greenhouse, almost a new home, you know, so, you know, I have to go down there to do it.
19:53Yeah, to be able to grow it and get it going. And it's nice to have that kind of, you know, outfit there is having the greenhouse so you can put them in there. So that's what I'm challenged with coming this spring, but I'll figure it out. Or this winter, I should say, is trying to figure out where I'm gonna put 4,000 seedlings, but you know, we'll figure it out.
20:21Yeah, I don't know that we're going to do 4,000, but we'll probably do a thousand at least. So, but I'm just excited to be able to baby the plant babies this year instead of just throwing them to the wolves of the weather. Yeah, I understand. Yep. Perfect. Yeah. It's so fun talking to people like you because you're so into it that I feel like I can kind of geek out a little bit about plants because...
20:46Sometimes people are like, yeah, we grow a garden, but we also raise cows and goats and rabbits and chickens. And they're excited about that part. And we don't do livestock here. So I'm like, oh, well, tell me about your goats and your rabbits and your chickens. And they talk and I listen and I'm like, that's awesome. And I don't have anything to say necessarily about goats or cows, but plants. I could talk all day. I love, love, love plants.
21:14I agree. Yeah, as far as livestock, I'm not interested in having them, you know, but I have teamed up with a couple of people for a few things. And maybe that's something that's out there for you is so I have a a pork producer that I buy, you know, a couple of pigs from them.
21:44and they're actually at the Schmitz right now. But you know, that option, I have a couple of neighbors that have so many chickens that they can't deal with how many eggs they have. So I buy them to sell off and stuff. So yeah, it's kind of partnering up with the things that we necessarily, you should say, not want to do but can't do. You know, I can't have cattle running around my two acres. Right.
22:13You know, it's tough. So but it's you know, there's opportunities and but like you I at plants are my thing and that's what I'm gonna stick with because it's a it's it's kind of like I got two daughters and it's kind of like watching your your babies grow, you know, you have to nurture them, you have to take care of them, you have to be there for them, you have to talk to them, you have to teach them the right things so that they're healthy.
22:44Absolutely. So you were saying teaming up with people and I know that you have the online co-op thing or at least your websites as you do. So how does that work? So if you're familiar, I'm guessing you're familiar with cottage foods. Yes. So what I'm looking for, this was just a random thing that my partner and I had talked about was just like how can we help
23:14other little vendors like us, you know, kind of expose their product and get it out there. And so when we redid this website, this website was from years ago that was kind of parked when I was up north. We kicked it back up and yeah, the idea was, well, maybe we can get somebody who has a year one.
23:44um cottage food license or I guess they're not called license but membership registration registration there you go yeah um you know and and kind of help them um kind of promote their products so and and as far as helping them are we have many different
24:15I shouldn't say organic, but very low chemical fertilizers, worm castings and all that. So we were going to sell that and then it was like, why stop there? So, so the idea is trying to find somebody who maybe makes bread, you know, that can promote it on our Facebook and that. So it's not a moneymaker for us. It's just, again, a way to.
24:45kind of go grassroots with this and really educate people and offer products that are healthier than run into a high V or a pub foods, something that really is meaningful for somebody to make and then somebody to eat. Well, that's kind of the idea behind that. We're just kind of starting. That's not my side of it, but that's my partner's side
25:15kind of starting to reach out and try and get some vendors, just to, again, try and help promote their product. And it will go back to them, the sale and everything, but just kind of an environment full of good products and safe products and healthy products.
25:39So sort of like a food broker, you know how there are insurance brokers who help you find the best insurance company for you to use? Same idea. Yeah. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. And our thought is, too, is not to exclude anybody, but we don't want to flood it. So you know, we were thinking, well, maybe if we find two or three breadmakers, the first one that...
26:08talk to us, get in there because I don't want to have, you know, 15 bread makers out there that, you know, people again are going, well, which one do I want? Which one do I want? So, so it's trying to narrow it down so that you have two or three of the same products that they can choose from and not have to go far. But yes, it is like a broker just kind of trying to point Mary in the right direction if she wants some maple syrup.
26:36Or some good sourdough bread. Yep. Things like that. Um, I was going to say when it comes to breads, you may be surprised because there are so many different kinds of breads. You've got gluten-free breads. Ancient grains breads. You've got just white breads. You've got like, my husband makes a fabulous honey oat bread and he makes an herb white bread and
27:04He's tried making rye. Rye bread's kind of a pain in the butt to make. He hasn't tried it again since. But there's all these different kinds that people are very passionate about, kind of like I'm passionate about the herbs and you're passionate about the bedding plants and stuff. So you may be surprised if you find like five or six people who bake bread and they're all different. Yeah, that's true. Yep, that's a very good point. And I've never tried to make bread, so.
27:34I don't know, but I know what you're saying. And yeah, that's that's a good point. And put that in my, my notes because yeah, there's there's many different types of breads. Yeah, and I'm not gonna lie, there's a lot of people making sourdough bread right now because of the thing during COVID, which I think is very funny. Because number one, I don't love sourdough bread.
27:59And number two, I don't want to have to feed a sourdough starter every day. So I don't do sourdough bread, but so many people are so into it. It's just crazy. Right. Yeah. Yup. So, so, um, there are also so many people making cakes and cookies and brownies and, and sweet, that you'll probably end up with like 30 people selling all different kinds of baked goods. Right. Yeah. And, and.
28:29I'm trying to streamline it a little bit again is not to exclude one person over the other, but yeah, just not to confuse anybody that goes to our website and says, well, there's 30 different breads, I'll just go to, you know, a grocery store where I can see it, feel it, look at it, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, so it's something, it's in a work in
28:58make sure that we're getting what we want out to the people. And that doesn't mean that we're excluding anybody that doesn't have good products. By any means, it's just kind of better for us to kind of just not have to. Because on our side of it, Mary, is we have to, our web developer has to get the pictures up
29:28the description and post all that and then link it back. So yeah, if he has 25 people doing the same sourdough bread, it's kind of an hot mess and kind of just too much for not making really any money off. Oh yes, absolutely. Yes, for sure. And you don't want people going to the website and being overwhelmed and being like, oh, never mind, I can trust this loaf of bread from Hy-Vee that I get every week. Right.
29:58Yep. Yep. Understood. I get it. All right. Um, here we've been talking for almost half an hour and I try to keep these to half an hour. So thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Yes, I appreciate it too. And you're in Le Sueur there, you said? Yep. Okay, well, we'll have to stay in touch. I would love to hear more about what you have going on. And, uh, you know, love to share with you how things are going.
30:28in the future and if you don't mind I can put a little link if you have one that you can send me. I'd love to put a link to your podcast on our website and Facebook page. Absolutely and I will send you the link when this one is live. Sounds good. All right. Thank you so much, Peer. Have a great afternoon. You too. Bye.
 
 

PTY Granola Company

Today I'm talking with Brit at PTY Granola Company. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brit at P&TY Granola Company. Good morning, Brit. How are you? Good morning. I'm so good. How are you? I'm great. You are where in Minnesota? Our kitchen is in Plymouth, and I live in Dayton, Minnesota.
00:30Okay. I wasn't sure which was which, so I thought I should ask at the beginning. Yes. Okay. So I went and looked at your website this morning because I'm a dumb ass and hadn't had a chance to go look at it and found out what P&TY stands for. And I just giggled. So can you tell me about yourself and your company? Cause I can't wait for you to share your story. Absolutely. So I'm Brit Williams. I started P&TY Granola Co. five years ago. And it all started
01:00I was making granola bars for my husband because he was eating a granola bar and I looked at it and I was like, Trevor, there's no nutrition in this granola bar. He's like, yeah, but it tastes good. I was like, well, let me see if I can do something better. And so I started making these bars and I would take them at the time I was an event planner and I would take them on the road with me for my staff. And one of the events that I did was for Whole Foods Local.
01:29And Whole Foods staff there was like, you got something different with this recipe. It's not like what's on the shelf. I think you should do something with it. And that was April of 2019. And by June of 2019, I sold my first granola bar and it was all by Insta story. And I just was having people test it out and everything. And as I was doing that, I was thinking about the fact that there's like 50 million granola bars out there. And.
01:58How do I stand out? Something has to catch them before they get to the taste. So if it tastes so good and they want to keep going after it, how do I get them to do that? And at the time, I had my son who's seven years old now, he was two or three, and I was teaching him manners. And he would yell at me like a toddler does and he would yell, no. And then I was teaching him about no, thank you.
02:27And so then he goes, no, thank you. And I was like, Oh, so there's something to this manners, right? Like there's something like it hits differently when you consider someone, even if it's coming from a toddler. And so that's what got me to think about what does, what does my company stand for? What do I want people to think about when they have a granola bar? And that's where P and T Y comes from. Please. And thank you. So granola bars that say please and thank you.
02:57So it's this message, this fueled by respect. Every time you have a bite of our granola bars or you go and grab them, I want you to just be reminded about the power of manners. I wanna think outside of myself. I wanna think about other people and how I can make them feel and how I can make myself feel by treating myself with respect as well. So that's where PNTY came from and it...
03:27My hope, my dream is that our granola bar tastes so good that every day you have a little bite and you're just reminded about the power of manners and how that can make an impact in the world. I love it so much and I'm gonna tell you why. I always say please and I always say thank you to the point that when my dog does something I ask her to do. I say thank you Maggie. Yes.
03:54And excuse me is a big one in my house. You know, we don't say, we don't say get out of the way unless there's a reason we say, excuse me, to the point that I say, excuse me to the dog as well. And everyone who listens to the podcast knows that I love Maggie beyond life itself. So of course I'm going to talk to her like she's my kid. And I have been talking to my kids like little adults since they were born.
04:19And thank you and please and excuse me and all those wonderful things that let them know I care about them have been part of my vocabulary with my kids forever. So I'm just so impressed with the fact that you put that much thought into naming your business. Well, it makes a big impact, right? I'm sure your dog appreciates being acknowledged and respected, right? And so does our kids and whoever they interact with and whoever you interact with.
04:49consideration factor and I think humans just need a little bit of a reminder of that like we're all doing our best right just have some consideration and and treat each other well. Yes patience goes a long way and that's part of consideration so yes I love it I love what you're doing. You asked me when I messaged you if the fact that you're not a cottage food producer mattered and I said nope.
05:14But the thing is you were a cottage food producer, so you do fall under the headings of my podcast topics. And you're one of those people that gives the current cottage food producers hope. Because it's not easy to go from being a person who cooks yummy things in your kitchen and sells them to friends and family and people at the farmers market to having a full-blown business. Right. That is a journey.
05:44So how hard was the journey? Was it pretty good for you or did you hit roadblocks along the way? I would say that I just tried to take one step at a time and I think the cottage food license is an amazing license that gives you, especially if you wanna grow, an amazing opportunity to try things with a lower overhead.
06:12You don't have to follow certain rules. You obviously have to follow the license rules, but there's some leeway and there's some opportunity to take in feedback and adjust quickly to the feedback that you're getting from your customers. So I started as cottage food. And
06:33I made everything out of my kitchen. You know, I have two kids and I was making granola bars in the morning before they got up and then I would drop them off at the neighbor's house in like a bag or a box or something. And they would pay me in Vemo and then I got into farmers markets and you could talk to people and learn what the rules were that were coming up next in a way that was less risky.
07:03to kind of start that way, get your bearings, get a foundation, get the feedback, be able to adjust along the way and then say, yeah, I know I got a product that if I license it, I could actually grow this and I know what I'm going to take on in the next round of growth. And so after, so I had the cottage food license for a year and a half probably.
07:32went to enough markets, got enough feedback, and I was like, I think I can do this in a commercial kitchen, get licensed for that. And then I moved into different packaging and then I got the nutritional stuff. So I took it one step at a time. There's roadblocks along the way, but roadblocks that I dealt with at that period in time are much different than this period in time.
08:02I, yes, it was hard, but it was the right type of growth and the right speed in which to grow. And that's why I love that cottage food license. It just gave me the opportunity to take a little bit of risk, but to learn along the way. Yeah. And I'm going to say this, like for the record, because I talked to one of the ladies that is part of the cottage food place.
08:31from Minnesota and she was very clear that it's not a license, it's a registration. There you go. So, so I try to, I always try to say cottage food registration, not licensing because she was like, it's not technically a license. And I'm like, yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, that's very fair. That's very fair. Yep. And the other thing is, um, I was going to go somewhere here. Oh, with the cottage food registration stuff.
09:00It gives you a chance to really stretch and play with what you're making too. And I, I have mine. I have my registration. My husband has his because he makes a really fantastic yeast breads. And he keeps saying that he's going to sell them to the farmers market, but he seems to run out of time to make these threads in the summer because, you know, he was growing stuff in the garden and selling things. Yes. But, uh, I made granola.
09:28You know, not granola bars, but granola, the first year that he was at the farmers market. I didn't do it this past year because I was too busy doing a podcast this year, but people really liked it, but I had made it with raisins and almond slivers. Someone said to my husband, they were like, could your wife just make it plain, like without the raisins and without the almond slivers? And he was like, I'll check with her when I get home.
09:57And so I started making the plain granola and the plain granola actually sold better than the granola with stuff in it. So it's really nice, you're right, to be able to get the feedback and the questions and the things that people like and dislike so you can pivot or you can change. Yeah, and you can get enough of that feedback in an honest way because you're the one talking to them face to face. And if you get enough feedback going one way or the other, then you know, for sure.
10:25make the change and stuff. So that's really cool. I've gotten similar feedback too. So I have, I have granola as well. And I sold it in two different ways, one with stuff and one without stuff. And the, the one without the extras has one out and that's what, that's what we make now. So it's pretty interesting because people always want to add their own stuff.
10:48Yeah, and I mean the reason I put granola slivers, not granola slivers, almond slivers and raisins in the original batch is because that's how I like it. And I was like, well, if I like it, other people will like it. And then I was like, oh, well, maybe I'm just weird, huh? Okay. You're not weird. I think everybody likes stuff in theirs. So it was really neat and I was astounded.
11:11at what people would pay for granola. And then I realized how much you're paying for granola at the store with a whole bunch of stuff in it that doesn't need to be in it. And I was like, I'm okay with what we're charging for my granola. Mm-hmm. So, so what do you, what do you sell as granola bars? What do you, what is the stuff that you put in your granola bars? So all of our granola bars are gluten-free and dairy-free.
11:38We use a locally sourced honey, so we are actually licensed by Minnesota Grown as well. It's oats and cinnamon and vanilla, and then we make our own nut butters that we use in them too. Four of our granola bars, four out of our five granola bars have nut butters in them. There's a peanut butter, a hazelnut spread, and an almond butter. The fifth one is actually nut free, so dairy free.
12:07gluten-free nut free and it's called the you're welcome because it has all of the Allergens taking care of so it's kind of like that. You're welcome Care of the you're the allergens So we make our own nut butters and then each of them have a different type of flavor So the golden rule is chocolate white chocolate coconut the part in me is chocolate dry cranberry Sharing is caring is dry cranberry coconut almond the thank-you bar
12:36is our peanut free bar and that one has an almond vanilla flavor and then that last one I just talked about the you're welcome is dates and pumpkin seeds. Nice, and you're making me think of the Care Bears. You remember the Care Bears? Yes, I do. And they're all in the different colors too. Yeah. Nice. I love that. Okay. So when I was looking at your Instagram page.
13:03I looked at the packaging for the granola bars. It looks very professional. So I'm assuming you're not printing that yourself. No, I actually worked with a local Minnesota marketing firm or designer back probably three years ago. And I found this company called Replace and they support small business and they were willing to grow with me. And they've been my design company ever since.
13:33I met with them and we came up with the colors and the branding, the granola buddies that we have. And then so they design everything. And then I work with a printer that prints all of the wrappers for us. Okay, cool. Isn't it great when companies want to work with you? It just makes it so much easier.
13:57It means the world and especially as a small business, if there's companies that are willing to start small with you, like if there's less minimums or they're coming in with a lower hourly rate and they're willing to stick with you and they can see that you're going to grow and you know you're loyal back to them because they have good business, then they're willing to grow with you and that means the world is a small business when
14:27cash flow is not as big when you're smaller and you're just trying to get to that next step. So it has always meant the world to me and Minnesota has a ton of those people that care a lot about Minnesota food, the industry, CPG industry. It's just a great community to be a part of.
14:56very, very touristy state. I mean, half the people that live in the state of Maine cater to the tourist market from Memorial Day to Labor Day because people go to Maine for the trees and the ocean and the experience. And I moved to Minnesota about 30-something years ago, and Minnesota is so Minnesota-centric. Like the great state of Minnesota.
15:26I hear it all the time. And I heard the great state of Maine when I was growing up, but it wasn't like the news catch phrase. And at first it really threw me. And having lived here for this long, it really is a great state. It is a really great place to live. And when you meet people who want to give you a leg up or a hand up, they mean it.
15:53They absolutely mean it and they stand behind it. And so for the people that have helped you along the way, I think that there's a big thank you there. And so the please and thank you part of your name, I think that thank you goes a lot further than just the name of the company. Absolutely. My whole dream is can I be the people that helped me grow and get to the next level? How else can I share my knowledge
16:23And talking with people that are willing to say like, hey, I believe in what you have going on. I have this resource. Let's tap into it and see where you can take it. And I actually just had someone, you know, I had a conversation with another entrepreneur on Monday night at, you know, 10 p.m. because I ran into an issue and he's like, I got somebody, I'm going to give them a call. Let's figure out what we can do next. He's like, this is where he even said it.
16:53I couldn't always do this before, but now I'm in the position where I can help somebody else and I go, I'm going to be you in a few years so I can help somebody else too. So it's just this really cool community of us trying to help each other answer these wild questions that we all have. Yes. And when I meet people who I really admire, I have this thing that I say, I always say, I want to be you when I grow up and I don't want to be them.
17:21But I want to be like them. And I still say it and I'm 55. So I'm never growing up. I'm going to be a kid for the rest of my life in my head. And I think that's what you're talking about. You want to be, you want to be able to be like them when you grow up. Absolutely. And it's just, you know, giving back and bringing it forward. And, um, I think Minnesota, like you said, has a, an amazing community of people that do that and actually mean it on the backside.
17:51Yeah, and I don't want to imply that people in Maine don't mean it, but I just want to know. It sounds like I got to go to Maine. It sounds beautiful. It is very, very pretty. It is also very expensive to live there, which is why we didn't move there when we decided to move four years ago. We talked about it and I looked into it and I was like, well, we could afford land and a house, no problem, but can we afford to eat after we do that? So we decided to stay where we were.
18:19And I love where we live, so it's all good. But yes, anyone who has not visited New England needs to go. And you need to go like the end of September, 1st of October, because the bugs are not as bad and the trees are starting to change and the temperatures aren't as miserable. Cause it's hot in Maine in the summertime. It's really muggy, kind of like Minnesota. Yeah. We'll note it. So go visit.
18:47Go, it's really fun. And the food, oh my God, try everything. What's your favorite? Lobster, because I can't get it here worth a damn. Yeah, lobster in Minnesota is probably not the best, huh? I don't, I had someone bring me a lobster roll as a surprise gift from a decent restaurant at one point. And I will fully admit that I was in
19:14incredibly not gracious about it. I said, I said, thank you. And I bit into it and it wasn't quite the lobster roll that I expected when I thought of lobster roll. And I chewed up the bite and put the thing down and said, I really appreciate this, but I can't eat this. Oh, that's funny. You gave me your best shot.
19:39The friend that brought it said, why? And I said, because this is not really a lobster roll. This is some not great lobster in a not great bun. And they put stuff in it that shouldn't be there. And they were like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm like, it is not your fault. You didn't know. Now you gotta bring that friend to Maine so they can experience what a true one is. Yes, and I mean, I am terribly spoiled. The last lobster roll I had had before that unfortunate experience.
20:09was literally on the coast at the lobster shack, I think in South Portland, Maine, outside at a picnic table with a gingham tablecloth on it. I had picked out the lobster in the tank that I wanted the whole experience and it was lovely. No way. You get to pick the lobster that you're going to eat? Oh yes. All right. Oh yes. I can picture this. I like it.
20:38They pull the live lobster out of the tank. They take it back. They put it in the hot water. They cook it. They break it up. They do the thing. And the funniest part about that whole story is my second son, well, my first son of my body. Long story, I have a daughter. I have a stepson. I have two sons after the stepson. Second- You got a full family. Yeah, first son of my body was like four or five at the time. And he saw the lobsters in the tank and he thought that was super cool.
21:08And I said, so you're going to try eating lobster? And he said, I'm not eating those big red bugs. I was like, well, fine. You don't have to eat the big red bugs. I will eat your share. So it was very, big red bugs. Yes. But anyway, go to Maine, eat all the foods. It's amazing. Um, okay. So we're at 21 minutes. What else can I ask you? Oh, you said you make, you make like breakfast granola too.
21:37Yes. Yep. Okay. And is it the same flavorings as the granola bars or is it different? It's slightly different. So this one is a cinnamon almond flavor. We make a hazelnut spread and we melt that down and use that as our coating. And then it's got extra cinnamon flavor and some almonds and some pumpkin seeds. It's a really, really good...
22:02granola for like yogurt in the morning. Lots of people love to put it on their vanilla ice cream at night too. And it comes in like clusters almost. So you can just, you know, put your hand in the bag, grab a little chunk and eat it like a potato chip. But it's better because it's yummy granola. And it's called Yes Please. So it's like granola trail mix. Yeah, there you go. Nice. Very nice. I was going to ask you back before we got onto the whole main thing.
22:32The packaging that you use, you're very aware of your customers and the gluten-free and the nut-free and the dairy-free. What's the packaging made of? It is a post-consumer recycled material. So it is made from recycled material on the front end and then you can specialty recycle it on the back end if you want. But
23:00Being on the trend of CPG, single use packaging, and doing that in a way that doesn't take away from the earth was really important to me because we're all running around, right? We're all trying to grab that convenience snack and it has a wrapper because it's supposed to keep the food safe and share all the information, but then it just gets thrown away, right? So I hope that we can stay on this trend of.
23:30Not only is the packaging made from recycled material, but then eventually the technology will catch up with us in which it can then be recycled on the back end while keeping the food safe and keep the shelf life safe. Because that's the other thing we have to think about is if the packaging doesn't support the food and the safety or the shelf life of it, then we're creating food waste. And so it was a, it was a
23:59learning experience to go from my bars are always in compostable packaging, but my bars only lasted for six weeks in compostable packaging. And that's not going to work in the long run. So then I got into opaque packaging that I'm in now that's made from partially recycled material, but then keeps my food safe up to nine months. And so now I'm extending the shelf life without changing what's
24:29And so what's really important to me is can my packaging be just as good for the earth as we would hope any packaging is and we don't add to the earth, we help it. So that's a long-winded answer to my packaging is made from post-consumer recycled material.
24:53That is a perfect answer and I expected absolutely nothing less. I figured with everything else you were considering, that was probably the answer I was going to get and I'm so glad it was. Yes. And now that we're looking into new machinery, I need to get into new packaging and so I'm having my packaging company do a lot of research around. How do we stay on that trend?
25:20make sure that the packaging is small enough to make it through the machine, but it's still made from post-consumer recycled material, but it keeps the food safe. And what's interesting about now going into a flow wrapper is we have less material for the packaging. So it's actually
25:44less waste that we're going to be using and I think we can continue with the post-consumer recycled material with this new packaging. So that'll come out next year when I get new machinery. But it's something that I think about and I think it's really important to stay on that trend and help the technology evolve. Absolutely. You are the person that is going to change the world. You already are doing it.
26:14I'm so pleased that there are people in the world like you who are really considering all of these aspects of having a business because the world is not the healthiest place right now, the planet. And I want people like you to be being ingenious and brilliant and putting your stuff in the world so that everybody else sees that it can be done. I appreciate that. And thanks to people like you that
26:41like to talk about it and spread the word and ask all the questions because there's lots of us out there that are thinking about it and we just need people to be interested in it and like care about that too because when you go into those types of packaging ideas or the ingredient ideas and you lean into high quality, there comes a cost with it, right?
27:10about how it's being produced and the care that goes into it, they're more okay with paying a little bit more, right? So if my bar is on the shelf and it's 50 cents more than somebody else, if you look into that and you ask the questions, well, it's a small business. They don't have the economies of scale or they're paying attention to packaging or they're paying attention to nut butters.
27:40more okay with the cost difference, right? And so it's people like you that are asking the questions and helping people understand, and that's really cool. I'm trying real hard to ask the really important questions. And when people say things to me that I'm not quite sure of, I definitely ask them to clarify and I'm like, I'm going to push you a little because we need deeper, bigger answers than what I was just given.
28:08And I feel bad about it sometimes, but I'm like, yeah, this is what I do. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Absolutely. And then you can, you can dig into, is that actually a real answer? Is it not a real answer? Yeah. And I haven't had anyone yet be offended. So I'm just going to keep trying to ride that wave of not offending, but making sure that the answers are what I need out of it. Yes, absolutely.
28:37because I don't want to offend people. I want people to feel safe talking to me. Well, you're really fun to talk to. I'm having a lot of fun. Good, and I don't want to hurt people's feelings either because that just hurts me too. I don't, I never feel good coming away from a conversation where I'm like, I think I might've hurt their feelings. I feel bad about that. Because not only did I hurt them, I hurt me in the process. So I try really hard not to do that.
29:06To end this interview on a really fun note, I have a story about my foray into making granola bars. It's not very long. I tried making granola bars years ago and I used honey and vegetable oil and biggest mistake was chocolate chips because I did not realize that if you put chocolate chips in an oven to bake granola bars, the chocolate's going to burn.
29:36So I ended up throwing away an entire pan of granola bars, which never made it to the bar stage because they smelled so terrible. We had to open all the windows and open the doors. So is there a secret to making granola bars? I mean, I want you to give away your trade secrets, but how do you do it so that you can have the little chocolate chips or whatever in them? So the ones that have chocolate chips in them are actually no bake. So four of my bars are no bake bars.
30:06Um, we make them and then press them down, cool them down, and then we cut them and package them and they, they don't need to be baked and, um, they meet all the requirements of, of shelf life. The only one that is baked, um, is the, you're welcome. And that's what the dates and what we do with that one is we reduce the water activity in it so that the shelf life is longer. But that's the only reason we baked that one. So, um,
30:35Four of the bars are non-baked, and then the granola is baked for that cluster, that crunch, and then the Your Welcome is baked so that we reduce the water activity in it. Okay, well the recipe I used must have been faulty because it said, I did everything it said to do, and I will never ever do that again because my house smelled like burnt chocolate for two weeks. There you go. And the baked ones sometimes are a little bit more crunchy, right? Our bars are a lot more chewy.
31:05They're softer to the touch. And so they just have a much different texture than what's out there. Yours are the kind that I really like. I don't like the hard ones. I don't want them to break teeth. I don't want to break teeth. I really don't. So all right, awesome. Brit, this was so much fun. Back at you. And thank you so much for your time today. This was amazing. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right, have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

The Food Movement

Today I'm talking with Rob at The Food Movement. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Rob at The Food Movement. Good morning, Rob. How are you? Good morning. I'm well. How are you? I'm fantastic. Are you in Illinois? I am. I am talking to you right now from Arlington Heights, Illinois. Okay, yeah.
00:29My mom grew up in Illinois, so I have a little geographic knowledge about the state. I'm in Minnesota. It is a beautiful sunny day here. I don't know what it's like where you are. Oh, yeah. No, the sun is shining. It's actually relatively warm. It's in the 40s today. Yes. For anyone who listens to my podcast, I usually ask about where you are in the weather because I feel like asking about the weather is asking...
00:55How are you? Like it is how I say I care about you. So for anyone who's never heard the podcast before, that's why I do it. Well, likewise, what part of Minnesota are you in? I am about 40 minutes southwest of Minneapolis. Okay, cool. Yeah, so. I know the twin cities very well. Yeah, corn and soybean country is where I live, so. Yeah, I've driven through it.
01:19Yeah, it's really, really pretty. It's much prettier in May and June than it is right now. But we have to have the winter too. The winter is the tax we pay to enjoy the spring, summer, and fall in Minnesota. Yeah, I like having all four seasons, but I don't know, this year here in Illinois, I think we skipped right past fall and sort of an interesting year weather-wise.
01:45It sure was. And I'm really hoping we get a reset in January and we can have some normal, moderate weather for 2025. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about this and she was like, our gardens didn't do anything. And I was like, no, neither did ours because the weather was crazy. So anyway, that leads me to tell me about yourself and what you do, because what you do has a lot to do with food. Yeah. So for the past
02:15Oh, 24-ish years. I've had a company called Whole Earth Marketing and we sell nutritional supplements, primarily to independent health food stores. And I love this business so much that in about 2009, I became a partner in an independent health food store in Gurnee, Illinois called Earthly Goods. Sorry, I'm giving you the long version, but- No, that's fine. Tell me.
02:45And so a business partner and I acquired a store called Earthly Goods. It's no longer there, but had a good 20 plus year run in Gurnee, Illinois. And about two years into it, we realized that it was a lot more work than we thought running a store. We had some complications, staff left and things like that. And we conveniently got an offer to sell the store. And we did that.
03:15Around that time, I had been working on a line of private label superfoods for our health food store. And I really wanted to do something in depth. I didn't want to just accept something turnkey from a manufacturer. So I started sourcing superfoods from around the world. And my naivete led me in some really interesting directions.
03:44For example, importing superfoods from other countries or any kind of foods is a really complicated and potentially risky business. You really don't necessarily have to, which is what I found out later. There are ways to navigate that. In that process of putting together a line of superfoods for the health food store I was part owner of and then selling that store.
04:14The food movement was born. I said, I've done all this work. I've come so far. This could really be a business venture in and of itself.
04:25And that became the food movement. Okay. So do you have a background in the science of this, or did you just learn it as you went? So I think my background coming into the industry would best be described as herbalism, which is somewhat of a science, but also a traditional school of healing.
04:53So, you know, my interest has always been in sort of the overlap of science and tradition, whether it be herbs or food, you know. So no, my background is not primarily scientific, but I do find the science quite interesting and relevant. And, you know, one of my favorite books when I was starting out in the industry working in a health food store, I was the book buyer. And there was a book.
05:22called the scientific validation of herbal medicine. And I really thought that was cool, because I thought, you know, here we have traditions of thousands of years sometimes that cultures have found the validity of these foods and herbs, and they've seen the results, you know, in their culture and their trial and error. You know, traditionally using herbs, there was no scientific validation.
05:51going back thousands of years. They really didn't exist, you know, when culture started using herbs as medicine. But in the modern era, it's exciting and, um, you know, interesting to see the validation of these traditional, you know, because it's really as simple as finding out that a plant can be medicine. And if you discover that garlic, for example, can kill just about any kind of
06:19And this is today validated by hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific studies. But where did we learn that? We learned that from traditional cultures. The wise women and men who lived it, didn't study it, but lived it, yes. Absolutely, yeah. And that's, and so the name the food movement for the company that I started coming out
06:49the Earthly Goods days was meant to put a pin in that intersection of herbs as food and food as medicine. And so I think, you know, we have a model in allopathic Western medicine, which is to have a symptom, I want to relieve it, I'm going to take a substance. So I've got a headache, I'm going to take ibuprofen. Problem solution.
07:20But there's a bigger picture when you look at what do you consume, you know, 99% of the time when you don't have a symptom presenting. And how do you treat your body holistically and on a day-to-day basis? And I think that mindset is becoming more and more popular. And people are seeking that out. And more so than looking for a magic bullet. Which
07:49really hard to find a magic bullet. I've never really found a true magic bullet that would be you know an antidote for the 99% of what we do. But thinking holistically, looking at what we do every day, what we consume every day as part of the medicine I think is really, it's really a growing, it's been there for just since time began probably. Sure and
08:17I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to push you a little on what you're doing because there are lots of supplement companies out there who are selling things that aren't necessarily good for you. So I guess my first question is where are you sourcing the ingredients for what you're selling? Yeah, so it really varies. We make a wide variety of supplements at the food movement.
08:46And the first thing I would say is that, you know, the name of our company, the food movement is meant to draw a distinction and an alignment with a tradition in this business that has been around for many years, the trade organizations. So, um, and the reason I make that distinction is because since my time, starting in the health food business where there were many
09:14legacy companies that had really good practices. In the modern era, we've seen hundreds, if not thousands, definitely thousands, I should say, Amazon supplement brands popping up. Never heard of them before. And suddenly they've got X, Y, and Z product Moringa. And, you know, I can tell you where we source.
09:38Armoringa and that Armoringa is, you know, just as one example, just picking on Yes. Moringa, the miracle tree as one herb. You know, we source Armoringa from Asia, from reputable suppliers that provide us with testing to show that the product is what it says it is and that it's not contaminated. And then we, as part of our good manufacturing practices, which is validated by FDA.
10:08we then do our own testing. So it's not enough to accept the testing of the supplier. Obvious reason being, they have a good motive to lie to you. So finding the right supplier that has vetting a supplier is an important part of the process in the supply chain, but then doing your own due diligence. So every product that the food movement makes is third party tested multiple times.
10:37And we test for, and these are industry standards, you know, every good company does this. We test for microbiological contamination, and then we test for heavy metal content.
10:52And then the third aspect of that is botanical identification. So just making sure the Moringa is Moringa. And there's essentially like a botanical fingerprint that validates that. That's the easiest part. But it's an important part because sometimes, you know, depending on who you're buying stuff from, you have no guarantee that it is what it says it is.
11:21Yes, and that's exactly what I was trying to get to. So thank you for telling me all that. And I'm not picking on you, Rob, at all. I just, this is my podcast. I'm the only one doing it. And I have to make sure that what I'm telling people and what I'm letting people tell my listeners is accurate. So I'm not trying to be a brat about this. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate a little bit, if you get what I'm saying.
11:51Well, yeah, and I could play, you know, devil's advocate in the other direction. You know, I think, I think it is important to hold supplement companies accountable. It's also important to hold drug companies accountable. Oh, yes. Yes. Important to hold food companies accountable, you know, and I will just, I hate to harp on this point about, you know, you're talking about supply chain. So how do we know the food movement products are good?
12:20And so I'm going to use some concrete ways that we're doing third party testing, whatever. But we also go a step further, which is that we recommend you buy our products in a local health food store close to you. There's some great stores in the Twin Cities. Mastells is a store in St. Paul that I highly recommend as a great source to buy not just our products, but products that are also reputable.
12:50They're very thorough in how they look at what they carry. I'm sure many other independent stores are as well. Because you can Google this, fraudulent supplements sold on Amazon. So you have brands that have been sold for many years. Two that come to mind are Host Defense Mushrooms and Now Foods right here in Illinois. And they found that there were sellers on Amazon
13:18that were making counterfeit versions of their products. They actually found this out on one of the host defense products, there was a typo. So someone, some criminal, I hate to say it that way, had made a counterfeit version of their product. You're hoping what was actually in the capsules was not harmful. Right. But at the very least, it wasn't what it said it was. And...
13:46That's because when you buy things online, you have less accountability. Both of those companies that I just mentioned, they only ship directly to customers, to retail customers, wholesale customers in this case. So if you go into Mastel's or any other health food store and you buy a host defense product, a now foods product, a food movement product, you know the chain of custody has been
14:16honored has been properly handled and that it is what it says it is because it came directly from the manufacturer who does their due diligence. So I think it comes back to dealing with reputable brands and when people go and I'm you know I might get in trouble for saying this because you know somebody's gonna there's somebody out there who has an Amazon only brand who's gonna say wait a minute you can buy good supplements on Amazon what are you talking about but
14:46And I'm not saying you should never buy anything on Amazon because since, you know, this fraud and counterfeiting of supplements came out, I understand that Amazon has put processes in place to try to validate in a greater way the products that they're carrying and you know, that's great. That's fantastic. But I think it's twofold. You know, one, when you walk into a health food store, by and large, they're
15:16brands that they have vetted, that our industry has vetted through third-party means. And so there is some accountability. You can feel good about what you're purchasing. And if you ask the store, how do you know this is a good brand? What made you decide to carry this brand of Moringa? They have an answer. Well, they do third-party testing. Their sourcing is consistent.
15:45You know, they have good relationships with reputable suppliers. Mm hmm. Okay. Awesome. So now my next thing, I, I am not at all downplaying what you have created because I think that supplements are very important and have their place. But I also feel like we should as a human species be getting most of what we need nutritionally from our diet.
16:15Now, you know as well as I do that our country does not promote people getting what they need nutritionally from their diet. Thank you McDonald's and Burger King and all those places. And the reason I even bring this up is because I live on a 3.1 acre property and we grow a garden every summer and we try to grow things that are good for us to eat that support our bodies. And so what is...
16:44Why do we need supplements, I guess is my question. Yeah, so there are a number of reasons. So as we kind of started off saying, we have really two kinds of products. We have whole foods as supplements, really just whole food, superfoods, really no different than something you would have grown and dried and.
17:12you know, in this case powderized, but they haven't been processed, they haven't been extracted. They are raw foods, essentially. And I take the case of maca. So I'm going to venture to guess that you don't grow maca on your farm. No, no, we do not. And that's probably good because there have actually been studies that found that the
17:41And it grows in that climate, in that region, in part because of the altitude. It's a high altitude. It's also a very rich volcanic soil. And it is native to that area and they've tried growing makarut in other places. There was a study published looking at cultivating makarut in Eastern Europe, because that could be a great cash crop, you know, over there. But
18:08They found that it did not have the same potency, didn't have the same properties and qualities that indigenous maka root does. So Peru realizing this and maka being a cash crop, they only allow the export of maka root as a finished product. In this case, ours is certified organic, traditionally sun dried, and it's in a powder. So,
18:37I say all that to say, you know, maka root is something you cannot grow yourself. Right. Very, you know, to my knowledge, it'd be very hard and it would not necessarily be as good as what you're getting from Peru. And maka offers as a whole food, some really unique benefits. So I think the answer is probably both. And that word, supplement, you know, so it's not replacement. We don't sell. Right.
19:05meal replacements or food replacements. We sell something to supplement your diet to give you benefits that you would not necessarily get from just the diet that you already eat. Okay. So you've brought up maca a couple of times. What are the benefits of it? So maca, yeah, I mean, maca is a great example just because, you know, it is something you
19:34to source from the region it's indigenous to, from Peru. So it's a great example. Same with moringa. I mean, you can grow moringa other places. So these are the foods we're offering as supplements, right? So maca itself is what we like to call an adaptogen. And adaptogens are plants that can non-specifically increase a state of resistance. So it means basically that they strengthen the systems of the body.
20:04So a lot of people feel more energy taking maca. It also has been shown in studies to help with reproductive health. So it has some hormonal balancing properties and that could be, you know, on one end of the spectrum, helping, you know, somebody's reproductive health. And then you can extend that.
20:32out to later stages of life. It's been shown to help with things like prostate health and dealing with symptoms of menopause.
20:44Okay, that's what I wanted to know because I know nothing about maca. I think I read about it maybe five years ago and went, eh, I don't need it. And then I didn't look at it again. So thank you for the information. Absolutely. Goodness sake. It's allergy season again in Minnesota. It's dry and gross here. Oh my gosh. Sorry. Yeah. Yes, I won't try to recommend any supplements.
21:12for your allergy symptoms on this podcast, because that is one thing we don't do. We're not, and that's an interesting distinction with supplements, right? You have the laws in the United States. You sell supplements to support the natural structure and function of body symptoms, but not to treat disease or illness. And that's an interesting sort of line there. It's a law called Deshae.
21:42And people don't always stick to those rules. But certainly there are lots of great formulas that can potentially help with allergy symptoms, for example. But that's kind of the crossover between food and what we would call medicine. And another thing about supplements, what you're saying.
22:13you're growing your own food. And the question is, why would I need supplements? You know, can't I get it all from food? And I think I the reason I brought that up is, is I want to hope that we can get what we need from our food. But I know we can't. So go ahead. Well, and you got to look at the the evolution of the human body. And it happened over thousands, if not millions of years, where we've adapted to our environment.
22:41The problem is that our environment has radically changed over the last 100 plus years to where we're not just dealing with, I mean think about, and you may not be living this way, but the average person has, I mean, I can only speculate, 100 times more stress than we did in our evolutionary history. I bet it's even higher than that, but yes, I get what you're saying. And we have, let's say...
23:10100-folds, 100-folds more exposure to pollution, kinds of pollution that we never dealt with. So I think the point being that in the modern world, our nutritional needs may be increased beyond the level that normal, even normal amounts of food might provide. Yep. Yeah. Because of this, you know, even...
23:38the sort of mainstream government bodies recommend adding B vitamins to enrich cereal products. So it's actually since 1998 a rule that if you're selling, you know, grain products that you're supposed to be adding B vitamins like folic acid and niacin, other B vitamins, very small amounts. You know, I think that's where our industry differs because if you want a therapeutic
24:08you probably are going to look towards a supplement outside of just enriched grains. And I'm not sure. I would rather eat less processed grains and take a more effective supplement. So I was, I was just going to say the same thing. Okay. We're on the same page here. Yeah. I mean, you got to look at if you, you feel like the, I feel like the body is a natural healer. If you give it the right nutrients that it can
24:37heal itself, really. And so that's where the original approach to supplementation that I encountered, if you go back maybe not even quite a hundred years, but the early 20th century, where folks were talking about using vitamins in conjunction with the whole foods diet, it was to identify deficiencies. And one of the biggest deficiencies, and I really
25:06zoom in on this for the food movement. One of our areas of focus are minerals and trace minerals in particular because that's an area of deficiency that we don't often talk about. People talk about vitamin deficiency. Oh, you know, look at your diet. You're really not getting enough B vitamins. You're dealing with a lot of stress. You need to think about
25:34water soluble, they don't build up in the body and they may help. A lot of people feel a real difference taking an effective B vitamin supplement, but the minerals above and apart from the vitamins. So magnesium is a major mineral. A lot of folks find that they're not getting enough of in their diet, especially if they're eating at those places you mentioned before.
26:02If you're on the Super Size Me diet, you're probably magnesium deficient. Most likely, yes. But there's this broad range of over 70 trace minerals that in our evolutionary history were part of our diet because they were part of our agriculture. When people were doing crop rotation, when people were doing composting and those kind of things, there was a natural balance of trace minerals, trace elements that were
26:32recycled, you know, that were part of the life cycle. Switch fast forward to a big agra, you know, modernized food systems. And there was a turning point. You could call it an evolutionary U-turn where big agra decided, you know what we really need to make big profitable crops in P and K, you know, we need these three elements because they're what make plants.
27:01grow strong or grow big, I should say. And N, P, and K are nitrogen.
27:12Oh my gosh, nitrogen, phosphorus.
27:22And potassium maybe? Yes, thank you. Okay, yep. Well, it's definitely Monday over here. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, thank you. But yeah, the focus on those. I live in cornfields. I hear about nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium all the time. And if you look at our natural evolution, we weren't getting crops that were fed just nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
27:49they had a broad range of other minerals. You know, they had, and if you look at even just traditional farming outside of big agra, adding things like limestone as a natural source of calcium, that puts nutrients back in our food. You know, the trace mineral is a little more elusive because it's at a trace amount.
28:19So you're talking maybe parts per million, and what the modern system has said, your body doesn't need that. I know it was there for thousands, millions of years as we evolved, but we don't see a need for it. And I think the naturalist looks at how things have evolved and how they've been done prior to now, prior to modernization, and they go, wait a minute, if it was part of the system,
28:48part of the cycle, if it was part of how we evolved, the need for it may not be as pronounced as, for example, a calcium deficiency or magnesium deficiency, because you need more of those. We know that you need much larger amounts of calcium and magnesium than you do of, say, chromium.
29:16thousand milligrams or more of calcium a day. You need, based on what we know, micrograms of chromium.
29:27But there's no chromium in the crops that are being grown with NPK as fertilizer by big agro. And where else are you going to get chromium if not from a supplement? Early natural products looked at supplementing with nutritional yeast was a really popular kind of whole food supplement. And it's naturally rich in chromium.
29:55is a big factor in blood sugar metabolism. It helps to regulate insulin sensitivity in the body. It's a big correlation between potential blood sugar disruptions and chromium intake. And you don't need a lot. We're talking about maybe hundreds of micrograms, so less than a
30:26but there's still great evidence that you need these micro-minerals and rather than picking ones out to supplement, well let's just take some chromium and then let's take some manganese. What the food movement is focused on is a broad spectrum of these trace minerals as they occur in nature and we use a very ancient plant material called humates.
30:54And that's what we sell as black earth minerals. And that's made from lignite, which is basically, like you say, very, very old plant material that's broken down over long periods of time. And then it results in these organic acids and this broad array of trace minerals. Wow, that's a lot of information. So I'm gonna, I would love to have 10 more minutes of your time if you have it.
31:24Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So I want to break this down into layman's terms for my listeners, because I'm listening to you and I love words and I read a lot. So everything you're saying is actually sinking in. But what it comes down to is what you've done is you have taken these really good for people things, broken them down into things that can be ingested and used by the body
31:55So my big question is how does this stuff taste? Because I know kids who take medicine and will spit it out because it tastes gross. So how do the supplements taste? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm realizing now I didn't say it at the start, but it's part of the Hippocratic oath. Do no harm? First, do no harm. Primare no ser noctum, right? That's our...
32:23primary responsibility and that's partly why it's called the food movement, you know, because there are some really interesting supplements that are not food and that are, you know, things that can be useful. But I think the safest path forward is to stick to things that are food. The exception to that is probably the black earth minerals which are made from food because it's very old plant matter broken down. It is...
32:52I'd sort of say it's ancient foods. Sure, yes. Like ancient grains, but ancient foods. Yeah, yeah. But the answer to how does it taste, I think the greatest thing, we have a lot of parents that use our black earth zeolite, which uses our black earth minerals with an extract of volcanic mineral called Kleinoptilolite. Sorry, I know I'm throwing out a lot of food.
33:20As you say, I'm throwing out a lot of terms here. And, you know, I think, but the bottom line, I think this is, I love words as well. And I try to be clear and not just to throw words around. And I think one of the great things about Black Earth Minerals is that we didn't come up with this, you know, one supplement that's been very popular lately, sort of because of social media and whatnot, is called Shilajit.
33:49And you may have heard of that one. I'm sure some of your listeners have heard of Shilajit. It's just really trending. It is an ancient Ayurvedic from India, Indian traditions, humate. So it's very much like our black earth minerals, but it comes from India and it's sourced up in the mountains. And you know, and I say that to say, a lot of these influencers are saying, you really want Shilajit that tastes bad.
34:19You know it's good stuff if it smells like a horse's feet and it tastes the same. That's how you know you got the good stuff. I'm sort of going like, well, this is an interesting world that we're living in now. When I got into this business, people complained that spirulina, it's an amazing superfood, but it tastes so terrible. The industry responded by making products that had spirulina and then a bunch of sugar
34:49flavorings like wild berry and banana. So you take something that's naturally not necessarily tasty, and then you try to make it fit the modern paradigm. We don't do that. If you look at our black earth minerals, we have a black earth fulvic, is just the most basic liquid extract. Most of the feedback we get from reviews and things like that is that it does not taste
35:19bad. It does not taste strongly. I think I would put our black earth minerals up against Shilajit as tasting a heck of a lot better, get a lot higher compliance with kids. And that's not to say there's anything wrong with Shilajit. I mean, Shilajit, I love, you know, what taste is a matter of conditioning. So they say you have to taste something I've heard like what 11, 12 times before you'll develop a taste for it.
35:50And in American processed foods, we develop a love for salty and for sweet, but maybe not as much for savory or bitter taste. And I think that the more I have changed my diet since I was young and eating more processed foods, I develop more of a taste for those.
36:16I mean, Shilajit, you know, we don't sell that. We sell a North American version in our black earth minerals, but it's got this smoky, bitter kind of flavor that I find myself sometimes kind of craving. There's a different company, not our company, but that has a Shilajit honey. And it is this complex taste. You know how sweet honey is? I mean, it's like.
36:44It's just pure sweetness, right? And nothing tastes like honey. It's very sweet, but yes, nothing tastes like honey. So I'm guessing you're going there with this. Well, you gotta look for the Shilajit honey because I mean, they call it campfire honey, not because you eat it around the campfire because it tastes like it fell in the campfire, but it's got a smoky, savory taste to it. And I just, I think,
37:14There's something to that about, you know, a lot of our products are made to not be tasted. To your original point, you know, that if you dilute our minerals in water, it will change the color. It gets very dark because of the fulvic acid and the humic acid, but it really just tastes like water. I mean, our ultimate trace minerals, 10X, is a black earth mineral that you dilute in water.
37:42put about 20 drops in a bottle of water or whatever you're drinking. And I don't taste it at all. And a lot of the reviews we've gotten say that they don't mind the taste, they don't notice the taste. It's a very...
38:00you know, not a strong unpleasant taste, if anything. So neutral. Yeah. I think that's a great way to put it. Kind of a neutral tasting way to take these minerals, whereas other kinds of trace minerals that we don't make, like the ones that are extracted from the Great Salt Lakes, it's a good way to get minerals, but they're very, very salty. And if you don't dilute those, man, you will just spit it out because it tastes like you swallowed some of the ocean.
38:29you know, which you don't swallow that, you know. Yeah, and if you can taste that much salt in something you're drinking, you probably shouldn't be drinking it. It's not good for your body. I think it's okay. You know, it really depends on how much salt you're taking in otherwise, you know? Right. I think trace minerals from the Great Salt Lake, just to be sort of objective about products we don't make, you know, that they're good sources of trace minerals. You do want to dilute them.
38:58but it's more about how much salt. Like if you're taking that supplement and you're eating at McDonald's where they're adding a lot of sodium, then you're gonna spike way high above what your sodium intake should be, but probably more so because of the processed foods. I mean, if you're eating whole foods and you're, let's say you're adding Himalayan sea salt, you know, or I'm sorry, Himalayan salt or sea salt to your food, I think you're safe to add a reasonable amount.
39:27You know, your body will kind of tell you. But if you go around eating cheese whiz, you know, that's been spiked with tons of sodium, yeah, studies show that your body will start craving more sodium than you really should be taken in. And since you said all that, I always anytime I have anybody on the podcast who is talking about supplements or.
39:56herbal, I don't know, salves or lotions or anything where you are taking something into your body or into your skin that you don't normally do, make sure that you talk to your doctor before you start anything new. And that's only because sometimes things do interact with maybe medications you're already taking or maybe you have diabetes and something that you are going to take is going to mess with that. So
40:24Anytime you're going to start a new thing that affects your biology, talk to your doctor. That's all I want to say about that. Yeah, no, I think that's a very safe recommendation to have. And you know, I think that's a really good thing about that is it may make people think about
40:46the medical care that they have. Because if you go to your doctor and you ask them about Shiela Jeans, what are they gonna say? Or if, you know, and if what they say is, well I- They're probably gonna say, what is that? They're gonna say, well, I don't know. And if I were in that position, that doctor, and I didn't know, I would say, maybe you shouldn't take that because I don't know what it is.
41:14So this is gonna sound really harsh, but I don't mean it this way. A question you may wanna ask yourself in addition to asking your doctor is how much do you wanna be limited by the knowledge range of your doctor? And is it time to shop around? Are there holistic doctors that may have the medical knowledge you're referring to, but also some of this natural information? So there are...
41:43integrative doctors, and you can have more than one healthcare practitioner, right? You can go see a general practitioner and then go see a rheumatologist. And if you want to get really radical, you can go see an herbalist. You can go see a wise woman as you, they're still out there. So, I mean, it's, I think it is a great suggestion of what you just said to ask your doctor. But I think in this modern
42:11realm we have to be ready for that answer of I have no idea what you're talking about, you know? Yes. And thank you for pointing all that out because I was going to say back 10 minutes ago that it's unfortunate that our doctors, our general practitioner doctors are not really up to date on herbs and minerals and vitamins because they're really not.
42:39Our doctors that we have, my son's doctor is fantastic. I love her, but if I brought up Shilohji, she would be like, what are you talking about? And she's really, really smart, but she wasn't taught this stuff. And so when we go to our general practitioner for a checkup, they're like, okay, so your heart rate is good, your blood pressure is good, your lungs sound good, your skin looks good, you can see, you can hear, you can talk, go home. Yeah.
43:07There's so much more to health than just those five things. And so I think that what you're saying is absolutely right, that you can have a general practitioner who gives you a checkup like your car would get at the mechanic. And then you can go to a nutritionist and say, I'm kind of feeling puny.
43:32If I eat these things, but I'm feeling great if I eat these things, I think there's a disconnect somewhere, help me. And you can go to an herbal person and be like, okay, my nutritionist said, and then we got talking and she said, I want to talk to you because you're going to know things I don't know. And then you go to a rheumatologist. I mean, there are so many people who know things that the other ones don't know. And it frustrates me to no end. I can't, I'm not allowed to talk about.
44:01why my son has a doctor who he adores. And it's nothing life threatening, but it is definitely a life inconveniencing. And I wish that his doctors would talk to each other more about how to fix the problem, because it's going to be a lifelong thing, and it gets in the way of him having a fulfilling life. And so I'm probably gonna end up stepping in here in the next six months and saying, okay, guys,
44:31The things you're doing aren't making this better. I mean, it's not as bad as it was, but it's not making it better. Who do I talk to who knows more than you? Because I need someone who knows more than you on this. And I think I've, you know, I could, I don't wanna go, you know, over your time here, but you know, the, I will say I've got a daughter who's at this point an adult. She's
45:00one of my kids is in college and thankfully we discovered something called functional medicine. And so she went to see an MD starting in her early teenage years because she had a wide range of issues. And he was functional medicine is a phrase that can possibly be helpful. You know, looking for a practitioner who practices functional medicine.
45:29I'm sure there are many different kinds of functional medicine, but it seems to include nutrition and focus on things like food allergies. In her case, my daughter's case, she found that cutting out gluten, cutting out dairy, cutting out corn, and originally some other things that she added back in like eggs. She eats eggs with no issue at this point. But it was...
45:58Number one, identifying those potential irritants or I don't know if you'd call them pathogens, but just foods that you're sensitive to or maybe even allergic to depending on the person. And that's something you don't get from a general practitioner in my experience. They don't, you know, they might send you to an allergist or a nutritionist, but functional medicine seems to be kind of straddling.
46:28couple of those realms and also dealing with supplements. And one of the things that's really interesting is now, and with that practitioner as well, they sell supplements. So you go in, you find out, okay, you're sensitive to gluten, you're sensitive to dairy, cut those out, you're gonna see a huge benefit. They may recommend some lifestyle things. And by the way, you need to take these three supplements and we have them behind the counter.
46:58Right. And that kind of enters into a whole new realm there where now the health food stores are complaining, wait a minute, you know, they could buy a lot of those things from us at a better price, but you know, the doctors have identified a revenue stream. So you get this, what it used to be, I think what I've found is that 20 years ago, those kind of doctors were sending people to the health food store. Yes.
47:27as a practitioner has really ramped up. And, you know, it's neither bad nor good, right? I mean, I think it's good in, but, you know, it goes back to your point about your kind of having to be the advocate for your child and to navigate in between these practitioners and these options. And that's where something like common sense goes. You know, I know Dr.
47:57Smith, it's not the name, but you know, let's say Dr. Smith is recommending this $50 supplement that includes CoQ10 and some other things. But I'm thinking that I could maybe find something and I'm going to get in trouble with any functional medicine. Wait a minute, he's telling them to go off their script. But we have to navigate these things for ourselves between what one practitioner says or sells.
48:27and what our common sense tells us and what our own research tells us. And I think it's gonna be a good process if people really trust themselves and they trust their ability to, you know, because I think a lot of times we get made to feel it's the way medical expertise works. You know, trust me, I'm a doctor. And you're supposed to sort of relinquish a certain amount of control.
48:55You know, my uncle was a PhD scientist at NASA at one point. And he said, you know, I look at my practitioner as a consultant. He's not telling me what to do. He's giving me advice that I'm paying for. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, Jerry, your doctor must love seeing you walk in the door if that's your approach, you know.
49:19Yeah, doctors don't love me either because they're like, you need to do A, B, C, and D. And I'm like, well, what about E, F, and G? Because I know there's an E, F, and G coming down the pike. So, so yeah, I always tell my doctors when I meet them, I'm like, so I read a lot. My dad was a, he was in the medical field. So I learned a lot just by listening to him talk about his job. You're probably not going to like me much. And they usually just laugh. So. Yeah, you know, and their jobs aren't easy. And.
49:50They have limitations, things like liability, right? If that is one thing I've been told, and this may be changing, I'm sure it is, but I've been told point blank by practitioners, look, taking whole foods and vitamins may be very well and good, but it's outside the scope of my malpractice insurance. So if I start telling someone to take Shilajit, and they have a terrible reaction,
50:18I'm liable for whatever reactions they have and that's not a risk I'm willing to take. Yep. It's so the medical profession and the medical thing we have in our country is so frustrating and so difficult to navigate sometimes. But on the plus side, at least we have it because I would be
50:42I would be heartbroken if anything happened to my kid that I was talking about and his doctors are very good with him. So I'm thankful for them. And on that note, I'm going to let you go because we've been talking for almost an hour, Rob. I didn't mean to wind this so far out. Well, thank you. It's been a great conversation and I agree with you that, you know, doctors are very important.
51:09And I think food is very important. So it's an interesting conversation. You know, we've got to, we've all got to find, you know, what works for us and our families. And thanks to you for asking important questions. I always do because I have something called got to know itis. I want to know all the answers possible before I die. Rob, thank you so much for your time and you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks, Mary. I hope you have a great day too. All right. Bye.