A Tiny Homestead

The Homemade Mess

Today I'm talking with Jessica at The Homemade Mess.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Jessica at the Homemade Mess in South Dakota. Good morning, Jessica. How are you? Good morning. I'm so glad to be here. I'm so glad you had time. Hi. It's really hard this time of year starting in September. Harvest season has begun and then the holidays hit.  And I'm like, okay, who's going to be available to talk to me?  Yes.
00:3030 minutes isn't a hard time to carve out of the day. Well, it is and it isn't. It just depends. It depends on what people have going on and what time they have available. And things come up and they can't make it. And I'm just like, ah-ha! And it's not 10 o'clock at night? Yeah, I don't do... I try really hard not to record past 6 o'clock at night because I am not on my game at past 6 o'clock at night. Yes. That seems to be the only me time is after 10 o'clock.
00:59Nothing else is there. Well, that's because you're a mom and you're a home sweater and you're busy and you're a teacher. Yes, I am. OK, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. So I am I live in central South Dakota and I grew up in North Dakota. I did have did grow up on a ranch. And so when I married my husband, I always had these big dreams. I was going to I was going to marry a rodeo guy. Right. And then I fell in love with a fisherman.
01:29So  we,  love him to death and we, um, he really isn't into the homesteading, the animals, the, he's a fishing and hunting guy and that's, that's what he does. And so, um, we moved, he's not my husband's alignment. And so we moved to a really small town.  Um, there was no Walmart. So I said, we're not moving there. We compromised and we moved there.  And so,  um,
01:53We, I really didn't have land.  I do have some horses and I do barrel race as well. And so I didn't have land. And then up until probably a year ago, a little over a year ago, uh we found like our dream place and it was like, God willing it happened and it worked out. And so we really are like living out our dream now.  I do also teach.  I teach in a very small town. have 11 kids in my class.  And then I'm a full time or full time teacher.  I'm a mom. And then from after that, after
02:23whatever time I have left is when I do my social media business. um I actually started it in late  June of 2025, so like not very many months ago. um And I kind of blew up, um which is I'm very grateful, but um I don't really know what I'm doing on social media quite yet, which might, the half a million followers might seem  like I do, but I'm just living on a prayer and winging it over here. But um we live day by day. We don't really know.
02:52I don't really know what I'm doing in life yet, so here we are.  You are in one of the most wonderful and most frustrating spots of life right now because  winging it is really fun, but it can also be really scary. Yes. Yes.  Especially being like, nobody prepares you for motherhood. You could Google all you want, but then you become a mom and you have no idea what you're doing. So I'm like trying to figure that out.
03:20trying to figure out my social media business and trying to be a good mom and be a good wife and take care of all the hundred thousand animals I decided to accumulate and it's busy. Yeah, just just be a good human and everything else will fall into place. Yeah. Okay. I have a couple questions regarding your your answer to my first question. um How many kids do you have? Just have the one. I just have the one. Yep. He's 18 months.  Oh my that is a very busy busy time. Yes,  very busy.
03:49And then did you teach at a bigger school before you moved? I did, yes. I taught in a very large school district. I taught in a school district that had 12 just elementary schools. So it was about 20 to 30,000 people in elementary. So I taught in a very large district. And then I came down here and I had nine kids last year. I didn't know what to do with my time.
04:15So how many kids were in the class size before this new place? About 30. Oh, wow. So this is a huge change for you. Yes. Yeah. also, before that, I taught in really big district. And then I taught  over on um like a um meeting reservation school. And then I taught where I'm at now. So  there was a little bit of steps taken before I got to where I'm at now.
04:45Yeah, very large class sizes. Do you enjoy the smaller class size more because you can give the kids more attention one on one? Yeah, I do.  It comes with its challenges as well, though.  The small school district also comes with a school, so it comes with a small community.  The small community was hard for me to adjust to. OK. All right, that makes sense.
05:11Okay, so your place is called the Homemade Map. Yes. So why did you call it that? I feel like that really encompasses what I do. we are, I really encompass the reality of that life is messy. I also want to normalize the fact that like not everything is Instagram perfect, especially like the homestead we live on. My kitchen is really my main recording place and my kitchen has become a large.
05:40profile of who I am  as our social media presence.  But it really encompasses the fact that life is chaotic, life is a mess and it's okay.  And it's normal. um Just embrace that mess and really  soak it in because that mess doesn't last forever.  And one day you're gonna miss that mess.  Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh my goodness, you just hit a button, I'm sorry. um
06:09I'm 56. I've raised four kids. Oh gosh, I love that.  And uh they're all grown and  it's great.  I swear to you, I love the stage of my life.  do. Yeah. But I miss my kids, you know? Yeah.  I swear to God, every time I think I'm going to get through a podcast without tearing up, I can't. So  it's okay. ah
06:35The other upshot is that once your kids are adults and hopefully you've raised them the way that you hoped you would. A hundred percent. And all move out and they're good human beings and they're doing their thing. Your stress level comes down immensely. I bet. I can't imagine. Today we, I had to get my kid out of the vent of the house because he was stuck and I thought he was going to fall to the basement. Oh my. like, Oh my God. I was like, what? When does this end?
07:03Um, the sweet spot is when they're about eight or nine years old. Oh good. I look forward to that. Because I don't want to rush life. I really don't. I really, I really like where I'm at now.  Um, but nobody prepared you for that part of life.  Oh no, there's no, there's no owner's manual as it were for kids. No, but as far as social media, that is something that I feel like is really not normalized.
07:26Um, especially as a new mom, like when I was feeding in the middle of the night, what was I doing scrolling social media?  And I feel like when I was, when I was doing that, I was, I really felt degraded on myself.  Um, cause I didn't have, I didn't have number one, I don't have family around. So I didn't have a village, right?  Um, and it wasn't even about the village because really our village has changed over the years. mean, I can get Amazon prime in two days now where we couldn't before. So like, I do consider that part of my village. Um,
07:55But I didn't have I don't have family around here. So like, when I was scrolling social media, I felt like there was really nobody out nobody out there that  or that I had found they are out there.  But that really normalized like the mess in not only like my kitchen, but in like life, but also in like homesteading, you know, like  I really um that's one thing that I really wanted to encompass and I couldn't really find that and I wanted something
08:23to give me answers. And that's kind why I created it.  All of my recipes and all my platform is completely free  because I do think that that is really important for moms  and not everyone is um in that financial space where they can afford healthier alternatives. um So that was something that I wanted when I was scrolling. When I was scrolling, I wanted someone to give me the answers right then. I wanted someone to read that it was going to be okay. You made the thing that you needed. Yes. Good.
08:53Good job. That's what we all should be doing. That's why I started the podcast because I needed  a place to talk to people who were doing things like I was doing. So same premise. Yes, I love that. Yeah.  And, and I'm just going to reiterate life is messy. I mean, I  came down with some upper respiratory thing back the first week of October and I am finally over it. took like six weeks to start feeling human again.  Oh gosh. I feel that.  I feel like that's our house on rotate.
09:22Yeah. And my downstairs right now is not very nice.  It's a mess. There's stuff everywhere. Yeah. But that mess is temporary. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes life takes the front seat. Well, being able to function, being able to get the dishes done and laundry handled when you're sick is enough  for at least that first couple of weeks when you don't feel good. um But the other thing about life being messy is that you can spend three days getting your entire
09:52kitchen and living room,  cleaned up, organized and spotless. And within two days, it's going to look half as nice as it did the day you were done. Two days? I wish mine would last two days. Well, you have a little one. So  you get some slack on that.  You just you cannot make your house a museum. It has to be lived in. Yes. So, OK, tell me about your homesteading stuff.  What do you do that classifies as homesteading?
10:20So  my main platform  is in my kitchen.  number one, my platform is I do 100 % think that everyone should have um the knowledge of learning how to can and preserve food. I think that that is a skill that is really dying. And I think that everyone should have access to that and for free. Bravo.  Whether you need it now, but I think you should know how to do that.  And so like a really big part of my platform in my homesteading community is learning how to can and preserve your own food. And that's
10:48um not only for my garden, but it's also supporting local people. So  I feel like a lot of people sometimes think that they can't homestead because they live in an apartment. And that is like so far from the truth. You can homestead in a studio if you want to.  It's all about learning how to  really just be self-sufficient. And  that all starts in your kitchen. um don't need cows in your pasture. You don't need goats. You don't need chickens.
11:15you don't need a chandelier in your chicken coop with wallpaper like that's so far that's so far fetched and we really and that's fine if you want that I'm not at all hating on people that do that like I love that and I really would want to be that but that's just not reality  and so like I feel like that is a really big  homesteading space right now and so I like really wanted to bring that back  and and just let that let homesteading be part of everybody's life.
11:44And you can do it from anywhere. And so a really big part of my homesteading space is canning and preserving your own food and dry mixes. I have a really big space in dry mixes as well. Like transferring your homemade dry or store bought dry mixes to homemade. Number one, it's cheaper. You can do that. So if you are not in a space to be able to afford store bought mixes, then not only you can do it frugally, but you can do it with less ingredients and a healthier alternative.
12:14um But outside my kitchen, I do have lots of animals. um Some that I have accumulated over the years. uh I have like chickens for, and my husband's rule, I have to preface this. My husband's rule is that I cannot have any animal unless it serves a purpose.  And so if it was up to me, I would have everything. um But he really humbles me. um But we have chickens, um obviously for eggs. We tried meat birds one time. ah
12:43one and only time I will support local ranchers before I do that again. um But I have we have goats as well. We have geese,  we have horses,  we have cat well, we don't have to herd of cows, but we raise them for our own consumption.  But that's really the extent of our animals that we have here.  We have a few like random birds. um We'll just chop those up is like I have them for my mental health. But but that's really the extent of
13:12our homesteading here as far as animals.  I do have a garden, it's about an acre garden.  And that is an absolute jungle after the first month.  But it still produces. So,  but that's the extent of my homesteading.  Most of my homesteading space is canning and preserving inside my kitchen. Okay, cool. That's awesome. And I agree 100%. I think that every freaking person on the planet
13:42who has the means and the ways to learn to cook should. And I say it on the podcast all the time. If you want to save yourself money,  learn to cook. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And it's not like I get, I get comments all the time on my platform  asking like, I would really like to start, but it costs a lot of money.  And sometimes I think that a lot of different platforms,
14:04Like it really doesn't cost a lot of money to start. You don't use what you already have. And that's a really big thing that I say on my platform all the time. We are absolutely  not an aesthetically pleasing homestead. We use what we have.  So,  um, and that's one thing that like, it doesn't have to be,  it's only expensive as you make it. You know, I think that people really should use Facebook marketplace a lot or thrift stores or goodwill. Um, like they have a lot of really good things there and it doesn't have to cost a lot.  I found my first set of matched dishes.
14:34you know, plates  and coffee mugs and  salad bowls  at  Goodwill. And they are Faultscraf. They are like a, you know how mallard ducks have that greeny blue color on them? Yes.  They're that color. I love them.  I broke at least a quarter of them in the five years that we use them consistently because dishes break.  Yeah. And now when I'm feeling nostalgic for when I finally decided I needed matching dishes,
15:04I will pull out some of those plates and use them, but I don't use them as often as I did because I lost a quarter of the setting that I had.  And I finally bought restaurant style white plates, bowls  and mugs because I was sick of dishes breaking. And if you want dishes that don't break,  get restaurant style dishes because they're meant to take a beating. I've actually never thought of that. Yep. gave up. genius.
15:31I gave up because I really love Faults Graph. I think they make some beautiful dishware, but they're stoneware. And if you hit them just right, they break. They break right in half. And we've had this restaurant style set for over a year. And I think we've broken one plate and one mug out of a setting of 12. I love that. That's a genius idea. Yeah. Cause I was just like, I'm so tired of buying pretty dishes and they-
16:00break and then I'm out, you know, a dish that I need.  So there are lots of ways to do it. And  I'm actually glad that you're very kitchen focused and cooking focused  because just before I got sick, I had 6,000 words written  for a, basically a book on how to kit out your kitchen and what needs to be in your fridge and your pantry and things like that.  And I am just now getting my brain back to where I can sit down and edit it.
16:27and I'm hoping to have it up on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. Yeah. By the first of the year, wish me luck. And I wish you the best of luck because that is something that is definitely, I think needed in that stage of life. Yeah. And it's so funny. I keep talking about this on the podcast and with friends that it used to be that your great grandma, your grandma and your mom would teach you these things. And
16:57moms are not teaching their kids this anymore. I did. I taught my kids how to cook and how to get out of kitchen because  it's important to me, but it's not as common as it was.  did not have that. I am completely self-taught. Okay. I taught myself how to can and preserve food right out of high school  because I started reading ingredient labels  and doing a lot of research. And I was also going to school to be a health and fitness coach at the time. Oh. And so I
17:23I started reading ingredient labels and at first I didn't until  I started going to school and doing my research, I actually really didn't even know what a lot of these ingredients were. um I thought I grew up on these foods. I grew up on Pop Tarts for breakfast and no hate to my mom. She's probably going to listen to this podcast. So I like no hate to my mom. That's just what we did. um And so we had a lot of ramen noodles and we had a lot of canned soup and that's just what we had and that's what we ate. And so I didn't really know different. um
17:53once I, I shouldn't say I did no different. I did. I didn't know ingredients. I didn't care. And so once I started going to school and started to be doing a little bit of research, I started reading ingredient labels and I knew that if  I wanted to be the best Jessica I could be, um the first thing to change was my diet. um And so that's kind of what started there. um And then  I have like, I cannot let food go to waste. That's like my,  I can't do it.
18:22My brain will not let me do that. uh So I started canning  and then  I had  many fails before I  was successful at all. um But I didn't have that either. And that's something big on my platform too  is people come to me because they didn't have a mom or a grandma to teach them how to do these things.
18:43And so I really work on not over complicating it because I did I was in that stage of life too where I where I needed somebody to like literally grab my hand and teach me what to do because I Didn't know and I mean ten years ago YouTube was a thing of course, but it  wasn't as a big of a platform as it is now  and so  I needed somebody to  teach me and to walk me through it and and Do it with me and so that's kind of what I created my platform on was on to
19:12was that I want people to realize that it's really easy. It's not as over complicated as it seems. I am self-taught and trust me when I tell you if I can do it, you can do it. And the best part is you don't have to put pants or a bra on and leave the house. You just do it in your house. Yes, exactly. Jessica, do you mind if I ask how old you are? I am 28. I love that. There are so few people under 30 who are interested in doing what you're doing.
19:41I am.  I'm going to do this again. I've said I'm proud of people  all last week and the week before. I'm proud of you. You're doing a great thing. Thank you. I do think, though, that it is  it is coming back,  especially  with like I don't I am not going to get into politics, but especially with the um like um things that have been brought into light about what ingredients really are. Yeah. And  that that how  normal it is.
20:11And so I do think that canning and preserving, not even canning and preserving, which is making food from scratch, like my dry mixes, for example. um I sell, do sell,  all of my recipes are free on my page, but I sell um label kits for dry mixes that has over 35 dry mixes that you can exchange um store bought to homemade. And I think that that is like a first step into really becoming self-sufficient on yourself or really um getting to food freedom. I think that's really important. And I don't think...
20:40I don't think there's ever going to be a time where we can't depend on stores. Like we just live in  the  age where we will have to depend on stores. I'm confident of that.  But the less that you can get there and the more you can make at home,  you know what's in it. You don't have any of those, you know, emulsifiers in your food. Then that's a win in my book.  Okay. I have two things I want to share regarding what you just said.
21:09I learned how to make homemade mayonnaise uh a good eight years ago, maybe 10 years ago.  I don't do it very often. I should do it more often, but I'm the only one in the house who likes mayonnaise, so I'm not gonna make it every week because I don't use it every week.  And there is something incredibly magical about watching  something like that come together because it seems impossible.  And the first time I did it and I saw it,
21:37go from olive oil and  egg and whatever was in it  to  mayonnaise. I stood there with my mouth hanging open because it was literally nothing and then it was the thing I needed it to be. That is even small alternatives like that. I  have a lot of them on my page, but the  DMs or the comments on all of my platforms that are like, I had no idea you could make this like powdered sugar or brown sugar. Yeah. Like people don't
22:06And that's no fault of their own. Like they just don't know. It's  just lack of knowledge. So  once they know, well then you take that information and do with it what you will. But  it's  just knowledge and knowing that you can do it  on your own. can. And it's stuff you already probably have at home. And it's significantly cheaper. I mean, my platform is about doing it on a budget. It is significantly cheaper.  Maybe  not. You could probably get some really cheap mail.
22:35because olive oil is really expensive. But um brown sugar and um powdered sugar or tanning your leftovers, I mean, you could do that for pennies on the dollar, really. Yes, absolutely. And the other thing that I made, speaking of the dry mixes you're talking about, I made a homemade ranch dressing because I actually love ranch dressing. I  am very vanilla in my taste, Jessica. I don't like spicy.
23:03Me either. don't like bitter other than coffee. Freaking love coffee, but I can add sugar to that.  And I didn't want to keep buying ranch dressing at the grocery store because it has all kinds of preservatives in it. And I worked at this for  a whole summer trying to get a ranch dressing that I liked with actual real ingredients from scratch.  And I finally looked, I finally Google in, finally typed into Google, cannot talk this morning,  real ranch tasting.
23:33recipe and somebody had come up with one that used buttermilk either dry buttermilk  or or just buttermilk  and I use in mine to buttermilk powder. Yeah, and I tried it and it tasted exactly like the ranch dressing that I buy at the store and I was so excited.  Yeah, and and the dry buttermilk is so weird because if you put it in your coffee, it's it's it's basically like a creamer.  Oh, we don't drink coffee, but that's a good thing to know.
24:03So not only did I have uh the stuff to make a good ranch dressing, but if I was out of milk, I had something to lighten up my coffee. Yes, of course.  So that helped. But when it comes to talking about preserving food,  you certainly can can things  and you can freeze things and you can dry things and you can freeze dry things. Yep.  Am I missing any? um
24:32You could freeze dry, could dehydrate. Dehydrate, yes.  Yeah, you can can. um That's like the main ones I do.  can. um That's it. That's the main ones I do. Yeah.  On my page. Yeah. Because I do I actually don't have a lot of freeze dry. Well, I don't have a freezer currently right with me but  around my house. But um I also realized that that's not something that  a lot of people have.  that's expensive. And so
25:01um Most of my  content is about using, like I said, using what you have.  So most people have a freezer, a dehydrator,  and then my canning. Yeah, and I want to throw in here a dehydrator is not that expensive to acquire. You can get them at thrift stores for very cheap. Yes. Or you can buy a new one for less than $50.  Yes.  Yes.  I will say that they're like with a dehydrator,
25:30If you're purchasing new,  you get what you pay for. um so especially if you're going to be using it in bulk, um using it often,  you get what you pay for when it comes to that. And that's really with anything, but um I got mine at a thrift store. All of mine have been from thrift stores. um and they work just fine too, but yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is, is if you don't have a dehydrator, if you have cookie sheets,
25:58You can dry things in the oven at the lowest setting that your oven will do and it doesn't have to be a gas stove. It can be an electric stove. Yep.  Same with canning.  You can can and preserve food and that's kind of,  there's multiple ways to do that. You can can and you can do oven canning or what they call dry canning. You can do pressure canning. You can do steam canning. You can do water bath canning.  It's really just what method.
26:25is easiest for you and what you are really knowledgeable about.  A lot of people throw out their botulism like they truly understand what it means. ah And so  just being aware of  number one, using what you have. You don't have to go out and purchase a pressure canner if you're not comfortable with that. But just using what you have and just understanding that even with canning, there's multiple ways to can.  So  we talk about dehydrating and freeze drying and freezing.
26:53Um, and canning and so even within canning, there's a lot of ways  to get the end result. Oh, absolutely. It just, the one thing I will say about food preservation is before you get into it, do your research.  Yeah,  especially. and  I mean,  I do like to think that I'm a really good resource for a lot of people, but a lot of people go to social media, including myself.
27:19A lot of people go to social media looking for support or answers to their questions. Like I said, I did it too. And I still do it. uh so like they,  TikTok is the new Google, right? TikTok is a new search engine. So uh I do it too.  But a lot of people, a lot of creators are, oh and vacuum sealing. I forgot that one.  Vacuum sealing as well. um But a lot of creators are really good at fear mongering.
27:47Um, and so a lot of people don't want, don't want it to can because like I said, they're afraid of botulism and a lot of creators are, are, are throw a word vomiting that, that word without truly educating people on what that is. And so that is, I feel like a wall that I run into on my platform is like retraining you that botulism is not something to be afraid of, rather it's something to understand. It's something to be knowledgeable about.
28:15Of course it's a real thing. I'm not going to disregard that. ah We know it is,  but you have to be knowledgeable about it.  I personally am a rebel canner.  I  100 % believe in that. aah But it's all  about education  instead of throwing out that word. People are scared of that.  And so that really turns a lot of people off of that.
28:41Yeah, and that's part of reason I'm saying do the research. Find someone who's been canning for 20 years and knows what they're doing and have them  quote unquote hold your hand through learning it. exactly. And don't just believe the first thing that you read, you know? And that's with anything really and not just canning. Like just do your research. Yeah. And I'm not  about, I'm just about informed. I want you to be informed before you make any decision,  no matter what that is.  And I want you to have real facts.
29:10Yeah, for sure. And the other thing is that this stuff takes time to do. Yes. I'm not saying it's going to take you a week to can some tomato sauce, but it's going to take you a good day.  Yep. And maybe two days, depending on how... you might fail. Yeah. And depending on how practiced you are. mean, when we did tomatoes  four years ago, it took us two days to get through it because we were hot and tired and we're like, let's do the rest tomorrow.
29:37When we did them last year, only took half a day. Yeah. So  it's all about learning. It's all about practicing and it's all about getting comfortable with the things that you are doing. Yes. And being okay to fail. Yeah. Like failing is really part of your learning process and I know it stinks. I know it does.  you learn from your mistakes, especially with canning. When you do spend two days getting, you know, making your tomato sauce and  you figure out that...
30:05you know, three or four jars didn't seal. Like, what do do with that now? And so just, just, just knowing that, that there's a possibility that you're going to fail and what are you going to do from that failure? And that's just not just in canning, but life, know,  definitely.  Um, I love that because we made our tomato sauce that we made two summers ago. Now  I don't love it. My husband and my son will eat it. I don't love it because they made it with different, a different variety of tomato. um
30:35And it's not as sweet and it also had to do with the growing conditions that year. And so I'm very excited. We're going to be canning tomato sauce over the new year weekend, I think this year. That's what we do too. We make it, we, we all put all of our tomatoes in a freezer and make it a winter problem. Yeah, that's what, that's what we did too. And, uh, I have eaten a few of the tomatoes that I know we're going to be making sauce out of and they were so good this year. Oh my God.
31:04So very excited for New Year's weekend to be working because we always work on holidays. We were always doing something that there just hasn't been time for. I love that. That's something that I wish that  I shouldn't say I wish something that I would like to have is to have like a community, local community that does that together. And  I live very rural. uh I live, I live two hours, three hours from like a Sam's club or a Walmart.  do live, there's a Walmart about an hour and a half away from me, but
31:33So I live very rural and there's not a lot of people around that do that. So that is one thing that I wish that I had was just a community here to do that.  Well, it'll just be my husband and I. We are the community on this project, but  at least we have each other to  keep ourselves entertained while we're cutting up tomatoes and smooshing tomatoes and juicing tomatoes. Yes.  All right, Jessica, I would love to have you back because I feel like there's a whole lot more that we could talk about. I would love that.
32:02Okay, awesome. Thank you. Where can people find you?  You can find me on all platforms. I am under the homemade mess on all platforms. I am on Lemonade, TikTok,  Facebook. I'm on threads, Instagram,  but I'm under the homemade mess on all platforms.  Good job, because I just talked to a lady the other day who has to consolidate all of her stuff in the new year.
32:25And she was kind of poking fun at herself. And I don't think she realized that she was going to get as big as she did, as fast as she did. So I'm really glad you don't have to do that too. didn't.  well, I, so I started in late June.  Um, and  I've, I've built a community of half a million followers, have no idea what I'm doing on social media yet. there, um, with that came a lot of struggles. So I have,  I  think I have my, my ducks in a row. think there might be a few, um, off track, but.
32:55I did, I have prepared myself for the, I have learned from the struggles that I already had. So hopefully after the new year, I know with like after taxes and all that fun stuff, there'll be some changes that I have to make, but hopefully my ducks are at least going the right direction. Well, please keep doing what you're doing because you are doing a fabulous thing.
33:19Well, thank you. And I appreciate you  reaching out and I'm excited to get the homemade mess out there and really share our story.  Awesome. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  Jessica,  I know it's Sunday. I wish I'd talked to you on Friday so I could say have a good weekend, but have a good week. You as well. Thank you so much for having me. Yep. Thanks. Bye. Bye.
 

Catching up with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres

Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15% off your registration costs.
00:29And that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Becca at Moonridge Acres. I think it's the name of your place in Alberta, Canada. Good morning, Becca. How are you?  Hi, I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. Is Moonridge Acres the right name? That is correct. Yeah. Okay. And do you, you have a separate page for that or not on Facebook?
00:59I actually do have a separate page for it, but I don't really  use it very much. um just, I'm spread a little too thin, but eventually I would like to do it and have it be more, you know, promotional for the horses. But  right now it's just kind of sitting there. Okay, cool.  I  looked at your personal profile. was like, I know she has a business name, but I couldn't remember it. And I was like, oh yeah, Mooner Jakers. Okay, cool. So how's the weather in Canada this morning?
01:29It is brisk. Brisk is what I would call it. It's, I think we were at minus 11 last night, that's Celsius. So I don't know what that works out to in Fahrenheit. I'm still, I'm trying to get the conversion in my head, but it's not going super well. So yeah, it's cool. It's one of the cooler mornings that we've had so far. And honestly, this is a really great fall. It's been really nice. So I can't complain.
01:59Is it sunny there? Sunny? Yeah, it is. is sunny. It's,  uh, Alberta's kind of known for being cold, but sunny. So  you, you get  one,  one  evil and one good thing. You know, the sun is nice. Cause when it's dreary and cloudy, that's just depressing. Yeah. Um, yesterday all day, looked like,  um, dusk cause it was rainy and cloudy all day yesterday. um
02:28And I was okay with that because the weatherman was predicting that we were going to wake up to one to three inches of snow this morning. And I was excited. Oh, wow. And I got up and we got like half an inch of snow. I was like, it's going to be another one of those winters where they hype the hell out of the forecast. And then we get nothing. I swear every single year, like in the last like four years, they were like, this is going to be the worst winter ever. And then it's fine.
02:55Like, I'm not sure  if they get more clicks on that. Like, maybe they make more ad revenue by saying it's going to be terrible. I'm not sure. I have no idea, but I was  in my five-year-old pram of mind of, okay, it's going to be the first really nice snow. It's going to be beautiful when I wake up. And oh no. No. I  was also excited because my dog loves the first real snowfall of a couple inches because she goes out and rolls in it.
03:23And I was so excited for her to go out the door and be all crazy. And now I was like, okay, well, this was not the day already.  No, they seem to be doing that a lot. told us  Calgary, which is just  a boat three hours south of us, they got  a decent dump. Like I think it was  10 inches or not 10 inches, sorry, 10 centimeters. ah And they said it was coming our way and  to expect  a big storm and nothing.
03:52Yup,  I don't believe the weather people anymore. The weather is what it is doing outside my window right now. And right now,  it is really windy. It is 28 degrees and I would call it brisk. So I think we're probably in the same, the same. I think  so. think Fahrenheit to Celsius, believe 20 is zero  Celsius. So we're minus 11 Celsius. So that's gotta be like.
04:21I want to say around like the, in the single digits of Fahrenheit, I think. So we're having kind of the same weather day. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you've been on the podcast twice. They have been wonderful conversations. And just to catch people up, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Uh, so I breed miniature horses, um, here in Alberta and we breed for
04:48show purposes um and we show them and my, you know, my whole social media is all about promoting the breed  and hopefully getting more people  to get into them  and see that miniature horses are truly awesome little creatures.  I really, really love them. ah And yeah, that's,  we're all about the minis right now. Okay. So in the first interview we did,
05:15You had mentioned rabbits and goats. Do you still have those? So I no longer have my rabbits. I would like to get back into the rabbits eventually. I really miss my rabbit people because I did rabbit shows as well. um But right now  I am just spread too thin. I don't have  the time to give them proper care and rabbits are very time consuming because they're all in individual cages.
05:44and they all need individual feed. And it's just a very time consuming uh hobby to get into. I just, I'm spread too thin right now to  do rabbits  to the best of my abilities. ah And so we're pausing on that. I would love to get back into them though, cause I really do miss them. Okay. And do you still have goats? We do still have the goats and they are just ruling my life.  They're feral in my yard for whatever reason they don't leave. So I don't lock them up.
06:14And they're just,  you know, eating my horse food  and causing troubles.  That sounds about on par for goats. Yeah, they're just  out there living their lives and being menaces. Okay,  and did you have chickens? I can't remember.  No, we did not have chickens. We would love to have chickens. Like, I mean, I would love to have a whole lot of everything, but...
06:39um We're just kind of limited on space right now  and  the the minis are  currently our  major focus. Okay, I just wanted to check in on on what I remember. Well, I went and listened to both episodes this morning. I was like, what did she say to me the first time?  And I was like, there's got to be I don't know. I didn't know if you were just really focusing on the horses or if you still had the other things. So  and that's
07:05You are still- My husband would really like me to get rid of the goats because they eat all of our trees  and they're they're just menaces and I don't do anything with them other than laugh at them when they climb on things they're not supposed to. ah But I just really enjoy laughing at them.  They are highly entertaining and my husband is really thankful that I have not like demanded that we get goats because he knows how much I love them.
07:32Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're big trouble. um I like, yeah, there's something about them that I love,  but they're really more trouble than they're probably worth.  But here I am. Yeah, I use demanded loosely because I never demand anything from anyone I request. don't demand. But the thing is, is that I really love the baby goats, the adult goats. I'm not as thrilled with so.
07:59So I just let other people raise goats and I go see the babies when they're little and then  they take care of their goats and I just get the benefits of seeing the babies when they come. That's fair. The babies are so entertaining and I'm not like breeding the goats anymore because I can't really sell them.  So  it just, doesn't make sense  to continue on with it, but I, yeah,  I am entertained by their shenanigans.
08:27Yes, to quote Dawn's dirt. She's another person that does a podcast on Bershett  or something like that is her last name.  Her podcast is Dawn's dirt.  She calls that tic-tac-titioning, math-ing.
08:43That's awesome.  Now anytime somebody's talking about  it not making sense to do something because there's no return in it, the thing that pops into my head is tic-tac-titioning every time now. That's funny.  I love it. And she's in Canada too. Oh, no way. Yeah, I can't remember.  I want to say Alberta, but I could be wrong. I would have to look it up. Yeah, I'm going to have to look her up too and see. It's always good to connect with some other
09:12you know, Canadian people that are  probably trying to do  the same thing that I'm trying to do. Yeah. If anybody wants to listen to Dawn's podcast, and it's really great because she's,  she's very, very blunt. She's, she's friendly and she's honest and I love her, but she does not pull any punches.  And she's, she's, uh, she's very, um, anti-government.
09:38And she's very honest about that too. So if anybody wants to listen to it, all I have to do is type in Dawn's dirt in  Google and it'll come up. promise. That's awesome. I might have to do that. So anyway, um I want to learn more about what's going on with the mini horses, but I want to say that I am so glad you're still in the world because I saw that you hit a moose. oh yes. I just did that with my favorite.
10:05car ever. I absolutely loved that car so, much. um And it's,  you know,  I got really lucky because it was a cow calf pair  and I  was paying attention. It was just a really bad lighting situation. And, you know, where they came out of the trees were super close to the road. So  I saw mama and if I would have hit mama, we could have had a much different outcome. um But I swerved and I just
10:35just nicked the hindquarters of  the calf  and  it totaled my car most likely. I'm still waiting for insurance to let me know on that. But you still haven't heard yet?  No, I won't know probably until the end of this week or even early next week.  Oh, my goodness.  And, you know, the adjuster was like, start car shopping.  And I'm like, OK, I'm going to find a vehicle that I really love and then you're going to fix my car  or.
11:05You know, it's just one of those frustrating situations where the insurance companies make it really convenient for them  and you're at their mercy. So,  the best option is, is you find something  you like and you do have your vehicle back. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would be happy to have my vehicle back. um Unfortunately, I'm probably going to have to look at getting a truck because in reality I was probably towing a little bit too much with that vehicle. um
11:34And  it sucks because I really, really did like that vehicle, but a truck will be more versatile, I suppose. Yes, absolutely.  And I'm not giving you a hard time. swear I adore you. But it could be worse. It could be so much worse. So much worse.  at the end of the day,  my daughter didn't even feel the she was like, what was that? And I was like, oh, you know, just our car crumpling into an oblivion.
12:03But she didn't even know what happened. you know, like I  had a slightly sore neck the next morning. ah But I couldn't even tell. It kind of felt like I just slept on it wrong. So I'm not even sure if it was related. um So,  you know, us being okay is all that really matters.  And I'll  whine about that car for a little bit, but I'll get over it.  Yeah. And like I said, I wasn't giving you a hard time.  And I am  so glad.
12:32that you are okay and that your daughter is okay because that could have been a terrible outcome for both of you. Yeah. Most are no joke. So the last time we talked, we talked about your horses and we talked about the PayPal fiasco that you have since gotten figured out  and really, really quick. Can you catch us up on how that got fixed? Cause it was actually a very simple fix once you knew what to do.  Oh,  it's so like looking back, it's so frustrating that I
13:01had to go six months in just  absolute agony over this. ah Because what ended up happening was it wasn't that Metta wasn't trying to pay me, it was that PayPal was rejecting the payment because I used a PayPal account that I had had open for years. ah They had asked me to verify my account uh like years ago.
13:27And I had never logged into the account. I never saw the notification and the notification just went away. And so there was no notification and I had called PayPal. They didn't know about this. They had no idea. Facebook obviously had no idea about it. then Greg from PayPal, I called, I asked and Greg was eating his Wheaties that day. He was like,
13:55This is what you got to do. And it was like a two second fix  and boom, payment in my account and life is good.  So  yeah, and it has been fine since. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is uh specific to Canadians. ah It is a regulation put in by the Canadian government that any deposit over a thousand dollars needs to have a verified account.
14:21And that means like with your driver's license and you know, it was a couple steps to get it verified, but it was easy and now we're all good. Good, because I know that was driving you absolutely bug wonky to use it when my mother uses. I mean, you know, was beyond frustrating. Like I had $50,000 sitting in that account.
14:45that I couldn't access and my husband was on disability and like we were, we were struggling and I was at the point of like, do I give this up and just, you know, get a real job or,  or what do I do? Right. Because I'm like, I'm seeing this money here. Like I know it's working,  but it's not working if I can't access it.  thank Greg from PayPal. are my hero.  Shout out to Greg. Yeah.  Okay. So.
15:13Let's get to the horses, because I know that's what you really, really love and what you really, really want to talk about.  How many babies were there this spring? Ooh, this year. So we had five babies total,  but one of them was in the fall, and that's been a whole situation. Okay. So yeah, we had  the first four were born all without a hitch. Everything was great. um And then...
15:42We had the never ending pregnancy  of  the mare that I picked up, George,  from Tennessee. I drove to Tennessee and I picked up this mare in Niagara Falls and drove home  and she was bred.  And  she was supposed to be  due most likely at the end of June.  And  we got to,  the baby was born September 7th. So  it felt like she was pregnant forever.
16:12Um, so yeah, the,  uh, that whole scenario, but this little baby, such a sweet, sweet baby. And we've had problems.  Uh, her mama wasn't making enough milk. Her mom just got diagnosed with Cushing's.  Um, but we've got her all figured out now we're bottle feeding her,  uh, just as like a supplement.  And  it's been great. It's been great. I think I've learned 10 years of knowledge just with this one full.
16:41Which is going to be terribly beneficial to you in the future. So yay. Yes, exactly. It's the, we're just getting it all out at once. Like I feel like a pro now.  Good. Awesome. And the fact is you're never going to know everything because that would be a lot to keep in one brain.  Absolutely. Is this, is this the fool that's named after your friend? It is. Yes. Okay. Can you tell that story without crying or would you rather not? um
17:10I mean, I could give it a go for sure. Okay.  We're, we're,  we're a little bit more healed.  I don't know about healed, but anyways, um, so  my neighbors  were,  they moved in a couple of years ago and we got connected because they were looking for someone to feed their cats.  Um, and  I offered, you know,  as my services to make a little bit of extra money  and we ended up becoming like,
17:40close.  And the this July, I was at Stampede  and the husband of the pair called me and informed me that  Crystal had been in an accident  and that she was gone.  And that was just like, oh, I have no words.  I
18:07I cannot imagine and I feel just  so awful, know, like  you go through the last thing that  you said to that person or, you didn't respond to that message and now you like, it's just,  I've never lost a friend in that way.  So suddenly and so tragically and, you know, her husband who  was just...
18:34you could see how madly in love with her he was and they'd been married for like 27 years or something like that, you know, and he was still just that golden retriever husband that every woman dreams of, you know.  I love it.  And I just, my heart breaks for him. It still breaks for him. I can't even imagine. um And
18:57Yeah, I asked because Crystal loved coming over and she would always save her vegetables that they didn't get through in the week for the animals and she loved coming over and,  you know, seeing the animals and  I asked him, could I name this baby after her? And he gave me his blessing. so now we have little Crystal and it's so funny because this little baby is sweet as pie, but she's got that little...
19:26devil and I think that's that's kind of how Crystal was as well just the sweetest woman  and but you could see there was a little bit of  you know uh a sparkle in the eye a little bit of devious. uh perfect way to honor your friend. Yeah yeah it's  I feel really good about it and I hope that  Crystal is up there smiling  and enjoying watching
19:55little baby crystal kick me when her milk is not correct.  Uh-huh.  Laughing her ass off in heaven is how I would see that. I hope so. I really do because this little baby is,  my goodness, you better have that milk to temperature, let me tell you.  She's worse than a human baby. Uh-huh,  uh-huh.  And cuter than a button, cuter than a button. You couldn't ask for a cuter baby horse.  Oh yeah, and they're all cute.
20:23All the babies are cute. Your friend, I think it's your friend. I can't think of her first name. Her piercelle is how you- Oh, Nicole. Yes. Yes. Yeah. The baby that she had, the horse baby that has the rhinos. Yes. Riley. That is one of the cutest baby horses I've ever seen because of the shape of its face. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very cute.
20:52um Yeah, she's a... It's just, it's crazy, the things that can happen, but you know, it gives them character and you know, you love them for it.  Yeah, absolutely. And we're all different. It doesn't matter whether we're humans or animals, we're all different. We have our own things about us that make us specials.  Exactly. Okay. So I'm super glad that Crystal is doing well and...
21:19I follow you, follow Nicole, I follow Katie. And again, like I said in the last episode, I think I don't have any mini horses or horses. I don't intend to have any. So I don't live vicariously through you three amazing women who are doing the things because that means that I can enjoy it and I don't have to do it. Absolutely.  And I think like that's  kind of the point  of social media. Like that's how I view it. I feel like
21:48You know, a lot of my followers are people that might never even live on an acreage or might never get the chance to  own one or never want the chance,  you know,  and  they get to kind of enjoy these animals through me.  And I  can't think of a better thing. Like, I think that's amazing. Yeah, exactly. And it's almost, it's going sound really dumb, but I'm going say it anyway. It's like a virtual petting zoo.
22:16I don't get to pet your horses, but I get to see them and I get to like in my head I can sort of picture myself there with them. Yeah, absolutely. like  that's something I'm really trying to  get better at with my content is showing off each horse's  like individual personality because they all have their own personality. Some of them are very
22:42you know, chill and calm and you know, they never do anything bad. And then there's some that are total clowns all the time. And I'm really trying to capture their essence in the content, which is a learned skill, I'll say that. But I think that's what makes it so fun, is getting to know the personalities of these little creatures that, you know, they all have their own.
23:12Yeah, they are all good.  Yes,  I just love it. And I feel so weird sometimes. Like I feel like a stalker. Because  I didn't know about you until a good year and a half ago. And then I found your page and I was like, Oh, more mini horses. This is awesome. And then I got to sort of know you through your videos. And I was like, she's really sweet. And then I was like, Hmm, wonder if she talked to me on the podcast.
23:39And since we talked the first time, you're now a new friend to me. So I'm not always talking to you, I'm just keeping up with a good friend. I love that. I love that. It's just so cool to like, you know, have these friendships all over,  like all over the world, really. I mean, I would say most of my followers are in the US, but you know, to see people from Australia being like, you know,  I just, that's just, it's bananas. It's, it's a very surreal.
24:07kind of feeling, but it's super cool because knowing that somebody across the world is rooting for you is just, it's amazing. It's amazing and it's crazy at the same time because I'm an old lady, I'm 56. We didn't have this technology back when I was a kid. Right. Yeah. You know what? And I was born in 91. So I was right on that. I was on the line. I remember life.
24:37before technology, uh but I was like one of the first  to get it, right? Like I was in high school when the iPhone came out. um So  I kind of know both worlds and it's just  so crazy to think of how different my kid's childhood is versus what mine was. yeah, it's just wild. And you now my kid, my 10 year old is like, I want to be a YouTuber. And I'm like, I created this, didn't I?
25:06Uh huh.  Like how would I say no? Like I, it's a valid career. Yeah. And when I was growing up, my mom was one of those moms who was like, okay, you've had a good breakfast. You've had a big glass of orange juice. You've had a glass of water.  Get out of my house  and don't come back till the streetlights come on. And I'm saying that jokingly, but she might as well have said that because we spent all our time outside. Absolutely.
25:34No phones, no screens, no nothing. And I lived in a little tiny town in Maine  and the neighbors all kind of knew each other and they all kept an eye on the kids. they saw, the moms would make a note of who they saw go by if they saw them. if mom called and said, you seen Lynn? My nickname is Lynn.  Have you seen Lynn today? They would be like, yeah, like at one o'clock I saw her headed that way. And that way my mom sort of had an idea of where I was.
26:04It's so wild. think of the things that I did as a child. Like I was, I was an only child  and I would, you know, I was a little bit older than my kids are right now. I was like, you know, 13, 14, but I would get on my horse and ride like  miles away by myself with no phone, no nothing. And my mom was just fine.  It was like, I would, I would have a conniption if my children did that. oh
26:34Absolutely. When my kids were kids, they're now all grown. The youngest is 24 next month. The oldest is 36. Oh my God. We lived again in a small town. And so pretty much the same situation. The kids would head out the door and all the moms in the neighborhood would keep an eye on everybody. And we had a library not a block and a half away.
27:01If all else failed, I knew my daughter was probably at the library. Right. So it worked out fine. It's uh such a different time. Like now,  my oldest is at the point where I will send her into like a gas station by herself if she wants a drink uh or like a small grocery store if I need milk, trying to build that confidence of doing things on your own.
27:27You know, if she takes an extra two minutes, I'm like on my phone, I'm messaging her, I'm are you? Like, meanwhile, I was literally swimming in a river by myself. I feel like kids used to be feral cats and now they are pampered house cats. Absolutely. Yes. And there is something to be said for both. I, you know, I do not want to disparage the way my mom raised me and I certainly don't want to disparage the way that you're raising yours.
27:57And I sure as heck want to think that I raised mine right. So we're all doing the best we can with the information we have at the time we have it.  Um,  my, my horse was a bicycle cause I didn't have a horse. So I would ride my bike and the best freaking day of my childhood was when my parents said,  yes, you may ride your bike the two miles to the library and we're not going to worry about you. Wow.
28:27fast day of my life because I love to read. have loved to read since I was in first grade. Yeah, that's amazing. And I didn't have to wait for them to have time on Saturday morning to drive me to the library anymore. I could just go.  Right.  And two miles.  That's a decent distance for a little kid. Oh, I had legs like tree trunks. I was so strong. was like, I think I was five foot four when I was 12. Oh, wow.
28:54And I think I weighed about 80 pounds. And so I was tough. wasn't fat. I was solid. Yeah. And that's something I think that a lot of kids, mine included,  are lacking is  the physical activity of being outside and having to get from point A to point B.  you know, even me, I was horseback riding, but that is  not, you're not just sitting there.
29:20You know, it was something.  I'm really, I'm really pushing this year to get my kids into  more stuff that is going to build muscles because it's just  so easy to, to sit around on a device, you know? How many kids do you have,  Two, I have a 10 year old and a five year old. So they're a good age, but they're a terrible age at the same time. You know, the, the five year old wants to play with the 10 year old and the 10 year old doesn't always want to play with the five year old.
29:50But  the 10-year-old can help with the five-year-old, help her with some things and that sort of thing. there's pros and cons to the age gap, but  I like it. Yeah. And you have many horses. I know you must be feeding them and hauling hay and doing all that.  Do the kids help?  Absolutely. Absolutely. My oldest, as my youngest, is a little bit of a princess,  especially in the cold.  But this year,
30:18We got round bales and we bought a skid steer in September. So my winter chores are honestly so much easier than my summer chores because in the summertime I am individually feeding horses for show. I'm making sure their diets are ultra specific. And in the winter time I get to be like, here's a bale. And I go out.
30:46I make sure everybody's good, do that twice a day.  And that's about it. You know, we fill it, we have to fill the water every other day, but it's very streamlined in the winter because we made it that way. Cause I don't want to be outside at minus 30.  No, I don't blame you at all. It's no fun. No, it's terrible actually. Okay. So in the summertime they can, they can really kind of get into it. Yeah. And of course the kids are a lot more willing to, to help in the summertime,  um, with, you know, when we're feeding the square bales and we're
31:16We're being specific about it, but right now the horses are all just  eating and happy. Fat and sassy. That's exactly how I like it.  Good. So  I don't want to ask a rude question and if you're not comfortable answering it,  just say so.  How many, many horses do you have?
31:40It's so funny because this is a question that I get asked all the time and my typical answer  is, I don't know,  like a lot. And, know, I have 34, I  believe. Okay. Wow. This  is  where I, you know, I  know everybody's name, but I can never remember the exact number of the count because I go out there and I look for names. don't.
32:08look for, you know, names and faces.  I'm not doing a head count. I'm, you know, if I,  as long as I see everybody that I need to see, then, you know, I don't, I don't count so much. And I'm, it's hard to, with the foals, like three of my foals are sold, or sorry, not the foals, two of the foals, and then a yearling is sold. So do I count them?  It's like, you know, they're still on my property. They're not leaving for a couple of months.  Um, but
32:37Yeah, 34 is a rough estimate, maybe not including the three that are sold. See, the only thing I think of when you tell me all that is in the springtime when the cows have babies around here, they put the mamas and the babies out in the pastures to eat and babies nurse and it's very cute. baby cows out here are called grass puppies. And your mini horses aren't
33:06Well, they're a little smaller than a calf. probably about half the size of calf. And all I can think of is the equivalent of grass puppies at your house.  Yep. And it is the best thing ever. Like there's, there's really nothing better than watching the babies, you know, run around and play with each other  and  get lost in the grass when it gets nice and tall. And it's, it's the best. Okay.
33:34So um I had a question when you were answering my question and now it's gone because I do this all the time. um When did you get your first mini horse? So first mini horse goes back,  oh, I have to do the math on the years.  We're going into our third breeding season, so it would be four and a half years ago.  So  it skyrocketed very fast, but that's just
34:03who I am as a person. I do something, I do it 100%. Um,  and  it was at the time, my  30 year old Arabian horse that I grew up on, he was my childhood riding horse. I, he was that horse that I was riding down at the river by myself  and he always took good care of me. Um, he was starting to, he was not holding his weight. He was starting to have a really hard time moving around and
34:33we knew his time needed to be soon. So I made a deal with my husband and I said, I think a fair exchange when Flair passes is for me to get a miniature horse because I've always wanted one and I wanted it for the novelty of it just because I thought they were cute. And he said, that seems reasonable, way cheaper on food and you know, that seems good.
35:00And little did he know that I would become obsessed with them.  So did you just get one to start with? No, I bought one. And then my dad saw that one, which is Boomer.  And I actually just gelded him. So he was a stallion and he was a nice looking manager horse. And my dad saw him and he was like, oh, that's a nice little mini horse. And he said, you know what? I've always
35:27wanted to have a little miniature horse breeding program. And I was like, sign me up. Let's go. Immediately. Yes.  You're not going to have to ask me twice about that one.  And so my dad ended up buying a few mares  and, uh, you know, then we found a stallion that was
35:51a little bit nicer than Boomer and then,  you know, it just, it snowballed very quickly. And there, there's something about them where, you know, they don't really eat all that much and it just feels like it's totally fine to just buy another one. So what you're saying is that mini horse math is like chicken math. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because they're addictive and they're so sweet  and you
36:21like yeah, they come in every single color, which a lot of horse breeds don't. um But minis come in every color. So there's a lot of collecting you can do.  Well, this must be why um Katie Vance like has the mini cows because I feel like it's almost the same thing.  Absolutely. Absolutely. I would love to get some of the mini cows. Absolutely love. But I don't have the space for them  yet.
36:48Yeah, we don't have the space for goats, let alone many horses, let alone many cows, let alone any four legged critter other than the dogs and the cat. Fair, fair. mean, and most people don't. I think that's, you know, I thought to myself when I, before I started social media, I was like, you know, to be able to live this life with these horses and get to experience them, it would almost be  rude.
37:17of me to not share them, right? Like it's almost a crime to not share them with everyone  because not everybody gets that. And I live a very privileged life and I'm very aware of it.  I- you are thankful for it. can hear it.  Exactly. Like I'm so grateful that that is, that this is what I get to do.  And  it would just be, it would be rude of me to not give other people  at least
37:46the opportunity to have a glimpse into it.  know, and to get, you know, if my horse brings a smile to someone's day, like that's the most beautiful thing in the world.  agree, because every morning when I see new  videos of you on your Facebook page,  I smile and it makes my day better. So thank you for doing that. That is amazing. That's like just, that just warms my heart. I have no words.
38:14It's so, it's so funny. I get up early. I go to bed early. I get up early because my husband snores and I've mentioned this in the podcast before and he does not care that I tell the story.  My husband snores. So I go to bed early so I can get at least four hours of solid sleep because otherwise I will not.  I average about four hours of solid sleep a night, which is driving me insane.  And so, and so I get up at like between three 30 and four in the morning because I just can't.
38:43stay in bed and listen to the snoring anymore.  And I get up and I get my coffee and I go on the porch and I drink about half my coffee and I just listen to the outside because outside is quiet.  And you know, I hear the breeze, I hear the barn cats meowing and I'm like, okay, that's better than snoring. Absolutely. And then I come in and I grab my phone and I open up Facebook and I start looking at Katie's page and Katie's friend, um, Becca Miller's page  and your page.
39:13And Nicole's page because it's all happy. Well, most of it's happy.  98 %  of what I'm looking at is happy and uplifting. And it's a really nice way to wake up.  So  you guys save my sanity every morning. If that makes you feel even better.  does. Like I, I, I feel just like my heart is full right now. Cause that's so amazing to hear. And  you know, it, it's.
39:41Sometimes I get caught up in responding to the negative people  and that's just a good reminder to  try and ignore them  and just post the happy stuff.  You can respond all you want because it gets you more clicks and viewers. That is true. But don't take it to heart because it's not... Other people's behavior has far more to do with them than it does to do with you. Absolutely.  Absolutely.
40:10Don't let it get you down. And there are times where you may have done something or said something and you may have to look at it and go, okay,  was that  actually out of line? Right. Because we all need to, we all need to like check ourselves here and there. Of course, of course. But for the most part,  everybody is going through things and you can't know what they are.  Exactly. Exactly. So true.  And I don't want to be all Pollyanna about it, but
40:39you can't let it, you cannot let it screw up your psyche because it's probably, it probably has nothing to do with you. Oh, absolutely. I, this is one situation where I think the ADHD plays  a very solid role in how I'm able to  kind of move past things because I genuinely just forget. uh I just,  you know, it'll bother me for
41:01five minutes and then something else will happen and then it's gone. It just leaves the brain because my brain can't handle any more  information to dwell on.  So I focus on the good  and the bad things kind of float in  and you know, I'll feel it and then it floats away again.  Yes, and I'm going to say something that will probably make you giggle beyond belief. My dad used to say, and he used the actual swear word, but I'm not going to.
41:30He would say, Mary Evelyn, opinions are like buttholes. Everyone has one. That is the truth.  100%.  Absolutely. And if you can imagine him saying the actual word that butthole is replacing  to a 12 year old who was very upset, who had been bullied at school, which was me. was sobbing. And then he said that to me and I was just on the floor laughing with tears streaming down my face.
42:00Oh, that's amazing. mean, sometimes you gotta say it straight because it's the truth. It really is. Yeah, and I just looked at him, threw my tears,  guffawing, took a big deep breath and said, you said a bad word and he just fell on the floor too laughing. uh Oh, that's funny. So, you know, every, they tell, the thing they tell people, they tell kids mostly, is don't be judgmental. The thing is,
42:28All human beings are judging beings because we have to look at a situation and make a decision every moment of our day. Absolutely. It's not about not being judgmental. It's about not imposing your viewpoint on other people.  Absolutely.  Absolutely. That  is a true life lesson. I  mean, it goes back to if you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say anything at all. You know, like learning
42:58when to keep an inside thought  inside. Yeah, the trick I used to pull is some, if one of my friends would say, what do you think of my dress? And if I didn't like it, I would say, it's a dress. Yep.  And my, my close friends were like, okay, I'm going to go change. Right, right. Cause they knew they knew that what that meant.  Yes. But I couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to
43:27give my honest opinion because I was like, you like it. Absolutely. And oftentimes  I,  I'll even ask, like if my daughter asked my opinion on something,  um, you know, like, cause she's very crafty  and  she'll say, do you like it? And I'll say, do you want  like, you know, if there's something that  could be better about it or whatever, I'll always say, do you. oh
43:54Do you want my mom answer or would you  like some input on how to make it better?  And sometimes she'll be like, I want the mom answer. I just want to know, do you like it? And I'm like, yeah, I love it.  You  couldn't make something that I didn't like. um But on the other times when she says, yeah, you know what, I'll take the  critique  and I'll say, this is what I really, really love about it. And here's what I think you could do to improve it.
44:23You know, I try and always word everything whenever you're delivering maybe something that isn't what they want to hear. Always, there's always good in everything  and delivering that alongside a way to make it better and being constructive about it.  Um, but I always give her the option. Do you want, do you want my, your, my mom answer, which is  absolutely, I love it every single time. Or do you want the critique and  it's her choice.
44:53Yep. And I'm going to wrap this psychology big net we're on with this. I always say to people when they start talking to me and they're like, what do you think? I say, are you venting or do you really want my opinion? Right. Absolutely. Because the last thing I want is to give someone a place to just vent their feelings and then step in and be like, oh, you could fix it like this. And they're like, I didn't need you to fix it. absolutely. Okay. So.
45:22Yeah, definitely respond to the people who say things  that are inflammatory because you benefit from that, but please don't take it to heart because you're awesome. Thank you. Canada does not celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Is it Boxing Day or is it Boxing Day after Christmas? can't remember.  Boxing Day is after Christmas, but  we do have Thanksgiving. It's just on a different day than the States. Like the US celebrates tomorrow, I believe, which is at the end of November.
45:52um And then Canada is usually the second weekend in October.  Oh, okay. And is it a harvest festival like  we have here? I mean,  kind of sort of.  I guess our harvest is probably just a lot sooner than yours because we go from Thanksgiving right into winter, whereas you guys are probably just starting to get the super cold weather now. um
46:18But yeah, I would say it's kind of like a harvest festival and wrapping up  the season of growing and that sort of thing. It's just, it happens sooner here.  Yeah. And it's not, it's not based off of the same lore that ours is based off of, because ours is based off of the pilgrims or the settlers  and the Native Americans coming together to break bread and eat food. Right. And I'm guessing yours is not based off of that.
46:47I do not think so. No,  I've heard of the the pilgrim stuff,  but I've never really heard it talked about  in a Canadian kind of fashion. So I mean, somebody could correct me if  I'm wrong,  but I don't think it has the same lore. It's just mostly about giving thanks.  Well, at our house, we  just get together to basically enjoy family and eat way too much food and be thankful for the year's gifts.
47:17That is exactly what we do. just, we  like put our belts down a hole  and,  and  fill up.  Yeah. Well, we are having the most unconventional Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow that anyone possibly could think of. My husband is going to make homemade pizza pockets because our kid is going to be at his girlfriend's house. Oh, that actually sounds delicious. We are on a pizza pocket kick right now. whole house is, we're just kind of like.
47:47We've been eating a lot of pizza pockets  and they're really expensive. So I would love to try and make one homemade. Well, he found, okay,  we are so far afield, but I don't care. My son who lives in Nebraska was introduced to something called a Runza,  R-U-N-Z-A. And it's like a meat sandwich pocket thing. And  I guess it started in Nebraska and he had been talking to his dad about it.  And my husband was like,
48:16We should try making those. So we made some beef, sausage,  onion, cabbages part of it too.  Pockets last weekend and they were pretty good. And I was like, you know,  I said, I feel like these would make excellent pizza pockets if we put pepperoni and cheese and onion. uh A little bit of pizza sauce in there. And he was like,  that sounds really good. So then I find out that my son is, my youngest son is going to his girlfriends for Thanksgiving and I was going to do a whole turkey dinner.
48:46Right. I'm not doing a whole turkey dinner for my husband and I that's craziness. Yeah, absolutely. And I said, you know, we have all the ingredients on hand to make homemade pizza pocket runs us whatever we want to call them.  I said, yeah, I just make those. And he was like, yeah. And the reason he makes them is he's the one that makes  the dough and it's a bread dough and I suck at making yeast bread. So he's dinner. He makes the dough.  That's amazing. So we're to do that. So as I'm talking to him about this, I said, by the way, I said,
49:16Do you feel like making  Christmas sugar cookies for Thanksgiving too? Because he makes the most fabulous sugar cookies. They are soft.  Oh, I love those. Yes.  And he was like, we didn't make any last year at all, did we? I said, no.  He said, will you make the buttercream frosting and slather on them? And I was like, yes.  He said, OK. Christmas cookies in the morning and pizza pockets for dinner. I was like, OK.
49:43The scene sounds like the worst ever food for us, but yes. I love it. I love it. But that's what it's all about, right? you know, that'll probably be like a solid memory, you know, in the future, right? Because it was different and it was a little bit off, like off the cuff, a little bit crazy, but it'll it'll stick with you.  Yeah. And Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only times that we really cook together.  I usually I usually make dinner before he gets home, so it's ready when he gets home. Right.
50:11So we love to cook together, we just don't have a lot of time to do it.  Fair enough, yeah, absolutely. When you get older, you gotta find new things to do together.  I fully understand that, I fully understand that because  we have a very big age gap in my relationship and my husband is very much in his  sit at home and watch TV and typically not even good TV, like politics.
50:40I  don't want to do that at all. trying to find  some common ground that we can  do  fun activities together,  it's a challenge. It's definitely a hard thing, but it's so important.  Well, if you want to stay together until you die, yes, it is. It's very, very important. Absolutely. Okay. So Becca, where can people find you?
51:09Oh, on Facebook, um my handle  is  at Becca Bia Moon um or just search Becca Hammond.  And  that should bring me up. That's for Facebook and Instagram. And then I'm at Moonridge Acres on TikTok and YouTube. And I really need to make all of those the same, but I just  haven't done that.
51:34When you're not completely busy with the horses, you will get it done. have faith in you. Absolutely. Okay. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com and I am lowering the price on my Patreon account because I priced it too high. So I'm going to be doing that today. And if anyone wants to check out my Patreon account, is patreon.com slash a tiny homestead.
52:02Becca, it was a joy to talk with you again. I adore you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I love our conversations. This has been fantastic. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Rosewyn Urban Regenerative Farm - Catching Up With Chelsie

Today I'm talking with Chelsie at Rosewyn Urban Regenerative Farm.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15, you'll get 15% off your registration costs.
00:29And that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Chelsie at Rosewyn Urban Regenerative Farm in  Montana, right? Yes, Billings, Montana. Yeah. I've talked to a couple of people in Alberta in the last few days and I keep thinking Alberta. I'm like, no, she's not in Canada. She's in the States.  Okay. How are you ma'am?
01:00I am doing wonderful this morning and yourself? I'm good. How's the weather where you are? It's it's a little chilly, but not  as bad as it could be. Okay.  It is definitely chilly here. We got sleet for the first time this season this morning  and it has all melted away already and the sun is peeking out. So it's, uh,  it's looking like it's going to be a pretty day, but it sure didn't look that way at three o'clock this morning when I got up, when I got up for no apparent reason.  It was.
01:28pouring rain here at 3 a.m.  Oh no, we haven't had a lot of moisture. I've  been pretty lucky on that. I do have my wool out, but it's like mainly for mornings and evenings and then you just don't want to get caught  out before the temps go back down.  yeah, it's been a beautiful extended fall here. It sounds like it has been there too, so that's good.
01:55Okay, so Chelsea was a guest on the show back in May and she was telling me all about her regenerative urban farm or urban regenerative farm. said it in the wrong order. So give me a quick update on who you are and what you do, Oh, well, I am someone that just took their health into their own hand and it led me here and now I like to grow lots of things and
02:24have chickens and I just added rabbits. eh And the attempts  of creating a decentralized intentional community that's focused around edible landscaping and self-sufficiency  and personal growth. Okay, I have a question about decentralized.  Is that the same thing as hyper local community?
02:54I have absolutely no idea. just said decentralized because we won't live together. Okay.  Cause with everything that's been going on in the States right now, I've talked to a couple of people on different aspects of the whole snap fiasco  and  what  we don't, we don't use snap, but I definitely was on wick when I had my first baby.  And, I think maybe way back.
03:22My first husband and I might have had to use food stamps and it wasn't a card then it was actual like paper vouchers.  But, but SNAP is really, really important, but more important than SNAP, think is  number one,  not finding yourself in a position where if SNAP goes away,  you're, there's a bad word, you're in trouble.  And that learning to cook helps with that  planning ahead.
03:51and trying to get things stored away in your pantry or your cabinet for an emergency is really important.  And  your local growers is really important because  farmers  in my experience really want to help. I can tell you right now, someone had pulled into my driveway  and said, do you have eggs? I'm on the SNAP program. I don't have any food. Can I just have some eggs? I would have given them eggs. Yeah. I mean, it's hard because for me, you know,
04:19grew up, was a welfare kid, you know, like I didn't have a great childhood. And, know, even when I raised my children, I had to utilize that even though I still worked full time, you know, I went to college full time, uh, online and when I was working full time and raising two kids by myself, and I definitely used food stamps, but I still had to go sit outside of food banks, you know, on the weekends and in some way forage.
04:48or  additional resources while raising two boys. So I get it. I get  using resources, but I also understand that being dependent on them makes you a slave.  Exactly. And you don't want to be a slave. And  let me just clarify, there is absolutely no shame  in  utilizing the resources that are available to you that taxpayer money pays for, especially if you're one of the taxpayers paying for it.
05:19But I also, you know,  as, someone who has lived lots of lives, one of them is, you know, I  have been part of the Mormon church and watching how they take care of their own  and just everything that I've ever seen. I've lived in low income housing where there was 31 units and we didn't even have an apartment manager for a long time. And we took care of each other. We had a little community garden. You just have to be more intentional and connected.
05:49You know, people are very disconnected with where their food comes from.  They're disconnected that they can forage food or grow food. And they're disconnected from each other too. Yeah. I mean, everything. We just need to be more empowered and think about what we can do instead of all the things we can't. Right. Exactly.  Okay. So you and I talked back in May  and what's  new? Is anything new? I know you had a...
06:16uh, community gathering kind of event last night. Yeah, I went to, um, Morgan with Ruby Grazer had a homesteader meet up yesterday during the day.  Um,  I have my first intentional community meet up this Thursday coming up. Yeah.  Uh, I've been on a few more podcasts about various things  and
06:43given a couple more interviews. I've added rabbits, meat rabbits to the farm recently. ah Yeah, I mean, but everything's kind of calming down right now for the season and focusing more on community and building that at this point since it gets cold here and there's not a lot of growing until I get my greenhouse up and going. Yes, and you had mentioned on the last episode, last episode we did.
07:11that you were going to turn your swimming pool into a greenhouse and that has not happened yet?  We have utilized the last season of it and it's completely empty and so we'll begin the conversion  once it's kind of safe weather wise to do so. We don't want to be  caught in the middle of that and then have a whole bunch of water pool up on us because we're in winter. Yeah, no, that would be really bad. Let's not have that happen. um
07:39Do you have any idea how long it will take to convert it?
07:44Um, that's the thing. Like it, for me, honestly, depends on how fast the parts I have to rely on other people go. Okay. If it's me,  my neurodivergence just hyper fixates and gets it done. Like my front food forest or food meadow I did in a day  once I had a blank canvas.
08:12Yeah. And it's so funny because many hands make light work, but many hands also make many distractions. Well, yeah. I just, you know, if there's like welding, I don't have that as something I'm proficient in at this point in time in my life. You know,  so there's, if I have to rely on someone else's schedule, there is a little different latency than I deal with than if I were doing it myself. Definitely. Yeah. I understand. um
08:42When my husband and my son built our greenhouse, they spent,  oh, every weekend for, I think, five weekends building it. it's, think it's 25 by 15 or something like that.  I thought it was 40 by 20, but I was informed that it's smaller than that. And I was like, oh,  I was wrong.  But  they got it done over the course of a month. And had we had more people, I still think it would have taken a month because there would have been a lot of chatting and
09:09probably would have been beer and pizza involved and it just probably would have taken the same amount of time. think the thing that's going to take me the longest is because the swimming pool, I'm on like a  shotgun property, so it's long and narrow  and the pool is at the back of my property and there's no alley. It's going to be  actually will bearing all the soil back there myself.  Oh,  you're gonna, you're gonna be even more fit than you already are by the time you're done with it.
09:40I mean, that's part of the cool thing about like farming or homesteading is you don't need a gym membership no more.  So how was the homestead meeting with Morgan yesterday? I'm so curious because I saw that on Facebook and I just interviewed Morgan the other day. So how did that go?  It was good. It was small. There was  like her and I and our husbands and then one other person that showed up.
10:09Everything kind of trickles in. So it was nice to just kind of talk about things. It'll grow. I bet you it will grow. I bet not the next meeting, but I bet a month from now you'll probably have like five extra people. Well, home studying is kind of a trend right now. So like every type of convention or fair I go to, it's either back to traditional skills or it's like plastic 3D printed stuff, know, like
10:39There's no, it's either or. And so I think it will definitely catch on as people wake up to needing to have their own sustenance. Yes. Somebody else I talked to last week called it personal sovereignty. Yes. And I loved that because I love the word sovereignty. I have always been entertained by that word.
11:07Mostly because people think of um you know, medieval England and the sovereign king and blah, blah. But  it's not that sovereignty is having your own choices and your own skills and being able to rely on yourself first.  I just, I love that word so much. Man, that's what makes me hecka thankful for  all my trauma because
11:32You know, I've had to be that way since childhood. um But the problem with that also is that it requires that people use their agency.
11:44And people prefer for someone else to be the villain or responsible. I don't. I don't love that. I am. uh I'm a minor control freak, so I really do like relying on myself because if I want to get it done, it's got to be me. Well, yes.  And there is the reason why you're also a homesteader.  What? There's a reason why? What? That you're also a homesteader.  Yes, exactly.
12:13Exactly. So tell me about the rabbits. Rabbits are a new adventure for you? They very much are. We just added them last week. had said to my husband, because ultimately the goal for me is to close  everything on my property and show people that that can be done in the city. um So we have animals that do require meat, even if I don't eat them myself. Yeah. But we could use the textile, the fur.
12:42Um,  so we did, we added a boy and three girls.  And last week,  and that is what I told my husband we should do for each other for Christmas. It was to add our meat.  Sweet. That's perfect. Yeah. So are the, any of the dough is pregnant or are you going to be breeding them? No, we're going to Jamaica next month. Um, this has been planned since last Christmas with his family.
13:09So we're going to breed them right before we leave. That way there's no chances of anyone house-sitting the farm and having to deal with that. Yep. I think it's two months. Two months from breeding date to birth, I think. I think it's 31 days actually. Oh, is it? Yeah. That's why there's such a great livestock, especially for small properties, because it's quick.
13:37Oh my God, you're right. I'm sorry. I was thinking cats, not rabbits. Um,  we've, had meat rabbits for a little while and you're right. It's like 30 days, 31 days. Yeah. Cats are two months. Cause we've had, we've had a barn cat that's had kittens three times and it took two months.  Yeah. At our other house, my husband liked to leave the basement door open and we had two stray litters in there that we ended up taking in and then giving out.  Yup.
14:06We're actually getting three kittens this weekend from friends because we have two barn cats now that's it  and We have no female barn cats and  all of her kittens seem to be female But we need barn kittens because we need them to keep the mice down in the pole barn So if you see a photo of kittens on my Facebook page Monday, you'll know why  Okay, so the only thing that I would say about the bunnies because we've done it before
14:36is you have a place for them to be warm because the cold is really hard on them and hot is really hard on them. So right now they're in the main house. have a bedroom in there that has like tile floor and that we've done up for them because they and the chickens will eventually live in the greenhouse.  Yeah.
14:59Okay. greenhouse is going to be really, really cool because I'm not just like doing greenhouse. It's going to be just like an underground food forest that you can walk through and hang out in. And I want to do like a rocket stove type of situation to help heat and do some like radiant heating in the soil.
15:21So there's a lot of different plans in there. Nice.  I can't wait. I can't wait to read about this when you post about it, because I'm assuming you'll post about it.  Oh, absolutely. There's going be hangouts. mean,  in the winter time, we just enclosed our covered area too, so we can hang out there. But like, if I'm going to be hosting a lot of community events here to have all these outdoor spaces when it's cold six months of the year, it's going to be fantastic.
15:50And it's really great to have a hands-on experience too for the next generation to be in touch with their food. So to have like the chickens and the rabbits running around and then the kids just being able to hang out with them is going to be awesome.  Yes. And please, please, please do that. I just had a conversation with someone  not on the podcast the other day about the fact that the people.
16:16The younger generations, it seems so weird to say that. I just turned 56 on November 4th and I can't say we anymore because I'm older than most people I talk to now. The younger generations are not teaching their kids these skills. They're not teaching them animal husbandry. They're not teaching them how to grow plants. They're not teaching them how to cook. And it can die out in a generation and that is not a good thing.
16:44and coming from the concrete jungle, not having, I didn't even know that vegetables didn't come from a can until I was almost an adult. That's the kind of childhood I had. didn't, yeah. So I'm very, very determined that those skills don't go away. I've had to learn them, but I burned down those gates as soon as I go through them. Good, keep doing that.
17:13because we need you, we need people like you.  And we need people like my mom who  very much wanted to teach me to cook when I was a teenager. And  I really didn't want to learn to cook. I wanted to go babysit and make money. I wanted to go hang with my friends.  I wanted to go to my job because I had a job too.  And uh I ended up learning almost by osmosis by watching my mom cook because
17:38she would have loved for me to be right there in the kitchen with her working side by side. And I was like, nah, I got stuff to do. And that's not good. And I actually love to cook now. And I think it's partially from my mom. So yeah, if you're a mom listening and you have kids,  get them in the kitchen with you. Learn to cook with them if you don't really cook. Even if it seems like it's  inconvenience, because you're going to have to do more work.
18:05Yeah, but make it a game, make it fun. Yeah. Yeah.  I totally agree.  I learned because I had to experiment  and, you know, I grew up mainly on, you know, everything that was leading to the anaphylaxis that I was  living in  because
18:28know, poor people foods mainly have tomatoes and ground beef in them and whatever version, whether it's spaghetti or tacos or hamburger helper  or sloppy joes or whatever it is. And those are the things that I,  I actually need to avoid because the histamine intolerance that I have. So.
18:51Definitely getting that connection to our food is so, important. It's because I get just seeing all these people be like, why can't you just go to the store and get it? It is just so sad. Well, you can always tell them the truth or you can just be a snot and say, because I don't want to. Yeah. Unfortunately, my brand of petty is always being the better person. Uh-huh. I understand. I do.
19:21But you can only explain it so many times and then they ask you for like the 12th time and you're like,  because I don't want to. And I've done that before and people look at me like I'm crazy. But that's why for me, relationships that I have at this point have one pre-correquisite and that's that the other person has a growth mindset because I can't disturb my peace with people who refuse to grow. I'm growing too fast.
19:48Yeah, that's why I don't have a whole lot of people around me ever because the ones that stay are the ones that are good. Yeah, I don't believe any good or bad. I just think there's lots of different perspectives. We're all on different journeys and some of us prefer comfort over growth. growth requires discomfort and we're sold comfort and convenience as the American dream. You know, like...
20:17Yeah, and I meant good, like good for my peace of mind and not having to... Oh, got you. Okay, sorry. Not having to make myself crazy to make other people There's some autism literalism coming in right there.  I do it too, honey. I do all the time. And my husband has ADD, so trying to have him, you know, have a conversation with me  is really interesting sometimes because he's all over the place and I just need a straight line sentence. And I'm like, back up.
20:46five sentences. I,  you lost me. And he's like, I don't remember five sentences ago. And I'm like, okay, start from here. What are you trying to tell me? And we get it figured out, but it's really, I would hate to record a hour long conversation between us and play it. Cause you would be like, what in the world were you guys trying to get at? Well, being that I have like body HD, I might actually get it. Cause the conversations that happen in my head oftentimes, I don't think most people would want to be privy to.
21:16Yeah, it's so hard sometimes and  you know how it is with people you love you want to listen you want to understand and  there are days where I'm just like I don't I don't get it  I honestly do not understand what you're trying to tell me and he says okay hang on let me  let me get my thoughts together let me get them in order and then I will say it again I'm like okay and like ten minutes later he'll come back and be like
21:43This was what I was trying to say and he will tell me in a straight line and I'm like, oh, I get it now. Thank you. So there's a lot of patience and love involved in our relationship. Well, that's good because I mean, that's the relationship is to have that yin yang where you balance each other out, you know?  Yeah, exactly. And we sure do. It may take a few bumps and stumbles, but we do. We eventually get to the same place.  And you both have grown at that point in time.
22:13because now you have another view of or perspective because you had to kind of like muddle through it a little bit to see it all the way.  Yeah. Yeah. It's that never leaves. Yes. And the other thing that's funny is sometimes when, when this, this miscommunication happens,  new ideas pop in to getting his thoughts together and he'll tell me the thing. He'll tell me the thing you want to tell me. And he'll be like,
22:41As I was thinking this through, I had this other thing pop in and I'm like, uh-huh.  And he tells me that and that's clear because he's gotten his thoughts in order. And co-regulation and verbally processing,  those things are beautiful love languages.  Uh-huh. And it's so funny because the first time he said it this way to me, probably 15 years ago, the whole, got  another thing popped in  and he told me.
23:10what he wanted to say and then the new idea and it was all in a straight line, made sense, all words in the right order, blah, blah.  I put my hand over my mouth and I couldn't look at him and he was like, are you upset? And I was like, I put my finger up, like, just give me a second. And I took a big deep breath and I looked at him. I said, I was trying not to laugh because I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing in amusement  and appreciation of the person that you are.
23:37And he said, go ahead and laugh. said, I get what you're doing. And I was like, okay, I just giggled, just giggled for five minutes straight. And he was laughing with me at the same time because it was very funny how that all went. And now I expect it, but either way getting way, way far afield again, because psychology makes me just, I love psychology and how people's thoughts and brains work.  I mean, really it's all connected. It is. Let's be honest. Everything's connected.
24:07And  the other thing I wanted to say is that  one of the ways you can really get kids interested in all the things we want them to be interested in, food, growing your own food, animal husbandry, all of that, is remembering that we are nature. Humans are part of nature. And taking them out for hikes and stuff in the woods and showing them edible plants and  where the animal tracks  are and the deer trails are.
24:35that will spark them into asking questions. Absolutely. I mean, I don't know how to go out in the woods personally. oh You know,  that's not anything that I was ever really taught. I know how to go camping and I know how to like throw a hammer,  but like hunting and  tracking and all of that, I've never had the opportunity or anyone to show me how to do any of those things. So  this is why I literally have to grow a forest around me.
25:03so that I can know my plant allies from seed to fruit and through their death and rebirth cycles.  And  that's how I have to learn  is through experience and teaching myself and just relying on my brothers and sisters that aren't human. Well, if you ever come to Minnesota, darling, we will go on a nature walk. We will go on a nature hike and I will show you some things that you know.
25:31That would be wonderful because I have lots and lots of books. But I mean, there's still a little bit of like,  what if, you know, when it's when it's a book  and so that's why I like I have to plant things that look like  so that I can know the differences.  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we used to take our kids when they were little, we used to take them hiking. We were really blessed to live in an area where there's hiking trails and.
26:00The kids loved it and we came across a patch of wild asparagus. And  there is technically no such thing as wild asparagus. mean, I'm sure that there originally was, but now it's more like asparagus seeds have gotten dropped by birds in the ditches.  And we came across a patch and I was like, oh my God, asparagus. Cause I love it. I love asparagus. And my youngest was like, can be asparagus.
26:25Why is asparagus growing in the woods? And I said, because some bird probably ate the seeds and then pooped them out  and they grew. He's like gross. And I said, yes, yes, it's a gross process, but it's very important because that's how things grow. And we had a whole talk about this and he's looking at the asparagus and he's like, well, it tastes like the asparagus from the store. And I said, no, it'll be better. And he said, can I break off a piece and try it? And I was like, of course you can. Cause I knew it had just rained. I knew that it was probably fine.
26:54So he broke off a little piece and bit into it and chewed it and the look on his face was priceless. He's like it is sweet like candy and I said, of course it is because it's been grown in nature. ah He ate the rest of it. He said, can we come back in a week or so and pick some more? I was like, of course we can and we did and he ate it and most kids don't like asparagus.
27:18So that's my favorite memory from a hike where I actually got to teach my kid about plants and about nature.
27:27That is very, very cool. My very first step into any of this was like essential oils through someone that was still on doTERRA, you  know? ah To learn anything about holistic wellness at all. My children like to call them my witch's oils, because I literally like Lavender Balm any of their sleepovers. um But  now they will. They'll call me like, Mom, I'm dealing with this.
27:56What would you do for this? Like,  it is cool. It is very cool. And we can show them some things specifically for me that I wasn't,  I did not have an example of growing up, you know? Yeah, I do know. And it's, I was really lucky, Chelsea. My parents are big nature nerds. mean, they hunt, they fish, they  grow, they grew a garden every year. They still do. And my mom's 80 and my dad's 83.
28:27They had us involved in everything, whether we wanted to be or not.  least favorite. tried with mine. I really did to like,  I had the requirements of a language and an instrument at least in school. Yeah, my least favorite memory is my mom and dad had permission to go out and pick the blueberry field out behind the neighbor's house.
28:53It would have been six acres of blueberries. Oh my goodness.  Yeah. And, um, number one, it wasn't my favorite thing to do because anyone who's picked blueberries knows that it is a, an utter pain in the butt because they're little tiny berries. And I'm not looking forward to picking my honey berries. I understand. Yeah. And the plants that they grow on, they're pokey. They're like a woody stem. So you're reaching into these plants to pick blueberries and you're scraping your hands on the stems.
29:22And that wasn't even the worst of it. I didn't like picking blueberries to begin with. But my sister reached into a yellow jacket nest when we were picking blueberries. I think she was probably 10 or 11 and I'm a year and a half older than her. And I didn't know what happened. All I know is I had never heard my sister howl in pain. And she jumped up and was running away and the yellow jackets were
29:51chasing her. They're flying after her and she kept getting stung. She must have gotten stung at least 60 times. And luckily she wasn't allergic, but she was definitely swollen up and she was very much in pain. And  I loved my sister and hearing that sound come out of her,  I still hear it in my nightmares sometimes. So again, my parents tried to have us with them.
30:17doing whatever they were doing, but that one really sticks out to me because that was really hard. Not that there's always yellow jacket nests and blueberry fields, but sometimes there are and you need to pay attention.  So we had a wasp nest on the water slide this last season. So one of the last bigger events we had a kid actually got stung twice because we didn't see that it was  on there as they were going down the water slide.
30:44Very quickly ran out into the yard and got some yarrow and made a poultice and put it on there and it just removed everything so Yeah,  isn't it amazing how nature has a solution for everything? It is and then the little boy was following me around asking me about the plants which was that was cool  See there's a there's a silver lining in everything. I swear. Yeah  Unreal I love it. That's amazing
31:14You are, again, I told Morgan this the other day that I'm proud of her. And I'm going to tell you I'm proud of you and that I'm so impressed with what you're doing. Thank you very much. Thank you for connecting people together.  I'm trying everything I can to do that. And it's really super fun. So there's a payoff for me too.  All  right, Chelsea, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're there. Where can people find you?
31:41Uh, right now I'm still on Facebook, but I have probably intentions of removing myself from Facebook and everything again once I get  this up and going. like, if people do want to get connected, they should do that. Otherwise it's going to just be like snail mail or telephone.  Okay. How is that going to work? I don't have any desires to be
32:10famous or anything. just have desires to create and cultivate a peaceful place for people to come and be a part of  and have rest and recovery if they'd like.  I don't care about any way of this world and how it operates. I'm just creating my own. Okay. So basically right now people can find you on Facebook, but if they want to keep track of what's going on at your place, they need to get hold of you.
32:40through your phone or they need to get an email. I haven't a rosewood urban regenerative farms at gmail.com is an email if people want to get in touch. Okay, cool. Because I'm like, you're doing really cool stuff, people are going to want to know and want to be involved, but they're not going to be able to find out about it. At some point, I'm going to need someone who wants to deal with the outside world. It's just, you know,
33:06want to be surrounded by the problems. I had to crawl out of the problems as a child, you know,  and I finally have peace and safety and I just, I can cultivate that for others. I just don't want to deal with a lot of the other problems anymore.  I don't blame you at all. And you know what? You have to do what's right for you. So you do that.  You stay true to yourself because it's the best way to live.
33:33All right, as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support. um Chelsea, thank you for coming back. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Have a great day.
 

Lala and Justin’s Homestead

Today I'm talking with Amanda at Lala and Justin’s Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  The tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Amanda at Lala and Justin's Homestead in Vermont.  Good morning,  Amanda, how are you? Good, how are you Mary?  I'm good, how's the weather in Vermont this morning? Chilly, we got our first freeze.
00:56Um, well, our first day that the bowls in the barn, the ice bowls were all frozen. So that was a fun morning, topping out dishes, but it's to be expected. It's Vermont. So as my dad says, it's all part of it. Yep. Yep. It's, uh, it's very gray here in Minnesota this morning. It's chilly  and there's almost no breeze at all. It's very quiet outside, which is weird. We usually have some kind of wind blowing.
01:24Okay, so  I want to know why it's called Lala and Justin's Homestead first. Well, Lala um was a nickname given to me by my stepdad.  And  when I got into rabbits,  he helped me a lot with like building nest boxes and building cage areas and different things that I needed help building. And he always called me Lala. So
01:52When I started the rabbitry back up, um as an adult, I decided to honor him and call it Lola's Lovely Lops.  And Justin's my partner, so he gets to tag along.  Well, yeah, and he probably helps, which is really nice. um Is your stepfather still with us?  No, he passed away five,  he's been five years since he's been gone. Okay.  Well, what a great way to honor his memory. That's, that's fabulous.
02:20Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you guys do. Um, sorry. Um, so I'm- Did I make you cry? I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
02:37It's just... I just miss him. That's all. Yeah,  yeah, it's so hard. It's hard around the holidays.  Oh, for sure, yeah. And the way that I deal with people who have passed... The way I deal with it is I try to remember the really fun stuff that made me laugh and then it makes me laugh and it kind of counteracts the crying a little bit.  Yeah, he was hilarious. So there's a lot to laugh about.
03:05Yeah, and you're carrying on his memory by doing something you love to do.  So that's a beautiful thing. And how much do you love raising rabbits? I mean, come on. I've been raising them since I was 10. I absolutely adore them. Yeah. one of my favorite animals in the whole entire world, other than my dogs. Okay. So are you okay? Yeah, I've got it back.  Okay, good. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.
03:35So we are a family of four.  We have a point four or five acre property and we raise the rabbits  garden. We do a lot of foraging.  like, I'm very into mycology and mushrooms. um So we've been taking on teaching ourselves different types of edible mushrooms for the past,  I'd say 12 years or so we've been learning about mushrooms.
04:05And I'd eventually like to get into herbs and learning about that. But I would like to find a mentor before I step into that because there's just so much to learn. But yeah, we're a small family and we raise the rabbit meat. I do a lot of bartering with people for rabbit. And I get most of my beef and chicken from other people that raise so that.
04:30That's a good trade. It's a good barter system we have going in our community. And we started that back in 2020 with the bartering because of the shortages and stuff. So I just got deeper into the rabbits at that time.  And I have way more than I intended  now.  So rabbit math is not much different from chicken math. take it. Oh, I think it's a little worse. Okay.
04:56But it's enjoyable, so it's okay. don't have anything bred right now. I have one that's due today. And, she was due yesterday and she hasn't had her litter yet. But other than that, I don't have anything bred because I haven't decided if I want to have babies in the cold, cold months yet. But I have a few that I was thinking of breeding this week so that I could have them born during my Christmas break from work. So. Yeah. And it's addictive. Those baby bunnies are so cute.
05:25Oh, they're adorable. Yeah, I don't, I'm not, I am not an expert. We tried raising meat rabbits for about a year.  We had one litter after trying to breed rabbits for the whole year. got one litter out of the deal  and had to bring them, had to bring the mama and the babies in the house because they're born on the hottest day of and oh there was no way to keep them cool out in their hutch. And my husband was like, we should let nature take its course. And I was like,
05:54No, because this is not nature.  She is not living the way she would live if she was in nature. If was in nature,  she would be burrowing into the ground to stay cool with her babies. I said, I am not letting those babies die. And so we literally put her in a clear bin with her nesting box with the babies. And I had little baby bunnies in my house for about three weeks. Oh my goodness.  No, it was so fun.
06:24It was no, it wasn't bad. just we had pine shavings that we had in a bag and we would just empty the  bin out every morning  and put them for our shavings in and it was it was very educational but it was far more entertaining than anything else. Yeah. But they are they are the most adorable babies and  about the only time you can hold a rabbit really safely is when they're the size of your palm.
06:56I know if I agree with that, but. Oh, I I got kicked really hard when I was about, oh, probably 15 from my pet rabbit. had a pet rabbit when I was 14, 15 and, uh, claw punctured the skin at the top of my breast. I still have the scar from that puncture. I have a scar in that area too from a rabbit I had as a child that bit me and. Yeah.
07:24And I mean, if you hold the babies from when they're just  little and they become something that you hold every day, they trust you and they're fine. But I didn't get that rabbit until it was probably four months old. So it hadn't really been handled a lot. So it did not love to be held. And of course I wanted to hold the bunny.  I didn't hold that bunny as often after that happened. Yeah, they get kind of feisty if you don't really hold them too much, if you don't give them too much attention, but if you socialize on them and
07:52play with them, they're usually pretty easy and chill. Yeah, exactly. They don't fight me too hard, but I think I just have a bunny way about me. I don't know, I  can handle almost any rabbit, even the wild ones.  You're a bunny whisperer. Yeah,  I've doing it a while. I I've had rabbits for 28 years, I've  had them for a long time. You have a lot of experience. Yep.
08:21Okay, so since you've been doing this for a long time,  can you walk me through so that anybody who wants to get into rabbits could think really think about it more how you get started because  it seems like it's easy, but having done it, it's not as easy as one would think. Yeah, they don't really breed like rabbits when you want them to. They do not. oh Well, if I was to get started, I think I would research.
08:49the breed that I want. There are so many breeds to choose from. And I would  look at the American Rabbit Breeder Association standard of perfection and find someone that knows a little bit about what they're talking about. Because  rabbits bred to the standard,  the meat breeds are bred to produce more meat. So if you get something that's closer to the standard of perfection, you're going to have more meat production.
09:17and better meat production because they're going to be bred to the right standard. oh I would start by finding a breeder that knows what they're talking about,  that has a little bit of experience at least. I mean, there are new breeders that have done the research, so I can't say just experienced breeders, but for the most part, find someone that might want to mentor you. So if you have questions,  you can refer back to them and
09:47I mean, as a breeder, if someone buys from me, when they message me, I answer their questions. That's part of it is they get mentorship out of purchasing my rabbits. um
10:00But I would research that and then research  the type of environment that you want for your rabbits  based on your space.  So I don't have very much space because I'm a small property  and I do stacker cages, which work for me in my space.  But with that, you've got to clean more often because if you don't, you can get pneumonia buildup and end up with sick rabbits. So your space,  some people want like a full barn with
10:28just hanging cages, which is nice because then you can shovel out the poop and you don't have to clean pans.  And you don't have to clean as often because  the droppings fall to the bottom and they're not ever going to be in their waste. you'd want to do, some people want to do colony style.  That doesn't work for my area. um I also don't like, I personally don't want my rabbits  on the ground picking up parasites and
10:58being exposed to disease.  So for me, cages work best to keep them clean and healthy. Let's see. What else? have, I have a specific question. If someone was going to get into raising rabbits  and they were in it for the cuteness effect to begin with, because a lot of people love baby bunnies.  If you were going to get like,  I don't know, eight week old baby bunnies, is there a whole different
11:27way of taking care of them until they're old enough to breed? um So my rabbits,  my rabbits are on hay and pellets. um The younger ones don't get treats, snacks and stuff because that can give them diarrhea.  So for the younger ones, I wouldn't expose them to like vegetated  stuff. I would wait until they're a little bit older to start introducing that to them.
11:53Okay. Just so that their stomach doesn't get messed up because they have sensitive digestion.  But if they were into the  cuteness factor, they might want to consider what they actually want to breed for. Do they want to breed for pet? Do they want to breed for meat? There's dwarf rabbits that are primarily pet or show. And  is that the direction they want to go? But if they go that direction,  they might want to research. um
12:21issues with dwarfs and know a little bit about like rabbit hips because some rabbits will get stuck if their if their hips are narrow when they when they go to birth. um So that's something I would look into um getting a properly  shaped rabbit obviously that's able to birth those kids.  and a narrow pelvic floor is no good for any female animal ever. No,  no.
12:49And that's when you end up, can lose your female, lose your babies. Dwarfs are more prone to producing peanuts, which is a double genetic dwarf  and it's not viable.  So you might have to call those babies because sometimes they'll survive about 10 days or so,  but they don't grow.  why do they call those babies peanuts?  I've seen it before. Why is it peanuts? I don't know why they're peanuts, but they're super tiny.
13:19Um, that could be part of the reasoning because the I've had, I've had letters where the mother had a peanut and a regular kit and the penis just don't grow. They stay like birth size.  They get fur and then they slowly like wither away and die. If you leave them in the nest,  um, they have pinched pointy ears that are like closer to their head versus a non-peanut that has a little bit bigger ear. So you can kind of figure them out when they're born.
13:48They're usually like half the size of the rest of the litter. So it's like failure to thrive? Yeah. Yeah, they can't survive. They're not, they're not viable. Okay. I always wondered about that. Thank you. Cause I read about it when we were looking into getting meat rabbits and I was like, why do they call it a peanut? And I couldn't find any information about it. Well, if you're getting into meat rabbits, your meat rabbits shouldn't produce any peanuts. Um, I was just reading up on baby rabbits in general, and it mentioned peanuts.
14:18And I  think probably the reason that people pick the word peanut for it is because they look like a peanut. They're so tiny. They're just little tiny things. Yup. And you know you're going to lose them. It's just pretty sad. This raising animals thing is like the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I kid you not. It's so  good and so bad at the same time. Yeah. There's days that I think about getting rid of all of them because it's just been hard.
14:48Then I'm like, oh, look how cute they are.  I can't do that. I love them. Yeah. And honestly, meat from rabbits is really  nutritionally dense, I think. I think it's really good for you. It's the highest protein of any meat you can get  and the lowest amount of fat.  And it's absolutely delicious. It's very similar to chicken. Yes. And actually, I was thinking about this earlier, knowing I was going to talk to you.
15:18I have an opinion question for you. you think that if you are trying to get someone to try rabbit that you should say, I made rabbit as a dish for dinner. Would you like to try it so that they know what they're eating? do you think that you should let them think it's chicken and then wait a few days and let them know that they ate rabbit? Wow.
15:44The first time I went to Bible study at my new church, I brought buffalo body dip and I made it into, it looked like chicken, know, buffalo chicken dip. And I didn't tell anybody, I just let them enjoy it, you know? And then later someone asked me, oh, is that chicken or was that pork? That was really good. And I said, actually it's rabbit. And they're like, oh.
16:08And were they like, ew? Or were they like surprised and considering they were like, more curious. So I mean, I've tried to bring,  I try to bring a rabbit dish every Bible study. It's once a month.  And I try to bring it with me every time I go so that they can try something different because I feel that, um, like a lot of people have prejudgment around rabbit and eating cute little animals, but aren't they all cute?  Like aren't the cows cute? Aren't the chickens cute?  Um.
16:36So I think if  it's cooked up and made into something that's edible looking and smells good, people are more prone to try it. eh And when I have birthday parties for my kids, I'll make some kind of rabbit dish. So if someone's there that hasn't tried it, they get an opportunity. em I pulled rabbit for summer barbecues. People seem to love that. And I've had a lot of people that said they never try rabbit. Look at it.
17:02and be like, actually, I'll try a little bit of that. That looks pretty good. Yeah, and part of the reason people don't have exposure to eating rabbit is because grocery stores don't really sell rabbit. No, only like the Asian markets like carry it. There's a couple of specialty food stores, the health food store around us used to carry it, but I don't think they've found another farmer to supply it to them.
17:28Yeah, just yeah. So they don't I don't think they carry it anymore because the lady that was selling to them got out of it and I haven't bothered to see if they were interested in mine or I don't know. I don't think I make I  grow enough to  supply any stores, but I do grow enough to supply myself and my community with barter. OK, so the reason I asked you about that that question is.
17:56When I was a young  lady, like not quite 18 and not 12, um I babysat for a guy who raised rabbits  and his kids ate rabbit all the time.  And I didn't realize that he thought that I would be grossed out at eating rabbit.  And so he was like, I fried up some chicken, it's in the fridge. You can have some if you would like it, but that's the kid's dinner. And I'm like, okay, cool.
18:25And so I grabbed a chicken wing or chicken leg or something. remember what it was.  And I had a piece of chicken with the kid.  And he informed me like a week later that it was rabbit. And you couldn't tell the difference, could you? No, I had no idea. But I was really perplexed. I was like, why didn't you just tell me it was rabbit? Because some people have that mental block. I mean, my niece,  when she comes over, I make
18:55chicken nuggets, but they're not really chicken nuggets. um And she's always said, Oh, Auntie makes the best chicken nuggets.  And she was over a few weeks ago, talking about how I'm cruel for killing little baby bunnies. And I'm like, you don't seem to mind my little baby bunnies when you're eating chicken nuggets.  Oh, that just clicked for her that she's been eating rabbit for four years. And what was her? What was her? uh
19:25reaction to it clicking. mean, she's  10 and I got the big eyeballs.  but yeah, she's still going to eat it. think when I make it again and think it's chicken. I  don't think it'll ruin that.  Okay, good. Well, the answer that I got when, when I said, didn't you just tell me it was rabbit was that he had had people, he had told people that he raised rabbits.
19:50And he would have people over for dinner and they're like, is it rabbit or is it chicken? And he would say it's rabbit and they would say, no, thank you. And he learned that asking for forgiveness was better than asking for permission to get them to try it. I said, how's that been going for you? And he said, well, he said, I've only had a couple of people get greener on the gills when I tell them they ate rabbit. And I said, is that why you wait a week? So they don't end up. um
20:20up checking dinner. And he said, yeah. And I said, okay. I said, I understand your reasoning. said, I'm kind of offended that you tricked me.  He says, okay, I can accept that. He said, did you like it? And I was like, yeah, it tastes just like chicken. He's like, it does. He said, it might as well be chicken, but it's not. So that was why I asked you because people are like, oh my God, rabbit. And I'm like, it  literally tastes like chicken. It does. I mean, I've been labeling my crock pot lately when I go to places and
20:49It's funny when people read it and I can  see the faces. And I went to a  baby shower this fall and I brought a, my friend wanted Buffalo bunny dip. So that's what I brought. And there were some kids there about my son's age, about 13, 14. And you could tell they were daring each other to try it.  And then one finally did. And like the look on his face was like, Oh, this is really good and impressed. And then the other little boys all tried it and.
21:20they were all eating it and enjoying it. So I mean.
21:25I  think if you label it, they have the opportunity to see what it is and then you don't get in trouble as much with them when they find out. Yeah, exactly. don't think it's fair to trick people into trying something. I  have a little bit of an issue with the trickery involved.  But I also think that people should try things because you never know what you're going to like until you try it. You don't know.
21:54and kids are more picky usually, but I found that uh my son's friends when they come over, they're interested in trying it because they've never had it before. Most of them don't have a clue what it tastes like because that's not something on their menu.  And I've had quite a few of them that are like, ooh,  I'm coming for dinner tonight. Can you cook rabbit? And I'm like, OK, I'll go outside and pop one off.  You know, because it takes me about two hours to make it if I'm roasting it in the oven.
22:24And  it's a lot quicker to take a fresh one than it is to take one out of the freezer for the most part.  Yeah, absolutely.  Rabbit takes forever to thaw out. Yeah, about a day. It's a chicken. That's  OK, so I have a question about that. I thought that you were supposed to let the rabbit carcass sit in the fridge in water overnight. That's not you don't have to do that?
22:48And  when you put animals in water,  takes the blood and stuff out of the meat and it makes it like soft texture. oh I never soak my rabbits.  Some people brine them, I don't.  I usually will process and if you eat it before it hits rigor, then you're good. um But if it starts to hit rigor mortis, then you want to wait until it passes rigor mortis or you'll end up with tough meat.
23:17And how long  is it from death to rigor setting in? I don't know. I don't know.  When I'm making them fresh, I go out and I kill one  and  process it right off and get it in the oven. So I don't usually  have to deal with that. em But if they've hit rigor, it's usually like you want to let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days.  If I'm processing and I don't have time to get them packaged up,
23:44right off, I'll put them on like a baking sheet pan in little bags and  let them sit there for a day or two until I get to um them and then package them up when they're flexible again.  Okay. And if you're not going to cook them after that timeframe, then  you put them in the freezer? Yep.  Okay.  I usually take and I marinate  a large portion of my rabbits. So I'll
24:10I'll bring them in and I'll put them in a marinade and let them sit in the fridge for two days anyway  to soak up that marinade. And then I'll freeze them. oh Awesome. And then since you know what you're talking about and I didn't know what I was doing, um do you, is it better to roast a whole rabbit or is it better to  piece them out and  cook them like fried chicken or is it different in general? Oh, there's so many ways.
24:39There's so many ways to cook rabbit and it took me, I mean it took me about three years since, it took me about three years of cooking it to learn how to cook it properly. And I was always like, okay, this is tough, this is gross, like I don't know about this. But the thing with rabbit is if you cook it low and slow, so like 300, 350 for like two hours, if you do that, something like that in the oven and you want.
25:06to add some kind of a moisture method. So like butter, oil,  water,  it'll help make it more tender in a closed vessel. You don't want it drying all out because if it dries out, it's not gonna be nice and tender.  No, it's terrible rabbit jerky and you won't be able to chew it. Yeah.  Yeah, I love to cook. So I'm glad you're talking to me about this because...
25:32Eventually we will probably try meat rabbits again, not anytime soon, but we have flirted with the idea of trying again. Yep. Because I actually do like eating rabbit, but I don't know anybody who has any to buy. So yeah. mean,  yeah. I'm sure there's someone in your area. I've got a list of readers on my page that's pinned to the top. If you want to find someone close to you. Go look. Yeah.
25:58And I really loved having the rabbits. I just didn't love feeding them for no return. Yeah, that's upsetting. So when I don't get return, I usually end up culling the rabbits that don't give me return. Yeah, that's what we ended up doing because we only had three  and they were not doing the job they were hired to do. No, sometimes a lot of rabbits get fat if they're not bred continually um and will not.
26:26That sounds terrible, but not continually. um... When they're supposed to? I breed my does like two... two to three times a year. And if they go a whole year without breeding, they're gonna get a lot of internal fat and they're not gonna get pregnant for you. Or it's gonna be a lot harder to get them pregnant. Yeah, we had the most beautiful... I don't even know how to explain her coloring. She was...
26:54She was like the prettiest, softest brown with gold tips and black mixed in and a little bit of white. All those colors together, the  predominant was like a deer color brown. Oh, so she's probably castor colored or chestnut colored, which is a wild rabbit color. Yes. She looked like a wild rabbit, but she was not a wild rabbit because you're not allowed to keep wild rabbits in Minnesota as any, in any way, shape or form that is highly frowned upon.
27:24Same here.  But she was beautiful and I so wanted her to have babies and she just never took. And I was so frustrated after six months I was like, what is wrong with you? Why are you not getting pregnant? My husband's like, she cannot understand English. I'm like, I do not care.  I still want to tell her.  Why? Why are you not giving me babies?
27:48And so after a year, we were just done with all of them because  the one that did give us babies actually died. have no idea why. um I don't know. Three, four months after she had that first litter. Yeah. My husband went out to the Hutch and she was just killed over dead. And he came in and he said, you are going to be upset. And I said, OK, well, I've been upset here before. What? And he said.
28:15the white rabbit died and I said, well, it's a good thing no one's having babies anywhere in this house or around us. I said, because that would be a bad thing. It's the old joke is the rabbit died if you're pregnant.  he said, you're not as upset as I thought you'd be.
28:31I said, well, I said the rabbits are not exactly doing what they're supposed to be doing. So it's one we don't have to call.  Yeah. And he said, I am so proud of you. said, thank you.  I said, when are we going to take care of the other two? He's like, oh, we'll give it one more breeding attempt. And if it doesn't work, they're done. They're food.  Yeah. I usually give three strikes and then they're out.  It was what I try for. And if I really  want them,
28:59I threaten them one more time and give them that fourth try  and hope that it works. I mean,  you don't want to waste too much time on them. They should be breeding. And if they're not, then  it's time to find something else  that does want to breed because there's a lot of rabbits that do know how to breed.  Yes. And feeding rabbits is not cheap.  Nope.  I mean, my feed bill is about $400 a month, but I have a lot of rabbits.
29:29Yeah. And I mean, they are lovely little creatures and I really do like them, but I don't want to spend the money to feed them if they are not doing the job that we've got them to do. Well, they do great fertilizer. They make great fertilizer. So I mean, that's a job that they can still do  if you still want to hold on to them for  fun.  Yes. And rabbit manure is um a cold fertilizer. You don't have to let it uh cure, right?
29:57Right, you can add it right to the garden. Yeah, yep, and they are very good at producing poop. They poop a lot. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I pull four wheel barrel loads out every weekend.  And uh as I recall, it's not their manure that's stinky, it's their urine. So yeah, yeah, their poops don't really stink unless it gets like built up in a corner.
30:24And the only reason it would stink is because it's getting built up and there's pee on it. So yeah, exactly. It's true. And to end this out, because I try to keep these to half an hour, I feel like we could talk for four hours about this. could talk for five hours about rabbits. Yeah. Yeah. But I, no one's going to listen to that for five hours, Amanda.  I know. uh Um, so I learned a thing when we had the baby bunnies,  they will eat the mom's poop, but it's  different. Can you explain about that?
30:55Um, so they have hard poops and they have soft poops and their soft poops.  Um, so the mama's soft poops  have all the probiotics and everything the babies need to build up their gut system. So they'll eat the softer poops. The moms that will go in the nest box and drop off some of those poops for them.  And they'll, that'll be some of their first foods to build up their stomach.  Yeah.  There's a note for that.
31:24poop though.  Centotropes. Thank you. it's the right, I don't know if I'm saying it correctly, I say things a lot of times. That's okay.  It's a very specific thing that the babies actually need to do. Yes. probiotics is a good thing to give them during that time too so that they can help build more of an immune system. Yep. um
31:50The other thing that I learned when we had the baby bunnies is that they nurse upside down.  Yep. So when people are like, Oh, don't hold a bunny on its back. I'm like, what are you talking about? They eat on their backs when they're babies. Like I think they can go upside down. They'll be fine on their back.  Funniest oh thing I saw when the bunny, when the baby bunnies were probably  two, three weeks old,  I looked in the, in the
32:20in the box and I had taken the nesting box out. They were probably three weeks old, I think. And they were just all over the place. There was no point in having the nesting box in there anymore. They were just in there with mom. And they were nursing and you could see their little feet kicking, their back feet up from under her eye. Oh my God. So funny. so cute. So. So cute. I've had, I got some heat because I shared a litter. I keep my doughs with the mom until
32:50I'm ready to harvest or breed back the mom. So sometimes my does will be with the mom 12, 16 weeks. And it's very funny when you go in to go take care of your rabbits and you hear these loud gulping noises and you've got some 12 to 14 week kids nursing off of their mom. huh. Yeah. the feet are flailing and they're almost as big as her.
33:19Yeah, I would feel so bad for that mom because that just makes me think of the fact that I nursed all three of my babies. And if they had come to me at like, I don't know, eight to nurse, I'd been like, no, we are way done. No, way done with that.  I nursed both of mine too. So I mean,  I'm like, well, if she wants to do it, that's up to her.  Absolutely. Our  barn cat,  she's gone now. She disappeared.
33:48I'm so sad about this.  But uh last year at this time, she had her third litter of kittens. And uh when the kittens got to be about  six, seven weeks old, they were still wanting to be up close to her because it was kind of chilly outside.  And of course, they're up close to her, so they want to nurse. And she was trying to wean them. And they would get up underneath of her, latch on, and you could tell they were nursing.
34:17She'd give it maybe a minute,  maybe, and then she would kick them off of her.  And she'd walk away like,  uh, no. And they would just follow her around waiting for her to lay down to take a nap. And then they would just swarm her to nurse. And I'm  like, oh my God, you guys.  So yeah, babies are always going to want that comfort, whether they actually need it or not. And it's up to the mom to be like, yeah, we're done. m
34:46All right, Amanda, this was amazing and I hadn't really had uh a,  to quote AI,  deep dive on rabbits before on the podcast. So this was great. Thank you. You're welcome. I hope it's informational for some.  Oh, I think it will be.  Everything on this podcast is meant to teach people how to get information and how to consider the next step. And so every time I talk to people like you, I'm just like, Oh, you're brilliant. Thank you for that. uh
35:15Where can people find you, Amanda? Well, I  have a Facebook page, Lalo and Justin's Homestead. I also have a rabbitry group, Lalo's Lovely Lops, I  post my babies when I do have them available. But I like to evaluate before I post anything, usually. And then I have an ad on American Rabbit Breeders Association if they want to see the breeds that I raise and  contact me through phone or email.
35:46Other than that, I don't really have anything else for contacts. Okay. Well, if anybody listening wants to learn about rabbits, they should talk to Amanda. And I'm assuming if people have questions, they can message you on Facebook or they can email you. Yeah, they can comment on my page on something I post or keep those interactions coming so I can keep growing that page. Yeah. Yeah.
36:12It's amazing what it takes to get Facebook to notice you.  as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you want to support the podcast, you can find  the support page at atinyhomestead.com slash support.  Amanda, again, thank you. I hope you feel better and I hope you have a great day. Thank you for having me, Mary.  Absolutely.  Bye.
 

Clear Creek Ranch Mom - Life Goes On (whether we're ready or not)

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29And that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  The tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch in Nebraska. Good morning, Leah. How are you? Good morning, Mary. Always good to visit with you. Yes. And as I told you before we started, I love you. You are wonderful. uh
00:58What's the weather like in Nebraska this morning? Oh, goodness. So if you didn't know, my first major in college was actually meteorology. I was planning to be a weather girl. And so I love to study the weather. It is foggy and dreary. I'm supposed to be 60 today, but if you follow the old wives' tales, I mean, I keep seeing these early foggy mornings, TNS up for precipitation in 90 days. I don't know. Winter has not arrived yet, but
01:27It'll be interesting to see what ends up happening. We've had such a beautiful fall.  We have here in Minnesota too. And I thought we were going to be looking at an early cold snap, but it's been gorgeous. And we had our first, um, Sneet. We call it Sneet here, snow and sleet mixed together.  We had that three or four days ago  and it did it early in the morning and then it was gone by noon. Nice.
01:54It's been, it's been foggy here every morning for the last four mornings. So I don't know. This, this climate change thing is freaky. I don't really love it, but it's okay. We'll see how it goes. And honestly, my husband drives all over creation for his job. So the less ice and snow on the road, guess is better than more ice and snow on the road. story. Yep. Yeah. Let's check like in February and see how things are looking.
02:24Yeah. Well, I'm sure we're going to get snow. I just don't think we're going to get a lot. The last two winters here where we live, we haven't even seen a foot of snow total for the winter. Yep. Same. I always uh judge the snow by in my diary how many times we had to scoot bunks for the feeder calves in the mornings. And the feeder calves are with us until, well,  somewhere around the week after Valentine's Day when we usually sell them.  so I always know what kind of winter it's.
02:53It's been, we didn't have to shovel at all last winter at all. Okay. All right. So Leah's been a guest on this show three times already because she's brilliant and I love talking with her  and she is a rancher, a fifth generation rancher, right?  Yes, ma'am. And sixth generation waiting in the wings.  Oh, there's a baby come in. uh No, the girls fight our daughters. Yep.  Yep. Yep. The ranch will be left.
03:23to  these wonderful girls  when the time is right  and they can do with it as they choose.  But I love that fact. Good. And hopefully they'll marry really good, strong, smart men who can help them run the ranch. Yes, ma'am. That is the prayer when I go to bed every night is marrying the right man, not because of what I want him to do, but how I want him to be no matter  what occupation he's in.
03:53Yes, absolutely.  need, okay, I'm gonna step on the soap box for a minute because I don't usually, but I'm going to right now.  We need our children who are adults to hook up with the right person so that they can have a really  long and lasting love and that they work together as partners because I've  been married three times.  This current marriage is my third marriage and we just celebrated our 20 something.
04:22I can't remember right now.  I married in 2002. And  it's longest marriage out of any of the three that I've had. And my husband and I are very different people.  I mean,  very different. His priorities and my priorities on things are very far apart sometimes, but our core values are the same.  And so if you can find someone with the same core values, you can work through almost anything. Amen, sister. Yeah.
04:51So um when we last talked in September, so this is a really quick turnaround for you to come back. I'm very happy about that.  We talked about beef prices.  And one of the things that you told me is that you guys were going to have to decide how many of the  baby, ah well, not baby, but younger bovines you were going to keep back to build your inventory back up.
05:17So how is that going? Have you decided? Have you already made the decision what's up with that?  We were blessed with wonderful weather this fall and we weaned right on schedule and the weather was cooperative for that. Weaning is a stressful time for the calves mainly because they do lose that last bit of immunity benefit they're getting from their mother's milk even as most of them have tapered down.  And we did deal with some wild temperature swings and when that happens right in  that stressful period,
05:47they can have some respiratory concerns.  And we did see that, but thankfully our people,  all of us, vigilant on top of that. And we got through the weaning stress just fine.  And then we moved right into harvest and then we moved back to cattle work. And so the last two months since I talked with you really have been a blur.  That's the way it is each year.  Oh, to the news  on beef,  you know.
06:15We could talk just for days and days about  everything over the last 60 days regarding  beef in the United States.  insanity. uh Yeah. And  so, you know, my father is a very wise man, still very involved in the operation. And he reminds me constantly something we talked about before we went on the air today about only managing what's in your sphere of influence and sphere of control. And that's a good touch point. And it's important.
06:45to do often, more than once a day sometimes,  as these sensational headlines and comments being made and swings on paper at least in the markets  and global challenges continue that the wisest voices have said, focus on what you control, which is ranchers, please keep raising high quality beef.
07:10So here we are now in mid-November and all of our feeder calves are  growing away  and we have not made decisions yet on how many females we will retain next year. Now we always raise our own, our own replacement heifers, but there may be an opportunity to hang onto a few more rather than set them into the feeder cattle market. Preg checking was last week for us. That went exceptionally well and we're very grateful  because every cow
07:38will hit a place in her life where it's time for her to exit the herd for whatever reason. Maybe she hasn't bred two years in a row. She's  got cancer. She needs to go.  Or maybe her last calf didn't wean off very well. Maybe she didn't have enough milk. So we're always anxious that we have a good quality crop of replacements, always  ready to step in  to that herd. Now we have finite resources as far as what we own for grass and the rent that we
08:08do of grass, so we have to manage our grazing plans well, working with Mother Nature. But the  bigger question that many producers have right now who are justified in their concerns about what an operating note is going to look like, maybe they raise other commodities that are in the dumpster, like corn and markets are right now, are going to have to work really closely with their bankers, with their accountants, with their insurance people.
08:38and with their families  and other decision makers and make  real hard decisions about what the plans are next year and try to do it without being caught up in speculation because that doesn't serve a purpose. So for us, means keeping on keeping on.  There may be an opportunity to keep back some additional females so we can do our part to try to help grow the herds.
09:07size in America because it has continued to shrink. But that'll be a decision made in spring, probably.
09:16It's really, really hard to explain what all this means to consumers or to those removed from agriculture, but  it's not unlike owning and managing your own business, especially if it's a business that's really can be really caught up in things affecting you that you don't have any say over.  That's the hardest part to translate  as again evidenced by comments and wild swings in the markets. um
09:46things happen at least on paper and on the boards  that affect us,  sometimes minute by minute.  And I don't like it.  I can't do anything about it except for ask my elected people to be cognizant of what we've allowed to happen. And so much of it is well beyond my  limited understanding of economics um and trade. But.
10:15Doing what's best for Americans, for consumers, for business owners, investors and all is very complicated. All I can say is there's a lot more that needs to be done  again as evidenced by what's happened. mean, it was terrible a few weeks ago and I  more than anything I think in this day and age of instant information, instant communications, it's every one of us needs to be much more cognizant.
10:44of understanding the words have consequences. Good words and bad words, because you  just travel so much more quickly and you don't get an opportunity to provide further explanation to what you're saying. People have got to take responsibility for the words  and the impact that they have in all regards.  And that goes for us in agriculture, those of us working in it, those of us leading these industries.
11:13And to those who are supposed to be looking out for us, who maybe have never had had a pair of boots in their life, your words really do have meaning and consequences. So choose really wisely.  absolutely. And  the whole thing about not having control. It also impacts little, little farms like mine, because  every time we see a report for the weather,
11:42you know, for the week coming up in the summertime,  we're like, okay, well, we could lose the entire garden a week from now because they're predicting really bad storms, really high winds, hail, blah, blah, blah. And every time that happens, I take a deep breath and I'm not really a religious girl, but I, I phrase it as the universe, not God. And I say, universe, please don't take my garden right now.  And we've been lucky. It hasn't taken our garden, but at some point,
12:11the weather will take our garden.  And so you just, I don't know, you gotta have faith in something, whether it's God  or yourself or whatever, that as long as you're breathing and capable, there's always potential. Yes. And your words do have consequences. Your actions have consequences  and sometimes things just happen. Yeah.
12:40We want so badly to have  blame placed or responsibility assigned to  everything. And I mean everything.  And that's not good for us. It's not healthy. The thing I appreciate about America's  ranchers, I'm just, I'm going to, I'm going to say ranchers, but really mean throw, I'm throwing that blanket over people who raise a living thing, who are responsible for a living thing, whatever it might be. They understand.
13:10they have to or they won't survive. Sometimes things just happen. So you try to plan for it. You try to make sure you have insurance, you know, for it. But sometimes things just happen and there aren't any answers and there aren't fixes. They're just not. And when those things come, for me personally, I have to rely on my faith and I have to rely on
13:36Believing, choosing to believe that other human beings are good. They care about the wellbeing of others, even if others look different than them.  And that there is enough goodwill to get people through those things. um If we don't have that, and that's why I'm so passionate about community, if we don't have that, we all would fold because stuff just happens.  Yep, I have a couple things on that. Number one,
14:05It's okay to have a damn good cry when stuff happens. Yes. And it's good for you. You know,  it's better than crawling into a bottle of alcohol or  I don't know, smoke in a joint. And  I'm not saying that marijuana is  bad. There's a lot of stuff in the news and among people right now that  marijuana is not any more harmful than alcohol.  I have never done a street drug in my life. Don't intend to.  am
14:34way too much of a control freak to let go that far. sometimes feeling your feelings and just having a really good cry or a huge giggle fit is good for the soul. So do that first. And I was going somewhere with this and I think I lost my train of thought because that happens too. You can't judge people. You should not be judging people's response to things happening either. I am right.
15:03really,  really hard on women on this one, because I've seen it a lot recently where women are judging one another's response and grief, whatever the grief is over, that that is a dangerous thing to do, because it doesn't look the same for everyone ever, and it never will.  No, no, it does not. And it changes for the same person. When we first moved here, five years ago, we got
15:31a couple of cats from the Humane Society to be barn cats. And they were gorgeous. They were like six or eight months old and they were males. They were fixed. One was a silver tabby. One was an orange tabby. And within six months, the silver tabby got hit by a car.  And  it was the first  animal we'd lost here since we moved here. And I sobbed. Like I was really, really upset.
15:58And my husband said, you're going to have to get uh a stiffer upper lip, honey, because things die on the farm. And I was like, I don't have to do anything. I have to cry right now. And he said, okay. He said, it's going to hurt every time. And I said, yes, this is the worst one. Let me feel it.  And he was like, I just hate it when you're upset. And I said, yeah, no, I know you love me. You want me to be happy. I understand. And so I, I felt my feelings that day. I slammed cabinet doors.  I.
16:27did dishes and swept the floor and threw all my sadness and my disappointment into cleaning because that's what we women tend to do,  you know, a lot.  And then a year later, the orange one got hit by a car. We live on a really busy highway. And I saw him in the road and I knew he was dead. And I was like, well, I know where the cat is. And my husband said, where? I said, look, cause we'd see him out the window. And he said, oh no, are you going to cry all day? And I was like, nope.
16:57I'm not, I'm gonna slam cabinets and clean my house." And he just laughed and he said, oh, he said, so you were right. The first one was really hard. It's gonna get easier. It's just never gonna be any fun. And I said, yeah. So even your grief process changes from  one day to the next because  you never get over losing something to death. You just get used to it, which sounds terrible, but it's true.  It is true.  And
17:27I'm so thankful for my tenure in the past as a government employee. I'm thankful for it for many reasons. When October 1st came, not long after you and I had talked.
17:40and government shutdown happened. I was so thankful for my experience as a government employee because it helped bolster my empathy for those affected, including myself a second time, but also to be a voice and push back against those who could not seemingly find their compassion or empathy for those affected by the decisions made. And
18:09I don't love looking for a fight.  I don't. And I don't like arguing. really prefer peace. The older I get, the more I crave it. And yet there's this piece of me that says, you know, thank God made you for a reason to be an advocate for people who feel like they don't have a voice.  So I found myself  doing exactly what you're talking about in helping people, trying to help people see.
18:36When you don't know how someone's feeling or how something affects someone, you don't have the right to tell them how they should feel about it.
18:51And I don't know if I made an impression or not, but the second time that someone just said something like, well, you'll get your pay when the government's back open, I'm sure you have an emergency fund.
19:06doesn't help.  you know, I don't know enough about other cultures to know if this kind of self-righteous, all-knowing  behavior  exists in other cultures the way it does in this country. But it's not a good look for us,  and it's really,  really left me thoughtful, especially in recent months, about how we conduct ourselves and how we think we are, all knowing about how everyone should think or feel or act at any time.
19:33Yeah, and I have to be really careful with my podcast about this stuff because  I think the way that we do things at our house is good.  I think it's the right way to do things. It may not be right for everybody else.  Yes, and we need diversity. That's what makes our country so great. Yeah, and I actually talked to two different people oh in the last two weeks for the podcast  about the whole SNAP.
20:03benefits fiasco  because the first one was about how to find help and how to be a helper  in that situation and then the second one was how to not find yourself in a bind  if  if something like that happens again how can you prepare for that ahead of time  and I almost didn't do either one of them because I was like well who am I to say anything about this I have food in my freezers and in my pantry because
20:32That's how we operate here.  We plan for a month ahead at least, because it's how we've always done it.  Who am I to tell anybody how to do anything? And then I was like, but that's how we survive our  winters, because if we can't get out for a week, because we're iced in or snowed in, we're prepared.  So I did. I talked to people and I shared what I knew.  And  our state, Leah, honest to God,
21:00I grew up in Maine. I didn't not want to leave Maine ever. And my first husband decided to take a job in Minnesota back when we were together for, we were married for a couple of years at that point. And I was kicking and screaming to not go, but my parents raised me that if you marry somebody, you go with them. Should have divorced him then, but didn't do it. But, uh, this state that I have come to call home is so good. Um,
21:29whole bunch of restaurants put out the information that if you are hungry,  we will feed you no questions asked during this whole snap thing. And I couldn't, they didn't have to do that. And I know it's a really good public relations thing,  but they didn't have to do that. And the food shelves just banded together and basically were ready to do whatever they could to help people.
21:59I'm just so impressed with my state and I don't know if other states have been that good about it, but I just,  love the state that I ended up having to move to.  Those wonderful stories have been told in many spaces and a couple of things that, you  wish you didn't have to ask, ask for people to do good for one another when they can. Um, in my, how I was raised, that that's, that was a commandment given, um,
22:30from biblical times m to do that, to be that for one another and the expectation and yet we need more of those positive stories. And again, when you get away from sensational headlines and TikTok videos that went viral of people saying and being stupid, underneath of that was the superior majority of people just doing good for one another and being the helper. And thank God for that.  Yes.  I don't want to be that extreme.
22:59And  people have to set that crap down because it's also not good for your own inner peace  and your mind. You have to learn how to filter what you're taking in. It's too much, too much information any day. You've got people need to be more discerning and stop idly just scrolling.  Yes. And the thing, the thing about scrolling is that the algorithm feeds you more of what you actually want.
23:27what you're telling it you want. And for me, I want education. And so my Facebook feed is full of things like  your, your page, Facebook page, and many, many others like you who are trying to educate, who are trying to help who are trying to share. And so  I love my Facebook feed because it actually lifts me up, which is great. uh
23:55When I feel like the algorithms get messed up, I start whispering things. I got that idea from a hilarious  woman I follow in Colorado. She whispers to her phone often like, baby otters,  happy cows,  puppies listening.  Cute kittens, cute puppies. exactly. Keep garbage away.  Yeah, exactly.
24:23I just,  I have the news on as background during the day because my dog is not happy unless the TV's on.  Her name is Maggie, by the way, and I didn't realize that your daughter's name was Maggie. I realized that the other day.  with the news on during the day, if something happens, I know about it immediately. And it used to just make my heart skip a beat and I'd be like, what happened now?
24:49Now when there's the breaking news music that every news station has, I'm like, okay, what happened now? And I read the little ticker at the bottom. I'm like, oh, nothing I need to worry about. And volume goes back down. I just keep doing what I was doing because it is too much. It's constant feedback. Yeah. There's one outlier that has, and I can't decide. I wish my grandma were still alive to help me talk through it.
25:18And it's the whole conversation about AI.  I have not been able to discern that I can leave it alone and set it down and just be aware of what's happening or do I need to become more vigilant and more outspoken and be doing something because I don't trust those who have the power in their hands. Which obviously like many other things in history has all been about who has the money and influence  and that's not a good look.  But.
25:46It's been hard for me to set that one down, I believe.  Yes, and the thing that I keep hearing from people who are concerned about AI but not afraid of it  is just keep being human. If you're a human, be human because AI can't be human.  As long as AI doesn't  gain the ability to out-human us in its own way.
26:14I hope that doesn't happen, but in the meantime,  keep being you.  Because there's only one you. You're the only person who can be  you and show yourself to the world as being human.  Yeah, online arguments going on this morning. I was pleased when I did see that one woman had evidently used chat GPT to help her put her argument together. uh
26:41And she was called out on that and said, if you want to debate this, you do it. You don't be going to.
26:49other forums like that. That's not right and it's not fair. This is a human to human conversation and had to do with safety for incoming college students on campus. I don't want chat GPT to decide. I want to go with my gut. The questions I ask and the experiences I have. I'm not going to use chat GPT to tell me if this campus is safe for my child. Yeah, and and the other thing is is that I don't want to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway.
27:17No place that is public is safe anymore on any given day, which is a  terrible, horrible thing to say, but it's true. ah A year or so ago, it might've been three years ago. don't know. Time is wimbly-wombly here on the farm  because there's no real schedule. We just do the chores and do the things we do. And we're not really aware of calendars as it were.  a couple of years ago,
27:46My husband worked for a different company and he traveled to places then too, because he's a tech and he was at a clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota,  not an hour before it was shot up. He was out of there before it happened. And it was in the town  where my second ex-husband and our son live.  And  I was  shook. I could, I could have lost.
28:14my kid, I could have lost my husband or my  former husband if they had been in that area. And I was like, is no place safe anymore? And the answer was no, no place is safe anymore. So asking  if a college campus is safe for whatever reason is kind of a dumb question.  Yeah.  And as you said,
28:43depends on all of us remaining and choosing to be human and how we look at others.  exactly. Exactly. And it's really hard sometimes. Sometimes you look at people and you just know that it's not going to go well. The conversation is just not going to go well.  And  I am one of those people who will try. You know, I always stick out my hand and say,  it's nice to meet you. Tell me about yourself.
29:12I know within five minutes if I'm ever going to want to hang out with that person again, because it just depends on how they react to that  one first interaction. Absolutely. Yes.  So,  so,  I have a question for you. You were off work because of the shutdown, right?
29:33I was considered  rolled back in my hours because  our little nonprofit  is funded by various federal grants and some were frozen and some were not frozen during shutdown.  So we did for a little people and then we partially furloughed other people like myself um for the duration of that because  being a small nonprofit without other sources of income, we didn't have the funding to keep doing our work without that program support.
30:03Okay. So was that, it doesn't sound weird. Was it sort of a blessing in disguise because you guys had so much going on at the ranch? Yeah. The blessing and very freeing Mary because it helped fix my vision a little bit. So my vision, my personal vision on some things  and  being a part of what's called that sandwich generation, though the women and particularly  wedged in the middle as their parents age.
30:33They themselves are aging and they're still raising children. The pinch  that I had been feeling, feeling  that it was time to make some changes and truly step out in faith because who wants to abandon a paycheck?  And so near the, before the shutdown ended, I did put my resignation in to the nonprofit, not because I want to abandon the work. It's really important work.
30:59But because of my reality of being a woman in the sandwich,  that they need someone else um to pick up the reins, so to speak, right now,  because  I have to choose differently for the next period of months. And that means being a present and focused mother of a senior in high school, being a present and focused daughter and business partner to the operations on this ranch, and frankly, taking better care of myself.
31:30I am so proud of you.
31:35It's difficult, Mary, because I'm so blessed with the way I was raised as a woman to work in what would have been considered a traditional way, but also very non-traditional. I love to  be an irritator sometimes. People love to make assumptions about me because I'm a white woman living  on a ranch.  We have fun with it. But so thankful to be raised to think through things.
32:04really think through things  and evaluate them and not get caught up in like expectations and traditions. But also realistically that I am a money worrier, you know, so that's always in the back of your mind. But, um making this decision and being able to be  vulnerable about it in front of my 17 year old who may find herself one day walking that tight rope that women walk with so many decisions to be made.
32:33not to tell her that I made the right decision, but to empower her to be able to make decisions  for herself. and that's a really good distinction in the difference there. uh No, seriously, proud of you.  That's a hard choice and  really brave. So when I say I'm proud of you, I mean it with everything I have in me. Thank you, Mary. There are so many women who have to make
33:01hard decisions every single day. again, this back to the sandwich reference that  many, many, many, many, many women find themselves in right now that  when  you feel the pinch from both sides  and you recognize that you're so pinched that you're not taking care of yourself, that that serves nobody. If you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of either side of the sandwich either. Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure.
33:30If you're not strong and you're not balanced in yourself, you cannot be that for anyone else.  And  I get it. It's a  really difficult spot to be in. um I am really fortunate because my folks live in Maine and I have a younger sister and she's the one that decided she was going to stay in Maine and she lives like a couple miles from my parents now.  And  I know that if something's going on,  she is there.
33:59And that's the choice that she has made because I live too far away to be of any help in any kind of reasonable amount of time. And my kids, my oldest is 36 and my youngest is going to be 24 in December. And the youngest still lives with us. So I know what he's doing, but the other three are out on their own doing their thing.  I think we raised them well enough that they are very self-sufficient.
34:28Self-sufficient to the point that the one who lives in Nebraska comes back at least three times a year and helps his dad on this little farm and loves every minute of it.  So I'm not quite as caught in that sandwich as you're talking about because I'm too far away from my parents to really help. And I'm kind of too far away from my kids  in their ages to have to help. They're really good on their own. So I am so fortunate
34:57to be in the position that I'm in and I damn well know it.
35:03Yeah, it's definitely unique. There's not a lot written or said of it. I think it's because the women who are feeling it probably don't have time to talk about it a lot. They just do one day to the next. But I recognized I wanted to be fully present for my daughter as she visits colleges and applies for scholarships and makes decisions, not because I want to helicopter her into making the decisions I want her to make, but so that I'm available and I'm present.
35:31And that my mind is clear enough to be available to her to help her. And then  we will find our new normal when she leaves us  and then we'll see and reevaluate at that time. um And our youngest, of course, will still be at home for a long time yet. So we'll see.  I have been able to say yes to some opportunities after giving that notice. And  I'll be wrapping up there here in the next few weeks. But  say yes to some exciting opportunities in 2026 that I wouldn't have if I hadn't said.
36:00said that it was time for this other tenure to end. Fantastic. I can't wait to find out what you're going to be working on.  And you're also in that really weird spot  of your first child becoming a fully fledged adult with her own life. And that is so exciting.  And it's so sad at the same time. It's  so exciting.  the sadness is because it just went so fast.  I know.
36:30I'm going to cry for you.  When I had my daughter, I was 10 days past 20 years old. I was a very young mom.  And when they put her in my hands, was like, holy cow, 18 years is a long time.  And the day she turned 18, I was like, oh, no, it's not. It's a blink of an eye.  now that she's 36, I'm just like,  wow.  How did this happen?
37:00You know, and I read this interesting talk last night about how kids of the 80s, you know, raise themselves and  today we're so hyper focused on making sure we're trying to not make any missteps with parenting our kids.  And I would say I landed somewhere in the middle. My parents were very intentional with trying to teach us the.
37:20the rules of life and being prepared and whatnot. And when our daughter had a flat tire unexpectedly 60 miles down the road during harvest season and neither parents could go help her.  She thought to call her parents  and we talked through what she already knew, which was problem solving and how to overcome. And she did great.  And yet as she's driving home and I'm worrying that she didn't get the lug nuts tightened enough. um
37:50thinking  she's about to go. Have we done everything we were supposed to do? Have we checked all the boxes yet?  And I don't know if my parents thought about those things when I flew the coop. You know, have we helped her check all the boxes  on how to stay alive and thrive? But I find myself thinking about it often. ah And it's important to me. And I think it speaks well because we're very
38:18We're very open. She and I can talk about anything and disagree about anything um that makes me feel better. But yes, it is, like I said, when you're in this pinchy place and you're trying to think clearly, removing distractions is important. I know I speak from a place of privilege and saying that not every woman can decide to quit her job.
38:42without having a backup plan. And believe me, as a child of the farm crisis in 1985, of course I have backup plans. it is important. It's just so important to be present. And if that means putting your phone down or whatever it is, parents have got to be present. I feel passionately about that. Yes. And I'm going to say another unpopular thing because apparently that's my thing today.
39:12I feel like the women who are in their  mid-20s to early  30s right now who are having kids,  I feel like some of them are up a creek without a paddle when it comes to parenting because I feel like a lot of people didn't parent their kids in that spot. Yes, ma'am. And I don't know if I'm right or wrong on that, but...  You're right. By the feedback I'm hearing constantly from young ladies who got a...
39:41college degree and know nothing about taking care of their home. Yeah. And  I did not enjoy the fact that my mom and dad had me and my sister doing dishes by the time we were like eight years old after dinner.  I didn't really want to wash the dishes. I didn't really want to dry the dishes.  I wanted to throw dishes in the trash and buy new dishes. That's what I wanted to do,  but that's not a really sustainable way to do it.
40:06I was doing dishes at eight years old and I tried to always wash the dishes because that was better than drying for me.  And we were helping take the split wood to the bulkhead to the basement of our house and throw that wood down the stairs. And then once that bulkhead was full,  going back in through the house and moving the wood  from the bottom  of the stairs to the other corner of the basement for the wood stove. Okay.  I didn't really enjoy that either, but.
40:34As an adult, I'm really glad that my parents were like, no, you are part of this family.  And part of being this family is being part of the work of the family. And somewhere along the way, I feel like that has gotten lost because  number one, there's not as much work to do unless you live that way.  But also when realtors tell me that people say, well, I don't have a kitchen table. don't need, I don't need space for a kitchen table.
41:02That  speaks volumes about what you're just talking about, the illustration of that family unit, whoever's in your family, not having those touch points and connections  frequently, regularly, where you do exactly what you're talking about.  And so we raised them to be  smart  by our definitions and capable of earning a great income.
41:30but the realities of life, all of that got glossed over in chasing titles and  income and all of that's important. I'm not dissing on any of that. when I have women say, but I don't know how to make a grocery list. I don't know how to look at the ad and put a meal together. I don't know how to balance my checkbook. I don't know how to think beyond the present  or  I have my phone. What else do I need?
42:00Uh-huh. It's a very scary, dangerous place to be in. You're right. Now these women and men are the parents and they're little people. And part of that is the effort, the chase of, don't want my kid to hurt and fail and be left out and lose. And I understand all of that. Oh, do I understand it? But I so appreciate it on a college visit, this  really, really wonderful, empathetic  nursing advisor saying to my daughter, have you ever received?
42:30a B, Maggie. And Maggie said,  no. And she said, I'm telling you right now, you're going to get a B, Maggie. You may get a C, a D, or an F. And your job is going to be to develop the resiliency and find the resources to here to move beyond it. You have to.
42:55because they're seeing such a surge of young people who get their first B and they throw up their hands. Because everything's just been managed and curated for them so that they didn't fail. Yeah, and that's so wrong because if you don't fail, you don't learn. oh I just, it's so frustrating to me and I'm not gonna, I'm not, I swear to God, I'm not going on a tangent about this. I'm not, Mary Evelyn, no.
43:25It's so frustrating to be a child of the eighties as it were. was born in 1969. I barely remember the seventies because I was just a little kid, but the eighties I remember. And the eighties seemed like just a golden time to be a teenager. And I look at how things are now. I wouldn't want to be a teenager in this day and age.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be?
43:55and everything of your life being documented and potentially put on social media where it could  ruin you in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years? Oh, I would not. I would not.  Knowing the teenager that I was, if I was that teenager  now,  I would have killed myself because I was bullied. I was teased. I stuck my foot in my mouth more times than I can count. And you know, it would have been caught on video and posted to Facebook or  TikTok or whatever.
44:25And  I was not the kind of child who would have had the resiliency  to live through that. I know that about myself.  And there are so many kids  bullied through social media that I just want to shake their parents and be like, what are you doing?  It can't do that. Right. And so we raise them to do their best to make things right when they've done a wrong.
44:53to ask for forgiveness, to offer grace. Like that is the way you're supposed to raise your people. But now,  and  again, you and I would enjoy some political conversations today. I laugh, right?
45:09Let's just talk about this week's news and what's being released for consumption to the public. The misdeeds of this man. Horrible creature, Horrible, inexcusable, despicable, disgusting behavior. And caught up in this narrative, this is new news. Americans today in 2025, at what your elected people are doing. Look at their terrible
45:38terrible behaviors. Can you imagine if social media had existed at the inception of this country? uh Dare I say that if any former president of this country had had social media and had participated in it, would any of them been elected? Any of them?  Uh huh. Like, this kind of human behavior has existed since the beginning of time. It's just now we have the evidence. We have the proof, right?
46:07Like there's journal stories about JFK and all the way back to Thomas Jefferson if you want, but we don't have the volume information today that has convinced us that this behavior has just all started. You know, it's trending now. uh People have made mistakes forever. Yeah, we just didn't know about them. That's all.  Every freaking waking moment of the day. uh was, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
46:35I'm going to shift this just a little bit because  I feel like this was a very good airing  of feelings, but I want to go back to the fact that the government shutdown was 41 days long.  And  what I took away from that, because I already had it in my pocket, is that we really do need to have a local community of people who we love and trust  and who we can help and who can help us.
47:02I am the worst at this because we moved here five years ago. I've made like two friends in five years because  we literally have neighbors who are a quarter mile away. And when you live in the country, you don't just go knock on somebody's door in the middle of COVID when we moved here and be like,  hi, I brought you cookies. We live over here. Who are you? Because that would have been not really well received. And I did not want to take a chance on bringing
47:31sickness to somebody's house or getting it from them in 2020, that seemed like a bad plan.  But my husband sells things at the farmer's market in the summer and he's there every Saturday morning. So he has formed  community and I'm all good with that because he and the people he's met, they all grow things and sell things that are different. So in our situation here, we do have a little community of people who are producers
48:00who do want to help their community. And  what I think that people probably should take out of this government shutdown is that  we shouldn't solely rely on the government to  help us. We need to help ourselves. We need to have a community of people who we can help as well. And so I'm guessing that you agree with that, but if you don't, feel free to disagree with me and tell me why.  I do, Mary. And the pushback
48:31is  we have to stop being a nation afraid of one another, afraid of inconveniencing, afraid of asking, and then afraid of just showing up to be the hands and feet we need to be. We  love to be called like these independent people, don't need anybody, but that's not true.
48:57And historically speaking, it is community that has helped people truly make it through the worst and the hardest of times. can't even begin to tell you the stories I could share of the  resiliency of community and how the women, give, just talking about women.  The women are the only ones who got my community through World War II because the work had to keep going. So what were they forced to do?
49:24to rely on community to help each other in the field, looking after the little people while the mama was out doing whatever needed to be done. We have to get back to community. And community means everybody provides and gives something, and maybe this isn't your season of giving, but next season is yours, and I'm not talking just about money. We have to.  A united, community-focused country cannot be divided.
49:53And the division we have today is because we don't have community. That's my feeling. I will die on that hill. I worked in the Nebraska legislature in college and I learned a lot. This is pre-9-11 and we have a unicameral legislature, Mary, where your party is not part of  who you are.  You can gather by how someone votes, maybe what party they...
50:21affiliate with, but that's not what we do.  And my memories were the man touted as the most liberal and difficult in the legislature,  walking down the hall, coming around the corner and plopping down in the office of my Senator, whose wife was dying of cancer,  to check in with him, to talk about the day's proceedings, to talk through and sometimes disagree, but they were not ugly to each other.
50:52ever.  And if you have community and you're actually looking and talking and sitting  elbow to elbow with people.
51:04You're not nearly as inclined to be ugly as what we see today. So helping each other, talking through our differences, finding consensus, because I'm not saying we're all going to agree, but consensus means you're willing to be respectful of another person's feeling or decision or have to go along with something. We have to, we have to get community back or we won't. We won't save our country without it. That's my opinion. We can't save it without it. Yep.
51:33Absolutely. And that's again, part of the reason I started the podcast, because I needed a community of people that I could talk with and whether they agree with me or not. I learn a lot from people who disagree with me because sometimes I haven't considered the point of view because it's never been presented to me in the first place. yeah, it makes me stop and go, okay, now I understand where that comes from. And honestly,
52:01One of the hardest things for me to get to, and it took me until I was probably in my late 30s or early  30s, is that people become who they become  because of their experiences. I said that really wrong, but I was trying.  Whatever has happened to them in the past forms who they become in the future. And  when somebody seems really mean or evil to me,  now my first thought is,
52:31why are they the way they are,  not I don't like them, because I want to understand what brought them to what they think and what they believe and what they feel. And being able to understand it  helps me accept that that's who they are. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay.  and people  easily misunderstood if you don't get to know them. Yeah.
52:57Sometimes there's no fixing the thing that's wrong with the person and I'm, I'm going to talk real roundabout about this. There is someone who is no longer in my life who has real big issues  and they have perpetuated throughout that person's life. And I know why I know the story behind it still has not gotten through that still has not learned how to be a good human  and
53:26Good human to me may be different than good human to anyone else, but someone who respects people,  who  lets them have their own autonomy, does not gaslight them, things like that, okay? I understand why this person is the way that they are.  I do not understand why therapy  and seeing how other people behave hasn't brought them along to being, in my opinion, a good human.
53:53I can't control that, it is not my place to tell them how to be. But being able to understand why they are the way they are has made it so much easier for me as a human. And that speaks to my heart so clearly because in my defense of agriculture, so easy to be caught up in like what my lens is like and the crops I raise and what I do. The great divide between us and consumers.
54:24is because there isn't enough back and forth speaking with each other. And I don't know why that happened because I remember so clearly my mother shopping for groceries  and shaking her head on occasion about, you know,  a price jump in eggs, for instance, shaking her head, setting them some things down because it didn't fit in the budget, maybe wondering out loud about why something was more expensive. But I don't remember her ever blaming the farmer for it ever. And maybe because of who we are.
54:53But this great divide between us and consumers and this, again, this thing about placing blame or we don't trust you, you know, you're trying to kill us or sicken us with what you're doing is because there's not enough community and not enough talking and effort just to try to understand, even if you don't agree, but just to try to understand. exactly. We all need to be better listeners, better tellers.
55:20Because telling the truth is a big thing here too, in this whole  community thing. And we need to be able to be around other humans and have compassion and patience. And  I hate this part of this conversation because I always feel like Pollyanna, everything's great. If we would just be nicer to each other, the world would be a better place. And that is true. But it's not just being nicer. It's about being more patient and more understanding.
55:49not just about being nice. And being willing to invest oneself in some of that self help, which is finding facts,  finding accuracy, doing your own research and not just buying into the hype and the trends and the sensation, which makes you think  one way or another, but asking more of yourself  to be invested in what is fact.  Digging deeper. Yeah.
56:19Yeah, absolutely. enough. is just, I could go on for days, just not enough of that and wanting to be spoon fed everything instead of.
56:30instead of
56:32acting independently and wanting to validate and verify things because it matters, whatever it is, it does matter. Now you can say some act on faith. Yes, that's an important part of my life. But when it comes to making decisions about how to live and what to do and where to go and what to buy,  it really, I'm not gonna ask others to do all that heavy lifting for me. I've gotta be invested in that.  Well, that's why I asked you to be on the podcast back in September about the beef prices.
57:02I knew that you knew facts that I didn't know. And I was like, I need someone who's more expert in this than I am.  And I so appreciate you for that. And I appreciate you for chatting with me today.  And we're almost in an hour. So I'm going to wrap this up because  I didn't mean to take this much of your time today, Leah.  Thank you so much for being here. where can people find you? You can find me at Clear Creek Ranch mom on Facebook and Instagram.  And I.
57:32What is ahead of me in 2026 is taking my show on the road, Mary. I've been invited to be a speaker um across the country in a few different venues.  I'm really excited about the opportunity.  And my message is going to be very simple. It's all going to be about how to help advocate for agriculture, whether you're growing hazelnuts or chickens or beef or cranberries or pumpkins or great. uh
58:02any row crop, how to best advocate for our industry and do it with compassion and empathy and an open mind so that we can better bridge these gaps between us. Congratulations. I knew that was going to happen. I knew you were going to end up doing speaking. I'm anxious and excited all at the same time because I challenged myself to go in front of audiences I've never been in front of before with people.
58:31who love their lives as much as I love mine in a completely different way.  Awesome,  awesome. I'm so happy for you. I'm so proud of you.  I love you. You're fantastic.  Thank you. That's not what my senior says who has to be harping on her about scholarship deadlines.  That's because you're her mom. You're not my mom. uh
58:56As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com  slash support. ah Leah, I can't say it enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate you so much. Mary, keep up the good work. The world needs your stories  and your voice in helping others tell their stories. I'm going to talk till I'm dead. That's what my dad told me.
59:25I so  love that you're from Maine because I have a dear friend here in Nebraska whose daughter bravely put on her boots  and packed her bags and she's a student in Maine in college. A fish out of water but she's there because of the educational opportunities she was looking for and it has been an adventure.  I hope that the Maynards have been nice to her and embraced her because  New England folk have this uh
59:54I don't know, this reputation for being very standoffish and  not very nice and being very blunt. And that was not my experience growing up.  all right, Leah, I hope you have a fantastic day. Thank you again. Thank you for taking the time with me, Mary. Appreciate it. You too. All right. Bye. Bye.
 

Drunken Duck Farm & Rescue

Today I'm talking with Bryna at Drunken Duck Farm & Rescue. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Brina at Drunken Duck Farm and  Sanctuary in Ohio. Good morning, Brina. How are you?  I'm great. How are you doing today?  I'm good. Tell me what the weather's like in Ohio.
00:54Well, it's a little cold, but it's sunny. So we will 100 % take it, ah especially because where our farm is, we're at the  end of the power line and we lost electricity this morning. So it's a little cold in the house. Oh, I hope you get it back soon.  Oh, yeah. This happens to us probably about 30 to 40 times during the winter.  Might be time to invest in a generator that kicks on when the power goes out. We have one of those. They're really great.
01:24That is on our wish list for this year.  Good, because it's  so helpful. When we were looking for our property, we didn't know that the property we would end up with uh would have a generator that kicks on when the power goes out. And at our house, we have a well. So when the power goes out, there's no water.  And  we were very excited to find out about the generator just automatically sending power to the house. It's amazing. It is one of the most wonderful things about this place.
01:54Okay, well, the weather here is very gray and I think it's probably 37 degrees outside  and they are predicting snow tonight. oh wonderful. Congratulations. Yeah. And I'm in Minnesota. So that stands to reason that we would have some snow in November. I'm excited. I always love the first snow. The last one I'm like, are you kidding me? But the first snow,  I,  I'm just beside myself. I'm like a five year old.
02:20So I'm a little, I'm actually originally from near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. So I'm very pro snow. During the winter, I am always excited for snow and I am disappointed in rain  because for us  ice  and really frozen mud is like the worst thing we can ever want for on our farm. So when it snows, I get so excited because we have snow and not ice. Yeah, absolutely. And
02:50I get excited because I associate snow with cozy homes because I grew up in the woods in Maine and we had, my parents had a lovely little ranch home surrounded by pine trees and it would snow, we had windows in every room and we would just kind of hang out by the wood stove and watch snow fall and be cozy. Yeah, I really, I want to say probably fall and winter time are my favorite time. Yeah, mine too,  absolutely.  Okay, so.
03:18I have to know why is it called Drunken Duck Farm and Sanctuary? Okay, so it's a little bit of a longer story. That's okay. When I originally moved onto the property,  was leasing. I hadn't rented or anything. mean, was, let me try that again. I was leasing and there was two houses on the property. There was a converted barn that got turned into a two-bedroom, one-bath house that the owner had  and then an  old
03:48a  1890s house, three bedrooms, one bath that I went ahead and I rented out and I had a small yard around it. And  by that time I was already rescuing a few rabbits, not that many. And I had some chickens, once again, not that many.  But  what I wanted the property for is I was a brewer, a home brewer.  And I wanted the property to be able to grow my own grapes, raise my own honey.
04:15my own hops because at that time I was actually traveling the world  teaching brewing classes and workshops and I did a lot with  boy scouts teaching them  about the science behind brewing and making their own root beer and stuff like that. And so when I had it, uh I called my little brewing farm the Drunken Duck Farm.
04:37And I was doing a lot of home brewing and I would give the spent grains after I would make a beer and I'd give that to the animals and they loved it. It's really good for them. Well, unfortunately, the person who  owned the property, it was right before COVID  and she really wasn't taking really great condition of the animals.  And when COVID hit,  she was work from home.
05:01And I was not, I was considered an uh essential employee. I worked for a greenhouse um and we were a wholesale greenhouse, meant we had to be there on the property,  making sure the plants and everything were okay. m she started traveling and she had me take care of her animals.  And when I started doing that, I started realizing that first of all, she did not want to live in Ohio anymore.  And  the animals needed someone better to take care of them.
05:31So  when it came time, I offered a solution when she's like, hey, I don't think I to live in Ohio anymore. And I was like, yes, I realize that. And I would like to buy the property with all the animals on it. So I purchased the property uh minus her horses that she took with her.  And I ended up having to turn it into almost like a sanctuary because it took us about two years to get the animals healthy and happy and thriving.
06:00and I just decided to keep the name. And at this point, I'm known for it. Everyone loves it. I don't have the opportunity to do as much home brewing as I did,  but  that still is part of my history. And I don't think I would ever change the name of the farm for anything.  I love the name of your farm and I don't think you should change it. I think you should make t-shirts with a drunken duck on the front.  We actually do have a couple.  have some on our store on our website.
06:29Some with our logo on them and then some with like more of a traditional style with a duck on it that says, you know, German town circa, I think it was, it's 2019 when we started and we love them. And every year we have a tendency to come up with a new one because why not? Absolutely.
06:54And Drunken Duck is very attention grabbing. So when people see you on social media  or your website, you know, they're scrolling through something and see it. They're like, what is that? So there are some pros and cons to it.  When I do things in the area now, um revolving the sanctuary, taking them into schools and stuff like that, I use the sanctuary name, which is Mallard's Landing Sanctuary.
07:20um just because  it's a little easier and more appropriate for kids.  And the only other drawback is  Google has a problem with me because they think that I'm getting ducks drunk. And so therefore the name of  my business and the website actually violates their terms of service. So...
07:43They're kind of fabulous about it. Every time they do that and they send me the notice, I send them all the information. They're like, oh, it's a legit company and they turn it back on. And then about six months later, they ban us again and it's, it's a thing. But even with all that, there's no way we will ever change our name. That is crazy. God love algorithms and AI. I'm telling you. Yeah. Yeah.  It's, it's a hoot. And every time it happens, I just laugh because that's kind of who I am.
08:10Yeah, but what a pain in the butt to have to deal with that every single time.  It's okay. I have the document saved in Google Drive now. So I just go and get the document and I send it to them. It makes it so much easier. And they go, oh yeah, we've talked before. We know who you are. Okay. Yes. Yep. Every single time.  Okay. So what do you do now at your farm? And I know you have sanctuary, but you have the farm too. So tell me about the farm and then tell me about the sanctuary. um So  the farm aspect,
08:40is we actually, still do brewing ingredients and stuff like that. I'm still part of a brewing guild.  So I will grow hard to get spices and herbs and traditional brewing ingredients  for those people that are brewers. We don't sell them on our website, but I'm, I have friends and if brewers contact me, I'm like, oh yeah, this is what we have. We sell them.  But most importantly, we sell spices and teas and herb blends.
09:09and they're all just as crazy as our name.  And then all those proceeds will go ahead and they pay for the farm sanctuary. And all the ingredients that we can grow,  we do grow. So everything from the flowers to the herbs, to the spices, everything like that we grow.  The only time we have to bring in ingredients  is for things like vanilla and cloves, those things that we can't grow. Though we are trying to find
09:37Ohio native plants that produce seeds and things like that that have a similar taste profile so we can eventually be a hundred percent from the farm.  Awesome. You know, it's funny about vanilla. There are a couple of plants that it's really hard to distill anything from them to have it taste like vanilla,  but if you break the leaves they smell like vanilla and bay leaf is one of them.  If you break a bay leaf, leave. Can't talk.
10:05and it's fresh, will smell like vanilla. And interesting,  we have bay leaves growing on our property. Yeah, I just don't know if you can actually distill it into vanilla. don't know enough about it, but I haven't read anything about it. And I would think if you could,  people would be doing it a lot more. So I don't know. You'll have to look into it. Yeah, that is actually something I might actually check out. Yeah, it's so weird because who would think that bay leaf that you get at the store that you
10:34that you buy dried, and you know what bay leaves smells like, dried bay leaves. Who would think it would smell like vanilla fresh? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love the changes of the profile of some of our plants that we have where they're fresh or how their flowers smell compared to the part like the leaves that we might use. So it's such an interesting like smell experience throughout the season on the farm. Yes.
11:00I am, I'm like a fanatic in the spring when we go to greenhouses and we go to the uh herb section because that's one of my favorite things to do in the springtime. And  we go to a specific greenhouse in our area. We love them. are fantastic. They have,  they always have golden retriever dogs in their greenhouse, greenhouses, and the dogs just kind of hang out and they are socialized from the moment they are adopted.  So.
11:26We went probably six years ago in the springtime and there was a little tiny eight week old golden retriever puppy and we got to see him grow over the summer. We specifically went like every month just to see him.  And every time we go in there in the springtime, the guy that owns the place, sees me and he's like, Oh, are you going to go stick your nose in the herbs? And I'm like every day I'm one of them. Yes, I am.  Yep.
11:52So interestingly enough, that's actually how I got doing the spices and the herbs is because I was the marketing director for uh a local greenhouse, like I stated during COVID.  And we also did wholesale and I put their catalog together and everything like that. And I did their website.  And that's where I learned about so many of the herbs, so many of the plants and the natives and everything like that. And whenever they would have cuttings,
12:18they would take the cuttings, they would put them in a bag and I would take them home and I would feed them to the animals.  And at the end of spring, getting into summer, if they had extra herbs or  tomato plants or any sort of plants like that,  they would go ahead and they would send them home with me and I would take a lot of them, especially the tomatoes and stuff like that. I would take them to our local Metro park  and I would donate them to the park so that they would have a community.
12:48garden and then I would take all of the herbs home and I started planting them around our property  so that way I would have additional herbs and everything like that for the animals and I had so many of them that I started to make blends with them in order to hopefully raise money for the animals and from there it has taken off from our first blend to now we have over 60.  Wow and that's wonderful that they sent you home with the extra plants that is amazing.
13:18And one more minor aside, and then I want to hear about the sanctuary part. We have a plant that grows here in Minnesota called bee balm, and that's not the Latin name, obviously, but they're these alien looking blooming flower plants that grow wild. And the leaves on those are, I guess the Native Americans used to use them as what we use thyme for T-H-Y-M-E because the leaves when they're dried, kind of have the same scent and
13:48flavor as thyme does. And we had some growing wild in our yard at our old house, so I dried some of the leaves and put it in a beef soup. And yep, it was exactly the same as using thyme instead, you know, using those instead of thyme. I love bee balm. So it's Menardia is the actual name behind it. And that is just weirdly one of the ones I know because I love it so much. It smells amazing.
14:14hands down it is one of my favorite pollinators for our bees and our butterflies  and we have it in our teas  because from the flowers down to like you said the leaves and stuff like that  make amazing teas they're really incredibly relaxing and the flowers just smell  so amazing it is one of my hands down favorite perennials and I recommend everyone have some. Yeah I we tried putting in Bee Balm on our three acre property
14:43where bee balm grows in every ditch  around us, cannot get it to grow on our property. Our dirt is too good. It's too dark and loamy. And so I told my husband, said, we need to get some sand, pick a four by four spot, mix some sand in with the dirt and get some bee balm and throw it in and see if it grows better. I said, I think  the dirt is just too rich for the plants.
15:09Yeah and the one thing that well there's two things when it comes to planting monardia.  One see if you can get the heritage  ones  so if you start growing it from seed or if you go to a greenhouse try to see if they have the heritage ones  because they're more likely to do better in your soil and also  one thing that people don't know is it's part of the mint family so  make sure if you do plant it that you have some way to contain it.
15:37because otherwise you're just gonna have it all over your property. I would be okay with that. I would be thrilled with that. My husband would hate it because he's the gardener and he would be really mad if his 100 by 150 foot garden became Albee mom. He would be very upset. So one funny story on that is one of the plants that I received was cat mint and I love cat mint which is slightly different than catnip. Pornio, it's amazing.
16:05and I planted one my very first summer there and I kind of forgot about it.  I thought it died or something like that. Well, there's a reason why we have like five different blends and teas that all  is cat mint is the main ingredient  because we now have it  everywhere on our property  and it's choking out the poison ivy. So as long as it does that, I'm like, go ahead, grow anywhere you want it.
16:36Very nice.  we actually had, we got cat mint by mistake one year, because we read the tag wrong. We thought it's a catnip. And cats actually like cat mint as much as they like catnip. They do. So they're kind of related. em differences, you get a different um profile on it. And I think the cat mint  is a little bit like  not as strong.
17:03So when it comes to things like making the teas and the spices, I prefer that because it's not overpowering.  But I do have to be careful  after I go ahead and I'm in the field and I'm gathering it all up. If I go inside, I have to take my pants and shoes off before I go inside  because if I forget, my cats will crawl up my jeans.  They just, they love it.
17:29Yeah, the biggest difference I found between catnip and cat mint and how it smells is catnip smells skunky to me compared to the cat mint. A hundred percent agree. Yeah. And catnip doesn't really stink, but if you, if you put these two different plants  side by side and give them the sniff test, the catnip smells different. It's really weird.  Yeah. Okay. So tell me about what animals you have you're saving at your sanctuary. So I like to say we have all
17:58farm animals except for horses  and cows.  Mostly because we don't have the space and there are  a lot of different horse organizations out there.  We do have donkeys, but we have  llamas, alpacas,  sheep, pigs, goats.  I'm trying to think of all the big ones.  We also have uh rabbits.
18:24We have all the fowls from geese size down to pigeons and quails. um And we have a lot of, like I said, rabbits, roosters,  and ducks are our number one we get in, which I call the unwanted Easter gifts.  Yes.  So we do a lot  of  advocacy for.
18:48Please don't get your kids rabbits or chickens or ducklings during Easter or any holiday or birthday for that matter because they are living creatures  and they do need love and attention.  And when parents get them for the kids and then they realize that they take a lot, em they normally release them in the wild, which is where we end up. We get called out. We go ahead and try to catch the domesticated ones and bring them back to our farm or find them homes.
19:17We currently have 22 rabbits  that we have and we would love to find permanent homes for every single one of them.  Yes, and the other thing is when you get your kids baby animals for birthdays or Christmas or Easter or whatever,  you have to provide the right living conditions for the animal too. Yes, exactly. And so one of the things that we actually do,  if someone is interested in adopting
19:44one of our rabbits or some of our chickens or roosters. uh First of all, if they're outside animals like the fowl, we make sure that they're going to a home where that they are going to be brought in every night.  So that way they're not gonna become predator food.  And  with especially the rabbits,  we'll go ahead and we'll uh instruct them how to take care of the rabbits. We'll send them home with food and hay  and we...
20:11give them advice on what kind of structure that they should be in and how to get used to them and everything like that. We have a coloring book that we'll give to the kids that will teach them what to feed them and what not to feed them.  And we have a  policy, a return policy, no questions asked. If you figure out that this is not the animal for you,  for whatever reason, we don't need to know it. We beg you to bring them back to us rather than rehome them or to release them into the wild, which is
20:40basically a death sentence for some of these animals.  Uh-huh, exactly.  So do you have people come in and visit the sanctuary? does, how, what? I don't know how to ask this question. Do you have classes? Do you have people come in and learn about the animals, things like that? So we are not open to the public. uh The only time we'll open it up is for very circum,  for very certain circumstances. em If a kid is getting bullied.
21:09If you know there's a special kid,  a special needs kid out there who might need  a little attention or love or  needs to find a place.  All of our animals are amazing around children and a lot of them were raised around uh special needs children. So they understand the autistic cues  and things like that. And so they know when to step back or when a kid might need a little extra love. uh But those are on very
21:37specific situations um for the past. Since we started,  our full endeavor was trying to make sure that they were healthy and happy.  And that took a lot of years.  And now that we know that they are, we're really trying to get to a point  where we can start to open it  up for workshop and classes. um Unfortunately, the grants are not there right now, even though we are a oh 501C um sanctuary. So we are a nonprofit.
22:07em So that's kind of why we really push the spices, especially on our social media, is because we would love  to build a workshop area.  We would love to be able to  build  appropriate gating and other things to make it safe for visitors to come in and learn more about the animals. That is probably  our number one goal.  We do bring a lot of them out  with us to our fairs and markets when we go.
22:36Mostly because for some of them, that's the only time a kid might be able to pet a pig  or we bring Biscuit, our one-footed goose, with us a lot. most people, kids and adults, have never been able to touch or pet a goose.  And so it's an opportunity to bring the animals to them. And then we'll also,  if schools want us to come down or if we work with the libraries and stuff like that, we'll go ahead and we'll bring them out to them.
23:04Okay, so you are getting some of them out into the community for people to interact with, which is great. Oh yeah, a lot of them. We were working with  a local pet training area where they were doing workshops with kids,  and in the summer we would bring a lot of our animals down so that way they could go ahead and they could see them and they could learn about them.  They really loved  the roosters because we have incredibly friendly roosters.
23:30And it was really kind of cool for them to see roosters that were not going to attack them. Yeah, that's why we don't have roosters at our place. We have laying hens and my husband was saying that we should get a rooster  so that we could have baby chickens. And I was like, you might want to rethink that.  A  couple of rooster facts because  I love our roosters. So
23:58First of all, if you remove the roosters  from the hens, they are nonviolent. They're only violent if they're trying to protect their girls. So I know what some people will do is they'll actually have  one or two roosters in a property and they live in a different like little chicken home next to them or something like that. And when it comes to breeding season,  they'll go ahead and they'll put them together. And then when it is not breeding season anymore,  they'll go ahead and they'll separate them.
24:28The other cool thing is that you always want two roosters if you can. So the proper terminology is actually that there are roosters and there are cocks. And roosters will actually stay with the hens. They're normally very submissive, even with the hens, they're not going to fight a lot. And their goal is to roost and to watch out for the hens. Whereas the cocks position is to be the dominant one.
24:56and they are with the ladies, they're hanging out, they're doing their little thing in order for the hens to go ahead and have baby chicks.  Which explains a lot about the names for roosters and the other one.  So that is one of the things that we actually do and we let schools know about is that we will use proper terminology for all of our animals  because it is the actual words and I know that there's a lot of them.
25:24that are now used in our society for inappropriate things, but we like to teach them that, you know, this is actually their name and there's a good reason why it is their name. Yeah,  absolutely. And  there's no such thing as a bad word. It's just how people perceive the word. My son, my youngest came home from school one day  and a friend of his, well,  an acquaintance of his actually  had used the N word, the one that we don't say.
25:54Yeah. And he said, why? He said it to me, know, said the word and I said, we don't say that word ever. And he said, why? I said, cause it's a bad word. And he said, why is it a bad word? And I really had to stop and think before I answered him. And I said, I need, I need, I need some time to be able to explain this to you. And I actually had to go look up words and why people have made them bad and why we see them as bad.
26:24And I did a whole day of thinking about this because I wanted to give this eight-year-old kid an explanation that was reasonable. And I came to the conclusion that there aren't really any bad words. It's how people have made them, what people have made them represent that's bad. And so my son and I had a long talk about this and I said,
26:53The word that your friend in quotation marks used is not a bad word. The way that he used it is bad. I said, and I said,  only people who own the word get to use it with each other. And he said, okay. That's an amazing way to put it too. um When I always tell people before we bring the animals around kids that we use the correct words.
27:21It's interesting because a lot of people that are homeschoolers or homesteaders, uh they're actually usually more okay with using those terminologies and their kids already use their terminologies. And it was interesting because I actually, my degree is in theater design and construction.  So I have a theater background.
27:45we were able to bring in our chickens and our roosters into a class and turned it into a Shakespeare lesson. I love it. Because that is where the connotations  behind cock came from was because  Shakespeare used it as a description of about how a man was,  you know, kind of acting around a female and showing off of his plumage and everything like a cock. And that is where that term came from.
28:11So we turned it into this beautiful Shakespearean lesson and the kids  loved it.  I love it. I would have loved to have been there. ah God loves Shakespeare. I really hope that if there's a heaven and Shakespeare is in heaven,  he knows how much influence he had on the language.  You know, it's interesting from the theater background to just look and see how many  of our words come from it and how many of our
28:40common plant names actually come from Shakespeare  and from that time period.  That's a side love of mine of researching all of that stuff. Yeah, and people thought that Shakespeare was a nut bar. They thought he was crazy.  He was genius. Oh, yeah.  And we,  I love those play on words. And so that's,  we do that a lot with our naming of our animals, like
29:09I'm trying to think of a few.  have Drew Baconmore,  which is a play on words, of course, and we like to do those kinds of things. And then we also bring a lot of that into the naming of our seasonings is  there's, we just have fun with it. We play with the historical names of some of the plants or we'll play with some of the puns and we just have so much fun creating those because  why not?  Yeah, absolutely. And you've said, why not?
29:36twice now that I can remember. And  why not is a very big question when it comes to farms and small businesses and homesteads.  And I love that your baseline is why not. Yeah. So one of the reasons for that is when we first started  is  I had to learn as we went. em And  luckily I had some amazing mentors out there,  especially when it came to the alpacas and the llamas.
30:05my shearer who came out for the first time to shear them.  I don't know where we would be without her. She's amazing and she walked us through how to take care of them.  And so when we would get a new animal on the farm, it would be like, all right, why not? Let's learn how to do this.  And we kind of bring that philosophy into everything we do.  When it comes to the teas, hey, can you make a tea kind of like this? Why not? Let's try it.  Because the worst that it can happen on the spy side,
30:35is we learn that tastes horrible and we will not do it.  So we don't. And the worst that happens  on the animal side is we learn we need to do more research  and we need more help. And we will always go that extra mile  to figure out the right way to do it and how to give our animals the best experience they can ever have. Yep,  absolutely.  Briana, I love your spirit. Like your heart's gotta be a
31:04billion times bigger than most people's.  So we try really hard  and I'm going to actually,  one of the other things that we're very transparent on  is some of the struggles that a lot of farmers go through. um A lot of people don't realize that they are in the top  five highest suicide rates  because farming is hard.  And we tell a lot of homesteaders, especially when they start
31:32that this is not going to be all easy. It is going to be hard.  And personally, I actually struggle and I seek medical help for depression.  And so when it comes to  having an outward happy appearance, it goes back to that, not?  I choose to be happy because I know it is hard on the farm and I know other people are struggling right now.  And so if I could bring extra joy to people, m
32:02I will always try to bring extra joy to people  and we will donate whatever we have,  anything we can to people who need it. We'll donate flowers and plants and extra cuttings in the spring to homesteaders who are struggling and who might not be able to afford a $3 asparagus plant.  We'll give it to them free of charge because we want to make their life better.  So sometimes we get animals in  that are in the worst possible condition and we will always go,
32:31that extra mile or that extra three feet past that mile in order to save them and to give them a really great life.  And sometimes it's just not possible. And that is incredibly hard for us.  We are a no kill farm. We have no problems against any homestead or farm that goes ahead and chooses  to do that.  We are totally for that. We support them. We buy meat from them. However, that's not our choice because we're a sanctuary.
32:59When those animals pass away,  we choose to go ahead and turn them into something positive.  We keep every feather or bone of any of the animals that pass away on our farm  and we'll either go ahead and we'll donate them to schools so they can have  full structures of what a chicken might look like. um We'll also go ahead and we donate them to local artists um so that they can go ahead and turn them into  amazing, beautiful pieces of artwork.
33:28So that way,  when an animal passes, that they can become something so much more  when they leave us  and their lives don't go to waste. And so for us,  anytime we can turn  anything negative into  either something positive or something lovely and beautiful, we will  always choose that route.  That is amazing. Again, your heart is so big, Breanna. I love it. uh
33:56We did a thing like that too. We had a maple tree taken down on our property because it was in danger of falling on our house and it was probably at least a hundred years old. And in the branches of that tree, there was a hummingbird nest that was empty. And I don't know if you know what hummingbird nest looked like, but they, no, I'm sorry, not hummingbird, oriole nest.  yeah. O-R-I-O-L-E.  And uh how the orioles make their birds nest is they look like a stalking.
34:26that hangs down from  the branch. And so my brother-in-law, he is a biology teacher in middle school. And we messaged him and said, do you want this oriel nest for your class?  You would have thought we had given him a gold bar, like a literal bar of gold. He was so excited to take that in his class and set up like a, uh is it diorama? uh A thing where he could have eggs and like a uh stuffed oriel.
34:55bird and have it look like the mama was sitting on the eggs in the nest. And so we try to do things like that too, but we haven't gone  as deep as what you're talking about. And ours was a minor thing. We had a tree taken down there happened to be a bird's nest in it and we knew somebody who could use it. But either way, we made that nest go further and educate kids.  know, and it's funny, we're  not quite Appalachia down here, but we're getting close.
35:23um down in Kentucky in that area and on the eastern side of Ohio is kind of where it starts.  And  male raccoons  are the number one requested  bones  because we do unfortunately have to  not allow raccoons on our property. So we do trap and it's illegal to  release a raccoon after you trap it um off of your property. So whenever we get them, we have a waiting list.
35:52of schools and artists that have requested male raccoons because their bone structure is slightly  different, especially in their genitalia area and everything like that.  And they always want to be able to recreate a, you know, a raccoon. And so those are always the minute we get one, they're right out the door  to someone who can put them to really good use. It's really interesting. Raccoons. Hmm. Okay.  Did not know anything about that.  Yeah, there's, it's,
36:22a whole  Appalachian folklore  about uh they have an extra bone in their penis uh that most mammals don't. And so it was used as uh traditional magic  in the Appalachian folk hill legends as well as for medicine  and also a charm that you would go ahead and you would give to a loved one because if you put two of them together, it creates a heart. okay.  So I learned so many cool things from this podcast, I swear.
36:52I am a fountain of useless information.  Me too. You're a reader, aren't you? I am. am. And if I don't know something, I ask or I look it up.  And  most of the time it's a really great thing.  Sometimes, especially we're at fairs and people are looking at our stuff,  they'll say something and I get really excited and I go on a tangent about the herb or the process or something like that. And I was like, I need to remember  to keep it short.
37:21that not everyone needs to know the entire historical background on it,  but  it amuses me. So I'm all for it.  I used to do the same thing when I was in high school. And I had friends who really loved me and would put up with my  endless amounts of information spewing forth from my face.  And I had friends who were like, I don't need the encyclopedia version. I just need four words in answer to my question.
37:48And that was really hard to do when you're so excited about the things that you learned. We do warn people that like to follow us on social media is that, especially on Facebook, we have a tendency to get a little wordy,  but we also like to have fun with those words in the post. So normally they actually make people smile, so we're okay with it.  And then we also use a lot of puns and what we like to call foul language. Uh-huh. Exactly.  F-O-W-L.  Exactly. Yep.
38:19Yep, and honestly, knowledge is power. And that's why I started the podcast, that people can learn things that they didn't know about ag. And that's what we're talking about. So I try to keep these to half an hour. We're 10 minutes past that. Where can people find you, Breanna? So they can find us on Facebook at Drunken Duck Farm. They can also find us on our website, which is also drunkenduck.org.
38:46And then if they are in the Ohio area, we are  located in Germantown. So a lot of the farms and festivals around Germantown,  Miamisburg, and even Cincinnati, we have a tendency to visit and we do have a full calendar on our website,  which is once again, drunkenduck.org.  And for herbs and spices, we actually ship throughout the continental US as well. Okay, awesome.
39:14As always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support. Thank you so much, Breanna. This was so fun. Thank you for having me. This has actually really made my day today. All right. Have a fantastic rest of your day. You too. All right. Bye.
 

Dawn's Dirt - Food Security

Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt about food security. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt in Alberta, Canada. Good morning, Dawn, how are you?  Good morning, I'm doing really well. How about yourself?  I'm great. I'm so happy you could take the time to talk with me today.  Absolutely. I'm very happy too. Anytime. I love talking about this stuff.
00:59Good. How's the weather in Alberta?  Well, we had a little bit of snow last night. So just a little skiff.  It's not too cold. actually still, even though it snowed,  I'm a crazy woman,  even though it snowed, I still wore my sandals  to go into town for a cup of coffee this morning.  I'm excited for you.  think that's great because that will wake you up for sure.  Absolutely, for sure.
01:23Okay, it is  really beautifully sunny here. The breeze is very light and I think it's probably 45 degrees outside in Minnesota. Beautiful, beautiful, nice.  Yeah. So Dawn is a homesteading coach  and I wanted to have Dawn back. She'd been on the podcast before  to talk about growing food  and about preserving food and about how to not get caught up short.
01:48if there's an emergency like we had in the States here over the last month with the SNAP benefits. And has told me all kinds of cool things before, but I'm going to open this up to Dawn to tell me about growing food. So tell me about growing food, Dawn. For sure. So I just want to back it up a little bit. So my understanding is that you have the SNAP program down there. You've got little cards that the government issues that that's how some people get their food and that's been cut off. Is that what's happened?
02:17how they get some extra food, you know, for like low income people.  Right, which  again  is honestly in some ways a beautiful thing because, you know, everyone should have access to food.  However, having said that, if you're relying on a card and you're relying on the government for your food, that's a problem  because just like you just saw when that card doesn't have dollars on it to get food,  what are you gonna do? Right? Yes.  That's where it's at.  And so that's where I wanna take this today is
02:46let's we the people have the power to make the change for ourselves. And so when you think of a package of seed, I'm going to use an example of a package of lettuce seeds. So if you go to the store and you buy a package of lettuce seed, maybe it costs you $2 for a package of lettuce seed. Now, if you take that seed and you plant it in your backyard and everyone, most people, 95 % of people have space of some kind, whether it's a balcony.
03:14whether it's a backyard, whether it's a space, there's lots of  community gardens around in different towns and cities.  So find a piece of dirt or find some pots and you take that $2 package of seed,  you plant it in some soil  and you can be creative. You don't have to, it doesn't have to be an expensive venture. There's soil everywhere. So you dig up some soil, you put it in any kind of container, your old ice cream pail, I don't care, put some drainage holes in the bottom,  plant some seeds.
03:42water it and you're going to get lettuce and the amount of lettuce that you're going to get out of that little $2 package of seed is going to, if you were to buy that lettuce in the grocery store, it would probably cost you 10, 12, 15, $20, right? By the time you're harvesting over and over and over again. So you're taking your $2 and you're turning it into 20. And so that's where I'm saying is we, people have the power to look after ourselves. If we all grow whatever we can,
04:12in the space we have serving ourselves,  we would have less hunger issues actually globally if everyone did this in the world.  I completely agree and that's why I wanted you to talk about it because you're a Homestead coach and you teach people how to do this. Yeah, absolutely. So just give me one second. Yeah.
04:39I just have to write something now. um So yeah, I teach homesteading. I teach people how to garden. So I have a garden group coaching garden in the spring,  group coaching garden program,  group coaching garden program in the spring.  And so  I teach, yeah, it's like a little tongue twister there.  So I teach people how to grow food in the space they have.  So I teach that online in the spring.
05:06And so you can be anywhere in North America, really the world, and I can teach you. was actually in an online class last night teaching people in Pakistan, ah India and Saudi Arabia how to have little greenhouses and how to grow food. So that was pretty cool. oh Good job.  Yeah, thank you. I was hired actually by a local college here and it's super fun and super exciting. So  I loved it. I was on a two hour call from 10 o'clock PM till midnight last night because of the time zones.
05:35Yeah, it was a lot of fun. was a lot of fun. so I teach people in the spring how to garden and then I also  teach business coaching. Like I do business coaching. And so if you have a piece of  land, if you have a homestead,  if you have a plot of land  and you want to make some money off of your land, so  you're not just growing for yourself, but then you're turning around growing extra or raising extra, extra chickens, extra pigs, extra whatever it is.
06:03And I teach you, coach you through your business plan and we can then serve your community around you and you can make some extra dollars off of  the items that you're getting off of your land. And so it's a business opportunity. So I coach that as well. So.  I love it. And I love how you do it because you are a no bullshit lady.  You are kind and you are clear.
06:31but you don't pull any punches and I love that about you. Thank you. Well, that's the thing. Like if you're,  when you think of a coach, let's say you were on a  sports team and I'm not sportsy at all, but if you think of a coach, if you've got a coach on a sports team  and they're always going like, uh oh, it's okay.  Oh, you know,  and oodles and coddles you, you're never gonna, you're never gonna like get further. You're never gonna like  push yourself to the next level.
06:58Whereas  I am not the one to oodle and coddle. You're right, I'm very kind, but I'm very direct and blunt. And I'm just gonna call it like I see it  in a kind fashion. But  if I can see that you can level up in some way,  just like I said with  the lettuce packet, if you're on that card,  slightly I'm calling you out saying, go buy the package of lettuce seed and help yourself level up because you have the power to help yourself.
07:26We're human beings and we're able to do this for ourselves. We don't need the government to  provide our food for us. We can do it ourselves. And so that's what I do with all my clients is I just push them a little bit in kind ways  to just help themselves be a little bit better. And I love that you do. And I appreciate that you do because people  need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and  do things for themselves.
07:55Sometimes that's not always possible. If you are a five-year-old and your parents don't  grow food for you,  five-year-old is probably not going to have any direction to know how to do that. Or if you are in your  90s and you're not mobile and people aren't around to help, you're probably not going to be doing this. But the people around you should be able to help. And that's kind what I'm trying to get at.  Absolutely.  I've told this story several times and it's the inspiration behind what I'm doing.
08:25I was in Kelowna last summer, I think it was,  and we were walking through the streets of Kelowna down to the lake  and there was a zucchini sitting on an electrical box and I thought that zucchini right there on that electrical box  is the key to our food system.  If everyone would just grow what they can in the space they have, the five-year-old will have food,  the 90-year-old
08:48will have food because there will be extra food produced. And so you don't need a card. You don't need a grocery store even. Well, you need a grocery store for some things, but you know, if you can,  if you can grow some of what you need  and then you can get different things at the grocery store. And that's where, that's what it comes down to is you're, you're able to do more with what you have. You're taking the assets that you have  and just stretching it that much further.  And furthermore to that five year old,
09:16Yes, the five-year-old can't grow food for themselves, but the five-year-old can learn how to grow food.  So if mom takes the five-year-old into the backyard, plants some carrot seeds,  waters the carrot seeds, has  the five-year-old help pull weeds,  help water, help tend to those carrots,  however many months later when that five-year-old pulls those carrots out of the ground, the five-year-old is going to go, wow,  that is food  and it's the best food.
09:44where it's at. It's about the education and teaching people. And I feel like as society, we have lost these skills and we need to get them back again. Yep,  absolutely. um Speaking of a packet of seeds, I have a fun story that I want to share. My husband doesn't know about this yet. This is his birthday or his Christmas present. um One of the seed companies here in the States, they sell a specific kind of watermelon and it is a 60 day growth cycle.
10:12And they're called mini-me watermelons, and they're like enough watermelon for two people. So the small watermelons.  We've never grown these before. I didn't even know they existed.  And my husband has been trying to grow big watermelons for the last four summers, and they just don't do well here. We don't have a long enough growing season for big watermelons.  So I discovered this. It was like $6 for 12 seeds through this very reputable seed company. And I was like,
10:41That's what I'm getting my husband for Christmas. 12 mini me watermelon seeds, because he will be so excited at the 60 day turnaround. I love that. That's amazing. Right. And that's just it. It's trial and error. That's farming.  So if you buy that package of lettuce seed or watermelon seed or whatever it might be,  welcome to farming. Farming is trial and error. Farming is actually gambling. Right. So sometimes it pays off big  and sometimes it pays off small. So it can go either way.
11:09I did a reel on my Instagram a couple of weeks ago  and I said, some people go to Vegas to gamble and they'll throw $1,000 on the table.  Me, when I had my farm,  I threw half a million dollars worth of plants in the soil and hoped it didn't hail. Like we're not the same kind of people here. And so it's high roller gambling. But even on your $2 package of seeds, sometimes things happen. Sometimes it doesn't go well, but if it pays off, it pays off big.
11:39Yeah, I'm really hoping that this works because if it does,  we have a great big garden and I would love to grow more of these small watermelons because no one around here grows them. They'd be a great hit at the farmers market  and especially a small watermelon. Maybe it's not practical for a family, but for sure for two people,  that'd be amazing. Or for kids, I could see kids really getting into those little baby watermelons as well.
12:06Yeah. And I mean, if you're a family of six, I eat three watermelons. Hey, why not? Right? Share it, cut it in half and eat it with a spoon. Like that's the way our food should be done is just, you know,  the natural way that  we've been  raised with or yeah. Yep. So I can't hide the packet of seeds because he's the one that grabs the mail on the way home from work.  So um
12:32he's going to see this envelope from the seed company addressed to me and be like, what is that?  I'm going to just turn around and give it to him and say,  early Merry Christmas,  I love that. I can't wait to see his face when he realizes what they are because  he has been so sad that we have not been able to get any good watermelons in four years. And I keep telling him it's just too short a growing season here,  but we can handle 60 days. Yes.
12:59So watermelons need uh lots of heat units and they need lots and lots of water. I mean, they're a watermelon, right? So lots and lots of water and lots and lots of heat units. Yeah. And the last two summers, part of the problem we've had is that we've had lots of water,  but  it didn't ever dry out really well. And so I'm going to suggest to him that he plant them in our heated greenhouse in like  April.
13:28because then it'll be nice and warm in there from the sun. It gets over 100 degrees in there. he can control the watering. He won't have to worry about if it's too wet. For sure. And you know, one more bonus. This is where my business coaching comes in. I know that you go to farmers markets. So if you plant them in April, 60 days later, you're sitting at what? April, May? So June, yeah. In June, you're going to have watermelons. Yeah.
13:56You're going to have watermelons at the farmer's market  when no one else does. And you could probably charge a little bit more for those bad boys then, right? Because you're first to the table  bringing something that no one has. And so that's that that's the business side of it, right? Right. And when I looked at this, when I saw the email come through from the company, I was like, hmm.  And then I looked at what it was and I looked at how much it costs. And I looked at the the turnaround time and I was like,
14:24Ooh, I can't pass this up. For $6, this is worth trying. For sure. Okay, so let's do it. Let's take tactician some math on that. So $6 for how many seeds? 12. 12. Okay, so it's 50 cents a seed. how many watermelons do think you'll get off of one plant? I have no freaking idea, Dawn. It didn't tell me, but I'm assuming at least two or three.
14:49Okay, so let's go with the number two. Just keep it a little low just for the math sakes, but your 50 cents a seed, you're going to get two watermelons. You could probably sell those watermelons at three to five dollars.  Boom.  You've turned your 50 cents into  six to,  uh, six to ten dollars. Yeah. Right? Yes. Yes. And that was the other thing that I thought about. I was like, is it going to be worth it? And then I did the numbers and I was like, oh,  it is well worth spending six dollars to see if this goes.
15:19Absolutely, absolutely.  Or, I mean, if there's a crop failure,  like that happens. But the next crop, if you're doing multiple crops, if you're doing some lettuce and some tomatoes and things like that,  something will work out. And in gardening, especially in vegetables,  that's your margins. You're just out some time and labor and, you know, some water and things like that. But it's really not costing you a lot. it's some backbrain, like  it's using your body, it's  using what God's given you to
15:48get food, right? And so if you're planting a couple of different crops,  you know, even on a balcony, if you're planting lettuce,  tomatoes and beans, let's say you're going to get something, you're going to get something.  so something that the margins and the math works out on it so well that you're going to get something, you're still going to get your money back tenfold no matter what.  Yep.  And they're not  sorry.  I've had I've been sick for a month with some crap. So  I'm not quite there yet. I'm at  98%.
16:18So I'm little goofy still. The other thing is that they are not seedless watermelon. They have seeds. So we will definitely be saving some of the seeds from one of them and seeing if they will grow true because they are a hybrid.  Amazing, right? Absolutely.  So I think sometimes  with your watermelons and your tomatoes and your squash and things like that, sometimes they'll cross pollinate and you'll get something a little bit different.  still, it's super, super fun. And  gardens and
16:48and  vegetables are the gift that can keep on giving. You know, if you plant some bean seeds and then you  let some of those beans, a few of those beans really  over mature, form the little bean inside the pod,  you dry it out, you can plant them the next year. Peas are the same way. So again, you  plant your 50 cents worth of bean seed  and you may not have to buy seeds ever again if you do it right.
17:15Yeah, that's what we do with our basil plants because basil plants produce so many seeds that we save some every year and then we don't have to buy anymore. Right, so you invested your seeds, you invested in your seeds the first time  and now you're picking basil for yourself but you've also got basil that you're selling at the market and it's the gift just keeps on giving and giving and giving without any more real investment other than your time but I mean a little little hard work never hurt anybody.
17:45Yup.  um, yeah, my husband, um, it's so funny because the first few weeks that he's doing the garden, he's so excited and it's his baby and he just is so lit up. He's out there all the time. And about the third week he'll come in and he'll go to bed, you know, he'll get up in the morning and he's, he's doing the wiggle thing when he's sitting and I'm like, um, are you okay?  And he says, back's a little stiff. And I'm like, well, yeah, cause you've been busting your back for two
18:15three weeks now, every day. He forgets that he's not 25 anymore. That's hilarious. I mean, I had those days too. When I had my greenhouse, I had a big 36,000 square foot greenhouse. And every year when we got the greenhouse going up and going again, I had this big heating system, hot water heating system. And to get it going, I had to fill it with water and then I had to climb ladders all day, every day for a couple of days on end.
18:43just bleeding out these pipes to get  them to go again to heat my big greenhouse up. And so yeah, you just do what you gotta do. And those are my favorite days. My favorite days are when I've worked so hard physically during the day  that I'm just exhausted at night.  I fall into bed, I sleep through the next day and I go, wow, I'm pretty stiff and sore, but you wanna know what the best cure for stiff and sore is? More work. up the next day.
19:08Yeah, and do it all again. Don't just lay in bed the next day. Do it all again. I think that's the biggest cure.  And I think that's what a lot of people don't do actually is  they go, oh, my back hurts. And then they sit in a chair all day. Yeah. And that actually leads me into my next comment or my next thought about all of this.  We as human beings have gotten really soft. We've gotten really soft and we want everybody to do everything for us.  And nobody wants to be a producer anymore. They want to be a consumer.
19:38Yeah.  And that's not good. mean, I don't think we're created like that. I don't think we're designed like that. And I think if you're relying, if you're soft,  which we're just going to call a spade a spade in kindness.  But if you're soft, if you're relying on the grocery store, like that's not a great way to live because  what happens when things go sideways?  I'm  not a crazy, like, prepper by any stretch of the imagination, but I do want to know.
20:07that I can look after myself if something crazy went down in the world. Yes, and that's part of the reason I wanted to chat with you is because I talked with a lady,  I don't know, a couple of days ago, and we talked about SNAP, and we talked about how to find help during this shutdown and how to be a helper in the situation.  But the other thing that I kind of want your thoughts on, I'll share mine,  is
20:35How do you not  find yourself in a bind in a situation like this?  What can you do to prep for a situation like this thing was not being available for over a month? And I actually have some things that I  already do and that I looked up. And honestly, if you can  have a couple of chickens,  you have a protein source. You have eggs.
21:03If you don't have, you're not allowed to have chickens,  someone nearby has  chickens for eggs and you can get eggs from them. Because  eggs are the easiest thing to produce if you can come up with the money for the chickens and if you can put together a safe coop for them.  For sure. Chickens are  your easiest way to get protein because if you do a hybrid bird, if you get a hybrid chicken,
21:31and you have some hens and you have some roosters,  then you've got eggs  and you also can let the hen sit on those eggs  and she can  make chicks so you're going to get more chickens um if you need to  or you can eat the eggs. Also, um if it's a hybrid chicken, you can butcher those chickens for meat. So you get too many roosters, you just butcher a rooster and put them in the soup pot, right? So  they're very dual purpose
22:02animals and they're small so you can keep them in small spaces. I think every backyard um should have a few chickens and have a garden. um And then you were talking about prepping as well. The easiest way that you can prep even just on a small scale is by canning. We've talked, you you mentioned canning earlier today. uh So if you  get the,  like if you get into the fall and you get a box of tomatoes, uh
22:28You can put those tomatoes, first of all, you can do it two ways. You can put them in  jars and can them. So then you've got canned  tomatoes, your tomatoes are going to be less expensive in the fall than they are going to be like, let's say  in spring when they're not readily available. Right.  And you can put, can put, you can can things.  You can also freeze tomatoes. Did you know that? You can take a whole tomato,  you can wash it and you can just pop the whole thing in your freezer. And then you've got
22:55tomatoes  all year round, as long as your freezer doesn't go down. um The other thing too, when I moved from my big farm and I looked at moving into town, the biggest thing I looked for  in a place to live is  where can I hide my chickens and where can I plant a garden? Those were the two biggest things that I looked for when moving to town. And thankfully I landed back in the country and so I've got a little chicken business going now.
23:20One more thing that you can do  to prep and help prepare yourself for these times  is honestly a bag of rice.  Go with your snap card, plant your seeds, get your seeds and grow your vegetables. But if you can just get that extra bag of rice, big bag of rice,  it's inexpensive  and just have it on hand  so that  if  something like this where it shut down,
23:49If something like that ever happens again,  you have something.  And it's not that hard. It's not a big prepper. You see all these shows, Prepper, the  YouTubes, or the Instagrams. You don't have to go all out like that.  But if everyone just did a handful of things for themselves  to prepare,  if things go sideways, or if the government shuts down.
24:15Yeah, and along with the rice suggestion, beans are good, pasta is good, lentils are good because they're all dry goods, which means they can be stored  for quite a while in case something happens and you can rotate them out. You can use them when you want to and then add back in. Absolutely. actually know,  back in my farmer's market days doing vegetables, I know of another vendor and she would actually go down to the seed company and  pick up like big
24:4450 pound bags of  lentils and beans and things like that that were meant for seed, but they're the food. So she just packaged them up  and she sold them just like that. So a  big bulk bag of beans  or a big bulk bag of rice. If you have a big bulk bag of  beans and a big bulk bag of rice, you've got meals for a long time if you need to. Yeah. And the only real problem with that is that
25:12food can get boring if you're eating the same things over and over again. So if you're growing some herbs  on your balcony or in your little yard, you can add herbs to your beans or your rice and it makes it taste different and taste better. For sure.  And that's the thing. We're talking prepper style. We're talking like  having something on hand. I'm not saying that you should eat rice and beans and rice and beans and rice and beans because you're correct. That's very, very boring.  I'm just thinking.
25:41ahead to the, you know, what if and so,  but until what if happens, you're right, grow your garden, plant your vegetables, have your chickens and you're going to have a lot of great variety in your meals.  And it's so much better. The carrot that you pull out of the ground and you wash up and you have that in your salad, like that is going to be the best salad you've ever had. Yeah. I just,  part of the reason I started the podcast on  is so that
26:09I could help people learn this stuff and be exposed to it. And a lot of the people who listen to my podcast are already doing these things, which is really interesting to me.  But it used to be a hundred years ago that everybody had a kitchen garden. That's okay.  Yep, good.
26:32100 years ago, almost everybody had some kind of little kitchen garden. And  we just don't do that anymore. And everybody should be doing it.  That's what I think.  mean, that's where I've talked to my grandmother and she was in the Netherlands during World War II  and grew up in the Netherlands in the countryside. And that's what they did.  They had food from their yards. Like they had milk, they had, because they had dairy cows, they had
26:59You know, some beef, had some pork, they had some chicken,  they had, they grew their gardens and that's how they were raised. And then my grandparents immigrated to Canada  and they had a dairy farm. And I said to my grandma once, said, grandma, what  did you eat when you were on the farm? What did you eat? And she said, well, for the most part, we ate what we had. And I said, well, what did you buy in the grocery store? And she said, oh,  sometimes some flour and some sugar and.
27:26We didn't have a lot of fruit in  the yard. So sometimes I bought some fruit. And so that was their diet, was they just ate meat, potatoes and vegetables and bread.  you know,  they didn't buy a lot of groceries because they ate what they had that they produced and raised on their farm.  Yep.  is absolutely crazy making that we don't do that as much anymore.
27:53I'm trying so hard to get people back into it. And I know you are too. For sure. Absolutely.  But that's the thing. we  as society, I'm going to call out one more little thing. We as society, we've actually gotten kind of lazy  in how we do life. you know, it's easier sometimes to go to the McDonald's drive-through than it is to go home and peel potatoes.  But we just need to get back to that for our health,  for our wallets, for our food security,  and just even for our mental health.
28:23get back to  quitting going to McDonald's and I'm not saying you can't go to McDonald's. McDonald's is a treat once in a while potentially, right? But stop doing the drive-throughs  and start cooking at home more and growing more of your own food and doing it from scratch more because it's just  healthier and so much better for you and you're just in that much more control.  And it's more satisfying when you cook what you grew. Absolutely.
28:50Absolutely, for sure. So I have one more question for you. Does Canada have a program like we have here like SNAP? No,  not that I know of, but Canada has something called food banks. So you've got your food bank and so  people, um so lots of towns and cities and things have a food bank. So that's where people donate extra food.  And unfortunately, the food that's donated to these food banks are usually from the centre aisles of the grocery store, non-perishables.
29:19And so it's not the healthiest food that they're getting. So people will go once a week  and pick up their food from the food bank and then they'll take it home and they'll eat it that day  or  that week. And so it's to supplement your income. And honestly, in the last several years, um the food bank usage has gone way, way, way up as  things are getting tighter and harder for people. um
29:44more more people are relying on the food banks for their food and that's, it's  scary and it's sad. Okay, so we're not alone in that here in the States. Canada is going through it too. Oh, absolutely. I think everywhere is going through it.  And that's the thing. That's where I'm a proponent of,  you know, you can help yourself and maybe you can't, maybe you're like we said, the five-year-old or the 90-year-old or maybe you've got some reason that you just can't.  But if more people who can,
30:13do something or doing it,  then that will just share around  and make it so that all of us can eat. So even if you're listening in like  around the world in countries anywhere, grow something in your backyard, get the seeds and put some  things in the ground and grow something.  Do whatever you can to be self-reliant and get some food for yourself. For sure.  Do you have any coaching classes coming up?
30:40Yeah, so I'm starting a microgreens class this Saturday. And so  the link will be in my stories on my Instagram  to sign up for that. It's just it's just a really inexpensive class. So it's $100 uh Canadian.  So that's really, really inexpensive.  And then yeah, book a jumpstart call with me. So I'll have my my garden coaching in the spring, we can cover chickens with that too. I'm always happy to cover chickens with any kind of my coaching.  And then
31:08I'm yeah, and then I'm business coaching. So if you have a small homestead and you want to make a little extra pennies, nickels and dimes off of the land and the space you have,  book a jumpstart call with me. It's a free jumpstart call. We talk about your situation  and we'll see if I'm able to help you make some dollars, nickels, dimes, pennies off of your farm. Yes. And having having done  the run through with you, just the  example one that we did with my farm. The thing I will tell you guys about Dawn  is Dawn
31:38knows that there's no such thing as a stupid question. And so you can ask her anything and she will have an answer for you. Absolutely. Absolutely.  The only stupid question is the one that doesn't get asked.  For sure. All right, Dawn, um tell me again where people can find you. Dawn's the... You have a podcast, Dawn's Dirt. You have... Do have a website?
32:01Yeah, so  I'm not sure if my website's really up and going right now. I'm just working on a few things, but I'm Dawns Dirt.  So I'm on Instagram, YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, ah Apple Podcasts,  Facebook. Yeah, so just look up Dawns Dirt and you'll find me. So I've got my own podcast and then I've got my social media pages as well. And my YouTube is very hot these days. So that's really cool too. Subscribe, subscribe to my YouTube channel. That'll help me a lot.
32:30All right.  You heard it here first guys. Subscribe to Dawn's YouTube channel.  Okay. um As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com and check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash atinyhomestead.  Dawn, thank you for taking the time today. I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure. I really appreciate you. I really appreciate what you're doing for our food system and for homesteads and for people.  And  it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
32:59You're welcome. I hope you have a great day. You too. Thank you. Bye.
 

Groovy Grazers - Ch-ch-ch Changes!

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29and that price is valid through the end of November. So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com. A tiny homestead is sponsored by cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers in Montana. Good morning, my friend. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. It's a wonderful morning after getting to see the Northern Lights. Did you get to see them? It was so weird. I got up at like...
00:571130 when my husband came to bed last night because I had to go potty  and uh I  went outside on my porch for some reason. I don't usually usually just come back to bed and I was looking out the window. I could see this red orangey color off in the distance. I did not have my glasses on and I was like, oh no, what's on fire over there? Yeah. And I was going to put my glasses on when I came upstairs and look out the bedroom window and I was like, if it's on fire, it's too far away to impact us. And I went to bed. I went to sleep.
01:27Got up this morning and looked at the local Facebook page for our town and somebody had posted, what's the red glow on the west side of town? And people were posting so many pictures in the comments and I was like,  I missed it. Well, I mean, you kind of  saw it. I saw the red, my husband got pictures and he got the blues and greens. Wow. So up here it was red and green. Yeah.
01:55And it was bright.  And  you know, I always wanted to see the Northern Lights. I was on my bucket list. I thought I was going to have to go to Alaska.  I mean, I really wouldn't have had to move up to Montana to even see them at this point. But they were  red and green last night and dancing. They'll dance too. It looks like almost like glitter in the sky to the naked eye. But the fact that you're able to see the actual red and green without the camera lens is pretty crazy because that's like
02:24Alaska, you know, style Northern Lights where you can see them dance in the sky. So we,  guess you're supposed to again see them tonight. So we're really excited. We'll go out again. Last night we had cloud cover and that ruins all of it.  course. And  you'll be surprised people in Minneapolis and St. Paul here in Minnesota actually could see them even with all the light pollution. Yeah, that is wild to me. I had friends that were in,  you know, Billings because we're kind of on the outskirts.
02:54And they were posting pictures of a two full blown light pollution.  And normally it has to be pretty pitch, you know, pitch  outside to be able to capture it in a long exposure. was capturing it without a long exposure. I mean, cool, but also scary tinfoil hat, you know, style thing where I'm like,  my husband jokes around. He's like, should we be putting tinfoil hats on now when we go outside to look at these? And we couldn't help but really laugh at that because it is.
03:23It is from the sun having solar flares that we're able to see these. Yeah, exactly. And  it's really cool and it's really pretty. But yes, it's concerning.  So I'm assuming the weather is pretty good there. If you were met, you managed to see it last night. Yeah, it's you know, it's a weird year this year. There's we haven't knock on wood, like really just everyone should knock on wood for me right now. We haven't had any serious snowfall. We have like a real light dusting one day.
03:52and it stayed for like a few hours. But to see like other parts of the country that normally don't get snow before us are getting snow  is a little strange. We always joke that Montana is going to be the banana belt, but weather's been really good here, which has been nice because we've been really productive since we last talked. Like a lot of building has gone on. We've done  miles of electric fence. mean, so I, I'm enjoying the nice weather and that it's not harsh yet because
04:21It's going to be, guess, according to the farmer's almanac, um a pretty cold but not snowy year. And I'll take that because last year was the opposite. It was extremely snowy  and not as cold, if that makes sense. yeah. Yeah. It's so weird here in Minnesota because uh supposedly the weather people will tell you that if it's super cold,  it won't snow.  But if it's super warm, it will snow. And it was really cold here.
04:50last year and last winter and we did get snow when it was like minus 20 out and I was like mother nature what are you doing? Yeah the negative 20 and then snowfall is what like that's when I'm like okay why did I move here that that's the one moment everyone told me when I moved here from Arizona that I was going to absolutely hate it the snow was going to send me back and I'm like
05:15I'm fine with the snow. I'm cool with everything. But when you, I was telling my husband, once you hit like negative 10 and below and it snows, that should be illegal. It should be a crime. Yes, absolutely.  And just for the update for Minnesota, it's very sunny. It's breezy. And I think it's about 40 degrees outside this morning. Well, then we're about the same temperature. Yesterday was 70 degrees. I got to wash my horse yesterday. I cannot believe that in the middle of November. I was like, okay, I'll take it. guess.
05:43Very nice. And for anyone keeping score who's listening in last month,  I'm  almost over this freaking respiratory, upper respiratory crap. Finally.
05:54It's been crazy. mean, I have a little bit of it too, but that's partially probably because I got kicked in the ribs by an auction horse that I bought first time at 31 never been kicked. So she cracked some ribs and you know, when you crack ribs or break ribs, you're really susceptible to like getting a lung infection. So I can understand that it's horrible. The upper respiratory is I've seen going around to.
06:19Yeah, I don't know what it is and I didn't test for COVID because  it doesn't matter. I'm sick. You know, I don't see anybody so it's fine.  It's the same, same treatment. Just high vitamin C. Look up a vitamin C cleanse. Vitamin C is a radical free remover. So it like removes radicals to include metal and heavy toxins and parasites and stuff like that. uh It's supposedly what it's supposed to do, you know, of course, because nothing's backed by anything that's natural. And it really did help.
06:49Um, cut down on the amount of stuff that I've had. So I, I've been really big about pushing vitamin C this year to everyone telling them to take a ton of it. Yeah. I've been saying on the podcast, if you're comfortable wearing a mask, wear a mask when you go out in public, if you're sick or if you don't want to get sick and wash your hands because that helps. Yeah. Don't touch your nose. I've had to teach my kids that. Yeah. I think hygiene is something that we could all use a little bit of scrubbing up on because that, you know,
07:19good practices  for not getting sick, the same as biosecurity with your own animals. So we gotta take care of ourselves as good as we take care of our animals, and I know that's pretty hard for some farmers, including myself.  For sure.  Okay, so I've had Morgan as a guest on the show three times over the last two years. Last time you were on was in September,  and  I wasn't gonna ask you back on until spring, but you've got some exciting things happening, and don't jump in yet.
07:48because I know you're ready. I know you're ready to like woohoo about things. um Also Morgan was in the service, what branch? I was in the United States Air Force. Yeah, so thank you for your service  and happy belated Veterans Day. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. We had a good day yesterday. We got to see the Northern Lights. We carved pumpkins. We ate T-bone steak. You you just try and reflect on Veterans Day.
08:13to remember like what you did with your family because your family stands behind you while you serve. So I appreciate that. And I know all the service men and women, past and present, are very thankful that uh the American people thank us. Well, you guys put your lives on the line for us.  I, you know, I don't say that lightly. My father-in-law was in Vietnam and he was  one of the people,  as far as I know, that would go into the tunnels. Oh, wow.
08:43Yeah, and he doesn't talk about it and he says that he basically worked on radios and that's probably true but I've heard some other things through family that there was a little more to it and that was a really dangerous thing. So, so I don't take it lightly but my my dad was in the Air Force Air Force then and he did not go overseas because my mom was pregnant with me. So I kept my dad from
09:13from going, even though I was not even born yet. But he also was in the electronics and radio stuff and he helped over here with the Vietnam effort. And so he didn't really have to put his life on the line, but with what he did, he saved lives. you know, it's, it's, it's six, one and a half dozen of another. You're, doing your job. You are helping our country. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, looking back, it was a huge decision to make. I
09:42I mean, sometimes we all have regrets, right? Like the VA doesn't take as great of care of us or sometimes we get frustrated because some of the freedoms we may be served for maybe aren't still in place, you know, there's various things. And so I think the biggest thing is just remembering that like each generation sacrificed  and, just reflecting on it. My dad was a radio guy in the Marine. So that's really interesting that your family was a part of that. My dad was back in.
10:08way before I was born, 1994 was when I was born to kind of age myself. So it was quite a few years before then, but yeah, that generation, I was in Okinawa, Japan. So I learned a lot about that era because we were in one of the areas that it was highly affected by. so  that's one of the things. It's also why I'm so sick, I believe too, because where I was stationed and the chemicals that I was exposed to. ah
10:36you know, they've affected my health. But one of the benefits to it is I get to farm with my family.  And this life is a blessing. I know a lot of people say that, but to not have to  have two  adults that are working continuously and then coming home and farming on top of it, like our whole job is farming.  And yeah, I've been on the show quite a few times. It's been really cool because I can listen back to some of the episodes and see kind of how we pivoted because that was a huge talk pivoting.
11:05Yes, yeah. Oh my goodness. Have we pivoted so much? So we'll kind of jump into what's changed because I think what we found in Montana may not work for other states, but I think it might work definitely in other states. know, so  Andy and I live on 20 acres. We're in Montana for some of the people that haven't maybe caught some of these details.  Last time we talked about the hay issues that we might be looking to move. Well, pivot.
11:35Of course, we're staying. So we're just going to end up refinancing. We're going to try for a while. That's one of the things is we haul every drop of water out to the house and that causes a lot of burden when you're trying to be self-sustainable. You're trying to live eventually off grid and honestly just trying to farm because then you're stuck with dry land and dry land doesn't produce. You maybe get one cutting out here of dry land hay.
12:04um And  that's really it. And that's with like, you know, fertilizing, weed control, all of that stuff. So since last time, we've kind of had to get back into the thought process of how can we make this more sustainable for us where we're at? So we live on  10 acres  of flat farmland and the other 10 acres are between a gulch and kind of like mountainous because we're on the top of a flat rim.
12:33Um, just to kind of paint the picture, you know? So our grass out here is terrible. So Andy and I, that was one of the things last year or yeah, September that we were talking about actually. not even that long ago, we were talking about how can we resolve this? Cause I had to order 51 round bales. It's like 21 tons of hay. If I'm paying 150 a ton, which is way less than most people do in America. yeah.
13:01I mean, you're still talking about four or $5,000  by the time I haul it, I pay for it, I get it home, I get it loaded up, like all that stuff, right? So that's been one of the biggest challenges that we've kind of had to think about long-term resolution. And also  now that we know that we're going to stay here, the market's just not great. You know, we did look. The last...
13:27two, three months we've been looking on the market, but either we're going to get into something Montana's prices are extremely high. ah You know, a million dollars plus for what we need. And we just don't have that kind of money. It's not sustainable anyways for a working farm to have that kind of overhead. So we had kind of talked about previously, I think em Andy was working with the Hay Guy. I don't know if we covered that actually. did. Yeah. Yeah, we did actually. So Andy, because we talked about potentially a land share.
13:58So we were hoping that was gonna drop into our lap. So here's the big update. So yes, we are here. There is a land share potential that we could work on  with a farmer and take home 50, 50 of the profit that comes from it. And I just wanna talk about what is a land share because that was all kind of new to me a few months ago and trying to understand it and grasp it and learn about it. I think this land share might solve a lot of people's problems.
14:27um, that need hay like we do. So if you're needing hay, you're needing, um, barter work, maybe there's a farmer that has grain that you could, you know, barter with them, but they need work. So I'm talking about the older generation of farmers. As we all know, it's an epidemic, right? The old generation of farmers are retiring. They're in their seventies, if not older. Yep. And they're done farming, but here's the crux. Nobody in their family wants to farm.
14:55They all went off to the big city and they became doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, whatever, right?  It's a tale old tale. And now it's coming to like a head, you could say, like the farm industry is feeling this now. We're feeling that nobody knew Cayman, right? So you have these older farmers and they're not able to do the labor, but they can't afford payment to laborers.
15:22That's why people don't, you know, they're like, well, we don't want to work for $15 an hour for the farmer. Yeah, I get that. That's not a sustainable income for you or the farmer because the farmer can't really afford that. If they're selling hay and they're selling them for $8 a bale, it's $6 their cost to put that bale up from the time they grow it, weed it, you know, get it into a bale and then get it onto your truck. That's not sustainable for farmers.
15:51So we have to find a way to make it sustainable for everyone and scratching everyone's back. So Andy met Dave. Dave's been haying for a long time. He used to do grain. He's in his seventies. He started out with nothing. So he had no land. He had no equipment, but he wanted to get into farming.  And that literally is Andy and I's story. We don't have a lot of money. We have a little land, but it's not good for hay.
16:19But we got a lot of tenacity, right? Yes. We're wild, wild children. So I met, hey, know, hey, Dave is what I call him. I met Dave, I went bought hay from him and we got to talking like farmers do for three hours and Andy didn't know where I was. Well, Andy's been going out there quite often. He was out there last week. They were burning  weeds because that's a better alternate to round up, but that takes a lot of hours. So Dave's been walking Andy through all these struggles that he has as a farmer.
16:47So then we also understand what we're getting ourselves into. So Dave said, hey, I've got some land down here and he took us to it and it's 160 acres. But what he pointed out, which I did not know that if a hundred and it's technically a hundred acres. So on the map, it says a hundred acres. But when you actually map it out because of all the, you know, gulches and the mountains and dips and hills.
17:15It's like 160 acres of actual land. Yeah. Which I thought that was interesting. I didn't know that. So some of these people that are only thinking, I have a hundred acres, you may have more if it's not just flat. That's hard to measure. So that was, that was something that was very interesting to me because we might be sitting on more than 20 acres with how our land is set up. So that, that led me to think, okay, I want to learn more of that. So that was something he brought up. Then he brought up.
17:44the cost. So he used to actually pair up with the government and he talks about the wheat bushels. So he said that before if you just did grain on your own, you made  nothing. You would break  negative at the end of the day. But if you got with the USDA, you would make a guaranteed amount because they were paying per bushel versus just by tonnage.
18:11So I didn't know that either. That was something that was really interesting to me because I've trying to figure out what is the cause of farms breaking down? What towards the end, know, I'm not looking 20 years down the road. I'm looking 30, 40, 50 years. Why are they hitting a point and it all seems to be about 30, 50 years and then they can't sustain anymore. So he brought up, you know, market changing, the USDA changing their pricing.
18:42He also brought up equipment. John Deere's didn't use to cost a million dollars plus, you know, for a whole setup.  No, they did not. I didn't know that.  I did not know that tractors cost and I would love to find the percentage and post it someday.  But the cost from what they used to be to what they are now is so insanely gross. It makes me really upset that these
19:09big name corporations that make our tractors are nickel and diamond the farmer. Even these cattle farmers, they're not coming out. It's not the cattle farmers that are making the money right now. It is the processing and packaging plants. But people don't realize that. Same thing with farming grain. So, you know, a lot of people may have that knowledge, apply the knowledge that you have to the meat industry to the corn, wheat, grain industry. And it's the same thing.
19:40And they're going through their machines breaking down. John Deere is no longer making parts. Kubota is not making parts for certain things. They don't have technicians anymore. You used to have mechanics, right? That could actually find a problem, fix it, diagnose. Now you just have technicians that just pull and replace. Everything's a plug and play now. And all of this has literally pushed farming to this corner where it's dead end.
20:09because they can't make their tractor bills after paying for their chemicals, their seeds, workers, that's something else, but you can barter. So why I kind of brought this up was because we listened to this farmer. Just tell us, he's not like complaining to us to make us feel sorry for him.  I asked him, why is farming dying? And this is what he gave me. And I was like, wow, this is a lot, it's a big plate.
20:39But there are outs. said barter. We need to go back to bartering. So we were like, you know what? We need goat hay. He's got a lot of bales that don't meet  horse quality, but they are horse quality compared to what I've seen. When I lived in Arizona, this hay would have been horse quality. But today he's very, very um picky and very, everything is uh a science to him with hay, which is great. You need those kinds of people. And so
21:08We traded him, we bartered hours. He was like, I'm gonna give you 20 an hour and I'll barter you these bales for eight a bail, right? So you do the math, that's two bales an hour. Okay, we're talking now. A little bit of time to learn stuff, to barter. So then that kind of progressed. You gotta start a relationship with a farm before you can do business with them.
21:36So we did the little bit of a friendship buying hay from him. And then we asked him, can we barter with you? Is there something we can help you with? Because it's a one man operation. It's just Dave out there. And he goes, yeah, I need help. But I, he looked at my husband and he said, real honestly, I can't afford to give you 20 an hour though cash. He goes, I can't give you the cash, but I got hay. And Andy looked at me and he goes, well, I don't have cash, but I got time. So you can fill the void in what.
22:05you need in your farm by looking at how you can help other farmers. And I think that's something we've moved away from. And I wanted to talk about that today because it led us to a really great spot where we pivoted again. And now it's sustainable for us to stay on this farm. Okay. So let me jump in here for a minute because that's a lot.  It is. Congratulations on being able to stay.
22:35Being able to get a well dug because I know that was a big thing for you. We talked about that in September. And you're right. If you can barter services with anybody, I mean, in your case with a farmer, that's freaking awesome. But you can barter services with anybody who needs what you're doing. need what they're doing. Correct. And people forget that. Yeah. I mean, we are
23:05really lucky we have friends that have goats and goats poop a lot. um And we have a farm stand and our friends also have ducks and they have duck eggs in the summer. So my friend messaged me back in the spring and said,  can I sell my duck eggs in your farm stand because we don't really have a good place for a farm stand.  And I was like, of course you can.  And then my husband texted her husband  a month or so ago and said,  hey, do you have any goat manure? Cause I want to put it in my gardens.
23:34And so basically we let them sell duck eggs in our farm stand and we get goat manure at the end of the season. And  it's great because we're trying to grow produce and they're trying to get their duck eggs moved. Yeah. Cause you got all those trees. I remember we talked about your awesome trees um and, and, that's the thing seeing them, then it's more sustainable for you and her. She gets her duck eggs out. She gets their, their feed paid for, um, or is trying to work towards breaking even.
24:03and then you guys get manure and that's going to save you guys, I guarantee if you added up hundreds of dollars by the end of next year. Oh, absolutely. On fertilizer. Yeah, definitely. And  I don't want to go buy bagged manure at Home Depot or Menards or Fleet Farm or whatever store has it  because it's not just bagged manure. It's other stuff in it. I want,  I want straight from the goats butt manure. How's that for saying something crazy?
24:33Right here. Like I wanted to fall hot and fresh right on the plant. Yeah, I mean, I don't because it would burn the plant, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah, no, for sure.  Actually, go poop just so you're aware it's not a hot manure. Oh, OK. Well, then sure, we can do that, too. Yeah, yeah. That was why we got goats. Ducks also. didn't know that we have call ducks now  and  that they also don't have hot poop. Neither do sheep,  but horses and cows.
25:02I don't know about pigs. We have pigs now. We've gotten quite a few animals because we solved our great dilemma of hay, right? Yes. Once you solve one of the things that you work for, which is hay, then it's like, okay, well now we can expand. And that's one of the things now that you've got fertilizer, which I encourage you to add up or look at previous years and see how much you paid for fertilizer versus whatever.
25:30Um, anytime you do something like that, because it does help like this year alone, we have saved over a thousand 500 on hay, just in partnering.  That's a lot. mean, if you think about it, that is a lot and the knowledge that my husband has, because now Dave's like, Hey, go get a tractor. Cause his tractor, like I said, all the tractor companies have made it unaffordable to fix these older tractors is like my track. Once my tractor goes out, we're out of business. I can't pull hay.
26:00And you need hay and I'm like, yeah, I really need hay. But if we go that route, we can split it 50 50. Now it's not always a 50 50 share. So that's something you have to take into account too. So like he's just saying we have a really smoking good deal. He's got the land. If we get the tractor, then we can go ahead and do business together and then split a 50 50. So like always look into deals. Some deals aren't worth it. Not all the farmers are nice, but Dave is willing to help us because of that.
26:30little bit of extra money that we're saving, I went and bought two horses and three pigs.  And what else did I get? Oh, and I got my ram for my sheep.  You know, so we expanded because I was like, well, if I'm going to save all this money on hay every year, I can actually put that in towards animals. And we did a bunch of fencing, right? Like I got electricity up. I was kind of anti-electricity with animals  before.
27:00with having like, you know, a jeweled system. And I absolutely love it. My goats no longer tear at my fence. I'm not having to constantly repair them. But because we traded hay, I was able to do that. And I wouldn't have if we didn't trade the hay. And that's something that like, I would have never thought to barter time for hay or even barter time um with a mechanic that we had working on our truck, right?
27:26or bartering goat milk. I've bartered goat milk before, but time is a little different. I think people forget that time is valuable. I mean, we know that it's valuable for us, but we forget that time from other people is really valuable. So if someone's willing to give you a few hours and trade for something, it's probably gonna make your life a lot easier. Yeah, and honestly, that's how I see the podcast sometimes because I know that you and a lot of the people I talk to are very busy with your homesteads and your
27:56businesses and what you're doing. And  I absolutely love the fact that you guys take the time to come talk with me and put information out there that other people can learn from. Yeah, and not dead internet stuff. We're not talking AI generated stuff. No, we're talking  actual accounts of people. And I and I love that. And I love your podcast because there have been things that I've even learned. Right. And I'm sure people have art. I've connected with people from your podcast.
28:25Um, and I think that's the greatest thing is you give a platform where we can all share time, but it's mutually benefiting. And that's what I think people forget is that bartering is also mutual benefiting. So it has to scratch both people's backs. can't just scratch yours. Right. You know, it can't be so such a smoke and great deal for you that it,  puts them out  and getting back to that thought process brings you more back to the old school way that all of the farmers act.
28:53You know, I remember in Texas, they all would be at McDonald's drinking coffee. It's like 11 o'clock in the morning, but they're all drinking coffee like they just woke up. But I have to remember they've already done all their morning chores.  This is like their free time, but that's how they all learned was from each other vocally. And I think just talking about the reality of what's going on with farming, you know,  I didn't know that tractors were so unattainable. I don't want a brand new tractor anymore.
29:21I'm going to go on the auction site and go buy a used tractor. Yeah. Because it makes more sense if we're able to fix it compared to these new John Deere's or Kubota's or whatever, where the technician has to come out. That's something else I also learned. If your tractor stops, your combine stops in the middle of working, they have these like systems that shut it down. So it may not be like broken to where you can't turn the engine on, but the system is shut it down because the computer says it's not safe to run. Yeah.
29:49Only way you can do that is having a technician come out that has their specific brand little iPad plugin. And then they plug it in and then they tell you what it is. And then they tell you it's going to be thousands of dollars to fix that part. Plus now you have a technician call. I don't agree with that. That's nickel and diming the farmer.  Yeah. And I'm going to, I'm going to jump in with something else.  Computers are amazing, but not when it comes to vehicles or tractors.
30:18or snowblowers or anything that has a motor because it doesn't work well.  mean, we had our internet go out a couple weeks ago for a day. I don't know what happened. It was our internet provider and I couldn't do anything that I needed to do regarding the podcast. And I was like, huh, I'm going to get a lot done today because the dishes are going to be done in five minutes and the laundry is going to be moved through all day because I can't work.
30:46It scares me to death, Morgan. If the internet actually went out for more than a day, we would all be screwed. No, we would. And that's what we were joking about last night. Because when you have these solar flares that cause everyone and their mother to see with the naked eye the Northern Lights, it's like, huh, hmm, wonder when the grid's going to go out. We joked about calling our farm the tin foil ranch. Yeah. foil.
31:15It's a thing, you know, and so we do and that's what drives our lifestyle. That's why I was so against electricity on my fence. Yeah. Because what happens when I don't have this, right? I don't have this luxury. And that's something that we build our whole farm off of is not having luxuries. Because if something were to happen now again, do I think that you and I will see?
31:40The end of the grid may be. Do I think my son will? Yes, absolutely. I do. And when people say that I'm like, he's 11, he will.  Um, you know, and, and that's scary to think about. That's part of our drive is like, how can we, so we got horses like that's so funny because that literally leads us into the next day and what we got. So we went and got two little baby horses, which I have a horse and we've talked about it I have a pony and we bred her and she is  99.9 % sure that she's bred. So we'll have a mini Shetland next year.
32:10a baby, which is super cute, but we have two babies. old are the baby  horses? They're young.  Liberty, which is Betty. We call her Betty. uh Liberty is from South or North Dakota. can't remember, but she was born July 4th of this year. Okay. So you're talking like Weenling age, right?  And then we have  another one. So we bought Liberty last auction at the BLS,  which is Billings. uh
32:40And they have one of the country's largest auctions in October. I highly, you can buy online, not the loose guys, but you can buy the, the horses that go through on the online auction. It's super easy. I've done it. So I encourage people Montana's horses are cheap. Come look like really cheap. So I took home a hundred dollar in October, a hundred dollar Philly. She's this little, little.
33:04Bay Dapple, maybe a buckskin, I don't know, because she's a baby, right? She's young. She's just now getting in her six month incisor. So that tells me she's probably about the same age as Betty.  And Bambi, Bambi is her name, the new baby. And she has a hawk injury, right? So she's got the typical barbed wire cut. But we got these young babies because I was like, well, if the grid goes out, then we've got, we've got, you know,
33:33a vehicle essentially, a horse is a vehicle at that point. um And we have a lot of Amish around here and they ride their horses and stuff and they have beautiful horses that go through the auction. And I was like, you know, maybe the  Amish are onto something because they live off grid essentially, not fully, right? Like some of them have cell phones now and get to talk to the outside world. They're changing with times. But for the most part, they live in a very, if the grid went down type way.
34:01So we ended up picking up the two young babies and they are amazing. They're also good therapy animals, because a lot of people know we're going through a bunch of legal stuff. That's why we're refinancing. um And they're a good escape. They also eat a lot of hay though. So that was why we expanded. We had some of our hay issues um fixed and therefore we were able to move forward with that.
34:28having the horses because it's less of a worry, less money going in, you know, to feeding them hay as often. it's transportation. So it's actually beneficial. You can have horses that plow your field, that take a disc through the field. I mean, the Amish do everything with horses still.  and there's a lot of equipment floating around here. So instead of paying a big name commercial company, I'm gonna feed my horse hay.
34:56I'm not paying for the technician to come out. I'll pay for the chiropractor to come out for the horse instead. Yeah. The vet bills instead of the technician bills. Right. I think they're a little bit cheaper when it ends up being a  vet bill compared to a technician bill. I'm a knock on wood, but I think I have a  theory that running a horse is a lot cheaper than running a tractor.  Yeah. And I'm gonna, I'm going to play devil's advocate for just a second on that.  I think that it all comes out in the wash regarding these two different things.
35:26Because God forbid your horse colics,  you're gonna have a big vet bill Yeah, oh for sure because we're getting insurance on the horses Something I already looked into it's 250 a year Yeah for my little babies, but they're babies and it covers up to $5,000 in  colic surgery, but that's something you have to worry about right also another devil's advocate Horses are not fun to deal with in the snow sometimes
35:56So if you're walking, you're not in a heated cab, you're on the ground walking behind them. There's a lot of give and take. So when we do anything on the farm, we do devil's advocate because that's our biggest thing. Also, my husband got to see how some of these horses that were ridden were selling and he was like, doesn't make any sense to me if we have the knowledge. And I'm not a horse trainer, I tell people that. I'm not a horse trainer, I've ridden horses since I was nine years old though.
36:25On and off, I've done exercise riding. I've worked with really green, young, unexperienced horses, but I'm not a horse trainer. But if I can get a horse that I can  ride into a sale barn, they'll go for 4,000, 5,000 plus. So it's  an item that I guess you could say in a hurry is a lot easier than to sell with a tractor. Like a tractor can take longer. It's a bigger bill. So yeah, there is a lot of give and take. And I think that's what
36:55I've learned in the last few months is pivoting and being excited to pivot because sometimes if you get in that mode of like,  I don't want to pivot anymore. And I've been there. I've been there. I've been in tears saying like, I don't want to do the damn thing anymore. Cause those that have listened know that that's my saying, just do the damn thing.  Um, and it's okay sometimes to be really excited about pivoting and to find the positivity is in it, you know?
37:23and then to move forward with it. And we may have to pivot again. That's just the reality of life. But knowing some of the things that I've learned, that the death of farming happens because equipment starts to break down  and the companies no longer service that, or you can't find anyone that will service it, or the parts, or whatever, be it, right? That's a huge crux. The other crux is nobody to replace the old farmers, okay? So that's two cruxes. The third crux is...
37:50is that there's just not enough money flow through the system if you're doing it outside of the USDA. Because they have grants, they have subsidies. People forget that farming is built on subsidies  because the government keeps them that way. The private buyers won't buy directly from the farmers because after so many acres you become a commercial farm.  There's so many rules and regulations.
38:15Yep. And right now, I think we're still kind of screwed on the grants from the government because I think a lot of them have been put on hold. I would have to look into that. No, they are.  So if you're looking for grants, you want to look regionally or locally right now. Yep. In your state for grants.  there's grants everywhere, guys. Like, seriously, please go look. There are grants to help offset new equipment. There are special loans.
38:45um that are offset by grants to help with interest on equipment.  know, like there are so much and maybe Montana is a little more gracious than other states. But I encourage you to look and see even though the government is in shambles,  look for those grants now because they may not be there in 10 years. Yeah. I thought we were done with the world being a dumpster fire when COVID eased eased up, but no surprise it's a dumpster fire again.
39:15Um, it's just, mean, we're a, we're a landfill on fire. Now is what I joke. Uh huh. I just, no longer dumpster. I am so thankful that my husband and I moved when we did back in 2020, because it's a lot easier to feel okay when you live on three acres and you live like a homesteader lives because you're prepared for a lot of things that most people aren't so incredibly thankful that we did this. Yeah.
39:45Oh yeah, can't. I'm, I could, if I could go back and pat, uh, my husband's back in 2019, way before I met him when he bought this, I would, because got 20 acres for under a hundred thousand. I can't, yeah, we don't have water. Yeah, we have, we have no trash. Our internet is barely working, but you know what? I got land and we got land more than anything. He did nothing with this before I moved in with him. It just sat vacant, which was fine. It was a clean slate.
40:15You know, and that and it has been a blessing to us. It's  it has kept us afloat wonderfully. And I won't say afloat even in the sense that we're in the green and profiting.  It has kept us from losing gobs of money with no return.  Or no nothing back, I should say, like pigs send them off to slaughter. You get bacon back. That's a return. Yeah.
40:42And the peace and the happiness that it has brought you and the sanity that it has brought you, that is worth everything. That is definitely a double-edged sword. Sometimes this property has not brought me sanity, but that is because of family issues that we have going on. It's a headache sometimes, but it has brought me so much peace in the sense that I'm able to walk outside with my husband and  my son and say, okay, we're okay. We have items to barter.
41:10We're going to be okay if something happens. We've got horses to ride in the future. You know, we got babies on the way. got goats, we have sheep, have pigs, we have ducks, we have a turkey, we have a rabbit. we have, we're there. We're at that point, we're starting to build and we're about three years then. I think this is my third. Yeah. Our third fall going into this building. Um, we started in the fall building, which was rough, but you know, I, I look back and.
41:40And it is truly amazing. I tell people,  even if you can't do this on a large scale, you have people on your podcast all the time uh that have different varieties of acres, but you can do it on less than an acre. There's a girl in my town that you've interviewed,  with Roseland uh Urban Farm, believe is the name, but  she does it on very little land. And so I think when people listen, don't, this shouldn't just be a dream in the, in the far future, like, oh, one day.
42:10Maybe I'll get to own three acres of land like Mary, right? And be able to farm. If I lived in the city, right? And was listening to this.  No, you can start now. There's a way to start now. And the sooner you adapt now, the better it is long-term. Even if it's just you growing your own tomatoes on your apartment patio. Like that's going to offset your bill by a little bit each year. And that little bit can go to something else that will help offset.
42:38And so if we just all got in this mindset of we need to start building to sustainability, then it does naturally ease your anxiety about what's going on in America because you know that you have yourself covered. You're not relying on somebody else. So the sustainability, the soothing, right, that it brings to know that we're OK and we would be OK in that situation helps you enjoy what you do more. And that's that's the biggest thing. Enjoy what you do.
43:09Don't make your hobbies into money making things. It'll make it where it's less fun.  And find a way that you don't rely on a single person from the government to provide for your family. That doesn't mean not relying on anyone. That just means not relying on the government entity. You gotta rely on each other. And so like that's been a lot in the last two months learning and digging this apart to get to this point.
43:35But I'm glad that I got to come back on your show and we got to talk about from September to now the changes. mean, that's a lot of change in just a few months, but it's okay to pivot and it's okay to step back and say, how can I make this more sustainable? And then figure out how you can barter that. Yep, absolutely. And you were saying that you can start now.  The thing that I keep saying is learn to cook.
44:02Cooking is a homesteading skill. It has been a homesteading skill since people showed up on the planet and learned to cook.  You know, when we stopped being nomads.  And uh honestly, if you learn to cook, even basic cooking skills,  you will save yourself a lot of money. You won't save yourself time because cooking takes time, but you will save yourself money.
44:29Correct. Yeah, we cook a lot. I mean, it's fun when we get to go out to eat. But if you eat out even once a week, that's 400, if it's a family of three, with, you know, we have gluten allergies. So you're talking four or $500 for us to eat comfortably, like good food, not just junk food, right? Because if I'm going eat out, it better be better than my cooking. But it's not really. Everything is just, we make jokes that this will probably turn a lot of people off from food.
44:57Even your mom and pop restaurants sometimes, if they're not cooking stuff in house, it's Cisco. Cisco Foods,  we joke about who can reheat Cisco Foods the best. So I would rather go cook and buy whole ingredients. We're 2026, I wanna encourage a lot of people to do this, because this is something I'm gonna try and do. We're gonna try and buy nothing brand new, other than the absolute necessities. A coffee pot does not mean brand new. That means used.
45:26There's no tariffs on that, which is going to save us gobs of money. So  I'm encouraging everyone, just non-consumer. Look up, even if you can't, if you're cooking and you're like, I can't grow anything, look up just non-consumerism. That's what started me down this whole homesteading, off-grid journey, was just trying to learn how to be a non-consumer because we live in such a consumerism world. Yeah, absolutely.
45:54Again, double-edged sword, devil's advocate. um If  everybody starts buying stuff  used and it still works, that's great. But we also have to consider that we don't want the economy to tank. Correct. Yeah. So it's a slippery slope and there's a real balance there. But I get what you're saying. We  have a percolator. Okay. You know what a percolator is for coffee, right? Oh Yeah, yeah.
46:21The kind that you actually put on an open flame. It doesn't plug into the wall. And I love that thing. Now, I'm not going to lie. I love the fact that we have a drip coffee maker that is programmable and the coffee is made when I get up. I love that. But I also love that if the power is out and our generator doesn't kick in, which hasn't happened yet, thank God, I know how to use that percolator. So even if we have no power,  there will be coffee. And without coffee,
46:51People will die with coffee.  People stay alive. That's how this works in my house. That's what my son says. He goes, I don't tell you bad news before you have coffee.  Yeah, we're all addicts to coffee in this house and it's the only thing we're really addicted to. So I guess it's okay. But it be worse.  Could be way worse in the grand scheme of things. Yes. But knowing how to use a percolator, I didn't know how to set one up until maybe 15 years ago because I'd never used one. Yeah.
47:21Yeah, and it is. You got to find balance in it, right? Like, I'm probably not going to go buy horse panels brand new when I can find some bent ones, right? Because those are being shipped from China. But there is  such a given a take on our economy because it's based on the consumerism. And  I highly believe that is what makes people believe that they'll never own a house.
47:47Well, I got to go buy this thing. Well, this thing broke. like, yeah, the new stuff is not built the same way. But in that the same thing tractors, right? We talked about that on the all morning was tractors not being built the same. But I think there's items that you can be non-consumerism that that are smart. And there is it's always a fine line. I want to remind everyone that in life, everything is delicate. There's a balance, a yin and yang, right?  Homeostasis is the word.
48:15for when your body tries to do it.  When you go from really low lows to really high highs,  emotionally is homeostasis and that's with everything. Everything tries to find a neutralness world. And so if you can just do some of  on one side and some on the other, then it's helpful. And that's with your farm too, right? Like I'm buying some of my hay, but some of them I'm bartering for.  So  it makes it worth it. Cause when my husband goes out there, he gets a load of hay.
48:44He does some of his barter hours and then comes home. And so that yin and yang with getting the hay, buying it, making sure that we're set up  is important, but it applies. If I look anywhere in my life, that is a major thing. And so just yin and yang as we say sometimes and do the damn thing with the homesteading and five years from now, you're going to look back and be like, oh yeah, I do remember. Yeah, there was nothing there. That's crazy. Now look, there's something everywhere.
49:13that's built the way I need it. And that's how we're getting to year three, finally, we're seeing it. So don't let the first two years get you down, because it'll come back up. Yeah. And honestly, this lifestyle requires a lot of patience and a lot of planning. And we're five years in, Morgan. Yeah. And I looked outside this fall and went,  wow, cannot believe what this place looks like now.
49:41Yeah, oh yeah, with the trees that you're off, man. Yeah, year five, if you're still struggling at year five, then you might need to look at your business plan again. But if you're finally starting to lift, then that's when it's good. I worked for into, I sold accounting software  and I've talked to hundreds, if not thousands of business on the phone and I was having to pick apart their business in five years is the golden year. And that's when you should be able to reap the benefits, you know, and so it's.
50:08It's a lot of tenacity and people don't realize that there's a lot of heartbreak. There's a lot of ups and downs. There is good and bad and there is frustration  and exciting things that happen on the farm. But just keep pushing through. Like I think people are so used to,  what do they call it? uh Quick instant gratification, instant gratification. Thank you. Exactly that my generation, especially we love instant gratification. ah
50:38And farming and this lifestyle that we're living of being sustainable, it's not instant gratification. There's nothing instant about it actually,  to be really truthful, but there's gratification, it's just not instant.  And I think that that also is a big crux in farming too. We all just want instant gratification, but like Dave said, he puts up for the next year. You have to be one year in crop ahead.
51:05People don't realize that. They think, oh, you should just make all the money and be a big, bad, hey, bajillionaire the first year doing it. That's not true. You got to put up a full year before you can really feel that way. And it's so interesting because nobody online wants to talk about these dark things. Not dark, but just hard things. But if we can be comfortable talking about it and it's not just on the dead internet where everything is positive and everything's dandy and everyone's making millions of dollars when they're really not,
51:34then we actually get to learn and we actually get to move forward in what we're doing. Yep. The last major, what felt like instant gratification, it was not, but it felt like it  was when we learned that the offer for our place had been accepted by the seller. And it wasn't instant gratification. took like 20 years from  wanting to do this to getting here. But that moment of
52:02they accepted your offer was  amazing. And then the second one, which again, wasn't really instant gratification, but it felt like it was when I found out that we got the grant for our greenhouse that we talked about last time. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're looking at grants for greenhouses too, by the way, because of your idea. Yeah. And it wasn't instant because I had to actually apply for the grant and I didn't find out until six months after I'd applied for it. So that's definitely not instant gratification.
52:30But the highs, those have been the two biggest highs in the last five and a half years. There have been smaller highs, you know, and there have been really great things. There have also been some  lows. And there have been moments where I'm like, why are we doing this, really? And then there have been moments of, I know exactly why we do this. Yeah. Oh, for sure. It's a roller coaster ride doing this sometimes, but it's not a ride that I would want to get off of.
53:00No, I, every time we drive back through the town that we lived in before, the houses are really, really close together. It's a little tiny town. Yeah. And I get tense. I'm like, Oh my God, I can't believe we lived in this way for 20 years before we live the way that we live now. get anxious. Oh, I couldn't live in the city. would, I lived in the city a lot. I can't.
53:28I can't handle it. I don't even like driving now. I can't tell you the last time I've had a drive at night. Like I just, don't, I have no desire to go back. And there are moments where something really bad happens and I'm like, I want to go back. I could live an easier life. I could go play sports on the weekends and go to the bar and do all this stuff, but it's not worth it. I mean, I would, I would have so much anxiety from this world that we live in that I wouldn't be able to enjoy my life.
53:56Yeah, and don't get me wrong. I still do like to socialize now and then, very rarely, but now and then I do like to see my friends.  And I do love it when my kids come to visit because that socializing with an extra. Yeah. To it. It's great. But I really do enjoy just being in my own home, not having to put on the show.  And when people come to visit, it's wonderful, but that happens rarely.
54:26Yeah, we're like, I mean, we have more visitors just because of the goats, but it's still pretty rare. Not going to lie, like one or two visitors a month, maybe. Yeah, we go mostly to people, but yeah, no, my, home is my sanctuary. It's my peace.  Um, it's where we feel most secure. It's where we have the most happiness.  Um, we have all the animals that we love  and that love us and that need us. And so.
54:53It's one of those things where when people are even like, do you want to come play trivia on Wednesday? And I'm like, no, I'd rather go pet the babies under the stars and look at the stars. Like I don't, I don't find any use in that, you know, because it's more stressful. got to drive into town. It takes up gas then, you know, the entry fees and stuff. I, and I think that when you find that kind of piece, does change your life.
55:20But like we've said, there's a lot of ups and downs. And I think sometimes just talking about that and normalizing that helps other people that are maybe in that low spot that are wanting to give up. Like just keep pushing, keep going. Yeah. If you're still alive, there's still hope and potential. Correct. Yeah. Oh yeah. Every day you wake up, you know, six feet above, there is potential. I would have never thought my life would have landed me here as a single broke mom in Tucson, Arizona in the ghetto. I lived in the hood.
55:49You know, and never did I think I'd be in Montana living this life. But I did it because of my tenacity. I kept pushing forward. Even in the lows, I was like, this is my goal. This is my goal. And being single, I was able to find someone that shared the same goal as me. Now, if you're married, hopefully you and your partner have the same goal or you can get on the same page and compromise. A lot of farming is compromising with your partner, compromising with your bank account  and compromising with where you live.
56:19Mm-hmm. Absolutely.  Morgan, I'm going to sound like your mom. I'm really proud of you.  Thanks. I'm super proud of you. Just in two short months, we've all accomplished a lot. Like hearing somebody else is in your farm stand, you're getting fertilizer and trade and bartering and using the system that's going to help farming. I am so glad that we got to talk about this because you were already putting this in place also.  Oh, yeah.
56:43We are always trying to figure out the smartest, most economical way to get things done here, doing the damn thing. Yeah. Oh, always. You got to do the damn thing.  I can't even talk. Do the damn thing. Get up,  get out of bed. If you're listening to this podcast, go do the damn thing. Do the thing that lights your heart on fire and never stop, no matter what gets in your way. can't. I mean, it brings tears to my eyes.
57:12to say that because we have gone through the ups and downs, but do the damn thing. No matter how upset other people are at maybe what you're doing, if you're doing the right thing and you're leading with a good heart and from a kind place, you're gonna succeed, even when you feel like you're failing. And sometimes you don't succeed at the thing that you were trying to succeed at. Sometimes life throws you a little curve ball in there and you become successful at the thing past that. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. And like,
57:42Just go with the ride. You're  here to experience. That's what humans are here to do. We're here to experience the world. Experience it to its fullest. Yep.  Absolutely.  Morgan, where can people find you online? Groovy Grazers. There's one with an MT and one without.  The one with the MT is more professional. That's going to be about the goats. Groovy Grazers for right now until we figure out a farm name is going to be where you can see everything going on at the farm.
58:12We own www.grooviegrazors.com. You can message me on there. The phone number that uh is on there is textable. Please feel free to reach out to me or give me a call. We like to talk to other people that are farming or have questions or bouncing ideas. um And you can find me on Instagram. I'm not as active on Instagram, but those are the two main places. Okay, awesome. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  And if you've gotten any kind of
58:41I don't know joy out of listening to my podcast or learn something  or had a good laugh or had a good cry.  You can support my podcast by going into the show notes and there's a link that says buy me a coffee  and that will allow you to kick a couple bucks at the podcast so I can keep it going. Yeah. And you have a Patreon too. You've got to talk about that.  I do have Patreon. It's patreon.com slash atinyhomestead. I am so proud of you. Good job.
59:10Thank you, proud of you too.  All right, Morgan, thanks for coming back. Me too, thanks for having us and we'll talk to you guys again. All right, thanks, bye.
 

Mother Clucking Eggs

Today I'm talking with Kristin at Mother Clucking Eggs.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Food Econ is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Kristen at Mother Clucking Eggs in Duluth, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Kristen. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. Is it gray up in the north there? It is a very gloomy day. Yeah. Typical November in the Northern tier states.  It is.
00:59Yeah, we're gray and it rained a little bit and it's breezy and it's cold. We just got the wood boiler going. Yes, I know. This weekend looks like it's going get down to the 20s. So I'm not quite ready for that, but yes. Yeah, we might get snowflakes. I know. Ready or not.
01:21Well, it is November what, ninth today?  Yes, seventh. Seventh, sorry. I'm way ahead of myself. um The  running joke in my family is that my birthday is November 4th and my daughter's is November 14th. And so we have a running bet as to whether it will snow by my birthday, in between my birthday and her birthday, or after her birthday.  And we're going to get snow here before her birthday. You think so?
01:51Yeah, I think so.  And she lives in Florida, so she won't see any snow, most likely. Oh my gosh. Lucky.  Yup. It's really weird having a kid who lives in the South  because she grew up, she grew up partly in Maine and partly here in Minnesota. And then she ended up in Florida. So, right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and mother clucking eggs, which is mother clucking fun to say.  My mom did not like  when I named it that.
02:21Um, she did not appreciate, but I think it's kind of funny.  is funny. So we moved out to the country,  um, six years ago and  I was obsessed with goats, specifically Nigerian dwarf goats. So,  um,  that was my first order of business was to get some goats. So I have two of those.  And,  um, then the next spring I.
02:48decided to get some chickens and I started with six and now I don't know what happened but I'm up to 44. Oh chicken math got you. It got me good. Okay so what else do you have anything? Two dogs, two kids and a husband. That is a good way to round it out I think. Yeah yes. Okay I have to ask what kind of dogs do you have? A golden retriever and a silver lab.
03:16So they're not necessarily livestock guardian dogs, although you may be using them that way. Yes, I do want a Great Pyrenees very badly, but my husband says that we cannot have a third dog. So I said um then we could maybe get a donkey, but he said no.  A dog would be easier than a donkey.
03:36I know. I know. I agree.
03:41Well, anyone who's listened to my podcast for over two years now knows we have a dog and I talk about her a lot. I really talked about her a lot in the beginning, but I try not to talk about her as much now.  Her name is Maggie. She's an  Australian shepherd and she only weighs 36 pounds. Oh my gosh. Little. She's a little Australian shepherd.  She was billed as a mini Australian shepherd, but having talked to people who raise Australian shepherds,
04:09I have been corrected. There is no such thing as a mini or a toy. They're just all Australian shepherds of varying sizes. Oh, I didn't know that either. So there's some, some dispute going on in the Australian shepherd world about  what they're called.  love her to pieces and she is definitely not a livestock guardian dog. She loves every critter that comes on the property  except for possums.  Oh.
04:38Okay. She thinks possums are cats until she realizes that they're possums and then she's like, oh, and she does this really deep in her throat growl. And that's when I know there's a possum outside because she sees them outside the window. Does she kill them?  No, because she's never she's never been up close with one.  Okay. There was one in the doghouse and she saw it and she thought it was one of our cats who she loves. And she went
05:07tail wagging up to the doghouse realized it was not one of our cats  and her hackles went up and she was just barking at it. My husband had to drag her in the house. Oh my gosh. And then he killed it instead of her killing it. So well job got done. Yep. She's not a livestock guardian dog, but she thinks she's a big dog. So  that's funny. Okay. So tell me, tell me why you moved to land and what prompted all this five years ago.
05:39So I was living in more in the city of Duluth and I grew up in Lakeside, so kind of close to Lake Superior.  But I've always liked um nature and being outdoors and  I loved my neighbors, but I was looking to not have neighbors so close  and land  and um we like to hunt. So we have some hunting stands on our land  and I was wanting.
06:08animals  and just the peace and quiet of the country. So we made the move out here. Okay, was this during COVID? It was right before. Okay. Bet you were glad you moved before COVID because I bet you got a really good price on your land compared to after COVID.  We did. We got lucky for sure. Yeah, us too.  moved in  in August of  2020. um
06:35So we've been here five years as well. eh And ah really glad my husband was ready to make the leap because if we waited even another year,  we wouldn't have been able to do it.
06:48Yeah, so understand not wanting to have neighbors really close. We are nearest neighbors a quarter mile away. Yeah. That's great. And we ended up becoming really close with our neighbors and now we have a trail going to each other's houses.  Oh, funny. uh Crazy. Yeah. Okay. So I know your place is called Mother Clucking Eggs, but you have goats. So,  so you have two goats.  We have two goats. Yep. Sullivan and Sebastian.
07:15Okay, and you just have them because they're fun?  literally just for fun. They serve no purpose. Okay, I'm assuming their weathers that they're not they don't they're not able to reproduce.
07:31They just rearrange  in the yard. The dogs are all out loose and the goats and the chickens and they all are just, they get along great and they all just walk around the yard together all day.  love it. They're friends.  They're friends. um The thing that a lot of people don't know is if you have male goats that are not um neutered, male goats are stinky and they're gross.  Yes, I am very glad that I do not have that.
07:58Yeah. So most people don't keep male, unneutered goats for fun.  No. Yeah. mean, male goats that are not fixed can be wonderful animals, but, um, you don't want to be hugging on them.  Nope. Nope. Yeah. They, they are, no spatial awareness. They will come right up on your lap and, um, jump up on the patio table and.
08:26play with the kids, the kids will be on the swings and they'll be headbutting the swing and pushing them on the swing actually. It's pretty funny.
08:35Oh, silly.  All right. So, um tell me about the chicken situation. um I know you sell your eggs for $6 a dozen because I saw it on your Instagram page. Yeah. But do you sell like hatching eggs? Do you sell chicks? Do you do any of that? Not yet.  I'm hoping to get more into that next year. I have five roosters right now.  And I actually got some hatching eggs from a lady.
09:03this past spring and I put them in my incubator and hatched them. So that was pretty fun. Um, so they are a little better quality of a chicken and they lay a really cool, like deep green brown color. um and those colors are hard to find in chickens that you buy from hatcheries. So I'm kind of making the shift now from buying chicks  at, from hatcheries online or,  um, the local feed store and getting more into breeding and, um
09:32hatching on my own. that's been kind of fun. is my last, this past spring was my first time doing that.  Okay. So this, this brings up a couple of questions for me because we have chickens too, but we have them basically for eggs. We sell eggs from our our farm stand to our community.  And that's, that's pretty much it. And they're just the, uh, the ISA, they used to be reds, but now they're calling them Browns, ISA Browns.
09:58And they are friendly, they are calm, they don't attack you when you try to take their eggs. We love them. great.  And I don't ever see us branching into  getting chickens for different colored eggs because the purpose of ours is just  to keep people fed. is it just that you're interested in the breeding and the different colors and the different varieties of chickens or what is it about it that makes you want to go further?
10:28So when I first got chickens, I was getting all the frizzles and the silkies and the polish and all the funny, cool-looking chickens. And  they were decent layers, but they were all just like your typical light tan colored egg. And then  my first colored egg came from my Americana who lays light blue. And I was like, this is kind of fun. So  I started researching more on what chicken breeds lay different colors.
10:56That was a slippery slope, which is why I ended up with 44. Um, because I just started getting all these other different kinds. And it's fun because there might be a breed that lays greens or greens and blues, but you don't know exactly what shade or what it will look like, or if it's going to have a heavy bloom or be speckled. And I just think that it's so cool. The variety of eggs that you can get from one animal. And it's kind of like a game. Like I'm.
11:26Now trying to get more speckles in my eggs and which two can I breed to try to get that and just making my cartons a little prettier and more fun. And yeah, it's been fun. Okay. And I was not absolutely not giving you a hard time about it. It's just that my husband is the one that really handles the chickens and the garden. And if I said to him, Hey, we should get a whole bunch of different kinds of chickens so we can have a rainbow.
11:54carton to sell to people, he would look at me like I was cracked.  My husband probably would have too, but I more just come home with  more eggs and chickens.  there was actually a time this summer where he looks at me and he goes, um how many chickens do we have? And when I told him the number, think his jaw about hit the floor because I think he thought we were more in like  the 20 range.  Uh huh.
12:19Yup. I try so hard to keep out of  the gardening and the chicken stuff because  my husband is the gardener. He is obsessed with it. I have said it a billion times on the podcast in the last two years.  And he's not obsessed with the chickens. He thinks that it's very easy because basically we get our laying hens from a friend who raises them and we get them at about 18 to 20 weeks. And then a couple of weeks later, they start laying. So
12:46It's simple. get the chickens, we put them in their coop. There's a nice run for them. He feeds them, he waters them. We have eggs. works out  great.  That's all he wants. And that's all I want him to want. We're good.  However,  all that. Yeah. Well, we have talked about that. He has actually brought it up a couple of times  and I said to him, I said,
13:13I don't really have any problem with getting the incubator and the laying eggs and the whole bit. said, but where are we going to put the brooder?  I because if we're going to do it, we need to do it in like, it takes six, five to six months for them to be ready to lay. And that means that they're going to have to be in side. I don't want a stinky brooder in my kitchen and there's no other place to put it.  I get that. Yeah, that's fair.
13:43And he was like, well, maybe we could put it in the greenhouse because the greenhouse is warm through the winter. And I'm like, I am afraid of that because, and I'm always afraid of stuff. will, I will be honest. I was like, I'm afraid of that because what if  something goes wrong with the heat lamp  catches on fire and we lose our greenhouse.  And he was like, Oh, I hadn't thought of that. And I said, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. greenhouse was built with a grant.
14:12that we got that I applied for and it was $5,000 and we cannot replace that greenhouse if it goes up in flames. So probably not on the brooding, the brooding chickens, know, baby chickens, but we will always have chickens as long as we can. Yeah, they're so fun. I love them. Do you name yours?  No,  no, we do not because chickens are food.
14:43The first chickens we got, we got four and we named them A, B, C, and D. And my next door neighbor at the time said to me, why are they A, B, C, and D? And I said, because everybody keeps asking us if we name them. And if they're really pushing, I say, Anna, Bella, Kara, Dana. And she was like, oh, A, C, and D. And I said, uh-huh, any name that starts with A, B, C, or D.
15:10She was laughing so hard. thought she was going to pee her pants.  That's smart. But no, we don't name food.  It's just a bad plant and we try not to have favorite chickens. We did rabbits for a while and  oh, I don't want to do rabbits ever again because baby rabbits are the cutest thing ever.  Yeah, I would not be able to do that. Yeah, no, we did it  and we did it for a year and we got one litter out of two does and a buck and I was just like, we're not feeding rabbits to feed rabbits. Forget it.
15:40Yeah.  But those babies from that one litter, oh my sweet, ever loving Jesus, they were so sweet. Oh, that's so fun.  Yeah. And it's really funny because I've talked to a couple other people that raise chickens and they have some form of  cluck in name of their business. Yeah. And I'm always really careful about saying it because, you know, I don't want to get in trouble on a podcast. uh
16:08What I will tell you is that when the chickens are being stupid, my husband and I call them mother cluckers all the time.  Oh yes.  See, it's perfect. It's just fitting. Yep. And way before we ever got chickens, I have a friend who lives in Cloquet or Duluth. I don't know which it is.  And they're the ones that have the locally laid egg company. Oh yeah. Lucy and Jason. Yeah, I've seen them. um
16:37I had found her on Facebook  about something else. She writes, she writes books. And so I was talking to her about her books and she, she messaged me at some point and said, we're, we're, my husband is decided, has decided we're going to start a chicken business. And I said, oh, really?  And she said, yeah. And I said, how many? And she was like hundreds. I was like,  Oh,  okay. A business.  And she was like, yeah. And she said, she said, yeah. She said, and they're all going to be named Lola. Yep.
17:07And I said, Lola, and she said, yeah, for locally laid. And I was like, okay.  And as I watched her, as I watched her business grow,  way that they play on chicken language is ridiculous.  It's so fun.  is fun. That's awesome. And I think they're still in the business and they also ended up getting into like,  I want to say blueberries or strawberries or something. They're at, I think they do the, aren't they at the honey berry place?
17:40Yes, sorry. Yes, Honeybird. Okay, yeah. Yep, they're super nice people. I love Lucy so much. She's great.  That's awesome. And she's a neighbor too, to you, so. Yes,  yes she is. Have you met them?  No, just at like different events in Duluth. Okay, yeah. Not like actually.
18:04I have not met Lucy yet either because I'm never up in Duluth. I've been to Duluth once. It's beautiful. Duluth is a beautiful city. Anyone who's listening who wants to visit Minnesota,  do not go to Minneapolis. Go to Duluth. Duluth is way prettier.  Yes, we love it up here. Yep. And there's so many small businesses in Duluth that are just so amazing.  are.
18:32And we need to support small businesses. go, go to Duluth, go support a small business in Duluth. It'll be great.  Okay. So,  um,  when egg prices started to spike, what a year and a half ago now. Yeah.  Did you start selling more eggs? I did.  I did. That's about when I started selling eggs actually is when,  um, we saw the egg prices go up  and  I started, um,
19:01My counter was flooding with eggs and I was giving to family and friends and more just giving them away. And we still really couldn't keep up with how many eggs we had. And my husband was like, why aren't you selling these? And I was like, I don't know. It just seems like too much work. I guess I've never really thought about it. And then one of my childhood best friends is the one that really gave me the final push to start mother clucking eggs. And she helps me a lot with different designs and more the
19:30social media and tech part of it. I'm not really tech savvy, so she's been really helpful for that.  And I started selling  more to just like coworkers and people that I knew when I started the Instagram and it was pretty fun  to start having people that I didn't even know message me for orders and um meeting up with people in the community for.
19:56fresh eggs and it just kind of took off from there. So for a while I was um more like taking orders, like you would message me and ask for however many dozen that you wanted.  And I would message you when your order was laid, but the list was getting so long that people were waiting four or five weeks for their order. So um I stopped doing it that way. And um most recently I sold out of a outside of a
20:26local salad place down in Lakeside, um just right outside on the street. And that was a lot of fun.
20:34Nice. So you guys don't have a farm stand at your place? No, we don't. It wouldn't be a good road for that. We don't have a shoulder on our road  and we're kind of more tucked back. It's not a busy road at all.  And um also I watch too much true crime for strangers come to my house. Yeah. I don't, I don't watch or listen to true crime at all.
21:02I'm like, nah, I don't need to make myself more scared than I usually am.  I'm good. I'm going to believe that the world is full of good people.  And if I get murdered  at my house, then  it's suddenly not my problem anymore.
21:20Yes. I would like to live to a ripe old age of like  200. 200 would be great, but  I don't see that happening, but that would be cool.  I would, I would really like to just die in my sleep while I'm dreaming when I'm old. That would be great.  Yeah. like a great idea to me. um Okay. So let me think here.  What, what breeds of chickens do you have right now? Holy moly.
21:50All of them.  Yeah. Yeah. I have um maybe like seven silkies.  drove um like two hours one way to pick up four, um what are they called? Satin lace silkies. Those are really cool.  So those are more just like little fluffy fun.  I definitely do not have those for the eggs. More just cute little fuzzy cotton ball things.  And then we have um
22:19Americana is the ISA Brown speckled Sussex fired rocks. um Golden laced, silver laced, Rhode Island reds. um Some that just hatched in the barn sometimes without me even knowing that was happening. So maybe a dozen are just mixes that um usually the silky is hatched because they are broody quite often.
22:48And,  um,  we have buff Brahma's buff, Orphan Tins, Cochins,  um, a lot of Marins. um
23:05Yeah, a lot.  White leg corn. Are the marins the ones that lay the really dark brown eggs? Yes. The reddish brown eggs. Yep. So my favorite ones are crossed with um olive eggers.  So what happens there? What color do they end up being? So the bird itself is just jet black with a copper neck and then the eggs are um like a deep.
23:34green brown and actually one of mine are laying like a super, super dark chocolate brown, which I was not expecting. And I was so excited when I went out to the coop and saw that it was a couple of weeks ago and I still have the egg in my fridge because I just can't throw it away. I can't do it. Yeah. It's a jewel in  the refrigerator. Yes, it is. is. Somebody told me to poke a little needle hole and then like blow the yellow coat.  Yeah.
24:05Yeah. And that way you can keep it. Yeah. We'll see. Sounds kind of gross. It's not. I've done it for Easter eggs. Yeah. So you mentioned the Orpingtons or Orphingtons, however you pronounce it. Yeah. Yeah. We picked up some, some, uh, pullets from a guy 20 minutes away, two summers ago, and we didn't know what kind of breed, what, what breeds they were. We were just like, we need 12 chickens. And he was like, pick one, the ones you want. Yeah.
24:35And he had all these different little bullets running around in his barn. And there were two  that were sort of like silvery gray and they were really pretty. And I said to my husband, said, if you can catch at least one of those guys, I would love one of those.  And my husband walked over and had a net and scooped it up and put it in the box. We had the ones and we brought them home  and I didn't know what they were. And as it got older, it just got more and more  beautiful.  I
25:04Finally just took a picture of it and uploaded it to whatever the thing is on Google where it'll tell you what you have. Yeah. And it said something lavender, lavender orpington.  Ooh, that's on my wish list. And oh my God, what a beautiful chicken. Like I am not in love with chickens. They are a means to an end for me, but I was a little smitten with this one. What color egg did she lay?  I don't know. Okay. Because they all lay in the chicken.
25:34the laying boxes and we never know who lays what. So I don't know, but beautiful animal. It's hard when you find one that you want to know which egg they're laying and it's hard to figure it out. Yeah, unless you know the breed. mean, Americanas tend to lay green eggs. So if you've got a green egg, that's probably what laid it.  But uh that chicken killed over about six months after it got to be an adult.  Oh no.
26:02And my husband came in and he said, I don't want to tell you. And I'm like,  oh, no, what? Because I thought maybe one of the barn cats had died.  He said, you know your favorite chicken? And I was like, no. He said, yeah. He said, she's laying on the ground dead. And I'm like,  damn it.  Oh, that's always so hard.  He said, you don't even like chickens. I said, but I like that one.  What this one? He was like, you're so silly. said, yeah, That's why you can't pick favorites. I've learned the hard way many times.
26:31Yeah, and that's why we don't name them and that's why we try not to, you know, have a smi- try not to be smitten with any of them. But that one just had my heart. Yep. And in that same batch, there was another chicken that didn't have any kind of comb. Nothing. It had a round top to its head. Yeah. It was the only one in the whole group that we- that was like that and we named it oddball. We named that one because- because it was an oddball.
26:59I wonder if it had frostbite or something. It was like that from the very beginning, like a baby. yeah.  Never developed a comb. Just genetic, interesting. Yeah, and so um when Oddball died, um my husband came in and he said,  I don't know whether you're going to be sad or if you're going to laugh. And I was like, what?  He says, Oddball, unalive itself. Herself. What did she do? And I said, how? And he said,  she was.
27:27He said she was laying on the ground in front of the waterer, because it was on the base, uh on the floor of the chicken coop.  He said, and head under the water in the waterer.  was like, huh. Did it get stuck? He doesn't know. He didn't know what happened. Oh, those are so hard. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, are you sad? And I was like, I'm more perplexed than sad. Yeah, right.
27:52Yeah, we want to know what happened.  So we lost the  pretty one and we lost Oddball  and  the rest of them were all kind of the same looking chickens so there was no differentiation on them. Yeah. And when you have the same breed of chicken, you don't necessarily get smitten with any of them. Yeah. So that helps. But those are my two chicken stories that are of any importance, I guess is a good word to use. uh
28:21My favorite thing about chickens is that they give us eggs and they keep us fed and they have very nutritionally dense properties.
28:30That's my favorite thing.  So,  yeah.  Are you going to get more chickens or are you, have you capped out for a while?  Um, well, we usually lose a few a year to predators. We free range.  um, I'm guessing,  I guess we'll just see where we're at in the springtime. How many we're at. I do have a few that I,  um,
29:00I'm hoping to get so I'm  I'm guessing I'll get more. Hopefully my husband doesn't listen to this.
29:10I suspect he probably already knows you're gonna get more.
29:18Um, one of the things that I love so much about the topic of my podcast is that it's homesteaders and you're not necessarily a homesteader, but she's not necessarily not a homesteader. And what's great is when I talk to people, there's always some farm animal noise in the background. I can hear, I can hear your rooster crowing. uh Pancake, rooster. Yep. Yep.  There was a lady who was, uh, she was pruning her grape vines while we were talking.
29:47And I could hear  the pruners clicking in the background. That was funny. And there was a lady who had donkeys and they were out in the field. They weren't by the house. And they were braying and you could hear them. are loud. She's like, God, I love the background noises on my bog dance. Yeah, for sure.  So, all right. Well, Kristen, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about all your plans  and about your chickens.
30:16and about your goats for funsies, I think that's great.  Where can people find you?
30:24I have an Instagram. It's at mothercluckingeggs. um The goats also have an Instagram. It is linked on that page if you would like to follow them with their adventures.  didn't see it.  What's their name for Instagram? It is Sullivan.Sebastian.Ngd Nigerian  dwarf goat. Sullivan and Sebastian are their names. Oh, there will be people who want to go look at their page. know there will be.  They're pretty fun.
30:51All right, as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash atinyhomestead.  Kristin, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thank you so much. You too. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Bye. Bye.
 

Stone Soup Farm - SNAP How to find help, and how to help

Today I'm talking with Megan McGovern at Stone Soup Farm.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.
00:29and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefruitycon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Megan McGovern  at  Stone Soup Farm  in Oregon. Is that right?  No, I'm in a little town called Ferndale, Washington, which is about as far north  west in the United States you can get without being in the ocean or Canada.
00:59I was one state away. I screwed up. I'm sorry. uh Good um afternoon, Megan. How are you? Good. I'm doing great. Thanks. Good. um So how's the weather there? um You know, the nice thing about Washington, and we love it here, we are right on the, it's a beautiful place.  We're in between mountains on the East and they are just gorgeous mountains. And on the West, about eight miles of us, there is ocean.
01:27So we have everything we have. could literally if you were doing like a design theme, you could have, you know, Western house in a little log cabin or you could have a cabin in the woods or you could have beach house. It's really fantastic here. And the best part is that it never gets really cold and it never gets really hot. So in the winter never gets dips below freezing a few times, never gets a hard freeze or much snow, a couple inches here and there. Summer never gets above 75, 80 degrees.
01:57The winter is dark and gloomy and they call it the big dark. In the summer, you've got daylight till almost 10 o'clock at night. You can't even go watch fireworks, 4th of July, because it never gets dark. In the winter, it's dark at 430 and doesn't get light till 815 and we're right heading into that. And it rains every day all day long. And this weekend, this whole week has been dark and gloomy and overcast and sad. Makes me miss summer already and it's only November.
02:26As I sounds like November. We're kind of in the same boat today. It's drizzly and it's gray and I think it's like 45 degrees outside in Minnesota. Yeah, but it gets cold there. also not only cold, you have sunny days occasionally though, right? Oh, we have lots of beautiful, bright, crisp.
02:46Yeah, bright blue sunny days, you bright blue sky sunny days. Yes, absolutely. But today is not one of them. my  my husband happens to have a doctor's appointment here in an hour. So he's home today.  And he just got the wood burning boiler started for the first time this season.
03:05Yeah, yeah, we're about to start. Same thing. I love that thing. It saves us so much money in the wintertime, because as long as we're willing to do the work, the wood is paid for. Well, we have a very old not OK, not very old by Minnesota standards, but we have a farmhouse that's been a farm since the 1920s. And one of our little buildings outside was built as a place for farmhands to sleep in the 1940s. And my two adults
03:34sons are both ones in college and ones just graduated and they're both moving home for a while to save money and they want to live in this little outbuilding. It is not insulated. It is not warm. It is basically a barn and they're trying to keep warm with a little propane stove and it's not working. We might need to upgrade to wood for a while or something because it's or I could insulate but you know that's work. So we'll see.
03:59Whatever you're do you better get on it. No kidding the bar cats are sleeping on their beds right now to get everybody keep warm. yeah, exactly All right. So tell me a little bit about your farm we Honestly, we did not set out to be farmers Although I have always loved food and the food supply and figuring out where my food came from but we have
04:26three kids who are all gluten-free and dairy-free  for health reasons. And so we need to be very strict about what we eat.  And  my middle son, he's in college right now, but he needed room to roam. He could not be contained in a suburban household.  And he's the kid that when you go to the park, he's the one that all the other moms are pointing at the tallest tree and saying, whose kid is that?
04:54and it would be mine.  And so when we,  we had to move to Washington for my husband's job  and we decided that a farm, all he wanted was goats  and  we  have always homeschooled, but he in particular was the one who benefited the most from  homeschooling. We call it goat schooling. And so we needed a place where he could have goats and trees to climb and where he could just move and move and move. And this was perfect for him. It's an old dairy farm from the 1920s.
05:23And it had been neglected for the last 30, 40 years and was kind of falling apart. But we moved here and got that boy a goat and holy moly, he was happy. And within a couple of years we were in 4-H and all of a sudden we had cows and we were raising beef cows or steers. And we had a couple of cows to raise the steers. And it was a lot of fun. We've never done crops. I've just done extensive gardening. But Washington State is fantastic for food.
05:52Because this was an old farm stand or farmstead, we had apple trees that are 100 years old and there's blackberry bushes everywhere.  And if you spit out a cherry seed, a tree grows the next year. It's just incredibly fertile and beautiful. And with all this rain, you know, there's  never a drought. There's a pond, there's a creek. It's just kind of a lovely place. And we never really made much money on the farm, but we always made enough that we had a side of beef in the freezer and maybe uh half
06:21pig and you know tons of applesauce and apple cider and then we trade with neighbors and so it wasn't ever designed to make money but it was certainly designed to  you know keep a farming lifestyle  and  keeping up with our food and our family.  love it and I love that you called it goat schooling that is beautiful.  Well he always said he was not academic and he wasn't going to go to college and he wasn't interested in anything  and there was no way he was very interested he has his own
06:51you know, special interests, we'll call them,  and his was politics and he was very, very into politics. And I said, well, you can't do much with politics if you don't go to college. There's, you know, there's not much call for guys who graduated from high school but can name every senator. It's not really, you know, a niche market for that.  And with goat schooling, we never did any curriculum. We never did anything except
07:16you know, following his interests. And so he was in a program for politics in high school called Youth and Government. It's run by the YMCA and it teaches you how to write a bill and how to work with state legislature and what it means to be in politics. And so he was always very into that. And we did a lot of cool stuff homeschooling. And I'll tell you what, that kid got into every college he applied to and he got waitlisted at Harvard. so  goat schooling apparently works and that might be my new
07:43Big thing, maybe I'll make my first million dollars by teaching people how to goat school. I think you should. think the world would be a better place if you did.  So anyway, it's been a, we're slowing down now. My husband is 62 and he's always had an outside job to  feed the cows.  And since my sons are both  grown, my 15 year old daughter, for whatever reason, doesn't like slopping pigs and feeding cows. So. oh
08:10The animals are slowing down. know, funny, huh? But we still have the acreage and we still have my son's beloved goats.  And I'm still very uh heavily involved in the food community in  our town.  You are amazing at setting me up for the segue. Thank you.  Kind of figured. I really wanted to hear about your farm because that's kind of what the podcast is about. And I really love talking to people who are doing things like you're doing.
08:40But I saw a couple of your Facebook posts about this situation with Snap. And I was like,  I need to talk to this lady because I need to talk to somebody about my feelings about this Snap situation going on in America right now.  So I'm going to let, well, I  actually made notes. That's how focused I was on this. Okay, good.  So I'm going to share what I found and then you can jump in and tell me what you think about what I found.
09:08The thing is, a lot of people assume that SNAP is something that only people who are lazy and of color need. And this is not true.  I found statistics. Roughly one in eight people in the U.S. used SNAP benefits this year, with approximately 42 million Americans receiving aid to afford groceries each month.  That's a lot of people.
09:36Here's the thing, SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition, because what it is meant to do  is to keep children, especially,  but people who are disabled and people who need a little boost, is designed to help them get better nutrition.  Because the fundamental American system has always been set up since  the  1940s,  since we set up Social Security and  all the other  benefits we now take for granted, things like  weekends.
10:06and no more child labor,  we now have programs set up that in theory every American should have basic access to food.  That everybody should either be able to, if you have a disability and can't work, you are too aged to work, you have a back that won't allow you to do any of, and you had always worked in a factory line, that um you're supposed to get a basic supplemental
10:34need that would enable you to feed yourself. But what was happening was people weren't eating well enough. Children were not getting enough nutrition.  People were living on rice. And SNAP is set up to make sure that you get a little bit extra every month so that a mother with three kids, if her husband has passed away, the husband's not in the picture,  there's no child support, her kids can get apples, or they can get oranges, or once in a while they could get a birthday cake or ingredients for birthday cake from the store. So it's not meant to be something that
11:03is the only way that people live. That's why it's called the Supplemental Program. Right. But the way things have gone, and I don't care who you blame or how you think we got here, the way things have gone, many people are not getting even the basics for food. And there are a lot of families, I'm friends with a family, a homeschooling family, that had adopted three children from foster care because of severe neglect and
11:33One of the things that ah the kids had told me, they became very good friends with my friends, with my kids, that the hardest weeks of the year for them  were Easter break  and Thanksgiving break because the rest of the year, every day they ate at school, they ate breakfast and lunch every day,  five days a week. They struggled on weekends because their parents didn't feed them, but at least they knew they had those 10 meals a week.
11:58But during Easter week, there's no extra lunch program. The school doesn't set up an extra lunch program during that break. during Christmas, there's a break. And usually during Christmas, they would have relatives, they would have friends, they would have some leftover food somewhere. But that was all they got was what the school gave them. So something like that,  and this, mean, obviously the parents didn't even bother applying to SNAP where they kept the food for themselves. But kids like that, there are millions of kids like that in the United States.
12:27who don't have any food at all, and they don't have the basics. And I think people seem to misunderstand and think that there's people who are just applying for SNAP and eating it on their own. I have a sister who's homeless. She's mentally ill. She can't live on her own. We, as my family, have kind of plugged in to help her get an apartment because she was living on the streets. And she's applied for SNAP, and she gets $300 a month for food.
12:58And of course we could all pitch in and also give her 300 a month for food. But there are plenty of people who don't have families who could pitch in and get an apartment. There are people on the streets who have no food at all. And SNAP is just, I mean, if you're living in a tent and the only food you get is, you know, your $150 in SNAP benefits, that's about $35 a week, something like that, that you're trying to make last all month long. And
13:27$35 a week doesn't last long. You know, not for one person and not if you don't have a kitchen and you're trying to make sandwiches, it's literally just tuna fish and a thing of mayonnaise and bread from the dollar store.  And it's even worse now because of inflation.  Oh, it's worse now because of inflation and it's because of the restrictions and it's worse because you have to do all sorts of hoops to jump through to prove that you benefit for this. And I hear so many accusations and
13:56things like, oh, well, it's only going to illegal immigrants. If you look at the application, I'm not making this up. This isn't fake news. If you go look at the application for SNAP, the first thing it says is you have to be a legal citizen or you have to be legal resident or a citizen of the United States to get SNAP benefits. End of discussion. So it's not going to people who don't need it. No one is going to go apply for SNAP if they don't need it. And they're not going to get approved if they don't need it.
14:23I don't know. see a lot of people complaining and say, well, they buy soda and they buy pizza and how dare they, you know, they're buying steak. Well, you know what,  what's in your grocery cart people? How,  you know, how do you your business? Yeah. And the other thing is, is that I thought with SNAP benefits, you couldn't buy like, like candy or, Oh no, you can buy whatever you want. And that is, and I understand to some degree, I understand
14:50why people don't want other people buying candy or pop with their own,  with tax money. But on the other hand, it really is supplemental.  If the parents  of these kids are really just getting by, if they're buying stuff for a birthday cake, or they want to have a party for their kid because their kids never had one,  and they take $25 out of their SNAP benefits to buy some candy for a party, or they take $25 to buy some soda so that their kids have soda for the field trip like everybody else,
15:20I can't imagine judging somebody for that. And if they didn't do that, yeah.  I didn't know that. um When I had my first child, my only daughter,  I got WIC benefits, which is not the same thing.  And with WIC, I was not allowed to get anything except stuff that was nutritionally dense like peanut butter and milk and eggs.  WIC is set up. um
15:45for women and children, but it's also set up to help farmers. It's one of the ways that they get rid of excess cheese and milk is they know it's going to go into the WIC program. And it's one of ways they keep dairy prices stable. They know it's going to go into the WIC program. Okay. I don't want to get sidetracked, but that's why I would confuse. No, But this program is literally, they give you basically cash on a card. You can buy whatever you want, except what I think is interesting. You can't buy hot food. So you can't buy a rotisserie chicken. You can't buy a heated up lasagna. You can't buy a
16:14pizza from the window at the grocery store where they have hot pizzas set there.  Which I agree, if you are on WIC and you're using this money, you should be buying a chicken and cooking it. But there are so many people now who are living in a shelter, staying at their sister's house on the couch, and they can't cook a whole chicken. There are so many people who can't cook nowadays. At all.  I'm  a scout master for a scout troop here. And one of the things we're doing this month is
16:43We're going to go and volunteer at a place like a food pantry where they hand out meals and food to people. And I am very, very passionate about food rescue. And this is one of the places that rescues food that would be thrown away. And so this place always has carrots  and lettuce and onions to hand out to people. But a lot of the people who come through are living in a car. And if you're living in a car, you're living in an RV with a broken heater, handing somebody an onion isn't going to help anything.
17:13No. And giving someone carrots with the... So many people, this is the other thing that gets me besides food waste is the fact that our government and our healthcare system treats teeth as a luxury item. And so many people have no teeth that it makes it really hard to feed people because you can't feed anybody anything except soup if they're missing three teeth. Or rice. Or rye-lates or something. It's rice.
17:41It's rice, bread, soup, stew.  And so when you hand somebody carrots, onions, and  potatoes, and they're raw,  of course it's wonderful food that can go to somebody who's hungry. But there are a lot of people who can't benefit from  this kind of thing.  And so I just think people are missing the point when they say, oh, snap benefits go to lazy people who are buying junk. Of course there are people who are buying junk. Most of them are
18:09there are a lot of poor people who are really uneducated about food and about nutrition and there people who are super educated about food and nutrition but who can't do better  and they can't do better because they're living in their car or because their kids have eating disorders or the kids have anxiety or because that's what the other kids in their class want and they just want their kid to feel like they fit in. You know?  Absolutely. And  this situation with SNAP when I found out what three weeks ago?
18:38that people who receive SNAP benefits weren't going to receive them. I had a moment of just tears in my eyes because all I could think about was all these little kids who aren't going to eat well. Well, you know what's going to happen? I was really upset.
18:56Go ahead. No, go ahead. You go first. What did you say to your husband? I said to my husband, said, honey, I I thought things were bad. said, things just went from bad to abysmal. And he was like, what are you talking about? And I explained it to him and I had tears in my eyes.  And he said, you love our children more than life itself. said, I sure do. And they're adults.  He said, you love babies and toddlers.
19:21a lot. I said, do. said, and that's who this is really, really, really going to affect because  number one, those kids are not going to have food that's good for them. Number two, their parents are going to be so stressed out that that's going to affect them. said, this is just like a snowball effect. And I just talked for 20 minutes  and he was like, so what can you do? And I laughed and I said, I'm going to find somebody to chat with about on my podcast.
19:51He said, do that. He said, because you are one person, he said, but you have a voice. And I was like, yes, I do. So that's why we're talking. So  one of the things, what I was going say before is that one of the things is that in a lot of families, the kids won't go hungry because the mother won't eat. Yep.  And that's just a hundred percent fact that a lot of mothers, especially right now, they've always been eating light and telling the kids they're not hungry. But now the mother just won't eat and that's just the way it goes.
20:21And of course there are other people who won't eat, there's,  so a couple of things about SNAP. um 60 % of the families that use SNAP have children under 18  and the other 40%, almost all of them are um elderly  and  they cannot go get a job. They cannot go, you know, do better. They're, social security doesn't cover their basic expenses if they have social security  and
20:48So there's no way for them to supplement this. This is it. They just go without. But one of the interesting things is that 200,000 people that are on SNAP or using SNAP benefits are active duty military.  you're talking about a father who's deployed in the military and a mother with two kids who's left behind on base or in their hometown. And the father's pay doesn't stretch far enough to cover basic
21:17living because if it did, then the family wouldn't qualify for SNAP. So the father, I don't know what starting salary for the military is probably around $40,000 a year. It's probably minimum wage in a lot of uh cases if the  father gets deployed. And I may be way off military.  I'm terrible with numbers like that.  But it's low enough that it qualifies as below the standard for SNAP. So the father gets deployed. The mother stays behind with two kids. They don't have money for food. Should the mother go get a job?
21:45I  mean, who knows what her circumstances is? Maybe her mother's on hospice.  Maybe  her dad lives with them. Maybe one of her kids is disabled. It doesn't matter. We can't just tell everybody to go get a job. In the meantime, these people who are saying, they don't deserve it, who deserves it more?  A kid whose father is deployed doesn't deserve food? Is that really what you're saying when you say cut SNAP benefits?
22:12So I'm just frustrated by the whole thing. But yes, I do think there are things we can do to fix it. Okay. Well, I don't know. I don't know how to fix the government being shut down, but I do know that as a single person in the world, I'm married, but as a single human being, myself, entity, there are things that I can do. And I'm doing one of them by talking about this with you. The other thing that I can do.
22:40is I can go to our local food shelf, we are friends with the president,  and say,  what do you need? Do you need us to volunteer? Do you need money?  Do you need gift cards so that people can go buy their own groceries? What do you need?  And do  those things. The other thing is that churches, I don't know, when I was a kid, I'm 56, but when I was a kid, the local church, when somebody needed help,
23:09They jumped right to it.  I don't know churches are still like that. I hope that they are. And in Minnesota, there is a phone number that you can call. I think it's called the first call for help. And  they specifically help people, whether you're having a mental health crisis, whether you need food, whether you need housing, that's the place you call and they are the resource to help you. I don't know if every state has that, but Minnesota does. I'm sure most states have some kind of
23:38hotline or some kind of place where you can go and you can call  and they give you access to all of the state funding things. However, most state budgets are really in trouble right now. There's not a lot of food going to food banks. There's certainly not extra flowing anywhere. um I did read this morning that in some states, SNAP benefits are being turned back on again, even though there's a court order saying they shouldn't and they're going back and forth. um
24:06Even if SNAP benefits were turned back on today, there are so many cuts everywhere that this is an important conversation to have about how to help.  what we're trying to do is we can't, it's like when you show up to you know, an  accident scene and there's, you know, hundred bodies on the ground and you don't know who's  well and who's sick and who's,  you're playing triage, but you're a civilian. Say you have a...
24:31basic, basic first aid and you understand how to help a person in shock, but you're certainly not a trauma surgeon, your job isn't to go into surgery on this and your job isn't to say, whose fault was the accident? And your fault isn't to say, well, I'm going to blame this person or that person or talk about how the airplane's  gauge must've been faulty. Your job is to look at the first person next to you and say, what can I do to help you?
25:01And how, or how can I help the helpers? You go to the lead helper, the person who's running the trauma response and say, what do you need?  Your job isn't to go to each individual person and say, well, how do you feel about this? Can you prove to me that you need help more than the person over there? I need you to tell me that you deserve help before I go help anybody else. Cause I need to see who's in that  none of that matters. What matters is  going to the person who does know how to help, which would be here.
25:30the food pantries, the churches, the areas in our, our, every community that have been doing this for years. And here you are just showing up on the scene saying, I know how to do it better than you.  And I want to help, but it needs to feel good. Or I want to help, but I don't like the way you're doing it. And I don't like,  I know the church is handing out food, but it's not the same denomination I'm in. So maybe  none of that matters. No, don't make it about you. Make it about the people who need help. Right.  And
25:58So literally there are two ways to help. And one would be going to the person on the ground nearest to you and saying, what do you need right this second? Are you dying? Do you need a band-aid? Do you have a headache? How can I stabilize you until help can get here? The other thing you can do is go to the head of the place, the food bank, whatever it is, and say, what do you want me to do? And they might say, don't talk to the people on the ground. Go get me more bandages.
26:27Can you call 14 different people for me and get them to come help? Whatever it is they want, that's the way you can be most useful. And in the food banks case, so many people want to help by buying canned food or going to their grocery store and getting donations to give to the food bank. And that is 100 % a viable, useful way to give to the food bank and to give to people.
26:54The food banks are also inundated with boxes of canned mac and cheese or boxes of mac and cheese and canned green beans. And every single year at Thanksgiving, they have thousands of cans of green beans, but they don't have apples. Right. And they might not have rice and they might not have beans because nobody wants to give them that because that's not nearly as much fun as giving them mac and cheese. And if you give them 10 boxes of Kraft mac and cheese for a family that is living in a shelter and they don't have butter and they don't have milk.
27:23and they don't have a way to cook it, you're not actually helping. It's like going to one of the people on the ground who has a broken leg and putting a bandage on their arm. What you want to do is help, but the help isn't what they need. So you need to figure out a way that your help can better align with what the helpers want. And so if you call your local food bank or right now, probably in every community, there are Facebook posts from the food bank and there are, you know,
27:53articles in newspaper from the food bank saying, this is how you can help. And unfortunately, the number one thing they want is cash. Yeah.  not many people, a lot of people don't have the cash to donate. But  my suggestion, and some people have said this is not the best suggestion, and I'll tell you why, but I love the suggestion.  My suggestion is  everybody stop, if you have any discretionary income at all.
28:18If you can afford a coffee out, if you eat at a diner, if you go and get pie once in a while, if you go to McDonald's, stop doing that. Take that money and take it to the food bank. Because if we can afford to eat out right now and we're out eating anything, there are people and the food banks could use that money better. And this is what it means to love our neighbors is to  give up a meal out. I'm not saying skip a meal, eat it at home. ah But take that income  and
28:47give it to the food bank. And the reason I suggest that instead of taking that money and going and buying food for someone is because my oldest son, who is a sweet, kind young man, he's just wonderful. And he spent three months in Asia and Cambodia and Laos and China,  and really did a lot of great work with them.  he worked with, he lived with the family of farmers for a while in Cambodia. And he came home
29:17to our farm and said, why aren't we growing food for people? There are people hungry. What is wrong with us that we have land and we're not growing crops?  And he was about,  oh, I think 19 when he came home and he spent an entire summer growing an acres worth of potatoes. And it was all by himself and we don't have a tractor. He just did it all by hand and plowed and everything else.  And he grew a lot of potatoes and he donated them to the food bank and they were thrilled.
29:46But they said, this is about $30 worth of potatoes for us. Yeah.  And he said, what? And he said, yeah, we have grants and  we're tax free  and we can buy them in lots and we can buy them by the truckload. We can buy a truckload of potatoes for about $40.  So we appreciate the potatoes and we love that.  But if you're going to spend hundreds of hours on something,
30:11you could spend the hundred, because he asked how he could help better. And they were not being unkind. They were really as nice as they could be.  But they said, if you want to spend hundreds of hours on something, you could do a fundraiser. If you  raised $500 with a fundraiser, we could buy 10 truckloads of potatoes. And he was like, why does anybody grow potatoes? Like, well,  first, because they like the taste of potatoes and because it's good. But also, you know, when you give money to the food bank,
30:36It goes a lot further than anything you could do. Buying a 10 pound bag of potatoes and donating it to Food Bank is great. That cost of that 10 pound bag of potatoes might be able to buy them 70 pounds of potatoes. Yeah, the dollar goes further because of how it works.  And I'm glad you said that because I was going to bring that up too. um The other thing that I wanted to say is that
31:02A lot of things that people are doing right now are so super cool and I want to wrap it up here because I try to keep these at 30 minutes. I'm going to wrap it up with this. In Minnesota, a lot of our restaurants are basically telling people if you are hungry, come eat. You don't have to pay for it. Come eat. You don't have to prove that you have SNAP benefits. Just if you're hungry, come talk to us. And some of them
31:31have said no questions asked. Some of them have said no questions asked unless we feel like we're being taken advantage of and then we will ask questions.  I am so proud of these restaurants that are trying to help  and  I get that it's a good public relations thing  but they don't have to. course.  No and I've seen yeah I've seen a couple places saying we'll give you personal pan pizzas to all children no questions just bring your kids.  Yep and that's amazing.
32:00The other thing that I've seen is a lot of our libraries are setting up little food libraries inside the library. And yes, it's canned goods and it's macaroni and cheese, but at least it's something. They're trying to do something. Oh, and  I'm not dismissing canned goods and macaroni and cheese. If you're hungry, macaroni and cheese in a can of tomatoes goes a long way. And there are plenty of people  who live in houses and who have stable housing.  But if they spend their rent money on food,
32:30won't have housing. so mac and cheese goes a long way if you've got a kitchen.  The other thing that I would suggest if you want to bring food to a food pantry or a food shelf  is the instant oatmeal that you can get that you just put in hot water.  The flavored ones, the packets.  They're not  really good for you. They're not like steel-cut oats with raisins and all the good things. uh
32:57That's the kind of thing that people who can't cook could actually just get hot water from the sink. It doesn't have to be hot, hot. It just has to be warm. And they have some kind of food that they can just pour in. You can literally pour water into that bag.
33:14Yeah, mean flavor and also if you're  sleeping rough or if you're turning down your heating oil to save money, a hot meal or hot breakfast or hot dinner goes a long way to keeping warm. Yeah, exactly. And if you're going to get mac and cheese, get the mac and cheese that's already in the little cup and all you need is water. Yeah. There are ways around this to make it work. there are. I mean, that's what we're doing with my scout troop is we're trying to create ready to eat meals that somebody with
33:44Bad teeth can eat that somebody, you're living in a tent, you can just heat up. But also something that people in a family would like. If they could maybe add a potato or two, would even make it better. Yes, absolutely. And actually, I lied. I'm going to wrap it up with this. OK. If you don't know how to cook and you have a kitchen, if you live in a place where you have a kitchen and you could be cooking, learn to freaking cook. You're going to save yourself some money.
34:12Well, yeah, and you're going to eat a whole lot better too.  Yes.  This, this I don't cook thing.  It makes me crazy. I don't understand. And I'm talking about people who have a kitchen  with a stove and with an oven and with a microwave and with a refrigerator. You know, if you have the accessories to do it, cooking is fun.  So cooking is fun. Even, even just adding an egg to ramen makes a difference. You know? Yeah. So
34:40I just, there's so many things about food that are so important.  And then SNAP benefits get cut. And I was like, okay, it's time to talk about food.  Hey, I don't know if you and I are going to change the world by talking about it, but it's a good place to start because maybe somebody else, if we have enough people trying to change the world, eventually it will, it will make a difference. Yeah. I just want people to know where they can go to get help. And I want people who want to help  to know how they can offer their help.
35:09That's all I want right now. yeah, anything we can do. All right, Megan, thank you so much for going on a minor tear with me about this. I appreciate it. And where can people find you online? uh My, I'm  mostly on Facebook and it's Megan McGovern, M-E-A-G-A-N McGovern.  And I have a Facebook page where I about those children and homeschooling and all sorts of stuff.
35:35Yes. Go check out Megan's page. I was looking at the other day and I could have spent hours reading through it, but it didn't have hours. I was very disappointed in myself.  All right, Megan, as always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Check out my Patreon, patreon.com slash a tiny homestead. And a tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Cottage Foodie Con. Cause I just got another sponsor. I'm so excited.
36:03Thank you, Megan. I really You're welcome. Thank you. I appreciate being here. All right. Bye. Bye.