A Tiny Homestead

Little Willow Homestead

Today I'm talking with Jessica at Little Willow Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful. If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care, you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Jessica at Little Willow Homestead in Idaho. Good afternoon, Jessica. How are you? Good. How are you? A little dumb today. I'm not going to lie. It's all right.
00:59Maybe both of our brain cells together  will accomplish something.  Maybe. I think it's allergies. It's very sunny here in Minnesota and there's a light breeze  and I think all the things that are really starting to bloom are just ruining my brain. But my husband sent me photos of the apple  trees that are blooming today.  So I'm very excited. Our apple trees never do very well  in
01:29end of April, 1st of May, because we get these big wind storms or we get thunderstorms and the blossoms get blown off. uh And I'm just, the weather's supposed to be good for the next five days. So  I'm praying  that the weather is good for the next five days. So we get apples on the trees on the far side of the property that we've never gotten apples from in the five years we've been here. Hey,  we can pray.  That's awesome. Yes.  So I think the allergies are kicking my butt.
01:59And I got a really quick thing I want to share with you and listener. um I went out on my porch and looked out the window and one of our chickens was over by our useless garage. We don't use it for anything. It's ready to fall down.  And we have this one chicken who escapes the run every day. And I decided that her name is Hopper because she hops the fence.
02:24I have a few of those and uh one of them,  she is ultra determined. She's a coffee agger and she loves to jump the fence and lay in this one particular spot.  But  I know it's going to be there every day, so I go and collect it every day.  Yeah, I don't think the chickens are actually laying outside of the coop, but this one just has to go explore after she lays her egg in the nesting box.
02:55She's a little crazy. She's a little free spirit. She is and she looks so fat. I know if I went out there and picked her up, she probably only weighs about three and a half pounds. She's so feathered out that she just looks round. I love it. So I want to talk about the coffee agar thing, but first, would you tell me a little bit about yourself and about your homestead? Oh my goodness, where do I start?
03:24So I really want to share with you the why why we moved out here to begin with. Yes. um So we  we kind of homesteaded a little bit before in our hometown, which is a little tiny town in Idaho.  And  I  don't know, I just  that was back in 2009. And I got chickens. I had a ton of chickens. I was doing meat birds, taught my kids how to process meat birds and all the things.  And my daughter
03:54My youngest of, we call her the youngest of the  first batch. was the youngest of our five.  She was really struggling in school. And so we made the decision  because she was the only one  at home that we would um sell our house, move to a different town and get her into the best school in the area that worked well with children on an IEP.  And so we  sold our house, moved into a subdivision, stayed there for four years.
04:21During that time we did foster care and then we  adopted our daughter. Well that daughter the daughter that we moved there for graduated from high school and a month later we put our house on the market  and and we had our daughter that we adopted from a foster kiddo  she had asked us to take her and and and raise her and so  we wanted to give her a life  away from the city teacher where her food came from and just
04:50for me to be able to homeschool her and,  you know, just teach her all the things, you know, things maybe that I didn't learn and  just, I don't know, I just really wanted to raise her out in the country. I felt really strongly about it.  And I had this like idea that you move out into the country, far out into the country, because we do, we live 30 minutes away from anything,  a gas station, anything.  And so you have this like mindset, at least I did.
05:19that you move out into the country and things are gonna be slow and peaceful and serene and all the things.  And that's not what it's been like for us being out here.  It's actually been really, really hard. When I first  got here, we got chickens right away, of course. And then I started to raise meat birds and  what have you. And then...
05:47Shortly after that, um that daughter was 19 years old, was actually convinced to go into uh Washington state, get on a plane and fly into Washington state and she uh was trafficked while she was there, she was sold.  And so this whole time I'm thinking like, it was supposed to be easier being out here, but things seem to be getting harder.  And  I um struggled with um being diagnosed with lupus after that.
06:17And then  really having a hard time with breeding my birds and trying to take care of my daughter,  struggling with lupus. But my husband was so amazingly, like, patient and loving. And  he saw this desire in me to do this. And so he would step in when I couldn't. so we just really learned to work together as a team. em you know,  we were doing really well. We were
06:47building our business, creating the rainbow eggs and what have you. And while I was doing that, I came across that really deep dark brown color. And I was like, I know how I can make that, but what am I gonna call it? Because it needs to be something different. And so I looked and looked and I'm a coffee drinker. So I was like-
07:12I love coffee and I have like coffee signs, have a coffee bar, like all the coffee things, right? And it just hit me one day, it was like coffee agar. And then I felt like God was like, go look it up  and make sure, know, dot all your I's and cross all your T's, make sure that it's not being used in commerce. And it wasn't, I couldn't find it anywhere.  It's just like, this is awesome, this is so cool. So I actually had the name for it before I ever even had the color, which I thought was funny.
07:42pretty cool. And then I got the  color that like six months later, as soon as I figured out like how to do it, I got that color and hence that's where the coffee acres came from.  And so we were, we just started to breed like those colors and whatnot  and things were going well. We were selling to a local  like feed store, our birds and stuff. And  it was like literally in the height of like hatching season, you know, it was the end of April and I got a phone call.
08:11at six o'clock in the morning on April 26th that my son had overdosed and died of a fentanyl overdose. And I was completely wrecked.  when was this? This was five years ago, April 26th, 2021.  And I told my husband, I couldn't catch my breath for one. And it felt like I was getting kicked in the gut daily. And I told him, said, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't breathe.
08:41I'm going to cry.
08:45said, want to sell everything. I don't want to do this. um And so I started to list things and he said, you're not selling the incubators and you're not selling your best. I'll let you sell, but I won't let you sell your best. I need you to keep back your best.  And he knew what I was trying to accomplish. And so I sold all but 10 birds  and I grieved hard, hard, hard for eight months.
09:14And then I just felt like God's saying, go back into the brooder, like get back into this.  And I walked back, I just remember walking back out into the brooder and going, this is it. This is what is going to bring me healing. Like I just need to take all of that grief and pour it into genetics. So that's what I did. I just dumped it into genetics and  like that's all my brain really thought about, you know, and I was able to mass produce the coffee acres  and
09:44I figured out how to do it and I figured out which ones were laying that egg without even having genetic testing done  just by the look of the bird. And so I posted a post one time. I mean, I didn't have very many followers. We weren't big or anything. And then I just said, these are our coffee agers. And it blew up after that.  And my husband was like, you're going to need to trademark that name.  And he said that from the beginning.
10:14he saw interest in it. And so did my father-in-law. I said, no,  no, I'm okay with that.  And they just kept pushing me. And finally this last year, he was like, no, we're going to do this. And I said, okay, but you got to get all of  the duckies in a row because that's not my thing. I just want to breed the birds.  so he did. He found an attorney and we  filed our application and we had to prove.
10:42When we started, like when we started using it, how long we had been using it, how long we were using it in commerce and stuff like that.  just this last, just uh in January it was finally approved and we, um it went, um it went live that it's now a registered, registered name under Little Will Homestead.  How did that feel?
11:08Well,  with the hatred that I have had towards it,  it was actually like, God, you did this.
11:19I never intended for  our business to get big. I never intended to even ship  out of the state.  really,  my whole goal when  I started to homestead was just like, I just want to feed people. Like I want to teach people how to butcher a bird and I want to teach people how to  raise chickens and,  you know, grow a garden and do the things, you know. I never had this like big plan of
11:48this is what I'm gonna do.  And so  I was kinda,  I was kinda taken aback, you know, like, this is real. Like, this name now  is always gonna be tied back to little Willa Homestead, you know? And so  it was amazing. And you know, I don't think that  the biggest thing with coffee acres is  what it affords us to do.
12:16with the funds that come into our business. We don't have a  5013C,  but we have a ministry where em we feed the homeless. We go every single week and  we meet at a  local burger place  and  we bring them in and  we don't feed them burgers every week.  We actually will bring food and supply all the stuff. We just have a place to do it.  And then we go out into uh our community, which em
12:46is our homeless population  is bigger than Portland, per capita in this little tiny town in Ontario, Oregon.  It's about 30 minutes from us. And so if you could just imagine, you know, per capita, you've got this small town and a huge portion of this town is homeless people,  you know? And so we go out into what are called uh the flats or tent cities.
13:15and we minister and we feed these people and we don't just feed them like food. We sit and we talk with them, they love on them, we pray over them. We're  just trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus  and do what God calls us to do. he, coffee acres afforded us the ability to financially support this.  How fabulous. It's  far bigger than that even, Mary.
13:44Like I said, was telling you, I got on a plane and went over, I went to Bangladesh and it's a 91 % Muslim country and there are so many women and children are being trafficked over there. So we got to actually rescue a girl from trafficking while I was there. And if it weren't for my business, I would have never been able to afford to go to another country and do something like that.
14:14just  do what  God is calling me to do. so every door that he opens, and I know it's of him, I just keep walking through it.  so, yeah.  So that's where we're at and they want us to come back.  So, yeah. Nice. Okay. So, uh are you mainly poultry focused on your homestead or do you grow gardens and have other kinds of animals?
14:42I uh only have chickens, that's it, as far as animals are concerned. We did have a giant garden. The chickens now get that area  because we've grown so much.  We literally live on an acre.  We  can't  expand anymore. The people that own all of the property around us have it in a trust and they don't want it broke up. They don't want anything done to it, which I think is amazing. um
15:11I think what they're doing is amazing and it keeps us being able to do what we do with somebody not coming out here and saying, you can't do that.  yeah, we only,  right now we're only doing our rainbow layers, our coffee acres and all of our other colors.  We  used to do meat birds and we used to sell them.  And uh I just had to mention, I saw that you had Joel Saliton on your, uh that's his name, right? Am I pronouncing his name?
15:40And he uh was  my guy as far as being able to learn how to track your meat birds and do it efficiently and how  to process a bird even. I used to sit there and watch all those videos over and over until I could figure it out. He is the kindest man. Yep, I believe that. I do. If you ever have the chance to go...
16:06Anywhere near Polyphase Farm, should set up a time to meet him and tell him thank you for teaching you.  Yes.  On video, nonetheless. Yes. Yes.  Absolutely. He is a darling soul. I like him very much. Yeah, I've really enjoyed watching his videos and learning. Are we still there? Yep. Okay.  I'm not sure why that popped up. It might, oh, it might've been my watch. I like, why is my camera popping?
16:36Squirtle.  yeah, he, I used to watch countless hours  of his stuff and listen to him and very, very knowledgeable man. So.  all he wants to do is help people.  Just like you want to help people just in a different way. uh So uh how many chick, I've got two questions.
17:04How many chickens do you have  and do you sell the eggs to people who want to eat them?  I have just over 200 birds. We just did our testing  and we never sell eating eggs. We only give eating eggs away. Okay. So if people want them for eating, we give them away. We do not sell them as eating eggs. We don't have very many eating eggs  because we
17:33we sell our hatching eggs.  We ship them so people can enjoy  having the rainbow colored eggs and stuff.  And then the other question I have is do you actually ship chicks? We just started.  We just started shipping chicks. Yeah, I did my first shipment  almost two weeks ago and every chick made it.  Wow.  Every chick survived. So I was really, really excited. Yeah, we had.
18:03We had  across the board  babies that went all over the United States and they all made it alive. And so, yeah, it was pretty awesome. It was very nerve-racking.  uh... Yeah, that doesn't happen very often.  No, it was... Well, I prayed over those babies like no other did, so...
18:22I was like, Lord,  I feel like you're calling me to do this, so please let these babies survive, because  that would hurt my heart to send babies in the mill and see that they didn't make it.  Yeah. Yep. It's sad when that happens.  Mm-hmm. For sure.  Yeah. I've heard a lot of horror stories with  shipments and stuff, and so  that's why I was so reluctant to do it.  But I had so many people begging me to ship chicks.
18:51and people that maybe didn't have good hatch rates with their coffee acres and they really, really, really wanted the coffee acres.  And so I opened up just a few slots for the end of spring and summer to ship some babies and  they actually already sold out. So  most of our stuff is sold, well,  I'm sold out of everything pretty much until fall. um
19:19Or yeah, and even into the fall now.  Okay, since I'm not an expert on any of this, I'm going to ask you some some questions that might seem obvious, but they're not obvious to me. um When people buy the coffee egg or hatching eggs or the coffee egg or chicks, are they buying them because of the color of the egg because they want that color egg? Or are they buying them because the
19:48because they want to sell the eggs as food?  What's the draw?  There are a lot of different reasons, actually.  I have had a lot of breeders that have  bought my birds, bought my eggs.  And then a lot of people, they do, they love to put the eggs in their mix that they sell, like maybe they have a farm stand. Yeah.  they...
20:15they want to be able to, you know, offer that color inside of the mix of  their eating eggs.  so,  yeah, and they're pretty neat because when you crack them open, they're coffee on the outside, but they're blue on the inside. oh snazzy. I didn't know that.  There are some neat looking eggs. yeah. Okay. um Sorry, nose is trying to run.
20:43It's allergies, I know it is. ah So  what do the chickens that, what do the coffee agar chickens look like? Are they a dark chicken? And the way I breed, there's a lot of different ways to get that chicken, right? There's a lot of different ways that you can go about getting that  specific color. The way I breed, my birds are blue and black.
21:11and sometimes white, and that is a recessive white gene that they would have carried from one of the parents.  I don't get the whites that much anymore. I don't breed for it, but I didn't ever breed away from it just because I actually had people  would specifically come to me and say, I want all of your white birds because they thought it was neat that I had these white birds that would lay all these different colors. And so, um
21:40But now, for the most part, they're mostly blue, which is gray in the chicken world.  Just so people know, because a lot of people don't know what a blue is, it's a gray chicken.  And then blacks. And then  some have muffs and beards, some don't. Some have pea combs, some don't.  Most of them have  feathered feet. em
22:07Some of them have some really beautiful lacing in their feathering. It just varies. Not one of them looks exactly the same as another, which is kind of cool. You figured this out all on your own or you studied genetics to get to this?  I'll be honest with you. I'm not that smart.  I really truly believe it was God.  I would dream it.
22:34I would dream genetics, would dream colors, I would dream how to put  two specific birds together to create a color. And  this is another thing that I have not seen in any other farm, and I'm not saying that it's never happened or people don't do it,  but  my entire rainbow of eggs was created with just two colors, and it's only been just two colors, and I do not buy in other birds.
23:03to add to that, I started by making an olive agar chicken.  And everything else has been developed from that in the seven years I've been doing this. Wow. Wow. That is so freaking cool.  It's God. It really is.  It's amazing.  You can randomly stick some birds together and, you know,  if
23:31they're colorful layers, you're gonna get some colorful layers out of them, you know what I mean? But what I've been able to do is literally  ban my birds. We're now even using  these like little uh vegetable bags, I guess, like uh netting.  And  I am putting very specific eggs into each one of them so that I can even  narrow things down even more.
23:57so I can get speckles on specific ones. can get blooms on specific ones.  We now have been able to um create what we call  little willow lilacs,  which is like this just beautiful pink  egg with this really heavy bloom. And we're looking into um just some other names for colors.  I have another color.
24:26I have a name and I haven't created the color yet.  we'll see how that goes. It's so far so good. It's always like panned out, which is pretty awesome.  um,  your story is so interesting. Like I have never, I've been doing this podcast for over two and a half years and have never heard a story like this before. uh Yeah. Well, you know,
24:55That's God for you.  I just think that, you know,  he's had his hand in this the whole time. yeah,  it's just been neat to watch it unfold. It's been hard.  know, two years ago, I don't know how long you've seen my farm or followed it or whatever, two years ago,  we had a fire around our entire farm  and we were supposed to evacuate. I mean, we were...
25:24We were told to get out of here and get out quick.  And uh the fire was burnt back on us four nights in a row. So it was coming at every angle.  And one night it  literally came within an acre and it was flying off  the trees. And you could just see the embers just flying through the air.  40 mile an hour winds were pushing it in our direction. And not one of those embers hit the other side of the road. I mean, that in and of itself is a miracle.  hours those trees were burning, for hours those
25:53those winds were pushing those flames. And even the fire department guys that were sitting in our driveway said that was a miracle. I've never seen anything like that ever happen. but God, he's powerful. he was like, nope, far enough, far enough. And other people lost their homes, they lost their farms, they lost a lot, they lost cattle.
26:23My birds didn't even get sick from the smoke, which was  pretty awesome. So  yeah, it's been crazy to see the things that have happened and to see God's hand in all of it. And I think that's why he gave me the name. I think that's why he called us to trademark it was because he wants his glory, you know, and he doesn't want other people taking it. he...
26:50He deserves to get the glory for what he does in our lives, you know, and he's used my life  just to show people how good he actually is and that  though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you don't have to fear any evil, that he's always with us, you know, and so, yeah, he's been faithful.
27:13He's been faithful, you know, I talked about having lupus before. I don't even have it in my body anymore. It's undetectable and has been  for many years.  There's just so many things that he's done that it's like  only him, you know, so. Well, I am  so  glad that you have found something or God gave you something. Let's put it that way.
27:41that brought you out of the depths of despair and gave you something so positive to focus on. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. And  I mean, chickens of all things, know, egg colors of all things, you know, but that's just how he works.  You know,  it could have been many horses. One acre.  It could have been that probably wouldn't have gone very well.
28:09No, no, would not have because you would only be able to have maybe one and a half mini horses on an acre. Exactly. Yeah. yeah, it's it's and I even thought about it like when we moved out here, of the things because I used to do ministry a lot, you know, like I said, we did foster care and we would work in the church and stuff like that. And when we moved out here, I was like, God, how on earth are you going to use me out in the middle of nowhere where I didn't even get
28:38phone service at the time when we first moved out here.  And it felt kind of depressing to be honest. I wanted my daughter to grow up out here, but I also still wanted to be able to serve  in many ways and felt like there's no way I'll ever be able to serve out here.  And God's like,  oh honey. Hold my beer.  Yep.  Yep. Yep. And so.
29:09Yeah, it's just,  it's amazing. is. I love your story so much, Jessica. Thank you for sharing it. I try to keep these to half an hour. We're at 2838. So uh where can people find you?  At littlewillowhomestead.com.  And also we are on Facebook  at Little Willow Homestead.
29:34And  I am also sometimes very little on Instagram. I try to stick to one platform,  but you can find me on Instagram as well.  Little Willow Homestead there as well. yeah, those are our places.  Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinypodcast.com.  A tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Again, brain and tongue not working today.
30:04Um, this was great, Jessica. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Oh, absolutely. This was really fun. And I learned stuff again. This podcast  has been the joy of my life because I learned something  new with every person who talks to me. That's so awesome. It really is. It's really fun.  All right. You have a great rest of your weekend. All right. You too. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. All right. Bye bye.
 

Natures Farmacy

Today I'm talking with Joe and Jessica at Natures Farmacy.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Jessica and Joe at Natures Farmacy in Alabama. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Alabama this morning?
00:55It's a little overcast. It rained yesterday and a lot last night. So overcast, warm. Plants are happy. I bet. I bet they are. It is a beautiful sunny morning here in Minnesota and there's a very light breeze and everything has greened up beautifully. And tomorrow is May 1st. Yay.
01:22Very excited because May 15th is the date that we plant our seedlings. So we only have to wait 15 and a half more days. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about yourselves and what you do.  OK, so uh we're Nature's Pharmacy. We are a  micro farm here in Summerdale. um We grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables. um We're basically on 1.7 acres and we're trying to pack in as much
01:52ah produce and fruit as we can on this.  It's not tiny, but it's not big either on this piece of land. And ah we use organic growing practices.  We set up at the markets. ah We have five kids.  We homeschool them. So we're here all the time.  That is a lot of little people in your life. We have two that are big people now and we actually just became grandparents.
02:22from one of them. So that's really cool. She's a month old now. Jessica, you look amazing to be a grandma. saw your videos on Facebook and I was like, wow, she can't be more than 25. guess. Oh, thank you. It's the veggies. Yeah, absolutely. Are the kids involved in the... They're involved in the berry picking and eating. Yeah, it's hard to keep fruit on the trees and...
02:51on the vines, ah but I'm guilty of that too. I love to get out here and pick berries and eat fruit.  It's really awesome to be able to have that experience and for our kids to have that experience running up and down the rows picking, whether it's fresh carrots or blackberries, plums, peaches. I'm so glad that we get to do that for them. They do help though. They  are oldest,  not our oldest, but the oldest living here. He's 13. ah
03:20He helps us with harvesting and packaging and getting stuff ready for the market. He helps us set up at the market. The girls help some too. They'll come out when we're planting and want to poke a few seeds in the ground. We don't force it. So if they  want to help, they do. Nice. You're growing budding entrepreneurs while you grow your gardens and your fruit trees. Actually, our 13 year old has his own mushroom operation. I mean, I'm sorry.
03:49Worm casting. Worm casting operation. Which could lead to mushroom growing. Well, we do grow mushrooms.  So,  yeah, that's definitely something that, you know, if he wanted to get into that, he could. We grow Shiitake mushrooms and  we'll grow other mushrooms as well, like wine cap. But yeah, so he's he's  farming worms and collecting castings and he sets his little worm castings up at the market and he
04:17He sells worm casting, so it's really cool. He's pretty much staying sold out too. And the girls are trying to get into crickets. They  did just recently order their first batch of crickets. They want to be able to grow those, whether it's for like people that have lizards  or feeding their chickens  or even bait. Yeah, fishing.  I love it. You guys have been an excellent example for your little people and your big people. Thank you.
04:47I wish everybody could be that kind of example because we'd have a much better world in about 10 years. Well, I think more people  are waking up and  moving towards, you know, going back to  homesteading and  I say a simpler life, but sometimes it's not simpler. mean, there's a lot of work involved, but  I see more and more people all the time. Seems like they're waking up and trying to.
05:15disconnect from the system and become more self-sufficient.  So.  Yeah, as I've said on this podcast a bunch of times, I didn't know that homesteading was anything weird or different. my parents lived on an acre  in Maine when they were raising me and my siblings and they grew a garden and they heated their house with wood and my dad split wood by hand with a splitting mall and an axe.
05:44And we helped him haul wood over to the basement and chucked it downstairs and moved it from one corner of the other to stack it for the winter.  We didn't know that that was not what everybody did. And I can remember walking into a house for the first time where they didn't have a wood stove in their house. And I was like, don't you guys freeze in the wintertime?  I think  I was 10 and  the dad of the family was like, what are you talking about? We have electricity.
06:15We kind of grew up the opposite. Okay, yeah. Yeah, like we grew up on the TV dinners and the plopped in front of the TV and you know, just we didn't know people lived like you lived. Yeah. Yeah, we grew up completely different. But later in life, we, you know, started to realize that that's not the way we wanted to live anymore. So
06:43We wanted to start growing. We got a piece of property in Summerdale, started our first garden  about 13, 14 years ago and just fell in love with growing and with the idea of being able to provide people with food.  so from there we just expanded on that idea and have continued to grow our farm.  And,  you know, we still want to expand. uh It's a work in progress for sure. Building new beds all the time and
07:12planting more crops.
07:16Yeah,  do I explain this?  We have a hard sided greenhouse that is permanent, but we had a,  a, I want to call it a high tunnel, but it's not one of the big ones, but that style of greenhouse, we had one up and the plastic ripped over the winter.  That whole thing came down yesterday. Cause we're not going to use it this summer.  And I was like, I'm kind of, I'm going to miss that little bubble out there. My husband looked at me and he said, what?
07:45And I said, the greenhouse you took down today. Yeah. It's been part of the landscape for two years. And I it's going to look weird having a hole in there, you know? Yeah, for sure. We love our greenhouse. That's actually where we're sitting right now. It's actually become like a second living space or actually maybe this is the main living space and the house is kind of secondary living space. yeah, we have Thanksgiving out here. if you know, the big kids come over and bring the family then.
08:15We have dinner out here. It's really nice. That is so sweet. I love that. And is it warm in Alabama at Thanksgiving time?  Sometimes. Most of the time. Yeah, it's very warm. We usually have to have the sides up and  sometimes fan going.  Yeah, we couldn't do that here. It would be very cold to be eating Thanksgiving dinner in our greenhouse. Yeah.  Yeah, most of time it's warm, but like two years ago we had snow. So
08:45That was kind of unexpected. Bet it was pretty. It was. We actually played in the snow. I don't even think I came inside for two days. I'm just out here walking around in the snow. It's something we don't get to see very often. Did you eat the snow? Cause I would have. No, I did not eat the snow, but I definitely played in it. We do still have a bag in the freezer though. Our daughter wanted to keep some snow.
09:13One of the most fun things that I ever did with my grandpa when I lived in Maine  as a kid is he would go out and get  the fresh fallen snow that no one had walked on and no dogs had done anything to.  And he would bring it bring it in and put it in a bowl and put maple syrup over it. And we would eat maple syrup snow. So like a maple syrup snow cone. Yeah. And if it snows again this winter you should do that with your little ones because they might get a kick out of it.
09:42Yeah, that's cool. Never thought about doing that, but yeah, that's that'd be cool. And I don't know if it'll snow again. That's something that's very rare down here. Yeah. If it does, do not use the crappy store bought fake syrup. Get some real maple syrup because it will not be the same without real maple syrup. Oh yeah. That's all we use.  Okay, good.  My husband picked up some of the  not real maple syrup when he was shopping and I was like, we will eat it because you bought it, but don't keep buying this.  Yeah.
10:13It's bad for you. It may taste good, but it's bad for you.  So much stuff in the stores is terrible for you.  Yep, absolutely. If I knew somebody close by that I could get uh raw milk from, we wouldn't even buy milk from the store. We would buy it from somebody nearby, but there's no one within a half an hour of us that sells raw milk right now. Oh my goodness.
10:39And with gas prices the way they are, a gallon of raw milk is about $20 at the cheapest around here. And I don't even want to know how much gas it would take to get over to where they sell it. that's, we're pushing $30 a gallon for raw Oh my goodness. Yeah, that is insane. It's so crazy. But it's worth it. I mean, if we were some, if we were nearby somebody that was selling it, we should, would certainly stop in and pay $20 for a gallon because
11:08Those dairy farmers work really hard to provide a really good product. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it takes a lot of work. It's it is nonstop. Sometimes you got to get up in the middle of the middle of the night, you know, to handle business. So yeah. Yeah. Does Alabama allow raw milk sales?  No. No. Yeah. No. You have to put that it's for  pet consumption only, not for human consumption.
11:36But if you want to drink it once you get at home, can, right? Sure. I mean, I'm sure if they thought they could bust in and bust you for it, they probably would. It's so dumb, isn't it? It is. Yup. mean, you're just trying to live their lives, man. And I don't know, people who want to dictate what you can and what you can't do. Yeah. Humans have been drinking raw cow milk for
12:02Ever. Yeah. then the government went, no, it might make you sick. You can't do that.
12:10Yep, it's insanity.  I can't say anymore because I'll get myself in trouble. I know, I know. That's why I'm just like, it's crazy.  It is. It's nuts. I do not understand why we regulate things that don't need to be regulated and we don't regulate things that do need to be regulated. I will never figure this out until I die. And even then I probably won't find out. It's just about control. Yeah, pretty much.
12:37God love the government. And honestly, I'm going to say it again because I've said it a lot of times on this podcast. I think that we need government for for a few things, but I also feel like the government makes us trip over feet more often over our own feet more often than not. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Let's government. I mean, they definitely like you said, there are there are some things, but there's just countless things that they just need to.
13:07you know, get out of our business. Yep.  I have, I have a  B in my bonnet this morning because I just found out that  our government decided that it's going to be okay to mine up in the boundary waters in Minnesota. Like it's, it's going to be legal. And I don't know if you've ever been to Minnesota, but the boundary waters area is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. And it is pristine because we have taken really good care of it.
13:36Yeah. And now there's going to be mining pits there. Awesome.  Yeah, no, it's really not.  I'm quite pissed off about it. It's sarcastic. Yeah. I know. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.  I'm,  I took a big deep breath when I heard it and went, okay, well, maybe in two and a half years, they'll stop doing that. Maybe.  We'll see. We'll see.  So yeah.
14:06Go ahead. So yeah, it's it's not great.  And I feel like there are so many or so few  untouched places left. That's right. You really should not be screwing around with them.  every time we lose a place that hasn't been touched, we can't get it back. That's right. Yeah. And they just keep on going.  It's so funny how the double standard, you know, it's OK for them to destroy and I  don't know.
14:35I mean, I'm not saying that I want to destroy anything, but you know, they they want to control everything and and they give themselves a license to destroy, you know, our our ecosystems and habitats. And it's just it's it's mind blowing. It is. I wasn't even going to talk about it, but I did. So. So do you guys have any animals? You know, I know you do produce, but do you have any animals? We do. We have chickens. We did have some sheep.
15:04But  where we live and  the fencing situation that we had, we live right on the highway. So  the stress of them getting out and getting in the highway and causing an accident was, it was pretty intense. So we got rid of our sheep, but we do still have our chickens and some ducks. And we collect eggs. And we have cats and dogs. iguanas. Yeah. We have the normal stuff like cats and dogs.
15:32Iguanas maybe not so normal. um To each their own. Yeah.  What kind of dogs do you have?  They're nuts, basically mixed. They're good dogs, though. Just rescues.  Good.  Yeah. A lady  was going to take them all to the pound, so we adopted two and they turned out to be some fantastic dogs.
15:58Yeah, it's always the ones that are going to not have a home that turn out to be the best dogs. That's right. I have not told this story before and you guys just gave me a really good opening.  One of my sons, he and his wife saw on Facebook or next door or something that there were three huskies.  They were living in Arizona. My son and his wife were living in Arizona at the time and there were three huskies running around loose in the desert.
16:26Nobody around somebody dumped these three beautiful dogs. And my, my son's wife looked at him and said, do you want to go get them? Do we want to go get them and give them a home? And without batting an eye, my son said, yep, get in the truck. Sweet. They rescued these dogs and they were over six months old. They're now  two or three years old. There's two males and a female, they're siblings and they're the golden huskies.
16:56like golden and white? Yeah. They have turned out to be the best dogs ever other than my dog is my dog is the best dog on the planet.  I won't die on that hill, but they have turned out to be the best dogs. Yeah. Huskies are really good dogs. They're, pretty smart. We've had some and uh, yeah, they're very intelligent,  uh,  very loyal. Yeah. Can you imagine being a Husky in the Arizona desert?
17:24not knowing why you're in the desert. Yeah, no doubt.  Oh, poor dogs. I'm so glad that that my son and his wife were like, yeah, we can add three dogs to our household. Why not?  For sure.  OK, so you guys sell your produce and sell your eggs? Yes, we do. We set up at  the market and we also  we have a CSA program that ah we are running also right now. So you can sign up and become a member. ah
17:54purchase a share in the farm and we provide you with local all-natural produce.  I think we're one of the few  farms that are actually doing that right now, at least that I'm aware of in our area.  Awesome. Have you gotten into the  making soaps or  bombs or salves or any of that stuff? I'm actually, I have oil going with calendula flowers in it now for making soap.
18:23and salves.  Nice. Have you done it before?  No, I haven't. How are you liking the process so far?  Well, I've only gotten to the growing the flowers  and soaking it in the oil at this point. So I'm just waiting on the oil to be ready and then I'm going to order everything I need to start trying soaps out. Are you going to do the cold process kind? Yeah,  the lye.
18:53Okay,  my husband makes it I'm scared to death of the the lion water situation I  it scares me to death that I'm gonna do something wrong and then I'm burning myself with it  But he's been doing it for years and once you get the process down, you'll be able to do it in your sleep Yeah, I was watching videos and it looks  I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how simple
19:17Like  it's really not that I mean you've got it, you know measurements and everything but I didn't realize it was that simple  Yeah, and back to Joe's statement earlier about people getting back to a simpler life that isn't it's not necessarily simple but it's got a lot of hard work  We all need to remember that Factories didn't make soap 250 years ago. That's right. They didn't make candles. They didn't make dish soap. They didn't make laundry detergent
19:47people made those things. You're absolutely right. So clearly humans can make the things they need. We've been doing it for a long time. That's right.  I think it was done by design and  I'm not trying to get back into that whole control thing. But I think it was done by design to cripple us  and make us dependent on a system that, you know, obviously is just flooded with all kinds of toxins and everything is so poisonous.  I think it was done by design.
20:18Think it was done by design. I don't think that I don't think that anyone meant to poison humankind. I Think that if it didn't actually kill us it was acceptable. Yeah, and number two Humans love convenience and they love making money That's true.  So when somebody figured out that they could mass produce soap  and It's not even really soap because if the thing that you're washing your body with doesn't have lie in it. It's not actually soap
20:48Yeah.  When they figured out they could mass produce it and make a ton of money and people love convenience, that's when that all came together. Yeah. So, you know,  it's it's partly our fault as the consumer, but it's also the producers fault too, I guess.  And really proud of everyone who is trying to take back their power and their autonomy and provide for themselves.  Absolutely.
21:18So you said you had you grow fruit what you said blackberries what else we have uh peaches plums  blackberries raspberries mulberries we actually grow pineapple  apples uh Occasionally  we'll have bananas, but not so often Let's see what else do we have that I'm not thinking about
21:44Pear trees. haven't started producing yet. They're still young. Blueberry. Baby trees. Yeah, they're young. Grapes. Grapes. Wow, you guys could just go out and grab a whole fruit salad out of your own property. I know you know what  a food forest is and basically that's kind of the concept that we're  doing here is we're stacking in fruit trees, ah you know, real tight.
22:14Everything is ah working together.  Like the shade provides a perfect space for lettuces and radishes and stuff here in the summer heat. And we're just trying to pack it in here. We have, our beds are, I know the standard is 30 inches by 50 for like market gardens, but our beds are two foot by 50 foot. And we have a one foot walk space in between. And we're just packing in as many beds as we can and fruit trees in the middle of all of that and our arbors. uh
22:42on top of all of that and it works out beautifully.  I bet it does because that is an absolutely beautiful system.
22:52Um, our peach tree is just, it's just getting buds on it. Oh yeah. Yeah. We have one big peach tree and one smaller peach tree. I don't know why they're not, they're not choking each other out or anything, but  one of them just has gotten really big and, uh, it's supposed to get into the twenties tonight.  Oh my goodness. So keep your fingers crossed for us that the, the peach blossoms do not open today because if they don't open today, we'll be fine.
23:22Yeah.  That's kind of what happened to us this year. Yeah, it was, was, we had a really mild winter and all of our fruit trees, our plums and peaches, they bloomed early because we had a false spring and then  we had two cold snaps there right at the end and we lost a lot of fruit that we were expecting to have this year. I mean, we still, we still got some plums and we still got some peaches, but nothing like what we were anticipating.
23:52Yeah, we were really hoping for peaches last year because we got like 12 the year before on the first year of growing. We got peaches  and it froze the blooms  last spring  and nothing.  And my husband said that the peach tree is loaded with buds and I was like, God, please don't let it bloom until tomorrow, please.  odds are they probably won't bloom today.
24:22I don't know. It's supposed to be like in the  high fifties and it's supposed to be sunny all day. So I'm like, no, stay asleep for just one more day, guys.  I don't think anyone who doesn't grow produce understands the impact of the weather cycles. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're completely at its mercy. That's for sure. Yeah. It's really frustrating. We lost.
24:48We lost  all the blooms off of two apple trees last year because there was a big wind  for two days in a row when they were blooming and  all the petals blew off the trees. So there were no apples on those trees.  Oh man. uh it's so hard.  apple tree is actually loaded this year. This is the first year that it's actually put on apples and held them. So  we are super excited about getting apples for the first time.
25:15Do you know what variety of apple or is it just apples? They're eintchamir. I have no idea what that is. It was one that was developed in  an Israeli kibbutz. Okay. Yeah. So it's kind of, guess, like Middle Eastern  adapted and  I guess that's similar to our growing conditions.  Huh. I have never heard of that one. I'll have to look it up. What kind of
25:45tree do you have? We have lots. We have like 20 or 22 apple trees. Wow. And we have. We're on 3.1 acres. Okay, awesome. We have a regent, we have a harrelson. We have four honey golds and the honey golds are the ones that have done the best and I don't even like them. My husband loves them. We have two honey crisp trees that were
26:13really hoping to see apples from this year as we put them in three years ago.  And then we have a whole bunch of just like  mutt apples over on the other side of the property and we're not sure they're ever going to actually give us apples.  Yeah.
26:32But we also have plum trees, we have peach trees, we have wild plums, we have... something else and I can't think of it right now. We have rhubarb, we have strawberries, we have asparagus, and then we have the usual suspects in the farm-to-market garden. I've never had rhubarb. Oh, honey. You've got to get some rhubarb. I don't think it grows here, or if it does, doesn't grow here well.
27:00No, I'm sent you've never tasted it before. No.  Go to the grocery store. I know you don't want to, but go to the grocery store. Go to  the nearest one that has organic produce and get a couple stocks of rhubarb. I've never even seen it in the grocery store here. Really? Yeah. Like  I've never  even, I don't think I've ever even seen it in person at all.  That is crazy.  Huh.
27:29I wish I knew that it would ship okay, because I would ship you some when ours is ready, but I don't think it would. I think it would get very squishy. might be why they don't have it here. If it doesn't grow well here, I know like pigs and things like that, you don't see them too often in the grocery store. That's something else that we have. Oh, crazy. didn't know that. Well, I've learned something new yet again from this podcast. I swear it's been an education for over two and a half years. That's awesome.
27:59um So do you guys have any plans to do anything  new this year? Because we always plan for one little thing that's new every summer. um We're hoping to expand our mushroom production for sure.  just putting in new beds and  expanding um as far as any new type of produce or anything like that. um I don't know, we just kind of go through the seed catalogs and whenever we're looking
28:29things if something pops out then we'll try it.  But trying things sometimes is just kind of frustrating because  you just don't know what you're gonna get.  I guess I kind of like to take the safe road and do things that we know are gonna do really well. As far as new journeys we're hoping to be able to put our farm stand out front and not catch any flak from the town.  Yeah.
28:55I wish you all the luck in the world with that and if they let you do it, I wish you all the success in the world with it. Thank you. We have a farm stand and people love it. They buy eggs from us almost every day. How many chickens do you guys have? 14. Oh, wow.  So we usually have a dozen or two out there and we're looking at getting more chickens because people are  buying, they want eggs.
29:22Like they pull in, if there aren't eggs, they pull right back out. And I'll get messages. Are you going to have eggs tomorrow? I hope so. Yeah, we added 32 new chickens this season because we had 24. We've lost a couple. And we get on average 17 eggs a day right now. But we eat about a dozen a day. Yeah, we don't eat as many eggs as we probably should.
29:52But we also need to make sure the chickens get fed. So every time somebody buys a dozen eggs at $5, we're making sure that the chickens continue to produce. So we are trying a new thing this year. We are trying mini-me watermelons. They are personal sized watermelons. OK, awesome. Because big watermelons don't work here because our growing season isn't long enough for them.
30:22That's right.  The mini me's are a 60 day um time frame from seed to producing watermelon, to picking watermelons.  Yeah, that's quick.  Yeah. Thank God. Cause we really like watermelon. We could probably fit in a second round of watermelons with those at the end of the season then. Cause we kind of get like a second spring. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of wish we had considered moving south when we bought this place five and a half years ago.
30:52It's good and bad.  What, Jessica? It's good and bad. We get our storms and  the humidity is a lot sometimes.  Yeah, Minnesota has been  very humid the last four summers, like beyond what I've ever experienced in the over 30 years I've lived here. And I don't enjoy it. So you're probably right. Probably staying in Minnesota was probably the smartest thing we could have done. Yeah, I think our
31:20like lowest humidity point that we hit here in Alabama is like 80 % humidity or something like that. It's like, we're very humid. You're walking through water in the summertime.  Yup.  All right, guys, I try to keep these to half an hour. Where can people find you?  We're on Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook is just Natures Farmacy. On Instagram, it's naturesfarmacy251.
31:51Okay, cool.  is pharmacy with a F-A-R-M-A-C-Y like pharmacy. Yes, not P-H-A-R-M-A-C-Y like pharma.  Yes. No pharma on your place. That's right.  Absolutely not.  All right.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Jessica and Joe, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Yeah, we had a good time. Appreciate it. Have a great day.
32:20You Thank you. Bye bye.
 

Forsythia Farms

Today I'm talking with Casey at Forsythia Farms. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Casey at Forsythia Farms in New Jersey. Good morning, Casey. How are you? Good morning. I am well. How are you? I'm good. You said it's a beautiful day there in New Jersey?
00:55It is. It's nice and sunny and it's going to be almost 70, I think, today. It rained all weekend, so we're due for some sunshine. Well, congratulations on having a great spring day because I am in Minnesota and I can hear the rain falling on our tin roof outside my bedroom window. Oh, my goodness. And it's supposed to rain all day and I think we're supposed to get thunderstorms too. So we are getting what my grandpa would have called
01:23poor man's fertilizer for our garden.  Oh my goodness. You guys get some heavy storms out that way, don't you?  Um,  we get... I have never experienced nor seen a tornado in the over 30 years I've lived in Minnesota. Well, that's good. But we definitely get some high winds. We have had our power go out because of lightning strikes, stuff like that.
01:52Minor things like  I'm scared to death of tornadoes like I don't ever want to Ever want to see one and I sure as heck don't want to have one come through my door yard. I would pass on that Yeah,  I understand  But no the weather has been unseasonably warm this spring our  Lilac bushes are leafed out our maple tree is leafed out  Everything is leafed out. I could do a list. It would take ten minutes, but it's very exciting
02:22because we're ready, we're ready for this long, long winter to be over. It is, has been such a long winter. I know we started getting some good like sprouts and whatnot, but I know some farms around here are actually dealing with issues because it froze again. We were under a freeze warning last week. So I know there's some like fruit farmers that are concerned because it, you know,
02:50usually doesn't typically freeze as bad at this point in April.  So they're seeing, some are seeing some detrimental like loss with some of their plants, which is really upsetting. We're supposed to have freezing temps tomorrow night, think, there's tomorrow night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, maybe. And I am so thankful that our apple trees are leafed out, but they're not budded out yet. They're not blooming. Okay.
03:19because I really want apples and if it freezes there will be no apples this fall for us on our property.  yeah, yeah, we have an apple tree and a peach tree, they're,  I'm not expecting fruit from them for like another couple of years because we just planted them. So  anywhere from three to five years, depending on what the, uh, the variety is. Yeah. Honey crisp. I don't remember what peach variety it is, but we have honey crisps crisps.
03:47crisps, there we  go, that we put in, I think, two or three falls ago. And we're hoping with everything we have that they actually bloom this year  and that we might get one or two, because they take a while and they were baby trees. So we'll see what happens.  So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Forsythia Farms. So  we are first generation homesteaders or farmers, whichever
04:15term you prefer to use. We are more on the animal side. I will say I don't have much of a green thumb. um I can do like we have our fruit trees, we have some berry bushes. um But as far as like plants,  I'm really bad  with the gardening aspect. My husband is actually better with that. I am the animal person. So  we have a lot of chickens, we have some turkeys.
04:43We have goats and a pony and horses, and obviously they have cats and dogs as well. I am a certified veterinary technician by trade, so to say. So I've always been around animals and always wanted to have animals. I think I've wanted chickens my entire life. So we moved to New Jersey in 2023, because we were actually originally from Pennsylvania.
05:12And we moved to Southern New Jersey to have some more land so we could start on our little farm that we have always dreamed of. And it has grown. It definitely has grown. Chicken meth is real. It sure is. We started with four in 2022 and now we have over 100 turkeys. they're definitely the gateway to the rest of the animals.
05:41Chicken math got you real good. It did. It did.  It went from chickens to  goats and then to turkeys and then to horses. And if we had enough land, we would probably have a cow, but  we don't.  I wish we had a cow. I wish we had enough land for a cow.  And we do not. We have three acres and  there's no grazing area for an animal that big. So we are just not going to do a cow.
06:10It's not happening. Yeah, we have about three acres as well. my we have grazing areas on some parts of our land, but a lot of it is wooded and trails. um But our neighbors have. Big like yards and stuff in the my horse, Chai, she'll go over and mow their lawn is what they say, but. The many that I have can't have fresh grass,  so they're mostly on a dry lot, which is one of the reasons why.
06:39brought them here as opposed to boarding them because he can't really have grass to begin with. So us not having a ton of grazing isn't a huge uh deal for the two of them, but definitely not enough for a cow.  Yeah. Yeah. They eat a lot. And  the other thing that I hadn't really considered until I was listening to you talk is even if we had a cow,  we would have to have her bread to have to give her a milk because we don't have
07:06If you don't have a cap to get things started, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work. Right.  And, um, the other thing is, is that a full-size cow gives a lot of milk and  we don't have anywhere to keep that right now. Right. That's exactly it. We've run into that problem a couple of times.  Um, with the chickens, we just had like in the spring and summer, so many eggs.  So  many.
07:36Eggs, yes, yes. I think at the highest number we had 36 or 40 chickens and we have a farm stand on our property and we would sell the eggs and we were still overrun with eggs with that many chickens. So  we're down to a very reasonable 14 chickens. There you  go. just, we free range um and unfortunately,  you know, the circle of life, there are predators here so we do lose a few. um
08:06Especially during this time, we're mostly ground predators are our issue. Foxes to be exact. We do have some hawks, but foxes tend to be our big issue. So around this time, I don't love to let them free range.  I always, it's part of the reason why I like to have a lot because if we do lose some,  now we have established a clientele that like order eggs from us. And some people get upwards of like 10 dozen at a time.
08:36So I like to keep a certain number just so we can keep up with demand now. But  in the winter, I at least have enough to fill that demand. Whereas my older ladies might stop laying, I always have younger ladies that are still going. Yes.  Thank God for the younger ladies and the older ladies. Yeah. And when I let them live out their days, however long, I still have a couple of my originals from 2022.
09:06And I have, I do breed for like olive aggers. So I have some of those are my more, I have silkies  and bless their hearts. They are just not smart. love them, but they are just not the smartest and they can't see because of their little head puff. So they don't free range and I have them in a separate coop. Yes. The dumb as a stump chicken variety. Yeah.
09:33Yes, and the Polish, I have those as well. It's just, you got to collect them all, they're like Pokemon. Or Lay's potato chips. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So what is the nearest city in New Jersey to where you live? The biggest, largest city would be Philadelphia. So yeah, and we moved from the suburbs of Philadelphia to New Jersey.
10:02Because the biggest city  in Jersey closest to me would probably be like Trenton. But even still that's further than Philly is to us. We're about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on traffic from Philly. So not too bad.  No. Yeah, we're in a good spot. We're not too far from family. Everyone's still over in Pennsylvania, but we're also in an area where it's like, I think when my family helped us move here, my uncle,
10:32had made a comment like, feel like I'm in Alabama because it's just all farmland. This doesn't even feel like the Northeast. It feels like the South. And I was actually really surprised when you said New Jersey because I didn't think there was a whole lot of acreage available in New Jersey. maybe you lucked out. There is, there is. There's a lot of actually preserved farmland down here. um And it is the garden state, you know, for
11:00for a reason, they do produce a lot  of um goods and it's amazing. There's a preserved farm, I'm not sure exactly how large it is, but I wanna say it's at least over 100 acres right around the corner from us. um And they switched from doing, I think, hay and corn.
11:24But there is a lot of farmland down here. Now when you go further north, that's when you get to more like the city life, especially with Jersey City, because it's right near New York City. But it's like night and day from North Jersey to South Jersey.  I feel like I should do some research on New Jersey, mostly because I was born there. But when I was six months old, my parents moved to Maine with me. Oh, OK. So they never really talked about it because they weren't there very long. Yeah.  I've always wanted to...
11:53visit Maine. I've never been. Go. Go while you can because it's really, really beautiful. That's what I hear. And we would be living there right now except that it would the cost of living is so expensive in the state of Maine that we just couldn't do it. Buying property and a house on that property would have been fine because it was it was fairly reasonable back in 2020 when we were looking.
12:22But when I talked to my folks who still live there about the cost of actually living there, and they told me what they knew, I was like,  no, we're staying in Minnesota. Yeah,  New Jersey is very expensive.  We have very high  property taxes and, you know,  it is an expensive state, but I will say it was cheaper to move here.
12:48and get the land that we wanted than it was to stay in Pennsylvania. Yeah.  And if we were to stay in Pennsylvania for what we wanted, we would probably be about 45 minutes to an hour away from family. Whereas where we're at now, we're very close.  you made it work for you in the way that worked best. And that's amazing.  The thing that we lucked out on is we started looking in, I think, end of May 1st of June back in 2020.
13:18before everything jumped in price. So we were really glad that we did it then because if we'd waited even six months, there's no way we would be where we are now. Yeah.  And did you go to Minnesota for job opportunities or? ah No,  I moved to Minnesota over 30 years ago with my first husband, who is my first ex-husband.
13:45And then I married again and got a second ex-husband  and the third one is the charm. we,  we decided that we wanted to move out of in town, little tiny town in Minnesota, like 6,000 people, I think.  We wanted to, we wanted to get away from town and we moved half an hour away from there  and we live in the middle of  corn and soybean fields and it's  glorious. There you go. That sounds amazing. It really is. And I'm.
14:15I've talked about it ad nauseam on this podcast, so I'm quite sure that none of the listeners want to hear it again. But just  let's suffice it to say it was the best decision we've made in the whole time we've known each other.  Yeah, that sounds amazing. We  love it here. And it's definitely a different lifestyle. Like when our friends and family come to visit, they're like, oh yeah, it's definitely different because there's farmland. And  when we first moved, I think
14:44Every week there was a new Facebook post about like somebody's animal got out. So there was an emu that was running around town  and then someone's bull got out. Bulls? Someone's horse. So it was like just the funny little things that you see in farm towns that like you obviously wouldn't expect when you were living in the suburbs of a major city. So we love it. It's so peaceful. We're on a very, very quiet street.
15:13The only cars on this street are the people that live here.  I  am not on a quiet street. We are on a  two-lane highway that goes between  two towns.  And uh there's a lot of semis and tractors and stuff that go through because it's farm country. They're moving tractors, they're moving equipment for farming in the spring.  And in the fall, it's constant semis going through  loaded down with corn and soybeans.
15:41Yeah, we have InTown,  which we're about 10, a uh 10 minute drive from InTown.  And um they have a lot of trucks that go through there, you know, delivering from South Jersey all the way through to Philly or where have you. So when we go in town, there's definitely a lot more traffic. um But when we come out of our little  neighborhood, we mostly get stuck behind the tractors  that are like...
16:11doing the crop fields or moving the crop itself. And it's so funny because every time I drive by, always want to blast International Harvester on. And I just, I love it. It's just such a great little community that we're in. In the five years that we, well, a little over five years that we've been here, we've had friends come to visit. And I think three times in in that five years, somebody has said,
16:39totally forgot we get stuck behind some kind of farm equipment. Sorry, we're late. I'm like, I knew you'd be late. It's totally fine. I don't care if you're late. You're here. Yay, I'm glad to see you.  So you sell your eggs  and you said that you have  goats still? We do. We have goats. um And we had tried to breed them because we had gotten a buck, but it did not go well.
17:07So I would love to breed my does. have three of them.  They are called the Powerpuff goats. It's blossom, baubles and buttercup. Of course it is.  And they're adorable. They're  Nigerian dwarves. They're like dogs. My husband's favorite animal on the farm. I think that's the only animal I could come home with without asking that he would be totally fine with. um
17:31Because I want to do their milk, so I would love to do like goat milk soaps and body washes, lotions. My dad has really severe allergies and his skin flares up a lot and I would love to be able to make something natural for him because he can't have or can't use a lot of the products that are on the shelves these days. uh So I would love to make something that he would be able to use to kind of soothe his skin when he's having a flare up.
18:02Um, and I know it's really good for, oddly enough, we have a lot of people in the area that are asking for goat's milk for their dogs. Okay. So, and there's not many around here. It's not a lot of people that sell goat's milk. So that's definitely something I would love to do, but I have to, uh,  I have to run out of buck cause our boys are now weathered. So we'll see how that goes. I kind of want to breed them to a feigning goat.
18:31That'd be fun. know, but I think I'll just do stick with the Nigerian dwarfs because their temperament is amazing. They're like little puppy dogs. They are. They are. And our first boy, Rocky, he was a bottle baby. So he was in the house until he was about 10 weeks old. And we got him when he was eight weeks old and we were still bottle feeding him. So he is a
19:00legitimate dog. Like he just would prefer to be in the house, but I can't do that at this point.  Not without a diaper. And he won't keep it on or he'll eat it. He's not  love him to death, but he's also not the smartest either.  Well, he's a goat. He's not a human kid. So  we'll grant him a little bit of grace.  Why do people want goat's milk for dogs? I thought, I thought most dairy wasn't good for dogs. So goat's milk.
19:30Actually, like some of the proteins in there can be beneficial. I wouldn't give it to my dog like every day.  But it can help with their coat, just like it can help like soothing our skin and things of that nature. Some  allergy  dogs can benefit from  goat's milk. ah There's specifically a woman here who breeds, ah and I should know the name, the actual name of these dogs because I'm a  tech.
20:00but they're essentially like long haired greyhounds. They're not, but they're not whippets. can't think of their name. tall, right? Yes. I can't think of the name. I can see it in my head. can see the animal, but I can't think of the name either. But she uses it for her dogs. And some people also bathe their animals in it if they're having like a skin flare up. That's an expensive bath, but I bet it does the job.
20:27Yeah, they might be Afghans. Yes,  that's what I was thinking too, but I couldn't think of the name. Yeah, they're not bores. I know that they might be Afghans. ah But she specifically asked me when she found out I had goats and I was like, no,  but if I do, I will definitely let you know.  For sure. ah So  do you love your life at  the farm? Are you are you happy that you did this? Yes.
20:55Absolutely, I would do it 10 times over. It's just so amazing to just wake up in the morning and look out at my backyard and see just these chickens running around and you hear the goats. My children love it. They love being able to go out in the backyard and collect eggs. They love having their little pony chocolate that they can take care of. my youngest is...
21:22huge animal. My oldest likes animals, but my youngest is our animal girl. she just, they're just like living the dream. And that's what my husband and I wanted for them. So it's  amazing.  nothing beats fresh eggs in the morning, in my opinion. Nothing beats fresh eggs at any hour of the day, as far as I'm concerned. That  is true. You are correct.  I make an egg bake once in a while in the wintertime.
21:51We don't have it for breakfast. We have it for dinner. Hey, breakfast for dinner is was one of my favorite things growing up. Yeah, I make a great big casserole pan and here's all the hot dish. It's not a casserole. So here it would be a hot dish pan, glass pan. I make a big one and we freeze half of it. And that way we have some for breakfast if we want it. That sounds amazing. As it freezes great. Yeah, yeah, we.
22:20I've always wanted to try either freezing or also doing the glass. Oh goodness, I can't think of the name of anything.
22:30The eggs in the big glass jar with the water? With the lime, yeah.  Water glassing maybe is what it's called. I have never done it. It's a way of preserving eggs without having to pickle them, yes. Yeah, I will say because I'm not a big pickler.  So I know some people love it. I used to sell my silky eggs to a friend who would just pickle them because they're tiny.  I don't like pickled eggs.  I like hard boiled eggs for um...
23:00for egg salad sandwiches, but I'm not a pickled egg girl. I think they're stinky. Yeah, I agree.  I can't do it. I love pickles. I love cucumbers as pickles, but pickled eggs are just not my jam. Yeah, I feel that.  I don't know what it is, but I just, if I smell them, I'm like, need to walk the other way because it's going to be a mess if I do not.  I agree. Eggs are great, but they can be very stinky in certain ways.
23:29Yep,  not a fan. um So I saw on your Facebook page something about your turkey. Yes.  What can you tell the story without crying?  I think I can. So  I had a Tom, his name was Darryl. um And I  actually got his name, because everyone asked me, how did you come up with the name Darryl?  And  my daughters  are.
23:58six and four and they were big bluey fans. I don't know if you're familiar with any kids TV shows. I've heard of it. I have not ever seen an episode. Okay. It's, it's an amazing kid show. I'll be honest. Like it's actually a kid show that was made for parents, but either way, um, they have funny names for their animals or their imaginary friends or whatever they're doing. And one of them, the one daughter was pretending to be someone and her name was Cheryl Landa. Okay.
24:26So we got three turkeys  in the early  spring last year.  And at the time I didn't know what they were, male or female, but we went with Telemachus, Shubidua, and Sharolanda, all names from Bluey. Cute. Well, Sharolanda turned out to be a dude. So I was like Sharolanda, Darryl, Darrylanda. And then it kind of just stuck. So it was Darryl. It was Darryl, yes.
24:55And he was a, I believe he was a bronze. I got kind of like a mixed group of breeds. And he was just, he was also like a dog. I had to harness train him because my youngest wanted me to bring him to school for her Bring Your Pet to School Day. Out of all the animals that we have, she chose him. So I harness trained this 30, 40 pound turkey.
25:25Um, he went on car rides with us. We took him to, we don't have,  uh,  like local trash here. We have to go to a dump. So he would go to the dump with us and, and just ride around in the car. took him through Duncan and, um, he was a big part. Duncan give him a pup cup? They did. They did.  Um, he, so he got a pup cup and he was just, he was just a great, a great pet.
25:53And he was a very good protector.  will say turkeys are very good protectors of our flock. They're very good at alerting and they're big. So not a ton of the predators in our area would, it wouldn't be worth it to them to try to come like to our flock. And unfortunately it is mating season and we had two of our neighbors children.
26:21run onto our property. I'm assuming to see if our children were outside so they could play. Yeah. And the youngest is about 18 months. So she's little and they ran up to Darryl. I don't know in what manner because I didn't see it, but they ran up to him and he started.
26:46like jumping on the youngest and I guess trying to mate. So he was doing the like stomping with his feet and he was scratching her up. And in the whole commotion to get Daryl off of the child, he was kicked not only by the child, but by an adult  to get him off of the baby. And that whole commotion, he broke his leg.  And he was very large.
27:15poultry have very thin, tiny legs.  And  he was in a lot of pain. So I didn't want to put him through trying to fix it, because the prognosis of him getting fully healed was slim to none.  And it wouldn't be fair to him for me to put him through all of that pain and recovery  just because for selfish reasons, I didn't want to lose him, you know?
27:45So we humanely called him and we did bury him next to his favorite tree. But it's just, it's quiet without him because he would always like talk to us. We would call his name and he would talk to us. And he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was  protecting his  flock. But it's definitely a good lesson  with  being cautious around animals and making sure, you know.
28:16No one's unattended or anything like that. Our kids  knew  if they were going to be around Darryl,  they always had a stick and they would just wave it at him and he would run. He wasn't going to come after them. He's like, okay, these kids have a stick. I'm not going to mess with them.  And he grew up with them. So he was familiar with them. But yeah, that day was very stressful because we had also brought a Mustang home that day.
28:44Oh, so double whammy. Yeah, and he  broke through our fence a couple times. ah So we were actually dealing with the Mustang when the incident happened. It was just very crazy.  sounds like it. It is. And you learn some hard lessons in life. um There's,  you know, you go back and think of everything you could have done differently at that time. But in that moment,  main goal was to
29:14make sure the child was okay, you know? And I love my animals.  I love them to death, but I will always put a human child's  wellbeing above my animals.  Yep. And I feel like this is a good place to jump in and say,  if you are a neighbor of someone who has animals on their property, and I don't care whether it's turkeys or goats or a freaking elephant, and you have kids, tell your kids,
29:44that they need to be aware and they need to be careful.  And if they're too little to understand that, then you should probably be with them if  they're going to the neighbor's house. Yeah. And  I  don't want to direct other people's traffic, but it's a shame that you had to lose your turkey because of the situation. It is.  And  my husband and I were, you know, we went through the motions of the stages of grief and
30:12We were angry for a while and it's not that we were angry  at them.  We were just angry at the situation because we know it was just an unfortunate incident, but it's like we lost a member of our family.
30:31It was just really, really unfortunate.  it's really hard. One of the things about farming or homesteading is that there are days that just suck lemons and you're going to have one.  It is. And  I think the hardest thing about having a farm and having livestock is that there's a saying for a reason. If you have livestock, you have dead stock because a lot of the times
31:01At least in my experience with chickens, sometimes they just keel over and you have no idea why. And if you're like me and you get attached to them,  everyone takes a small little piece of your heart. And it's like, ugh, I wish I could have done something different. But it's just the hard reality of  having animals. I may be the most unattached to my chickens person you will ever meet.
31:29I don't love them. I love what they do for us. I don't love chickens.  However, I keep trying to not get attached to the barn cats and that's a trick. Yeah, we have one barn cat. just got him recently. ah He showed up at my in-laws house actually and he was super sweet and we're like, you know what?
31:52We need a barn cat because we do have a of mice because we are in the woods. Yes. Like we're in farmland, but where we are specifically is a lot of woods and trails. And he is just the sweetest thing. He  loves to just be pet and love Dawn.  And I would be devastated if something happened to him.  I was devastated when the first barn cat got hit by a car on that busy road in front of our house.
32:20Like I swore a blue streak, I cried, I slammed cabinet doors, I was upset.  My husband said to me, said, honey, said,  if this is how it's going to affect you if we lose an animal, he said, we can't stay here. He said, this is awful. And the next one that got hit, like four months later, I swore less, I did not cry,  and I think I slammed a cabinet door when I realized that it had gotten hit.
32:50He said, that's growth. I'm like, yes, I will eventually be able to handle this, but that's two in four months time. Yeah, that's a lot. It's a lot. And it's, it's different when you have like outdoor animals as opposed to indoor animals. Like you try not to get attached, but you do. But then you also know that they're here for a job  and sometimes bad things do happen.  mean, that can be said about any part of life. And I'm not.
33:20unfamiliar with death and animals because I have dealt with my fair share of euthanasias and really unfortunate, sad situations just working in the veterinary field. it's always different when it is something that you have personally cared for. And the advice that I try to give people, even whether it be a cat or a dog or a horse or what have you, is the
33:48best thing that we can do for them is to end their suffering, is to not let them suffer. So if something is happening  and  you have the choice to take away their pain, then that is the kindest thing that we can do for them. And that is why I didn't rehab Darryl. it just wouldn't have been  kind for me to do that. And I don't think if he could talk that he would want me to do that.
34:17Probably not and  that's why it's called stewardship, you know, whether it's land or animal it's stewardship Yeah  All right.  Um, Casey, this was a joy. I try to these to half an hour.  Where can people find you? You can find me on Tiktok Facebook and Instagram um For Scythia Farms is our Facebook
34:43profile, but Casey at for Scythia Farms is my Instagram and TikTok handle.  Um, so can find me there and I just, you know, have my daily antics of farm life on there.  It's very fun to watch you do your thing. It's, it's a huge part of my life now. I don't think my day is complete until I've done my like morning chores and you know, sang my songs to my animals. Cause I do that a lot.
35:12Yep. Well, keep doing the good work because  every video you put out shows people what this is like, that it can be hard, that it can be absolutely joy-filled days, because that happens too.  But we need more people to get into this because we need local food sources. Yes, we do. It's incredibly important.  All right. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Casey, I hope you have a wonderful day.
35:40Thank you so much. This was so much fun. hope you have a wonderful day as well.
 

In The Thick Of It with Clear Creek Ranch Mom

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom . 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care, you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company.  Today I'm talking with Leah Peterson from Clear Creek Ranch Mom in Nebraska. And she also happens to be my fabulous co-host  on Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Good,  um, well afternoon. It's noon now.
00:58It's high noon. It is high noon.  What's for lunch besides I have a birthday cake in my kitchen, but not much else going on yet.  I don't know. I might  nuke a couple waffles and put some real maple syrup on them. That sounds delightful. It kind of does.  So  Leah's been on the show, like,  I think it's been five times now. And then she became my co-host on the other  podcast.
01:26Leah posted a photo on her Facebook page of a cowhide from a calf  and  was talking about why they have that. And I thought that it would be interesting for my listeners  to know what was going on with that. So Leah, do you want to tell me about that? I can.  I always say that  raising livestock teaches little people so many life lessons that are applicable.
01:55you know, in all parts of your life and will be for all time.  And so as a child, um my first  memories, some of the harder memories from calving season was honestly learning about the miracle of adoption  right through my own  eyes,  watching it in the cowherd.
02:18It's a practice as old as time. It's evolved and changed over time and many people are still advocates for this method of helping a cow adopt a new baby and other people have moved on to try different things.  But we're still  kind of old school here and we subscribed to what we call the no fail method. It is hard. It's kind of yucky. um But it works.  And so when we have a cow,
02:46who has lost her calf for whatever reason and she's in milk. We can take another calf, say a twin for instance, or a calf whose mama doesn't have enough milk, and we call it grafting, grafting a calf onto the mama.  And it's very interesting when you look at different breeding programs, different breeds, there are different traits that rise to the surface as being most  usual for that particular breed. When I was with
03:16Derek Josie out at TDF Honest, he raises pure red Jersey cows for milk.  And those ones do not have the maternal trait of desiring to have a baby. They have their baby and happily will let you take it and he won't even ball for it. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how the Jersey cows live.  Our beef cattle want to raise a baby.
03:40I want to be careful in describing that though, because it's not, I don't want you to think, I don't want listeners to think that it's some emotional bond. It is a physiological response. It's biologically the way they are bred and how they live. And that is that those hormones that kick in when they have given birth and they start producing milk, they desire to have a baby. And so when we have a baby in need,
04:10What we will do is we will skin the hide off of the deceased baby. So she's lost her baby, it was stillborn, it died, whatever the reasons might be. We will skin that hide off of her baby and we'll make what we call a calf coat  and we will adhere that calf coat on to her presumptively to be adopted baby. Do you tie it on to them?
04:38Yeah, so you can use a variety of methods. We use  sometimes some glue to help hold it on and then we use baling twine  and  tie it  so that it kind of starts at the back of the neck and goes down their back, truly like a superhero cape, I guess you could call it,  and tied it on.  And then you  can do some other things. You can apply some scents to mask the smell because again,
05:06The emotional connection  between a mama and a calf is not what you think it is.  They identify their calves by sound, which is truly amazing. They can find their baby in a group of 500 by their sound.  I think there is probably a measure of recognition.  Hard to say how complicated that is because I'm like, all little black baby calves, for instance, look the same to me. um And I can't remember if cows see in color or not,  but it's definitely by scent.
05:35And so if you can mask their original smell and make it smell like their baby, they are  way more likely to uh accept it straight away. Now, depending on the cow, depending on the breed, I have seen it go like snap of a finger, this is my baby now, and I have seen times where it'll take 48 hours, but I've never seen it not work.
06:00You  love what you do because you just told a very hard story  and your voice sounded so satisfied telling it.  It is. It's something  I'm passionate about because it helps elevate  more understanding about ranchers and not just ranchers because I know this method can be used with uh other animals.
06:29and trying to help them adopt babies that aren't theirs. SAKE, it happened all on its own or with a little help from humans. It happens a lot.  I'm passionate about it. And it's so satisfying because while you see videos and photos of little girls and boys feeding bottles to baby calves, yes, it can be done. Yes, it's a good chore. Yes, it's  rewarding.
06:54but there is  nobody that feeds a baby calf like the cow herself.  It's just the way nature intended it to be. In beef cattle, not talking about veal calves and those in dairies and whatnot, but for beef cattle, it  is the best outcome. And it's so satisfying when after a day together, being  confined together that you can turn them out. And we call it traveling pairs. You see them travel together as one.
07:23back into the wild, so to speak, and feel so relieved and satisfied that you have helped them mother up  and that baby is going to be cared for until it's weaned.  I love it.  See, this is why I wanted you to tell the story because I knew you'd tell it in a way that everybody would get it. um So what happens to that calf hide once the calf is grafted? Well, usually it's sort of, it's
07:48just like any piece of leather, right? It withers eventually and  they'll shed it. Sometimes we'll cut it off. It's very smelly, you can imagine,  a couple days and uh it'll wither away and eventually then the scavengers will pick it up and disappear with it. Okay, cool.  Thank you for telling the story.  I  always feel weird asking you this stuff because I am a novice. Like I am,  I know nothing.
08:16about any of this. And I'm so curious and I'm like,  Lea knows the answer. I'm going to ask her. And it's so fascinating because again, it depends on the maternal traits in different cattle breeds  and what your breeding programs are. But I'm out watching our first calf heifers, right? These are their first babies.  And in their first year being mothers, these heifers are like, I don't know, they're energetic teenagers and they're all about everyone's baby. They'll let anybody's baby.
08:43nurse and so we call them the little robbers. These babies are out there bebopping around. They don't care who's utter they're going to. It's that second year when she has her second calf that she generally, again, depending on the breed, is more interested in just having her baby nurse and kick  away at somebody else trying to rob.  But then we have some cows. em Some of them usually are those with a little more dairy influence, so they're short horns. They will let more than one calf nurse.
09:13they  produce milk for more than  one often, but most of our true beef cattle who are bred towards putting all their work and energy into growing one healthy calf, they don't have enough milk for more than one. So it is not common to have a beef cow  raise more than one calf if it's her calf or if it's one that's been grafted onto her. I will say we  still have one set of twins on there.
09:39mama and she is up in the corral getting extra groceries as we call it. She's doing phenomenal at raising  both of her calves and has not rejected anybody. um We will not kick her out to summer pasture like that because it's too much  to babysit that, especially if grass is kind of short and her energy needs are not going to be enough to feed two babies properly. But uh we're gratified that all of our
10:06transplant, we call it also transplanting a calf.  Situations have been successful. We've had some kind of yucky stuff happen in the last 10 days with the volatile weather and we've had some loss. um But so far we're cruising through, we're now on the over the hump and calving season and thankful  for the wins, the victories, are when  mamas will take a new baby without too much work.
10:34Definitely.  So how has calving season been for you? I  suspect it's been a lot considering everything else you've had going on. Yeah, isn't it something, you you try and just to get your work done and at this time, critical time, it's like, need to get  my work done and not start a fire  because conditions are so difficult in the pastures. It's branding season. Lots of folks are branding their calves. The challenge is there's nowhere to go with them at this time.
11:04um Pastures need to be able to rest longer. Typically, here in Nebraska, we're trying to start kicking animals out to early grass, what we call cool season grasses, around the first of May, and it's not happening. um That's next week. We're really in a critical time.  We really would need, if we could get a half inch of rain, that could buy us some time. We'd really like one to two inches of
11:33calm, quiet rain to soak in and recharge and get our cool season grasses to go so we have some early grazing possibilities that buys you time to get hopefully a first cutting of hay and things put up so that if we look to late summer and a resurgence of drought that we dry lot cattle and if we have to feed them ourselves.  That's where we're at. um
12:03People are just having to make some very difficult decisions right now. I'm trying to sell Daisy, um Daisy and her calf.  She's our black Angus Jersey cross mama.  to relieve us  of one mouth to feed because we hadn't planned for her to stay. um We're making some decisions already on some older cows who maybe are not um feeding their calves the best.
12:32or potentially are open and not having a calf, they're not gonna go to pasture and get another chance, they gotta go town.  And  meanwhile, you reconcile that with none of us are wishing to contribute to a further shrink in the cow herd size, but that's where we're at.  you know, literally, if you don't have anything to feed them, that's the choice that you have to make.  And you're not alone in that, which is even scarier. Correct, correct. It's...
13:00It's so widespread. Now, there was a tornado watch in eastern Nebraska yesterday, and I know some rain did fall there. Even if it was hail, at least it was precipitation, a very small piece. uh But desperation really across  all of Nebraska, moving west and north  into multi-states,  you start to consider  the widespread effects, and they're pretty big.
13:29Yeah, and that doesn't even count the effects of like your household. I mean, are people's wells going dry because it's so,  you're so lacking in water? Yeah, we're okay here.  Our work, to be respectful of our aquifer, is in full play. Conservation methods are,  but certainly like in Colorado, um there's pretty significant discussion  because of no snowpack to melt, that there will be early water restrictions in place. And that includes
13:59golf courses,  know, water parks and things like that. I don't think  we Americans are very good at thinking beyond the end of our own nose too often. If you think, it's okay, I have access to water, well, and you let your sprinklers run and run down the street that you just, you're not thinking like, how does that affect the person that's downhill from me?  And I hate that we have to have rules and regs to make people be disciplined.
14:26about their water use, but it's a finite resource  and nobody wants to turn their tap on and have nothing come from it.  So I encourage  everybody to just be aware of good personal accountability when it comes to water use. It's so important.  It is, and honestly, if we could just realize that it's not all about  us, it's about everybody.
14:56You know, it's not just about me. It's not just about you. It's about everybody.  It's true.  We're all in this together.  All in this together when I,  um,  friends, you know, across the Great Plains and moving west that have had this abnormally period of dry years. And again, I'm grateful that I was raised in a home to practice  stewardship, picking up your trash.
15:26um minimizing waste,  food waste especially,  not letting the water run freely while you're brushing your teeth.  Aim small, miss small is something  I say often.  Every single person has the ability to make positive difference  and they're not hard. It's an act of thoughtfulness and self-discipline.
15:52Yes, for sure. um So  I had a question and then I forgot it because I was listening closely to what you were saying because that's what I do all the time.  Yes, you do. So the fire that uh blew up or showed up or whatever word you want to use  when you were in town the other day,  I'm assuming they got that at least  handled. Yeah, the National Guard.
16:22was deployed here to help. were air dropping water in some very hard to reach canyons  where there's hot spots. They're using thermal imaging.  I don't know that people realize that cedar trees,  which are the bane of our existence in Nebraska now, can hold heat for so long and have flare-ups literally for weeks or months after a fire. So they're working really hard on that and setting backfires to stop any forward advance. We have loss.
16:51structure loss and one home burned to the ground. And I actually know the woman who lost her home and she recently lost her husband. And bless her heart. She's handling it as well as could be expected. I'm very grateful for emergency responders who were able to advance enough to give proper evacuation notices and help people gather essentials and get them.
17:21So people, for instance, could move their camper or their boat or their horses, gather up your purses and wallets and clothes and had some time. So she was able to do that, but obviously left 95 % of her life at home and it's gone. And for the rallying of community and churches to help her and other people who were displaced, you know, there's not enough time in the day to share stories of the goodness of
17:50people. um You kind of, it's kind of fatigued, right, of having to  deploy so much goodness over and over and over again. But it's  what we're supposed to do for each other,  why these community organizations and efforts matter to help coordinate and organize, because it's not easy to figure out how to feed 200 firefighters by yourself. certainly is not. And the community has rallied and done so and given people given of their money when they can't.
18:18serve physically and given up their time, given their prayers and kindness. And so we'll be all right. um But again, it definitely illuminates why we have to have fire departments, why we need emergency responders and EMTs and why we need community organizers because, you know, the whole place would have burned up if we hadn't had it because there was nothing that was going to stop that monster in the winds that were blowing.
18:45It was the selfless giving of hundreds of people that stopped the advance of the fire, putting their own lives in jeopardy. um It's truly an amazing thing when you think about them all being volunteers.  Yeah, absolutely. um So fire season. um I feel like you have been talking to me about fire season  since we first talked a little over two years ago. Has it just been fire season for two years?
19:13You know, my friend James, the meteorologist says we just have to face the facts with climate changes.  You can call it what you want, that we are a wildfire state. And part of it is because we're actually so good at stewardship that we have a fuel load, which is your standing grasses and things. Part of it is because of letting some invasives get away, like the cedar trees and my messages.
19:38that Eastern red cedars are not your friend in Nebraska. First of all, they hog a lot of water. Oh, do they drink water? And second of all, they cause these tinderboxes to get worse  because they burn so hot  and the trees were exploding. They were exploding and then sending the embers straight into the air. And in the 40 mile an hour winds, the embers were then traveling a mile and then reigniting.
20:01So we're in wildfire season. We have been for a long time in this cycle of wildfire. We had a lot of fire in 2012 during a flash drought, but the fire risk didn't start till July. That's when things really dried up.  I think it's paramount that people recognize that in building a new home,  in renovating a home, in thinking about what kind of yard you want to have, that you need wildfire preparedness as part of what you're doing. That is our reality now because
20:29there are not enough volunteers to cover every need.  And you're gonna have to be able to try to defend your home a little bit yourself. That's just the reality. That is just how it is.  And it would serve everyone well to be aware of those things.  Well, I don't wanna give you more to do, ma'am, cause you are swamped. But maybe once graduation is over  and
20:58calving season is over.  I, if it were me, I would take some time and email a couple of realtors and mention that. Yeah.  Because I'm not sure realtors even really think about that. I agree. I agree and young homeowners and maybe if you've, and I hate to say it Mary, but the palisades  in California should have shown every American the fire can come into your town too. You're not safe just because you're in town. No.
21:27So you've got to think about it no matter where you live. This is not just for acreages and ranches and farms. This is for everybody. Everybody.  Yes. Part of the reason that I was so hot to trot, which is a really bad way to say that right now,  to get out of where we lived before we moved here is because our neighbor's house was literally three feet  from our house. Their outside wall was three feet  from our outside wall.
21:54And I had  nightmares about their house catching on fire and catching our house on fire or our house catching on fire and catching their house on fire. Because if one went up, the other one was going up. And I just, couldn't, I was like,  the next place we buy has to have room between homes.  And now it's like a quarter mile of room between homes. So I'm very happy about this.
22:20And it's a hard conversation because with this wildfire risk is also the wind. And the wind is our nemesis and it blows and blows and blows and that's why people want trees and shelter belts. But you're going to have to really be smart about how you put them together and how close you put it to your house.  absolutely.  So  you have a book  that you wrote for your daughter whose birthday is today. Happy 18th birthday, Maggie. Thank you. And it's called An Apple for Dapple.
22:50Yes.  So we had a pony. My folks purchased a pony for the ranch for the grandkids. And his name was Dapple, a little Dapple Grey pony. And when Maggie was a toddler,  before we moved home to the ranch, we were enjoying the fruits of our labors of my childhood with the planted apple orchard. And we pick apples. And then my mom said, you know, they say horses love apples. Do they really love apples? I never really fed my horses apples as a kid, but we
23:20When we're done picking all the apples we wanted, my mom went and got Dapple and tied him to the apple trees. And that pony went to town eating the apples that fell. Oh, he'd eat them till they'd think he'd be sick.  But he was the best cleanup in the late fall when the apples fell. He'd just eat them like it was going out of style. And Maggie, as a toddler, would love, I mean, she'd just giggle. I wish I had recorded it on video. She would pick up the apples and feed them to him and he'd snatch them.
23:49right out of her hands. So I had this idea that I wanted to write a book, a children's book, I still want to write,  and I came up with An Apple for Doppel.  And I wrote it. And when I wrote it, I wrote it as if Maggie was like Lucy's age, nine or 10.  And made the story work that way because I thought that the book would be for young readers  at school. I self-published it.  That was it.
24:17a learning experience. had to find an illustrator because I can't draw  and launched it  with a goal of Ag advocacy, sharing my love of reading with children, educating them. I got to read at a ton of schools. I love that. Kids always wished I brought DAPL with me.  bet.  And ultimately,
24:42Something that spoke to my heart at the time was the beginning of,  in our community,  a campaign called Little Feet Big Dreams, which was to start putting money away towards new school facilities  that were focused on the arts. And I believe writing is one of the arts. so I came up with this thought that if DAPL sold copies when I was able to cover my costs, that I could  use the proceeds.
25:08of any books to buy more books for other children who don't have access to books or to donate to different causes.  I don't talk about it a lot because I'm  an anonymous giver uh most of the time. And  it's just something I feel strongly about because I  didn't  ever want the attention to be on me, um but just on trying to do little pockets of good where I could.
25:37um So I just decided on a whim because I did the shirt campaign and we sent money to a bigger wildfire relief fund. But when I saw some of the first bills coming in the other night,  just in fuel costs alone for the trucks, I thought, you know, maybe we could  auction off a copy  and get enough interest I could write a check and pay for  some.
26:06tanks of fuel and I was overwhelmed. The woman who won the her final bid was $222, which I thought, a random, funny, crazy, wild number. And I want to talk just for a second about Liz, Liz from Ohio. She's a retired teacher and her classroom number was 222.
26:36So that was a number that was special to her.  And  she doesn't know me, and she doesn't know Nebraska. She loves red cattle. She raises a few Herefords now that she's retired. She lost her mother in December,  and she's just trying to put her own pockets of good out into the world.  it. So I was able to match her donation and take a nice check today, and it just,  well, was special because it's Maggie's birthday. Yeah, that too.
27:06And I couldn't have done that without the overwhelming support of people buying copies of my book from me for the last,  gosh, it's been 14 years.  I'm able to save those funds and then do these pockets of  good throughout the year. it just makes my heart happy when I can help.  yet it felt like, it felt  hard because it took $500 in there with me today. And like, that's not even enough to fill a semi.
27:35truck with one tank of  diesel. But I said, like the starfish story, it's money they didn't have before I came in here.  my mom says, every little bit helps.  So proud of you for doing that. Thank you.  You are a fabulous person. You know this, right?  I have  moments  of thinking, am I doing enough?
28:04em using my voice  the way I should.  And  also emotional just because I hate that we have so much need right now. Like I said to the girls when I took the money in, like we just have a few normal days where there's no national crisis happening.  That would be a novel concept, wouldn't it?  Yeah. em
28:32It would just be lovely because everyone's just so fatigued and stuff right now. So.  Yes, everyone, even our little people are tired because we're tired and it's rubbing off on them.  Can I just share another story from this week  to speak to someone that I just deeply admire and respect with my daughter's softball coach. He is such a humble man. He's fighting cancer, which is known by everyone, but he's managing it. He's persevering.
29:01And he's pushing through his chemo to coach these little girls in softball and his own, like they had to evacuate too, right? To get out of the way, like  his wife and he kept telling their little girl at softball practice during the fire, here's the smoke billowing in the background. em It's not because our house is going to burn down, it's we're just out of the way. So the emergency workers don't need to worry about us. They can just focus on the fire and little girl.
29:27struggling with the emotions and fear. And I mean, they're all just caught up looking at the smoke and stuff. And also like recognizing for our little people, they don't miss a thing, but also knew that keeping them busy and focused on playing softball was a really appropriate distraction from the scary stuff. So I'm just so grateful for him and his family and their home is okay. um For people to remember that.
29:54are little people that are always watching and listening and they're not stupid. It's this fine balance of helping them be aware  enough that's age appropriate, but also protecting them in their innocence as much as possible.  Yes.  And  it's a fine line. Yeah, it is not easy at all. And mine had a
30:22field trip today and they were going to the tree nursery and talk about Arbor Day and all of that. And I thought that was a great needed also busy distraction, something different to do, get them out of town for a little bit. Yeah, I was going to ask you, it's probably weird for what this podcast is, but I was going to ask anyway, how has Lucy been dealing with her sister doing all these
30:49fabulous things and getting ready to go to college and stuff because that's got to be kind of weird for her. It is and she's at that tender  age where again her awareness is really  waking up  and  there have been plenty of tough moments of late and because I can see the wheels turning  and we have tried very hard in our home  to
31:19say that no topic is off-limit. We don't dismiss or diminish someone's feelings. say feelings aren't facts. However, they are your feelings and you are entitled to them, even if they're not correct, and then we'll deal with it. Do  not get some idea that I get it right all the time because I don't. So I'm trying very hard to pay attention. Lucy is a feeler. She feels everything. I'm trying to pay attention,  and we did that, but we had a particularly hard moment  at Easter.
31:49where the awake, and I was a first born, so I was the first one to leave. I never ever thought about how my little siblings were feeling about anything, where she had this conscientious.
32:05She said out loud, oh oh, Maggie's going to college and holidays happen while she's at college.  Lucy's so big in family gatherings, like being together at the table and stuff. And she said,  does  that mean that Maggie gets to decide if she spends her holidays with us? Maggie wasn't present for this. um
32:33And I was trying not to have an emotional response to that because I didn't want her to feel afraid that her sister wouldn't choose. And I had to be practical and say, yes, it's true, holidays happen while she's at college. And we have created a home that is always warm and welcoming so that Maggie, of course, would want to spend her holidays here because her mama makes the best whatever I said.
33:01it will be her decision and we will always just be so happy when she can spend her holidays with us. it  was still, but like then it was, but what if she doesn't?  And I said, well, then we'll go to her and hunt her down.  But not- We'll make her do all the cooking. Yes. um So yes, this awareness of what kind of change is coming is there. And I do not want to diminish or dismiss it.
33:33though I can't relate very well because I didn't go through it.  Mm-hmm.  No, I was just thinking about Lucy yesterday because I know  you and I talk a lot because we talk on the other podcast and you're my friend  and I've been listening to you talk about Maggie's things a lot  and  you're supposed to and that's totally fine but I was like I wonder how little sis is doing with all this. Yeah, little sis will have  so much fun this summer. We're gonna be able to focus on
34:03her activities and big sister being present for them for some new things. She's trying like playing softball.  yet I know it's going to be rough  because there's such an age difference that Maggie is Lucy's second mother. I mean, she just is and yet they share everything. em And so, yes.
34:33It's the whole thing. And my husband also is an oldest, so he doesn't really have experience. I was close in age with my younger siblings. I mean, they flew the coop not long after me. And I think the second big piece that's coming for me is finding my newer adjusted identity also after the roles.
35:00I've played change again.  Yep. And I guess it isn't weird to ask about this because everybody has similarities and  anyone who's a mother is going to go through this.  know, being a mother is  something I always wanted to do. Yeah. And being an involved mom who had my kids
35:29in service organizations and participate in lots of things  was important to me. I thought it was important to trying to be a well-rounded person. I am not a helicopter mom. I'm not their problem solver. I oh am an assistant when needed. um She's kept me very busy because she has been a very involved student by choice. And so yeah, there is going to be a period of adjustment where I
35:59I  get to shift the time I gave to that thing  to something else. Yes, some of it will be because I'm going to do a lot of the same things with Lucy in her own unique flair, but some of it isn't, we're not there yet because Lucy's so much younger.  That it will be a period of adjustment for me in particular, not the husband quite so much though he'll have some. um
36:27do know there are lot of women who have struggled in this season of life.  Why did it always hit two during like paramenopause or menopause, which probably compounds it,  but for every woman out there who has been a mom, there is a shift and change in your roles. And if you deny it or you don't  maybe get help through it, if you're not coping very well, I can see why marriages struggle, friendships struggle, work struggles, your health.
36:58Um, it's a huge deal and we don't, I don't know that we talk enough about it and I have more compassion for my mother, the older I get about how her rules adjusted. Cause she was very much the same serving, giving, volunteering, helping, you know, going to the field trips and  making the cookies and different things. And that like, who am I if I'm not mom, who am I? Because.
37:28when you're in the trenches of motherhood, it does feel like your identity and whether that's right or wrong we can debate, but a lot of moms found themselves in places where there wasn't much left over time for them.  And then suddenly they had this time and they're like, but I don't know who I am. I don't know what I even like to do. What do I like to do that's just for me? And is that selfish to take that time?  And that's why I have two podcasts, Leo.
37:57You've channeled it for the good,  which is what I hope to do.  Yes.  And you dipped your feet in the public speaking world this year, so maybe you'll keep doing that too. Yeah. I hope so. And I hope and I believe my daughter knows that I'm always a phone caller text away and that I will be moming her in the appropriate sense from
38:26250 miles away. I think she'll come home when she can because she loves her little sister and wants to watch her from the bleachers like her little sister has always done for her.  So I hope so. I'm very close to my nephews as well who are both flying the coop and so it'll be a big period of change for my sister as well. It'll be an empty nester. So I look forward to getting to
38:56having some time, I've just
38:59I've just been in this role for 18 years today.  Darling,  I know.
39:08Believe me, I know.  And  I wasn't gonna cry either, but here we go. The thing is you  get adjusted to it. I'm not kidding. um Talked to my daughter the other day  and she just called because we hadn't talked in a week or two. And I thought that was really sweet. And then she sent me a tech, a instant message or whatever they're called on Facebook.  And she was like, I wrote this thing. I'm thinking about posting online. Can you?
39:37read it and let me know what you think. And my heart just went, yes. Oh, she loves her mama. And then she deleted it because we decided she hated it because I didn't get the time. Oh, sweetheart. I was like, well, crap, I really would have liked to have seen what you wrote, but that's fine. Oh, she's decided she's going to do an art piece to represent what she wanted to say instead.
40:07And the other thing is my mom is 79 years old and she still is moming me in the appropriate ways. So it never ends.  And it's just, I think it's the emotion today,  is it just went so fast.  Yep. It just went so fast.  The good news is it's not over. It's not.  It's just different.  It's just different.
40:37And you  may be lucky enough to have grandbabies someday.  I'm not going to have biological grandbabies. My  kids do not want babies.  And I think it's because of their youngest brother. I think because they were all  old enough to remember the sleepless nights, they don't want to do it.
41:04So,  gosh, that's  a whole thing thinking of that. My mother transitioned into being a fantastic grandma, it was easy, like she was made for that and she's such a fantastic grandma. And I'm  so grateful. um I know, like women just, it's just hard for us to get out of our own way sometimes and let things be.
41:34knowing there's just, there is enough goodness to go around. There is enough need and want to go around and hobbies and interests and work, careers, whatever you want it to be. There is enough, you don't need to  worry about that, but you do need to be open, you have to open your heart and your mind, which is very hard to do when you're fragile, like I am today. Cause you can't imagine that change.
42:01Yep, but you've got people rooting for you and I'm one of them.  Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. um So  we got a little bit off topic, but I feel like a lot of people, women especially, are going through this right now. So why not put it out there? Yes.  People can find you at Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook and Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Instagram.  And they can find you and I at
42:29Britain Grace and the Heartland Women in Agriculture podcast.  And people can find me at a Tiny Homestead podcast.  And that's all I got. Thank you for taking the time to visit with me. Yes, and keep up the good work. Amazing, important work.  And it has just been the joy of my year to join you in helping elevate these stories of amazing women from across  this great country. So many stories to be shared will never run out of stories to share.
42:58I'm so grateful that you asked me.  I'm so grateful to have made a new friend in you.  Like this. And I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I hope Maggie's birthday party is amazing. Oh, we're having Shirley temples in Lasagna. You just can't beat that.  Oh,  man, if I could teleport, I'd be there. Anytime. There's always an extra  space for you. And it rained when we had her for three days. And so she even said, I'd be just fine with getting.
43:27lots of rain,  if we could be blessed with some rain, that would be amazing. She'd love to have a campfire. Most of my girls love roasting marshmallows and I'm like, if we get three days of rain, we can.  I appreciate my kids are em able to show gratitude for like just the  the smallest trivial things. They're very sentimental like that. so yeah, our special memories are  a lot of times at the campfire. So we'd love some rain so we could have a campfire.
43:56I'd love some rain for you for many, many reasons, the least of which is a campfire.  you. But anyway, please just soak it all up and enjoy it. And  don't cry in front of Maggie if you can help it. Cry with Matt. Yes. Thank you. Good advice. I appreciate that very much. Because otherwise she's going to think that you're miserable and you're not miserable. You are just stretching. I'm just stretching. Yes. And stretching is painful sometimes.
44:26Damn right.  All right. Thank you so much for your time, Leah. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mary.
 

The Tiny Life with Ryan Mitchell

Today I'm talking with Ryan at The Tiny Life. Ryan's newest book - Living Off Grid: 50 Steps to Unplug, Become Self-Sufficient, and Build the Homestead of Your Dreams
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Ryan Mitchell at the Tiny Life in the Carolinas. Good afternoon, Ryan. How are you?  Good. Thanks for having me.  Oh, you're welcome. I'm  so thrilled to get a chance to talk to you because I had
00:58Sent an email to you, I think a year and a half ago, and I didn't hear anything back. And then your person, because you have people, I don't have people. Yeah, there's a few of us. Your person emailed me and reached out and I was like, yes, finally I get to talk to you. Yeah. All right. So how is the weather where you are? It's good. Yeah. So I'm located in the, I say the Carolinas. So we are, my tiny house is in
01:27North Carolina and we moved on to a homestead about a little less than a year ago. ah And then I live with my girlfriend in South Carolina. And so we're kind of gearing up the homestead to make the transition over to that. So that's why I kind of say, you know, I have one foot in both places right now as we make that transition. How far is it from where your girlfriend is to the tiny home?  About 30 minutes.
01:55Oh, so close. You're real. Yeah. Yeah. And I was living, you know, obviously full time  in the tiny house when I met her. And then, you know, when we decided that uh we were going to, you know, continue the relationship and it kind of went to the next level and everything  that I was probably moving in with her because she had  her  two dogs, a Liz, two lizards, a spider and a
02:22a snake, that was not going to fit into the tiny house at all. has a full house of critters.  It sure does. Well, I'm in Minnesota and I'm going to tell you right now, it's hotter than I would like it to be for April 22nd. Yes, yes. It is, I think it's 77 outside right now. And thank God there's a breeze because if there wasn't, it would be disgusting already because  Minnesota is really weird. You would think that 77 would just feel good.
02:52It doesn't, it feels hot in April.
02:57So, but at least it's not snowing. Yeah. Cause it could be doing that too. And I'd rather have this than snow cause I'm over it. It was a very,  it was a very moderate winter, but it seemed like a very long winter.  I'm  good on snow for the season.  Um, so I have a quick question about  where your, um, your tiny house is located. Is, is stuff has, has stuff been greened up for you?
03:26for weeks now because you're so far south.
03:30Sorry, ask that question one more time. Has stuff been green up? how are the trees leaving out? Yeah, like in the last two weeks, things have really kind of taken off. You know, we've had some warmer days, some really nice days, like low humidity, which is  not typical for us.  So yeah, things are starting to green up.  We just had our last frost date a couple days ago. So, you know, we're busy in the garden and things like that. m Get ready for spring and summer.
04:00We have another month before our last frost date. But that doesn't stop the greenhouse from getting planted. That's true. Yeah, we have  that benefit of  long growing seasons. if you're really on  the spot, can sometimes cram two  rounds of crops.  And if  you're choosing shorter varieties that
04:28you know, take a little bit less time to come to maturity. then, you know, during the winter, you have quite a few options if you have a greenhouse or you're going to do, you know, low tunnels or something like that. Mm hmm. Yep. We're starting a brand new to us variety of watermelon this year. We've never done it before. It's called a mini me and personal size watermelon. It's got a 60 day maturity.
04:58Wow. Time frame. And my husband planted them,  I want to say two weekends ago.  And we have sprouts already and I'm so excited to see how these do because growing the big watermelons in Minnesota does not work very well because our growing season is so short. Yeah. Yeah. So hoping to have watermelons in  end of June, first part of July.
05:26Excited so excited because I love love love watermelon and if they do well I want to grow a bunch of them again next year so we can sell them at the first farmers market in June. We'll plan.  I've never had much luck with any melons because the squirrels always get at them before they're ready and it always seems like I'm like, okay, I'm gonna pick it  one more day and we one more day on the vine and then I'll pick it and then that night something gets every time.
05:53Huh, we,  it's weird, we don't have a lot of squirrels on our property. I don't know why, I think I've seen two in five years. Oh wow. So they just,  don't think they have a food source that is a natural food source for them, so they just don't live here. And we're surrounded by corn fields and soybean fields and alfalfa fields, and I don't think that squirrels are very happy with that,  so.
06:22All right, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, Ryan. Sure.  So my name is Ryan Mitchell.  I run the tiny life dot com and we focus on a simple living in kind of three different lenses.  The first one is tiny houses.  So, you know, small homes. uh Typically for one person, you're looking at two to three hundred square feet.
06:47You know for a family, a small family, you might be looking at thousand, fifteen hundred, just depending on your needs, things like that. Then minimalism, which is basically, you know, thinking intentionally about the way that you live and your interaction with consumerism, what you buy, and just, you know, making sure that the things you own don't start to own you and just being, you know, kind of crafting that intentional life around what's important to you.
07:16And the last one is home setting home setting, obviously, you know, very familiar to you. Uh, and that's a, a newer  kind of park tour or website we've been doing for about two years now.  Uh, but it's not new to me. I've been, you know, growing food, chickens, quails, bees, you, you name it,  um,  for  at  least a decade, um, if not more. Uh, so.
07:42Yeah, we kind of focus on those three topics at the website. um, you know, why I'm speaking to you today is because we have a new book coming out. It's called living off the grid, 50 steps to unplug, become self-sufficient and build the home set of your dreams. And that basically was the book that I wish I had when I was kind of, uh, you know, going through my own journey, uh, with a lot of like practical steps, uh, of how to think about how to develop a plan.
08:12how to make a homestead that's right for you,  and not just kind of adopting someone else's pre-packaged plan of or definition of what it means to be a homesteader. So yeah, that's kind of a little bit about me and our background.  Awesome. So I have to ask you, how do you define homesteading? And I will tell you how I define it first, and then you can tell me if you think it's accurate.  I think that homesteading is a  lifestyle choice
08:41It is not owning 100 cows and 100 acres of land. How do you define homesteading? Yeah,  I think for me,  I do this also with a tiny house. I don't get too dogmatic about the number of square feet. You some people get very firm about like, it has to be under a certain square footage.  And I think with homesteading, um what's important is  coming up with your own definition.
09:08definition and you know kind of defining that path for yourself.  So for me,  what my kind of personal definition is, is just thinking about ways that you  rely on external systems that could be the grid, that could be food systems,  that could be the store,  you know, different things like that, entertainment, all that kind of stuff.  And,  you know, thinking about those kind of points of weakness  or
09:37Kind critical areas that  you maybe rely a little too heavily on and then trying to shore those up trying to replace some of those or bring those a little bit closer to you and that could be as much as like bringing, you know, getting off the grid,  bring solar to your home set and doing all that kind of stuff. It could be  growing your own food. It could be, you know, having a cow or two. It could be a whole, you know, herd of cattle or it could just be working with uh
10:05the rancher down the street to buy,  you know, half a cow  and put that away in your freezer. So,  um,  yeah, in the book, I kind of walked through some thought exercises about like how people can think about this. And, and the thing that I've just seen over the years,  time and time again, is that people tend to say like, okay, in my head, home setting is this,  and it's usually someone else's definition.  And they adopt it  as almost like,
10:36The rule and there there is no rules right like you can make this lifestyle whatever you want it to be and then they they tend to back themselves into a corner and figure out that oh don't really want this they'll get you know 10 20 30 50 100 cattle and then realize like oh I can never leave this house because I always have to be watching the cattle or milking the cows or.
11:02or whatever the daily chores are constantly and I can never go on a vacation.  So yeah, that's why I've always kind of said like, it's important to sit down and define your own definition. Yep,  absolutely. I just, it's so funny because I was just interviewed by Cody Hanner at the Homestead Education Podcast  and I just heard it today. I was interviewed by her three weeks ago, I think it was, and  she was asking,
11:32me about how we got started. And I was like, the honest answer is I just needed quiet. I just needed to not live in town anymore.  Yeah. And we started at 50 and my husband and I are 56 now. We bought our homestead when we were 50.  And she said, I love that the first thing you answered with is that you started, you bought your homestead when you were 50  because you,
11:58doesn't matter how old you are, if you are sound of body and mind,  you can make it go. And I was like, yes, you can. I said, just realize that  sound of body may be a little less  definitive than it used to be. And she laughed. So yeah. And as for the tiny house thing, I used to refer to the old house as a tiny house.  was a three bedroom, one bathroom home on a 10th of an acre in town.  And the realtor
12:27listing said that it was 850 square feet. And I believe it because I raised four kids in that house with my husband. That's tiny house for a family of six. Yes, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And my husband was very taken with the idea of actual tiny houses. When we got old and our kids were out of our small house and I was just like, no freaking way. Yeah. No.
12:55You value your quiet, I value my quiet and us being literally in the same space all the time will have us divorced in a year.  So instead of doing that, we bought a three acre place with a 1400 square foot house on it. big.  So it's all how you look at it. It's all what you need to be happy.  Agreed.
13:23So having said all that, I have a question about your tiny house. house. How big is it? So my tiny house is 149 square feet and then a sleeping loft. Okay. And is it on an acre? Is it on a couple of acres? So it's on a friend's property and that's 20 acres.
13:51Okay.  It's gorgeous woods  and I got extremely lucky because it's in a this, this acreage is in the middle  of the city. like I would, you know, be, you know, doing just life and work and all that kind of stuff in the city. And then I would come home ah to my tiny house  and it was just on this acreage  that has this pond on it that
14:19like is a spitting image of Walden Pond. And so it was like this little oasis in the city. And it was wonderful to live in. does it feel like camping when you're there? Or does it feel like home? I mean, I think initially it did kind of feel like camping. And also it was a long journey for me to get there. You know, I started back in 2009.
14:48Uh, in the, when kind of the downturn happened and I  had made a decision like, I tell me that you change because I was just starting my career back then  and  the company that I was  working for closed and I was only six months into my career and I was already getting laid off with the whole, you everyone else in the company. was like, um,  maybe this wasn't the bill of goods that I was sold  when I was signed up for  college and all that kind of stuff. So.
15:18I did some thinking about it and I worked a long time and in 2012 I moved into it. And so yeah, I did feel a little bit like camping in beginning. But then I kind of settled in and what I realized was it was probably one of the more comfortable homes that I've ever lived in because it was designed for me. Traditional homes are designed to maximize for resale value, not for
15:46people or not for families. They're  a asset. They're not a home, which is a really sad state of affairs. But I also understand why, you know, like these homes are expensive. They're usually people's largest asset that they own.  So they have to be able to cash out at some point in the future  for, you know, their needs, their retirement, things like that. uh But  yeah, once I kind of settled in  and got comfortable in it,
16:15It definitely  felt like a regular house. uh I was also younger  and  was out and active and doing things.  At that time I owned a business, so I was going to that physical location  most days of the week  while building up that business. uh It was just a nice little respite away from the big city.
16:43Yeah, that's how I felt  when we moved because I had just had it with all the noise and the church bells and the train that went through town daily. All the noise was driving me insane. And when we moved here, we live on a pretty busy road because it goes from one town to another and the semis go by a lot because, you know, spring season they're hauling tractors and in the fall season they're hauling corn.
17:12But you get used to that. That's part of it. But I'm not,  I'm not hearing the Catholic Church's bells toll three, four times a day. I'm not hearing cars go speeding up my road. I'm not hearing  all the things that drove me crazy.  it,  we basically bought the place that we wanted, that we really, really wanted.  And
17:39It feels like we don't ever want to go on vacation because living here feels like vacation, even though we have chickens and cats and a dog and a big garden. So whatever makes you happy is what you need to do. And as I've said quite a few times on my podcast, not everybody is cut out to live in the middle of the cornfields and alfalfa fields and soybean fields.
18:08There are a lot of people who really love living in the city. And if that's what floats your boat,  do that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You  know, we are our South Carolina home is right next to the  the big city that we live nearby.  And  we love both places. We have family here.  So, you know, this is a convenient place close to all of our family. And then we also really love the mountain.
18:38um And  that's this nice little quiet  place that  is away from everything. um And so that...
18:50that dichotomy or that juxtaposition, I guess you could say  of the big city, kind of the city house and the mountain house has been really nice.  um,  and you can do  home setting and  all those kinds of things going off grid, even in, you know, more urban locations or suburban, because, uh, getting back to  the earlier point of like make, define a home setting for the way that you want it to be. If
19:20If you do want to be very social and  have things nearby, like lots of restaurants and concerts or whatever your thing is,  you can  have your cake and eat it too. You can live in  a place that's a little bit closer to town. You may have some smaller acreage. You may uh be just working on a patio out of like container gardening.
19:47But you may be to do other things. So everything's a give and take and you kind of think about it that way. Yep, absolutely. When we lived in town, we had four chickens in a garden shed. We made it into a chicken coop.  And we had, I don't know,  I would say 50 by 20 square feet of garden in the backyard. That was it. Yeah. And we had more than most people in our neighborhood. So that was great. And we grew lots and lots of really good produce.
20:16and shared it with the neighbors. And it was wonderful, but I just didn't want to be in town anymore. we decided to jump in 2020 and we're not sorry that we did it. So you said you're getting into homesteading. So what are you doing? What have you started doing for homesteading? Yeah. So I'm kind of bringing it more as like we're getting back to homesteading.
20:45Um, when I  lived before the  tiny house,  you say I had a big garden. had like a third of an acre garden in ground  and  bees and chickens and quail,  um,  and  doing a few other things like that, canning, all that kind of stuff. And at that time, uh, I was at least part of it. I was in an apartment, so I was able to do all that at a community garden.
21:15And, uh you know,  so I didn't even have to have the land and the cost was like 150 bucks a year to me  to just kind of get access to that. And then you had community alongside of it and, you know, fun activities to do and people to talk to and whatever. uh But then  now  we're kind of thinking about,  OK, you know, what are the things that  we want to do right now  while we are?
21:42kind of in two places, you know, there's certain practicalities like we're likely not going to be able to have livestock if we have to be away for a couple weeks at a time, let's just say. um But we could, you know, have a garden, especially raised beds where we kind of do heavy mulching and things like that.  We could have bees, we can do solar, you know, there's certain things that  are practical there. um So
22:11I think right now we kind of have developed a loose plan. We've gone on the land,  we've got the  house kind set up. One of the first things I did was build out a workshop to kind of be the jumping off point to  do all the other things. you know, having a place to build stuff, the materials on hand, the tools on hand.  in the book I talk about kind of orders of operation  when it comes to home setting and
22:40Workshop is kind of a key step after you've got your basic necessities nailed down like your shelter your water your sewage things electricity things like that So now that we have the workshop now, we're kind of We've been taking a little bit of time to kind of learn the land through the different seasons and That's been nice to one just enjoy the land. But then to we've learned a lot about okay, you know, it's
23:09When it rains heavy, it pulls here.  When it gets a little cold, you have these cold wells and these little spots.  The animals um that are around kind of come from this direction. So maybe we're not going to clear that way so we can leave their habitat. Things like that. The sun  angles and the shadows and all that kind of stuff that you learn throughout the year.
23:35So we're kind of coming to an end of just like learning the land a little bit. And now we're setting plans for the next things, mainly as the garden. We had to do some infrastructure work and we're still working on that. Just getting water where we want it to, power where we want it to be on the house. We took down an old barn just a couple of weeks ago so that we could put our kind of large garden.
24:05Uh, area we're going to do all raised beds  and  put our, our trees and our,  uh, beehives in it and then kind of fence the whole thing. with some,  uh, electric fence, because we have  several bears on property.  you know,  they love to munch on those,  uh, you know, you have to watch out for bears knocking over your hives to get the honey and things like that. So yeah, that's been kind of  the workflow so far is getting on the land.
24:35getting a few key things established, learning it, and then setting plans for what's next. That is so exciting. I'm listening to you and you have just got to be chomping at the bit to see how this goes.  Yeah, yeah. There's a long list. Well, I sat down  like a year ago and just like made a list of like, okay, these are all the things that I want to get done. And they were kind of the smaller steps in between.
25:03And then I ordered them and then I assigned dollar values because, you know, certain things cost, you know, for materials or whatever. And  I was like, oh, okay, I'm definitely not going to be doing this and all in the next year.  So how do I want to go about this? And so just kind of thinking through all the steps um was really exciting. And  also, you know, it allowed me to kind of prioritize things um and kind of paint that vision too.
25:33Yeah, I've said a lot of times on the podcast, start small, dream big.  And I stand by it because unless you are a millionaire, you can't do all the things all at once.  It's not affordable. Well, and even if you are a millionaire, like it takes time. It's all going to take time. Like there's a lot of work. There's a lot of moving pieces.  you know, ah
25:59I'm not going say having money is a bad thing, but like it also isn't the panacea for um kind of standing up a homestead that it could be. There's still a lot of work, time, effort and planning.  And I think frankly, you know, being a little bit more budget conscious, thinking about your dollars and things like that,  it slows you down just enough to make sure that you don't make any critical mistakes and you really think through your decisions.  I think that's an important part um that
26:29kind in the book I laid out some of the  kind of the common mistakes I see people make in their journeys. And  so yeah, I think it's just important to kind of take your time with it for sure. Start small, 100%. When I that the community garden for many years, I ran myself.  I was kind of like the head person once  I got kind of involved with it. And  every year I would have  probably like
26:5720 to 30 new gardeners come in and they always had big aspirations.  And I would always kind of coach them. like, okay, let's start small. Let's give you a hundred square feet. Let's start there.  And,  and you know, sometimes they would push back us like trust, know, just trust the process here. When it's August and it's miserable out and you have a bunch of weeds coming in, like you want it to be approachable and practical so that you're not just hating life as you're, you know, trying to weed.
27:26way more garden than you're used to. And every time it's worked out for them and they agreed in the end. And those who didn't heed the advice always ended up with a garden full of weeds that they couldn't keep up with. yeah, small, starting that way is definitely the way to go, even if you're experienced. Yes, exactly. And I'm going to use chickens as an example.
27:55If my husband had his way, we would have 200 chickens. He learned after we got up to about 36 chickens that having about 14 to 15 is a good number because there's enough eggs for us and there's enough eggs to sell to the neighbors in the farm stand. Yeah. Because 150 to 200 chickens, that's a lot of chicken coop cleaning out to do every week. Yeah.
28:25Yeah.  And you need to have an outlet for those eggs, right? Like you're not going to,  if you never,  if you haven't had a business, even a small side kind of thing, uh, selling eggs, like you're not going to go from zero to a hundred as much as you want. Um, and unless, I don't know, unless you just have a particularly good location or you're really tapping in heavily into  farmers markets, but there's probably already people there selling kind of the same goods that you have.  yeah.  Um,
28:55I think the most I ever had was about 15 chickens and  that was about right  for us at the time. Yeah.  And  honestly,  we did have, I think it was two, I  think it was last spring. I think we had 26 chickens  and now we're down to 14.  That's because chickens get um eaten by raccoons. Yeah.
29:24Or they just get sick without any notice, keel over and die. So old, you know, all those things. Absolutely. Yep. So if I was going to give anybody advice and I shouldn't, cause I don't know anything, I know enough to be dangerous, but if I was going to give people advice about chickens, I would say start with like five and see how it goes. And if you actually like taking care of them and then you can always add more.
29:54Yeah. So, so I try to keep these to half an hour, but I do have one last question.  How long did it take you to write your book and get it published? Let's  see. So this book, I had already had a publisher lined up and basically we worked with  Prince and Press  to kind of come up with a book concept. They wanted to be in this space.
30:23They liked my writing because they saw it through the website, the timeline.com. uh, so I've always been fortunate to always have a publisher and not have to like shop a book around. So I've never actually done that before, but, uh, so I had that on my side and then I focused on it for, uh, about six months. It was basically every single weekend, uh, because I work, you know, like, um, you know,
30:51Part of my own stuff consulting and then like a day job too. So I was doing a weekend and nights and things like that. So yeah, about six months of nights and weekends. Okay. So not, not forever, but it definitely took some time. Yeah. I mean, uh, this is probably one of my, I don't know. This is I think 60,000 words. So it was about middle of the road for my books and um,
31:19He's this is my ninth book  and yeah, it's a lot of words and then you have to edit it too. So we spent, you know, three months editing as well  on top of that. then, you know, kind of going to press and all that kind of stuff.  yeah, I mean, I always enjoyed the process. It's something that I  found that I really enjoy through the years,  the tiny life and through all the other books I've written as well.  And I was really excited to work on this one because it was
31:49Like said, the book that I wish I had handed to me when I first started. I'm sure people are going to appreciate everything in it because if it was the book you wanted, it's the book they probably want now. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Ryan, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you? Yeah. So I appreciate the time and the conversation. For those who are interested, we're at thetinylife.com.
32:17And  in the store, you can find a link to the book as well.  But the book is available at your local bookstores,  all major retailers online,  and a bunch of indie kind of mom and pop bookstores in  stores as well. The title is called Living Off the Grid by Ryan Mitchell.  And I appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Mary. Are you on social media anywhere? Oh, we have presence there.
32:46We don't do a ton of social media anymore. We mainly focus on the website and our email So if people want to kind of like really stay in touch with us  I would encourage them to you know Just go to the website sign up with our newsletter and we'll kind of keep you in the loop on stuff  All right fabulous  as always people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast calm  Ryan. This was really fun. Thanks so much. Thank you. Have a great day
 
 

Bauer Family Farms

Today I'm talking with Leah at Bauer Family Farms. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You'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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Leah Bauer at Bauer Family Farms in  Faribault, Minnesota.  Good afternoon, Leah. How are you? Doing well. I got most of my chores out of the way, so I'm...
00:56sitting pretty with a nice coffee in my house and ready to chit chat about farm life.  Good.  And normally I would say, how's the weather? But you and I both know it is a gloriously beautiful day in Minnesota today.  Compared to yesterday, yes.  Yeah. And Saturday, Saturday, we got snow in the morning. Right. It was enough to to build up on the grass where we were at. We're we just had unhooked our our plow and everything and got it put away for the
01:26spring, which those couple of 80 degree days really, really had me going for a second there. Yeah. And I just said that wrong Sunday. It was yesterday morning. I'm not quite with it. Oh, you're right. Yeah. It was yesterday morning because I was up at five and at 515, I went out on the porch with my coffee and looked outside and I was like, I will be damned. It's snowing big white feathery flakes. Right. Which is not what you want to see once you've already had what? Five 80 degree days? Yeah.
01:55Yeah, it's  spring in Minnesota. Doesn't know what it's doing.  Oh,  it's coming. It's all going to be okay. Our rhubarb is leafing. Our tree line is leafing. My peonies are  up. They haven't budded yet. Thank God, because they'd be  useless if they had, because the snow would have killed them. We have um tulips up with buds on them. They haven't opened yet. um
02:24The tree has not bloomed yet. The apple trees have not bloomed yet. So that's good news too. We have about  500 cloves of garlic planted that are, I think like eight inches tall already. Wow. I know I'm so excited. We started,  I think in 2023, we planted 80 cloves from a neighbor  and the plan was to just  multiply it, you know, cause garlic is
02:50It's one of those things that if you plant one, then you usually get five to eight cloves back at the end of the season. Oh yeah. And so started with 80 and then replanted everything. And now we've got 500. So when we harvest, we should have 3000 or 4000 cloves to plant again at the end of this year. I am so jealous because we can't grow garlic here to save our lives. The dirt's too heavy, too black. You have more of a clay soil.
03:20Yes.  Yes, we do. That sucks. Garlic likes  soft soil, kind of a loamy almost so that it has room to expand. Yeah, I asked my husband if we should just put in a raised bed and, you know, make the soil what the garlic would like. And he said, yeah, we could do that. And we haven't done it yet.  It's easy to to get all of the dreams together.
03:47But then once it actually comes to putting the supplies together, that's a different story. Well, we're just not sure that we need to grow garlic because lots of people grow garlic in Minnesota.  And he really loves growing tomatoes, so he puts all his focus on tomatoes.
04:06I think  it was 2024 that  we did a ton of tomatoes  and I still have some in the freezer. We just,  we don't need a ton of them. And some other family in Wasika actually grows a greenhouse load of them. So they  cover us for that and we're going to stick with garlic, I think. It's lot of fun. Yeah. And garlic is like God's gift to cooking. So keep growing garlic, please.
04:35Yes, absolutely. We're hoping to put it in the farm stand if we get any  smaller heads that aren't suitable for planting at the end of this year. Yes. So we kind of jumped the gun here.  How about you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to be farming and what you do? Right. So we  just kind of started up the farm and the farm page this year, but I do have  a rural
05:05background and grew up out in the country.  Always had chickens when I was younger, but never really  cattle or  any other types of poultry or pork. ah So we're just really getting into it again, after a  few years hiatus  and  jumping in with both feet, you know, starting  chickens again, I have about 125 egg laying chickens.
05:34Very nice.  And I have  six New Zealand doe rabbits  and one buck. And we're hoping to get some quail eggs in the incubator soon, along with  hopefully doing cut flowers for the farm stand  and lots of vegetables.  I love a big garden and I do a lot of canning myself. And so most of it's for my own shelves. But I'm hoping to get my cottage license here soon and I'll be able to sell  my canned goods.
06:04Yes, do that. Cause I think it's still free. Oh yeah. To get the cottage license. It's  I've from  the women around me that have applied and gotten approved. said that the process is fairly easy.  It's super easy. have to renew mine and basically the website has a bunch of information you read through it. And then there's a  quiz. It's like 10 questions and you have to get seven or eight correct. Right.
06:33I mean, it almost sounds too easy. Anybody could do it, but maybe that's the point. Yes. Yes. And the thing is, if you don't love to cook, you're not going to bother to get your cottage registration. So I think it's fine. But yes, we we have a farm stand on our place too. And my intention over the next month or so is to start cooking some start cooking, start baking some cookies and get them packaged up and out there because
06:59People are stopping in for eggs anyway. And if there's like a little box of six cookies out there for eight bucks, maybe they'll buy them. Who knows? Oh yeah. I'm pretty terrible at the impulse buys. And so that would get me a hundred percent. Yes. And my cookies are way better than store-bought cookies. I promise. That rings true for, I think, at least 99 % of farm goods.
07:27Why buy it in the store when your neighbor can make it and you can barter for it or...  And it doesn't have preservatives in it. You're right. Exactly. Five ingredients compared to a paragraph. Yes. And thank God for that because the labels would be impossible to create. So  our neighbor, um the lady that I do the farm stand with, her name is Summer and her cottage name is Summer Flowers. It's kind of a play on words.
07:57Cute. so she does all of the cottage baking and she is incredible at it. I mean, she's she truly has a gift. I'm looking at uh jalapeno cheddar and cinnamon raisin loaves right now that I snagged  from the weekend.  And so she does a lot of  the cottage baking and I am going to supply cut flowers, fresh produce  and farm fresh eggs at the farm stand. So it's kind of a
08:27oh co-operation with the farm stand. But it's been a lot of fun so far. We've only been open, I think, three weekends now on Saturdays and Sundays.  Nice. So do you get a lot of traffic in there? Yes. They  have a gorgeous property and  it's a little brick building that I think used to be like a pump house or a garden shed or something, but  it was  repurposed  beautifully into what the farm stand is now.
08:56but lots of, uh, not nitpicking, but we'll change little things about it as the season goes. Yes. You'll have to re revamp it as the season goes. Right. Fresh pangy,  um, some decorations. I've saved seeds from when I grew  marigolds  last year and I have like a gallon bag full of marigold seeds that I just plan on kind of sprinkling everywhere.  That'll be really pretty.
09:26Marigolds are great for  chicken eggs too.  I don't know the exact science behind it, but they're supposed to lower the cholesterol  in chicken eggs, along with making the yolks darker. If the chickens eat the blooms? Both flowers  and the greenery on the plant too, I believe.  Cool. I didn't know that. I will have to let my husband know that. That would be really cool to plant some marigolds for them. Right.  I inherited a
09:55gallon bag of expired seeds from my mom  and was just kind of chaos planting everything because why not? You know, if it grows, it grows and I can separate it and put it where it belongs or it doesn't grow and becomes fertilizer. You know, one way or the other, it'll do okay.  But so I planted like eight packets worth of marigold seeds in like a two by two square.
10:25in one of my planting boxes and all of them germinated and it just became this super dense marigold bush that got like three feet tall.  bet it was gorgeous. Oh, you could smell it from  a mile away. It was great. But so I saved all the seeds from that and I'll plant them around our chicken pasture this year. Your chickens are going to love you.  I really hope so. Yeah. ah
10:54So  because we're talking  about the farm stand thing, I have a question for you. Do you know what scones are? S-C-O-N-E-S? Yes.  Summer makes  like blueberry white chocolate chip scones that are to die for. Okay. Are they like the ones at the grocery store that are really flat and dense or are they the ones that are fluffy? Oh, they're fluffy. They're so nice. Okay.
11:23The reason I ask is because one of things I'm thinking about baking and putting in the farm stand is scones. Because I make a really flaky, fluffy scone. And I'm not sure that people will even know what they are because the only scones I've seen for sale in Minnesota  are the ones at the grocery store that are flat and dense.
11:44Well, if your farm stand has a decent, I mean, you are on Facebook for the farm stand, right? Yes. I would just post them on Facebook first to gauge interest, maybe. I love those videos where people like take their sourdough loaf and split it in half and then like slowly open it to show the crumb. And squish it so it crackles. Yes, you could do that with the scones to show that they're not.
12:14dense kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I was so flabbergasted when I, when I bought scones at the store the first time I was like, these are terrible.  same thing has been going for the  sourdough English muffins. The ones that I just bought at Aldi like a month ago are  so small and so sad and so thin.
12:42And the ones that I am looking at in front of me are like an inch thick and they're fluffy. You'll, you'll never go back once you have one. Yes. And that's the other thing I wanted to, I wanted to bring up since we're talking about this particular subject,  everybody has their own magic when they cook. And if you're, if you're a good cook, that magic can't help, but be infused into the food.  So.
13:09One person can make a scone and another person can make a scone  and they can be  absolutely wonderful and delicious,  but they're going to be different because two different people made them. I've always kind of wondered if different sourdough bakers, if their starters have like a different. I don't know, flavor or like base to them.  I don't think so. I think what's different, I think it's just water and flour.
13:38I mean, it could be different kind of flour, obviously, but it's water and flour. What it is that every home has a different environment. What's in the air? Oh, interesting. And so that's what makes it different. But I also think that it's how the person actually makes whatever they're making out of the starter, how they make the bread or the pizza dough or whatever. Right. I know I've followed a recipe before where if you don't mix all the dry ingredients before you
14:07add the wet ingredients, then that can change the entire outcome. Yeah, chemistry is amazing.
14:15Chemistry is a pain in the butt, but it's also amazing. Right. It wasn't my forte in high school. I'll admit that. Yeah, I was okay with chemistry and biology. Physics was the one that kicked my butt. I don't think I ever made it to physics. I really loved uh reading, literature, English,  writing. I loved all that stuff. Yeah, that was more my thing. I'm good at math. I just don't enjoy it at all. And physics is a lot of math.
14:43So that's probably why physics was very hard for me. Algebra was easy.  was,  I think geometry is what sucked. Once you get into like the cosine and tangent and that kind of stuff, that's where it tripped me up a little bit. Yeah. And what's funny is as a homesteader or a farmer, we all tend to use geometry without even thinking about it.  Right. But it's because it's practically applied geometry.
15:14I know that every teacher that told me that I wouldn't have a calculator in real life was absolutely wrong. Yeah, funny how that worked out.  You're not always going to have a calculator a hundred years later. Oh, really? Right. I have one right here in my pocket.  And not only do I have that in the same device, I have a camera  and a video camera  and a way to access the answer to any question ever asked by any man ever.
15:43It's  terrible, but it is true. It's real handy though.  I do believe that thinking for yourself is important, but having answers easily available is also  so much more convenient. Yes, like why is my dog scratching at her ear? Oh, she might have ear mites. What can I do about ear mites?  You can put olive oil in a Q-tip and put it inside of her ear and it will kill the ear mites.
16:13Right. That's $200 that I can save instead of taking her to the vet and... And it worked. Oh, right. It's... love... I consider myself a semi-crunchy type person. Like, I love the holistic approach to bumps and scrapes and bruises, but I'll still go and get myself a nice coffee kind of thing. Oh, yes. Absolutely. They will pry my coffee from my cold dead hands.
16:44They'll do their best at least. Yeah, I don't know. My spirit might come back into my body because I'll be really angry. I don't know. I'm just being silly. So you have chickens. What else do you have? Right. So we raise New Zealand rabbits, mainly for meat. I have a couple of pelts in the feet and the heads in my freezer. I am a sucker for oddities, curiosities, that kind of thing.
17:14And so that world is in my wheelhouse as well. I sell any rabbits that don't make it or die of natural causes and some chicken eggs to the save a fox rescue out of Millersburg.
17:32So they take some of the rabbit products. Otherwise, we're trying to market rabbit meat for human consumption as well. yes, definitely. Rabbit is really yummy. Millersburg, where is that? Oh, it would be north of Faribault, think like 15 miles or so. And then it's west of I've 35. And they are what?
18:01What's the place that you're? It's called Save a Fox  and it's all one word. Yeah. They're pretty popular on Facebook, I think. They have a couple of different Facebook pages, though, but they're great. They rescue foxes from fur farms and let them live their happy little fox lives in a contained environment.
18:26I'm going to have to look them up and see if they will chat with me because I like, I like talking to people that are sort of adjacent to what I talk about. Yeah. I, I don't know if they would be open to it or not, but  they've, I think they're above a million followers on Facebook. Wow.  I know they're awesome too.  The people that work with Fox's  have a lot of patients, I think. Yes. And it's interesting because I was brought up being told that
18:54that wild animals are wild animals and that you don't really get to be anywhere near friends with them. But there is a uh fox rescue that I do follow it. I don't think it's the one you're talking about though. I think it's another one.  And  they have foxes that they rescued that literally will eat out of their hands and sit in their laps.  right. Yes. The foxes  at ah that rescue,  they...
19:23are like nine generations  bred out of the out of  a wild habitat. So they're completely they're like a cat and a dog's body, I think is how they refer to them. Yeah. Yep. It's just it's so funny because like I saw on Facebook,  I find everybody I talk to on Facebook. So I spent a lot of time on Facebook. I shouldn't, but I do.  And there was a guy that rescued a coyote.
19:52It had gotten hit by a car and it was, it was really hurt and took it to the vet. The vet got it fixed up and then the guy took care of it while it was in recovery.  The coyote comes back all the time to visit the guy. He let him go. The guy let the coyote go wild and the coyote comes back to see him all the time. That's really sweet. We've, it's, been a, I've, I've loved working with animals  since
20:21I was younger, maybe it started with a chicken obsession, but who knows? But I would love to in the near future, if not, maybe like a five-year plan or something, but I would love to have a wildlife rescue.
20:37uh I would love for you to have a wildlife rescue too so I can come visit.  Right. ah A lot of times in the spring people disturb like cottontail nests or a baby bird falls out of the tree or a possum gets hit on the highway kind of thing. I just really enjoy that  rehabilitation work.
21:01Yes. And if you do it, I hope you get to rehabilitate baby raccoons because we had some visit last spring and oh my God, they were cute. They, their little hands just kill me.  They're little squeaks. The noises they make.  I know they're the best. I love little raccoons. That's a lot of,  um, roadkill happens in the spring because all these animals are trying to feed their young right now. So it's  in the spring, it's  usually a good time to take your
21:31speed down five, 10 miles an hour or so on the highways because everything's crossing. Yes. And sometimes you hit people's barn cats and they die. And that's really hard on us who own the barn cats. Yeah. For Fairbolt has a really heavy, uh,  feral cat population as well.  There's,  um, the Fox rescue in Millersburg and Fairbolt, there is furball farms. Yes.  I actually did a, an article about them for, um,
22:02River Valley Woman Magazine a few years back. They're so much fun. They have a pretty huge following around here. They're kind of like a local  celebrity type thing. But a lot of my family has gone to just go hang out with the cats. They have events where you can just go in and hang out and. Yes, and if you love cats, you will love being there because there are cats  everywhere.
22:33I love cats. My husband is more of a loves kittens,  not the adult cats. Yes.  So we do have two of our own along with our livestock guardian dog. She's a great Pyrenees. Her name's Mika. Nice.  But then the two cats are kind of indoor outdoor. If  it's a thunderstorm, they get to come hide out in the garage. But typically they like spending their days outside.
23:01So I have a question. your cats like your dog?  They don't snuggle, but they respect each other's space.  Okay. The reason I ask is our barn cats  love our dog. Our dog is an Australian shepherd and she's only about 36 pounds. And we just got three new kittens. They were like 16 to 20 weeks old when we got them last summer.
23:29They wanted nothing to do with Maggie at first. They wanted nothing to do with anybody at first. And now in the morning they come running up when we let her outside and  they just rub up against her and purr. And I'm like, didn't take you guys very long to be friends, did it? Right. You have very well tempered cats and the dog, I think. Well,
23:51Maggie would have been a great mama dog, but we got her spayed when she was six months old because puppies was not on the bucket list.  Right. We had a,  German shepherd just passed in January and he was the same way. I really wish we hadn't gotten him neutered because his temperament was  ideal. Yup. But  you can't, you can't know.  And also there are so  many.
24:20animals in the world that are in shelters that don't have a home and I was just like I don't want her to get pregnant by oh geez a dog that's too big and she ends up dying because the puppies are too big right she's small dog and There was no guarantee we could find homes for puppies. So I was just like the smartest thing is to Make her not a mama permanently and it's sad
24:49But it was probably the smartest thing we did. Right.  I would love to someday go to a shelter and adopt like who's who's been there the longest or the senior dog that got surrendered or something like that. I would love to give  somebody's pet uh a good ending to their life. Yes. Oh, I love that.  I love that. And actually, that's probably what we'll end up doing when Maggie is no longer with us. We probably will never get a puppy.
25:18again because my husband and I are both 56 and puppy energy is a lot and I can't imagine going through it in our 60s. So we'll probably just get  a dog that is a dog, not a puppy. We still try to get out and travel as much as we can. We also have two small children here in our homestead, farmstead, whatever you want to call it. um But they're two years and six months.  so young children and the farm makes travel.
25:47pretty difficult, but someday we'd like to  be able to take a month off in the winter and go to Mexico or something. But having too much going on and  needing to find someone to watch  everything, you know, and be able to learn feeding schedules and all that is  such a challenge.  It is. And we're going through that too, because it's just my husband and I.  So
26:16If we want to go somewhere,  we really can't because  I don't know what you know about Australian Shepherds, but they are very, very close with their people, but not really close with anybody else. Oh, so she wouldn't do well with like a doggy hotel type thing.  No,  no, she would not. I suspect she probably would go on a hunger strike. And she also is scared to death of people, strangers.
26:45So even if we could take her with us, all she would do the whole time we were not home, if she was with us, is bark. So  we have the joy of having a wonderful dog, but we also have the pain of knowing that it's gonna be a problem if we actually wanna go somewhere. Right? It's like a, kinda like a toddler in that respect. Yes, exactly.
27:12And honestly, it is a lot like a toddler. husband took her out and  threw the frisbee for her last night.  And I got up at midnight to go potty and she was snoring in her crate in her crate. I thought you were going to say crib.  Yeah, almost.  I was going to say kennel and I'm like, it's not really a kennel. It's a crate, but she was snoring and I was like, wow, he must have run her  hard.  That's so funny. Yeah. But anyway, um,
27:41So you said chickens, you said rabbits. Do you have other animals or is that it for now? For now, that's it. We have done pigs in the past, but  as  typical farm life goes, we found ah things that needed to be stored in the shed that the pigs were kept in. So it turned from livestock back into storage and  we just haven't really had the time.
28:11with two small children to start pigs up again. I would like to start quails soon. I'm hoping my incubator has sat empty for about a week and I'm starting to get the itch to hatch eggs again.
28:23Yep.  It's so funny because quail is very much on the radar here and it keeps coming up in these conversations with you guys. uh We're thinking about it. We're about 50 % sold on the idea of getting quail. I just found a little hutch on Facebook Marketplace  and so I think that I would keep quailing that. We have thought about doing other poultry, know, throwing some turkeys or something in with the chickens.
28:51Getting turkey eggs or turkey poults is  they're so expensive. It's insane. I think I saw a sign in Tractor Supply that was like $18.99 for one turkey pulled.  Really? Yeah, like wildly expensive  and nobody around me has any hatching eggs available. So are  chicken chicks expensive this year too? Like five or six bucks a piece? Well, I mean, it depends on if you want
29:20barnyard mix or if you want some sort of purebred specialty type. So I ordered from Hoover's Hatchery for our egg layers that I, oh, I think they were Valentine's Day chicks. So they're, I don't know how many weeks old that would make them. They're about to start laying next month. So we got 70 there and those were.
29:47between four to six dollars a piece, because I went with the more budget-friendly breeds. But I see a lot of people hatching ah like cream leg bars, which do the blue eggs or  the black copper morans, which give you the dark chocolate eggs.  Those can be like nine to fifteen dollars a check if you're getting them from purebredlines. I swear, just like two years ago,
30:17The not fancy chicks were only like a buck and a half a piece.  I would love to know where you saw those prices. It might have been three or four years ago, but it wasn't that long ago that they weren't five to six dollars a piece.  Right. I know that backyard chicken keeping has become wildly popular, especially after the pandemic. think a lot of people turned to  wanting to be more self-sufficient ah after you couldn't find toilet paper at Walmart.
30:47made a lot of people panic on uh the whole food supply in America.  It absolutely did. That's why so many people moved out of the towns and cities they were in out into the country. And I'm not going to like throw any shade about that because I think that if you can do it, you should. Right. Absolutely.  I fully support anybody that wants to  commit to  a lifestyle in the country. Yeah.
31:15Yeah, I do too. And it's not for everybody. There are lots of people who really want to live  in  an area where there are people around. I am not one of them. I really, really value being  not surrounded by people anymore. Let's put it that way.  Right. I grew up 20 minutes from  the nearest  town. And so going into town to the grocery store with my mom was always a trip.
31:45You know, was preparation to get out of the house took 20 minutes in itself, 20 minutes to drive to the grocery store and then 20 minutes back home. Yeah, it was like half the day. But I always would go to sleepovers at a friend's house and not be able to sleep because of the headlights bouncing off the walls at night. It's like, how can you how can you sleep like this? There's so much going on outside. Like, aren't you worried about
32:13people looking in your windows or, you why is your neighbor's window pointing at your kitchen? Uh huh. That's, it's just the strangest concept to me being stacked on top of other people like that. Yes. And it's part of the reason that we decided to move five and a half years ago. Well, actually almost six years ago,  we moved in here on August  7th  of 2020. Wow. You have a very good memory. Well,
32:40Part of the reason I remember it is because I spent the first night I spent here was August 3rd into the 4th because we, had to be here because they were going to hook up the internet and bring a stove because this place didn't have a cook stove when we bought it. So I had to be here on August 4th in the morning and I vividly remember going to sleep on the couch downstairs that we had moved in. So I had a place to sleep.
33:10And I couldn't sleep. I was just so excited to be spending the first night here. And my husband was actually at the old house because he had to work and it was much closer for him to stay where we were living before to drive to work.  And we hadn't moved clothes down here yet. And I could not sleep because I was so excited and because it was so  quiet.
33:37That's like the night before a field trip when you're a kid that you're just jittering in bed. so excited. Your backpack's ready. Your clothes are set out. Yeah. And I've told the story a billion times, but I'll tell it again because it's one of my favorites. I made sure to set the alarm on my phone for before sunrise because the window over the kitchen sink faces east. And I really wanted to see the first sunrise out over the field. Oh, that's so exciting.
34:05I think I slept an hour the first night I stayed here  and I was definitely awake for sunrise and it was worth every second of it.  I hope you took a picture or something that would be a framed photo.  I have a picture  of looking at the window so it's not like through the window at the sunrise it's just the window and you can see the sunrise outside so it's not
34:33It's not necessarily focused on the sunrise. It's focused on my cute little kitchen window over the sink. But either way,  just, feel like certain people are city people and they always will be. And that's where they're comfortable and they love it. And there are certain people who are not and that's where they're comfortable and they love it. I think that  anything worth having you have to work for.  so convenience,
35:03kind of  kills part of that.
35:09Yes,  I agree.  do. However, I am a sucker for a good burger and I don't mean the ones we make here at home. So I'm real happy that one of the best dive bars in Minnesota is in Lesour. What is it called?  It's called the Bar and Grill. That's very vague.  Yes, it's very original. It's a bar and a grill and they make a really, really good burger. But the best thing they make is homemade onion rings.
35:38battered onion rings. Oh, I put onions and mushrooms and almost everything I make. Uh huh. So when we're going to celebrate something, we we go grab a burger and really good onion rings at the bar and grill. That's awesome. I think there was just a do you know where Lonsdale is? I do. The Shields Lake cheesecake was just on the news.
36:05And I've never heard of them. Really? Oh my gosh, they're it's the best cheesecake you'll ever have in your life. Is it a it a bakery? It's they only sell cheesecake. OK, so so is it like a store? Yes, they have a storefront in  Lonsdale. I think that the city of Fairbolt put up too much of a fuss about regulations, and so they intended to  open their storefront in Fairbolt, but
36:35opted for Lonsdale instead. They're the type of place that you have to get there and wait in line because they sell out so quickly. is a that's a terrible problem to have. Boy, I don't know. It's I they it was worth I got there early one day and didn't have to wait in line for my cheesecake. But it is it is a hefty slice that you get.
37:03and they do all sorts of different flavors and concoctions. They supply weddings. Huh? I might have to go check that out. I would say it's worth it. Yeah, because I'm kind of a real sucker for cheesecake, which is why I only eat it about once every five years, because otherwise I would eat it every day. Okay, awesome. Well, I try to keep this half an hour. We're at almost 37 minutes. So.
37:31I am going to cut you loose, but before we go, where can people find you? So Bauer Family Farms is  currently only on Facebook. Bauer is spelled B-A-U-E-R. That is so far our only socials. We're getting connected to a couple of farm stand websites  and  the name is spelled the same in all those spots.  Okay. Hopefully  someday I'll connect to Instagram or TikTok, but for now it's just Facebook.
38:00That's good enough. It's a place where people can find you online, which means that I can link to it for you in the show notes. All right, Leah, this was really fun. Thank you for your time. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. You too. See you later.
 

Homesteading with BeckyJ

Today I'm talking with Becky at Homesteading with BeckyJ. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You'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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Becky at Homesteading with Becky J in Oregon. How are you this morning, Becky?  I am fabulous. How about you? I'm good. What's the weather doing in Oregon?
00:57We're actually really overcast today.
01:02Is it raining or is it just overcast? Just overcast. It looks like it wants to try, but nothing's happening.  Yeah. And rain is not, it's not anything unusual in Oregon or Washington state. So I'm sure you're ready for it to sprinkle whenever, right? Yeah. Well, and I'm in Eastern Oregon. So we actually, lot of the storms tend to go around us. We're usually pretty dry. So yeah, we definitely take all the rain that we can get.
01:30Yeah, I'm in Minnesota. It is yet another really lovely morning. It's  the reason I sound weird about that is because this winter has been the longest, grayest,  wettest we've had in probably four years. Oh, geez. But the sun is coming in the bedroom window. There's no wind  and it's just really pretty outside. I'm like, hmm, another good morning. Yay.  So. ah
01:59I have to tell you when I saw the name of your page, Homesteading with Becky J, for some reason it made me think of a pop star and I can't for the life of me think of who it is right now. But I was like, that sounds like a rock star homesteader. I want to talk to her. Easy to remember then. Yes. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, I am 37 years old. have
02:28Three children, a whole full-fledged homestead now. I literally have animals all over, but it was not like that. You know, six, seven years ago, I was living in a trailer park. So, I mean, we made some major changes for the better, obviously. There was a lot of work to get here, but...
02:51Still grilling.  So when you were in the trailer park, were you already like practicing homesteading skills though? you already learning? I mean, I've always been a meal prepper, baker, cooker. So I kind of had that going for me, but honestly, no. And I wish that I would have been practicing some of these basic skills. You know, like I could have been gardening on my porch. I could have been utilizing container gardening or
03:19you know, worm composting or learning how to sow, but I was so oblivious to all of it. And I guess I just thought that like the property had to come first. So I'm a big advocate for people. Like it doesn't matter where you're at. Like you can literally do this anywhere. And I wish I would have started sooner, you know? Well, I would say, okay, listener, you heard it here first, but I say it all the time. So, okay, listener, you're hearing it again. Learn to cook, grow a plant,  learn to
03:49crochet or sew,  just  learn some basic skills of do-it-yourself things because that way you're not caught flat-footed. Yeah. Yup.
04:01Okay, so  when did you move into, when did you acquire your land? We have been here about seven years now. it  just slowly but surely we started getting some animals and the first year I tried to garden it was a complete flop because I didn't know what I was doing.  That's okay, at least you tried.  Yeah.
04:31Yep. Okay. So tried gardening. Yeah. The people that had lived here before us, she had a big, big garden  and I know them personally. So like I seen what it looked like in full bloom and everything that she had been growing. like, Oh, I could totally do that. And so of course I just planted everything in the ground with no idea of like weed control or how I was going to water or anything. And then of course,
04:58everything started sprouting. It looked fabulous, but then I couldn't tell what were like weeds and what were the plants.  By the time it was big enough for me to tell, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm not pulling all these. I just gave up.  I just let it grow wild that year. I'm like, yeah, no.  Did you get anything out of it though, even though it was crowded? Some lettuce.
05:26I did get some lettuce, but that was about it.  Well, it's better than nothing. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.  It's definitely a learning lesson.  Are you plant, are you, so have you gotten better at gardening over the years? Oh yes. I now know like what works for me and because I do work full time still. So I definitely have to have some major systems in place in order for me to  make it work growing as much as I do.  Um,
05:53but I have some weed barriers down. have an automatic watering system now. I grow certain things in raised beds, certain things in the ground. And so I have a system now.  Yeah. Systems are really  very, very, I would could say very a hundred times. It wouldn't be enough  important to making a homestead run where you don't feel like you're putting out fires all the time.  Definitely. Yup. And you said you have animals. So what do you have for animals and what animal did you get first?
06:23Um, so funny enough, we got cows first, which seems backwards in my head. Yeah. But there, we already had a fence pasture and my husband always wanted cows, you know, raise our own beef. And we started with cows and that also obviously was a learning experience. Um, the first cow we had his name was Houdini given for a very good reason, because even though it was a fenced pasture, the fence needed some work.
06:52And so he got out constantly. So I don't know how many times I, we had to walk that guy home. Like he would end up at the neighbors, you know, half a mile down the road and someone else's pasture. And it was like, oh my gosh, this animal is huge. I'm going to get ran over.  And I got chickens and chickens obviously were a little bit easier to manage.  Yeah. They say chickens are the gateway animal for homesteaders. Cows is not.
07:21Cows is not the animal they say is the gateway animal. Yeah. Really quick. I'm going to jump in our neighbors to our west, our Northwest. They have cows and they have at least one donkey.  And we've lived here. We've lived here for a little over five years and I keep, I keep waiting to get up in the morning and find a cow or a donkey in my yard and they've never shown up. So they must have really good fences.  And what's really dumb, Becky is that
07:51I would not be terribly offended if I woke up to a cow or a donkey standing in my yard. It would be definitely has their own personalities. Yeah. As long as I could get hold of the owner and say, you need to come get your critter because I can't do it. I would be fine with it. Cause I think that we don't have livestock here. We have chickens, we have a dog, we have barn cats. And I
08:18We have three acres. We don't have enough room for anybody to graze and feeding livestock right now is real expensive if you're not grazing them. Yeah. So the idea of waking up to a cow or a donkey in my yard would be highly entertaining  once.  Yeah. Let me just visit. Okay. Like babysit them a couple hours, maybe once a week and then take them back. Yeah. Their beautiful dog came over one day and she's,  I think her name is shy or sky.
08:48And she's the red  golden retriever. Like she's not the yellow golden. She's the reddish kind and friendly as all get out. I was just like, Oh my God, she can stay. And my husband was like, we have a dog. She's going home. oh So we've met their dog and she's wonderful, but  have not met any of their other livestock yet. And I wait for the morning where I do. Do you have like, I don't want to say.
09:19There's a word. I hate this.  Do you have average chickens or do you have special chickens? Let's put it that way. Do you have like a bunch of different kinds or just have egg producers? em We honestly have a really big variety in our flock. I'm not really particular on certain breeds. I don't care if they're pretty. Yeah. We're dual purpose. So like I'll raise them and I incubate them and then, you know,
09:45There tends to always be a ton of roosters when you incubate them, seems like.  so,  you know, those will go to freezer camp generally. So then that way it's kind of a full circle and it's less I'm having to buy from the hot trees like to fill my freezer. Yes,  absolutely. Especially right now. I mean, you've been doing it for a while, but right now it's really important to have that.
10:08Yes. I'm real excited.  We just did.  So we've had cows for a while  and we do the chickens and we raised pigs and which I probably will never do again. They are so destructive. I mean, I love pigs. Don't get me wrong.  But we just picked up our butcher pigs yesterday and filled our freezer. So now I literally don't have to go to the store for any kind of meat.  How does that feel, Rebecca? Fabulous. It's fabulous.
10:38Like I said, they're really destructive and they got really big. And I mean, they were super docile, the breed that I got, we got a Mangalitza red wattle cross. Oh, nice. Yeah, they were not mean like at all. I there's a few times my legs got squished, but they didn't, they didn't realize they were hurting me. You know, they just want food.  But yeah, they definitely tore up that section of the pasture and it's going to need a lot of work.
11:06Yeah, I keep hearing people either be  very pro pig or very, I did it once, I'm not doing it again pig. Yeah, you know, I feel like if you have enough property or a lot of wooded area, they're really good at clearing land, but I just have a grassy pasture, you know, so like that whole section is just all dirt now.  Yeah.  Yeah. And trying to get it back to where you want it to be is going to take some time and probably some money.
11:35Yeah.  Do you have goats or lamb or sheep? do.  I have goats, but I just have a dwarf variety because I'm  not a large person  and I wanted to be able to handle them. I did have goats, like regular,  full-size goats for like three months when we first got this property and it just did not work out. We got them from someone else when they were already full grown.
12:01They were skittish of people. didn't want anything to do with me. And then when they did get out, it was so hard trying to get them back in.  And at least with a dwarf, like I can pick them up if I need to,  you know, I can actually handle them.  Yeah, absolutely.  Do one of the things that I would tell anybody looking to get any kind of livestock  is  really consider  what you can handle.
12:27Because if you can't handle them you will sell them or you will process them within months of getting them. Yep I've been doing pretty good with the ones we have now  and we have it like they have a nice little fenced in area now So they're not getting out constantly even though they're dwarfs. They still got some hops on them. They can still jump.  Oh, Yeah, how many do you have? Let's see. How many do I have now? um
12:56And then I have two babies right now in my backyard. I'm just weaning off and they're going to be going to new homes this weekend. So much fun. you, are you like an in love with baby goats person?  Yes, they're so cute and it's to get rid of them, but  you only get so much milk off them when they're dwarf size, you know? So it's like, I don't want to have like 20 goats  have to get rid of them.
13:25While you're talking about that, have a question because we're very, very lightly flirting with the idea of uh dwarf goats at some point in the next couple of years. And I read that they're good for meat and for milk. So how much milk can you get from a dwarf mama goat? So it depends. So I have a dwarf Nigerian and a dwarf Lamontia, and I definitely get more milk off my Lamontia.
13:55but it's still like maybe a  pint a day if I'm milking twice a day.  Okay. It's still like, it's not a whole lot compared to like, you know, a dairy cow or a full size goat. But I mean, if it's just you and your husband, it would be enough, you know, like it's really good in your morning coffee.  Oh, I know. And that's part of the reason we're even remotely thinking about this. Cause when we moved here, we were like, we are not getting goats.
14:24We're not getting goats because we don't have enough room for them to graze.  And then I saw that there were mini goats, pygmy goats as it were.  And I was like, they wouldn't eat much. That would, that might work. Maybe. So I've been doing research on that and I've been doing research on quail and we have not decided on anything yet because  it's spring in Minnesota. My husband has been every weekend outside because he's been stuck in the house all winter.
14:53He's been chopping wood for this winter and he's been planting seeds in the greenhouse and he's been checking out the fruit trees and the lilac bushes and the rhubarb and the peonies and I can't keep this man in the house from sun up to sun down. So he's been very, very busy and we're probably not going to do any major changes this year.
15:19partly because we don't know what this year is going to bring with everything going on in the world. we're like, you know, the gardens and the chickens are pretty stable. Let's just stick with that for 2026. Yeah. Cause I would hate to get into something new and then  have to give it up because money just gets too tight because prices have gone up so much. Yeah. Well, and that's what, where I was kind of at, um,  cause I, I'd melt last year and I'm
15:49will probably start milking again here soon. But getting them up on the milk stand, like after they finally get used to sitting there, you know, you typically give them like some kind of a treat or give them grain to like eat on while you're milking. And the grain here at where I buy it is really expensive. So I'm like, you know, I could probably just take this $30 and give it to another farmer that has a bunch of goats and just buy their milk instead.
16:18That too, yes. And I'm always saying if you can't produce the thing that you want yourself, find somebody local who's already producing it and support them. Yeah. So it's a good plan. Yeah. So what do you, I'm just going to sound really dumb. What do you love most about homesteading? Possibilities, I guess. There is just so much  to it when you...
16:45finally dip a toe in and then you're like, oh, well, I could do this, but then I could do that and I can collect my rainwater and I can sell my own clothes and I guess it just opens, opens your, your mind up a little bit more or, you know, we've been raised our whole life. Like, Oh, do this, do that, get a job, go to college, have kids. it's like, they don't teach you how to be self-sufficient or to.
17:11you know, care for your family in the ways that you may want to versus just going to the store to buy dinner, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like, oh, well, I can do all these things. Like what do I want to do?  And so I think that's my  favorite part.  absolutely. And you bring up a good point. We are brought up in the last, let's say, 50 years, we've been brought up to be  do what we're told.
17:39Instead of brought up to be functioning humans who know how to cook a meal, who know how to start a fire outside if you need to for, for, um, whatever you need it for.  Um,  we, we were not brought up taught how to know how to do a stitch in clothing, you know, how to hem pants, how to darn socks. We, didn't need to do that anymore, but.
18:08I don't think that's true. I think that we all need to know how to do this stuff. Yes. And I was actually thinking the other day and I haven't said anything to my husband yet because he's got a lot going on his plate and he's also ADD.  So if I bring it up, he's going to want to talk about it for three hours. And I'm like, I don't have three hours.  But I was thinking about the fact that we now have a little thing that we carry around in our pockets called a cell phone.
18:37most everybody does, smartphone, that lets us take video and photos whenever we want. And I'm 56, so I remember having to take film to the pharmacy or the Kodak, whatever, and get pictures developed, actual pictures you hold onto.  You can hold in your hand. And it was expensive to get film developed. When you chose to take a picture, you were making a choice.
19:08And I mean, there hardly anybody I knew had a video camera when I was in my teens, because they were brand new. Isn't that scary? I'm only 56.  And  I couldn't just pick up the phone and call somebody. I had to ask my mom if it was okay if I called my friend  and we had to keep the conversation to under 60 seconds because  it was a dollar a minute.
19:39That's funny. can't freaking believe that I have been alive for 56 years and what has changed since I was born and what changed from the time that my parents were born till now. You know, it's insane. And it's made it so easy. Everything has been become so very convenient, but we have lost the soul of creation.
20:07human creation in all of this stuff. Yep, you can pretty much get anything you want delivered to your door, whether it's in days or hours.  Yeah, and I don't know about you, but I really do like cooking.  I really do. And when I talk to people who like, I can't believe you make soup from scratch, you can get it in a can.
20:33It doesn't taste the same though. Like I don't want my soup to taste like aluminum. I want it to taste like soup. Yeah. It doesn't taste like aluminum. I'm like, um, yes it does. And if you want soup that doesn't taste like aluminum, I will make you soup. I had friends, we lived up at the old house. We moved half an hour away, so I still have friends up there. But if my friends were sick.
20:59They would call me and say, do you happen to have any of your chicken soup in your freezer? My, the stuff I make, chicken soup. And I would be like, I do or I don't. And usually I did. And I would say yes. And they'd be like, could I, could I please have some? Cause I'm really not great. I've got a cold, I'm miserable. Your soup is like medicine.  And I would let them have a little container of soup. I couldn't give them all of it. Obviously I had a family of six, but I was happy to share.
21:28And my next door neighbor, she was so funny. She had a really bad head cold and about three days after she ate my soup, she came over and she was like, I'm all better. It's all thanks to you.  That made me feel  so good inside and I helped her and it was no skin off my nose because the soup was already made. Yeah. oh
21:52So not only do I feel like I'm accomplished, I feel like I'm helping other people. And I swear that's why people get into homesteading, because they're trying to do something for themselves.  And then their friends find out about it and you end up helping your friends and it's really fun. Yeah. Well, food really is fuel. Oh, know, it is medicine, you know, for our bodies. So it's I feel like it makes a big difference. Yeah. And I feel like I'm constantly talking about food.
22:21on these episodes. And homesteading isn't just about food.  It's about getting outside and touching grass and getting your hands dirty.  It's about being responsible for other lives, even if it's just a barn cat. It doesn't matter.  And it's about being part of nature because humans are nature. We are.  And people have forgotten that too. Yeah.
22:52So I just,  I don't want to beat a dead horse because it doesn't do any good, Beats your soul. Yes. Homesteading is not about having land. It's about the way you live your life.  And  if you have made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, or if you have made, I don't know, bacon and eggs, you've practiced a homestead skill. Yeah. I've had a few people, um,
23:21You always, I don't know what you call them, trolls online. just, people just aren't nice sometimes. And then you get them behind a computer or a phone and then they just say really not nice things. But I've had a few people be like, I thought homesteading was working the land. What are you talking about? like, well, yeah, originally it was about working the land, but it's not the same as it was back then. No, it's not.
23:50And if we can encourage, you know, your average  Joe that lives in apartment to have a tomato plant in the corner of their house with a sunny window and to start baking from scratch, even though they don't have any land, why wouldn't you? m
24:08Hang on one second.
24:14I was going to cough and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh No, I'm good. That's fine. It's an echo.  It's an, it's an invisible echo. It was awesome.  Um,  the other thing is, is that I feel like people started looking down their noses at actual work a long time ago. Yeah. The trades are just dying for people to come to work for them. Plumbers, electricians.
24:44construction. And the fact is, if we don't have people go into those trades, we're not going to have houses to live in.  Or a toilet to flush or water to drink or  where, where did everybody go? It's like there were so many people,  but I feel like the workforce is like diminished. Like there's no one out there actually working. It's like everyone just stuck at home behind a computer screen.
25:12I think what happened is that back 20, 25 years ago when computers became quote unquote easier, and I'm not saying coding is easy. It is not. I've tried it. I don't like it. It's not my thing. My daughter learned and she's great at it. But when people learn that you can make a lot of money working in the computer field, they were like, oh, well, I can make more than being a plumber. So I'm going to go into computers. think that's what happened.
25:42And don't get me wrong, you can make a lot of money if you're really good at in the computer field. But we still need people to, you know,  use a wrench or a hammer  or take down trees that might land on your house. I mean, that's a really important thing too.
26:03So  I don't, I don't know.  And I didn't expect to go down this trail this morning, but it's interesting.  I think that, I think that to be a functioning human these days, it would be good if you knew how to cook a couple of meals from scratch. I mean, if you want to buy food from somebody else five nights a week,  just make a meal on Sunday, you know, learn on meal. Cause it's so,
26:33Amazing when flour and butter and salt and milk turn into a biscuit. Yeah. Like a little experiment. Yeah, a nice fluffy biscuit that you can put star bot jam on if you want and butter and eat it because at least you made the biscuit.
26:56Yeah.
26:58And the gratitude that you feel or just the pure, what's the word I'm looking for? Being proud of yourself. Eating the food that you made. You're like, oh my gosh, I made this whole meal from scratch. it's so gratifying.  Oh yes. I have uh a drop biscuit recipe that I use all the time for, for just biscuits or for sausage and gravy and biscuits or for butter and jam biscuits, whatever.  And.
27:28We had gotten strawberries a couple of years ago.  We did not grow them. We bought them and we made strawberry jam out of those strawberries. And we did not have a cow. We will probably never have a cow. But I was so excited to have our strawberry jam on biscuits that I made with butter from the store because two of those things we made. Yeah. Awesome. was super cool. I love it. um
27:57The other thing that I will tell you, and obviously I will tell the listener as well, is that when we lived in town, we lived in town. We lived in a town of 6,000 people and we lived in the old part of town. Our neighbors were very, very close. And the main reason I wanted to move out to the country was for the quiet.  if you are a person who is shy and really likes quiet,
28:27Living in town is not going to be your jam. It's just not. Definitely not.  People ask me why I moved,  why we moved to home. I'm like, because I needed quiet. And they're like, not because you wanted animals or more space to garden. I'm like, oh no, no, I wanted that too. But the main priority was  quiet.  More nature, less people, please.
28:54Yeah. And I was so sick of having  our bedroom fronted on the street that we lived on and we had the windows open, all that smell from the cars going by and all the dust on the road would get kicked up and my bedroom was always dusty.  And I was like, this is so gross.  I sweep this floor twice a day and it's still dusty.  Oh my God. And we don't have that problem here because we're back from the road.
29:23We still live off of a busy road, but we are way further back from it.  So there are many, many reasons that people choose to move to a quote unquote homestead and homestead can be a half an acre. It can be a hundred acres, but typically it is not just a little tiny lot city lot. Yeah. I have seen some people do some amazing things with their backyards though.
29:53Like  their whole backyard will be like a garden oasis. Like it's amazing what people can do when they really put their mind to it. That's exactly what we did at the old house. We lived on a 10th of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it.
30:12And we grew up, we put up trellises and we grew everything up instead of out. And it was really beautiful. I mean, it was crowded and it was a lot, but it was beautiful.  You make it work. Yeah, it was so fun. We  had the kids then, we have four kids. And the youngest was  born. He wasn't born in that house, but we were living in that house when he was born. And he knew no different than to have
30:42a little tiny  piece of land covered in vegetable plants.  And he, he and his brother, older brother came home from school when they were in, I think Kent was a freshman in high school and Cameron was in fourth or fifth grade.  And  they came home from school and I guess they had talked to each other about this and they were like, we should talk to mom.
31:11And they said, can we talk to you? And when your boys walk up to you and say, can we talk to you? And they're very serious. You're like, Oh God, what's wrong? Yeah. was like, yes, what's going on? they were, Cameron looked at Kent cause Kent's the older one and Kent said, can we start taking leftovers from dinner for lunch to school in a, in a pale, a lunch pail? And I said, why? he said, because school lunch isn't food.
31:40I mean, he's not wrong, but.  Yep. And I looked at, I looked at Cameron who was in, you know, fourth grade, fifth grade, whatever it was. I said, do you want to do the same thing? And he was like, yeah. He said, mom, the school lunches just suck.
31:56I was like,  sure. So I just started making more of whatever it was we were gonna have for dinner so that they could take it for lunch the next day. And luckily they both had  microwaves that they could use at school to warm up. Oh, very cool. Yeah, I was so impressed with these kids that they recognized that they were eating stuff that wasn't good for them.
32:20Yep, you can definitely taste the difference.  Yes, but there is nothing scarier than your kids walking up to you and saying,  can we talk to you for a minute? I'm like, what did I do now? You know? And then it was just that. like, oh, well, absolutely.  Oh, definitely. easy, yes. Yeah. And they both really wanted soups, you know, like three, days a week. They wanted to take soups for lunch.
32:44And I didn't have any little thermoses for them to take. So we literally went out and bought the little thermoses that are like a pint. You know,  like the  Stanley thermoses, the small ones, and got the little lunch bags that are soft.  we would just, they would just scoop the soup into the thermoses, put the lid on and take it to school. they'd warm, and it was still warm when they ate. So they loved it. It was great.
33:13So that's another thing that happens is that you try things and then it surprises you at how well things work out. Yeah. So I haven't told that story before because I had forgotten about it. Thank you for giving me an opening.  All right. I try to keep these to half an hour. Becky, I appreciate your time so much. Where can people find you? um
33:38Facebook. I'm on Facebook quite frequently. I do have a YouTube channel, but I don't know what I'm doing with it yet. So, but it's  all of them are home studying with Becky J. I have a blogs all connected, but I try to keep it all uniform. So it was easy to locate me.  Fantastic. I so appreciate your time as always people can find me. Sorry.
34:05People can find me at AtidyHolmsteadPodcast.com.  Becky, thank you again. Have a great day. You as well. Thank you for having me.
 

Morning Sun Homestead

Today I'm talking with Maryann at Morning Sun Homestead. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:28At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Mary Ann at Morning Sun Homestead in West Virginia. Good morning, Mary Ann. How are you? We're doing well. Thank you for having us on your podcast.
00:55Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it.  I was just going to close Facebook, your Facebook page because it was still open.  Do you have an Australian Shepherd? We actually have two of them puppies.  We got them the first weekend in January.  Two males.  One is Remington, one's Winchester and we love them. They are wonderful dogs.
01:21Yeah, I happen to see the always on guard even if it's watching a pesky cat post and I was like that looks just like my Maggie because we have one too.
01:32We are in the process of trying to train them to herd cows and chickens. uh One is more  relaxed. He likes just to stay  on the porch and watch, but the other one has the instinct and the drive to really herd.  So we have to watch him a lot. He's very good about keeping the chickens across the fence where they belong, but  he likes to nip a little bit. And that is okay for a cow,  but a chicken is much more tender. So we're working on that right now.
02:04I wish you all the luck in the world with that. Our Maggie doesn't really have a farm job. Her job is watchdogging for the home. And uh the thing we've learned in the five years we've had her is that she is not a dog that knows how to fetch. She loves to chase things, but if we say bring it back, she will not bring it back.
02:28That sounds very familiar. Yup. And are yours full size Australian Shepherds or are they the smaller ones?
02:39They are full size. Once they're grown, they'll be full size. Okay, Maggie's a small standard. weighs like 36 pounds.
02:53Okay, so how is the weather in West Virginia this morning? It is sunny and cold in Minnesota.
03:01We are supposed to have 78 degrees today. We had rain last night, a thunderstorm moved through. It rained really, really hard. Then this morning it was 52 degrees and we had a little bit more rain. It stopped, a few more showers. Right now it's 66. We're supposed to have 78. But this is a roller coaster. We've had some nice weather and now tonight it is supposed to be 37 and tomorrow we're supposed to have snow.
03:30And then it's supposed to shoot back up to the 50s, 60s.  And then next week on Tuesday, we are supposed to have 17 at night. So we are just up and down with the weather. But this is a small taste of spring and we want to get out and do all kinds of things, but we have a lot of mud, which is okay because we needed the moisture. We are very dry. So that worked out to get more rain. um We're really anxious for spring to come when you have warm days like this and you get out and you're able to work a little bit. And then
03:58you have snow again. So that's a let down,  but we are on a roller coaster ride.  Yeah, we're supposed to get a little bit of snow every day through Sunday this week here. And I'm like, okay,  um, I guess I can handle it because hopefully it'll be the last of it for the  winter. Hopefully.  Um, so tell me a little bit about yourself  and morning  sun homestead.
04:28So my husband and I, um well when we got married of course we ate like everyone else.  You know, was fast food and quick dinners and things like that.  And then over time once we had our children we realized that that wasn't the life we wanted to continue. So we started to dig in  and um grow in our own food. And we have branched off from that and now we do our own meats. You know, of course we have our own eggs.  The girls are a tremendous help.
04:58They  all are on the bandwagon with us, so to speak. So it really helps to have their help. They know how to do everything, which is a huge help now that as we're getting older, you just don't have as much energy. And uh when I look back, I wonder how I did it all when they were small. I guess it was just all willpower and grit. But that's how we got started. We just got tired of eating all the processed stuff, feeling bad, waking up with inflammation, you know,
05:28bags under our eyes and that sort of thing and decided to pick a healthier path  and it's worked out well and we are so glad that we decided to do that. It has made a major difference in our lives.
05:43Awesome, and I'm glad you just said all that because I'm gonna do my my public service announcement early in the podcast episode today  if you live in America right now, and you don't know how to cook  learn and If you don't grow anything to eat start a plant this year  try growing something even if it's herbs on your windowsill  and
06:08get to know your local producers, your local farmers, because if the supply chain should happen to go down again,  it's good to be able to know who to buy from locally. That's my public service announcement.  And there is so much truth in that.  know, local is best. If you can't grow it yourself, the next level would be local. That way, the way I look at it,  have, we milk cows, so we have raw milk and it's became legal now to sell raw milk in West Virginia.
06:37And I would never sell a gallon of milk that I felt my family wouldn't drink. And I think that a lot of people that are local feel the same way about their produce or their meat, their eggs, whatever they may be selling. I feel that if they wouldn't feed it to their family, they're probably not going to try to sell it to you. I know I wouldn't. Hopefully that's how most producers are.  But the big corporations really don't care. They will send us whatever.
07:04And because it doesn't matter to them, it's all one big connection with pharmaceuticals and big farms and our health.
07:14Absolutely yes.  Yes, yes, yes, you are absolutely right. uh I,  how do I say this?  We grow a garden and we have chickens, partly because it's fun,  but we're not doing it for funsies. We're doing it to feed ourselves and feed our community, if that makes sense at all.
07:39Yes, it most certainly does. um I'm assuming from the comment that you made, must also sell any additional eggs that you have and uh garden produce you give away. Right, and we do that if we have extra produce to older people. um There's a lot of older people that used to eat healthy. This was not...
08:02like a trend, this was the normal way of life, this is how they always did it, and now they're just not able to get out there and do it, and we will give them produce from our garden em just because  that's what we want to do. If we can help someone out, that's what we do, but it sounds like your family does the same thing, and that's wonderful. uh We need more of that in America.
08:23Yes, we do. need everybody who has a talent. And by the way, everyone has a talent.  It doesn't matter what it is. If you sing, then sing to your kids or sing to your friends. It makes them feel good. um If you're good at writing, write a story. It makes people feel good. If you're good at growing things, feed people. Everyone has a talent. You just have to figure out what it is.
08:50Yes,  you're exactly right. God gave us all a talent. We're all here on a purpose.  We just have to sometime research and dig deep to find it, but it's  Yes,  and uh yes, we grow a hundred foot by fifty foot or 150 by a hundred foot.  I don't know the dimensions. My husband does. He's the one that does it.  Produce garden, farm to market garden, and we sell at our farm stand and we sell at the farmer's market in town in the summertime.
09:21And we mostly have chickens because we don't want to buy eggs at the store, but because we always have more chickens than we can keep up with. We sell the eggs too, because when the bird flu comes through, people are very happy to get their eggs at $5 a dozen from our farm stand. Yes. Yes, I'm sure they are.
09:43So  I found you on Facebook and I am absolutely smitten with your Facebook page. I am thinking of you in my head. Your nickname is the Homestead Hack Queen because you have all the tips and tricks on your Facebook page. People, if you want to learn about homesteading,  go look at Mary Ann's Facebook page. Why are you doing a Facebook page full of homestead hacks? What's your motivation?
10:12Well, I like to teach people what I know. uh I feel that knowledge is power.  And if we can teach more people how to do dry mixes or how to can, how to provide for their self more and for their family, they're less reliant on the system.  And therefore, we have more power as people for our nation. And when you can take care of yourself, you're much better off.  And with my hacks and things that I'm trying to teach people,
10:40I feel that a good stock pantry is so important. And if you're able to do that, then you're able to survive a lot of things. And when we think of rainy days, we think of maybe a nuclear attack or something to that extent. It doesn't have to be like that. It can be a blizzard. It can be you lose your job. It can just be that a sickness has come through your home  and  the flu this year is really bad. A lot of people in our community are sick. But you know, if you just have a jar of soup to open,
11:09That is going to be so convenient when you're so sick you can hardly stand up but your children still needs to be fed.  So, you know, there's a lot of different scenarios that we can look at and that's why it's so important to be able to have all these hacks and know a knowledge of how to can, how to preserve, how to grow.  Eventually, that is a complete circle and it comes back and you're able to provide your family with nutrition meals on the table.
11:38Yes.  Amen, sister.  I  mentioned to you before we started recording that I saw your post about the homemade cough drops.  I have a story you might get a kick out of. Back when my youngest was probably eight or 10, I don't know, he was young. uh I had gone to the store because he was sick and I'd gone and gotten orange juice and cold medicine and I didn't get cough drops on the list. Therefore, I didn't buy any.
12:08And I realized it the minute I unpacked the groceries and I was like, what do I have? How can I make cough drops? I had honey, I had sugar and I had the other things the recipe called for. And I was like, I'm going to make homemade cough drops. It'll probably be better for him. And he'll probably think it's candy, which means that he will like them. And I made homemade cough drops. I was so disappointed in myself that I didn't put cough drops on the list, but I was so proud of myself for making them.
12:38Yes, because I can relate to them.
12:44Yup, I couldn't believe it. He was standing there waiting for the cough drop package to come out of the bag. And I was like, I completely forgot. And he was like, Mom, you know how when kids are actually disappointed in you, it just breaks your heart? It was that kind of mom. And I was just like, I'm a better mom than this. I am going to do something I've never done. I'm going to make a curative for my kids.
13:15And that's great that you went out of your comfort zone. I just think a lot more people need to do that because  a lot have the I can't attitude. You can't. It's just the willpower to do it.  And does everything I make turn out? Absolutely not. That was my second batch of cough drops. The first ones failed miserably. They would not harden.  So I just dug through, found a different recipe, and this one worked. This was an Amish recipe  with blackberry. uh They called for a juice. So
13:44just made my own juice. had frozen blackberries in the freezer. I took them out  and I poured boiling water over it, let them set in that for 10 minutes, and then I strained them really well and squeezed it all through cheesecloth.  So sometimes you just have to make do with what you have.  I know many during the depression, there was a saying of make do, wear it out, use it up or do without. And that's kind of what I try to stick with. We have to use what we have.
14:10We just can't say can't. We gotta do it. And that's great that you took the initiative and you did it. And that's what we all need to do.
14:20Yes.  And  I have been kind of pushing my husband about eating leftovers because  he's the kind of guy who would like a different dinner every night. And I'm the kind of girl who likes to cook big and  money just keeps getting tighter and tighter with inflation. So I finally have him convinced that leftovers taste better or the dinner tastes better the second night.
14:48And we have literally been eating the same thing two nights in a row.  And he said to me the other day, said, you know, this is actually better the second day. So I'm winning the fight here at my house. That's great.  That's great. And yes, mean, leftovers are important. But you know, another thing you could do is  one thing I did a lot when the girls were younger was at the end of the week, I just made a whatever stew.
15:12Sometimes it didn't turn out so well, but sometimes it was really good. So whatever was leftover, I put in there. But yes, leftovers, that's a great idea of what you're doing.
15:24Yeah, and  I have always been a leftovers girl because I was raised that way. And my mom used to make this fabulous  venison stew. And I swear to you, it tasted better the second day. I don't know why, but it did.
15:41think that's the way with chili also. That's how we feel. If chili sets a couple days, it just gets better. But there's a lot of soup and stews that are like that. And it's just trying to get people to try them. And then once they do, they  realize, yes, it does taste better the second day.
16:01Yeah, it's really weird. think it's because the flavors have a chance to hang out and get to know each other. That's how I see it in my head. That's a great explanation.
16:13So what do you have for animals on your homestead? You said you have animals. We do. We have numerous chickens, uh well 25 chickens that lay eggs and then we have ducks. uh We think that we might be leaving that market just because  they're not real productive in the winter. We have muskogees and they were supposed to lay throughout the winter.  This year they haven't.
16:38Now they do breed  very rapidly and we also butchered the duck meat. We wasn't crazy about it. We love chicken, but the duck was kind of, it was different.  We also have two milk cows.  And of course, when they calve, we usually butcher the calves or we sell a calf and then butcher the other one once it's raised up so far. uh The girls have a horse  and we raise our own pigs.
17:07not from birth. We buy them  usually at 50 pounds and then we raise them into feeder hogs and butcher them in the fall.  And we also do meat chickens that we get  and they're supposed to come this year the first of May. We have a chicken tractor that we move around the yard and then  usually about 12 weeks we butcher them.  They're on a  grass diet  so they take a little bit longer but  even
17:34You know people say they butchered in eight weeks. Ours would not be ready in eight weeks and I think factory farms do it in four to six weeks.  So without the hormones they just don't grow like that. So ours is longer and then we butcher them as well  and we have four dogs  and we have three cats  and I think that's the end of the zoo.
17:58I have a question. Do you coach people on homesteading because you are  a  great source of information? No, I mean, a lot of people ask us questions and I'm very willing to give information but as to and a lot of people have said, you know, you should do classes and that sort of thing. But no, I don't. I don't. I'm always willing.  But I  don't do that. If someone asked, I would be helpful. But as a side gig, no, I don't.
18:31Well, if you ever decide you want to, you're gonna be fantastic at it, because you have  all the skills, ma'am.
18:39Thank you, that was a kind compliment.
18:45I don't lie. So it was more than a compliment. was truth. You are brilliant. I love what you're doing. um You have girls. How many girls do you have and how old are they?  We have four.  The oldest one is 19  and she is a CNA  and she doesn't live at home anymore. She has moved on to a city. I'm not sure how she adjusts to that, but that's what she does.  And then we have
19:12an 18 year old, she babysits  and she still lives at home.  And then we have a 16 year old  and she works at a local diner  washing dishes and that sort of thing. now remember they've all been homeschooled as well.  And then we have a 14 year old and she stays at home and gets to help mom with all the boring things.  But anyway, they've all been homeschooled, they're all doing very well and we are proud of the young ladies that they have become and are becoming.
19:43Okay. So did they ever know anything other than homesteading and homeschooling growing up? No, they were homeschooled from kindergarten  on. They've never been to public school and we have homeschooled.  the older two, weren't  into the homesteading as much uh as the later two. They don't know any other life other than homesteading. The older two,  yeah, they, you know,
20:12We ate the processed food and did all that when they were littler, but they were so young I'm not sure they remembered.
20:19So  most other labs, I'm sorry.
20:25No, go ahead, most of their lives? Most of their lives they've been raised on the homestead, all of them. And I'm guessing they're pretty healthy young ladies. Yes, they are. They are. you know, no sickness. Occasionally they get a snuffle or a cold or the flu. Our daughter that works at the diner, she just got the flu and the rest of us didn't get it, thank goodness. And that's who the cough drops was for, but...
20:54You know with lots of liquids and herbal teas and things like that she's made it through except for her energy level but she continued to work because she's a little bit of a miser. So they are relatively healthy no one has any problems. They do great.
21:13I'm also guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, that they can hold their own in pretty much any situation, especially with boys. Yes,  yes, they don't seem to have any trouble with that at all. I  know from an early age, they went hunting, so we eat a lot of venison, and  if we can get a wild turkey, that sort of thing. So they're very proficient with guns and that sort of thing.
21:41But yes, they can hold their own with just about anything because once you wrangle calves and you know, you're chasing chickens,  so you've got muscles in your arms, you've got muscles in your legs, and overall you're pretty tough.
21:56Yes.  One of the things I love the most about girls that are raised on homesteads or farms or ranches  is that they believe in themselves. They have been through hard things and they don't take any shit off anybody. You know? They don't. They don't. They, you know, they always have a comment. As a matter of fact, our youngest,  I was telling my husband that, you know, she has this mouth that, um
22:24It's probably going to get her in trouble one day, but I don't really know what to say. That's just an issue that I'm kind of letting ride.  She doesn't have it with us  as she does other people, but it just, I don't know. She doesn't mind to tell people what she thinks, which is what we've always taught them, that you need to think for yourself and it's okay to swim upstream when everybody else is swimming down and, you know, staying for what you believe in.  But yeah, they do okay. They're  good.
22:53good mom, I'm so glad because it is so hard raising kids. And I was raised in the golden age of the  1980s. I'm 56.  1980s were great. And then I raised my kids  in  the  1990s and the early  2000s. That wasn't quite as easy, I don't think, as it was for my mom to raise myself and my siblings.  And I don't envy anyone.
23:21who's raising little kids right now. It is such a hard world for people to be raising kids and make the kids believe that there's hope that they're gonna have a good life, you know? I agree. I think it's a very difficult time.  Not only is everything so expensive, but we have all kind of propaganda that's trying to be constantly pressed at our children that we don't agree with.  One thing that we've always based our family on is God.
23:49We feel that if God's in the center, everything else comes together. So we've worked with that. Not saying, you know, my husband and I, sometimes we really get into arguments because he's got to have the last word and I've got to have the last word  and we end up in that kind of tangle. But  yes,  if without God, I'm not sure how everything would come together,  but it is a difficult time. It's very expensive.  And you know, if you're just starting out, it's even worse, but it's possible and we need good children.
24:19and we need good parents  to raise good children because that's our future of our country and our lives. So it's so important for good people to continue to have good children.
24:32Absolutely. All right. I have one more question for you because I try to keep this to half an hour.  If somebody  is considering getting into the homestead lifestyle, we'll call it,  what would you suggest that they learn first before they jump in whole hog both feet? What would you suggest that they take unto themselves to learn to start the process?
24:58think the first thing that they would need to do  is, of course, plan, but if we step past that,  the first thing to do would be to start in the kitchen and just learn how to make bread. I know that sounds very simple, but if you can get your family and you can learn how to make bread and you can get your family to consume that bread,  that's going to make it open for the whole family to want to go deeper. And when you have your family on board, that makes it so much easier for everybody involved.
25:28Bread is a simple thing and once people taste homemade bread, they're on board to homestead.  I was expecting you to say get chickens, but I like make bread better because make bread,  if you screw it up,  nothing dies.  Right,  Chickens are a great thing, but you know, that takes room. It takes a building. It takes time.
25:52Bread you can do even if you live in a suburb or  if you haven't bought your land, if you don't have your homestead yet.  That's something that you can test the waters. You're not going to kill anything. You're not going to kill anybody. uh It's just a yeast. So that's why I would suggest bread.
26:10I love it. MaryAnn, this has been so much fun and I'm going to be looking at your Facebook page every morning. I'm adding it into the rotation so that I can smile  every single morning. um Where can people find you? Well, we're on Facebook, obviously. We're also on TikTok and we have a YouTube that we post there. We try to post once a week. It doesn't always happen. So we're at all three social medias that you can find us under Morning Sun Homestead.
26:39Fantastic.  As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  MaryAnn,  no joke, this was a joy. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for having us. We were glad to be invited. All right. You have a great rest of your day. Thank you. also.
 

Faithful Harvest MN

Today I'm talking with Abigail and Christian at Faithful Harvest MN. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You'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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Abigail and Christian at Faithful Harvest Minnesota in Dexter, Minnesota. Good afternoon, guys. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Good.
00:54So I'm in LaSore, Minnesota and it's overcast here and it's like 57 degrees. Is that what it's doing where you are? Yeah, it's about that here. It's really windy today, but the sun is out. So we're happy about it. Yeah, the sun is not out here. It's kind of great.  Oh.
01:15But that's okay, because at least it's warm and it's not snowing. Finally, yeah. You get all cooked up over the winter and then finally like the nice days, you just want to break out and do clean everything all at once.
01:33Oh yes, my husband spent most of Easter day outside and he was either riding the tractor and watering chickens or he was in the greenhouse planting seeds. yeah,  perfect timing to start doing this stuff. It gets exciting when the weather finally starts getting nice and  itching to get outside and get all that stuff done.  Absolutely. So do you guys consider yourselves homesteaders or farmers?
02:01Uh, we consider ourselves homesteaders,  um, just because  whenever I think of farm, I kind of think of the large scale industrial farming and  our homestead is  very small batch and homemade and we have it smaller right now.  yeah. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do as homesteaders. Yeah. So,  um,  I'm right now I'm an ER nurse,  um, and I'm
02:31part time with that right now. And uh that's kind of a new transition for me personally. And  we've been doing the homestead for about four years now.  And uh recently over the last year, we've gotten much more into the business side of the homestead and just starting to share what we do on the homestead and our daily life and everything. So that's kind of where we're at right now and what we do.
03:01I'm just spending a lot more time doing stuff for marketing and just getting ready for the planting season here. Yeah. When starting the homestead, I do have a drywall business.
03:21other than doing the homestead.
03:26so you both have outside income.
03:30Yeah, yeah, we both have our jobs outside of this.  And then, you know, we're considering this a really fun job.  The homestead is the job you want to be doing. The other two jobs are the jobby jobs.  Yeah, exactly.  The goal is to maybe one day we both do this full time and that's kind of our long term dream one day. But for now, just paying the bills with that and then in our free time we...
03:59do everything we can for the homestead just to be out there and just working together on it. sounds very familiar after talking with people over 500 episodes in the last two and a half years. You're not alone in that guys. That's how it's done. So did you always want to be homesteaders? Were you raised by people who grew things? How did it work? Yeah. on
04:27My side, I did grow up on a small hobby farm is what we called it. And my parents just raised cows, pigs, and sometimes chickens just to feed the family and some friends.  And my mom always had a garden growing up. So it's kind of been in my blood. And when we finally got together and we've been, Christian and I have been together for five years and just got married last year. And in that five years we've
04:54learned a lot about each other that we both would love to get back to our roots of making things homemade and growing our own things, growing our own produce and livestock and just being able to be self-sustaining more. And that was kind of our biggest goal. So I do have a background in farming, I guess, but I learned a lot more in the last five years of Christian than I ever had growing up. Yeah, I would I would agree with that in the last five years.
05:23I've learned more than I ever have in my life. Growing up, I grew up on a small acreage and the extent of that was  what we would do was have a small garden and it was basics, tomatoes, peppers, onion. No, not onions,  just oh pretty basic garden plots, small garden plots. We didn't have any  livestock or anything like that, but
05:51always grew up just being outside and either working  or just  playing mow the lawn, stuff like that. But yeah, it wasn't until Abby and I met and... uh
06:11to start getting into this learning little by little. Yeah, it's a whole different ball game when it's just you guys and it's not family doing it.  Mm For sure. Yeah. There's a lot more that  I didn't realize that my parents know so much more that I never even learned that I find myself going back to them like, what did you do with this when we were younger and all this stuff and now when it's just us, it's fun learning the little things that maybe we didn't know in the past.
06:41Yes. And honestly, I think one of the best things about getting into homesteading is the learning curve because it's not, it's not necessarily a steep learning curve. is a consistent learning curve. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Yeah, I agree. Everything we've done over the years has just come little by little. Reading here, watching, you know, watching this or then trial and error that and
07:12At the beginning projects, it seemed a little daunting, but just getting into it, it's always been a steady, steady incline.  Yes.  And once you know it, you know it. You don't forget it. It's like riding a bike. It's true. I love that part because if I had to relearn everything every day, I would just throw in the towel. It would be too much. Groundhog Day is not an appealing concept to me.
07:41Um, Abigail, I saw your video on your Facebook page of your soap, making your soap. Yeah. Yes. And you were saying that it makes your skin so much softer and that I can't remember the rest of it, but just you were kind of raving in the commentary about how much you love it. Is that cold process, Lysow? Yeah. So that is, I guess I'm...
08:10not a connoisseur of making soap. And I, when I first learned how to make it, I actually learned it from a guy that makes it in Minneapolis and he had a YouTube video out there. I was, and I had always wanted to start making soap eventually. And so we just pulled the trigger and pulled up this YouTube video. Like let's just buy the exact ingredients. Let's do it. And yeah, it is a cold process soap. ever since then, we've been using that same exact recipe just because we, we love it so much and it
08:40changed how our skin feels and everything. So yeah. Yeah. Well,  let me tell you, girly, I am, am 56 years old. We started making our own cold process Lysol a good 15 years ago, mostly because mostly because the store bought soap that I could get made my skin dry and it made me itchy. And I got a bar of cold process Lysol.
09:10at the Renaissance Festival from,  I can't remember the name of the company, I don't think they're even out there anymore, but they had an oatmeal almond soap. And I fell in love with it and  I had the same reaction. I did not have itchy skin anymore. My skin was soft and it didn't smell like the soap at all.  And I said to my husband, said, can we please try making cold processed lye soap?
09:36I cannot afford to spend five or six dollars a bar per soap and it will cost us like less than a dollar if we make it ourselves. So he took it upon himself to deal with the scary lie because I don't like dealing with it. And we still to this day make soap and we sell it in the farm stand that we have on our property and people really like it. They really like the coffee scented one and they really like the leather scented one.
10:04Oh, that sounds really nice. I feel like I'd really like the coffee one too. It sounds waking up in the morning and taking a shower and just like that coffee smell. It's like, okay, I'm not gonna drink a cup of coffee now. It's fabulous. I actually love the lemon.
10:24I can't remember the oil we used first. We use a straight lemon oil now and we have a lemon soap and that one's my favorite in the morning because it smells  so bright and sunshiny  and it wakes you up.  Oh, I love that. You might have to try a lemon one.  Sounds really nice.  Yeah, the unscented ones work just as good.  My wife makes like a forest one that I really enjoy. That's the one I use right now.
10:53Yeah, it's like I ended up finding an Old Spice copycat mix and was able to kind of get that same smell. That's a lot of the people's favorites right now on the guys' side. Oh yeah, absolutely. The other thing that we did do, I don't know if we're going to keep doing, is we use the same oils to make candles. And so our candles mirror our soap scents.
11:22And so at the farmer's market, people come up and smell the candles and then they look over and they see the soaps and they see the same names on the soaps and they're like, are you kidding? The soap smells like the candles. Yes. Yes, it does. That's awesome. I love that. It's really fun. Okay. So you guys have a garden now. You do a garden now.
11:48Yeah, right now  we're getting ready. We're getting ready to start making more beds, but yeah, we have a raise. What we do is raise beds.  That's kind of what's kicked off everything. But. Yeah, we have a garden that we started indoors. I'm playing, sowing seeds and then we'll eventually be. Putting him outside to harden them off. Yeah, we ended up starting with raised beds when we started.
12:18gardening about three years ago, just because we wanted to kind of keep it simple. We weren't sure if we wanted to do the tilling yet. We're just like, let's just start with five raised beds and see how it goes. And now we're up to 27 raised beds and planning to expand more this year. So we try to get enough produce to last ourselves for the year. That was kind of why we started gardening in the first place is we wanted to preserve and whatever we needed to do between canning, freezing, drying.
12:47to save on the grocery bill every year. So being able to start that, and then it just kind of expanded into, okay, maybe we can start selling at markets. But yeah, our garden is one of our favorite times of year just to be able to see all the green out there and start getting the produce and eating what we  grow by seeds inside months and months ago. It's exciting. So is your kitchen table covered with seed trays right now?  Basement. Yeah, our basement is our...
13:16We call it like the factory down there because we have tables of  seedlings growing down there. Racks, racks  and  LED lights. uh every morning  when our neighbors are driving by, they're like, your basement oh looks like a spaceship  down there.  Do you have the pink lights or just the white lights? White lights right now. And then eventually they're going to turn into pink lights when we start moving.
13:47We start moving the tomatoes over to the other  table. Yeah, once the seedlings get bigger, we have to move them to a different table because they get  so tall when they're just in the basement. So we got more industrial lights on another side and those ones are pink and then it kind of looks like we're yeah. Yeah. Why? Like tabletops? Yeah. Doors and whatnot. Yeah.
14:11Yeah, I made the mistake of getting the pink lights. I didn't realize I had ordered pink lights. I thought I had ordered white lights and those pink lights are really creepy in the middle of the night. They are. They were. What's going on over there? This is the first year in forever. And that's a that's a big overstatement, but whatever. This is the first year since we moved in here in August of 2020 that I do not have ceiling trays on my kitchen table right now.
14:40because we started every single seed in our hard-sided greenhouse this year. Wow, that is awesome. So you have greenhouses outside right now? Yeah, we have a big, we have a, I always screw up the measurements. I thought it was 20 feet by 40 feet, but it's actually smaller than that, but not by much. So we have a hard-sided greenhouse, yes. That is cool. That's  another goal, but how...
15:10How did you go about building that? I well, I applied for a grant, number one, and got it amazingly enough. I didn't think we had a chance in hell of getting it.  And then that paid for the supplies and my husband and my son and a neighbor helped us build it, helped us put it up.  Congratulations. That's awesome.
15:37I feel like that's a big weight lifted  off your shoulders. You can just keep production going and be able to use that space all year round. Well, it gives us an extra couple months in the fall and it gives us a couple extra months in the spring. It is not great for growing anything past December and until March.
16:02Okay. I suppose that makes sense here in Minnesota. I would need a heater if you had to want it to grow anything indoors and there's probably not enough sun either. Yeah, that's the thing. We would either have to use one of those, I don't know what they're called, they're a great big heating unit and they're heated with propane, I think. You hang them up. Or we'd have to use
16:29electricity, which we don't want to do because it's too expensive,  or we would have to get solar panels and a generator. And all of those options aren't really worth it for just three months in the winter time. Yeah, that's true.  It would build a lot of costs up for,  and then I'm sure in the greenhouse, you can't grow much more than like greens and things that are more fragile that don't need a ton of sunlight.  So I suppose it might not be worth  the cost it would take to do that.
17:00Yeah. And then the other thing is, that where would we sell them? Cause there aren't really a whole lot of winter markets.  Yeah, that's true too. So we decided that gaining that two  months in the fall and that two months in the spring  really was a good idea because getting our plants started in March and 1st of April means that we actually have stuff to sell at the first farmers market in June. Oh yeah. It's very smart. Yeah.
17:30And we just wanted we just wanted a greenhouse. Darn it. That was part of the reason.
17:41Yeah. One day we'll be building up to it. Hopefully. Well, you guys are young yet. Yes. Are you in your late 20s? Yeah, I'm 26. Yeah, 32.
17:59You have lots of time to grow and stretch and decide what works for you for your homestead, which is amazing. Yeah, that is true. And you put it like that. I appreciate that. Yeah, it was just, at the feels of, you know, still trying to figure out what's the next step for us. And you will be until you leave the homestead for good. I swear to you, we bought our place five years ago, five and a half years ago. And, uh,
18:29We're still not sure what we're doing and we're like fully fledged adult people. Our kids are grown. So it's always going to be what's next. It's always going to be what should we do? What do you want to do? Yeah.
18:45I like that part that  we've felt  really creative since starting this, at least  just from all the ideas that have been coming up and the what ifs, like maybe we can do this and that and  how do we get there? that's, you  know, being creative is just what homesteading has allowed us to do.
19:09And it's fun.  Yeah.
19:14That's my favorite part. It's fun.
19:18My wife and I were just talking the other day about that.  When you get home from a long day  of just being out there, whether it's  working on a project that you had no idea  how  to start it, ah being in the garden, hands  dirty, tired,  how satisfying it is when you get inside and the laughs you had throughout just working throughout the day, how goofy you can get.
19:48We get really goofy out there. Yeah. Some of the some of the best memories we've made have been out outside working and being creative, as he said, and at the end of the day. And I still think back to last year, I still remember those memories out there working hard and until the moon comes out and we got blood lights out there just trying to keep working, trying to get plants in before it rains the next day. And yeah, I remember. Yeah, I remember we remember that time when we exactly we took out
20:18the shop lights and I took out the drywall lights and we just started hooking everything up and planting in the middle of the night.  It looked like a basketball court out there. bet it did. You guys don't have kids, do you? Not yet, no.  it's going to be harder to do those kinds of things once you have babies. So enjoy the silliness now  because the silliness that comes with kids is a whole different animal.
20:46Oh, I suppose. That's something to look forward to, Absolutely. So do you guys have any animals on the homestead yet? Do have chickens? Yeah, we do have chickens. have right now we have 19 hens that we get eggs from for ourselves and then to sell at markets. And then every year we do 75 broiler chickens to be able to we butcher them ourselves come when they're.
21:16eight weeks old  and we have a whole family day of it, butcher the chickens. And then when we're done, we have our freezer full for the year. And then we're able to fill our parents' freezers and a couple friends. um So yeah, just have chickens, but no other livestock right now. um Potentially maybe work into getting pigs this year. that's in the plan this year. Nice.
21:44If money was no object and time  wasn't a real object, and it is because you guys both have jobby jobs, what would you like to have for animals on the homestead?
21:55Oh, that's a really good question. Yeah. I would like a whole zoo out there if I could. But Christian would probably stop me. I love all animals, but I think specifically for thinking for the homestead. Yeah. Yeah. I would like for as far as an exotic animal, I was like if money was no option, it gets a couple of peacocks out there for sure. That'd be the fun. That'd be the fun bird. But I would go.
22:25I would go beef  and a lot of beef, lot of pigs, chickens, those basic ones, which I don't think  there was. Yeah, I think  we've always kind of, we've talked about goats in the past, but I think that we're kind of leaning more towards beef, pork and chicken just because those can have the most yield. And we kind of want animals that will.
22:53give back to us in the long run. know,  we do we do love pets and everything, but I guess if money was no object, then we'd get all of the fun animals to like goats, and stuff. get like fish because we have like a little bit of a pond back there. You can start getting like you can start farming fish, trout, stuff like that. mean, just imagine getting into that. Yeah.  You start farming trout. I'm coming to see you and I'm bringing money.  Bring it over.
23:21Come on, on.  It's sitting there.  You could just see at one point it was a pond and has water backed up.
23:39Well, I've started asking that question now and then because the answers are always interesting. I asked them the other day and she said,  I think I would like kangaroos. And I was like, okay, that would be great.  Oh, would be a fine fence.  Yeah. My husband and I have been talking about getting into quail. And I mentioned this a couple of episodes ago and we haven't actually decided yet because
24:07Money's a little tight with the way everything keeps going up in price. So we're waiting until we have at least an extra, literally extra, $200 before we do anything. Because we know we have to get an incubator. We know who we're getting the eggs from, and that's probably not going to cost us anything right now. But we still have to make the coop. We have to get the brooder. We have to get things to make this happen. So we're working on
24:37putting $200 aside that is not allocated for anything for Quail. And that would be awesome. Yeah, it's amazing to when you think about you want to get an animal and then you start think like when it's a dream, it's like, oh yeah, we can do that. And then when you start thinking seriously about it, then you remember all the little things that will add up. that. But I think that's a really cool idea that you set aside. You're waiting to set aside that money.
25:04to be able to do that. Cause then it's like, know that you are for sure. Like you have a really good plan going forward and everything. Oh, that's what it helps to us. I feel too, like it's always helped  like, well, not always, but I should say it started more  responsibility with money and really thinking about, right, what's, you know, let's sit down, let's write it out. Let's see, let's make a plan. I've always enjoyed that part of it too. Yeah, for sure.
25:32Well, it's either feed the quail or feed us and we need to eat to be able to do the things to be able to feed the quail. So the quail comes  second. other thing that  I haven't said anything to my husband yet because I'm still chewing on it, but  I made the mistake of watching a video about pygmy goats the other day. The little tiny goats, they're only about two feet tall and the biggest they get.
25:57The biggest they get is 70 pounds. And I was like, oh my God, I could have goats. We could handle those. Those are small. And then I was like, but they're probably going to cost $500 a piece and we have to have a fenced in area for them, which means you got to buy the wood to make the fence. And my brain just started spinning. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to keep this to myself until I figure it out.  Then I will be like, Hey, there's somebody that has two pigmy goats. We could have baby goats. And he'll be like,  um.
26:27Lay out the full plan. What? Yeah. He's going to be like, we need a plan. I already got it. Yes, I am trying really hard to keep my bright ideas to myself right now because he has ADD or ADHD. And if I even so much as breathe the word goat with any kind of intention near him, he's going to be like, goats. And he'll do he'll do the he'll do the deep dive into how we can make it happen. I
26:55don't want to do a deep dive. want to take it slow on this.  quail is much more doable. Pygmy goats  are  a pipe dream right this second, but I suspect there might be little goats here within two years. So we'll see. Oh, I love that. It's exciting.  Yes, and uh it's only him and I, and we like goat milk and pygmy goats are just as good for milk as regular goats.
27:24but they produce less of it, which means we wouldn't be wasting any. Oh, there you go. That's a smart way of going about it.
27:33Yes, and I could probably handle a small goat. I don't think I can handle a big 150 pound goat. That's not my idea of fun. So.  It is so much fun talking to homesteaders because you guys get it. I said, pig me goats and both of your voices just went up like, oh.  We'll have to come visit them when you can come to the trout farm, then we'll go visit the goats.
28:04We'll trade visiting rights. It'll be great. Yeah, there you go. I remember my, was just thinking back to when my buddy had a Billy goat and that, uh, I see way bigger than pigmen goats, but this thing, this thing was named Bob and it was just a nuisance, man. It was, it would stand on cars. It would stand everywhere. I was, I don't know, that came to my head. thought those goats, man.
28:33Goats are either a huge pain in the ass or they are a blessing. And if I get little tiny goats, maybe there'll be blessings. Maybe.  We'll see.  We will see how that plays out eventually.  But it's fun to think about and it's fun to do the research and I am a big lifelong learner. really like learning new things. So studying up on pygmy goats is no skin off my nose.  All right, guys, I try to keep these to half an hour. Where can people find you?
29:02Yeah, so we're um on Facebook at Faithful Harvest MN and we're also on Instagram with this same uh username. And then  maybe in the future we're working on a website so you can keep an eye out for that. But yeah, I've been trying to post on social media a lot more so you can keep up with us on there and see some fun videos and content.  And that will be in the show notes so people can find you.
29:30All right, as always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  This was really fun, you guys. And Christian, thank you for making the time too, because Abigail said you were going to join us, and I was like, yes.  Thank you. Yeah, thank you for reaching out to us. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for giving us a platform to be able to share about homesteads and other people get to share different things going on with their tiny homestead. It's a good platform that you've created for everyone. Yeah,  it's so.
30:00We've never done anything like this before. So  we're excited. We really were to be able to talk to you.  Good. And it's so fun for me.  You guys say thank you. All the people I've interviewed, you're all like, thank you so much. And you have no idea how this lights up my days too. So thank you.  All right. You guys have a great day.  Thank you.
 

Montana Country Homesteading

Today I'm talking with Diane at Montana Country Homesteading. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You'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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Diane at Montana Country something  homesteading  in Montana because it's Montana country homesteading. Good morning, Diane. How are you?  Good morning. I'm wonderful. How are you this morning?  I'm good. How's the weather there?
00:59Actually yesterday for Easter was just about as perfect as it could be. And this morning it's a little overcast, but it's going to be a nice day. Unusual weather in Montana, to be honest. Yeah. It was a lovely day in Minnesota here yesterday too. Yesterday was beautiful. Sunny 50s light breeze. was, it was really good. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Montana country home study. Well, um,
01:28Let's see a little bit about us.  I've been married to my husband who was my high school sweetheart for 47 years now. um We came to Montana exactly 30 years ago in just a couple of weeks, the first weekend of May.  And um we came with our three kids, two dogs,  a motor home,  a U-Haul carrying a pickup truck full of all my husband's construction tools and away we went.
01:57and  came out onto a bare piece of property that quite honestly, my husband found in the back of a Field and Stream magazine  in a one inch by two inch ad and said, honey, let's go to Montana.  And  so we did, we packed up everything 30 years ago and came onto this 20 acre parcel that  we actually bought it with a couple of Polaroid, the shake pictures, you know, that you shake to develop them.
02:26And  away we went  and it's  been a whirlwind since we actually did homestead this property.  It was set up in 20 acre tracks out here with quite honestly, no roads, no development, no nothing. They had just subdivided the land. um When we moved on the property, there was literally a two lane dirt path that came down to our 20 acres. And that I looked at.
02:52dirt path up by the way. And it is actually considered um a stage coach line road from Billings, Montana to Park City, Montana back in the day. So that was of interesting. Yeah, we live on a stage coach road. uh It's now been a little better developed than it used to be, but it's still just a gravel road coming in here. uh But yeah, 30 years ago, we came onto this property with just a dream and an idea. uh
03:21We were uh building contractors in the Bay Area and were just on complete overload and did not want to raise our kids in that environment.  And so we made a pact with each other to get the heck out of there before our kids got uh in middle school and away we went. And we've been here since. That is amazing. I love that.  Okay. So  did you...
03:47Did you grow up with people who did homesteading or gardening or farming or ranching at all? My grandparents um on my dad's side had a farm, but we didn't go there very often. uh My other grandma was the most incredible gardener that you had ever seen. She lived in a  little town in Pemberville, Ohio.  And um quite honestly, that woman could grow anything. And what was really amazing to me is she would
04:15pull all of her flowers in from her flower beds and put them in what she called her breezeway  in the winter months in Ohio. And she would hold those flowers over till next year and put them all back out in the beds. It was amazing to me.  I don't have that gift that grandma had, but  I can grow a thing or two.  So what are the  thing or twos that you grow?  We grow a lot of our own food. um I think it's really important that you grow your own food, especially today.
04:45with what's going on with the food chain and the modified foods and all the sprays and such that they're putting on our foods. think it's wildly important that you grow your own food today.  So I actually have,  one of the first things we did on this homestead was we built some raised beds, started some gardens with my kids.  And then of course the deer came and ate everything. I didn't realize  that I was dealing with some serious
05:15predation with animals and such around here, but we were. uh Then we decided to put a hoop house over the raised beds and got wise and kept the animals out and started growing food there. uh If you look on my social media page right now,  my husband finally finished uh our main greenhouse that we're going to be growing and I actually just started putting plants in there on Saturday afternoon.
05:39That's exciting. It's super exciting. It's like over the top greenhouse, of course, my husband's that go bigger, go home kind of guy. um But the first greenhouse that we we grew food in  was just a little  raised bed area that we put  literally sheet panels that we hooped over it and uh buttoned them down to both sides of the  of the raised bed and then put um plastic over top of it. And that's what we grew and put a wall in the front.
06:07some mesh in the back and away we went.  And I grew in that for  20 some years. So  it doesn't need to be elaborate, but you need to grow your own food.  And now we've just stepped up the game to grow into this uh major greenhouse.  And  years ago, I took a horse barn that we had when we were actually raising paints back in the day.  I took that horse barn and I rented it to somebody who cultivated. uh
06:34inside of that and they have since moved out. So now I have an area where I can actually grow indoor produce all year long. So we're working on that next. That's our next big project. We've had one project after another here on this piece of land. Again, we drove up, there was nothing here, like literally nothing.  No water, no power, no phones, no driveways, uh just a piece of land with some pin markers so that you knew what was yours and what wasn't and
07:04We laid it out from there and it's been  quite interesting. Okay. After everything you just told me, I have a couple of thoughts.  I'm going do my public service announcement now because it plays into what you just said.  I do this on every episode lately.  If you live in America right now and you don't know how to cook from scratch,  learn because you will save yourself a lot of money if you're buying ingredients instead of finished foods.  Number two, if you
07:30can't grow a garden, get to know your local producers and growers because they can grow a garden  and you're feeding yourself really good food and you're supporting your neighbors.  Love all of that. That's incredible. Yep. And then number two, I have been trying to figure out a way to explain the feeling  that we homesteaders get when we have a project and we get it finished. And the only thing I can liken it to
07:57is if you were in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or you took art class in elementary school and you learned a new skill, whether it was building a homemade birdhouse or Girl Scouts, they used to have you make an apron  or in art class, did, I don't know what it was called, but we took a chisel and we chiseled out  a design on a piece of vinyl board and then we would make stamps with that vinyl board.
08:26When,  if you've ever done those kinds of things as a kid, if you have the, I don't know, luck to end up having property and having some of your own choices be your choices, not the city planner's choices, and you can put in a greenhouse or you can put in a garden or you put in a raised bed and you see success with that.  It's the same feeling as when you took on a project when you were a kid.
08:57Boy, and to add to that, Mary,  if you do have the property and you do have the means to do it, do some kids classes.  One of the other things that we did on this property, we actually started it in 2023,  is we built out an area on the west side of our property, which is called Montana Country Pines. um
09:18Montana Country Pines is eight short-term rentals that we built over there that consists of teepees and a really cool 100-year-old sheep wagon and some  vintage RVs. But one of the other things that I do with Montana Country Pines is I put a sign out at the road  and the kids know that it's Craft Day at Montana Country Pines. And we have all the stuff here ready for them.
09:42So all they gotta do is show up at noon on a Saturday when the signs out and they can come make something and take it back to their properties. So that's been really, really awesome to do those sort of things and teach kids that, you know, you can do things other than be in front of screens all the time. We can find things in nature and turn them into art. And I just love doing stuff like that with kids because when I was a kid, we used to ride our bicycles to a place called the
10:11Miami Valley Rec Center, and there were volunteer moms that showed up with  stuff in boxes that you could make something and take it home.  And that was one of the most  biggest highlights of my childhood is going and making stuff at the Rec Center.  So that's why I do that. put a street sign out there, a little sandwich sign, and the kids know that tomorrow it's Craft Day at Montana Country Pines. So they show up, make something, and take it home.
10:40That is so amazing, Diane. love it. uh Summer rec saved my mother's sanity. That's not bad. Mine too, I'm sure.
10:53Yeah. And the same thing we would go and I mean, they were minor crafts. was like, I don't know. It's been so long. I'm 56. It's been forever since I went to summer rec. I remember having fun. I remember being outside for part of the day because it was at a school building. So we would play on the playground or play soccer or whatever. And then the other part of the day was indoor crafts. And I seem to remember having like little one foot by one foot boards and nails and we put nails in the wood.
11:23And then we took colored strings and made really pretty designs on it. But I don't remember what  the art form was called. String art, some kind of string art. was really fun and it was really Zen. I loved that because you couldn't focus on anything except getting strings right.  And I think that's what's missing with kids today because with social media, it isn't Zen. It's just feeding your brain constantly in all different directions.
11:54Yeah, that's why I grab my grandsons up and I say, let's go paint some rocks and leave them around.  We're that family too, that paints a rock and leaves it and picks up a rock and leaves a rock.  We're those people.  But yeah, my grandkids, they paint rocks and they leave them out here in our park. And uh it's fun. You you walk by and you see a rock that looks like a Volkswagen itself. It's pretty cool. yeah, have all sorts of stuff like that.  you do little rocks with them?
12:22encouraging words like joy and kindness. yeah. Hippie rocks. That's what I call it. Hippie rocks. Hey, again, I'm 65. I grew up in the seventies. I am that old hippie at heart, but you we use it. We use that hippie spirit to do good things for kids and people today. I love it. I told you when we talked on the phone that I was so excited to talk to you for the interview, cause I knew it was going to be fun. And so far you have not disappointed me. And in the least.
12:52So do you guys have chickens or goats or anything? We do, okay. So we used to raise horses, um got a little older and decided that maybe we'd let the younger people raise horses. um And um we do have a couple of goats. They are cashmere goats that we just use them for the fiber, um which is something else that we've got coming up here pretty soon. We're going to have a couple of gals come out here with a couple of spinning wheels and
13:19bring a group of homeschool kids out here and show them how to actually take fiber and turn it into uh spinnable wool  and then show them some finished products that these ladies have done.  just to kind of plant that idea in some young kids' heads that, you  you look at that animal and it's not just the animal, it's the fiber and the garments and such that can come from it.  So we do have a couple of cashmere goats. Yeah, I have a flock of chickens. I've always had chickens. um
13:48And a couple of Dobermans right now. Other than that,  we normally get em a little bum steer that comes in every year that we'll raise up. We don't have one right at the moment.  We do have a pig pen out there waiting for a couple of little pigs again, which I'm not overly excited about, but we'll deal with.  Their food. Their food. Yeah.  So when you say a bum calf,  would you define that for me?
14:17We usually find somebody that's got a calf that the  mom didn't make it or ignored it or it got left when people rounded up the cows and what have you and they find a bum calf somewhere.  We got a couple of  local ranchers that we always tell them when you got something that needs a home and needs fed up and we'll just put it in this pen over here, but we usually get one every year.
14:42And then one of my dearest friends in the world has a bison ranch just about an hour and a half from here that  we always have fresh bison meat here. And we go and help on the ranch and that sort of thing and barter for m boxes of wonderful meat from the ranch.  there a big difference between how cattle beef and bison beef tastes or is it pretty much the same?
15:09It depends on how you cook it, but yeah, it's pretty close to the same, but bison meat is much better for you cholesterol wise. It's the good cholesterol that you want.  It's just a better protein source.  At one point on this homestead,  we actually had a USDA certified organic meat facility that my husband built out of a,  he put up a hundred by 80 foot pole barn and we actually built inside of it.
15:38a certified organic meat plant. actually produced a bison jerky product for several years. We took it then from that particular plant that we built here on our place and took it to a co-packer because we kind of outgrew our space here.  And then COVID pretty much took care of that. COVID pretty much took care of a lot of things.  COVID took care of a really good business there.
16:04But it was awesome that we were able to create it right here from our own homestead. uh We got uh certified trim that came in from Bison facilities and actually produced the product right here on our property.  I'll tell you that that was one of the learning curves that uh took me a minute.  Learning uh nutritional labeling, um recipes that.
16:29actually produce the nutrition that you were looking for that didn't have too much sodium or too much fat or too much whatever. um I actually formulated the recipes. My husband did the cook  and um smoked everything and then we put it into the marketplace for years. It was pretty incredible right here from our homestead.  Very cool. I didn't even know you could do that.  Yep.  We had to have certified inspectors come out here every week. We had inspections and
16:59um Yeah, it was quite the process, but we built it from the ground up, bought every piece of machinery,  put it all together,  did the packaging, the labeling, the production, and then actually put it into the marketplace. uh I want to touch on the labeling because uh we  have a farm stand here at our property and we sell cold processed lye soap.
17:26and we sell candles and we sell roller balls with with essential oils in them and things like that.  And as soon as I renew my cottage food registration, which I haven't done yet, we can sell breads and cookies and things too. Nice. And  what I didn't realize when we decided that we wanted to do this is that it was going to cost money for the labels and for the ink to print the labels.
17:51God forbid we actually get the labels printed for us by ordering them because even it's even more expensive then. So so what I would like the listener to know is that when you're paying I don't know ten dollars for a loaf of sourdough bread not only are you paying for the bread you are paying for the work that it took to make the bread you are paying for the bag that the bread is in you're paying for the paper
18:20that the label is printed on because without the label, we can't sell you that bread because the state of Minnesota won't allow us to. Correct. Correct. So it's not that we want to gouge anybody as producers, but we have to make it worth the time to do the thing. Yeah. And the consumer needs to understand the fact that they are paying for all of those things,  but they're also paying for a better quality product.
18:48rather than buying something that's  jam-packed full of preservatives that you're going to feed your family.  So there's a cost to all of that.  What was really surprising to me when we went organic with our product, uh well, there's two sets of inspectors that would come out. There was the USDA would come out and inspect us just based on the fact we were meat, we were a meat product,  but then we'd have the organic  inspectors come out.
19:16And the first time that she came out, she said, I need to see all of your ingredients that you've bought over the past six months. And I need to see your production runs for six months because we need to see that they match. And it just kind of struck me funny. I said, what do you mean see that they match? Of course they'd have to match. Well, she kind of filled me in on the fact that there's a lot of fraud in certified organic labeling that they have found massive fraud that, you know, it,
19:45The label says it's certified organic, but you haven't bought enough organic materials to create  that amount of product. it just struck me. oh I didn't realize that people would defraud that system as well, but apparently they do.  So for me, buying local, buying from a farm stand, if I don't have that particular vegetable in my garden.
20:09is important. Buying meat from my local ranchers and so forth is important because I don't want to buy meat from the counters that are full of formaldehyde and  funky stuff to make them stay pink for a while so that they look good for you to pick up. I'd rather have it wrapped in paper in my freezer knowing that my neighbor took it to the butcher that I know. They processed it the right way and  it's  what I think it is rather than what's all in everything else you're buying today.
20:39So it is important. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Yeah. And the other thing is that if you spend your money locally, it tends to stay local. True. Very true. Very true.  I was reading something on Facebook because everybody reads something on Facebook every day at this point. But it was a story about how a guy went to the local dude who sold
21:06And he bought a box of steaks from the farmer. And the farmer then took that money and he ended up going to the local barber for a haircut. He donated some of that money to the tithing thing at church. He put some of that money in his local bank and he spent some of it at the local grocery store.  And by the time he had done all that, he had spent money  locally, not outside of a 15-mile radius.
21:36And I was like, you know, that's how it used to be. Yeah, that is true. And it's important, you know, if we don't, if we don't keep our, our own towns funded, they die. True. Community is everything.  And that's one of the things that I have specialized in for years and years and years is creating communities of people.  I've been in the network marketing space  in the background of everything that my husband and I have done for 35 years.
22:06Our first child was born autistic. We could not do the daycare thing, nor did I want to for that matter. So uh when our first boy was born,  I quit my job as a pediatric dental assistant  and became that stay at home mom and did the books for my husband's construction company for years.  And I was the one that was kind of filling in in the background.  Cause if you've ever done construction, it's feast or famine. It's either really good or it's really bad. uh
22:34So I was kind of that buffer for all those years um until, uh oh, about 10 years ago, I was able to step up my game in that space  and uh create a really, really good network of people  and create that leveraged and residual income that my husband  tells everybody now that I'm his sugar mama and  have taken over to the point where he does not have to build.
23:02homes any longer. He doesn't have to do projects he doesn't want to do. can pick and choose what he'd like to do. He's been doing a lot of volunteer stuff is what he's done. ah He can't sit still.  We figured that one out. So uh there's always a project around here on the homestead he can deal with, but he does not have to travel and go build someone's homes any longer, which I'm pretty excited about.  take it that you really love each other because you've been together for quite a long time.
23:31Oh yeah, 47 years. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, my parents were married in 1965. They've never been married to anyone else. My mom was 19. My dad was 22, I think, when they got married. Yeah. And they are still just smitten with each other this many years later. And I'm just like, how in the heck does that work? Well, you either grow together or you grow apart. And we grew together.
24:00and raised three incredible boys into nice young Ben. And it's been a whirlwind, I can tell you that. um I followed him from Ohio to Florida to California and now to Montana. So yeah, I think I'd follow the boy over a cliff, but um needless to say, Montana is where we really fell in love with the people, the surroundings, the opportunity um and a way to
24:30to create a really nice lifestyle for our family. And that's why we've been here for 30 years. This is home for us now. Congratulations on knowing what you wanted, going after it and making it a success. That is fabulous.  We are pretty driven people, I must say.  We're that go bigger, go home.  That's kind of been our attitude forever. So we kind of overdo it when we do it.
24:56just like  the meat plant, you know, we started out, that started out with us taking our buffalo jerky that we normally made to hunting camp. And everybody kept saying, you guys should sell this stuff. You guys should sell this stuff. Well, he heard it one too many times and took the building that he had just built that he didn't know he was gonna do with and said, let's just put a meat plant in there.  And we did it.  And it was crazy.
25:24Okay, well, you've been doing this for a long time. So  I'm gonna ask you the question that's always really weird for people to answer. What would you tell a young couple who wanna get into homesteading? How would you tell them to get started?  Plan well first,  okay? Do the planning,  figure out what it is that you really want from your homestead. Do you want it to produce food?
25:51And is that in the source of animals and vegetables or one or the other? um Figure out what your own gifts and talents are that you have. Because here's the thing, if you  can live on a homestead and you can take your own gifts and talents and monetize them,  and today there's  hundreds of ways to monetize your talents via the internet. um So if you can take your gifts and talents and figure out a way to monetize those from your homestead.
26:20For example, if you have goats and you like making cheese, that should be something that you figure out how to monetize. Or if you're that person that wants to make soaps and candles and that sort of thing, then you need to hone in on that craft and that talent and figure out where on your homestead will you be doing that. uh Create the space so that the space is for that. We have so many buildings on this homestead, it's insane.  It looks like a village around here, it really does. uh
26:51But at the same token, each one of those spaces has its own purpose on the homestead.  And I think that would be one of the first things I would tell somebody. Figure out what you want from it. Make a good plan to go after it  and know that you're gonna work your little butt off for a while.  Yes. Living doesn't come easy. If you want...
27:12If you want to live well and you want to be in a place where you're not breathing smog and everybody's exhaust from their cars or hearing all the sirens and  all the stuff in big cities, um it takes a  little extra work to live in an area like we live in. um So plan on that. That would be my first advice.
27:37That is really good advice because that's what I would have said too.  You have to...
27:44You have to have a plan. It's just the way it is. And  when we bought our place five and a half years ago, our plan was to start with a clean slate. And boy, did we, we started with a clean slate and we had to put in a garden and the field where the garden is had not been grown on or in for 50, think 40 or 50 years.  last thing that anyone grew on it was a big old field of  pumpkins.
28:14So it was all grass and weeds and my husband played hell getting that garden plot dug out to plant produce in.  I bet.  And uh this year  we now have our hard side of greenhouse that we put in three maize ago  and every single seed that's planted so far is planted in trays in the greenhouse for the first time ever.  Doesn't that feel wonderful?
28:41Oh, I'm so happy to not have my kitchen table and my desk in my living room covered with seat dress.  But uh the garden went from like, I think it was 50 by  20 feet. And now it's, I think it's a hundred feet by 150 feet. Awesome. Nice garden. So we have been here for five, well, six years this August. And it took until last year to really feel like we maybe had
29:10some kind of a handle sort of kinda on our plans. And that's the other thing is that if you're on a homestead, plans constantly change and grow and morph. Yes, absolutely. That's what happened with the west side of our property. There was an area over on the west side that I said, honey, one of these days we should build a little cabin over here because when our grandson Mason gets old enough, he may want to be out here.
29:38And if we had a little cabin over there for him, that would be great. Which by the way, my husband was a log home builder for a year. So when I put him to task with stuff, he usually can just get her done. So I may mention that we should probably put a cabin there for him. Well, the space that we were going to put the cabin actually is what houses a 14 by 20 wall tent. That's part of Montana country pines, which is.
30:06Our business, operate from the west side of our property, the short-term rentals.  We set up what is  an Airbnb style camping trip for people where you just bring your clothes and your food and we've got everything else handled for you.  But again, those plans changed  because I was just going put a little cabin over there for my grandson. And as it is now,  there's a whole village there in that area. Actually on that top side where I wanted to put that cabin.
30:35there's the two hand painted teepees, the tent, and then the sheep wagon, which is kind of like a frontier area up top.  And then we put a road that goes in down below where we've got the vintage RVs at. ah yeah, those plans changed dramatically and they changed because we got into vintage RVs.  We started refurbishing some vintage RVs and flipping them and then.
30:59We kept one and went to a show, went to a vintage RV show and got ribbons and was like, okay, we love this. uh And then  again, that go bigger, go home attitude. My husband said, well, we just create a little RV, you know, like a little Airbnb thing. Well, here we are now, uh three years later. And uh it's pretty exciting to be able to host people from all over. We had people here last year from Sweden, which was really awesome.
31:29but to host people from all over the world now uh here at our place and share a little piece of paradise with them has been pretty awesome.  I bet it has. I love what you're doing, Diane. Where can people find you online?  The park itself is under MontanaCountryPines.com.  We have Facebook page, but we also have a website page for Montana Country Pines for the booking engine and such. uh You can see pictures of
31:58The inside of the a hundred year old sheep wagon is just, it's all original. It's epic. uh It came off of the largest sheep ranch, which was in Martinsdale, Montana, just up the road about  an hour or so. uh It came off of the largest sheep ranch in Northwestern America.  And  that particular sheep wagon, someone lived in it and actually
32:25tended to the sheep of that ranch for years. It's pretty incredible.  So yeah, we've got  some interesting things going on out here. I'm a firm believer  in taking your property and  utilizing it for  what it can produce for you uh income wise.  And uh my biggest thing I must say for the last several years uh has been on a little mission to empower women, just women in general.
32:53Not that I don't like working with men, but I really enjoy working with women more so. I was raised back in the 60s by a single mom, which back then was not the norm. You were frowned upon if you didn't have a father in the household back in the 60s and 70s, which was my era. And I realized that if my mom would have had the skill sets that I have today and the knowledge that I have today, my life would have been really different as a kid, like real different.
33:23And here's the cold raw statistic.  One  in four women survive either being divorced or widowed without having to change all the circumstances around them, like leave their homestead or drive a different vehicle or a lot of circumstances change for women. So I have been on this mission for the last 10, 15 years to empower as many women as I can to be that  one.
33:53Right? To be the one that can survive whatever comes at you, that you know how to create income, you know how to handle the income, you know how to invest the income,  you know how to take care of yourself.  And I realized that  real wholeheartedly  when my father-in-law passed away and I realized the situation that my mother-in-law was in, she had always had dad taking care of  everything financially for her.
34:23quite honestly, she was 72 and did not know how to balance a checkbook.  Didn't know how to get the bills paid because dad did it all the time. So that's when I really realized she became a project person for me there for a while. But uh that's when I really realized that, my mom was one of those  three women, she wasn't the one in four that survived a divorce, right? She worked really, really hard to take care of four kids and keep a  roof over our heads.
34:52Um, but that one in four really just struck me. And I thought, you know, I need to help other women. I am that one in four. I've, I've created businesses for myself. I've created businesses for our family. Um, and I've made sure that, um,  everything's in order that if by any chance I'm the one that's left behind, which I keep  joking with my husband that I'm going first and there's going to be a casserole line down our driveway.
35:22which is about 300 feet or so,  300 yards or so.  Anyways, I keep joking with him that I need to go first and he needs a casserole line because I don't want to be a widow. But uh again, you gotta be that one in four. So you gotta know how to take care of yourself, how to create income for yourself, how to monetize your gifts, your skills, your talents, because everybody has something, right? Everybody's got something that they have a passion for, um something they enjoy that they can monetize.
35:52And so I've been helping women do that for a long, time.  I'm so glad that you took that upon yourself because it's really important. Thank you for  doing that, Diane. Yeah, it's a big deal. Really, it is. It is.
36:07All right, as always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Diane, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. You are certainly welcome. And  here's one other thing I wanna make sure everybody does. So Montana Country Pines is  our park over here, the Airbnb.  But at Montana Country Homesteading on the Facebook page of Montana Country Homesteading, we're doing a drawing for a  trip here to Montana Country Pines. You get a consultation with us on
36:36on your home setting plans.  We're going to make a really great meal for you out of our chuck wagon that we've got.  So there's a drawing there. There's no purchase required. We just want to get uh people aware of the fact that this is here.  And we want to give away a weekend to somebody so that they could come here,  maybe learn a little bit off of our homestead that they can go take back to theirs. But we're offering that to our home setting community.  So go register for that. It's free. uh
37:05And you just might end up here for a couple of days hanging out with my crazy husband and I. That sounds like fun. What's the deadline for that? What's the last day? The drawing is actually going to be live on a Facebook live on May 2nd. any by May 1st, by May 1st, get in the drawing. So go to Montana country homesteadings Facebook page. The drawing is on there. The link to that's there.
37:30Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. All right, Diane, I hope you have a great day. Thanks. You as well. And this was really fun, Mary. It's really good to get to know you and I'm sure we'll do more things in the future. I hope so.  All right. That's just going on it. Thanks, Mike. All right. All right. Bye. Bye.