A Tiny Homestead

Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm

Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at
00:28Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm, I love the name, in Florida. Hello guys, how are you? Hello, doing good. Good. You're melting in the sun, but trying to stay cool. Yeah, we were going through that yesterday. I said this on an interview this morning that I did, but I will say it again because it was ridiculous. We have central air in our house and it was set for 72 degrees. It got to 77 degrees in my house at three o'clock yesterday afternoon.
00:58Yeah. Yeah. My dog was laying on the floor panting. I'm like, oh, this is bad.  What kind of dog do you have?  She's a mini Australian shepherd.  Oh, cute, cute. We have a Great Dane. Oh, well, they're very different sizes, but I bet they're just as lovey. I bet they're on the same love scale. Yes.  OK, so how did your farm get its name?  So when I was a kid, I watched the movie
01:27Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? It came out in 2000. Have you seen it? I have not. I keep meaning to find it and I just never get around to it. It's a worthwhile movie and the song, Bad Bottom Girls, you know, is in it. And the movie is about these guys that escape from jail and it's like a story of redemption, finding yourself.
01:58and really like prioritizing your self-well-being. And it just resonated for me for a long time. And so when we developed our mini farm, it became a little bit of a play on words because we had chickens first and, you know, the layered chickens have very heavy bottoms. And then we got into bees and all the worker bees are female. And it's just kind of snowballed into our
02:27our farm name. love it. it who what band did the Fat Bottom Girls song? Queen. Yeah, that's what I thought. But I wasn't sure. I didn't want to sound like a total idiot.  Okay, cool. That is very cute. I love that story. So tell me about yourselves and what you do at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm. Sure. So my name is Larkin  and  we  are I would consider ourselves
02:56first generation homesteaders. It started as a hobby, you know, in the backyard before we had our first child. And that was around 2015 or 16 when we first got chickens and I was a zookeeper, worked with birds at our local AZA zoo. So I'm very fond of birds. And I decided I wanted to bring them to our
03:25backyard and Kevin is a good sport. So he was like, all right, know, eggs for the kitchen. Great. And then as we got into more gardening and,  and  planting our own crops in our backyard, we decided that this was like a really great, sustainable,  uh, an empowering hobby.  Um, and so we've just been taking like small approximations until we're
03:54where we are today, we have like a dairy cow.  We do homeschooling as of this year  and  we do take advantage a lot of our  public land for  hunting. And we just try and be as self-sustainable as possible without making it overwhelming. And so that's kind of how we got started.
04:23How much land do you guys have? So  we  have a family farm and it was built  for horses. My mom  is an equestrian. She breeds  Grand Prix jumpers and then they show on the circuit here in Florida and they travel around the country. So we have probably about 17 acres  and our farm is now down to two retired
04:52horses that we ride for pleasure and the rest of the farm has been made available to us for our our creatures. Nice. And what do you have for creatures? We have chickens, quail, changing list, ducks, geese, a cow. We have a couple of horses and that's it. We have a rabbit.
05:22for our  composting needs. He lives a life of luxury.  Yeah, we have the whole menagerie.  And  so are you using,  I don't know how to ask this correctly. I never asked it right.  Is anything on the farm produced to support the farm?
05:46Oh,  so we do  sell our extras,  if that makes sense. So we really produce for ourselves and for our family.  if we have... Go ahead. Well, Kyle's making what? About  a gallon a day or so? Gallon, gallon and half of milk a day? Yeah. We use that to make a lot of ghee. And then if we have some leftover milk or...
06:14Even occasionally we'll sell some ghee or butter. It's just the butter and the ghee is extreme and eggs of course. But the butter and the ghee is pretty labor intensive. So it's kind of a tough one to sell. So we end up using a lot of that for our cooking as well as we'll give some to like family and friends and stuff like that. Yeah. And then we do sell some products that we make. So we have like whipped tallow balm, soaps, and then we sell, you know, excess eggs and milk that we have.
06:45And it's really, we don't do like farmers markets. So the people that are interested, we invite them to the farm. They can take a farm tour, meet the animals, you know, that they are acquiring their food from.  And we try and make it like a fun experience  from when you drive through the gate and you drive off with our products.
07:10Yeah, if I was buying your butter or your ghee, I would want to go up to your cow and kiss it on the nose and say thank you. She is a miniature Jersey and she is in your pocket. She loves her treats and her people. So she comes up and interacts. Nice. Nice. I love those cows so much. They're so pretty. They're surprisingly friendly. It's like a giant puppy. What?
07:37Oh, same. They're like giant puppies for the most part. The miniature cows are super friendly. Oh, yeah, absolutely. If we had just a little bit more room here, we have three acres, but there's a lot on that three acres. If we had just a little bit more flat land with some hay, we might get a mini cow, but we just don't have the room and I'm kind of sad about it, but that's okay. So the reason I asked about whether you produce anything that supports the farm,
08:06is because when we bought our place, my husband loves to garden. don't know if you guys have listened to any of the episodes about on my podcast, but he loves gardening  to the point that our garden has expanded to a hundred feet by, I bet it's getting close to 250 feet now.  And it's not just one space. It's like  three or four different spaces that add up to that. And so the first summer we were here, we grew food and we had some of it.
08:36or sale to people who wanted to come get it.  And that was cool.  And then  we set up a farm stand three summers ago and we sold produce out of that and eggs and stuff. then  two,  three summers ago, he also started selling at the farmer's market because  we can't possibly use all the food that he's been growing.  Well, that's exciting though.
09:05Yeah. So, um, I feel like the plan was to sell some of our stuff to our community.  I'm just not sure that I realized how big the plan would become.  And I'm not upset about it at all. He loves it. It's how he, it's his Zen spot. It's how he distresses from his jobby job. Yes. Gardening has that effect. Very meditative.
09:31Yes. And I'm really happy when he brings me in fresh right off the vine tomatoes and cucumbers  and butter crunch lettuce that literally goes from the ground to my sink gets rinsed off and put in a bowl  and then dressed up with whatever dressing I want on it and I eat it. So literally five minutes from garden to my face.  That's awesome.  Yep. It's pretty great. It tastes better that way for whatever reason.
09:58Yeah. And who knew there were so many varieties of lettuce that you can grow in the United States. Yeah. Our personal favorite is rocket lettuce. Cause it's got a little bit of a spicy kick to it. Yeah. Um, there's a purple romaine lettuce that we grow and it's so beautiful. People see it and they're like, what is that? I'm like, it's a romaine lettuce. And they're like, nah, romaine's green. I can't be it.
10:27No, that's purple romaine lettuce. It tastes pretty much exactly like green romaine lettuce. It's just purple. can do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's purple carrots now. There's white carrots. There's red carrots. Yeah, we've done the kaleidoscope carrots. Those are super fun, especially if you have kids involved because you don't know. It's like a surprise when you pluck them from the grounds. You don't know what color you're going to get. So it's really exciting.
10:57It's fun. And  if you want to get kids to eat foods they think they don't want, you got to make it fun. Exactly. Definitely. Wish I had known that with my first three.  Learned on the fourth kid.  That when they're interested in trying what's on your plate and they're old enough to actually chew it and swallow it without choking death,  it might be a good idea to let them try it when they ask.
11:25Didn't know that were the first three and they're not the most non picky eaters ever. The fourth child who's 23 and still lives with us is the most adventurous person when it comes to trying new foods I've ever met. That's funny how that works out. Wish I'd known, man. And the rule in our house when he was little was that big kids were not allowed to make a big deal.
11:51out of foods that they didn't like. If they didn't like it, they could just  not eat it.  And if  they tried something new and didn't like it, they could literally quietly spit it into a napkin  or they could walk to the kitchen, because we ate in our living room at our table. They could walk to the kitchen and spit it in the trash, but they were not allowed to be like, oh, that's so gross.  Because we didn't want the littlest one  to take on their biases.
12:18Right. You don't want them to be influenced. was awesome.
12:24No, I really didn't because I really wanted this kid to have the joy of discovering different flavors and different textures.
12:37Because food is supposed to be an adventure. It's supposed to be an event. Definitely. And if you can incorporate  activities that go along with it, you know, it used to be don't play with your food, but what better way to explore flavors than  to experiment and to play with your food. Yeah. And then everybody decided to get into making sourdough and sourdough is playing with your food. Yes.  And pasta.  All of it.
13:08Yeah, I took on sourdough about a month ago and I've been avoiding it like the plague because I knew it was going to take time and patience.  And  every day I get out my funnel and my fourth cup measuring cup and the jars that have the starter in it  and a bowl and a spoon  and I'm screwing around with pulling some of the starter out for discard and then I'm putting the flour and the water in and stirring. I'm like, this is like play dough. This is like playing with my food.
13:38It is. Yeah. Kevin is our sourdough person because he has the patience for it.  I like to step in at the end and do the scoring. Yeah,  I haven't gotten that far yet. I've made one loaf and it came out like bagel texture, which was great because I love bagels, but apparently  it's not supposed to be that dense. So I have to do that to my technique, but it was really yummy.  I've avoided
14:04sourdough for a long time because I thought that it was very technical. Like you had to measure the flour in grams and you had to measure the water in grams and you had to do it very specifically and come to find out you don't have to do that. Yeah, we you're reminding me that I need to feed our starter but we've got it to where we're feeding about once a week now. It just kind of sits in the fridge. So it's
14:32It's low maintenance once it gets going.  yeah, it's definitely,  there's a lot of play involved in just kind of in feeling and texture and do any more flour, do any more water.  It's  fun. But yeah, I've never made the same loaf twice. I don't know how these bakeries are like super consistent. That's what's impressive about it when you can get really consistent.
14:57I don't know either and I will never be that consistent and I don't want to be. think the joy in making sourdough bread is you can make it different every time  and it is a win if it tastes good.  The other reason I avoided getting into it is because I don't love sourdough bread. never have. And  it's the tang in the bread that I don't like the tanginess to it.  And I found out that, if you don't, if you don't make it right,
15:27As the sourdough starter peaks or something, it's less sour, something like that. uh, the loaf that I made, it was definitely sourdough, but it didn't have that really extreme tangy sour to it that I really didn't like. So I've learned a lot in the last month about sourdough and I have a lady coming on my show, I think Friday, I think it's this Friday, who is, who has a lot of experience with sourdough.
15:58I almost said expert, but I don't know that she's an expert. She has a lot of experience in it. And she also is an admin on one of the Facebook sourdough groups. I'm very excited to talk to her and I'm going to be like, so tell it to me. Like I'm a four year old beginner. How do people do this? Because I put it off for years because I was afraid of doing it and it's not that hard. honestly,
16:24If you don't like to cook, you're not going to want to make sourdough bread at all. Yeah, you definitely have. Yeah, it's cooking.  is  chemistry. It is cooking and it is patience. And I am not the most patient lady ever. So  we have to plan your day around it basically.  Because it'll be three hours in, it will be proofing at this point and then I can go do this and I got to be back to do this at that point. So.
16:52You really do have to plan your whole day around it. Yeah, and even the shortcut recipes, you're still looking at five to six hours. Sure, yeah. That's a lot of time. And you got to figure out stuff you can do in between the stretch and pulls on the dough because it's every half an hour or something on the recipe that I use. Exactly. So it's a thing and I don't want to get too far into it, any further into it because the lady is going to be on my show on Friday and I don't want to...
17:21overdose people on sourdough. We're  off the lesson now. Yeah. So you guys  have kids? We have a daughter.  She is six years old. And  she just went to her grandparents' house  for a science lesson. So we have the benefit of living very close to both sets of parents.  None of us are from Jacksonville originally, so we've kind of all
17:50come together on the same  mindset that we want to be close to family, especially  with grandchildren in the mix.  And so when we decided to do homeschooling, was mostly driven for health reasons.  Our child was diagnosed with leukemia last January. And so  going to a traditional school has been increasingly more difficult.
18:19Just because we miss a lot of school for doctor's appointments and things like that. So we decided to pull her for homeschooling and all of the grandparents have offered to take on a  subject so that Kevin and I  don't have to do it all on our own.  And what is great is that we have a few teachers, retired teachers in our family. And so they've been extremely helpful stepping in.
18:48for some of the harder things like handwriting and  word groups, you know, to learn to read.  That is stellar. I love that. So what grade would she be in if she was in is going to enter the first grade. Okay. So does she go to and regular school? She did go to kindergarten.  Yep. Okay.  How is she doing?  She is
19:18Great, we do have  occasional  hospital admittances, but  it seems to be very benign reasons.  You fever spikes require us to be there for 48 hours. If her blood counts are below where they're supposed to be, just to make sure there's no  like blood infections,  things like that.  So our last two admittances were just there, we were there,  but no  underlying.
19:47Reason causing the fever so they let us come home. Okay,  and I don't know anything about leukemia I mean I had a cousin who  who got it as a young adult not not a kid but it's like in her early  20s actually  and I've heard about it, but I haven't heard about it in little kids. Is there  a cause or is it just something that happened?  Seems to be just something that happens. They haven't really
20:16nailed down.  As far as I know,  when your kid's diagnosed, at least at our hospital, they give you a big encyclopedia on everything about childhood leukemia. course, we all poured through it that first week and read  it.  Kids seem to do better than when  young adults or adults get it. Kids seem to bounce back, take the treatment a little bit better, I guess, just because they're resilient.
20:45kind of by their nature. But no, there's no, as far as I can tell, they haven't nailed down what causes it or like what to look for. It was basically she had leg pain and Larkin noticed she had some bloody gums one morning and it was over a couple of days, I guess. And then some bruising on the legs and Larkin was just adamant like, need to take her into the doctor. And it pretty much, I mean, it was by that night, that's pretty much
21:15But they knew that's what she had. mean, it was pretty quick. Yeah. You know how they talk about  spidey senses regarding Spider-Man, the Spider-Man comic? Yeah.  Mommy senses always trust them. That's true. Yeah.  Well, it's totally left field. And there's different types too. So she was a low risk.  Quote unquote best type. Yeah. And so anyways, but.
21:43The hardest part of treatment is over and we are just kind in the maintenance phase.  And the tough part about it for unlike other cancers is that the treatment is just more long-term.  It's like over a two and a half year.
22:01span rather than like six months like some of these other cancer treatments are. So that's a little bit the tough part about it. But yeah, we're kind of, we see light at the end of the tunnel here. Good. I was hoping that was going to be the case because I didn't want to cry on my podcast again. I want to make my guests cry again.  What does she think about the farm? Oh, she loves it. Yeah. She,  uh,
22:28wants to be an animal rescuer and a vet when she grows up.  And so she's very hands-on with, especially like the chicks, we incubate  eggs. We live above the farm, so we can go downstairs and see our animals and  look out the window and see them in the pastures. we incubate most of our eggs,  but our last batch we let a broody hen
22:56do the incubating and she did pretty good for a first time mother. yeah,  Hazel loves the farm life.
23:08Okay, cool.  So,  oh, I was gonna say, your daughter is homeschooled.  I'm gonna tell you right now, that little girl is gonna learn so much more  through homeschooling than she ever would have learned in public school.  Yeah, we can already see a huge difference from  traditional school to homeschooling in a positive way. I mean, she's just made
23:37huge leaps and bounds because we're doing a little bit of catch up over summer so that we feel really ready for our first grade coursework. I mean, the one-on-one time  makes a huge difference.  And I'm not even talking about  the book learning part of it. If you've got grandparents involved and you guys are on a farm  and she's going to be an outdoor kiddo,  she's going to learn so much more in general.
24:07like about animal husbandry, about how plants work,  how dirt is not the same thing as soil, you know? Yeah. And she goes on us with hunting trips. We do a lot of camping.  She  just has a love for nature, which I love, because so do we. Yep.  My two boys, my two youngest boys, we did homeschooling the last couple of years of their high school.
24:35I'm not going to lie to you, we did homeschooling before they were homeschooled because we would go hiking, we would go camping, we were growing food.  We would go to farms and visit other people's animals because we didn't have any. We had cats, you know, we had all these things that we supplemented their public schooling with.  And these kids would tell their teachers stuff about a subject and teachers would call me and be like, how do they know about this?
25:04Yeah, that's like Hazel's superpowers. She knows all the animals, species names. So she would go in and, you know, they dump out all the animal toys and she could name every single one. Part of that is from like our zoo keeping background. We would when I was working there, if we had like a newly hatched bird that needed some around the clock attention.
25:34It would come home with me. So we have had penguin chicks and flamingo chicks and vulture chicks  long before we really started getting serious about our homestead.  So  just learning the cycles.  And then when we, when she finally entered school,  we were doing at home,  uh, the monarch watch. don't know if you've heard of this. Yes.
26:01Yeah, so go ahead, tell me. We would raise cat, well first we planted host plants that we had, you know, wild caterpillars visiting our host plants and then we would, when they were close to pupating or developing their chrysalises, we would put them in a netted enclosure so that when they hatched, could tag them, record it and submit it to the...
26:29Monarch Watch database and then release them. And then the following year we would see if we could catch any that had our tags. And so that was a great, fun, hands-on learning process. And we were able to bring some caterpillars to her school and show them how to participate in that with her classmates.
26:56I think you win the coolest parents award guys.  It's really fun. It's fun for everybody. You want to have an  activity that is engaging for all ages because that's when you really bond and  develop these great memories together.
27:23Yeah. And the hands-on of that project is so good for kids because kids learn best when they have something to do with their hands that  transfers the information from their fingertips to their brain.  And I'm that way with anything I need to remember.  I need to remember something, I have to write it down with a pen on paper or I won't remember it. Yes. I'm a hands-on learner as well. I think  that's the easiest way to make a
27:52cement in your brain. Yeah, the connection just happens. And I don't know why I could probably type something in the computer into a notepad and it still won't stick. If I write it,  it sticks.  Okay. So  what's  the future look like for your mini farm? Are you going to expand it? Are you going to just maintain it? How's that going to work? I think right now  we're just kind of maintaining, you know, we've
28:21tried expanding it and that was fine. We did a lot of milk sales, egg sales, things like that. There is a little bit of a level of stress though that comes with, know, selling some of your products, especially milk. you want to sell as fresh as possible and, and keeping up with your, it becomes very expensive on like our end if
28:51jars aren't brought back to us.  you don't want to charge people  necessarily  for that expense because then it becomes impractical for people to want to visit your farm and  buy your products if it's too expensive. And so we  had like a small clientele base and that was very comfortable for us. And so that's probably where we're going to maintain. I'm not trying to become a dairy or a
29:20or you know, a grocer or anything. Just kind of like a small farm that offers  on occasion some products and you can visit the animals.  That sounds great. Low key, low stress.  Yeah.  Yeah. Okay. So I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost there. Where can people find you online?  We  are most present on Instagram.
29:49Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm.  We do have a Facebook page. It's not as active as mostly there to just maintain our name.  But yeah, we don't have a website, but we are on Instagram  social media.  Okay, awesome.  Larkin and Kevin, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And how sweet is it that your daughter was at the grandparents' house so you had some quiet?
30:16Yeah,  thank you for inviting us.  It's really fun to talk with people  that are like-minded and  share and learn from each other. think that's what is at the heart of home setting is swapping information and  valuing  a simpler life really.  Absolutely.
30:40All right, guys. Thank you again. And as usual, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. I hope you guys have a great afternoon. Thank you. You too, bye.
 

Twin Acres Farm

Today I'm talking with Dana at Twin Acres Farm.
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A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
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Calendars.Com
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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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Dana  at...
00:28Twin Acres Farm in Idaho. Good morning, Dana. How are you? Good. Good. How's the weather there?  It's actually better today. Like last week was in the  90s.  And then this past weekend, you know, when you have something planned to do,  it dropped completely. Luckily, we didn't get a freeze, but it was cold and windy.  I was like, I thought it was supposed to be the first day of summer, but whatever.
00:56Well, you had the opposite of what we had this weekend and yesterday. Oh my God, it was so hot.  We had the central air set for 72  and at three o'clock yesterday afternoon inside my house, was 77 degrees and so sweaty. was gross.  Oh my goodness. Yeah, we've been having some like for Idaho, it's been like above like record highs.
01:21But then we had like this cool front come through on like right on the first day of summer. And we were like, what the heck? My daughter went camping and they went up to the mountains and they ended up getting snowed on like five inches of snow the night before. And she was like, I thought it was summer.  Yeah.  I had the opportunity to apply for a job in Idaho years ago and I gave it some serious thought.  And then I saw what the weather is like. And I thought, you know,
01:51Minnesota is a little more predictable than Idaho. I think we might just stay here. Probably. So, all right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, So I actually am a school teacher. I've been teaching for about 15 years. And then when I'm not at school, know, evenings, weekends,
02:15school, you know, we get all those awesome school breaks then like I can't sit still. So I decided to start this little farm  to keep myself ultra busy.
02:28Okay, and it's Twin Acres Farm, is that right?  Right. So we own only, it's just small, if we have two acres  in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I have twin girls. So that's where  the name came from is like two, two, you know.  So that's where we came up with the name. Okay. I was going to ask, so thank you for telling me.  So what do you do at your farm?
02:53When we very first started out, know, it was like everybody else, you get a few chickens  and they're the gateway and then it grows from there. So I had some neighbors at the time and they had these adorable little goats. didn't, I thought they were baby goats, but it turns out they're dwarf goats. I knew nothing about them.  And then we were hooked. So you have to start with two, right? Cause they're herd animals. And then now I'm up to like 40.  Oh.
03:23my. we obviously I don't keep that many but you know after baby season we need to sell down some. We still have some babies and stuff to sell but I do  all the milking, make cheese, make soap, make caramel sauce, make you know all the different things that you can make with goat's milk pretty much.  And then  you know we make in can.
03:49and garden and we have chickens, have ducks, we have rabbits.  We've had other  homesteading animals like the cooney coon pigs in the past. We've had turkeys in the past, but some things,  we've even had quail in the past, but some things we've decided that that's not really our niche or something that we wanna tackle.  And those are things that you have to find out over time because some people love those.
04:15those types of things and then some decide that's just not for them or what they want to do. Just like some people are like, I would never have goats. I'd rather have sheep. You know, everybody has their personal preferences of like different homesteading animals that they would like to keep.  So chicken math translated to goat math for you. Well, I still got chicken math too, because I'm probably sitting on over a hundred right now. So I have both. Uh huh.  Yeah.
04:42Yeah, chicken math is weird. You start out with like two chickens and all of a sudden you find yourself with a hundred and you're like, where did they all come from? Right. We started with like a dozen, you know, again from like neighbors had an incubator and we were like, oh, we want eggs. And so we started with a dozen and then now I, um, breed certain, you know, purebred birds  and, um, we sell those here.  Um, we also, we,  a few years back, we started.
05:12I'm going to some farmers markets and to sell like our goat because we have our raw goat's milk permit here in Idaho. We, think we were number 205 and  now that number has over doubled. So,  um, we went through the process of getting that. And so we would go to farmers markets cause we'd been on Facebook for a while and our fan base had grown, but we hadn't got to meet a lot of the people that followed us. You know, it's just.
05:39via the internet and so that was really neat. actually won a farmer's market spot because it wasn't even something on my to-do list.  We entered like a giveaway because somebody had bought the spot. They had had to back out because they weren't going to be able to actually do it. They did like a giveaway for people that would want to  get a spot that hadn't entered because I mean it's a
06:04It's a packed market and everybody signs up and they almost never have spots for you to be there. It's right on main here in town.  And so we ended up winning that spot. And so my girls and I went and did six different weekends and we got to meet so many people and it was so great. We loved it.  The next year we did, we didn't do quite as many because when you do markets like that, it's a lot of prep work, you know, to get ready for those markets.
06:33And so the next summer we did a few, so we still got out there and then I started my master. So then my husband built  a farm stand because that's been the new trend, right? Everybody has their farm stands. And so we set that up a year ago  and  it's been great because it allows us our time back to keep still doing and making and tending the farm. And then people are able to come and get those products from us. So we are already upgrading.
07:03to a bigger like shed type soon. Like it's on order, but we're gonna upgrade. Cause in a year's time, the little farm stand is too small for what we've been doing. So.  Yes, we have a farm stand at our place and I love it because people just come in,  get what they want, pay through Venmo or drop some cash in a little container and they go on their way.  And that way we're not tied to the farm. I mean,  we're here a lot, but.
07:31sometimes as a doctor's appointment or dentist's appointment or something and there's no one here. And I love that people can just come in and see what we have, get what they want  and take off.  Right. Yeah, it's great. And  well, the thing here, you know, like you said, the weather is crazy in Idaho. So we started with that little farm stand and it's  more like open kind of concept.
07:55So instead of having it like available all the time, we kind of set it up at certain days and times. And we just feel like the bigger, little bit bigger shed idea would make it where people can come and go a little more often. We weren't hauling things in and out. So I think it'll work better for everybody involved because everybody has busy schedules nowadays. And when you're already out and about,
08:21you know, taking care of things, you want to be able to stop and get those things that you want instead of on a time schedule. Cause right now that's kind of how ours is. So  I think it's going to be. Yeah. Yep. have a question. When you started doing this, the, the farm stand thing,  the first time somebody came and bought your stuff, did you have like this bubble in your chest of excitement and happiness that you had provided something to a community member?  Well, I think it's, I've had that for a long time because
08:51even before I set up the farm stand and before we ever did markets, because that's kind of what led to it,  is we have another little building.  I didn't open it to the whole public, but it was more of like our friends,  friends of friends, like people we trust.  We had like a mini fridge set up and like that kind of thing. So we have been doing that for...
09:21probably over five, six years on a smaller, like personal scale. And then once we started with the markets, it's like, oh wow, like we're available to the public. Like the people that really wanted to support us were getting to meet them. And then, then it just grew into, okay, instead of like people coming down into our property, you know, cause it was mostly just our friends. Now we put that up at the  front of our property where like everybody can have access that wants it basically. So.
09:50But yeah, like this whole lifestyle gives you a sense of pride that I  don't feel like almost anything is. Like you're growing and you're making things not only for your family, because that's how it starts, right? Like I really want to do these things for my girls, my family, but you know, it can get pricey. You know what I mean? Like when you're going all in, there's feed costs, there's supply costs.
10:15that can get pricey. And then other people are seeing what you're doing and they're like, I would really like that or I would really like to try that. Like so many people have never tried goat's milk or they've had a bad experience because the goat's milk you get in the store is not the same as fresh off the farm. And that's if you can get it at the store. Well, that's true that too. But by the time you get at the store, it's so much older that you're already getting that funky like goat flavor. And I feel people all the time, like when you drink it fresh,
10:44within a week of when it was  gathered, you're not gonna, like my Niges have such a high cream content. You can put cow's milk and goat's milk side by side and have them taste it and they're not gonna tell the difference between the two most of the time.  Yep, Fresh goat milk is amazing. I did not like goat milk until I had fresh goat milk and I was like,  huh.
11:12I don't hate goat milk. Okay, good to know.
11:16Right, I've had so many people change their mind because they've had bad goat milk or bad goat cheese  from the store. And then I'm like, just trust me. I'm not going to steer you wrong.  I'm picky. If it has any kind of off flavor, I don't want it. You know what I mean? So I'm like, just try it.  I mean, we took a vacation once because I'm from Texas, South Texas. I didn't move up here until I was almost 30.
11:41And so all my family mostly is still in Texas. So we decided to take a vacation like, you know, six or seven years ago, we went halfway in Colorado and, you know, got one of those Airbnb's because I, you know, all my family thinks I'm nuts because they don't do this. They don't live this lifestyle, you know? And so I was like, well, guess what? I'm going to pack all the things, right?
12:05so they can taste all the farm fresh things and they were just blown away. Like I took the goat milk, the fresh farm eggs, the homegrown  pork sausage, made the whole breakfast layout  and they were pretty amazed. They started to get a clue like why I'm a weirdo, I guess. They gained an appreciation for the work that you do is what they did.  Right, yeah because they wait for Christmas and everything for me to send them all kinds of  different goodies in the mail.
12:35Yeah, I try. I try hard to do that. This past Christmas, I was not in a Christmas frame of mind. I didn't even send Christmas cards this year. But I try. I try really hard to send my brother and my sister handmade soaps because we make the cold process lye soaps. Right. Same. Yeah, we do it with our goat milk. So that was another thing. I have a neighbor across the road and they have a little bit bigger farm and they do like the whole pumpkin patch.
13:04little farm store. Like they've been doing that for years. And they were doing classes and it was to make soap. Well, they were just making the regular, you know, cold process,  soap. And so we went and took the class, but I was like, Hey, I really want to be able to do this with goat's milk. Cause you know, I milk all these goats.  And so she gave me like tips about like having to freeze the milk and those kinds of things.  And so, yeah, I've been doing that since I took their little class. So
13:34It's just great that, you know, everybody's teaching each other. I think that's the biggest part of it. Like what good is like a passion if you're not sharing it with others  or teaching them, you know, what you know,  you're never gonna learn it all. You know what mean? There's so much.
13:51Yeah, if it's a passion,  want, number one, you want to put your whole self into it. Believe me, I know.  And number two,  you want to share what you've done with other people, partly because you want them to benefit from it.  But also you need to share it. It's like important to you. Right, exactly.  And like here on the little farm, like obviously it's not that big, so we can't open it to the whole public, but we would do like
14:21open like, because everybody wants to come in the spring, you know, when you're having all those baby goats and baby chicks and baby, everything, everybody wants to come and see it. And so that's what we would do. Cause otherwise you have people wanting to stop by constantly, but you are so busy, especially, you know, we're still in school at that time. So I'm running hard.  So what we would do as at the kind of the end of spring break is we would set up like a little open farm day and invite like all our friends and stuff. And then
14:50you we'd have a meal together. They'd get to, you know, we'd get to share all the hard work that we've been putting in, like take a minute, enjoy it, share it with others. You know, it's, it's fulfilling that way. Yes. Have you converted any of your friends to this lifestyle yet?  Oh yeah.  I have several that like we've, they've tasted like the goat milk or the goat cheese and they're like, Oh, I never thought about it. And then they get a couple of goats and now they have a bunch of goats. And  you know, of course like,
15:20chickens,  you know, everybody starts small with like chicks and chickens like oh, you know, especially when the egg prices were getting so high. I had like this season, like this year, I've had so many people  come to us to learn about like what to do, how to raise chickens, ask all the questions because they never thought about it before. But then, know, when everything, not that it's cheaper, but you know,  by the time you buy everything, all the supplies, the coop, everything, it's not.
15:48necessarily cheaper, but it does give you food security, basically. Yes, peace of mind and food security. Yes. I had a question and it's gone. I hate it when I do that.  What was I going to say? Oh,  we were going to go without chickens this winter. We had chickens up until last October. They were getting old and lazy and we culled them. There weren't that many left.  Right.
16:18And we were going to get new chickens in May of this year.  And we bought, bought eggs from October until about the end of February when we needed eggs.  And I, I don't know, I cracked one back in February and I was like, these eggs don't taste like anything. I hate them.  And when my husband got home, said, can we get chickens like next weekend if I can find a source of laying hens? And he said, thought we're going to wait till May. I said,
16:47I don't want to wait till May. I want to do it now. I want chickens again." And he was like, yeah, call up our chicken broker and see if she got any laying hens. So I did. And we got 12  and we opened the farm stand early this year because the chickens were laying and people wanted to farm eggs, know, farm fresh eggs.  Could not keep eggs in the house for us to use because people were buying them.  So then we bought another 14 from our chicken broker and
17:16lost one so we have 24 chickens now.  Do you think I can keep eggs in the house? No, people are buying them as soon as they get put in the farm stand. Right, well and like not only is it the price, like you said,  it's the flavor, you know, it's just so much better. And  the thing about chickens is  you have to add new chickens every year because the chickens that are already a year old are gonna molt, you know, in the fall and then they're not gonna lay.
17:45So every year  we are adding new ones, either hatching them ourselves or for getting a different breed or genetics or whatever we're bringing some in.  But we wanna keep a new steady supply of those young layers because they're not gonna molt and they're gonna keep on laying a lot better than those older ones.  So  that's definitely what we're always doing here and we have so many. But yeah, we have ducks and chickens. We have people that are buying duck eggs because they can't tolerate the protein that's in that chicken egg.
18:15And so we have duck egg customers and we have chicken egg customers here. Yep. Absolutely. I have a thing about that too, but I think I misspoke. think I said, do you think I can keep chickens in my house? then do you think I can keep eggs in my house?  I get talking in my tongue twists and I'm like, oh, I said that wrong.  It's not going to phase me because I got chickens in my house. So  yeah, we have chicks in the house right now,  we have not kept chickens in our house yet.
18:44However, we're thinking about getting an incubator and trying hatching eggs. We haven't decided yet, but we've been flirting with the idea, you know, around the edges of the idea of  maybe growing our own chickens, as it were. Yeah, I mean, it's great. I suggest the Matty Coop X.  It's the best budget-friendly incubator that you can find, and I have been through so many incubators.
19:12I have a couple of cabinets, but then I have those Matty Coop X as tabletops. And so when we hatch them out, we want to be able to see everything. So it makes it where you can see everything. And they're only running about, uh, about 130 or so bucks, which is really budget friendly for someone who's never done it before. And just starting out and they have really, really, it's like set and forget as a water bottle on the side that you turn upside down and keeps it at the perfect humidity. It's, know, up here where we're at, we have to worry about.
19:40It's so dry. We're in a high desert.  And so, you you hear all these people dry hatch. Well, that's not even a possibility up here because  it's way too dry, not enough humidity in the air. But in the southern states, you  can do all that. Yeah. There is a lady on Facebook. I think her Facebook page is the hot mess homestead.  Oh, yeah. follow her. Yeah. Fun times.
20:04And if anyone wants to see somebody poke fun at having chickens or getting into chickens, she is a laugh riot. I love her. She is, she's a smart ass for real. And she's really, I don't know, she's really genuine in everything that she does. And I love that she wears all these big, these big
20:34Go ahead. You there, Dana? Oh yeah. It was just cutting it out a little bit. Okay. I'm going to finish my thought and then I'll let you finish yours. I love that she either is all made up and absolutely gorgeous and still gathering eggs and still flopping through the mud. Or she's in an old rock band t-shirt and cutoff shorts and Crocs and her hair is piled up on her head, no makeup. And she's gathering eggs and walking through mud.
21:04I love that she does both.  yeah, totally. Yeah, totally realistic. You know what mean? From one day to the next, how you're feeling or what's going on or what you got going on, you're making do.  You know, she's got all the little  that you're juggling along with, you know, all your other responsibilities. I mean, it's  totally realistic of how, how it goes around any,  you know, homestead,  not just those Pinterest perfect, you know, decorated.
21:33you know, farmhouses. like, well, my kitchen is usually a mess. And as soon as I clean it up, I'm cooking and making or canning or making something else. So it doesn't stay that way for long.
21:46Yes, what you see on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and all those social platforms.  When you see the really pretty girl with the pretty sundress and the,  I don't know, the wedge sandals and her makeup is perfect or her hair's all curled perfectly.  That's fine. You know, that, that makes it look pretty. It makes it look attractive. I'm okay with that. I want people  to get into growing food.  Right.
22:13But I also want people to understand that it is not a clean hobby. It is a very messy hobby. Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many times a day the girls and I have to wash our hands because we're handling eggs or chickens or goats or whatever, you know, just making a mess, digging in the dirt. love gardening. Like I, it's therapy, just digging in the dirt. You know what I mean? Dirt like a lot of times I have my nails done, but
22:43That's not going to stop me from digging in the dirt. Well, no, it shouldn't. And if your nails get broken, your nails get broken. Right, exactly. And you need that builder gel. That's the secret to life because  I'm hard on my hands and my nails.  And so my nail girl does builder gel on top  and that's what lets them grow because otherwise  they wouldn't stand a chance.
23:09Yeah. And my husband is the gardener. am not, I am the one who cooks the food that he brings in from the garden. And I'm constantly doing dishes. I'm constantly chopping vegetables. I'm constantly using my hands. always typing because of the podcast. My nails are either all the same length and look pretty good and they're not polished. I don't have my nails done because I'm not going to spend the money because they're going to get ruined.
23:38And so they're either all about the same length and they look okay or they're all different lengths or one's broken or  One's got a crack in it because I smacked something on it I never know so I don't really make a big deal out of my fingernails because I'm like they will grow back It'll be okay,  right? Well, and that's also what's great too is like everybody has a preference of the things that they like and the passion that they have
24:04And so like here, you know, it's kind of a whole family affair. I'm sure when my girls grow up and move out, I'm going to cut down on some of the stuff that we do just because it's so time intensive.  like each one of my girls, you know, likes to do different things. And so we split up kind of like our chores around here based on what things they like to do. Like one of my daughters, Brooke, she loves to collect the eggs. And, know, with our pure breads, we have to label
24:34our eggs that way we know which pin they came out of. So it's not like just going and getting a basket and collecting them. Like there is a little bit of work involved as well. And I offered like, you know, in the in the wintertime we just collect them. It doesn't matter. But when spring hits, then we have to start doing all the labeling and that way we know what's what.
24:51And I offered because I was like, well, you know, I kind of made the work and the extra pins. Like if you want, I'll take over that job. And she was like, no, I like, I love to go do that every day. So I was like, okay,  you know, I mostly deal with the goats.  Meadow here is the water queen. She waters everybody every day, which, you know, that takes some work, you know, especially in the winter.  My oldest, she  again is not.
25:16like the outdoors,  like she likes to hike and all those kinds of things, but farm-wise, like she doesn't really  mind, like want to do that, but she likes to bake and she likes to do stuff in the kitchen.  So she does more of that. Like we make it work where everybody's doing something that they really kind of like versus like, you know,  you don't want to be dreading what you're having to do every day.  No. And, and  here's the caveat to that. Back in the old days,
25:43when there was no choice, everybody had to kick in and had to do jobs they didn't necessarily like to do on the farm. right, right, right. Because it was their livelihood. That was how they made their money. It was how they grew. They had food to eat. It was the job for the whole family. These days, I feel like it's not quite the same. It doesn't have quite the same urgency that it did back in the old days. Oh, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
26:10And that's what's kind of great about it is like you can pick and choose the things that you want to tackle  or the things you want to like, you know, I just would rather buy that at the store. You know what mean? Like it's not worth the work to me. I'll buy that at the store or this is something I really like to do or want to do or like the flavor better. Like you can pick and choose now where back then you really couldn't. And same thing like here. I like I consult the girls like, do we really want to?
26:38Continue on with this or is this something that we can let go? You know because they're they're a big part of what we do here it's not just for me to make  all the decisions because  they help and do so much and I don't want them to just like resent everything we do  and They've even said like when they grow up like oh well This is what I would like to have at my house or my farm in the future You know, it's giving them an opportunity to try and see different things
27:06of what they want to carry on in the future versus what they want to let go. And that's great. That is so amazing that they are getting  to experience a whole bunch of different things to see if they enjoy it see if they want to pursue it. Awesome.  Did I see on your Facebook page that you or your daughters make snickerdoodle cookies?  Yeah. Well, we just started this adventure like not very long ago.
27:33you know, to add something else to like our farm stand because, you know, people love to get baked goods. And so we started like trying out making different, huge, like big, big cookies. So we make so far, we make a lemon poppy seed. We make a strawberry white chocolate with freeze dried strawberries. We make a s'mores cookie we've tried because, you know, it's summertime. So s'mores is a staple.
28:02Yeah. Then the latest one we were like, well, you got to make a snickerdoodle because like everybody likes snickerdoodles. Well, I take that back. One of my twins does not like anything with cinnamon. So she would take the other cookies other than the snickerdoodle.
28:18Okay, the reason I asked is because my mom,  I've told the story a couple times on the podcast, my mom makes snickerdoodles and she makes them as bar cookies. So she just takes the cookie dough and puts it in a  cookie sheet and bakes it in one flat cookie and then cuts it in bars.  And she doesn't necessarily make them  for her and my dad. She mostly makes them because their dog likes them. Oh my goodness.
28:44So she's always joking that she's getting a batch of snickerdoodle bars made for Dutchie, the dog who is a border collie.  Oh my gosh.  And I keep trying to tell both my mom and my dad that that sugar in there is probably not great for Dutchie.  And we have  a  mini Australian shepherd here who's like five years younger than Dutchie.
29:10I've become an expert on what's okay for dogs and what isn't in the last four and a half years because I love this dog more than life itself. So, I keep trying to convince them that maybe snickerdoodle cookies or any human cookie is probably not great for the dog. And my dad finally said Mary Evelyn and that's my middle name. When he, when he brings out my full name, I'm like, Oh no.  And he said, I understand that you love Maggie, your dog, two pieces. said, but Dutchie is my dog.
29:41He said, and I've been giving her snickerdoodle cookies since she was like 13 weeks old. He said, and she's not dead yet. So  we're just going to keep making snickerdoodles for Dutchie. And I'm like, okay,  Calvin Edmond, you do that.  So yeah, but I just, finally made a batch of my mom's recipe of snickerdoodle bars and  they're really good. I had not really had a homemade snickerdoodle before.
30:07I had them from the store and I don't like the ones from the store, my mom's recipe is really good. Yeah, anything homemade is gonna be way better.  Uh-huh.  Always.  Always, always. We are down to like a quarter teaspoon of vanilla in my  pantry right now and I was gonna make cookies this week and then I was like, you know, I think I'm gonna wait until there's an actual reason to go grocery shopping and get more of a vanilla.  There you go.
30:36Next you'll have to start making your own vanilla. Yes, I keep looking at the price of vanilla beans and debating whether I want to spend the money because it might actually save me some money. I don't know. I was about to say because basically we make a big batches, you know what I mean? Because they got to sit for a while. So if you're going to do it, you might as well make it big batches. And then those beans can be used over again  for a few different times.
31:01So yeah, you have to pay for it upfront, then you can use it to make quite a bit of another. So it seems like almost everything to do with homesteading and farming in the beginning, it's expensive, but the longer you do it,  it gets less expensive because you've already put out the beginning pieces. Oh yeah. And that's so true. Yeah. It's,  it's, it's an upfront cost. And that's why I like,  I tell people just start with something small, start, start little.
31:31You know, see if you like that, run with it and then add as you go. You cannot do  everything all at one time. Like there's just so much. Yeah. Start small, think big.  Right. Exactly. All right, Dana, I try to keep you to half an hour. We are there. Where can people find you online?  Um, we have Instagram  and Facebook. Our Instagram following is not quite as big because we didn't start that from the beginning.
32:00Facebook is where we post and do most of our things. We do share some to Instagram,  but  yeah, both of those.  Twin acres  farm.  All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Dana. I appreciate it. And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  I hope you have a great day. You too. And thanks for having me.
 

Twin Creek Gardens, CSA

Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.
00:29And Beth and I talked back in April of 2024. So it's been a year and a couple of months since we've had the joy of hearing about Beth's life at the CSA. So good afternoon, Beth. How are you? Good afternoon. I'm doing well. Thank you. Good. How's the weather in Wisconsin? It's hot here in Minnesota. Well, you know, it's funny. I've been waiting for hot and now that it's here, I'm going, oh, God, it's too hot.
00:56So it's beautiful. It's an absolutely beautiful day. So it's been fun running in and out of the house to to switch  gears with the water every once in a while. Yeah. Given everybody a nice deep drink. Yeah. My husband filled up three different bowls for the dog last night because she really wanted to play frisbee and it was hot out.  And he said  he said that she drank one and a half bowls of water  after after she played frisbee. And I was like, don't play frisbee with her when it's so hot like this. You're going to kill her. You know.
01:25Yeah, it is hard on them. Yeah, and when it's this warm and it hasn't been this warm yet, so she hasn't acclimated and she's a chubby dog.  She's probably five pounds overweight. So  I can't imagine it's fun being her and running across the yard chasing after the frisbee and realizing how hot she is when she's Right.  So anyway, it's been over a year since we talked on the podcast. So catch me up a little bit. Well,
01:55Um, last year I was doing a lot of dreaming and my tagline was if we build it, they will come. And I put that hashtag on just about everything as I was posting about what we were trying to do. And it seems like it's true. Um, we have a new website and that has been a game changer for us. I was trying to do that.
02:23solo and try to build something that would meet our needs and the needs of our members. And it just wasn't working.  And so I found CSAware. I don't know if you're familiar with  that. found it through localharvest.org, which is a nonprofit. And we are a nonprofit, so it was a perfect fit. And I've got a  wonderful person who knows the ins and outs of the website. She's my go-to gal. I can call her or send her a text.
02:52at any time of day to help me figure things out. I think it's really made the  difference for me in being able to meet the needs of the people of the community and yet still not have to spend so much time with the nuts and bolts of it.  So we currently have 10 families that have signed up for the season  and it's a perfect pace.  They trickled in.
03:21like two at a time, three at a time.  And  we have some really exciting partnerships that  have started. I'm really excited to share with you. so, you  know, I think it's growing at a pace that we,  and I, can still hold on to the bucking bronco and go for a ride. We're having a lot of fun. Good, because I know you really wanted to take.
03:46what you and Rob had started building and share it. And it sounds like you are, so that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. We have some families who come pick up their boxes here  on Monday or Tuesday.  And  they are,  what's exciting is it's families. So little people are coming with parents  and  getting a sense of the garden and what it's like here at the farm. And  we're talking about hosting one of their birthday parties in a few weeks. So
04:15They really love it here. And that to me is  such a blessing.  Yeah. And let me, let me catch people up. CSA, it stands for community supported agriculture.  And basically it is subscribing to a share of the farm's produce that is grown during the summer for a certain amount of weeks during the growing season. Correct.  And our season is 24 weeks.
04:40But we started a little earlier.  Now, I've learned so much about how I'm going to structure next year.  But  there isn't a ton of fresh produce right now. And so  what we've been doing,  and everybody's so lovely about it, is they're getting fresh microgreens that I'm growing weekly. And they're getting salad greens because I can grow them hydroponically, quickly, and cleanly.
05:07then the rest of what they're getting in their boxes right now is actually some of our specialty items that are available,  including preserves  and  other  like ferments and things like that, so that they have a sense of what else is on offer  besides the fresh produce. You're brilliant. That is a great idea. Thank you. It's been working really well.  It's so cute when I go to
05:34greet people and I say, here it is. They say, oh, it's like Christmas.  So they don't know what they're getting for sure. I mean, they do. Let me rephrase that. But they're not necessarily like, it's not carrots and potatoes yet.  know? And so it's an exciting little, ooh, what treat am I getting today?  we also are doing everything is  organic, of course.  But not, I'm not a certified organic farm because that's like a step beyond what we're
06:03really desirous of in our 60s to go through the hoops to do, but everything is made and done and grown organically and with  permaculture practices. So we're doing regenerative farming with our soil and all of those kinds of things. so  I'm also very much  about not only healing the earth, but healing ourselves through what we eat. So there's a lot of ferments and there's a lot of  sourdough ideas and
06:32all that kind of  healing food, I guess. I like to look at things, know, food was our first medicine.  And  so I want us to be able to go back to using it for our health, not just because we're hungry. Does that make sense? It sure does. That's why we, what we try to do here too.  This was the first, this is the first summer that we've had  lettuces, like butter crunch lettuce.
07:00and radishes for sale at the very first farmers market back two Saturdays ago. And Kyle's been doing the  farmers market. This is his third year. So first time in  three years now that we've had actual produce at the very first farmers market.
07:21Yeah, it's not easy up here. Our season is so varied. I mean, we had so many really warm, hot days in May, and then it would be 39, 42 at night, whatever, really low temperatures at night. so my poor plants were just, I kept them all very safe and protected in the greenhouse. And so...
07:48are we have these huge garden beds and now they're full because the weather's finally better. But we had three weeks  of  really, really cold, wet weather  and we could have lost everything if we had put them out when old farmers' almanacs said we should have, which I kind of found disheartening.  I think we were wise to go with what we could feel, you know, and just kind of look at the forecast 10 days ahead.
08:18kind of gauge it that way.  I mean, even our sweet potatoes, and they're under shelter, but it's just the top part of the greenhouse,  the walls are not on in our second greenhouse.  And so I keep them covered at night when it's under 50. I cover them with plastic,  because they're  sweet potatoes and they're a morning glory flower and they don't like it.  So.
08:44but there was a time there where I was starting to think I'm gonna start knitting sweaters for everybody out there in the garden, those poor babies, because we had three weeks in last week of June and the first two weeks of, or last week of May, excuse me, and the first two weeks of June that were just wet and cold. Yep, I understand. I really wish that we had had more rhubarb planted here, because this weather that we had here in Minnesota  would have been  perfect to grow  scads of rhubarb. We would have had rhubarb coming out our ears.
09:14And we only have  one really established plant that was here when we bought the place. We brought  some from our old house and put it in four fall ago, four autumns ago. And it just hasn't taken off the way we were hoping it would. It's doing well this year, but not, it hasn't been established yet. So,  but.  That does take a while. I'm having the same situation. I brought some from my house when Rob and I got married.
09:42I brought the stuff that was from my parents' place that I had at my house that I then brought here. And it's really just now, and that was three years ago, it's just now really, really establishing itself pretty solidly. Yeah, I feel like rhubarb and peonies take a long time to get going, but boy, when they get, when they're ready, they go crazy. Yeah, and then just get out of the way and let them do their thing.  Oh yeah, this was the spring.
10:08This is the spring I've been waiting for since we moved in for peonies.  Oh my God, my husband took a picture of our driveway. You hang a right into our driveway. It's a long driveway and then it's a round circle at the end in front of the pole barn.  And so on the right hand side of the driveway and  like just where that circle starts, there's a space that he put in a circle of peony plants, probably.
10:36Probably 15 feet in diameter. So across  the circle, it's  like a radius of 15 feet. And we had coral, had yellow, we had baby pink, we had fuchsia,  we had  what I call Hello Kitty pink, and we had white.  We had white panties this year. this was the year because it's the first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap. Well, this is the fourth year.
11:06Okay. And my husband was like, do you want me to bring you in panties? And I was like, no, I can see them out the window. Leave them right where they are. Yeah. So yeah, I was very, very excited to see them this year because I have been waiting and waiting and waiting. Isn't it funny how we get, you know, we get this vision in our mind and we just, I can do it. I can wait. I can wait, you know, but then when it takes
11:33three years to get there, I'm having that same feeling with my asparagus beds. This is my second year with them, but I put in two, know, second year asparagus last year. So technically this is the third year of that, those particular plants, but I'm waiting another year, but I'm just chomping at the bit as they, they're probably, I don't know, 12 inches tall, maybe 15 inches, the fronds.
12:00They're really thin and tiny and I'm like, oh, come on, sweeties. Yeah  I'm starving for you.  Yeah, so  it's hard to be patient when you know what they're going to be Someday. Yeah I was really hoping to have asparagus to sell in the farm stand this spring as ours have been in  since the second fall we were here so 20, okay,  and They didn't they're not quite at that point yet where I can go out and pick bunches and put
12:29rubber bands around them and sell them. So I got to have three different, I don't know, messes. My mom would call it a mess of asparagus. Three different messes of asparagus to have here, you know, to go with dinner three times this year. so sweet. Oh my God, I keep forgetting how good homegrown asparagus is. It's like such a flavor that doesn't exist when you buy it in the grocery store.
12:58No, it's a totally different thing. And  when we moved in here, I was like, can we please put in asparagus  crowns like now?  And my husband said, now. He said, because it's, he said, we have to get settled in, we have to get moved in. We moved in in August of 2020. He said, we have to find our feet. He said, this winter is about planning the gardens.  Now that didn't stop him from
13:26from accepting some apple trees as a housewarming gift from a  local apple grower that we know who was like, we have some apple trees for your place. I was like, thank you.  But the second fall over here, we got asparagus, crowns, we got strawberry crowns, anything that was perennial that we could get our hands on, we put in that fall in autumn. Yeah,  that's what we did when I got here. We started building the, Rob had
13:55apple trees before me.  And  we've been establishing guilds underneath them now for three years. So  each of them has  comfrey plants and rhubarb and  borage  and what's the other? Oh, some of them have raspberries under there too, under each of the trees.  And we have  eight trees out in our,  what I'm designating the food forest.
14:23Right now, because of the deer around here, each one of them has its own little,  what I call their play pens, with the fencing around each tree.  And so I have to peel those back and get in there and weed every few weeks or so.  I've only done two of them so far this spring. But our pear tree is doing remarkably well. And we've got several baby pears, almost probably 20, 25.
14:48little pears on there and then underneath I've been harvesting rhubarb from that one.  And then I just, the raspberries are starting to  look so beautiful. And that one has golden raspberries. So I'm excited about that.  So we did a lot of perennial stuff those first  two years. And then last year we did as well, but that's up in  the front yard. The food forest is in our backyard.
15:16And then it's literally up against the forest. So  we have a row of blueberry bushes there that I think the animals think is a buffet I put out for them. never got a, I think Rob got maybe a handful of blueberries a couple of times.  So we're going to probably be transplanting them more up into the cottage garden too, up in the kitchen garden in the front by the gazebo. Cause it's easier for our dog to patrol, you know?
15:44like this little sentinel around wherever I am in the yard at night,  our  biggest garden. Rob is an in-ground gardener. I, because of the nature of where I lived for 25 years, am a  raised bed  and  green stock planter gardener. Because of the cedar trees in my old yard, I couldn't dig.
16:11I planted on top of those beautiful cedar tree roots.  But Rob,  he built this beautiful kitchen garden for us around the gazebo that he put in the middle of his five acre front yard. And so that's just been growing exponentially. But now in front of that, he's created this massive in-ground garden  using the soil, the dirt from where the cows used to spend their days.
16:41So it's beautiful, incredibly beautiful black loam.  so we have, it's 40 feet wide by 80 feet long, no, 30 feet wide, excuse me, 30 by 80. And then  we have a potato patch besides that. And then  he has since made four hukulculture mounds to put more things on  next to the 30 by 80. He loves the big in-ground gardening and the
17:10I've, you know, because of,  like I said, I couldn't, now I'm discovering how glorious it is to have that space. It's just magnificent. And all I go is turn the water and one half of it gets watered. And then because of the length of the hoses, we only do one of them at a time. So the water pressure is good enough, you know?  So now that he's working days,  that's my job in the morning instead of his, and I'm really enjoying.
17:38that beautiful front garden of his too.  You guys keep going, you're going to be feeding the entire state of Wisconsin.  I have a question about the pear trees.  What variety is it? you know? No, I am not  certain. We got that the first year.  We had two of them and one of them, well, one of them got knocked over by the backhoe,  unfortunately, and we tried to...
18:07bring it back and couldn't. But I remember that this one was one that was like viable down to zone three, which made me feel like it would make it in zone four. And so it has. But I do not remember off the top of my head what the variety is. And the other one was a zone four pair that did not seem really happy. I think that where we're at, we're kind of in a bowl.
18:36And we get a lot, a lot of wind. So I think we feel more like a  3B than a 4A to  me. Okay. I'm  going to have to do some research on pears because we have two peach trees.  We have like 16 apple trees, but we don't have any pear trees.  I like pears and my husband will eat pears.  He would eat pears every day when they're at the grocery store in season.
19:02Oh, absolutely. Me too. I prefer them to apples, actually. Yeah.  So I'm really excited. Yeah.  I'll message you when I figure it out.  I've got it all  on a database. You know, I'm one of those former teachers who has to keep track of everything. 35 years in the classroom and  data with student learning. Yeah, I'm all about the data. So I have  spreadsheets  on my computer that
19:32go like the year, the  variety, the yeah, blah, blah.  where I've planted it on the farm, we have maps on there. Yeah. But  there's so many of them I don't have in my head the actual variety. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I was just curious.  don't know half the varieties of the apples we have. I know  we have Regent, we have Harrelson, we have Honey Gold, we have  Honey Crisp.
20:01We bought two honeycrisp trees a couple of years ago. Oh,  those are so delicious.  They will not thrive up here. And I'm so sad because  my granddaughter and I eat them, love them from the store, right? So then we took the little apple seeds and my little, well, she was three then, planted them in a flower pot on our  window sill.  And now it's about a foot and a half tall and she wants to put it in the yard. And I'm like, baby girl, it won't survive.
20:30So  we are working  long term at doing a wallopini. Have you read anything or seen much about those? of. It's sort of.  The in-ground greenhouse that you can have like trees and things like that can't survive in your zone. we're planning on going that direction. So I'm going to keep her little tree in our greenhouse.
21:00and I'm gonna nurture it until we have a wallopini to let it grow in.  I saw this  brilliant thing where they have citrus trees and all of the kinds of trees that they want to grow that can't survive in their zone. They have them in those garden carts and they live in those garden carts and then they can just wheel them in and out of the greenhouse in the winter. So that's what we're gonna do,  because I want citrus.
21:28And I definitely, after my trip to Europe, I definitely need an olive tree, just for my own sanity. Well, I was in Italy and Greece and fell in love with olives. I've always liked them, but oh my heaven. So I want to grow an olive tree. Yeah, olive trees are really beautiful too. It's not just the fact that they give you olives to eat, but they're really pretty. they are. They're just...
21:56They're old world elegant. That's what comes to my mind when I looked at them when I was there. It's like, okay, now I get it why people, some people get really obsessed with the old world quote. It's very logical.  They're so just elegant and beautiful.  So that's a plan for me for long range is that wallopini.  But in the meantime, I'm going to hang on to her cute little apple tree, her little honey crisp.
22:26I think that's great.  So  I can't remember because we talked a while ago.  Do you have any animals? you have chickens or anything? We do not right now.  My  stepson, Rob's  son, Stephen, had the chickens and the ducks, so we didn't  bring them on board. He used to have chickens when he had the cows. But  the last of our chickens...
22:54was a free ranger boy and it was tough and it would flit around and the cat would chase it and it was kind of adorable that first year I got here.  But  she did not survive the winter.  we are talking about  what I love is one of the  traveling,  there's a special name, like a chick saw, they call it, like a  traveling chicken coop that's on wheels.
23:23Yes, I want to do that. And so I'm being more patient than I've ever been in my life about like getting a good idea and wanting to do it and then having someone make it for me. He's very, very busy doing all of the other big infrastructure stuff. So I'm waiting on the chickens. Yeah, chicken tractor is I think what most people call that. Yeah. Yeah.  We don't have I've seen them called chick sauce. Yeah, we don't have any of those. just have a run the chickens get let out into and during the day. So
23:53Nice, nice. if we  have a chicken tractor, it would drive my dog crazy because she would want to get to the chickens to see them. And  she is not allowed off lead because there's a very busy road that borders our property. And if this dog got hit, I would never forgive myself. So she is never off leash or off lead because  I'm afraid she'd get killed.
24:22Oh, for sure.
24:26Yeah. So I'm hoping that,  you know, we are in a back end of, we're almost at the end of a road. And so it's, the traffic isn't so bad here.  Our cat goes visiting the neighbors and we'll be down, you know, two doors down and  they're coming out of their driveway will be our little goofy cat who's just wandering the neighborhood. But our dog stays pretty close to home.  So  we're pretty lucky in that.
24:56Yeah. My sentinel, I call him, he just follows me. And when Rob is during the school year, he works during the night, you know, evenings. So I'm out in the garden this spring by myself  and there he is just looking at the woods, just watching. Nobody's coming in to get my mama.  He's such a good boy. He's doing his job.  as a teacher, are you going to try to have people come and see your farm?
25:26Oh, absolutely. In fact, the two families that come Mondays and Tuesdays to pick up their things,  we have been talking about  one of the families has teenagers.  And so one of those boys is coming  on Monday, he's going to become our weed whacker.  And he's very excited about clearing the,  you using the weed whacker tool. So I'm going to be able to teach him where we're going to be doing things.
25:54but that same family has teenage girls and her, the mother, Emily, and Allison, the other mother who comes in the beginning of the week, we've all talked about doing some sourdough stuff together. yeah, and then the people, I was gonna tell you about our partnerships. We have a partnership now with the City of Superior Wellness Committee has,
26:23promoted our farm to every employee in the City of Superior  and the Douglas County  Government Center. So they've been given our information, they've been given an email.  I did a frequently asked questions paper with pictures  and  we have that's  small but mighty group of five that have started with us and I'm very excited. Last Wednesday was our first delivery with them.
26:53And Patrick who is  on the Wellness Committee,  and his family want to come out also to see where their food is grown.  yeah, it's going to be that I'm encouraging everyone, the people in Iron River, there's three of them that are coming together  in  not this  next week, but the week after when the father is back. And there's a restaurant where the farmer's market is.
27:23and we are doing some farm to table  work with that restaurant with the rustic roost in  Iron River now. That's gonna be a partnership. have like, for example, dilly beans  that one of the ladies makes for  having in  their buffet, but also in their Bloody Marys. And so they are putting in a bulk order for beans.
27:47And so when the beans are ready, they're all gonna come over and harvest their beans  and go make their dilly beans for their restaurant.  And they've put in a request for other things like the salad greens, but also in particular spinach, because the spinach that they are able to  get for, they don't have local. And so they're,  doing,  actually I'm gonna be doing I think some perpetual spinach, which technically isn't spinach, but it's.
28:15It's much heartier and stands up better on salad bars and in  fresh, you know, when it's traveling to a restaurant kind of thing. So  that's one, two of our partnerships. And then the third one  is another local grower who does mushrooms,  extraordinarily gorgeous mushrooms.  And  I am a newbie at mushrooms. And so they have a website, it's called mushroomsreach.com. And
28:45with our partnership,  some of the time people will get like this week in their boxes, they got a lion's mane mushroom that was about the size of a small dinner plate.  And then they have recipes, there's a recipe on their website. So I printed that off. And everybody in their box got  a  copy of the recipe as well as a recipe that I had provided with them or suggested to them when they got their
29:13welcome plant of chives. So when they sign up, they get a  beautiful chive plant that's blossoming. I have so many gorgeous purple blossoms everywhere.  And  one of the things they got as a sample this week in their box was herb butter, which I made with some of the chives.  And then they got a recipe for infused  chive vinegar with
29:41different marinades  and  salad dressings to make.  So  we're trying to do more farm to table kinds of things so they don't have all of this produce and then go, what do I do with it? Yep. Good.  And I'm doing that with like a baba ganoush recipe. I'm trying different kinds of baba ganoush recipes to find the  yummiest, easiest because we've got tons of eggplant planted.  And I...
30:09I really want people to learn to enjoy them  other than just your standard kind of cooking process.  yeah, so we're doing a lot of like the pickles. I did two different pickles this last week in little sample jars in their boxes of refrigerator quick pickles. So  if they decide they love that recipe, then when they get their produce, hey, they've got a recipe and a quick pickle they can do with their.
30:40stuff, their onions and their cucumbers. So  I and it's I love refrigerator pickles. I do. They're so easy and they're so delicious. And  I grew up with a there was always a jar of what we called mom's pickles. And it was just a simple vinegar, but vinegar mayonnaise milk based recipe. And they were when we run out, we just chop up some more and stick them in the you know, it was always in
31:09in the fridge and and I just  love that it's summer to me is those cucumber pickles. and the refrigerator pickles don't get squishy like  I hate it when I when we can pickles here because we're not great at it I've got to get my mom's recipe she had pickles that were not squishy  but  the ones we've made within like two months of them being canned they're not crisp anymore and there's a trick I just don't know what it is. Yeah.
31:37Yeah, my grandma was really good at it too. And I think it had something to do with allium or  alum.  So I don't do,  I do can pickles, but I don't do  that for other people because I do my fermented pickles.  I prefer that or the refrigerator pickles to the canning pickles for that very reason, because they're the fermented pickles are so,  they get soft enough, but not too soft.
32:06And then that's a really good  food for your gut.  And I just do a quick ferment. So it's like three to four days.  And then you get all the probiotics that you should have. And yet you have the yummy, pickly, num, deliciousness.  And I just find that the more we work together to help each other learn about these things, the  gut biome, the brain-gut connection, all of this kind of stuff, as a teacher,
32:35I knew there was something that was changing about our children.  They were coming to us every generation less prepared to learn, less able to learn once they got there.  I mean, it was just, there had to be something in the environment because it wasn't that it was, you know, these aren't aliens. These are,  you know?  And so it's the food. I swear every generation, they are less and less able to digest and process and they're eating more processed yuck.
33:06And you know, our grocery stores, even the stuff that is quote healthy, still has addictive salt and fat and sugar in it. And it's just harder and harder for us to raise healthy kids.  by having them come here  and plant things  and fall in love with gardening and  get grounded by, we're having grass instead of rock. have grass and sand.
33:35so that if kids want to run barefoot in our gardens, they can, because I do. Yeah, That's the way to be healthy, you know? Connect to the earth again. For sure. I try to keep these to half an hour, Beth, and we are at 33 minutes. I so excited that all the things that you had planned on being sort of in the middle of by now, you're either in the middle of or you've
34:04mastered it and you're you're planning new things. Yeah it's been a miracle. Yeah absolutely.  So where can people find you online? We are at Twin Creek Gardens dot CSA where dot com. Okay cool and you're Twin Creek Garden CSA on Facebook? Yes.  Alright awesome  thank you so much for coming back to chat with me. I'm  I'm cheering you on honey keep doing the good work.
34:34Thanks so much. You too. I'm looking forward to talking again. as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Have a great day Beth. You too, hon. Bye.
 

Homestead Hobbyists

Today I'm talking with Lindsay and Kaleb at Homestead Hobbyists.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Lindsay and Kaleb at Homestead.
00:29Homestead hobbyists. There we go.  Good afternoon, you guys. are you? Doing well. Good afternoon. Thanks for having us on.  Yeah, you're kind of saving my bacon. It's been, it's been rough getting  guests  to commit because it's a really rough time of year for people who are,  I don't know, birthing animal babies or trying to get their gardens in or their crops in. So  I appreciate you making the time. Yeah. It's like it's busy season all of a sudden.
00:58Yeah, I went through this back in November, trying to schedule interviews around Christmas time because everybody was busy with Christmas plans.  And we're not big holiday celebrators here. We just aren't. We're not Jehovah's Witnesses or anything, but we just don't make a big deal of it. And I always forget that other people do.  And  I was like, huh,  I might be entirely screwed on my podcast or two weeks straight at Christmas time. This is great.
01:28Well, if you ever need us to jump on as backup  conversationalists, you let us know.  will. I will put you on in my stable of,  of they'll talk to me, I think, hopefully. All right. You guys are in Ohio. We're in Ohio.  We  are  more on like the middle Western side of Ohio. We're in a really, um,
01:52not super small town, but we are surrounded by a lot of really small towns. There's probably only 20,000 people here and we're about 45 minutes north of Dayton. If folks know where that is.  I know where that is because I drive through Ohio about once every five years from Minnesota to Maine to see my parents. So  I know I have an idea of where Dayton is.  my great aunt  and uncle lived in
02:21Oh my God, I can't think of the town, but right near Indianapolis, Indiana and my grandparents on my mom's side live in Oakwood, Illinois, which is not far from Chicago. I think it's an hour south of Chicago. So I'm familiar with the route that I drive and all those towns are on little signs that say, if you want to go to Chicago, go that way. then it takes you two hours to get there.
02:47Yep, exactly. I love road trips. I really, really do. I haven't done one in four years now and  I'm getting older. I'm not so good at the sitting in the car for three, four hours straight at a time. My  back starts to hurt from sitting in the seat of the car. So road trips aren't as much fun as they used to be. But boy, when I was a kid, my parents were like, we're going to Illinois. I was like, yay, snack foods and pop all the way.
03:16Our kids are just getting to the point where they like that.  They like the idea of a road trip. My  youngest, asked me probably just this week actually, I can't remember if it was this week or last week. She goes,  mommy, when are we gonna do that thing where we get up really early and we get to wear our jammies and leave in the car?  I was like, yeah, we're gonna do that soon.  Yeah, it's exciting. It's getting you out of your comfort zone and going to a brand new place.
03:46or a place you've been to before, but it's always fun to go there.  So,  all right. So tell me about yourselves and Homestead hobbyists, cause I want to know all about you.  Okay. Well, Caleb, do you want to kick off? No.  So  we are originally from the Ohio area. We  kind of had a,  we're,
04:15We've had an interesting journey to get to Homestead Hobbyists. Both of us  grew up in this area and then went away to college and then  lived in different states  and then sort of found our way back to Ohio,  especially as we were getting more solidified in our careers and starting a family  and we wanted to be back close to home.  So  we live  in the same town that
04:44my parents and my in-laws live in, which comes in handy.  And  one of the things that I think  we both recognized  is that we  grew up with some different homesteading  activities in different ways on both sides of our family.  And  especially as we got kind of more into a routine of day-to-day life, it was like, well, I kind of want to bring some of this stuff back.
05:13So, like, I grew up in my mom, she made a lot of our clothes when we were little.  And,  you know, we did a lot of just stuff ourselves. And then,  Caleb's side of the family was like gardening and canning and even more of that.  And so, especially once our kids got here, it was like, well, we want to do some of these things with them too. And also, we're not...
05:42We're not going out and doing things, but we also still have full-time jobs. So Homestead Hobbyist was kind of birthed because it was like, we still want to be able to do some of this stuff and we want to show others that they can do it, even if it's not  solely everything that they're doing. Because you can kind of go down a rabbit hole and all of a sudden you've got, you know,  20 different things you're doing every day and trying to do that on top of raising kids and having a job and,  but also wanting to do
06:12You know, some of those things that just bring you joy.  Yeah. Does, does Caleb have anything to add before I jump in? Not really. That's  probably a better summary than I would have put it.  Oh, you have a beautiful voice, Caleb.  You should tell them a little bit about your background growing up though. Cause I think that would be interesting.  Um,  we grew, I grew up out in a, uh, farming.
06:37community area. There's a small school that  mostly farmers, kids and stuff go to. I did not go there, but  so I was kind of surrounded pretty regularly by  fields,  animals,  a lot of that stuff. And my really only tie to that was, you know, taking 4-H animals, but  definitely my grandma  grew up just on the other side of the block,  raised my parents,  my mom and her siblings.
07:05in that area. And so she was very much, you know, born out of the depression and stuff. So she would  can regularly. I remember making  rhubarb  jam at her house and cookies and stuff. And she has a very old farmhouse. And  my grandpa was a hog farmer before he was in the  World War II. So  there was some,  you know, some aspects of that from them. But then my mom carried a lot of that stuff over. So we would
07:32hand stuff pretty regularly. And a lot of our day-to-day chores, especially during the summer, was  taking care of the garden  and  picking things.  And we had a disgustingly huge mulberry bush,  our bush tree that grew over our playset that my dad absolutely hated because the birds were pooping purple stuff everywhere,  staining things. But,  you my mom would usually say, hey, if you pick a couple of bulls of that, I will make a pie. So we always kind of look forward to that.
08:02So yeah, a lot of that sort of stuff kind of growing up and  it's something that I always,  there's skills that  I think are underrated and obviously very useful in a lot of times and it really encourages a lot of self-reliance, which  I really value. Yes, and that's, I'm glad you said that because it's where I wanted to jump in.  It is so funny to me that back during the depression, people were doing everything they could to find  food.
08:32They may have had shelter, but they didn't have food because there was no money. people were, people were walking across the United States to find jobs, to send money back to their families. And, and then, um, there was a thing, there was a poster or a flyer at the post office back during World War I or World War II, can't remember which, about our government was encouraging us to have a kitchen garden.
09:02and a few chickens because that would help the war cause. And now cities are like, oh no, no, we don't want you to have chickens.  Chickens are noisy and dirty and bring in vermin. And I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me.  H  O A's do not enjoy chickens.  Yeah.  Um, I used to have  a, I don't even know. Homeowner's association is what HOA stands for.
09:31And I  used to have another thing that went under HOA and I can't remember what it was, but I think it had something that  had the word hell for age, but I can't remember what the other two words. And we've never lived under an HOA. My mother-in-law did. And they wouldn't even allow her to have a potted tomato plant  on her patio. Holy cow. Nope. But she could have a dog.
10:00She could have a small dog. I'm like, tomato plants don't make a mess  and they don't bark. They don't make any noise. What is the deal here?  So I, I love that you guys are doing what you're doing because a lot of places don't allow for this. If you choose to live in that environment,  I do not,  I would, I would not do well with an HOA. I would get, um,
10:29I get kicked out of my house probably, so.
10:34Yeah, that's  it was funny because when we were looking for our first home,  one of the requirements Caleb had was he was like,  I don't care where it is as long as it's outside the city limits. Like we don't have to have a lot,  but it has to be outside the city limits. Yeah, that's why we moved  almost five years ago now because we had lived in town.
11:03for 20 years in a small town of like 6,000 people and we were a block and a half off of Main Street that went through town. And I was so sick of people tearing up our road because it was basically flat and then went up a hill by our house. And they would take the shortcut to get from the Main  Street up to the other big street that went north and they would cut through our neighborhood to do that instead of going to the light.
11:31There were a ton of little kids that lived in that neighborhood and I lived in fear of a kid getting hit by a car. And it was just noisy and dusty and busy and loud and just obnoxious every day. So when we had the opportunity to get out of there, we were like, okay, let's, let's move outside of city limits. And we actually moved outside of city limits of a city half an hour from the city we had been living in. So.
12:01Yeah, I get it.  And the biggest thing about city limits is that you have to abide by the rules of your city if you live within city limits.  Once it becomes county, it's a little less, it's a little more forgiving. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with townships and counties, it's, it's a lot different.  Absolutely. I mean, I've told the story once already on one podcast, but I will share it again. Cause why not?
12:30We wanted to put in a  farm stand and it's not permanent. I mean, we could move it if we wanted to, but it's heavy. It's one of those nice sheds that you get from like the tough shed company.  And as Barn Red, it's adorable. We love it. We have made like almost $300 since June  1st,  I think,  on eggs and candles and soap and lip balms and  some radishes, you know, stuff that we make where we grow.
13:01And that's awesome. But we had to get a permit to be able to put it where we wanted to put it.  And it's called a setback permit. And it's through the county. How interesting.  And I didn't know if we needed any permits because I've never lived outside of city limits like this. And I called our county and I said, we're going to be doing this thing. It's not a permanent building, but it's this size.
13:28And the lady put me through to whoever handles that. And he was like, what's the size of  the shed again? And I told him,  and he said, you're probably not going to be happy.  And I said, what? And he said, number one, I need a photo of the area on your property that you're going to put it so that we know that the,  if there was ever a fire at your house, we know that the fire trucks can get in your driveway because you know, that's important.  I was like, that's fine. I can send you a photo.
13:57He said, and it has to be this far back from the road. It has to be this many feet from the edge of the driveway. And I said, it's not really a driveway. It's a driveway and then a turnaround. He's like, where are you again? And I told him. And he said, oh, you're out in the farm country. I was like, yeah, that's why we want a farm stand. He says, OK. He said, just send me the picture. He said, it's going to cost you $50. I was like, I am happy to pay you $50 if I can have a farm stand. He's like, OK, good.
14:26So then  last year we started building our hard-sided greenhouse, which is like 10 or 15 by 20 or 30 feet. And I knew that that was going to need the permit thing.  I  emailed him and I said,  Oh, might need another permit. Here's what we're doing.  He's like, it'll be another 50 bucks. I was like, sweet. said, can you, can you send me that same picture with just an X? Where are you going to put the, the, uh, greenhouse?
14:56And I said, basically the greenhouse is going slightly to the left and behind the farm stand. And he said,  send me the picture anyway. I said, okay.  So for a hundred dollars in permits, we have a really nice farm stand and a really nice greenhouse. So I'm okay with this. Could not have done this in the city we lived in because we didn't have the room.  Yep. A greenhouse is something we've been talking about because we'd love to get to that point where we've got, um,
15:25an actual place for us to start things, you know, more in the winter time. Right now we don't really have that. So we've been thinking about a couple different ways to approach that. In the meantime, our living room  this year ended up with a lot of seedlings stuck in the person. Yeah, I understand. Half of my kitchen  was  our dining table and then a folding card table  in front of our dining table.
15:54covered with seedling trays this spring for like eight weeks because we started them in February. And we were worried that it wasn't going to be warm enough in the greenhouse to put them out at the end of that eight weeks, but it was, it was fine. And  I highly recommend if you have the room  to do a greenhouse,  do it. It pays off in spades. Yeah, that's,  that is definitely the next thing.
16:20It's funny because  that's kind of one of the other things that we've been trying to share a little bit more on Homestead hobbyists is that I think sometimes when you,  I love the homesteading community because I feel like it's kind of, it's kind of like this conversation. It's very open and friendly and you're all talking and sharing about,  what did you do here? And did that work? And does this one work or this didn't work for me? So now I'm trying this.
16:46And one of the things with Homestead Hobbyists is I feel like you see a lot of these very like beautifully curated images  and  it's not really what it's like when you're homesteading.  Like there's dirt everywhere and there's chicken poop and there's kids covered in mud and animals that are just, you know, all over the place.  And so that's kind of like the other thing that we
17:13decided we wanted to do was just be very authentic and say, hey, we tried this. For example, I had a bunch of seedling starters and like, I would say half of them died this year because it's the first year that we've done seedlings.  And  Caleb had some other ones that we had saved seeds from last year and those did really well.  it's  so funny because I think
17:43When you're working with plants and animals,  I think failure is like par for the course. And I think it's so much more  accepted than in other areas  of like your day to day job or things like that. Yeah. I feel like appearances have to go out the window with this because  you can't guarantee that you're not going to have mud on your floor when people come to visit.  Yeah.
18:12It's mud on the floor, your rack stands with your plants everywhere. Yeah, I feel like, okay, this is going to sound really weird.  Our home is really lovely. Like it was remodeled completely before we ever saw it, like before we bought it. And I was just smitten when I saw this place for the first time. It's gorgeous downstairs. They remodeled the entire downstairs.  And I was like,
18:42It's never going to look like this again. I need to drink this in. It was empty. It was shiny. It was beautiful.  Floors were clean. Toilet had basically never been used. I don't think the bathtub had ever been used. I think it was that brand new. And I was like, holy crap, it will never look like this again.  And  my in-laws came down this past Sunday for Father's Day and
19:10I literally had to clean my kitchen and my husband had to clean the bathroom  because we've been so busy and we don't care about appearances when we're in the middle of spring growing season. was like, huh, I forgot that company is a really good incentive to do some cleaning.  Go back and do that stuff. Yeah. So it's
19:36It's a lot, but I also feel like this is very much what real life  is.  mean, the first six months we were here, it felt like living in someone else's house in a bed and breakfast or a, um, what is it? VRBO, Vacation Rental by Owner thing. Because  it was so  new  and I hadn't gotten all my stuff moved from the old house yet.
20:03You know, cause we, well, I shouldn't say that  first month we were here, took us a month to sell the old house, but  it was  literally like  living in a vacation spot because nothing had been messed up yet.  And I kept thinking I'm going to scratch paint somewhere and that's going to make it feel like it's ours now.  Yeah. I think there's a, I think there's an element of just coziness sometimes too. Not that Nethi's cozy, but.
20:32there's an element of like something feeling lived in that is just a little bit different than like the spotless nature of everything.  And I also feel like if, okay,  it's been a long time since I was single without children, since like I was 20. But  you know how  some people choose to not have children?
21:01not have animals. They live in a very, I don't know what the word is, sparse one-bedroom apartment and they go to their job 60 hours a week and their apartment is where they go to get a shower and sleep. It's not really where they live. It's not where they spend their time. I can't imagine what that's like. I want where I live to be lived in.
21:29And I feel like the homesteading life has given me that.
21:34Yeah, we joke a lot of times when we're out at the farm at his parents' house that like you don't go there with your nice clothes on. You don't go there  expecting everything to be spotless, but you'll definitely feel like you've got a lot of love and you'll have a good time when you're out there. And learn some stuff too, probably. Yeah. Yeah.  Okay. So tell me what you guys have at your place. Do you have chickens?
22:04So  we have an interesting setup.  we have our house and we've got the garden beds  and the  dogs and cat at our house. And then  we have a lot of plants  and another garden and the chickens out  at my in-laws house because...
22:29our in-laws, my in-laws would like us to buy the family homestead.  so, we,  Caleb had  the foresight when we started having those conversations like five years ago, that it's like, all right, if this is going to be ours, we got some things that we can do now that we are lucky enough to have that set up.  So he started planting our mini orchard five years ago. Very nice. Good.
22:59and then also started planting our grapevines out there.  And then because they've got the barns and everything,  we have the chickens out there. So  it really is like a family activity because we all do this.  So here at the house, have  our garden spans across the entire backyard and we started
23:25when we moved here with just like four raised beds  and now it's ginormous.  Um,  and it's kind of changed over the years. think what did we start planting when we first started?  one of the boxes was  peppers. One of them was tomatoes. One of them was herbs  and can't remember if I think we stuck strawberries in the fourth one just so the girls could pick them. Yeah.
23:55We, it's been interesting because we, kind of change what we do every year. It's been a, a learning experience over the last few years of like, okay, we know we will eat a ton of peppers  and do  a  ton of tomatoes. And then we have kind of like experimental things we do every year. So that's also kind of why we call ourselves homestead hobbyists, because we tend to think more like less around, you know,
24:26The  major things that people know about like so for tomatoes,  this year we've narrowed it down and we've gone more Roma because we're going to do, we're going to can and do more pasta sauces and things.  But in the past, we've had like a variety of different things. And then we've done everything from like Thai chilies. What else did we do?
24:53We like spicy food, so we go with a lot of spicy. Different varieties of banana peppers, some of them spicy, some of them pink. Yep.
25:04Always jalapenos.  Green beans.  We did radishes and beets this year. Carrots didn't work so good for us last year. Yeah.  We always do a lot of green beans because we,  that's like one of the staple veggies in the winter time. So we do enough that we can  can enough to get through the winter, but somehow  we, don't manage to keep too many year over year because we go through them so much.
25:31It's just so easy to like grab a can of green beans in the wintertime when you're cooking something and add that to whatever you're cooking as a side. Oh yeah.  Um, the last time we visited my parents for any length of time, my mom had canned green beans and she sent me home with like, I think it was 14 quart jars of green beans and, I, we didn't can.
25:58Then I don't love canning. mean, I've come to love it in the last few years, but I really didn't want to can for a long time.  And so she sent us home with that many jars and my husband doesn't really love eating green vegetables. He will grow them until he can't anymore, but he does, but he's not into eating them.  am. And my, uh, my second son down, I have four kids, daughter, son, son,  second son  loves green beans.
26:27And he was like, can I have a jar of green beans just to eat by myself? And he was probably 18, 20 at the time. And I was like, yeah, why? And he said, your mom's green beans are the best green beans ever.  He said, the ones from the store suck.  I was like, oh, okay. So yeah, he sat there and he literally ate them out of the jar. Oh my goodness. That's so funny. So apparently my mom's green beans are really good.
26:56But yeah, mean,  I think what you're doing is amazing and hobbyist makes it sound like it's just for giggles. And I don't think you're doing this just for giggles at all. You know, it's funny because I've talked about, we've talked about this a couple of times with people.  We came up with it because  it's not our full-time job.
27:24Right. And it's not for fun. But we do like try a lot of non mainstream things like,  like we, we kind of look at it as like growing the stuff that people don't necessarily always grow. So we have some of those staples, but then like,  this year I decided I was going to try my hand at flowers. So I'm trying that out. And then so it's interesting because it's like, we're not just sticking with like,
27:54one thing.  We've talked about like  once we move out to his parents' house, like maybe we should get sheep and see how that goes or you  But before you said sheep, I was going to say I don't know what you guys are talking about because I very much do this for fun.  Enjoy growing things and trying different things and finding out if they're going to work and
28:18doing a little bit research into what could make this work better or what are ways to make this more productive. And  honestly, just spending time out in the garden by myself sometimes is  nice too.  My husband would agree with you completely, Caleb. He  loves being in the garden. It is his de-stressing time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so we probably should have prefaced this at the beginning.  So
28:47Caleb ended up growing up to become a veterinarian. So that's the other reason that like our children are always like, well, we can have this animal because daddy will fix it. And he works with large and small animals. So we have all kinds of opportunities from that perspective too. But I think that's why you spend more time with plants because they're not animals.
29:13That's a great skill to have though, Caleb, because you can fix it all. And your dad, they're always going to think you can fix everything. My dad's 81 and I still think he can fix all my woes.  and I wasn't, like, I wasn't poking fun at the hobbyist thing, but I wanted to lead into, and you guys kind of helped me that,
29:37that part of homesteading life is  the trial and error and the experimentation and the, my God, it worked reaction.  It's like being a kid  at one of those museums. Like there's a science museum in Minnesota and  they let the kids actually see how electricity works with the little ball that you touch and the little sparks are on the inside of it.  And they have like,
30:07and levers that the kids can move and see how that works. Very hands on. And I feel like this homesteading life is the grownup version of that. Oh,  let's get a cow and see how that works.  Yeah,  it really, it's such a different way of thinking than I think. At least I always felt like, especially from like, I work in the corporate space and you know, the idea of like,
30:37failing is not considered, it's not always seen as something that  is essential and will help you grow and also can be fun. it's, to your point, think home setting is really unique in that perspective. Yeah. And you choose the things that you are willing to take the chance on failure at.
31:03Whereas if you're in a corporate setting, the boss is like, I need you to do this task and I need you to do it to the best of your ability with the expectation that it will not fail. That is not your choice that you took on that task.  Yeah, it's just, it, it's a very different, it's a different way of looking at life. And it's, I think not only is it fun, but I think for us too, it's really nice that we can do it with our girls. Cause I mean,
31:33We've always been very, we kind of came to this agreement pretty early on. It was like, we're not going to do screens. We're not going to do, we're not going to bring around tablets everywhere. And so our girls spend a lot of time outside helping do all these things and they love it. Yeah. I'm, mid fifties. So I remember a world where there weren't personal computers in every room in the house. There weren't tablets.
32:01Cell phones were a far distant idea  and telephones actually had a cord that went from the base of the phone to the receiver that you put to your ear. I remember those days and I remember having to get up to change the channel on the TV and all of that seems really really far away right now from where I am.
32:25I think it was actually better.  mean, as I sit here and talk to you guys in Ohio from Minnesota over a computer connection, I mean, that's wonderful.  It makes my life easier because I have made myself a job doing this podcast.  But I remember going outside in the summertime at  7 a.m. if I was up at 7 a.m. and spending the whole day outside. Yeah, I remember being told that.
32:53call it a side and don't come back until it's dark. And we were back in the woods behind my parents' place and there's a creek that runs through a couple different places there. And the girls were with us and I got to point to a couple places where there were still stones left over from some of the dams that I remember as a kid making. Yeah, kids will always find a way to entertain themselves and I think that we have forgotten that part. I think too, homesteading is great because not only
33:21Can they entertain themselves? But they learn about, you know, hard work and purpose. I think sometimes that gets missed too. Like our oldest, she loves to do chores.  Even like my parents and my in-laws, they all joke, they're like, we got so much done today. She was just out there like telling us, okay, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? What are we doing?  And she's six.  So. Yep. She's got all the energy in the world until she crashes.
33:51Yeah. She feels so accomplished from that. Like she can, especially like she's real into the chickens right now. And she, she's like, look, this chicken will do this and I can take the chicken here. And I found the eggs. got all of them up there this morning. And you know,  so cute.  I am so excited for that little girl. She's going to grow up  with the best self-esteem ever. That's the plan.
34:19I hope so. I hope so for you guys sake. really do. Because  if you can raise them right, they will be the strongest, most productive, most helpful people as adults you've ever seen. Yeah.  I was watching a video the other day about  screen time of the average teenager and it was like eight to 10 hours a day. Holy cow.
34:46I do eight to 10 hours a day because I use the computer and my phone to do my job. But I was like, do these kids ever play? they ever get to go outside and get vitamin D from the sun? And my son was watching the same thing and he's 23. And I said, said, Cam, I'm so glad that you guys were adults before all of this became the norm. I said, because
35:16You would have wanted to be like your friends and have the computer and the tablet and the phone and da da da da. I said,  I would have been  so  hard pressed to  not give you the things you wanted because I love you and I'm your mom. said, but I would have felt really terrible about giving you the things you wanted in this case.  He said, we had a ball.  said, we used to go out and like do.
35:45sword fighting with tree branches. And we used to play football in the street because back then people weren't tearing through our neighborhood. He said, mom, said, you lucked out. said, you didn't have to deal with all this craziness. was like, Oh, I lucked out huge. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's something we, we try and, know,  we early on decided we were going to try and mitigate that a little bit. So, yeah, good. Good.  mean,
36:15I do not want to tell parents that have given their kids all the technology that they're bad parents because that's probably not the case.  are parents doing the best that they can with the values that they have inside themselves.  Everybody's family values  are different. I don't want to disparage anyone. Parenting is freaking hard. I did it. I remember. I know it is.
36:39And it still is. My daughter called me last week and she was very upset because something happened on her dad's side of the family that was  quite a shock.  And she was upset and I had to like swallow down my tears for her and listen to her cry. And it's one of the hardest things you can do with your grown children. When your grown children cry, like actually cry like a baby.
37:06All you want to do is stop it. You want to make them feel better. And as an adult, you know that they have to feel their feelings. They have to get through it. And I don't even know where I was going with that, but  parenting is really  hard. It's a really hard job to do.
37:26So you're doing a great job. Well, thank you.  All  right, guys.  I try to keep you to half an hour. We're at 37 minutes and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.  Where can people find you online? Yeah, sure.  Thank you so much for having us.  Right now you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Homestead Hobbyists.  There's also a link to a newsletter that we're going to be doing here quarterly. So
37:55You can click the link and sign up for the newsletter. then hopefully here in the next month, we'll have our website launched. So we're going to have blogs about all the different things that we're doing.  We have  the small vineyard grapevines. So that's a lot of the focus right now  because they will be producing grapes next year for the first row.  We'll see.
38:26But you'll be able to kind of go through and read all the things that we're doing there. So for now, Instagram and Facebook are the best way to follow us and see all the new things that are coming. can't wait to see the website and the blog post. I love it when I meet people through the podcast and I get to continue to follow them and see how they're growing. Not just the plants, but the people themselves, how they're changing.
38:51I would love to have you back to talk me through the whole grapevine thing and  what you're planning for that and how you actually intend to use it. So maybe you can come back in a couple months and let me know. Yeah, we can talk through that and then even more details around the orchard because we've got different trees for different purposes in there and we've got a whole other section of fruit trees now.  Nice. Yeah.  This year we found out with the
39:20Our fig tree has been an experiment in Ohio. They're  not really trees apparently. Okay. So  yeah, we would love to come back and talk some more. That would be fun. And we have little baby apples on our honey gold apple trees this year, like a whole bunch of them. We're so excited.  So anyway,  as usual, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com. You guys thank you again. I really appreciate your time. Thank you.
39:49Have a great night. right, bye. Bye.
 

Dawn's Dirt - Farming In Midlife

Today I'm talking with Dawn about homesteading and farming as we age at Dawn's Dirt.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt and Dawn was a guest on my show, not two weeks ago, and told us about what she does. But today we're going to be a little more focused and we're going to talk about  homesteading and farming and gardening once you get past the age of 40, especially as a woman.  Good morning, Dawn. How are you? Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity again. I just love talking about these things. So yeah, it's good.  Me too. so
00:55If we're talking about when you get past 40, obviously I'm past 40, I'm 55. I think you told me you're 44, is that right? I was just going to say who says I'm past 40, but I'm just teasing. I'm 44. I almost had to edit all that out. Okay. So the first thing I want to say is aging is a privilege denied to many. And so I'm really glad that I'm getting older and hopefully wiser.
01:24trying anyway. But there are some real things that come  with getting older, especially with our bodies and  manual labor. So  how's that going for you Dawn? Because I will share mine after you share yours. For sure. Make me go first.  Well,  I'll tell you this. Like I'm not a
01:46bigger, fatter woman, but I'm a bigger woman. I'm tall and I've got big bones and I've got good muscle structure. So I can actually lift  and outlift a lot of people.  I was just thinking back this morning, I went to the gym  for a couple of months just after I  got through my busy season on the farm. And on the farm, I could lift, you know, three buckets of potatoes, which was about 150 pounds.  And I went to the gym and dead lifted 185 pounds.  So
02:13I can do it, I am stronger than most, but I'll tell you this, my back hurts a lot at the time and my lower back and my upper back and into my neck. It hurts a lot of the time and I've learned, I used to be able to do the 150 pounds in one shot and just do it and bust it done, but I've learned in the last couple of years here that I'm better off to do three trips of 50 pounds than one trip of 150 pounds.
02:42It's harder. Everything aches a bit more and I fall into bed at night and I'm just physically exhausted, tired from  doing physical work.  Yeah. And it takes longer to recover  once you get past 40 as well. Yeah, for sure.  My youngest son still lives with us and he's 23 and his job is to help us out on the  quote unquote farm.
03:12And this kid can just bust his ass for two days in a row,  be  mildly sore the next day. And  the fourth day from the first day, he's like, let's do it again. I'm like, nah, I'm not doing anything.  You can go play. You do it. For sure. And I found that too. know,  back when I had my farm, I would have to, in the spring, I'd have to get my boiler system going again. so,
03:38What that involved was taking a ladder around the greenhouse and crawling up it and crawling back down it, know, opening the valves and things like that.  And so I was up and down ladders, up and down ladders, up and down ladders all day  for a full day. And I could do it while I was going because once I'm moving, I'm moving. But let me tell you, the next day when I try and do it again, my body says, uh-uh, you do not want to do this again. Like it just took  longer the next day. And I was sore for several days after that.  Yeah.
04:06It's just your muscles don't recover the way they did when you were young. And  part of it is that your body has extended a metric but ton of energy up to the age of 40 because you had all the energy in the world. And at some point your body is just like, you can go easier now. I give you permission by telling you to stop. Yeah. The problem is, is my brain doesn't want to stop and I just keep pushing. And so
04:35Yeah, it's not the same as I was when I sold my farm. I'm I and then starting this new this new farm I'm I'm starting over from scratch and I'm you know doing cleaning jobs and  you know have my animals and my gardens and things like that again  and I'm doing it on my own. I'm a single mama  and yeah, it was easier the first time around to keep up and do it all and work, you know 12 14 16 hour days and now I'm like  a 12 hour day like a 16 hour day right now is is it
05:04It basically makes me  unusable the next,  on the Friday. I still have to work.  I still have to keep going. But yeah, I'm sore and I'm tired and I'm  a bit grumpy the next day.  And the thing that I get a kick out of is  I used to stay up till, you know, two in the morning  and I would get up at 5.30 a.m. and grab a shower and get ready to go to my job when I was 19, 18, 19.
05:34And I would do that for couple weeks in a row. I'd get a couple hours of good sleep. And then after that two weeks, I would take a weekend and just crash. would sleep most of the weekend because that's how I did it.  Now,  I can't do that anymore.  I really love  sleep.  sleep is where I recover. It's where I dream.  It's where I get to just not have to think about anything purposely.
06:02I love sleep. I love sleep more than I love food.  I'm so sorry. I've got this little tickle still.  Yeah, absolutely.  People would say to me all the time when I had my farm and was running three companies and had 30 people on payroll and was doing  all the things that I had and the stress load and all of it, people would say like, how  are you even surviving? Like, how are you even doing it?  And I would say to people, I sleep.
06:32That is how I survived it is I slept and I slept hard and I'm still like that when I go to bed at the end of the day, I sleep and I sleep hard and I don't wake up during the night  and  the next day I get up and I do it again.  And that's the only thing that saved me was my sleep.  If I  didn't sleep hard, I think I'd be a puddle on the floor. Yeah,  I have said this on the podcast a bunch of times and I probably should stop saying it, but it's the truth.  My husband snores.
07:02And so I go, I try to be asleep asleep by nine o'clock at night at the latest so that I get at least four hours of solid sleep before he will wake me up with his snoring. And I'm telling you, we're gonna have to figure out a better sleeping arrangement because this four hours of solid sleep a night is about killing me. We have to figure something out. I don't know what's gonna happen because
07:28I can do the podcast, obviously. I sit down, I talk to you guys, it gets my adrenaline boosted and all the happy endorphins kick in and I feel great.  But if I had to do a real job on somebody else's schedule, it would not be possible at this point, I swear to you. Yeah, well, sleep is what fuels us.  People discount sleep.  Sorry, I'm to to pick a drink.  I'm sorry.
07:58Um, yeah, sleep is what fuels us. People need sleep just like they need sunshine, just like they need food, just like they need water. Sleep is another set of fuel that just feeds us.  And I know for myself, like I need, in the summertime, I can handle six to seven hours of sleep a night,  but, and then in the winter time, I like eight or nine hours of sleep. It's just the way my body is.  Um, but if I don't get that six or seven hours of good, solid sleep,  I'm,  I start to cry actually.
08:28That's when I really start getting weepy is when I don't have enough sleep. And I've been like that. My mom has said, I've been like that even since I was little.  If I would start crying, my mom would say,  oh, Dawn needs to go to bed. And it's true. I wake up the next day and I'm okay again. Yeah, I get weepy or I get really snarky and I have to work really hard to keep my thoughts in my own head and not let them out of my mouth.  So yeah, it's not good.
08:57I think that's an over 40 thing, you know?  You lose your,  you gain your confidence and you lose your inhibitions to like,  in some ways care. Like I don't care what you think or what you whatever, and it just comes out your mouth.  I think that gets worse and worse as we get older and older, because I can see it more in my mom,  and then I can see it even more in my grandmother now is that  the thought process and the thoughts are just coming out of the mouth.  Yeah, I...
09:26This is going to be a very interesting podcast. used to have a really sharp tongue when I was,  probably from 10 years old  until I was in my early twenties. And it was partly because I was brought up on the East coast and East coast people are very blunt. So I was raised around very blunt people.  The other thing is that I was insecure. so insecurity sometimes comes out sideways, especially verbally. And it took me a long time.
09:55to count to 10 in my head before I would say the thing that wanted to just pop out. And I'm a lot better  these days, but man, if I am exhausted,  I choose not to be around anyone because it's so much harder to keep that  mean streak inside of my head, you know? Yeah, absolutely.  I've gotten better too.
10:22But for me, I'm Dutch background, like my heritage is Dutch and the Dutch are known for being direct and I'm not necessarily unkind. I'm not necessarily mean,  but I just am very direct. it's in my head, I'm going to say it and it's not mean, it's just  literal and direct. And so, yeah, I think there's a bit of a difference between being just literal and direct and  mean.  I can't say I'm mean with my comments.
10:50Yeah, and I mean, I'm not going out of my way to be bitchy with people. just have to think about the delivery because  how someone receives what you say is in how you deliver it, what words you choose and what tone of voice you say it in.  And the more tired I am, the less careful I am with both of those things.  Fair enough, fair enough. mean, I think we all are to some degree as women, you know.
11:18We're just created like that. I don't know.  But I do also think that there's a difference between a kind bitch and a mean bitch. Have you heard of that before?  What's your thought on that? A kind bitch and a mean bitch?  I don't know.  I think a kind bitch is going through things and things that she says come out sounding bitchy.  And I think a mean bitch is just a mean bitch. Yes.  I agree.
11:45Yeah, I think so. And I've run across both. I sometimes I've been called a bitch,  but it's just because I'm direct. But I'm not unkind in it. I'm just very direct and just  call a spade a spade.  Whereas a mean bitch is out to get you. I think one has selfish motivation and one has just. It's just direct. Yeah, and I think that the kind one has no spoons left. You know how people say I'm out of spoons, which means I have nothing left for today.
12:14Yes. I've never thought of that. But yeah, you're right.  The kind one just,  yeah, you're right. She gives and she gives and she gives of herself till she's got nothing left. Yeah, you're 100 % correct.  Yeah. There are days where my husband's had a rough day at work and I've had a long day here  and things are going on for me. And I'm just like, honey, I'm out of spoons. I'm going to bed. And he's like,  good night. I love you. I'm like, I love you too.
12:44Sorry, I cut you off. No, it's okay, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think that's a healthy relationship and a healthy couple to just say, hey,  I'm out.  I saw  a quote from, I think it was Brene Brown, I think.  And she said that she comes home to her husband at the end of the day and they'll say where they are on a scale of one to 10.  And she'll say, I've got a three and he'll say, I've got an eight. And so they'll just meet each other where they're at. And sometimes she'll be higher and he'll be lower.
13:11You know, to just meet each other where they're at. And I think that's good communication.  And that's where you can really build a strong, healthy relationship is to know that if you're both at it too,  rather than wasting your energy on fighting, just stop for the day. Tell each other you love each other and  carry on.  exactly. And,  and there are times, I mean, this is really funny. I did not expect to be talking about this today, but we're going to talk about it anyway.  When you are in a long-term relationship,
13:41There's a lot of patience and respect required to make it work. And when I started the podcast, I was so obsessed, you I was consumed with learning how to do it that I was putting in 45 hour weeks one way or another.  And after a couple of weeks, I was just swamped. was like, I need somebody else to do the dishes because I've got to do this thing for work. And I haven't really had a job in years.
14:10And I finally sat my husband down and I said,  now that I've made myself a job where I'm the boss and the CEO and the COO and everything,  said, could I get a little help with some of the dishes and maybe folding laundry?  And he was like, oh my God, I didn't even think of that. Of course you can. I said, thank you. That would be wonderful. And so he and the kid have been pitching in.
14:34And both of them love to cook. So two nights a week, I just give them free reign. I'm like, go make whatever you want to make for dinner. I will grab a bowl of granola. I don't care. I'll eat something else because they're like really spicy food and I do not. So two nights a week, I don't have to, I don't have to cook. And those are the nights, those are the nights that I try to schedule podcast episodes to record them with people who are, who need that time in the evening because they're not available during the day.
15:03That's amazing, honestly.  And that's what a family unit is, is picking up where someone else  can't pick up.  And I'm single now. I've been single for six years now.  But to be really honest with you,  I'll tell you about some  parts of my marriage is we were not teammates. We were not team players.  My ex-husband, he's a decent man. He's not a bad man at all.  But  his work ethic and my work ethic didn't match and didn't align.
15:31And so I would work a 12, 14, 16 hour day and he would work, you know, a three or four or five hour day and I'd come home and he's watching TV and on a farm or a homestead, like that just, it doesn't work. You have to have high drive and high work ethic to make a farm go. And yeah, we just weren't aligned and I tried changing that, but 16 years of marriage taught me that I can't change someone.
16:01And so ultimately it did enter our relationship. There was a few other things behind closed doors, but  yeah, the not being aligned in work ethic was a huge problem in,  you know, respect and love  within our marriage.  Yeah.  You've got to have  not the same goals, but I think you have to have the same core fundamental values as your partner.
16:29For sure. And if you're not on the same page, like,  it's just not going to work, especially as teammates, especially on a farm or, you know, trying to  reach the goals when one person is, I always say I picked up all the drop balls behind him and the heaviest drop ball I picked up behind him was I took on all our, 100 % of our debt  and I bought him out of the farm and he moved to our house in town.  And  yeah, that.
16:55It's just not,  we're not meant to do that. Like that doesn't work in a partnership. so, yeah.  And so I've been single here for six years now trying to build it back on my own. And  in some ways it's good because I don't have to answer to anybody. I don't have to  ask anyone's permission to do this or do that, but I do push myself because I am a single mom and doing this by myself. I do tend to push myself  just that much harder, you know?  And after 40,  it's tough.
17:24Yeah, how old are your kids, So my girls, I've got three daughters. So they are 14, 16 and 18. And it's there. There's that little meme that says, you know, when I was a kid, I had to roll up my chores were rolling the garbage bin down the driveway. And my girls, the farm depends on it. So even when my girls were younger, they would come with me to farmers markets. And so they would work their little butts off and they would work with me and we would do it as a team. And we spent lots of time together.
17:52And then when I sold my farm, interestingly enough, several people said, oh, you have more time for your girls now. And I said, actually, no, it's the opposite because I took a full-time job last summer  and  I did not see my kids because I couldn't take them to work with me.  And  so this summer I'm doing it on my own again  and they helped me. They helped me load my chickens, my meat birds into the trailer the other night.  They sure didn't want to,  but they did it. And I'm so thankful for my daughters for doing
18:21the things that  they can do to help me for the farm, you know? And that meme is  my chores were rolling the garbage can down the driveway and,  you know, the other farm kids, the farm depends on it if they do their chores or not, because,  you know,  there's bigger stakes on a farm.  I am so proud of you.  You are a good mom because you are teaching them so many things are going to help them later on.  Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.
18:51They are really good kids, honestly, and they have work ethic themselves. They are sought after in our community to do jobs and to work farmers markets and do different things.  And  ironically, like two of my children, well, all three of them in different roles are going to work for my former farm. The people that bought my farm are going to work.  They're going to work for them as employees this year.  it's pretty cool. know, last  summer we weren't ready for that, but this summer,
19:20They genuinely want to help and see that that farm survive because farming is so important and  it's a way for them  to still feel connected to their childhood, to the way they were raised.  It's pretty cool actually. That's beautiful. I love that.  Okay. So now we've talked about relationships  and partnerships and coupling and  uncoupling and all the things I don't usually talk about on the podcast.  It's for me,
19:49this whole thing about being over 40. It really kicked me in the ass when I was 44. So I was your age and I will tell you what happened. My husband was replacing a window in one of our son's bedrooms in the old house. It was a little tiny window and he needed help with something because he was actually out on the roof and I was in the room on the inside where the window was. And he had asked me to
20:17give hand him something through the open window space and I knelt down and there was carpet in that room. It was like a ugly shag carpet. So it was a really long deep pile and I knelt down and I felt something under my knee and I tried to move so that I wouldn't put all my weight on my knee on the thing and rocked my knee funny and also ended up on this screw that was in the carpet and hurt my knee.
20:45And I didn't think any of that. I was like, oh, that's going to hurt tomorrow and  I'll walk it off and I'll be fine.  And a year later, if I move my knee wrong, it still hurt. And I was like, oh, we have hit the,  I can't necessarily walk injuries off anymore stage. That's when I knew that I was over 40. Okay. You're putting some fear into me because I haven't  had that experience yet, but I'm sure it's coming.
21:14Because I'm that same way, like,  oh, I hurt myself or that smarted a bit. And  yeah, I've always been the one to walk it off. You know, if it hurts in some places, like it'll, if it comes by itself, that's what my mom always said, if it comes by itself, it's going to go away by itself.  you know,  I'm very much like that. kind of personally avoid the doctor, like the plague. And yeah, I just  grunt it off and walk it off.  so you're saying it's coming. It's going to hit that one of these days I can't do that.
21:44Yeah, it's coming. I'm sorry. I hate to be the  bearer of bad news, Dawn, but yes, at some point you're going to injure yourself and be like,  think I might want to get that looked at this time. Yeah. Well, and I can see it in my mom. mean, my mom is,  I got my work ethic from my parents and  my kids are getting it from me.  And my mom has recently, yeah, hurt her knee. And it was one of those things she thought if it comes by itself, it'll go away by itself. And yeah, it's
22:11she's going to end up with a surgery over it. she's been limping. the thing with my mom that I must say, and she's older than both of us, she's 65 and she, it doesn't stop her. even though she's limping and even though she's using a crutch to walk a lot of the time and you know, things like that, she's still going on holidays. She is still planting her gardens. She is still doing the work required. Like she's just a bulldozer. She's still doing what she needs to do.
22:39And she's not letting it stop her. I think that there's  something to be said for that. When you let something stop you, when you get an illness or when you let something,  you know, hold you back, I think it can hold you back from other possibilities as well. Whereas if you just  accept it and work within it, I mean, she, went to Cuba  last January and she, we got a wheelchair for in the airport, right? So she's still.
23:07She still allowed us to help her, but she still did the things that she wanted to do. She just didn't say  to us,  well, I have a bummed knee, so I'm going to not go.  exactly.  So we've spent 23 minutes talking about stuff I don't need to talk about and some of the stuff we wanted to talk about. So let's talk about  how to support your own self, your body and your mind to stay strong past 40.
23:35to doing the things.  What I would say is you gotta stay hydrated, number one.  You gotta get sleep and you have to eat food that supports your body because if you just eat junk food, you're done for.  I couldn't agree more. I've always been a proponent of my guts are like a dog,  but I noticed the other day, I forget what I had, but I had something the day before and it was.
24:00It was probably pasta. I've noticed it with pasta actually. If I eat pasta with, you know, a sauce or whatever,  especially if I've gone to a restaurant,  the next day I'm quite lethargic.  And I think that's to do with the food. And so quality food, quality water, quality sleep, I think  those help you.  They're the fuel for your body and you're right. And so when you've got a homestead or you've got a farm,  you've got access to these great foods and
24:27Yeah, sometimes I used to say with my farm, I sacrifice meals at my table to put food on others, but I'm still able to make different choices. can grab the vegetables or a salad or  just even a burger in a lettuce wrap even is something different than  the burger and fries or the chicken fingers and fries, you know? And so just making those different choices.  Yeah.
24:53I'm going to say this and I could be totally wrong, but it's my take. So it's my podcast. So I'm say it.  I feel like all of the fried  foods  are  not great for me. And I think they're not great for a lot of people. My husband and my son really do like to have like,  they like to make homemade donuts.  Homemade donuts are made in vegetable  oil or lard if you have it.  And I can't do it. Like I eat one donut and I'm like, okay, that's good for six months.
25:24You know, that's it.  Because I just feel so terrible that  evening into the next day because it's not good for you. And it's not so much that the oil isn't good for you. It's what happens to the oil when it gets hot and then it's in the food and then you eat it. Yeah, I, well, they made canola oil. Excuse me, they made canola oil.
25:50for fuel. It's meant to be biodiesel. I have no issue with  canola that's being used for biodiesel. I actually understand why big grain farmers use canola in their fields. It does clean up the weeds.  I know of a really cool farmer around these parts. He has a five-year rotation.  He only puts canola, which means he only uses Roundup in his  field once every five years. It does. It cleans up the weeds.
26:16But yeah, I don't think canola oil is meant to be food. I think it's meant to be fuel  for our cars, gasoline, or diesel, biodiesel.  it's not meant to be ingested. I think we've just had,  just like with a lot of things, I don't know if I can say these things now, but you can edit them out if you don't want me to. But  I do think there's a lot of things that it's big business, you know, and if you've got a big business and you've got money generated around it. So if you can  sell it off as
26:46the canola as food, someone's going  to profit from that. And  they've just done a really good job of  trying to  trick us into thinking that canola is food.  Well, it's like soda,  or cola, or pop, or whatever people call it. You're in Alberta, What is a fizzy drink called?  Pop. We call it pop. Okay.  In Minnesota, it's pop. Where I grew up, it's soda. But
27:14There are name brand pops and sodas. I'm not going to disparage anybody by name because I don't want to get sued.  But that's like a hundred and something calories per can  that is completely empty calories. Your body doesn't gain anything from drinking it.  And I would much rather have water with a squeeze of lemon juice and  maybe a half a teaspoon of sugar. I have no problem with sugar.
27:43I have a problem with grams and grams and grams of sugar. It's not good for you.  you know, water is the thing that hydrates you and sugar makes you, sugar converts to, don't know, carbs convert sugar, sugar converts to whatever energy.  But if you're not actually burning the energy, it just builds up in your body and it makes you fat. So I just feel like we as Americans, Canadians, people in general,
28:11We eat things because we've been told it's okay and it's not necessarily okay and it's not necessarily good for our systems.  No, and I do think that there is a full  pandemic, epidemic, I don't know what the right word would be  of that. You know, if you look in your centre aisles of a grocery store,  a lot of that quote unquote food does turn to sugar and sugar turns to fat if it's not burned off or not used.
28:38And I do think, and again, with our sodas or pops,  it's just not healthy. Like there are some types of pops that can even be used as cleaner. Like they'll clean the rust off of screws even. Like  how is this healthy to be putting into our bodies? Like  it just isn't. I don't think we've been designed for these foods and I don't think, well, I don't even think they're food.  And so that's where we need to get back to our roots. That's where it's so important. And that's why your podcast
29:06my podcast and you know,  teaching people to go back to their roots, eating from the land, having your eggs  and your butters and your milks and your chickens and your garden and your vegetables and your lettuces and eating seasonally.  I think that's how we're designed. We're supposed to eat those things from the land  and be stewards of our land. that's why these things are so important. And I think that's why there's a whole shift.
29:34back into this is because people are recognizing that the other food quote unquote is not food and that the stuff that you're growing in your backyard is actually nourishing good for you food. exactly. And since we're rolling toward 30 minutes, I want to get this in. Once we women hit 40, it's really that 40 to 50 stage. You really do have to take care of yourself because if you don't,
30:04Your  50s,  60s, and 70s are going to be exhausting and painful and you will wonder why you're even still here.  So,  and I don't want women to feel bad because there's things that happen like, oh,  I raised four kids. I spent a lot of time on the floor playing blocks and Legos with them. And I would get down on the floor on my hands and knees and play with these kids.
30:30My knees freaking hurt a lot now because I had so much stress on my knees.  I carried my kids on my hip  until they were at least 60, 70 pounds. If they wanted to be picked up, I picked them up. And so my back took a lot of wear and tear. And there's a thing called repetitive motion injury.  That's what I was doing to myself raising my kids. So
30:58Expend all that good energy, live your life, do all the hard things you can do, all the  physical things you can do.  While you're young,  you will probably pay for it when you're older, but at least you got to do the things you love.  I agree. I  think that we  were supposed to do that. We're supposed to care for our kids. We're supposed to do the work.  And I do think that
31:22It's about taking care of your body later on and don't feel bad if you got a few extra pounds It's all about how you feel. It's not about how you look  That's for sure.  And I just think too like if your knees hurt or your back hurts, you know Just do what you can  go for a walk if you can only you know walk a little ways  just do that It's it's doing what you're able to and and pushing yourself just a little bit even  That's what's gonna keep you young and keep you going. I can think of my grandmother who's
31:50She's in well into her nineties and she's still a go-getter, you know, even when she was late eighties and early nineties, she was still  working at  the tickle trunk thrift store  in her hometown because that kept her busy, that kept her going. And I think it's when we become stagnant and stop and go,  my knee hurts, therefore I have to sit on the couch for, you know, days and days on end.  I think that's where the trouble comes in,  not in,
32:20It's not the fact that your knee hurts.  It's if you,  and I'm not saying push yourself to the point that it hurts even more, but you know, just do what you're able to do. Yep, absolutely.  And I guess what I'm getting at is don't beat yourself up in your heart and your head if you're not as active as you used to be,  because you're not necessarily meant to be as active as you used to be. You're supposed to be as active as you want to and can be at the age that you're at.  I agree.  Absolutely.
32:49It's doing what you can do with the body you have. And I'll admit it,  I actually had to do a bunch of  online computer work yesterday and that is not my strength. Like I would rather be outside gardening and  you know working with my animals and doing the physical thing outside.  I would much rather be doing that but yesterday I had to be on my computer more  and it tuckered me out that mental strain and that mental whatever and  I took a little 10 minute cat nap.
33:17at three o'clock. I just did. I hit a bit of a wall. I put myself into bed. I closed my eyes and  it was 10 minutes, but it just gave me a slight bit of fuel to keep going.  was a power nap. Yeah.  And those are great. Do that. And you can do that when you're 15, let alone when you're 50. Yeah, absolutely. Just listen to your body and give it what it wants, you know?
33:43And I find too, even with food, my body is craving protein and my body is craving,  my body craves the  good whole foods, the salads, the things like that.  Yep, absolutely. I've been into a fresh,  well,  store bought fresh sweet bell pepper.  A month ago we had gotten some for some recipe and it was a decent pepper. wasn't terrible. And I hadn't had quote unquote a fresh pepper since September.
34:12I was like, oh my God, I always forget that I love bell pepper because I eat it for like two months in the summer and then that's Yeah, for sure.  So I had the greenhouse and I'll tell you what, my little girls,  they weren't actually tomato eaters. They didn't love, the tomatoes,  but they would eat those peppers as apples. Like I would even throw a pepper in their lunchbox as an apple because  they loved them and my peppers were so sweet. That's the thing, colored peppers.
34:41A green pepper is an immature  red, yellow, orange,  purple, or whatever. A green pepper is an immature pepper like a green tomato,  but a coloured pepper, they're  right. Especially a sweet bell pepper,  should be sweet in flavour, not that bitter flavour.  Are the yellow, red, and orange, are they different  levels of sweet?  Yes,  I always found that my orange peppers were the sweetest, then red, then yellow.
35:12Here's another little tidbit of information. People always think that peppers go from green to yellow to orange to red.  And I'm always like, no, they go green orange or green yellow or green red or green white or green purple, whatever  the color pepper is.  It starts off green, which is immature, and then it goes to the color. It doesn't go through this color changing process. I learned something brand new today. Thank you, Dawn.
35:41You're welcome. Yeah,  yeah, absolutely.  And  the little things and that's why these podcasts are so important too,  is it's just the little things to connect people to their food and to farming and to agriculture, you know,  to know the little things. And so when you see a picture, I've seen this a couple of times,  I've seen a picture of a pepper plant online  and it's got green, red, yellow, orange, you know, what all the colors on the plant all at the same time. And I'm like,  that's fake. That's not possible.
36:11Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, that leads me to a thought that I will leave you with.  I have been seeing commercials online on TV when we're watching YouTube, because we watch a lot of YouTube, because we're homesteaders, we need to learn things.  And there's all these AI commercials now. And I swear to you, they creep me the hell out. They look like real people, except they don't move like real people. And I keep saying this, like, I hate this so much.
36:41Yeah, yeah.  That's,  AI, I think there's positives to it, but I don't know. think the ultimate big picture  and  whatever  of AI could be a little dicey and slicey. And  that's why we need to get back to nature and homesteading and just doing things in our own spaces, because  to rely on this big technological system  is a little, for me, it's a little dicey, you know?
37:11Yeah, remember the toilet paper wars of 2020? I  just think if something happened to,  this is me getting slightly tinfoil hatty  again, like  I just think if something happens to our big system,  we still need to get back to basics and we just need to get back to food and hopefully nothing ever happens. Hopefully I'm always wrong.  But I just, that's part of wanting to be on a farm or a homestead and have my own food is just to know that I'm in control of it, not someone else.
37:38Yeah, two really important words, self-sufficient and self-sustainable. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then teaching my kids where it all comes from. My kids know where good food comes from.  Yeah, my husband just told me that he talked to our second kid. So I have four. I have a daughter,  son, son, son. So first, son.
38:02called last night, he lives in Nebraska and he and his wife are thinking about getting five goats, four does and a buck.  And I said, um,  two questions. And my husband said, what? I said, where are they going to put them and what are they going to feed them? Because they have like an acre. That's it.  And they don't have a whole lot of  tree line that belongs to them. And so my husband was like, don't know. didn't ask. And I said, okay, I will message him later. Cause
38:32I have friends that have goats. grew up with a friend that had goats and I know that it's going to get real expensive to feed those goats if they don't have some grazing area for them. So I think my kid and I are going to have a chat about goat husbandry at some point in the next week. Yes, for sure. And they do. They eat a lot of food. They're constantly eating and they'll eat anything. Yeah, I've got mine.
38:57I rotate them. I've got two  doughs left and I'm milking them actually for myself.  And yeah, I rotate them. I don't own this property, but I have access to a lot of property and yeah, I rotate them through,  I have to be careful where I put them because if there's a tree there or if there's  a small tree there, they're going to eat those leaves and they're going to kill that tree.  yeah.  Yup.  Okay, Dawn, thank you so much for coming back to visit. I appreciate it. Where can people find you?
39:27So I'm DawnsDirt.  You can find me online, Instagram, Facebook,  YouTube. I've got my own podcast, DawnsDirt.  And I love these collaborations. So thank you so much for having me on the show yet again. And  we just need more of this. need, I appreciate that you do this all the time and we need more of this, you know, homesteading farm to table talks. So thank you so much for having me. And a little bit of psychology and marriage counseling in there too.
39:53Well,  you know, to me, nothing's I'm very raw and open and honest and authentic and  I got no secrets. I'll just call. I  just say it. And so, yeah, I'm always happy to have a  raw, real conversation. So thanks for thanks for going down some rabbit holes of,  yeah, life with me.
40:14I feel like it's all part of life and homesteading is absolutely real and raw life. So we're doing it right.  As always, you can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com.  Dawn, thanks again. Have a great day. You too. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
 

A Tiny Homestead Update

Today it's just me with a very short update at A Tiny Homestead.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Hey friends, it's Mary. It's just me today.
00:29Um, I thought I would give a little update on what's going on in our place.  And to begin with, I want to say thank you to everybody for listening and people who talk with me every day.  It's been an amazing, almost two years of getting to people.  And secondly, it was a really rough weekend in Minnesota.  We had two lawmakers attacked in their homes,  um, early morning, Saturday morning.
00:57One of them died. One of them is recovering. And the one who died, her name was Melissa Hortman. She was 57 years old. She was the speaker of the Minnesota House. And the other one was Senator Hoffman, and he and his wife survived. Melissa Hortman's husband was also killed. And the person that shot them was actually taking cover in the county that I live in, in Minnesota, Sibley County.
01:26So it was very much a nerve-racking, anxiety-inducing weekend around here.  On the flip side of that, it is a beautiful day in Minnesota. Our gardens are thriving and flourishing. We have wild plums that are growing. We have apples. We have black raspberries.  We have the usual suspects in the garden, cabbages,  tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, peas,  and
01:55It's been an amazing start to the summer season.
02:05As I say on the podcast a lot,  if you support your local growers, you are supporting your community and we really need to do that.  And we really need to do it every day in every way, shape and form that we can,  which means that we should all probably take a big deep collective sigh or breath of relief  and step back and think about how we approach conflict, how we approach problems  and try to find the positive ways.
02:35to uh...
02:38To not have bad things happen  this weekend really shook me and  I'm not going to get into Democrat, Republican, any of that.  And when President Trump was shot,  I felt bad about that too. Luckily he didn't die.  So yeah, violence is not the answer. So I really don't love doing solo podcasts recording and I'm going to keep this really short.
03:06There should be a new podcast out tomorrow afternoon, new episode,  and there should be one  on Friday in the afternoon.  There probably won't be one on Thursday.  So thanks for listening guys and keep coming back to learn things. Bye.
 

My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0

Today I'm talking with Melissa at My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Melissa.
00:27at My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0, and  we're going to find out why it's 2.0,  in  Ontario, Canada. Good evening, Melissa. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm very excited to chat with you. Number one, why is it 2.0? It is 2.0 because  about two years ago, I started My Homesteading Chronicles  and I had about 2,400 followers and the hackers got me.
00:54Oh no. they hacked my Facebook, they hacked my Facebook page. So I had to start at nobody. So it was June last year that I got hacked.  And  yeah, I've been trying to grow my page back. So it's 2.0. I do not know why people have to suck so much. Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea. They didn't get anything out of me. just,  yeah, they got my followers, I guess.
01:24I'm sorry. It's so much work to rebuild it too. Oh yeah, it is. It is. But it's doing better than I expected it be. So I'm over 3,000 followers since June last year. So it's about my one year anniversary of 2.0 this week. Well, congratulations. Thank you. This social media thing is so weird. Yes, it is. It is. I've been on social media, but this starting a page is...
01:53It was new to me. had friends that kept telling me you need to start a page and I kept saying, no, I'm not going to. And well, I did.  Well, I'm thankful that you did because people need to know about this homesteading thing because it's important. So  tell me about yourself and what you do at  my homesteading Chronicles. So I am just a mom.  I have a 13 year old daughter this week and my son will be 18  next month.  I'm married. I have a wonderful supportive husband.
02:23We live in a  very small town, about 500 people,  just kind of five minutes from the shores of Lake Huron. I work full-time  in corporate finance.  I live in the village, so I don't have a lot of space, but I like to grow everything I can and make as much as I can from scratch. That's about it.  About 10 years ago, I hurt my back and had to change careers.
02:51and I was off work for about eight months. And that takes a toll on your income of your family.  So I started  to learn how to make things  myself.  So I've kind of over the last 10 years, I've been growing mostly a lot of tomatoes and I learned how to can and I learned how to crochet and I'm very self-taught.
03:19Very nice. We talk about tomatoes on the podcast a lot. I  am the tomato lady.  Tomatoes and chickens.  bet if I went through and had some computer program count the number of times  chickens and tomatoes have been mentioned, it would be in the probably 50,000 by  now.  I believe it. I don't have any chickens. I'm absolutely terrified of chickens, but I love to buy
03:47local farm fresh eggs. So I like to look at the eggs from far away and the chickens from far away. But tomatoes is my thing. love tomatoes and my husband has planted over 200 tomato plants this spring in our garden. He's got me beat. I've got 185 plants this year.
04:09What kinds? Because if we're going to talk tomatoes, let's talk tomatoes. What varieties? Okay, we'll talk tomatoes.  I have 71 varieties of mostly heirloom.  About 20 different kinds of cherry, chocolate cherry,  a lot of the bumblebees.  I'm trying a whole bunch of different paste tomatoes this year, different romas.
04:33Um, one called OptiMax that I hear is really good, but only one of them survived. So I'm hoping the plant does well.  but  I like, it's funny because I don't eat tomatoes at all  and no one in my house eats tomatoes,  but, I can them all.  um, yeah, yeah. They have a lot of heirloom beef steak type.  Uh, last year, my, my number one was lucid gem.  sounds pretty.
05:02It is beautiful. It's an orange tomato.  The top is purple and when you slice it, it's red inside.  Nice.  So you say you don't eat tomatoes, but do you eat like tomato sauce or salsa?  I do. make a lot of tomato sauce and a lot of salsa.  About 20 years ago, I ate a bad tomato and I just haven't been able to do it. So I was telling somebody the other day, my goal this year is to eat a toasted tomato sandwich again.
05:32You should give it a Give it a try. You might be surprised. I OD'd on cherry tomatoes when I was like 10. They were so yummy. My dad was growing them in our garden and I loved them. And I said, can I eat as many as I want? And he was like, well, sure. Cause he thought I was being eaten of them. I ate like 40 cherry tomatoes in one sitting. And then I proceeded to expel them through my face out of my stomach.
06:02And I hated cherry tomatoes for a very long time after that. And about probably 10 years ago, somebody had a different variety and said they were really sweet. Yeah. tomatoes. And I was like, what's the worst thing that happens? One is not going to ruin me. And I cut it in half so I could just take a half. Yeah. And I bit into it I was like, oh my God, I can eat them again. Yay. Now the dumbest thing about that whole story is that like when I was 15,
06:32friend of mine gave me a package of Andy's candies, Andy's mints or what the hell they're called, the mint chocolate candies.  And  I did it again.  I ate almost that whole package over the course of four hours and ended up being sick again. I'm like, am I ever going to learn not to overeat the things I like? And have you ate them since?  No, but I do like mint chocolate chip ice cream. So it didn't ruin me forever. Well, that's good.
06:58Yeah, if listeners don't overeat on anything you really love because you'll end up hating it
07:07I cherry tomatoes for very long time.
07:11So you said you're  like Roma style tomato growing them.  Yeah. Are you doing,  have you tried the Amish paste tomatoes yet? I do. I have about four of them in the garden now. So. Okay. And have you heard of the health kick variety?  I have not.  Okay. It's a, I think it's a hybrid. I don't think it's genetically messed with cause I don't really appreciate that.
07:40But it's like a Roma tomato, but it's supposed to be higher in antioxidants than the rest of the Roma style tomatoes. And  they're really, really good for sauce. I'll have to look them up. Yeah.  Probably the only place you'll be able to find them is online. You'll have to order them if you want to see. We've grown those for quite a few years and we really like them. They're great for saucing. They're great for slicing for like on a hamburger because they're small.
08:10They're maybe a little bit bigger than a quarter in diameter. Yeah. And they're just, they have a really nice flavor. So I will have to look into them. Yeah. I process a lot of tomatoes and last year I had planned to try and make enchilada sauce, but I never got around to it. So that's on my list for this year.  Okay.  Well, we're not as fancy as you are. We're not growing. I think we may be growing to heirloom varieties. think mostly we're growing  beef steak.
08:40early girl, some kind of cherry tomato  and San Marzano's because we did that last year and they did really, really well. Yeah. have  three San Marzano's this year.  they didn't do well last year. So I thought I'll try them again and we'll see. Last year was a strange year for the tomatoes.  Yeah. And when I say the San Marzano's did really, really well.
09:04There's a caveat on that. We had a lot of rain here last year. My husband had to plant tomatoes three different times to get anything to grow.  Oh, wow. So relatively speaking, the San Marzano's that grew did really well. I think there were only six plants. Wow, that's all right.  So yeah, but the summer before that, we were swimming in them. We had tons.
09:28Well, I had more  the year before last I had planted 120 plants  and last year I planted 175 and  I think my yield for 175 was less than the 120 from the year before.  Yeah, last year was a terrible growing season for almost everybody. For us here this year it's not going so well.  It's beautiful today but we just got our  I got my tomatoes in the garden
09:57about a week and a half ago. Because it's just, it's been real cold and wet.  And yeah, the temperatures have been fluctuating a lot.  And your growing season is shorter up there, right? It is.  It is, yes. Where usually I try to get to the beginning of October,  but  I  actually got a greenhouse from my husband for Christmas this year.
10:24I'm hoping to move some of the peppers into there to see if I can prolong their life a little bit.  Yep. We just put in a greenhouse last May, like two years, not two years ago, two Mays ago. a little year ago. And that thing has come in so handy because that's why we have tomatoes that are blooming right now because of that freaking greenhouse. That's perfect. I'm hoping to do an experiment and try and  winter sow them in the greenhouse.  I don't know if it's going to work, but
10:53It doesn't hurt to try.  Winter, so like in  the milk jugs or?  Yeah. So I'm hoping I was going to actually maybe try and just put them in cups and put them kind of like in a clear tote in the greenhouse.  With a lid on it?  Yeah. Yeah.  Like that can air out, but I'm going to, I don't know. I don't know if it'll work, but  I have all kinds of volunteer plants that have survived the winter. So why, I don't know, maybe it'll work.
11:23And what's the worst that happens? You learn a lesson and don't do it again. Exactly. And I save tomato seeds, so I have more than enough for the rest of my life.  yeah, yeah, absolutely.  So, um, how  I've talked to like three people in the last month and a half in Canada, but one of them raises many horses  and one of them, I can't remember. They grow things, but I don't think they try greenhouse stuff.  Um, so.
11:52If you're going to, if you're,  you have a greenhouse or you're, putting it together this year?  have, I have it. We put it together, um, about, uh, two months ago.  Okay. So could you,  it's expensive to heat a greenhouse, number one. Yes. But, could you, could you put like a space heater in there? I could, could. Yes. Yes. I have a lot of experimenting to do.
12:18Yeah, because tomatoes are real finicky about changes in temperature. You know this. Yes.  So if you could get, you know, a small space heater and maybe put up plastics that you're only working with a smaller space to heat inside the greenhouse in the winter. Yeah.  Yeah. That might help. We put one in ours this year  in  March and March, 1st of April, because we had put our little tomato seedlings that we started on the kitchen table in the house.
12:46out in the greenhouse and the temps just weren't coming up fast enough.  so,  and we had like a couple of weeks of cloudy days. So it wasn't even getting hot from the greenhouse.  And I think that that was the problem here.  I had started the seedlings in the house, but I had moved them to the greenhouse, but the temperatures just,  you know,  we're Celsius here. So I'm not really good with Fahrenheit, but  it would be like, well, it would be below freezing a lot.
13:16Yeah.  So,  yeah, they just,  they didn't grow very fast and they turned purple and, but I'm happy to say they're all in the garden now and they're all green. So.  Fantastic. I  have such high hopes for this season for everybody, including us. Yep. Last year was just so heartbreaking. We lost money last summer because of it. Yeah. Yeah. It happened. ones. So. No.
13:45No. Okay. So do you have any animals on your roomstead? I  do not know. I have no animals.  No cats, no dogs either?  No cats, no dogs. My husband is allergic to animals and well, my kids have allergies as well.  So yeah, I grew up on a dairy farm. So I had a lot of animals in my life and I am an animal lover,  except for chickens.
14:13Yeah.  Or yeah, any birds that fly near me.  I'm not a fan, but  I do love animals. I love other people's animals, but I don't personally have any.  I'm sorry that you don't have any because  my dog is the love of my life.  I almost love her more than I love my husband. Do not tell him this.  I do have  four niece and nephew dogs that I love very much. So I get to spend time with them.
14:42So get your  I do get to have my puppy fix. Good, good. Yes,  I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to rave about Maggie. I'm going to mention Maggie. She has  been a really good girl lately. She hasn't really barked in the background, so that's been great.  But  she's a mini Australian, Australian, talk, shepherd. She's going to be five in August and I love her almost more than life itself. And I had no idea that I would love her this much.
15:12Nice.  We had a lot of dogs on the farm as  a kid and we were definitely very close to them.  Yeah, she's like a little human in a dog body. It's ridiculous. If anyone had told me,  oh my goodness, five and a half years ago that I would lose my heart to this crazy dog, I would have laughed at them. So  there you go.  Yeah.  Okay. So you said that you learned to make things on your own from scratch. So I assume that you cook.
15:42I do. Do you love to cook? I do. Good. What's your favorite thing that you make? I love to make lasagna from scratch as possible. I haven't made the mozzarella cheese yet, but that's coming. But I like to make lasagna noodles and I like to make the sauce. yeah, I think lasagna is my number one. I love lasagna twice a year.
16:11I will make it twice a year.  will eat like three pieces of it and I'm good for six months. Yep. It's a of work. It's a lot of work when you're making it from scratch.  It's a lot of work when you're not making it from scratch. Like I make my sauce from scratch. Yeah. But I buy the noodles and cook them and I buy the mozzarella cheese and the other, the other stuff, the ricotta and  all that. But I do make it with our own eggs and the ricotta mix. So.
16:39So it's partially from scratch and partially not. Yep. The hardest part with lasagna is  if you're trying to make it all at once, like from beginning to end, what I do is I make the sauce the day before and put it in the fridge. And that way all I have to do is cook the noodles and make the ricotta filling stuff and pull the sauce out and I just assemble it and bake it. So it's just easier for me to do it that way. Yep.
17:09Yeah, we don't have it that often, but I would say maybe once every two months I make a good lasagna on a Sunday.  Nice.  What's your favorite dessert to make? you dessert? I am not,  I'm  baking  is not my  number one thing.  My favorite dessert to make, my daughter who's 13, she's a much better baker than I am.  I  don't know.
17:37We attempted a pumpkin pie that was pretty good. Yeah.  Um, with homegrown pumpkins last year, and I had never done that before.  So that was pretty good, but I would say cheesecakes the best.  Oh yeah.  Cheesecakes number one.  Yeah. I haven't had a piece of cheesecake in like two years. I may have to go find some in a week or two.  Yeah. I'm not, I'm not going to make it because if I make it, my husband will eat half of it. My son will eat a quarter of it and I might get a sliver. So.
18:07Yeah. Don't waste your money. Just get a slice. would be. Yeah. And then I'll know that I'll know that it tastes the way it should too. Cause cheesecake's not hard, but you can really screw it up if you're not paying attention. Yes. So I've made like three of them in my lifetime and they all came out really good. Like the first one I made, I thought I'd screwed it up. I thought I cooked it too long. It said to look for the wobble.
18:35when you moved the pan  and I went to pull it out of the oven, there wasn't a whole lot of wobble. I'm like, oh no, I ruined it.  I let it cool and I bit into it. was like, oh no, this is fine. I made cheesecake for the first time. It was really good.
18:51But yeah, there's a wobble you're supposed to look for. I'm like, okay, that's an interesting way to say it. The same thing with the pumpkin pie. The pies have to wobble. Yeah. My least favorite thing to make, but the whole family's  most favorite thing to eat is a recipe called Outrageous Brownies.  found it online.  Ina Garten, I think is her name, the lady on TV. Yep. She's a little kind of round lady with dark hair.
19:21It's her recipe and it has like six eggs in it. It's got baker's chocolate. It's got chocolate chips. It's got cocoa.  It's oh my God, they are amazing. And I only make them for birthdays because they're so incredibly fattening and decadent that I don't want them in my house at any other time. That's one thing I have never mastered the brownie. So I'll have to look up that recipe and see if maybe we can.
19:47We can try it, my daughter and I, sometime. I need her as my sidekick because she just is better at it.  Well, the one thing that I will tell you is when you get the batter together,  when all the ingredients are mixed together in the bowl,  it will look like chocolate silk.  Oh, okay. It's got that same glisten that silk does when you move silk. Yep. So if it doesn't look like that, there's something not quite right.  Yep. But yeah, and the magic of cooking.
20:17I don't want to sit here and rave about this too much because I talk about cooking a lot, but  there is just something inherently  magical when you take all these ingredients,  put them together in the right way, and you come out with something fabulous. Yeah. And it's amazing what you can do with what little you have sometimes too.  Yup. I'm going to talk about sourdough again. I've brought it up four times in the last four interviews.  Just made my first sourdough loaf last weekend.
20:47and I
20:50I am not a master. It was the first one I ever did and it was underproofed.  The thing is,  it's got like a bagel chew to it and I love bagels. So I made bagel sourdough bread.  Oh, yum.  Yep. That's what it tastes like. And I'm so tickled with it. And I'm like, how could I do this again? I have no idea how I underproofed it. So I'm probably going to overproof it next time. Yeah.
21:17But proud of myself, I have avoided sourdough bread for years because I didn't think I liked sourdough bread because I don't like the tang of it.  Yeah. Come to find out there's a way to not have it be so tangy and I got that right.
21:32Yeah, you don't have to let the  sourdough.
21:39Sorry, I just got interrupted there. Yeah, you have to let the,  when you feed your starter, don't let it go too long.  Yep. That way doesn't get that acidic, tangy thing to it that I don't like.  Yeah.  People are like, you don't like sour rubber? I'm like, no, cause it tastes sour. Like really sour to me. I don't love it.  And they're like, but you love pickles. And I'm like, it is not the same sour.
22:07It is different.  I like to make sourdough bagels. That's my number one favorite.  But I don't get around to it a whole lot because it does take a lot of time,  but it's a good skill to have.  It's the waiting. It's the waiting time that kills me. Sometimes I just have to add yeast.  Yeah, I did a shortcut sandwich loaf recipe.  I typed in shortcut sourdough bread  and it gave me that recipe. It still took me from
22:36from putting the  sourdough starter, the flour and everything together in the bowl and getting the dough ready,  still didn't have a loaf of bread until five hours later. I was like, oh my God, do I have the patience for this?  Yeah.  Yeah. I only make sourdough when I have enough time over a whole weekend.  And I make a lot of things at once.  Yeah. And the good news is that if you're doing it like I am, I had other things I could do in that half an hour  between the stretch and pull time. Yeah. Yep.
23:05But if I had nothing to do, it would drive me insane waiting that half an hour every time. Yeah, I do highly recommend you should try English muffins though.  don't know English muffins are the best.  Yeah, I have the little  circle thingies, whatever they are, the little circles that you make the  mold for the  English muffin.
23:29I don't know what they're called. I just ordered them because I was like, I want to make English ovens. And I saw the recipe for the sourdough English oven recipe. I was like,  have all the things to make that. That's next. Yeah.  It's so exciting. It's so silly. Like I probably sound like a kid at Christmas, discovering new ways to do things just really lights something in my brain. Yeah.  So I don't know.
23:55I may just be crazy. knows? I don't think you're crazy at all. I was talking to my mom about the sourdough thing and she said, you know, she said, I got some friendship bread starter years ago. Yeah. And I said, yes, I remember you named it Herman. And she's like, oh, I did. I said, yeah, I was Herman. I said, as I remember, Herman got fed a couple of times, stuck in the fridge and basically was a hermit in the fridge for a year or two. then you threw him out.
24:25She said I was too busy.  I remember that my mom used to make friendship bread, that Amish friendship bread when I was a kid.  I  can still remember her pouring milk into the Ziploc bag and letting it sit on the counter.  Uh huh. Yeah. And she said, she said, I was busy raising you and your sister and your brother. I did not have time for that. And I'm like, no, I'm just teasing you. It's fine.  Yeah.  Raising kids is a lot of work. I understand. I did four or so.  Yep.
24:56Okay, so  what brought you to the homesteading thing? Did you tell me at the beginning or not?  I can't remember now.  So about 10 years ago,  I  hurt my back and I wasn't able to work in it. I was working in a  nursing home at the time and I decided that I needed to save money and so I...
25:22When  I was first with my husband, I had planted a garden, but I honestly can't tell you what I grew in it  because the weeds were  100 % in charge.  But that summer I was like, okay, well, we need  to figure something out.  So I grew a smallish garden and I thought,  I'm going to learn how to can. I remember my grandma canning when I was a kid,  but I thought I want to do that. So I  learned and I...
25:51taught myself and I watched YouTube videos and back then there wasn't as many people that were into canning.  So I would say,  well, that was 10 years ago.  But yeah, people are definitely starting. There's like a new generation of canners coming. Yeah, I'm part of it. We didn't start canning until three years ago.  Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping to like,  one of the reasons why I started my page was just to kind of inspire the younger generation.
26:19Let them know the world isn't that great right now and money isn't really great right now. There's a lot of people struggling, but with a few things you can actually, you can make a lot. You can make your own spaghetti sauce for pennies if you grow your own tomatoes. so yeah, I just wanted to show people that you can do it. Anyone can do it, even if you have a small space. People think I have acres of gardens, I don't.
26:49I don't at all. grow my tomatoes vertically. I  grow everything as tall as I can and  as close together as possible.  And yeah, I can make a lot of food for  pretty cheap.  Yeah, it's amazing how that happens. And  I'm really glad that your grandma kind of planted the seed with you because  there's a lot of people I talk to and they're like, I didn't have a homesteading bone in my body. I didn't know what I was doing. I just saw it and went, I want to try that.
27:19Or the other side of the coin is that people are like, oh yeah, my grandparents grew gardens. My grandma can, my grandma baked. My grandpa did this. My grandma did that.  thank God for grandparents and great grandparents who spent time with their grandkids and great grandkids and showed them these things. Yeah. My grandma,  I remember her specifically canning beans. She had like a French slicer where she would like slice the beans  and she canned them in her all American canner.
27:49And a few years ago, she gave her canner to me that she used to use when I was a kid. And  I use it now  when I do some pressure canning.
28:02That's awesome. Yeah, it definitely meant a lot. Yeah. And it gets, it gets well used. It gets, it gets well used and it's pretty amazing how something, you know, that's so old still works just as well as it did, you know, 30 years ago. Yeah. We didn't luck out like that. We had to buy a pressure canner and we had to buy the canning tools and that's okay because we'll probably end up handing it off to somebody eventually.  Yeah.
28:31I wanted to ask you, because I was looking at your Facebook post about introducing yourself.  And in it, you mentioned that you're the canning committee chair and you're also on the board of directors for your local agricultural society. Is that still accurate? That is true. Yes.  So tell me about that. Like, what does that involve? What do you do in those positions?  So  on the board of directors, we  organize, we have one of the biggest fairs in the area.
29:01the Ripley Fall Fair. We also have one of the largest  homecraft exhibits.  And so I'm involved more in that sort of thing.  We arrange  a lot of programs in the community. So specifically myself,  I have kind of brought  Master Canner to come to our town and teach people how to can.
29:29He's a master food preserver, which I should give you his information because I think you'll want to talk to him.  Yes, please.  I will give you his information.  He's been to our town a few times. he's actually was just in town doing a sourdough or two or it was two sourdough classes. And then last fall he came to do two canning courses and we're hoping to have him back again  this fall.  Just, you know, promote agriculture in our community and
29:58Yeah, teach people all these old skills and  yeah. And then the canning, so the commanding committee chair,  we have a really large exhibit for our area. We have about 300 entries  just in canning,  which is a lot for this area.  We're hoping to have more next year,  but yeah, so we organize that part of the Homecraft exhibit.  Awesome.  Awesome.
30:26So not only are you walking the walk and talking the talk,  you're sharing the information too.  Yes. Fantastic.  See, it's people like you that are going to save the world. swear.  Things are so hard right now. You alluded to it like five minutes ago. And  I know that you're in Canada and I'm in America, but things are,  things are a little nutty here too.  Yeah.
30:56And my son,  my son and my husband ran to the local grocery store, know, the small town grocery store on Saturday or Sunday. And they got back, my son's 23. And he says, mom, he said, would you believe that a regular sized bag of Doritos chips is $9? Wow. I said, I'm glad you didn't want any. said, I'm not paying $9 for Doritos. Are you out of your freaking mind?
31:26I was like, I raised you right. I'm very proud of myself. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I know it's crazy going to the grocery store these days and seeing the inflated prices. And I think it's, you know, not just in America or Canada, it's all over the world. I'm so thankful that I learned to cook from scratch. Yeah. If we were trying to buy stuff that's already made, we would be starving to death because we wouldn't be able to afford it. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so important to learn how to make things.
31:54And  it's not hard.  People think it's so complicated and it really isn't because there's so many, like I said, there's so many things you can do with so few ingredients. You just have to find some creativity.  I keep saying that learning to cook is time and intention. Yes.  And if you don't make the time and you don't intend to do it, it's never gonna happen. Yeah.
32:22But if you can eke out the time and you really want to try, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. For sure. For sure. I've mentioned this before. I made a roux, you know, flour and butter thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
32:48Timing. Timing is everything. Yeah. And if I had tried that at 20, I would have been angry. I never would have tried it again. Age gives you more patience. I swear to God, it really does. And I was like, okay, I knew that one was going to burn and I did not let it burn to the point that I ruined the pan, but it was not edible. So I scraped the pan out. I washed the pan. I did something else for a couple of hours and I tried again.
33:14That time  I managed to make a gravy that thickened up the way it was supposed to. And I did not brown the roux as dark as it said to. And I was kind of glad because I don't like my gravy's dark from a roux.  Yeah.  But I did it and I learned how. And now I use that skill all the time. Yeah. And it's not hard. It's just  learning the steps.  Yeah. Yeah. Like there's a lot of things you can learn.  It's like dancing.
33:44Cooking is like dancing.
33:48You  have to learn the first steps and then you build on those steps and you continue to build until you feel accomplished. I think it's a wonderful thing. for sure.  All right, Melissa, I am going to have to extend these to an hour. I'm going to have to warn people from now on  that we're going to try for an hour instead of half an hour because I feel like half an hour is never enough.  Lies, bye. But I'm going keep this one to half an hour.  So thank you for your time.  How can people find you?
34:17They can find me on Facebook at myhomesteadingchronicles2.0. Okay,  and are you on  Instagram or do you have a website or anything?  I am not yet,  no. And I know I don't have a website yet. I'm still pretty new to this.  You will figure it out because you are determined. I can hear it.
34:40All right. Thank you so much for your time, Melissa. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com  and I hope you have a lovely night.  You as well.  All right. Thanks. Bye.
 

Little Cabin Big Woods

Today I'm talking with Keesha at the Little Cabin Big Woods.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Keesha at Little Cabin Big Woods in Tennessee. Is that right, Keesha? That's right.  Where in Tennessee? We're in Middle Tennessee, about an hour from Kentucky, so  northern middle. Okay, and how's the weather there today?
00:44Today it is gorgeous out. We are on day two of what should be three days without any rain, which is the first time that's happened in a really long time.  Oh, so you're getting the same weather my parents have been getting in Maine for the last three weeks. All they do is tell me it's raining. Yes, constantly. Yeah, we had that last year here in Minnesota. This spring has been fabulous. I am so thankful, like dropped down on my knees. Thank God, thankful.
01:14And today it's kind of gray, but it's not raining. So I'm, I'm thankful for that too.  Okay. So you got you or you guys, is it just you or are there other people? Oh, there's my husband too. Okay. So you guys are off grid. Are you completely off grid? We are, but we have  solar.  So we do still have  some luxuries. mean, we've got a window.
01:41AC unit for the days that it's just really, really still and stagnant.  We've got a TV for an occasional movie.  Got a couple of ceiling fans. So. Okay. So this leads me to tons of questions because the closest I have been to off grid in my entire life,  I think I was about 15.  My parents lived in Steve falls main and I live there with them with my siblings.
02:10And we had the tail end of a hurricane come through  and we were without power for an entire week. And the first, the first day and a half, we couldn't even get to fresh water because there was a huge pine tree across the road  between us and the fire barn where they had water. And so luckily my mom,  what grew up in Illinois where, where tornadoes happened and every time there was bad weather in Illinois.
02:38her mom would draw water. She'd fill the bathtub, she'd fill pictures of water  for drinking,  and my mom grew up with that. So  luckily,  we had drinking water and we had water to flush the toilet with.  But we had no power, we had nothing going, no heat, no nothing.  It was September, so it was in the sweet spot of not too hot and not too cold, thank goodness. But
03:02Yeah, my parents cooked outside on the grill or they actually had a fire pit so they would cook on the fire pit because they couldn't use their stove.  So that's the closest I've ever been to off the grid. And so tell me what it's like.
03:20That's a good question. I will say it  has its challenges, but it's also really satisfying.  And from your taste of being off-grid that week from the storm,  I so you have an idea. When you cook out over and open a flame, there's nothing quite like that. It's really, really good.  since we do have solar,
03:48It's an adjustment period. You do have to keep an eye on things. But we do  like pressure canning and such we do outside on the patio and get these wonderful views. And so  yeah, it can be a challenge, but it's worth it. And we just love it. We have an regret a thing. Okay, well, that's awesome. What brought you to it?
04:16Well, we lived in Arizona in Tucson for about two decades and raised our kids there.  And  as time went by, just, we weren't really satisfied anymore.  And so  we did always bring our kids up with, you know, going camping and learning things about how they worked and such.  so they got older and we just started thinking.
04:43You know, maybe we should just go ahead and take the leap and do it. And so when the kids were in high school, we kind of had a timeline thinking, okay, we've got four years left until they graduate. So let's start making plans. So we started looking at different states  and growing seasons and narrowed things down  and finally ended up picking Tennessee. But I think what really convinced us to go ahead and go for it was my husband and I.
05:13We went on a 500 mile pilgrimage hike overseas in Spain  and you learn a lot when you're living out of a backpack for six weeks.
05:25And we realized all this stuff that we had waiting for us at home was just stuff.  And you don't own it, it ends up owning you. So when we got back from that, I think we got rid of about 75, maybe 80 % of what we had  and sold the house  and off we went. Wow. So that trip inspired it. Well, it didn't inspire it all, but it definitely cemented your plans.
05:54It really did. Nice.  Okay, so the thing that I remember about not having any electricity and our phone didn't work either, really. I mean,  it  was a true old-fashioned landline then. So yes, the phone worked. We could call 911 if we needed help. But for a couple days there, there was no getting into where we lived. So  we were pretty well screwed if anybody got hurt. Luckily, nobody did.
06:22But what I remember about it is that it was so  quiet. Like the only real noises that we heard  was  chainsaws because people had to get the trees out of the roads.  And granted, was back,  good God, I'm 55. So it was a while ago  and we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have home computers. That stuff didn't exist yet.  And so I was very used to it being
06:52I mean, we lived in the middle of  the woods in Maine.  There was birdsong and there was breeze through the pine trees, but there wasn't so much noise back then. So in the area that you're in, is it quiet? Is it nature sound?
07:11It is very, very quiet.  And we do joke sometimes that it's kind of like a jungle. Sometimes  because you just hear the owls making a racket outside. My chickens always have something to say. They always do. We have dogs.  Yes, they do.  And yeah, but yeah, it's really quiet. But yeah, the animal noises.
07:37Yeah, that takes some getting used to when you first come out here because we hear that, you know, the coyotes are walking around  and the owls and the raccoons, oh, the raccoons talk a lot. The raccoons make of nature noises. Do the raccoons chitter or do they have other noises that they make? They do chitter. They do. Sometimes we have to stop and think, wait a minute, is that an owl or is that a raccoon? Because sometimes they sound a little bit alike.
08:07We have coyotes that kind of hang out in the cornfield around our place. We don't own the  field.  And I was up at about three o'clock in the morning three weeks ago, because I wake up at three and my husband snores and I'm like, I'm going to get up until I'm sleepy again.  And  I was sitting on our little porch with the windows open and it's dark out and I'm fine with that. No big deal.  And I heard a howl  and I was like,
08:35I've never actually heard a coyote howl in my whole life. I've heard them  yipe and yip and bark, but I've never heard them howl.  And it made  the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was like, wow.
08:51I think that happened with us once with my husband and was outside and I was just inside the house but with the windows open. Yeah. And he calls out to me and we're not sure if it was a cougar or a bobcat but it was pretty close in the tree line to where my husband was. That was a bit unnerving. Yeah and the thing that I had to remind myself of is all of these animals were here before we were.
09:21We are infringing on their home. And so  I was like, okay, that is the fear response that your body is supposed to have, but there's nothing to be afraid of. It's okay. It's out in the field. It's doing its thing. I'm in the house. Nothing bad is going to happen  with this animal. It's okay.  And then I was like,  Oh, how cool was that?
09:46And we also just had an incident with a big raccoon a couple nights ago. We have chickens and he's discovered we have chickens. And I'm not sure that he's after the chickens, the eggs or the feed, but he was kind of nosing around the run, the fence that's around the coop. And so my husband shot off our 12 gauge shotgun above the raccoon's head. He did not shoot the raccoon. And I asked him why and he said,
10:15I just didn't feel right about shooting this raccoon. He said he's only doing what he's supposed to do. And I said, okay.  And he said, if it had been  in the run, that would have been different. I said, okay, fine. So  we now have a raccoon who had the daylight scared out of him the other night and he hasn't been back. So we're  on alert for any more showing up.
10:40That worked at least.  Yes. The possums are a lot more of an issue for us than the raccoons are.  possums are just relentless.  Yeah, we don't have too many here.  do have possums in Minnesota.  When I moved here long ago, over 30 years ago,  I was told that possums don't, they're not in Minnesota, but they are. We've seen them in our
11:08nesting boxes in our coop, actually.  All curled  up. Officially, don't have wolves here. Authorities say that we don't have any wolves here, but  everybody up and down where I live has seen a wolf.  It's not all the time,  but we've all seen them. We've seen them twice in the last five years.  I mean, you they're around.
11:38Yeah, here in Minnesota, we have the Department of Natural Resources, DNR. What's the acronym for your thing like that in Tennessee? Probably TWRA, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency, I believe. Okay. Well,  our agency like your agency, except ours is DNR,  swore up and down that we did not have cougars in Minnesota. And my husband and I knew
12:07years ago that there are big cats in Minnesota because we would hike along the river and we would see their paw prints. And cat prints look a lot different than dog prints. Big cat prints really look different. And about, I don't know, at least five years ago, the Department of Natural Resources finally put out information that yes, there are cougars in Minnesota.  And I was like, no shit, Sherlock, what was your first clue?
12:37And  the way they discovered is people were catching them on their trail cams.
12:45So yeah, there are big cats in Minnesota and they don't like people. You  will rarely see one in person.
12:55So they don't really come around too much. Oh, no. No, they do not like humans. No. The only ones that I have heard of people seeing in person have been hit by cars. On the highway. So yeah, but they hide. They like to be in really dense forested areas because then they're not bothered. But anyway, very far afield here. What do you?
13:23How do you support yourself on the off-grid homestead?
13:30Well, my husband still works outside the home. He's in IT  and I do  odd jobs. Basically. mean, my career was,  um, I was in middle school and high school English teacher and I'm not anymore, but now I do probably like a lot of homesteaders. sell eggs  and I barter a lot. So I've got a wonderful local lady who's got an absolutely amazing garden.
13:58And she needs eggs and I like the produce that  pardon me. like the produce that she has. So I bought her eggs for food,  do pet sitting and  animal care.  And I do some occasional tutoring for some local high schools.  So it's not like all the stuff that you do on your homestead is supporting you and the homestead all on its own. Right. Okay.
14:26And I didn't ask at the beginning, and I should have, how far away are you from the nearest town and your nearest neighbors?
14:34I've got  neighbors, I don't know, I'm bad at distance, I'd say half mile.  But as far as, you know, going to a grocery store or something, it's about 45 minutes.  Okay. So you're a little ways away.  Cool. Cause most people here off grid and they think, you know, the middle of Montana or Alaska where you're  hours and hours away from everything.
15:01Yeah, it's really not too bad. mean, it's far enough away where we have peace and quiet, but you know, if we really need something, then it's not too big of a deal to go do. But we do live in a holler, so very, very small one lane road. And when we get ice storms, it gets fairly ugly. I mean, during the, I think it was 21, we had eight inches just
15:29solid ice and nobody got out of here for over a week.
15:35Yeah, we get some pretty good ice here too.  there was a time two winters ago where my husband didn't go to work because he could not get out of our driveway. He could not get any traction to get out of our driveway at all. He was like, I'm working from home today. said, you do that. yeah. I had to do that too sometimes.
16:03Sorry, I to swallow. I'm trying to think what I was gonna ask you. So do you have like any livestock? You have chickens? We have chickens. I think we have around 30 right now. And we've been doing, well, we've built this cabin that we're living in. I mean, literally ourselves by hand without any help. And so.
16:30It's it's a work in progress. It's always a work in progress. So we've been doing that for the five years We've been here  and we've been living in it for Three and a half four years now because we were on in a pop-up camper for a little over a year on the land Okay, so I mean it's plenty far enough we've got ceiling and the insulation and the walls and all of that is done  and A couple weeks ago, we got the kitchen cabinets my husband's
17:00built those and put them in. And so this week he's working on  the doors for the fronts of the cabinets.  so yeah, by doing it himself, I mean, he does it all. mean, local trees, he mills it himself, planes it, all of it. So it all takes time, but it's worth it.
17:23Absolutely. And did he have any skills regarding that before you guys moved there?
17:30The first time we took down a tree was here. He had built a couple of  furniture pieces, our TV stand,  a table, believe.  But boy, he's, it's a talent and we're on a five year plan now to where he can leave his current field.  And he would like to do woodworking full time. Nice.  Isn't it beautiful watching someone you love learn new skills?
18:02It is. And he's, he's just so happy when he's doing that.  He just gets lost in his own little world. Yeah.  It's, like watching actual magic happen. My husband loves to garden and he didn't even know he loved a garden until probably 20 years ago.  His mom gave him some hand-me-down plants and he stuck them in. were flowers. And I said, uh,
18:27I said, those flowers are doing great. said, you want to dig up a backyard and we can put in food we can eat? And he said, yes. And watching him tear that small backyard apart,  get some good dirt,  get the baby plants in, them all summer. And we had food at the end of the summer.  He was just glowing with happiness and watching somebody go through that process was just amazing. was, I mean, who knows? I never would have expected
18:57I never had chickens before coming out here.  And  they are the funniest, most ridiculous little creatures. They are entertaining. I would have expected to just love chickens.  Yeah, we have chickens and their run is now where I can see them from the house. So if I step out on the porch, I see them screwing around in the run.
19:21And they actually act like they're playing with each other. don't know. I don't know if chickens do play with each other, but it looks like they're kind of hanging out, talking to each other, chasing each other around like little kids. I think they do. just, took a photo yesterday. I was out in the front yard with them  and two of them, you know, they were out laying in the yard and sunbathing  and one had its head across the other one. Like they were just laying there cuddling.
19:50It's the silliest thing, but...  I love it.  I love it when they take their dirt baths. I think it's really funny to watch them do that.
20:02I don't have goats yet,  but I'm planning on it. Yes, you will be highly entertained with goats.
20:13I hope so.  think I'm just going to get probably two or three. Try to keep it a little little easier, but we need to finish a couple of other things outside. And then we'll have the room for that.
20:29Hopefully. Okay, so if you guys,  I'm trying to go back to the off-grid thing here because I know nothing and I want to know more.  If you guys are off-grid, does that mean that you do a lot of cooking outside? Do you have the solar hooked up to a stove in your house? How do you do cooking? Oh gosh, that's a good question.  We have an old wood cook stove.
20:55So we do a lot of cooking on that, but not in the summer, of course. It's just too dang hot.  But that's also our only heat source as well. So that's how we provide our heat for the cabin.  lots of cooking in winter on that. And then in the summer, we do a lot outside because we have  one of those blackstone kind of big flat griddle.
21:20Call them a grill. Yep  So we've got that and I have a  dual burner Propane stove camp stove that I do my pressure canning on out on the patio Nice. I really want one of those but we're not quite ready to get one  Do you guys hunt and fish or not?
21:43Not as much as we like, but we're getting there. Okay. So  I don't want to be nosy, but I'm so curious. Is the, is the cabin, is the cabin that you built small that you're building? It is. Um, I'd say  maybe 600 square feet. And is it one level?  We have a loft upstairs when, when we first came out here and started building.
22:13Um, our youngest son was still with us.  And so he was living,  he lived up in the loft  and he's 22 now. So he's off on his own doing his own thing, seeing the world  and our other ones off  in another state because he's in the military.  So it's just two of us here now. So  yeah, it's pretty small. mean, we've got it's open floor plan  and then we have kind of a half wall that divides the bedroom.
22:42from the living room. And that is opened up with the kitchen. So it's pretty small, but it's plenty big for just two of us. Oh yeah, 600 square feet is way big enough for two people, especially if you like each other. If you don't like each other, it's not ever going to be big enough. Now we've got our moments. Yeah, I think every couple does. So do you have like actual plumbing or do you have a compost toilet or do you have an outhouse or just use the woods or how does that work?
23:13Okay, so for the kitchen we have a sink, we've got hot and cold water. On the outside of the house we have  a tankless water heater that's hooked up to propane. Okay. And so that is also what makes our shower work. And then for the toilet we have composting toilet.  I want one. I want one of those. We have a perfectly functional bathroom in our house, Keisha.
23:42There's my husband, our 23 year old son and me. I'm the only girl in the house. And I swear that bathroom is tied up all day long, every day on the weekends, one way or another. And I'm like, I am never going to get in there. It's not going to happen. I was like, I just need a closet with a compost toilet so I can use the bathroom.
24:03I want. Yes, just a place for you. Yeah, just a place for me or they can use  the water closet and I can actually use my nice bathroom and it's really pretty. That would be great. That  would work.  Aha. Yeah, I would love that.  I said to somebody the other day on another interview, I said when we were looking for this place before we found it, the two prerequisites were that it must have a flat space to have a big garden.
24:31and that hopefully it would have two bathrooms.  The flat space for the big garden won out.
24:39Well, having a big garden, that's amazing.  My garden is not where I would like it to be right now,  but it will be.  So  we're getting there. I I  have raised garden beds, but this year we decided to relocate them to a different spot for better sun.  And so we are setting those back up again now.
25:07That's the joy of garden beds though. You can actually move them to the better conditions. We were really lucky. This garden that we've had in since the summer after we moved here, we moved here in August of 2020. It happens to be a flat spot. The space is like, I would bet if we used the entire space, it would be more than half an acre, but we don't use all of it. We use about 100 feet by 150 feet. And it's...
25:35The sun pours on it all day from the south, which is ideal. And there's a tree line that kind of blocks the wind so it doesn't  beat the hell out of it in, you know, midsummer when it's windy. We  lucked out so big and  I know it. I mean,  I am  so thankful that we found this place. I don't have words big enough to explain how thankful I am. That's amazing.  So yeah, and
26:04If you're not into gardening and you're not into having your own chickens to have good eggs and you're not into any of this, no one cares. No one wants to hear about it. And part of the reason I started the podcast so I could talk to people who get it and know what this is like. I know. I think my oldest son thinks we're kind of crazy. He is not a country kid. likes his urban or suburban living. My daughter is like that.
26:33She is living in Florida right now and she works at a shop that makes like, healthy smoothies and sandwiches, like a health food, fast food kind of place. And, um, I said to her one time, it's after we moved here, I said, do you think we're nuts? And she said, I don't. She said, you guys have been working toward this since I was about 15. She said, if you weren't doing this by now, I would think you were nuts. I was like, oh, okay.
27:03So yeah, it's a lifestyle choice. It is literally a choice. No one does this without choosing it.
27:15That's true. That's really true. And no one chooses off-grid living unless they, no one does it unless they  absolutely commit to it because it's not easy.
27:29Yeah, it can be a lot, but we love it.  We  know somebody who's thinking about doing it, but isn't quite ready to take that step yet.  It's really something you have to be  sure that you want to do. Yeah, is there anything that you really don't like about it?
27:52Not that I can think of. I hadn't thought about that before. No, I mean, we get such kind of crazy weather here. so, I mean, sometimes it's ice storms, sometimes it's tornado or flooding and the area loses power so much. so, you know, I'll step out on the patio and I'll look, you know, way up down the street one way or another, and try to see if everybody has.
28:21if anybody has power or not. But for us, we're just here doing our thing because it doesn't make any difference for us. We still are just running  as normal.  Yeah, we're the same way. We have one of those generators that will kick on and send the power to the house automatically if the power goes out.  And so we could be off grid if we wanted to be here. And it's not really
28:48a big deal either way. love the fact that if it's minus 40 mid-January and the power goes out,  we still have heat to the house.  That's good. Yes. But we're not off-grid by any stretch. Do we have the potential and capability to be off-grid? Yes, we do. But is it really off-grid if you have a convenience that makes you off-grid?
29:17Oh, I did think of one thing that  hasn't been ideal, but we wouldn't have known until we got here is the cook stove I was telling you about.  love it.  You know, it's heated the place well for the last few years,  but  because of how they're designed, they have a very, very small firebox where you put the wood. Yes. And so if it gets down to  one, two degrees, mean, anything below 10, I'd say then.
29:47We ended up taking shifts at night, probably every 45 minutes we've got to, we have to feed wood into it. Yeah. And it's, it's just, it makes for some very long nights when it gets that cold. And so a couple of weeks ago, we went and bought a more, traditional wood stove and we don't have it in yet since we just got it we've got to redo the, you know, the pipe through the wall, but that will be a, that will make a really big difference for us.
30:16Mm-hmm.  Yeah, getting up every wouldn't have known that.  Having to feed the wood stove every 45 minutes when it's cold does not sound like a fun way to spend night.  No, it really isn't.  That will change next winter.  Good. I'm glad.  What's your favorite thing about your whole lifestyle choice?
30:40It's got to be a tie between the peace and quiet and the self-sufficiency. Just  knowing that you're capable of doing things. And even if you don't have the skill when you start, you learn it.  And it just makes it so.
31:02Hmm. That's a good word for it. It's amazing. it really is satisfying. You can go to bed at the end of the day, you know, exhausted and sore and so happy and content at the same time. call it, I call it sleeping like angels because you're so, you're so comfortable in, where you're at that you just, you're tired, your body is exhausted and you sleep.
31:31Like you restfully sleep. Yes. Yes. Not, not anxiously sleep and dream about the repetitive thing that you do at work all day.  Or you wake up every hour worried about your job or your kids or your car breaking down. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. I haven't slept  so well other than my husband's snores. That's a whole different thing,  but
31:59I hear you there. used to sleep  so well when I was a kid in that house in Maine,  because I knew that my parents took really good care of us and they had a solution for pretty much every problem. Because they kind of lived like off-grid homesteaders. That's how they did it. And I always felt safe there. And living here, I have felt more safe than I have in 30 years. It has been  such a gift.
32:31That's awesome. love that.  Yup. And I'm not saying it's for everybody because it's not, it is absolutely not for everybody. But if, if,  if, if any of the listeners, if, if, sorry,  if any of the listeners  have an inkling in their soul that this is something they'd be interested in, I think that if it's there, you should pursue it. Cause if you hate it, you can always change your mind and move back to the city. Yes.
33:01All right, Keisha, I try to have these run half an hour. We're there. Where can people find you online?
33:10You can find me on Instagram. My handle is little cabin big woods. Okay. And that's it. No, no Facebook, no website, no nothing.  I've got YouTube is also little cabin, big woods and not as active there as Instagram. Okay.  All right.  I so appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. You are the, think you're the first really off grid.
33:37person I've talked to and I've been looking for somebody  and I'm so glad you the time to talk to me today. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me.  Have a wonderful day and as always people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Thank you, Kiesha. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.
 

Secret Farmstead

Today I'm talking with Heidi at the Secret Farmstead.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Heidi at Secret Farmstead.
00:29in Texas. Good morning, Heidi. How are you? I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. I would normally start off with questions about the weather and things, but  I was reading your introduction on your Facebook page  and are you sure you want to talk to me in a public forum because it's a secret, farmstead? Yeah. No, I'm not worried about it at all. Let's do it. Okay. What I'm alluding to for the listeners is that
00:58Heidi lives on a couple of acres from what I gathered, but there's something about an HOA situation. Do you want to elaborate, Heidi? Yeah, I can do that. We live in a super bougie neighborhood. Our houses in this subdivision range from probably the high 700,000 up to close to $2 million homes. We bought this
01:25location because we left the house and it has a guest house or casita and initially my parents had moved with us. So we were told that we didn't have an HOA when we purchased our land and that is technically true.  However, we do have what's called an ACC, an architectural control committee that thinks they're an HOA and we do have deed restrictions. So  despite living in the county and
01:52The county allowing, you know, so many  heads of cattle or livestock per acre and those kind of rules,  our little subdivision technically does not allow anything like that except for your household dogs or cats. So while I have a couple of acres that is flat and completely usable, technically I'm not supposed to have anything like what I have. And it started with maybe a couple of chickens from
02:21uh, tractor supply. Um, and now I might have 24 chickens.  Um, and then I thought, well,  uh,  I want dairy. So  now I have maybe a few goats. So  anyway, it's just kind of expanded from there and where we live, we're on a kind of a corner lot at the entrance of the subdivision. So we don't have a neighbor behind us and we don't have a neighbor on
02:50the other side of the property where the animals are kept.  It's next to a frontage road. So  no one's disturbed by our animals. And really most people don't even know we have them. We don't advertise them,  but we also are respectful and don't advertise that we're breaking the rules either. Uh-huh. Except for being on a podcast that anyone can listen to.
03:14You know, I used to be really concerned about being more open about it, you know, because I'm, you know, I have a career in law enforcement and I was always a rule follower and a rule enforcer.  But my  neighbors all love my animals. So the ones that are directly  adjacent to me basically across the street or next door, the opposite side. So that's not been an issue for us. And I  routinely provide them, you know, fresh baked sourdough or goat milk or
03:44eggs, you know, so  they really do benefit from it, even though they're not quite willing or able to break the rules themselves, they are kind of reaping the benefits of my break in the rules.  And I did a lot of research  as far as how the laws work and,  you know, an ACC is architectural control. So really that  is they can dictate, you know, the size of your home and what is built out of and your fencing and things like that.
04:12As far as the deed restrictions that they have put into place for our subdivision, technically, in order to enforce those, a neighbor would have to take me to court. And if I thought, you my husband and I had this conversation initially, if we thought that truly this bothered any of our neighbors, we wouldn't do it. I mean, I don't want to a bad neighbor. But also, I want to be able to use my land and not have people tell me what I can and can't do because it seems silly.
04:40that I have a couple acres that I'm not allowed to utilize in a way that would allow me to be a little more self-sustaining  and a little more, you know,  organic in my approach to my, you know, skincare and my food. So anyway.  okay. Thank you. Thank you for elaborating. Because  once I realized what was going on when I read your, your about you thing, I was like, Oh boy, I don't know if she's really going to want to talk to me, but clearly you do. I'm very excited about this.
05:10Um, so what, what brought you to doing this? Well,  you know, I always have kind of tried to be on the healthier side of things once I had kids and my kids are grown now, but you know, I like made my own sandwich bread for my kids. I just didn't like the idea of preservatives and fillers and, and all these things being put in what we, we eat and put on our bodies. And so I wasn't perfect when my kids were young because I work shift work and
05:39So we did have little Debbie snacks here and there, different things like that that aren't the healthiest. But generally speaking, for the most part, I tried to make everything from scratch. And then as I've gotten older and a little more educated in different things, I just lost trust in all of commercialized products pretty much in general. So especially learning what ingredients are  put in things and how they're modified to be addicting.
06:08I remember it's been brought up recently by some pretty popular people in the media, but growing up, I would look at pictures of my parents and my grandparents and all of the family, and there were never any obese people. It was rare to see someone that was overweight or  super  morbidly obese. And then it just kind of started to make sense to me that
06:34with the way things are being made addictive,  you you're eating more and more and you're in this cycle of, you know, this metabolic dysfunction and it's creating this problem. so just  as time goes on, just,  I tend to inch more and more  on that conspiracy side of things. And I thought, well, you know, why can't I make this or why can't I make that? Because then I have complete control of what's being put in my body and what we're eating. So
07:03And that's just kind of how it's evolved. You know, started with the whole bread thing. read somewhere that  I think Subway puts  an ingredient in their bread that's also put in yoga mats. And I thought, well, that's really weird because bread should only be, you know, flour and water. And so,  and then I started my sourdough adventure and that was challenging, but I've got it down now. So,  and then soap kind of became a thing. I thought I had an interest in making it.
07:33little intimidated. I like bought the things but didn't do it until I actually took a soap making class. And I thought, well, that's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. And I loved it.  The lather, the  way it felt on my skin, just I really enjoyed my own soap and I shared it with friends. And then  I started hearing stories about how their kids' eczema cleared up and how much they liked what I was making and I should sell it. And I'm like, yeah. And then it's just kind of
08:02You know, evolved from there and here we are.  I have a bunch of soap curing right now  anyway. So yeah, and now I'm doing lotions and body butters and sunscreen and  just trying to be as healthy as I can be and be in complete control of what is going in and on my body.  Okay, I'm glad you brought up your sunscreen because I was  was scrolling through your Facebook page and I saw the sunscreen post.  What do you?
08:32You listed the ingredients for the sunscreen bar or whatever it is.  What is actually keeping your skin from getting burned in that?  the coconut oil and the tallow both have some properties that  are protective from the sun,  but it's the non-nano zinc oxide that also. So I don't know if you have looked at pictures of like old lifeguards back in the  50s or the 40s, like they would have the white on their nose or whatever.
09:00That's  the zinc oxide except  it wasn't the non-nano zinc oxide. So  what I have is white, but as you rub it in it, it goes clear.  So that's why I use the non-nano version. But those are all skin protectant.  Okay. I didn't see the zinc part in the post.  I was like, how is she making that work? Because I've made some too with the same kind of zinc and it actually does work. It's amazing. Yeah.
09:27And I personally really don't use sunscreen because I don't typically burn. I just kind of have a natural olive complexion. if I do get a little red, goes, gone the next day. But my husband and my daughter are both very fair skinned and they both burn super easy. So I'm like, well, look at all these chemicals in these sunscreens that we're buying. You know,  I'm going to make you sunscreen. now that's  whether they like it or not. That's what they use. It's my stuff. So and then again, it's like, well,
09:55friends were interested and I'm like, well, there's no reason I can't make this as a part of the product line as well. So that's what I did. Yes. When  I made ours, I had a couple of friends who were willing to be guinea pigs  and I said, you're trying this at your own risk.  Do not sue me if you burn.  And they were like, no, we trust you. And I'm like, don't trust me. I'm new at this. I'm just trying to see if it works.
10:20I said, I tried it, but I'm not out in the sun a whole lot, so it's not going to have the same impact, you know?  Right. And one of the people came back to me and said, I'm going to need like three more sticks of that stuff. It works great. And so anytime we create anything here for sale, we always say, your mileage may vary.  You're doing this at your own risk. Right. Don't come burn my house down if something goes wrong, you know?
10:50Yeah. And I love that I have a group, you know, my family number one, and then I have a select group of friends that have young children too. And they have been super beneficial to me because they'll test anything I make and give me some feedback before I actually put it as a product and, at my vendor events or at the store we have in Harker Heights that carries our products.  Because that way I can make modifications. Like I'm now doing lotion bars because
11:17I have some friends out of state that want me to send them my body butter, but it doesn't have any stabilizers and it doesn't have any really emulsifiers other than the beeswax in it. And when it does separate, we learn this the hard way.  It doesn't go back together. not, it's never right again. Yep. And so  I won't ship it because I can't guarantee with the heat that it's going to get there and it's going to be usable, but I'm hoping my lotion bars.
11:42are going to kind of be the happy medium that maybe I can ship those to other people that want those products with the lotion  and not have it be a separation issue that it's not going to be good when it gets there.  Yeah, I love lotion bars. I started making them maybe 10 years ago.  And  the only thing I didn't like about them is I made them in little tins. So basically you would tip the lotion bar out into your hand and then you would have it all over your hands.
12:10And so you had to have paper towels or something nearby to wipe your hands on.  And I finally got smart and they make these little half-size  twist up, like deodorant shaped containers.  And I've been putting the lotion bar stuff in that and then you don't end up getting it all over your hands when you're trying to put it on your arms or on your feet. Right. Yeah. I haven't gotten, I haven't done the tubes yet. I just have them in molds and I put them in little boxes.  Um,
12:38I think they'll work out well. might have to explore that tube ID at some point. That might be a great option as well. Yeah. And when I started making them, my youngest was, I don't know, 10. And so there were a couple of times where I was trying to put lotion on my elbows, because you get ashy, dry elbows in the wintertime in the Northern States.  And he needed something. And I was like, you're going to have to give me a minute, because I had lotion bar all over my hands.
13:07And I was like, I got to find a better solution so that it's not all over my hands when I'm using it. Right.  So, and I also don't like the lip gloss pots. I would much rather have the tubes. So I'm just like that. That's just me. Yeah. No, that's a great idea. hadn't even considered that. I know they do it for deodorant and I haven't made my own deodorant yet. I know that's kind of like  on my radar, maybe the next thing to try.  But
13:34I kind of have to also pick and choose because it's just, you know, it's a rabbit hole. Once you get started, it's like, man, it's, you get pulled in so many directions, making so many different things, you know, jack of all trades. But a master of none is kind of where I feel like I'm at right now. So I want to, I want to get comfortable and good at what I'm doing before I, I add to the mix and maybe, you know, overextend. Cause I don't, you know, I don't, I just do this kind of mostly for fun. I'm not doing it as a, as a career. So,  um, mostly for me and then.
14:04or like I said, our friends and family. then if I can make money on the side to pay for my hobby, even better, know? Yeah, for sure. Definitely.  I started mine out out of necessity because I really can't use store bought soaps. And I had bought the  the cold process lye soaps at a farmer's market. I bought them from somebody who made them  and loved it because my skin didn't itch. I was hydrated. It smelled good. The lather was great. And I was like,  honey.
14:34husband of mine and he said what and I said can we try making our own soap?  He's like what's  how you do it? And I said um Google it. And he pulled it up and looked at how to do it and he said yeah I can I can make this in the garage and we did it when the kids were smaller we were concerned about  doing it around them  and  ever since we made ours it's been a thing and it's been at least 15 years of us having our own homemade soap in our house I  freaking love it.
15:04And that just sent us down the rabbit hole on lip balms and on lotion bars and wax melts and candles and all the fun things, you know? Yeah. You don't realize how much is in all of that stuff. I before this, you know, most of my adult life, was Victoria's Secret lotion. I'm not Victoria's Secret Bath and Body Works lotion. Like I love their cherry blossom and like I just I would go on their sales and stock up and buy a gazillion of them at a time.
15:32And I actually still have a few tubes like buried in the back of my cabinet in my bathroom that every time if my daughter has friends come over, I'm like, hey, he wants some bath and body works lotion because I'm not going to use it. So, but yeah. And then like when we started doing the soap, the whole goat thing came into play because I couldn't find goat milk anywhere.  number one in Texas, you can't sell it for consumption, which is fine.  I didn't need it for consumption. I just needed it for my soap making.
16:02Um, but I kept trying to find places, whether through Facebook groups or  on Craigslist. And I couldn't find the closest one I could find was an hour away. And I thought, you I'm not going to drive, you know, two hours every time I need to get some goat milk. So  it just made sense. I mean, we got the Nigerian dwarf goats. We've got them, they're on about  half to a three quarter of an acre area where they, where they live.  And, um, that it's,  it was a problem solver and they're easy and they're
16:31our entertainment. Honestly, they're so much fun. We just adore our goats and had no idea. I grew up in a city in the Bay Area.  I was always a city girl. I never grew up with anything other than a couple of dogs and cats my whole life. So never thought I would be living in Texas on a couple of acres raising livestock. So  it's been a complete turnaround for me that I never saw coming.  And then I tried the goat milk. I thought,
16:59I had goat milk years ago.  Some friends of ours in the state that we were living in had goats and I tried it I'm like, I don't really like that. That's kind of gross. But I also didn't realize because I didn't know that the kind of goat, the breed of goat, what you're feeding them, if you have any bucks nearby, like there's  so many different factors that contribute to how it tastes. So  with our goats, I thought I'm going to try this. And I tried my goat milk one day and I was like,
17:28Holy cow. This is amazing. It is delicious. I cannot differentiate between this and whole milk. Like it may be richer even. It was just better. now that's all we drink is goat milk as well. So.  Yeah. When I tried goat milk the first time, I didn't like it either.  And friends of ours have goats and I got to have goat milk cream in my coffee at their place.
17:56If I could buy stock in goat milk cream, I would do it. It's so yummy. Yeah, I so now I'm making cheese with my goat milk. I made ice cream recently with my goat milk.  It's just, I never would have thought in a million years that this is kind of where I would end up being  on this whole life path. it's been really neat. So I'm enjoying it. Good.
18:21Good, we need more people to do these things and learn to enjoy it because then we would have a better world.  I had a question and then I said that and I completely forgot what the question was.  So you didn't foresee yourself making soaps or lotion bars either then, right?  Never in a million years. Nope.
18:45And like I said, I had a career in law enforcement. So I worked 40, 50, 60 plus hours a week, you know, and so did my husband. And so, and then we had kids where, you know, sporting events and different things, different obligations. And so I never was in a position where I even really had the time. What little time I had, I kind of committed to baking like the breads and things like that from scratch. Yeah. But yeah, now I got medically retired a few years back due to some injuries sustained and couldn't
19:15couldn't do law enforcement anymore.  I mean,  we do real estate on the side for kind of fun as well.  But yeah, I just like I have this time, why not venture in doing some of these things? And I'm not artsy at all. Like I don't, I can't draw, I can't envision things, but soap, I can kind of get a little creative and be like, okay, this turned out really pretty, you know? So  it gives me that little creative outlet, even though I have zero creative ability in the big picture.  So.
19:45It's kind of fun. Yeah, the honeycomb bars. I don't know that was soap or lotion bars or whatever it was on your Facebook page are so pretty. Yeah, those are my I have  it's my  my oat and raw honey. get my raw honey from a place here nearby called  Walker Honey Farms  and  I buy it by the gallon and I go in there and I spend too much money on all of the all of the honey things.  But I love that it never goes bad. And so I thought, well, with my
20:15raw honey bars, my oat and honey bars, I'm just going to do those with those, those bumblebee molds. It was perfect to me. And so even my lotion bars, I'm doing with those molds too, because they're so high  in beeswax. So I feel like it's kind of appropriate. It's, you know, bee based. So it'd be molds anyway. you should change your name to secret hive farmers did.  Yeah, I would maybe if I had bees myself and  I'm just not brave enough. So I'll just buy from
20:44my local source here and I appreciate that they're doing all that hard work for me. So. Yes. And how thankful are we for local sources? There's a guy down the road from us, maybe two miles that has honeybees. He raises honeybees and his bees come visit our garden every summer and pollinate everything for us. And at some point we're going to have to take some of our produce to him and be like, here, this is what your bees provided for us. So we're giving you some.
21:13Yeah, yeah, I love I feel like our country or at least my area in general is kind of venturing towards the more handcrafted homemade locally sourced items,  whether it's food or, you skincare or or, you know, whatever.  And, you know, the product that the store that carries our product in Harker Heights, which is a neighboring town, it's called Solstice Studios.  And they that all they carry in their store is
21:41local handmade products. And so  it's just neat to go to these things and see what all kinds of people can make, you know, that you can get here. And then to  meet other vendors, you know, I was at a recent vendor event  last month for Mother's Day and the vendor next to me  does also honey  bees and sells honey and other honey tinctures and products and whatnot. And then I found out, well, shoot, she's like 15 minutes from me.
22:11So, you know, she grows, she grows luffa and I'm just growing luffa now for my soaps, but I'm months out before it's going to be usable for my soaps. But now I have, you know, an even closer source for local honey and for the luffa and other things that I can incorporate into my products. And so it just, I like that we seem to be going that direction versus a big commercialized, you know, made up product with chemicals and things. I don't know. I just feel like
22:41It's bettering our community by keeping things local and having a partnership with people in the area that have kind of like a similar mindset. Yeah. And when you do that, everybody in that community wins in some way. Yes. You know, a rising tide raises all ships. It's been said a bunch of times on the podcast in the last year and a half. And it's true. You know, when you buy from a local grower,
23:09You're supporting them in their continuance of their business. When you are a local grower, you are helping feed your community or sharing whatever it is that you make and everybody wins. And I don't mean to beat a dead horse over this, but you are literally proving my point with what you said. Yeah, no, I, I more and more am going that direction. If I can get it here, I'm going to get it here. I don't care if I have to pay a little bit more for it. It's worth it to me.
23:37to know where it comes from. even we have a local source for beef  and I started out with a quarter beef to try it out. And then we're like, oh, this is amazing.  And then it's like, and we increased, increased. Now we get a whole cow once a year from this family, but they're the next town over. And I can look at their cows and I can be a part of what they're doing. And I'm supporting their family and they're giving me grass-fed, grass-finished beef.
24:06product that is far superior than anything I've bought in the store. Even like round steaks and that was what surprised me because I grew up, know, where we  ate the cheaper cuts of meat because, you know, the times were what they were and you were when you're raising a family cost is everything. And so my parents would buy a lot of sirloin steak and I like would chew it and chew it and chew it and like wouldn't break down and I hated steak as a kid. So we got this whole beef and
24:33Even like the round steaks, which normally you have to tenderize the heck out of to get them really  where they're tender enough to eat. I don't have to, I can barbecue that just as is and I can cut it and it's just like, almost like a New York quality in this, in  the tenderness. so the quality of what I'm getting for what I'm paying as well is far superior than what I was getting in the grocery store.
25:00Yeah, and if you're anything like me, the security feeling that you get from knowing that you have that beef in the freezer and it will last you quite a while is probably helpful too. That's what I love about it, about when we get a half. When I fill my freezer with that meat, I feel like I'm the richest woman in the world. And I know that's the dumbest thing to say, but like, man, I've made it.  It's not dumb. And I say that all the time. When I say things like that, I go, and that's really dumb.
25:29It's not dumb and I have to stop saying it too. It is seeing the benefit of planning ahead, using your local resources and having the means to do it. It's not dumb. Well, I, you know, we moved out to Texas in 2020 and we went back and forth as far as what we wanted. Like, did we want a house in a subdivision with amenities? Did we want a house with some property?
25:57We went back and forth and then this house popped up and like I said, it had the guest house, which was going to be perfect for my parents.  So that's kind of where we ended up where we ended up. And we also had factored in our age, you know, I'm going to be 50 this month. And so how many years do I have that I can really work land? But now I always grew up in a subdivision. I never lived on land my whole entire life. And so we were always sandwiched into a neighborhood where you had no room in between. And now that I've had a couple acres.
26:23I can't imagine going back to a scenario where I have a neighbor,  like neighbors right on top of me, number one, and number two. Now,  you know, between,  I don't know if you follow like Joel Salatane, the lunatic farmer and people like that, but we've kind of gone that route as well. And I'm like, man, we're looking for more land, actively looking to like, how can we get enough land where we can grow our own beef and have our own dairy and
26:50be able to move paddocks and do the sustainable farming and regenerative farming  to properly support our land and have a water source. That never was important to me. And all of a sudden right now with some obstacles that we've had with our water provider, I  would probably donate a kidney to have a well. So I didn't have to rely on a water service provider.
27:19Maybe, I don't know,  at some point, the right time we can look at upgrading our space.  But for now, I feel like what we have,  it's humble, but  I feel like utilizing it pretty well.  I think you are from everything you're saying.  We have a well here, and I am so thankful for it  because there was a summer or two summers ago, last summer we had all the water we could stand, like it ruined our garden. But the summer before that,
27:49Basically from the first July until the first of September, it really didn't rain here.  And  we were very thankful for the well because  the problem with it raining a lot is you can't suck the water back out of the garden. But if it's dry, you can water a garden. Right. I would rather have a drought situation because we have the well than what we dealt with last summer with the endless rains for six weeks.  Right.
28:17Yeah, our  scenario is a little bit different in that we have what's called a water service corporation. It's technically a member owned thing, but unfortunately it's kind of  got a corrupt leadership  and office. And I just am at the point where I don't want anyone to have control over my resources. So,  you know, I don't like, they had threatened to disconnect our water.
28:46because we don't have a second meter for this guest house on our property, which was built over a decade before we bought it.  anyway, so  just, I don't like the ability for nefarious activity that someone could cut me off of a resource or have control over my access to that resource. So  for any reason other than non-payment, of course, because you need to, you  it is what it is. You have to pay for what you get, but.
29:14Yeah, if I could get a well,  would absolutely. And that's one of my criteria. If we do end up moving, we do buy land somewhere, it's got to have a well, or we have to have the ability to put in a well  so that we can be in control  of our resources. So I'm jealous of you. I would give  anything to have a well  for our water.  Well,  I'm always saying I'm jealous of people too, so I get it.
29:43But it's really weird when we moved here. It was so weird to not have a water bill because we had lived in town and had a water bill for 20 something years.  And my husband was like, I'm going to go water the garden. And he hooked up  the hose to the spigot thing on the well.  And he watered for an hour and a half.  I was like panicking. I  was programmed to panic because, you know, I was used to having to pay for the water.
30:13Right.  And I came in and  he came in and I said,  that was a long watering. And he said, yes, he said,  it's a well, we don't have to pay per  the gallon anymore. Yeah. He said, you're going to have to get used to this. He said, remember when we paid off the house that we used to live in and you  panicked  the first three months because you were like, did you pay the mortgage?  And I said, yes. He said, you're going through the same thing.
30:43I was like, oh yeah, I am okay.  So it's really weird when stuff that you've been doing forever changes because your body and your brain  are so programmed  to the thing you used to do. It takes a while to get used to the new way of doing things. Yeah, no, it definitely does. you know,  my sister-in-law her husband live in North Texas up in the Panhandle and they live on a lot of acres and they have a well and we
31:12We have a water filtration system set up  for our water because I just, don't, the water doesn't taste good. I don't like all the chemicals in it.  So  we only use the filtered water. But when we went to my  sister-in-law's house recently,  my brother-in-law was funny because I was drinking a bottle of water and he's like, why don't you drink our well water? It's  delicious. And so I'm like, okay. And so I gave it a try and I'm like, man, this is amazing. You don't have a filter, you don't have anything.
31:42And this is just straight from the ground, you know, and you're in your well and it was fantastic water. So  just amazing how much what we do consume is altered.  Um, you know, and I, it's supposed to be for the health and benefit of the community and safety and all of that. But like just straight natural from the ground was far better than even my filtered stuff. So anyway, yeah, one day, maybe one day I'll have a well dreaming of a well.
32:10I will keep my fingers crossed for you,  All right, I try to keep these to half an hour  and I always feel like half an hour isn't enough. I'm going to have to consider making them an hour long.  But  I really enjoyed the conversation with you. I have one more quick question. Do you grow any produce? Yes, we do. We have a garden that seems to expand every year. So,  you know, between kale and peppers and corn and tomatoes and
32:39Yeah, all of the things we grow as much as we can. And have a greenhouse that we put in last year to help us get through  the colder months. So we don't have to lose a lot of stuff and  we can start things early. But yes, we we grow our own produce. So and it's been hit or miss on success. We have a lot of problems with squash bugs and things like that. But  this year we learned about beneficial nematodes  and
33:03applied them and that has made a world of difference this year already. So we're excited for our garden this year.  Nice.  I've got to look that up. keep reading about that, but I haven't done enough research yet. And the other thing is that we've been trying the diametaceous or however you say that  earth, I guess it is  on the ground around our tomato plants.  And it seems to be keeping the pests away. So I'm hoping this is a new thing.
33:33Yeah, DE works great too. We use that in various places. I kind of use it in  the goat shack area to help keep flies down. And yeah, I use the heck out of that too, but the beneficial nematodes have been for us a game changer this year. So maybe give it a try. Hopefully you'll have a success that we've had with that. I'm going to have to look it up and do some digging about it because I don't know enough about it yet.  All right, Heidi, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you?
34:03So I'm on Facebook and Instagram under secret farmstead. So I don't have a website as of yet. I kind of intimidated by that, but maybe eventually or my email at secretfarmstead at gmail.com. All right. Awesome. As always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com Heidi. I hope you have a great day. And again, I've said thank you three times. I'm going to say it again. Thank you so much for talking with me. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. It's been my honor to be on your podcast. All right. Have a good day. You too. Bye.
 

CZECH BAKER MN

Today I'm talking with Michaela at CZECH BAKER MN. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Michaela  at Czech Baker, Minnesota.
00:29in Savage, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Michaela. How are you? I am good. How are you today?  I'm good. Sorry about the technical difficulties logging in.  I'm going to be emailing Riverside tomorrow and being like,  what is up guys? Cause it's not working very well for my guests.  No problem. We figured it out. So we're good.  Yes. So my
00:51I usually I say how's the weather, but I'm in Minnesota too. So we know the weather has been kind of rainy, kind of sunny, kind of cloudy, and we never know what we're going to  get. So,  Okay. So you are a Czech baker and I need you to tell me how you pronounce K O L A C  H  Y or E or whatever it is. So Koláč would be a traditional size that we have in Czech Republic. And that would be one item, just one.
01:20Kolache would be multiple. And then here in Minnesota, they do use Kolache keys. So they add the S at the end to make it multiple. But if you say Kolache key, that would be multiple already. And single would be Kolache. And that is just a smaller version  from the regular Kolache word. Okay. And that particular pastry we're talking about is the one that...
01:46that's flat on the bottom, but the corners are folded in and it has like a jam or jelly in the middle. Is that right?  You know, we're going to be  hearing a lot of people about this because I was born and raised in the Czech Republic.  Koláč comes from words, kolá, which means round. So  in Czech Republic, if you ask for koláč, you're going to get a round circle item with the filling on the top and open face. And that's the ones I make. And then the ones here in Minnesota,  they do
02:16put in the two corners or sometimes they just do two of the sides, kind of wrap them over and kind of hide the filling a little bit. So we make those in Europe as well. We don't call them kolache. We have different names on a different presentations. It's the same dough, same filling, just a different presentation and gives you a different name. But in Czech Republic, if you ask for kolache, you're going to get a round thing with open face. Okay.
02:41See, this is why I love talking to you people on the podcast because I learned things I didn't know. My husband and I were at a friend's house last year or the year before and the male of the couple was telling me that it's Kalachi and I've heard it called Kalaki, like Kalaki days in I think Montgomery. Kalachi days in Montgomery, yeah. Yeah, and for the longest time, I'm like number one, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly.
03:10And number two, I don't care, they're yummy. arose by any other name would smell as sweet. And I suppose that whatever this pastry we're discussing is called, it tastes just as good. Yep, I would think so. mean, know, different names, but different views or different looks, but the same dough, same kind of filling, of course, depends, you know, if you get it from commercial store, if you made it from homemade, but yeah, whatever they're called, they are delicious. You're right.
03:39Uh huh. love the pastry dough. is so good. And I'm not even a bread girl. Like I don't love bread, but these things are amazing. Okay. Thank you for sort of straightening that out for me because I figured you would know the correct answer. And where in Czech Republic are you from? I was born and raised in Ostrava, which is the East North side. I lived about, I don't know, have 20, 30 minutes to Poland and then about
04:0830 to 45 minutes to Slovakia. So we're kind of up in that corner and all of those three cultures kind of, know, interlope in there for us as far as food goes. So we'll get a little bit of everything. And when did you come to America? I have been here since 1998. Oh,  wow. OK. So how old were you when you came over? I was 19. So I've been here longer than my original start of life in Czech Republic.
04:36Was that hard for you? mean, this is not a geography podcast, but was that hard for you? Was it a real culture shock?  Not at  all. mean, you I grew up  with one brother and a mom, kind of. She was married for a while, but we never really kind of had a stable  father figure in our lives. And  I don't know. I was just always advantageous. You know, I wanted to do different things.  Right after high school, I went to England as an au pair.
05:04for a year and then I went to Italy for summer job and I stayed for like a year and a half and that's where I met my ex-husband and that's how I got to the States because of him at the end. But I have not, I mean I love travel. I have been to many, many different countries and I hope that I'll have many more to see. Okay, cool. So tell me how you became a cottage food producer because you make a lot of things out of a small kitchen, I would assume.
05:34Yeah, so that happened back in 2014 when I got married with my second husband who is actually from Montgomery grew up there and is a fifth generation of the Czech heritage here. We kind of joked around and I said, well, why don't we move to Czech Republic? And he was like, well, yeah, let's do it. Where are we going? I was like, well, wow, hold on. Like, we need to plan it. You know, I have two kids and
06:00little kids obviously so school and language and house and all that stuff and he was ready to retire so we decided that we're gonna have a year  kind of get it all together and figure out what we're gonna do and we're gonna move to Czech Republic for two years  and we did that we actually stayed for three and then  upon our return back I mean after my three years being back home and eating all the
06:23proper food and good bread and good kolache and you know, tasty  baked goods, not just sugar filled stuff.  I was like, well, I got to start doing it at home. So I actually started with the sourdough bread, the caraway rye was the first thing that I started doing and I brought it to Sokol  in St. Paul. We have a Czech and Slovak Sokol Hall. So we were meeting there with parents and kids for dancing lessons and Czech and Slovak lessons. So would bring it there. So that would be kind of like my first customers.
06:52once a week when I brought the kids over there and then I started thinking that, you know, I should make kolacha and make them the right way,  not the  Montgomery way.  So I did. And then I got very lucky of going to a farmer's market that was in Prylake. It was called the Little Market That Could. And it was towards the end of the season. I mean, I think there were like two or three weeks left. It was early September.  And the organizer,  Lady Rosemary,
07:19Was like yeah, of course come we don't have a fresh Baker and yes, you need to come here So I did it for like the first  for the last two or three weeks of the market  and I kind of got hooked and got some customers and it's been now it's  Is seven years six or seven years that I'm doing it. So Wow fun fun  So who taught you to bake did you just learn on your own or did someone teach you?
07:46It would be my grandmother. My grandma was the one who was doing all this stuff, you know, baking and cooking. mean, my mom, growing up in Europe, actually, everybody cooks at home.  Difference there is that some people enjoy it and some people just do it because they have to, you know, we didn't have all that, all those restaurants and stuff. mean, everything we cooked was from scratch and we would eat, you know, at home all the time. There was no really restaurants eating unless it was a big celebration or some kind of special occasion.
08:15So cooking more or less, you my mother used to do that. She didn't bake too much because like I said, she did it because it was needed to feed the family, but she didn't really enjoy it. Well, my grandma, she just loved anything in the kitchen. So when I was little,  I spent as much time as I could with her and try to learn stuff from her. Very nice. I kind of wish my grandmas were still around. I'm 55. So my grandmas have both been gone for  quite a while.
08:43I think my mom's mom passed away over 10 years ago.  Yes, I don't have my mom nor my grandmother anymore either. So I do have still and  who is left in Czech Republic and she enjoys the baking  as much as my grandmother did. So she got that from her rather than my mom, guess.  Uh huh. Yeah.  I have been learning sourdough lately. Sourdough bread  made my first loaf this weekend and it was, it was dense.
09:12It was dense  and it turned out that it tastes really good, but it's got like a bagel  mouthfeel to it. You know, when you buy bagel  and I kind of love my mistake.  It, I had cream cheese on it today. I was like, this is like a bagel. I'm okay with this.  Right. You like the chewiness of it. Yeah.  Yeah. It's probably under proof. That's why it's kind of chewy. Uh, so it didn't prove all the way, but.
09:37For me, like I said, actually started with the bread here first and that was easier for me because the sourdough is forgiving. You don't have to watch the clock and stuff. then once I started using the yeast dough, which is for my kolache, I was kind of having problems first because it's completely different. You do have to watch it, then you have to be on the top of it. So for me trying to figure out the schedule and how it works. And although I've been doing it for, like I said, six or seven years,
10:04I will not bake anything out of dry yeast. That just never works for me. I actually buy fresh yeast each time and that works perfect for me. But dry yeast, I mean, I have used it a couple of times in a pinch that I couldn't get the fresh one, but it was not good. I was not happy with the result. So I'm not sure what that is, but in Czech Republic, we would always use dry, sorry, fresh yeast when I was growing up. So I think that's kind of stuck with me that that's a better way to go.
10:32Okay. I have never seen fresh yeast, but I've read about it. it like a, is it like a little chunk of yeast or is it, how does it come? Yeah, I actually buy it as a one pound brick. We have a Hy-Vee here that has a bakery that they bake fresh every day. So they sell me the one pound. You can buy them in a little smaller, like a cube. Sometimes I've seen them at London Birely's I think, but
10:57That one small cube is only like 45 or 50 grams and I'm not sure how many that is in ounces, I'm sorry. But that one cost like three or four dollars and the one pound I buy at Hy-Vee cost me five bucks. So. Okay. So what's the texture of it? Is it like clay-ish or is it? Kind of, yeah. It's kind of like clay-ish, like a plasturine, modeling. So do you just like scrape a spoon into it to get what you need or how do you use it?
11:26Well, because I bake in a big batches, obviously, since I bake for the farmers market, you know, I weigh it. I just I usually use about third of that brick. So I, you know, take off whatever I need, obviously, wait, make sure I have enough and then I just  scramble it with my hands into warm milk with sugar already. And then the same process like with the dry yeast, you let it, you know, sit for a little bit so it starts blooming. But it works way faster than the dry yeast. So
11:52Okay, I had no idea.  again, this is why I love you guys. I learned so many things I had no idea about.  My husband is the yeast bread baker. I kill every yeast dough I deal with. I gave up. He's so good at it. I'm like, you do it.  And then I had a friend bring me some sourdough starter a couple weeks ago and I killed that too. Didn't feed it for three days and I was like,
12:16It's not good. Forget it. Oh, didn't tell it. The sourdough were last.  I brought mine actually dried up from Czech Republic. I bake once a week.  during the season, during the summer markets, but in the wintertime, I don't necessarily bake at all or for a month or two at a time.  And if as long as you keep it in a fridge, you can always revive it afterwards. It might take a little bit longer, but  it works. well, I have two starters. I have the white regular flour and then I have the rye.
12:45And the rye one is much easier to keep track of or take it easier to keep it going because the rye flour just has a little more power, I think, for the sourness.  The second part of my story is I also broke the jar that the sourdough starter was in. So  it went in the trash and then I started over. I started my own  and it worked. And that's when I made the loaf out of this weekend.  And so my sourdough, I have two now.
13:14I have two starters going because this is a thing. It's like chicken math and it's sourdough math.  And  I want to make two loaves of bread every Sunday now because number one, salt, flour and water only. That's it. That's what makes it. And it's inexpensive and it tastes really good. Who knew? Yeah, there's nothing better than home baked bread. And you know, while there is different
13:40ways you can make it and use it. Being it yeast bread or sourdough bread, there are just very simple recipes as well. Just like you said, three ingredients, know, give it some time, fold it over once or twice, plop it on a baking sheet and it will be, it might not look pretty, but it will be good. It will be edible. And even if you under proof it, it might turn out like a bagel and I don't make bagels. So I was very happy to have bagel bread this morning. It worked out great.
14:09So we've talked about Kalatchee's, however you say it, I'm never gonna say it right,  and sourdough bread, but what else do you make?  The other thing I make is vanocka, which is  some American  Czechs  know it as hovska, but it's basically a braided bread, kind of like  a  shala, challa bread. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. I think it's challa, yep.
14:35Yeah, it's that I mean, I use exactly the same dough as I use for collages. So it's just slightly sweet.  My customers actually compare it to brioche bread because of the sweetness a little bit. So  that's another one. And then I make bubla nina, which is a traditional Czech cake that's just poured in a baking pan and you know, baked as a as one whole thing and then you slice it as in little things. It's basically a coffee cake  with fruit.
15:03on the top of a different types of fruits. But  for that one, I actually use a Czech flower.  We have  three different types of flower in Czech Republic for the white one. And  this one you can't find here in America. So I actually buy it in Chicago when I go usually once or twice a year and I bring home like 200 pounds of the Czech flower. And then I use it throughout the year. But  the fun thing I always see is like, you know, comparing the ingredients of the Czech flower.
15:33you look at it and it says wheat, that's all there is. And then when I look in the American one, know, I, unfortunately I do not buy organic because  I couldn't make it financially for business that way. But I do buy the  unbleached and unbromated  from Sam's Club. So I'm trying to do, you know, at least something good in there. But still, if you look at those ingredients, it definitely does not say just one word. So.  Yeah, we Americans have a...
16:01crazy need to overcomplicate everything, including ingredients. Yep.  It's sad.  my podcast is about homesteading and cottage food producing and people who make things, so crafters.  And  we walk the walk and talk here. We have a big old garden and we grow a lot of our own food in that garden and we also sell it to people.  when you get buttercarnes lettuce out of my garden,
16:30That's exactly what you're getting.  It has no pesticides, no herbicides.  And if it has manure, it's chicken manure from our chickens in the dirt.  And it's, want people to know that it doesn't have to be complicated. Like flour should say wheat.  So I don't know why, I don't know why we all go so far out of our way to make things so difficult for ourselves.
17:00Yeah, well, I think it's the,  especially for the flower, I think it's the stability, know, shelf stable for who knows how long. Cause when you do, and I actually did look into trying to do my own  flower milling, you know,  but  I use,  I don't know about 100, 150 pounds of flour a month. And that's just not doable unless I would have a commercial miller,  you know, which there is no room for that in my house anymore. So.  Yeah, exactly.
17:29So tell me, you go to a bunch of different farmers markets, yes? I actually do just the one now, Chanhassen. I do different events that I see throughout the year. I try to stay kind of with the main events kind of thing that I can get into. But then I have done a couple different ones, like in Shakopee there were a couple, there was like a food truck event and then they do ales in the alley.
17:57which is like a couple open breweries on the  downtown there and then they have music and vendors and stuff. So I've done that for the third time this year. But the farmers markets only one on Saturday at Chanhassen 921 and that's strictly because I have a full-time job. This is my fun job. Okay. Yeah.  You have a jobby job and then you have your favorite job. Yep. I have a job I have to pay for health insurance with. That's correct.  Uh huh. Yeah. I know. I get it.  Um,
18:26So the reason I asked about the farmers markets is because  clearly you have an accent. It is absolutely beautiful.  And you're making foods that have different names than most Americans have ever seen. So do you get like questions when people interact with you about where are you from and what is this  and  what's it like for,  how does it compare to an American dessert? Yeah. So most of the time I would say probably 90, 95%.
18:53is people who actually know Kolache or who has actually followed me on Facebook and they come really specific for that so they know what it is. There's few others there are like you know kids who walk by and see my display and they go oh donuts and I go yeah donuts and then you know off and on there's a couple of people who will like ask what it is so obviously I can explain it and then you know just
19:17tell them what the flavor is and what the  reason of it is because I was born there. Obviously, like you said, as soon as I start talking, you can tell that  I'm not from the US. So  yes,  but honestly, I listen to accents all day long every day because of the podcast.  Your accent is so pretty and  you are very, very understandable. You know, it's not like it's in the way of my understanding what you're saying.
19:46Yeah, and I guess I would agree with you on that. I do work with calling insurance companies and I deal obviously with lots of different people and their accents sometimes are very horrible. But it's just a personal thing. mean, I have spoken or learned English since probably my fifth grade and then I also had German. I lived in Italy, so was able to communicate there as well. So it's kind of just, know, some people have the head.
20:14hard for languages and some just don't. So  yeah, I do not. I took, I took two years of French in high school  and to this day I can still sort of read French as long as it's words on paper. I can't speak French to save my life. Even after having an excellent teacher who I adored  and she required us all to start speaking French from the get go. Like she gave us a couple of phrases that were common  and
20:43made us use them in class from the first day of class.  I don't even remember what they were at this point.  I also took a year with Spanish because we had to take a different language in high school for three years out of the four.  So I was like, okay, well, I took French. Spanish isn't that much different. I'm going to take Spanish one this year. And it's very confusing because Spanish and French are alike, but they're also very different.
21:09And I would start saying things in French instead of Spanish and my Spanish teacher would be like,  Mary Evelyn, this is not French class, this is Spanish class. I'm like, I know, but I just got done with two years of French.  And she and my French teacher would like giggle because they'd get together and they'd see me in the hallway and  they'd say things that I could understand then in French and in Spanish, kind of teasing me about the fact that I would speak French in the Spanish class.
21:38Yeah, I mean, I was more required in here to do, you know, another one.  I mean, Spanish, I know that it's  you know, optional, more or less, I guess, or  if somebody does it, there's a requirement maybe for one or two years or something. But,  you know, I don't know. I've traveled all around the world and while English has been really good and most of the people speak them or most of the countries you can get around, it's always much nicer and you always looked at
22:06very differently if you know just a couple of basic language, basic sentences, even if you just try to, you know, say, hey, thanks to you, how are you, you know, how can I get there or just again, basic sentences and local people will just look at you completely different. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble if I say this wrong. I feel like if you are in a different country with a different language and you can, you know,
22:35communicate in the language of the country.  Even on basic level, it means that you're trying. You're trying to make them comfortable as well as making you comfortable.  I'm going to fail. If I ever go to France or Spain, I'm going to fail that test because I don't remember any of it.  But  my son actually took a year of Latin in high school  and he was doing online school. So that was even more interesting.
23:05And he needed help with the conjugation part.  Oh my God, Michaela.  I spent a month learning about Latin verbs and nouns and how it's built. And I was like,  I don't really want to do this. This is not, this is hard. This is really hard.  I think he got a C in the class.  I probably would have gotten an F  and learned a lot about
23:33the fact that a lot of English words have Latin roots, which I already knew, but now I really know it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That would be probably the hardest language for me, I think, because it doesn't really flow at all.  No, it's very flat. Yeah.  He had to actually record himself saying some of the words and  the stress on  the first  syllable tends to be just flat.
24:01there's barely any up and down in how it's spoken. when you listen to Latin, you know, in the Catholic Church, it always sounds like, I don't know, like mumbling because there's no inflection at all. So yeah, not only was it difficult to learn, but it was really boring as a listener to listen to. And I love music. So for me, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be asleep in five minutes if I have to listen to any more of this.
24:31So yeah, languages are,  some of them are beautiful. Some of them are boring as all hell.  So anyway, not a language podcast. It's a cooking podcast, homesteading podcast. I love that you have brought the traditions of your baking from the Czech Republic. I think that is amazing.
24:56Yeah, mean, we're trying, like, you know, once you move somewhere, when I originally got here when I was 19, I was like, oh, I couldn't care less for any Czech food. I wanted to try everything American. So, you know, at that point I was on, yeah, hamburger helper, Kraft and mac and cheese. Yes, all the fast foods I could have, you know. And then I was pregnant and I had my child. And at that point, I realized that it's all junk. And I just tried to.
25:24go back to my roots and try to do the cooking from scratch and everything.
25:31Good job, mama. I'm impressed. Good. I'm glad. Yeah. Do your kids, this is going to be a weird question because I haven't talked to anybody like you ever on the podcast. Do your kids love the cooking from scratch with the traditional foods? They enjoy the food. There's really not much that they don't like. There might be a couple of things like liver.
25:57When they were little, they would still eat it because they knew they had to. Now, obviously, they would be like they're 16 and 19. So now it'd be like, yeah, I'm not going to eat that anymore. But, you know, that's just one kind of funky thing, of course. But yeah, they really and Viv has living there for three years.  They were going to school and  lunch is the main dish  that you would have every day.  And they were getting it at school and it was always cooked from scratch there. And it would include, you know, soup.
26:23full meal  and then usually some kind of either salad or dessert kind of something sweet. So they have had everything and anything that I grew up on  and they really enjoy it. Making them cook it at home,  that's another story. My son is more of the cooker kind of adventurer, but some of this stuff takes really long time.  There's like different sauces and baked goods and stuff, not baked goods, but sorry.  Meat, that's been...
26:52roasted in the oven with vegetables and stuff and takes a long time and  making dumplings from scratch, you know, it's not a quick,  quick food to be done. So he,  don't believe that he would be able to cook anything traditional Czech.  But  my daughter, the other hand, she will eat anything as well, but no, she's not into cooking at all. I love that your son is into it though. My son loves to cook too. He just made  some,  some battered fried.
27:21uh, chicken tonight for dinner.  I don't, I don't make it. don't like frying in hot fat. It scares me. And when he puts, when he puts the chicken in the hot fat, makes that sizzling noise and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I hate it.  And he said, are you going to have any of this? It was chicken thigh meat and I don't love chicken thighs. And I was like, nope, spice it up the way you want to. That's the best part. There's the thighs.  I am not into chicken right now.
27:49I had chicken the other day and I was like, nope, I don't want chicken again for six months. I'm good. But he's really good at cooking. And part of it is that when he was little, I invited him to cook with me. And clearly I make American food from scratch. so lots of soups and stews and steak and, and chicken. God, I'm so sick of chicken and, and cookies. He would help me make cookies.
28:16and that's probably his favorite memory from when he was learning is making chocolate chip cookies. He still likes to make them. So cooking is not just a girl thing, it is a human person thing.  I'm glad that he loves to do it.  Okay, I don't think I have any more questions, but Michaela,  thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me  and where can people find you?
28:41Well, the Facebook site is probably the easiest to see where I'm going to be.  That's the most,  well, that's really the only thing that I kind of use for keeping in touch with people and it's the Czech Baker MN.  I am located in Savage. I do bake from the house, so don't have, you know, I don't bake every day. I don't have a storefront.  The best other way of contacting me is probably either emailing the CzechBaker at gmail.com or to texting me.
29:10at my phone number that you can find on my Facebook site.  Or  if you're already a customer, obviously it's on all my products as well, so you can find it on the  label. Awesome, fantastic.  One more question.  Are you a member of the Cottage Foodie website?  Cottage Foodie, you mean on Facebook?  No, it's actually a website.
29:36Matt Rosen started a directory. no, okay, Matt Rosen. I know that name. He does the cookies, right? He's the surgeon cookie master or something. Yes, yes. He has a website now that's a directory for bakers, food bakers.  I saw when he was trying to put it together, I think.  I saw that online somewhere and then I kind of lost track of it. So no, I am not there, but I might have to do it again. I will message you the link when I...
30:05tomorrow morning so that you have it. But yeah, he's doing it and it's  starting to pick up some traction and I  think he's going to have an actual  conference next spring. Oh really? Oh, that's pretty cool. In Minnesota. I keep meaning to mention this and I keep forgetting. So was like, this is the perfect time. Bring up Matt in the cottagefoodie.com. think it is. So.  Okay, yeah, definitely. I will look into that again.  Yeah, definitely. Because that way more people can find you.
30:35All right. So as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And Michaela, again, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out, Mary. Have a great day. You too. Have a good night. All right. Bye. Bye.