A Tiny Homestead

Montana Country Homesteading

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

An Enchanted Homestead

Today I'm talking with Lydia at An Enchanted Homestead.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Lydia at an enchanted homestead. I love that name in Idaho. Good afternoon, Lydia. How are you? Hi, I'm well. How are you?  I'm good. How's the weather in your neck of the woods today? oh
00:58windy and rainy. Us too. In Minnesota, same thing. It is gross outside. Yes. It's like we can't make up our minds here. One day it's like a warm spring. Now it's like kind of reverting to winter. It's so funny. Every time, every time I talk with somebody about the weather and it just keeps flipping, they all have the same sigh and I do the same thing. I did it two days ago.
01:27We just need spring to get here and stay here. That would be great. Yes. And it's unusually warm.  Um, cause I feel like winter skipped us here in Southern Idaho. We got snow like only three times and it melted the same day. And so  it got pretty warm. Like we were having a pretty warm  spring, um, which I was kind of excited about. And then this week it was like, psych.  So it's like cold and wet.  Yup.
01:56I... There's that noise again. I hate this. Alrighty. So why is it called an enchanted homestead? Do you have magic on your homestead? Oh, gosh. I'm just always... love all things like magical and just like finding gratitude even in the mundane boring stuff and like turning it into something... Well, magical.
02:21Enchanting and so I don't know it just it's stuck with me and we decided to name it that  Well, you'll be happy to know that one of my good friends gave me a fairy weather vane when we moved here five years ago, that's awesome  And it only took a year and a half to put up, but it's really pretty so
02:45Yep, I can see it out my living room windows and every time I look at it, I think of her and I'm like, I hope you're looking down from heaven smiling at the weather rain.  Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome. I love adding all kinds of stuff. Like I have like  my courts around the garden, like sun catchers, wind chimes. just I love putting stuff everywhere. I'm like,  I don't know, like adding that little magical umph to like otherwise  boring places around the property.
03:15And so I just, love that. Yes, because when things aren't blooming, you need something to look like it's blooming. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yes, indeed. Make it somewhat pretty. Yeah, I get it. I really do. I was talking to somebody about the fact that peonies are my favorite flower the other day and I realized I still have at least two months before my peonies bloom. Oh yeah? Well, I want to add more flowers around the property, but I
03:43suck. I don't know. cannot  get flowers to bloom hardly at all.  just, I don't know. Is it shady?  Some parts, but our house  faces west and so the sun does like, whoo.  Um,  but I don't know. just, I have wildflowers though that have taken off and they come back every year, thankfully. So I'm trying to get more going.  Um,
04:12So we'll see this year.  We'll see.  Okay.  I have a question. Did you grow up in Idaho? No, actually in Puerto Rico. Oh, okay.  I was listening to you talk and I'm like, there's some accent there, but I can't place it. Yeah, no. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, moved to Hawaii and then came to Idaho. Okay. It's really subtle. I don't think anybody else would have noticed it, but I am like a fanatic about it because I listened to everything really closely. um Okay. So.
04:42Tell me about your homestead. Well, we have a little bit over 50 chickens, I would say,  give or take.  We have four goats. We have  nine cats, five dogs. Five dogs, yeah. And we are just on, I think about three and a half acres here. um Yeah, we do gardening.
05:11We do obviously the farm fresh eggs, all the stuff. Nice. Because I'm a dog fanatic, I never was until we got our dog five years ago. My husband is the same. What breed, what breed, what breeds are your dogs or is it one breed? Oh, so we had, we started with one Shih Tzu and then she got pregnant. And she had five puppies that were mixed.
05:41one passed away early on and so I could not part with the other puppies. And so we were in town at first and so that is what led us to then have to find somewhere out of town limits because I think it was a three dog maximum rule  and we had a little bit more than that. And of course they're little dogs so they yap. They are quite the little yappers. um And so then when we moved out here  we had a dog
06:10that randomly showed up. His name was Jax. He  passed um two or three years ago. But then we had another dog show up, Bruno. He's still with us. He's  a  lab mix, a black lab mix. And then our son  brought another dog home and she is a border collie lab mix. And so  we currently, yeah, one, two.
06:40three, four, five, because we've had a few that have passed away. yeah. Yep. My husband and I are  of  the mind that one dog is more than enough for us. We adore our dog.  her mama has a litter every year.  And friends of ours own the mama. And I'm like, man, those puppies are so cute. My husband's like,  our dog is so cute. We don't need to give her a sister or a brother. What breed is she?
07:10She's a she's an Australian shepherd.  Oh,  okay.  And they need they need to be played with. Yeah, they have energy. Yeah. So  having more than one would probably kill both of us. Yeah, that's how it is with ours. That's a border Collie mix. Nova. Oh my goodness. She has energy for days and we have her kind of like on a routine. So like they get breakfast every morning and then she gets like after breakfast playtime. Then at around three o'clock she gets another playtime.
07:39Then after dinner, they get playtime and it's like, she will, and she knows, like she will sit by the area where her toys are at and just look like the saddest abused dog. Like, please play. Oh my goodness. I calm down.  But she loves, thought she wants to be outside playing all day long. cannot for the life of me figure out if border collies and um Australian shepherds just know how to communicate better than other dogs do.
08:08Mm-hmm. would say so. Maggie's the same way. She has all kinds of expressions for what she wants.  They're super smart.  Yeah, it's crazy. And my mom and dad have a purebred border collie and  her name is Duchess and she was aptly named and she has all kinds of faces for what she wants to according to my dad. So  I think that those two breeds are very expressive and very clear.
08:36when they want your attention for whatever it is that they want you to do. oh absolutely. And I could talk about dogs all day. Like  I am an absolute convert. I go to the church of dog. I swear to you. uh I've always been a dog person, but my husband,  for his whole life was scared of dogs. Like it is the funniest thing. Like even the littlest dog, he'd be like, Nope. And I'm like, come on. Like it's not going to eat you. Like really?
09:05and he will just walk the other way. And so then when we got our first dog together, Harley,  he started coming around and his family to this day, they're like, we would have never thought you would end up with five dogs. Like of all people, like you were so scared and they sleep in bed with us. Like they are so spoiled  and people like, man, you've come a long way.  Yeah, I always loved other people's dogs. I just didn't want one of my own. Oh, that's funny.
09:34And then we got this cute little puppy at seven weeks and six days old and I fell in love and I went off the deep end. So,  all right. So you said you would think you have about 50 chickens.  you, and you have a farm stand, right? Yes, ma'am. Yup.  Yeah. So are the girls laying? Oh my gosh, a lot. get like  around 30 a day, 30 eggs. So it's like, we stock the farm stand. So we started opening every day.
10:04except this week, I  do announce, like, hey, it's weather permitting. Because our house faces west and across the street, like, there's a field. So there's nothing blocking the winds or anything. So the farm stand um obviously gets affected. oh And we had an upgrade. We started the farm stand, I think it was two years ago,  and my husband built it, like, literally a little stand. He built it. My dad was living with us at the time, and my dad helped paint it. So it was, like, really special.
10:34Um, but then the wins, like she went belly up several times, several times. Thankfully it was like when she wasn't open. we didn't have stuff in it. Cause we also have like apothecary items that I make and stuff. Um, so thankfully we never experienced like damage in that sense. And anytime like my husband was able to fix her up and just, would set her back up. But then we were like, okay, we got to figure something out. And so.
11:03we had a shed in our backyard that was just full of junk. Like  it needed cleaned out. And so  we pulled that out and that's the farm stand. So it's like a green shed that has tables in it. And that's what we're using. And thankfully it's sturdy enough to where the winds don't affect it, but still like when you open the doors, like the wind is just like blasting it. So  we keep her closed. Yeah.
11:30We have a farm stand too and it's got like a  one door. It's got one door that opens to the left and it's a big door. And I worry when people come to get their eggs because I'm so afraid that door is going to smack somebody when they go in when the wind's blowing, but everybody's been okay so far.  And we have insurance that will cover that.  But I still don't want anyone to get hurt. I mean, I assume that they're coming to a quote unquote
11:59farm or homestead, they know to be careful. Right. mean, normally you would, yeah, I think that's a pretty safe assumption, but yeah, it's common sense.  Yeah. It's also, it's also probably not safe for people who have mobility issues and people know that too,  because you have to step up about four inches to get into it. And  I said to my husband, we should probably put a ramp on that. And he was like, it's on the list. This was, this was three years ago.
12:28Oh, we have a list going on stuff too. Yeah, there's still no ramp, but maybe this summer there'll be a ramp on it. I don't know yet. Yeah, I want to turn ours just a little bit because I want it to still face the road,  but kind of angled so the winds don't necessarily just like slap her inside.  But also I want to paint because right now it's just a dark green shed. So I want to get her painted.  Yeah, there's a list.
12:56There's always a list on a homestead.  never ends either. You get like six things crossed out and then seven more things show up.  Yeah, that's true.  So you do apothecary things. What do you do? We do elderberry syrup,  herbal salves. It's just stuff that  we use personally. I just make more.  We are big on essential oils, so I have rollers out there that we use. ah
13:23And so it's very important though with like herbal remedies. I have a disclaimer like, hey, this is what we use. This is how we use it and why. But, you know, do your research. Your mileage may vary. Yeah. I'm like, these are the ingredients, you know, because for allergy reasons, I don't want anybody. But yeah, so I have essential oil rollers. I have herbal salves. I love plantain, calendula, lavender.
13:53Dandelion we are big on dandelions here. We're probably the only property on this road that doesn't spray.  Oh uh I swear because everybody has all the pretty green yards and then there's our house with all the dandelions and which I think is prettier  Personally same I had to get my husband on board. He's like come  on and I'm like, nope, like they're just so good So we use it for like tinctures salves.  I feed them to our goats or chickens
14:24They're so good.  and so have you,  have you done dandelion root tea yet?  No,  I did. I have the roots. I, but I want to do,  um, this local lady was talking to me about it and it just, it got me curious, but I have not done it yet. It's like a dandelion latte. So basically you do that the tea, but then to that you add milk and then honey and it's basically like coffee, instead of coffee, it's the dandelion root.
14:53Yes, I bought dandelion root tea at the store at the co-op. Yeah. And tried it and it does it tastes like coffee. is wonderful. I just I have it. I just I've not been brave enough. Do it. Put those roots in the oven at the lowest temperature and let them dry out. OK, deal. That's good to know. She loved it too. She was like, no, it's so delicious. I'm like, OK, we'll see. And I have it. I just I've not done it.
15:22Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it.  I will definitely report back. Yes, please. um I love my rollerball bottle that has  lemon, lavender and peppermint in it. And I put it on my like right behind my ears  and right under my nose and on my wrist when I have a migraine headache and it literally takes the migraine headache down by half.  Oh my gosh. Yes, we have a migraine roller.
15:50Funnily enough, I had never added lemon to it. I do lemon, peppermint, and lavender as an allergy blend though. So that's awesome. killing two birds with one stone. Yes, for sure. Like it's so good. Yeah. And it smells good.  Yep. And I looked up the thieves oil recipe and I have thieves oil roller rollerball bottles too. I love these. We love thieves in this house.  Yep. I didn't know anything about it until I saw a former neighbor of mine was talking about it.
16:20And I was like, what is Steve's oil? And I looked it up and I was like, oh, I can do that. I can make that. have all the oils for it.  Mm hmm. Yep. It's really good. And it smells good. It's almost like Christmas. Yeah, because of the clove, right? Yeah. Clove and cinnamon.  Yes. m We didn't really do much for Christmas this year and I'm kind of sad about it. We were just busy and  my youngest had some stuff going on and we just didn't do it. And my youngest is an adult.
16:49Let's just make that clear. He's not little.  And ah we just kind of had a very quiet Christmas and we didn't really do cookies and we didn't do pumpkin pie.  And now I'm thinking about it. like, you know, we should pull some squash out of the  freezer and do pumpkin pie this weekend. Oh, that sounds so good. And nothing beats homemade. Yeah, and it's going to be chilly on Saturday. Maybe I can do that. Maybe that'll be perfect. That sounds so cozy. Maybe that'll
17:17raise the spirits around here, who knows. If that doesn't.  And that's one of the great things about homesteading is that the stuff that people do at Thanksgiving and Christmas,  you can do anytime.  doesn't matter. Yeah, that is true. Yeah. I just baked  zucchini bread, I think it was like two weeks ago, and it was using zucchini from our garden last year that I had frozen. Did it work? Yeah.
17:44Yes, it did. I always worry that it'll make it dry, but actually turned out so yummy. Oh, I thought it would make it really wet.  Oh, no, no, no, it did not. Huh. Okay. Mm hmm. Do you shred your zucchini before you freeze it? Yeah. Yes, I do. That's probably why it wouldn't make it wet.  Okay, cool. We grow winter squashes more than we eat zucchinis of the garden as they're coming in. So there's very little to go in the freezer because what we don't eat, we sell at the farmer's market.
18:14But we grow winter squash and the winter squash gets roasted and put in the freezer. So that's what will be in the pumpkin pie. It'll be butternut squash pie. Oh, that sounds so good. Yeah, because pumpkins are actually squash. So it doesn't matter what winter squash you use for your pumpkin pie. It's all pumpkin pie. Really? Yep. Huh, I was now years old. OK, that's cool, Yep. I was this many years old when I discovered that pumpkin is squash.
18:43I was like, has to be just pumpkin. Well, that's good to know. I don't think I would ever know the difference though. Yeah. I would not recommend using a Hubbard or a Delicata squash because they're not sweet. Oh, yeah. You would be able to be like, yeah, no, this is not traditionally made. But the joy of using butternut squash is if the butternut squash has had a good season, it's naturally sweet. It's so good. You can cut the sugar down in your recipe if you want.
19:13Oh God, butternut swatch is so good. We have some planted. I'm waiting for it to start sprouting because I'm excited because they're so good.  am. I'm trying so hard to not wish the next six months away because last year's garden was not  overly successful. Let's put it that way. And the year before that, it was not overly successful either. had really terrible weather. We had a lot of rain and then a lot of heat and then a lot of rain.
19:42which causes the blight, which kills plants. And I've got everything I have crossed that we have a successful growing season this year. Yeah.  I think it's going to be warm here. I'm nervous because we had a really warm winter. We're having an unusually warm spring. Yeah. So I'm nervous that we're going to have a really hot summer. So I'm trying to prepare for that. I hope with everything I have.
20:12that everyone who wants to grow produce this year  has a good shot at it because the last couple of years have just been hellish. The bugs, the bugs got us last year and  so we don't, we don't use like toxic chemicals on anything. So like I make our own sprays and stuff. um But my goodness, last year I was like, holy cow,  squash bugs. I had never  known what they were and  oh,  yeah.
20:41They give me the ick. They legit gave me the ick.  They're disgusting.  I was like, stop. I would stay on top of them, like trying to like, oh my God, was, nope. Zero out of 10.  Zero out of 10. Do you want to know a natural repellent?  What?  Neem  oil.  N as in Nancy, E-E-M as in Mary. Neem  oil. Okay. Okay. They don't like it. Good to know. I'll be able.
21:10You bet I'm going to get some now because after last year, like, oh my goodness. I could not, like, I could not get rid of them. I had to like constantly, once I thought, okay, I got this last like hatch because you could see the eggs on the leaves and stuff. I would cut the leaves. But then I was like, okay, we're good. And then they would come back. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, where are you coming from? And once they get into the main part of the plant, you're done for.
21:39Ugh, they just, no. Bugs in general just give me the ick.  And we've started finding ticks already.  Uh huh. I'm like, thankfully they're not on our animals, but I'm already spraying everything down. I'm like, nope. Like, no, no. They literally just, I start feeling them on me and I just, get the ick.  I cannot. Yup.  I hate that. It's so...
22:04It's so hard to get rid of it too, because you know there's no tick on you, but you still have the creepy crawlies. Oh yes, it's so bad. The other thing that I was thinking of when you were talking about the squash bugs, back before we moved here, we were growing squashes or something, very broad leaf plants at a neighbor's house. And they got the mildew, I can't think what it's called, downy mildew on the leaves.
22:33looked all over Google to figure out what we could do to treat it before it killed the plants. And it said milk and water, half water, half milk in a spray bottle. Really? And you wait till like 10 o'clock in the morning  and you spray the leaves and the milk somehow kills the mildew. Huh? So if you ever have downy mildew, and there's another name for it too, but again, think of it right now, spray it with a mix of milk and water.
23:03That's  wicked. Like how interesting. I wonder what's in the milk.  I have  no idea, but it worked. We had the most beautiful squash from those plants.  Well, hey,  and it's natural. So that's a double win. Yeah, there are so many things that  people did before we had all this not natural stuff.  And they did just fine. Yeah, that's what I like. That's the whole.
23:32thing here, like I always tell my husband like we like to turn to nature like for answers because that's how our ancestors did it. Like they didn't have all these fancy things that ironically are to make our lives easier.  But in reality, like, is it?  Um, in some ways, I'm really, really thankful for some advances we've made because because antibiotics kill strep throat.
23:59and I used to strep throat all the time and no natural remedy  gets rid of that. So really thankful for that.  But the stuff that we can do that  is fixable with nature, think that we should do that first. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Same.  I had one time it was strep throat and ah an issue with my tonsils at the same time.  Oh my goodness. On the plus side, I lost weight.
24:28I could not eat. So very thankful for the medicine for sure.  Yeah, I mean if I'm coming down with a head cold my go-to is orange juice and chicken soup, homemade chicken soup. And it usually does help.  But if I've got a sore throat and I've got white spots on the back of my throat, I'm going in for the prescription for antibiotics. Yeah, know. At the sign of anything here we start chugging Algaeberry syrup. I make our rollers. I diffuse oils.
24:58Like also if it gets worse, like, okay, you know, let's get medicine. Yeah. So, so again, it's, it's one of those  six of one half dozen of another things.  I don't think it has to be an either or. think it's a yes and yes.  Yep. um I agree. I would do elderberry syrup, except that our two elderberry plant trees, sorry, not plants, they're trees.  Um, get.
25:28eaten by the birds before we can get to the berries. Oh, so we have one here  and I didn't know what it was. It came with a property. I'm like, okay, because I wasn't into like homesteading. I didn't have that mentality when we bought our house. We literally came across it one morning and it was just like a good deal. Like, so we ended up moving in.  Plus we needed to be out of town because of the dogs. Yes. So it was like, okay. And it was the middle of winter. So it wasn't the ideal time.
25:59But then this was  going on 10 years ago. um Then like we got chickens and like, like they say chickens, it's the gateway to everything homesteading wise. so  I started getting into essential oils, which is like the gateway to like a natural life. It's like the chickens of a natural living of sorts.  And so  all that while here, but I think like
26:28We were like a year into the property and so like we had raspberry bushes out back that I trimmed at the wrong time and that's the end of that. um Come to find out we have an elderberry tree here on the side and I didn't know. So it got neglected for a minute  and  once I figured out what it was and I started learning about elderberry like the flowers, the berries and
26:55how the leaves, everything is medicinal, I started babying it. Well, for the last few years, it's been like my pride and joy.  Last year, finally, it was at a place where  I could have harvested the berries. ah Except the birds.  They were like, nope, dead. I'm like, well, okay. So we go to the mountains here, we can forage them pretty locally. It's like a 45 minute drive, so I don't mind.
27:25Worth it. Yes. Y'all,  absolutely. So I was like, okay, I guess I'll share with the birds this year.  So we just went up to the mountains and we forage. And so I've been very blessed in that sense that I still have them kind of close  and we're able to get them that way.  Yeah. Let's take a beat here on elderberry.  If you think you have an elderberry bush or tree growing on your property and you're not sure,
27:52make sure you know somebody who can identify it for you. There's two kinds and I guess the one with thorns, you're not supposed to eat the berries. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, either way you have to cook the berries for at least 20 to 30 minutes. Yeah. Cause otherwise it'll send you to the bathroom. Yeah. But I think the one with thorns is actually poisonous. I think it can really make you sick sick. Yeah. I identify it properly. Yeah. And on foraging,
28:21Definitely. Yeah, because  there's also another, I don't know the name of it, but it's very similar, but the berries are bigger. But they're the same shade of purple and everything, but they're bigger. I don't know the name of it, but it's also like one of those, okay, that's not elderberry. Like, no, don't do that one.  Yeah. If you want to get into foraging, find somebody who knows what they're doing and take all the notes you possibly can as they're walking through the forest with you.
28:50Yes, and don't over harvest because I've seen also people they're just they take everything. I'm like, OK, like the tree has to be able to come back next year. Like, hello.  Let's share with nature since nature shares with us. Yes, and share with everybody.  Mm hmm. Right. Because other people would like some of those elderberries,  Oh, yeah. Like we've um we've been times where it's like you see that people have already harvested.
29:20And it's like, come on.  Like you can tell they over-harvested. Yeah.  And  I'm going  to give them a little bit of grace.  Maybe they didn't know that they weren't supposed to.  Maybe they weren't greedy. Maybe they were just overzealous.  Maybe. Okay. But yes, try to consider the fact that we need to share. Yeah. Just like we were taught in kindergarten.
29:50Exactly. All the things I need to know I learned in kindergarten, I swear. Yeah, for real. Be nice, share, be kind. All those good things that the world really needs right now. Oh, and that's the truth. Yes, it is. So I have one more thing about the elderberries. We are thinking about putting netting over the trees this year so the birds can't get to the berries.
30:18The thing is, we did that with our strawberries a couple of years ago.  as the baby robins started showing up, we caught a couple of baby robins in the bird netting because they couldn't get loose. So  I'm thinking maybe we just say, screw it and let the birds get as many berries as they want. Because  I don't want baby robins dying in the  I know. think I would be like, it's fine. I'll share.  Yeah.
30:46That's my thing here like much to my husband's dismay like I don't think I'm the typical like homesteader Because I say the goats they're just very expensive dogs. Yes um Our plan of breeding and selling babies that went out the window like I fell in love with our first baby Denver and he's very much still here. Uh-huh. Oh, I  Same with our chickens like we have raised meat birds
31:14We raised a steer, we raised a pig, but everything that is raised for food is done so at my brother-in-law's property. Him and my sister-in-law. don't bond? Yes, literally. When we got the steer, my husband's like, no, like you're not allowed to name him. And I'm like, but why? And he's like, because otherwise he's going to die of old age. Uh-huh. Like, like he is going to feed our family when the time comes. And I'm like, so.
31:43We would help, obviously, like they would live on their property, but we help with feed, like with chores. Like if they went out of town, like we were on duty. And so there were a few times where obviously like I went over and I was like, I like feeding him. And my husband's like, no, like, come on. No, no, no. Like, no,  you cannot fall in love with him. Same with the pig. Same with the meat birds. They were all at my brother-in-law's house.  And so he had  animals that I'll be able to love on.
32:13That's really smart.  My husband's life is hard. He's like, well, like he's trying to figure out ways around this. Yeah, it's it's so hard. And I think all the time  we had our first litter of kittens two summers ago here.  And we knew that we were going to be finding them new barns to go be barn cats at.  And this family came and adopted two of them.
32:42And I was so excited because it was the last two of the litter. There were like seven kittens. Oh, wow.  And I was thrilled. And the mom and dad showed up and like a three year old and a six year old got out of the car with them. And they, these little kids were so excited  and I couldn't be out there with them. I couldn't, I just would have cried. And I thought I had a handle on it. I really did. And I saw these little kids just light up like Christmas trees at these kittens.
33:12And it was so good. Like my heart was so big and they pulled out of the driveway with those kittens and went home and I just cried. That would be me. Yup. That's why we just end up keeping them all.  And my husband, my husband came in and he said, is something actually wrong? And I said, no.  And he said, you're sobbing. And I said, they were so, those kids were so cute.  And
33:39They took the last two babies away and he was like, oh, so it's, it's happy and sad. I said, yeah, the worst kind.  Yes. Yup. That's, yup. That's how we have nine cats. Mostly people just dump animals here.  every July, I swear for the last like three years, we've gotten a cat every July.  Um,  last year we ended up getting two and then already there's one showing up an orange cat and we have one that's orange.
34:09And this one just looks just like him. And so one morning, my husband comes in and he's like, Hey, babe, I'm like, Yeah. He's like, there's an orange cat in the cat room. Okay, so we have an extra room that we have a little gate,  the dogs can go in it. Yeah, and eat their food. So we call it the cat room, but it's like just an extra room.  And, and I'm like, um our orange cat is in bed with us. And he's like, Yep.
34:36That's my point. There's an orange cat in the room and it's not ours. This cat came in through the little pet door that we have in the window.  He came in, he was eating, he was on the bookshelf, obviously scared at that point because our cat had noticed him. He noticed my husband and I'm like, oh good God. So we're kind of working on him. He's come back a few times and I told my husband as soon as he lets me love on him, that's cat number 10.
35:01And he's like, no, we already have nine. I'm like, you won't even notice. I'll just tell you it's tangerine. You won't even know the difference.  I swear people love homesteading because you have so much more. I don't know. Let's use the word freedom or autonomy. Yeah. To be able to do the things you'd like to do. Yeah. And regarding pet doors. Friend of mine, when we lived in the old house.
35:30Again, my life is old house versus new house. We've been in the new house for over five years now.  Oh, right.  When we lived in the old house, I had a friend and they had a pet door and  one of their cats caught a pheasant and brought it in through the pet door alive.  Oh, no. They had a pheasant in their house.  That's happened to us with a pigeon. I'm like, open and they brought it in.
36:00and they ran into the bathroom and I just heard like commotion in the bathtub. And so I opened the curtain and I see one of our cats with the bird and I'm like,  oh, like girl, like what are you doing? And then the bird just started flapping and it was alive and like this bird flying in, I'm like, oh my God. So I'm shutting off all the fans. I'm trying to keep the cats away from me. Cause then all the other cats were like,  game. Oh yeah. So, oh yeah. Yep.
36:29The things that they bring in. Thankfully they have not brought in a snake. Well, no, that's a lie. They did bring in a snake once and I'm terrified of snakes, like petrified of snakes.  And  I was making coffee and I see like this little snake curled like in the corner. I started screaming. I called my husband and he couldn't understand what I was saying. And I'm like, there's a snake.
36:58in our house. And he's like, okay, FaceTime me. Okay, so I FaceTime him and he's like, Oh, yeah, it is a snake. What did you think I was saying? Like, are you kidding me? Like he had to come home. Like he left work. He had to come home, get the snake out. And then go back to work. I could not I could I told him we're moving. We are moving. We are posting our house for sale. The house now belongs to the snake. Like nope.
37:29I cannot deal with snakes. Well, luckily it got removed and you still got to keep your house. Yeah, otherwise we have been homeless. I cannot. I could see that. We don't have a pet door here because our dog is on lead all the time, so we have to hook her up. So having a pet door wouldn't help. But my biggest fear, like I've had nightmares about her not being on lead.
37:56and having a pet door and she brings a live skunk into my house.  Oh, skunks. Oh my God. That's a whole other thing here because we had the tiniest skunks  actually kill a few of our chickens.  And so we had to dispatch them.  I am I love all animals except insects and reptiles. I cannot deal. But I love all animals. So I was like, oh, but at the same time, it's like my chickens or you, you're going.
38:24So my husband would handle it, but anytime I would like smell it, I'm like, oh God, our chickens. And so I run out, I'm like checking, no, skunks, my husband's actually just last night, I smelled and I ran out. I was like, there's a skunk. And he's like, you have like skunk PTSD? I'm like, yes. Like it literally got rid of, I think it was  nine out of 11 chicks and a mom. It decapitated a hen.
38:53Yeah, skunks and raccoons are the worst when it comes to chickens. We lost chickens last year to a mama raccoon and her four babies.  Oh no. See, I would be like,  ah, but also like, aw.  Yeah, it was really difficult because we didn't realize that she was a mama raccoon. My husband had actually tried to shoot her  and I stepped out on the porch at like five o'clock in the morning, the sun was just coming up  and
39:22As I shut the door to the house, I heard little screech noises and we have a cement pad outside the door. And I looked and four little baby raccoons out there. I'm like, oh my God, here we go. Oh, how'd you handle it? She left. I don't know. My husband went out and fixed the chicken run so they couldn't get in it. So they couldn't get near the chickens. And once the food source was no longer there, the buffet had been shut down. They left.
39:52Yeah, we had a raccoon once and my husband put a live trap and I swear it's like she saw the trap and just never came back. Mm-hmm. And I was like, okay with that. Yeah, if we don't have to dispatch wild animals on our property, we go out of our way not to. Same. It's because of me. Otherwise my husband would be like, he was raised very like country boy, like you do what you need to do, blah, blah, blah. But I'm like, but also how about we don't?
40:22Yes, and we have coyotes around here and I'm telling you, a coyote is in the yard, it's going to get shot at because that's not safe. Oh, same here. And I'm terrified of coyotes. Like in my head, you know, like a werewolf in a movie. That's what I see in my head whenever I hear a coyote. It is like the dumbest thing I know, but I cannot help it. I'm terrified. But we've never, knock on wood, had issues with them and our chickens.
40:50but we did lose a kitten two years ago.  she was half blind. I was getting her in. I brought her in and she got out again. And then I'm like, I hear the coyotes. I'm gonna go back and look for her. And I was out there and I could not find her. And it was mating season for coyotes. So it's when they're most aggressive. And so,  yeah, they took her. And so since then, I told my husband no. I,  that will be the one animal that I...
41:18No, like he took our little Freya, like, uh-uh, that's it. You do what you need to do.  Yeah, and the thing that's so tough with coyotes is that they are a beautiful animal,  but they will catch and eat almost anything that is smaller than them or injured. Yeah, yeah, so, uh-uh. No, I'm just, terrified of them to begin with. I've never seen one in real life. Oh, I have. So I'm like,  uh...
41:46So in my head, all I'm thinking is like this werewolf from a movie. So it it terrifies me and we hear them so loud. And my husband thinks, because behind our property, there's a field and there's like a little creek and everything. And there's like a section with a bunch of trees that he thinks there, there might be a coyote den. so he thinks that that's where they're coming from. I'm like, fantastic. Like I love that for us. Like why?
42:14And he's like, so like, we're just going to have to stay diligent. I'm like,  you mean you, cause let's be real.  But yeah, no. Yup.  And again, homesteading is a great thing to do, but there are some real things that come with it, like predators,  like losing animals.
42:35Oh yeah. having people steal money out of the farm stand. We haven't had that happen. really Oh God, knock on wood, us either. And everybody always  tells us like, you guys are very trusting because like we just, I don't know, it's the honor system. even like it's a self-serve stand. So like even if somebody just wants to take the eggs, my husband's like, listen, if somebody needs eggs  to feed their family that badly. They can have them.
43:02And I'm like, okay, cool. But also like at least  leave us a note like, hey, I needed the eggs. Thank you. And it would be really sweet if people would do that. But I think that they feel ashamed. They shouldn't. But they probably do. um I have one last thing for you. I hope it will help if you haven't already done it.  Did you know that Venmo and PayPal, the online apps that people can pay through,  they usually have a QR code that you can actually print out and put up in the arm stand?
43:32Yep, I have those. have that one. have Venmo, PayPal, Cash App.  And I also have the Apple thing to where I could run cards because we did farmers market two years. And so I had the credit card stuff, but I just cover that with the cash box.  Yeah. I get it as easy as possible for everybody. Yeah, I just didn't know if you knew and I wanted to let you know if you didn't know because it really helps because it does. Yeah.
44:01Because sometimes people just don't have cash on them, but they see the sign and they're like, I'm going to stop in and see what they have. And if you happen to have the QR codes, they can pay right there with their phone. I was impressed with how much cash we've also gotten,  two dollar bills. I had never seen a two dollar bill.  Like our boys had some like they were collecting them when they were little, but
44:28I got paid with $2 bills. This one lady came over and she did, I think it was $12 in $2 bills. And I was like, this is so cool. Like I'm keeping like all the $2 bills we get, I keep. And we've gotten quite a few. Like to me, that's so cool. I didn't know that was even a thing. Yeah. And they're not in print anymore. They don't make those anymore. My husband has a $2 bill folded up in his billfold from his grandpa. Oh, see, that's so cool. Like I had never seen one of my...
44:58The first time I got one, I even posted it. I'm like, thank you. Like, this is like, I'm geeking out something fierce. And so I keep them all like they're all folded in my  little money thing. And I'm like, nope, these are just like a keepsake that I hopefully will pass on.  It's so funny. The little things that just make your heart sing. Oh my God. Yes. Like I color code my eggs. Like they're always like  very specifically set up in their egg.
45:26containers, like even stuff like I feel so dumb because as I'm setting the eggs, I'm smiling like a fool. I'm like, oh my gosh, like it's yeah, definitely. It's the little things that bring joy  and everybody needs the little things to bring joy. swear to you, it's so good for the soul. Yeah. All right, Lydia, this was a joy. Where can people find you? Well, we are on Facebook, Instagram  and Tik Tok.
45:54at an Enchanted Homestead.  Fantastic. I feel like this conversation was enchanted. Thank you for your time.  Thank you for having me.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Lydia, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Same. You too. Thank you. All right. Bye.
 

Girlypop Acres

Today I'm talking with Lily at Girlypop Acres. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.
00:29At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Lily at Gurley Pop Far- Acres  in New York. How are you, Lily? I'm how are you doing today? I'm good. I almost messed up the introduction yet again. I'm telling you, I-
00:56I know what I'm going to say and the brain does not translate to my tongue to come out of my face. So how is the weather in New York this morning? Oh, it's actually decent for once.  We've been hit hard by snow lately, but it's sunny and shiny and everyone, all the critters are walking around happy. Good. It is March 30th, I think. And I'm in Minnesota and the sun is pouring through my bedroom window, which is the room I do my recording in.
01:26And it's supposed to hit 75 degrees today. Oh, goodness. I'm jealous. think we're probably in like the 40s and I'm celebrating. Yeah, the weather's been so weird. We had 81 degrees two Sundays ago for the high. Oh my goodness. And then it was cold, colder all week. And then it was really nice yesterday. I it got up to 63. It's supposed to be 75 today and it's supposed to drop down again this week. So.
01:51I'm gonna be real happy when we get a stretch of seven days where it is moderate and spring-like. It would be great. Oh, same here. Same here. It was snowing just two days ago here.  Yeah, it's nuts. So tell me,  I wanna know  about you and what you do, but tell me why your place is called Girlie Pop Acres. So I have four dogs, three great Pyrenees and one beagle.  And back when it was just the great Pyrenees,
02:20um I had two of them puppies  and you know, great Pyrenees puppies don't listen to anything at all.  And it was just easier to yell girly pops at them instead of being like, over here.  So I would yell girly pops and I accidentally trained all three of them to only respond to girly pop. uh And now the beagle does So I just named it after my dogs.  That is so cute.
02:50I call my dog girly all the time. Oh, I love it. I'm sure my neighbors know that we're girly pup acres because my dogs used to break out of the fence before we had our fences as good as we do. I'd be outside yelling girly pups, girly pups. Oh, Funny. You know what would be funny? It would you made cake pops and took them to your neighbors and were like, I'm so sorry that I'm always yelling girly pop. Here's some cake pops for you.
03:19I should. I don't know if they can even hear me because my neighbors are pretty far away, but if they do. Yeah, I think that would be really cute. If you ever get an inkling or hear a rumor that they're upset, just throw together some cake pops and I don't know, put cute little dog faces on them and take them over to them.  Oh, that's a great idea. That's what I would do because I really like turning messes into messages. That's such a cute like motto. I love that.
03:49Uh huh. have gained so many sayings from this podcast over two and a half years from people I've talked to.
03:57and they're all relevant. So I just, have a whole rolling lexicon in the back of my head of things that I can do or say. I love that. Yeah. It's been great. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do,  Um,  so  I'm a homesteader as you can guess, since I'm here.  Um, I raised Nigerian dwarf goats. We have eight goats right now.  Uh, we got the four dogs.  Uh, we got a goose named Boopers.
04:26walking around  next to me right now. I got a bunch of ducks, a bunch of silkies,  and  I raised two feral farm children and a potbelly pig named Big Bertha.  sounds like Homestead.  Yep.  Very  full life over here.  I consider myself a Lyme's disease advocate because I have Lyme's disease and so does my husband.
04:56um I'm a disabled farmer. I have two leg braces because my knees are all messed up.  I'm either always in a cane or a walker, which  is a challenge  with farming, but we make it work.  Yes, yes. And I'm glad you said that because  I'm not saying that you are over 50. I have no idea how old you are. I am over 50.
05:21You can do homesteading at any age as long as you feel safe in what you're doing. That is an amazing thing to call out because ah I'm only 28.  My husband is 25,  but we've been doing it for a couple of years and it was pretty much the second we could get a piece of land. We're like, okay, let's get back to farming. ah I was raised on a cattle farm when I was a kid and he grew up  at this lake.
05:50semi-famous bed and breakfast in Arkansas, where they had like 100 acres. But there's definitely times where your safety is like, goodness, like people don't think about how much goes into homesteading. Oh, there are so many ways to get hurt on a homestead. husband was splitting wood over the weekend with our wood splitter, you know, the actual
06:19motorized one. And I was sitting on the porch because I don't do  wood, he does it. And I kept going out and  kind of keeping an eye on him because he's out there by himself. And I'm like, please don't let him get sidetracked and leave his hand in the way. Because if you get your hand caught between the wood and the metal piece that splits the wood, you're going to have a broken hand for sure.  Oh, goodness, I couldn't imagine.  So he was fine. He's got it down to a science and he's very good at it. And it's kind of fun watching your husband do
06:48manly work, you  but  But there are so many ways I mean The first time we came to see this place over five years ago before we bought it  it's it's 3.1 acres and it is a flat it's a piece of flat land and uh There were divots or whatever. They're called trenches. I don't know  but all over the yard from where the the tractors had gone through or been moved or whatever on the property
07:18and I caught my boot toe on one the edges and went down. In the first five minutes, I was walking this property and I was like, well, that bodes well. I'll probably break a leg before it's over. So you can do the dumbest things and get hurt or you can be the most careful ever and still get hurt. So  it's something to consider. Yeah, I'm on the dumber end of it  with my first goat. He was a little baby.
07:44And he loved jumping up onto my shoulders to get  piggyback rides.  And I just let him because I was like, this is cute. This is adorable. This isn't going to backfire on me someday.  And now that he's a full grown goat and still tries to do it  so swell. uh I also got attacked by an emu once on our farm when we tried to raise emu. So  yes,  they are big birds and they're not
08:13I mean, I'm sure someone in their experience has raised an emu chick and it's the friendliest, sweetest bird ever and would never hurt a fly. But I don't think that's the usual course of events. I have no idea. We got one as a baby. It was given to us by a friend as a housewarming gift and it was in our living room and it would sit around and whistle at us all day long. I loved it.
08:41And then one day he just  snapped  and like went at me  against a tree. And I'm like, nope, you are not staying on the farm anymore. Wow. Okay. Well,  he was a he and I don't... Well, he wasn't a DNA sex. I'm not a thousand percent sure. We just called him a he because his name was Betty Sneemu the emu. So, eh I was going to say roosters of any fowl breed tend to be more aggressive than the  females. So...
09:12Apparently in emus, it's the girls usually who are the aggressors.  Oh really? Well, maybe it was a girl maybe  You did something that made her mad  apparently Okay Yeah, go ahead.  I just thought I'd say when you were mentioned in like your property and like how the like divots  you wouldn't imagine we bought seven acres  and  the previous owners,  don't know any of this like
09:41it's like rumors, but they were rumored to be like dog fighters that were breeding pit bulls in the forest portion of our property. And there's just like barbed wire everywhere and all sorts of hazards. We bought the property and there was a five foot tall trash pile just filled with junk. So we've had to be like,
10:07revamping the property since day one. We're two years in and we're still removing stuff. Yep. You inherit whatever the former people  left for you. welcome to this place was a dead skunk in the back of the barn. freshly dead, so freshly smelly.
10:30That was exciting. ah dogs,  when they used to go  into the forest area before we  fenced it off so they couldn't get back there,  they came out once with a fully intact deer skull.  Yeah, the joys of living in the country,  Yeah.  So you said you have Nigerian, is it Nigerian dwarf goats or is it Nigerian goats? Nigerian dwarf goats.
10:59Okay, anyone who's listened to the podcast over the last two and a half years knows that goats are my nemesis. I love them so much. I don't have any because we don't have any place for them to graze. And I say nemesis as in my weakness. I love baby goats. Grown goats? Not as much of a fan. Like I see a grown goat and I'm like, oh, that's a nice animal. But I see baby goats and I melt inside.
11:28We're planning on getting a baby buck sometime next week because I want to breed all my girls. have like six girls and I have two weathers. And I kind of want to raise them from a baby just so could get the baby. huh. And they are very cuddly. I don't know. Do you have experience with baby goats? Just with the one. Cause everyone else I've got as an adult.
11:53I have one goat that was bred on our farm. delivered her. Her name's Adalia. She's standing right in front of me trying to climb up a slide and failing. But she's about a year old now. Okay. Yeah, I talked a lot about baby goats at the beginning of when I started the podcast back two and a half years ago, because my friend, her parents raised goats and they had the long eared
12:21goats? they newbies or lemonges maybe or both?  And those little babies with those long ears were the sweetest things ever. I will have to send you  some photos of my goats after because I love all my babies.  I have this one tri-color goat that I just had over heels for. She looks like she's a baby but she's not. She's like two years old.  Her name's Feather.
12:48and she has this cute little collar with bumblebees on it.  I just adore her.  Nice.  Okay, so  you sound so  happy. Like your happiness, what you're doing is just rolling through my  headphones. Cannot talk today, geez. um So  are you just doing the homesteading for yourself or are you doing like a small business with it?  So  goal is both.
13:17I've only been doing the homestead for about two years. um So I feel like I haven't really got to the businessy portion of it yet, except for like Facebook monetization from sharing  photos of the animals online. ah But I hope to eventually get into more businessy selling and stuff.  And beyond the animals, do you grow any produce? ah Yeah, we grow some, but it's very minimal.
13:46Mostly because last year we had 28 ducks  and they were very destructive. So this year when we got ducks, we built them a run. We stopped free-ranging them. Okay, if you have 20 or you had,  I mean, I assume you still have a few ducks, you must have eggs in the summertime. So are you using them? Are you giving them away? Are you starting to sell them?  son would eat eggs for every meal.
14:16every day if he could. And  when we had like 80 chickens, we've downsized since then, ah we had like 80 chickens, he was going through the eggs like, wow.  Yeah. So yeah, mostly you're going to my side. I also have my dog Penelope who we found out was stealing eggs out of the nesting boxes. Uh huh.
14:43Yeah, I have seen dogs do that. My dog doesn't because she doesn't go anywhere near the coop.  We're really lucky.  So did you tease your son that he was going to turn into a chicken if he kept eating all the chicken eggs? uh I haven't. No, I'm just glad he's eating. He's a skinny butt, so I like to get some weight on him.  Uh huh. Yeah. The whole thing with your dog  eating the chicken eggs or taking the chicken eggs.
15:08um I don't know if you know who Millennial Farmer is. He's a guy that lives in Minnesota. has a YouTube channel. Oh, I have not heard of him. Okay. Well, he has a German shepherd named Anna and he has a chicken coop that she can go into.  he just out of the blue finds chicken eggs on his property. it's because Anna goes in and steals a chicken egg and walks around in her mouth  and then puts it down somewhere.
15:36Penelope, uh she was inside the house the other day and my daughter had found one of the concrete eggs that we had for the nesting boxes  and she had brought it inside and I looked over and I'm like what you got in your mouth and she was trying to eat the concrete  eggs.  Yeah that's a good way to have broken teeth doggo.  Yeah I took that away so quick. Yeah our dog when she was a puppy we had the uh
16:03It's like river rock, but it's not river rock.  It's the ugly rock that you put around your house.  And she would go out and  she would come in the house with a piece of river rock in her mouth. And I'm like,  you cannot chew on rocks. I cannot afford to get your teeth fixed. She finally outgrew it. think it was two years ago that she finally stopped doing it. But I was like, why are you doing that?  Oh, these dogs will keep you on your toes.
16:31Yeah, it's such a bad plan. Do not chew on rocks. Your teeth are not stronger than rocks. I promise you. And I loved her so much that I was like, I don't want her to her teeth. Oh my goodness. I was such a sucker. Okay. So you have a son. Is that your only child? No, I have a daughter too. She is obsessed with our ducklings that we got. So she will just sit down in the duck pond and quack.
17:03She's only three. She just turned three. Okay, so how old is your son again? He's seven. So have they ever known any other kind of life other than this homestead life? My daughter not really. My son, yes, but he doesn't remember it. So we were living in our friend's attic.
17:29before we got to this place and Isla was just crawling. She like just started and Isaiah, I don't have much to say about him. was, you know, it was he five. And then we were saving, we got this place and it's all they really know now. So I of course am a convert. I love the fact that we live on a homestead.
17:57I'm really excited for your kids because your kids are going to have such... My son's finally starting to see  the possibilities of what he could do now that he has land.  And he's starting to build his own little playhouse um out of cob. He's using pallets and cob. And yesterday,  my daughter and him came in.
18:20all just completely covered in mud. They showed me that they were mixing in like the hay and stomping it, trying to build their little playhouse.  love that.  And before you, before you jumped in, I was going to say they're going to have so many opportunities that most kids just don't have these days.  Your kids are not going to be  noses in tablets and cell phones. Your kids are going to be outside.
18:50with the goats and the ducks and chickens and I don't know whatever else you add in over the next 20 years. We're saving now to get a horse. That is the big goal. Next week someone is coming in to finally finish the seven acre property fence and we'll have that ready so that we can get our horse soon. Awesome. Do you have a preference on what kind of horse you're going to get?
19:17Oh, I still am in the research stages. I need to learn more about horses, but I've wanted one since I was a kid.  Like I said, I grew up on this cattle farm and my grandpa, he was like, if you can get your mama to stop smoking cigarettes, I'll buy you a horse.  And little five-year-old me took that as my life mission. And every single day I'd be like, Hey, what you doing in there?  You're going outside? What are you doing out there?  And eventually  she got.
19:46tired of me being up her rear 24-7 and she quit. And my grandpa forgot that he had said that because he didn't think it would actually happen. So I didn't get my dang horse. Well, you gave your mother many, many years of her life. I did. The more important thing. Good job. I hear really good things about quarter horses because quarter horses are like the horse that can do everything.
20:17I'll definitely have to do my research on those.  Yeah, but the best horse is the horse that  is a good horse that listens to you, that is calm with your children and isn't huge. A huge horse,  it's really hard to mount up a huge horse. It's really hard to get on them. Just me with me being as broken as I am, I would imagine it. Uh-huh. So.
20:40But no, just, literally just had a conversation with somebody about quarter horses a couple of weeks ago on one of the podcast episodes. And I was like, so what is special about quarter horses? And she was like many, many things. And then she told me, and I was like, wow,  I, if we had room, we'd have a quarter horse.  Oh, I'm excited someday. It's going to be true, but you know, got to start with like the preparing.  Yeah. I learned that the hard way. Don't get an animal before you.
21:09have all the fences and all the things ready because, you know, it doesn't go well. Yeah, it comes back to that safety thing. You want to be safe on your homestead and you want your animals that you care for to be safe too. Okay, so you are living on a homestead. Are you getting into the whole preserving, canning, I don't know, doing sourdough, any of that stuff? Yes. So my grandma was canned my whole life and she still does.
21:39um Every year she makes this big trip up from Illinois to bring me her canned goods because she cans way too much for just herself  and completely fills my ah now canning room.  I just got into it myself about last year and  definitely got quickly obsessed.  We just planted some blackberry  plants, some strawberries, some blueberries.  So I'm hoping to be able to can up some jam soon.
22:09Very nice. I'm so excited for you.  We put in apple trees the first fall we were here. So we moved in in August of 2020  and we had six apple trees in the ground in October of 2020. And we just got our first decent harvest of honey gold apples this past fall. So it took four years.  Well, gives me a timeline  because we did the same thing. So  hopefully two more years to go.
22:38You might luck out. It's anywhere from three to five, depending on the variety and how old the trees are once you put them in. When you put them in. I don't know. My husband works at tractor supplies. So every now and then I'm just like, hey, while you're at work, get a fruit tree. Hey, while you're at work, get this. Yep. We bought alder or alden plum trees last year and we have no idea how long it'll take for them to produce fruit. have to look it up. My husband asked me the other day and I was like, I don't know.
23:08I will put it on the list of things to Google.  But I'm kind of hoping that at least we get blooms on them this year because they always smell good.  I'm kind of a uh chaos homesteader and I just  throw things in the ground, throw  water and hope for the best.  We are too. And the apple trees that we got were actually a housewarming present from a guy that owns an orchard up near where we used to live.
23:39That's very cool. Yeah, so six apple trees because he liked us. I was just like that is the sweetest thing ever. Thank you. And my husband is always like, you he's always going to Tractor Supply or Fleet Farm or Menards or Home Depot for something. And if he sees a fruit tree that he thinks will work, he'll call me or text me and be like, I can get a couple more fruit trees for $7 apiece. Do you want them? And I'm like, if you're going to plant them, sure.
24:07So it seems  like every year we're putting in a new tree. We just have no idea when we will see fruit on it. That's so cool.  The plants I'm most excited about right now is last time my grandpa came up from Illinois, they're getting up there in age um and they're like, I think this might be our last trip. I don't know. um But they gave me a bunch of blackberry plants.
24:36that they brought from their farm.  So I'm very excited for those so that I can have a little piece of their farm here.  Yes, and that I'm so glad you brought that up because that is so important. History is not just in books,  it is in plants and animals. And it sounds really funny saying it about animals. But when you think about racing horses, people are so
25:04I don't know, bent on getting particular foals from grandparents or great grandparents or great great grandparents that won races. Like Secretariat the horse, he, if you have a horse from his line, you're golden. Yeah, for sure. And it's history. And when you end up bringing plants from your family's gardens from 50 to 100 years ago,
25:32That's their spirit in those plants. That's how we remember them.
25:38You made me smile so much at that.  like my grandparents  mean everything to me.  And I'm definitely super happy that they did that for me. I cried when they brought those up. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I would have too. My grandma on my mom's side loved peony plants. P-E-O-N-Y.  Those are my mama's favorite.  Uh huh. And she grew them in her garden behind her little house in Oakwood, Illinois, of all places.  And I
26:08I didn't really know much about peony plants because we were never visiting them when they were blooming. So I didn't ever see them bloom. I just saw the leaves.  And when I moved to Minnesota from Maine, everybody in Minnesota has peony plants everywhere and they're gorgeous. And so I have become a peony addict. have over a hundred plants outside right I love that. I love that. That's why I have a bunch of hostas because they were at my grandma's house.
26:35And they're not her hostas. But the second I got property, was like, honey, you are going to scavenge the internet. And if you see hostas, you are grabbing them for me.  So I'd send him links on Marketplace, like free hostas, free hostas. Yeah, absolutely. And I wish that I had known that my grandma, her favorite flower was peonies. I didn't understand because I was too young to understand.  I wish that I had known enough to ask her if I could take some home.
27:06Because I could nobody thinks I would have asked from for the original farm. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I'd known because I would love to have peonies for my grandma in my my peony garden. And I do not. But I have like 10 different colors growing and they will be blooming in  two months, two months. And every time I cut peonies, I'm like, oh, my grandma in heaven is probably just grinning. She's like, yes, Mary Edlin. Good job.  Oh, so sweet.
27:37Yep, my favorite is the baby pink ones. They are so pretty and they smell so heavenly.
27:44gonna make me need to get some peonies here.  We do plan on doing beekeeping. We have the bee boxes, we're getting set up. uh So I'm starting to plant a bunch of plants around the bee boxes  so I could probably get some peonies around them. Well the good good and bad news on that is the best time to plant peonies is now.
28:08And I don't mean now, but I mean when you want to do it, do it. This fall is probably the best time because you plant them in the fall. But it takes three years for them to bloom. ah So if you want to have flowers for your bees ahead of time, ahead of three years from now, um Bee Balm is really good. They love that. Hence the name Bee Balm.  And they also really like um basil when it's flowering.
28:38Ooh, we have that planted in the duck area already.  Yeah, they love basil. They love thyme. T-H-Y-M-E thyme.  And uh I can't think of what else. Oh, they love them. ah Zucchini squash blossoms. They love those. And they love winter squash blossoms. So if you wanted to, you could put up a trellis and grow like butternut squash. be so much fun. Yeah.
29:07And it would give them  nectar to play with and make honey. So you can do a whole bunch of stuff because bees are great.  I am not going to lie. I'm being very honest. I'm not a fan of bees. I don't want to keep bees. I love what they do. I think that the wild bees can do just as good as the ones that we might keep. And I would just assume the wild ones do the job.  Yeah. My husband, the homestead is very much more my thing.
29:37uh Like, he likes it. He likes being able to see all the cool stuff that I've done.  He comes out and helps me with fences.  But that's the one thing that he really wants to do is bees. So I really want to get that for him so that he has his little passion project. Well, he needs one because you guys have to be aligned. That's important in a marriage. Yes.  Plus you'll get honey and you can be like, honey, I love the honey that your bees produced.
30:06Well, if you met my husband, he can go through honey like no one's business. His favorite thing to do is go to like little farm stands nearby and get those little like honey sticks that are just straight honey. I don't see the appeal in those, but he'll just drink them all the time. My kids loved those.
30:27When they were little, they loved them and I hated them because they always ended up dripping it on their clothes. They're messy. I don't know. Just too sweet for me, but he loves them. So well, anything that is easy to keep the spouse happy is always a good thing. All right. easy now. Just now that we have this little piece of quietness, you know, if I didn't want to get stressed, it's like, OK, go sit by the duck pond.
30:58Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's why we did it. That's why we moved too, because I just couldn't handle living in town anymore.  We had the opportunity to jump and we jumped to a 3.1 acre from a one tenth of an acre lot. That's amazing. We were ready. We were so ready. We were high from the minute the house, the offer was accepted  until we moved in a month later. And I was just like, oh my God, I'm actually home. It feels like home.
31:28We told the guy who was selling this place, we'll pay whatever you want. It doesn't matter.  We'll pay whatever it is. just went in.  Yep.  Absolutely.  All right, Lily, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're there.  Where can people find you?  I'm  at girlypupacres on Facebook and Instagram.  Awesome. Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Lily?
31:53You told me at the beginning that you woke up feeling like you might be getting the flu. Thank you for  sucking it up and taking the time to talk to me. This was really fun.  I'm glad. It was fun for me too. Thank you for having me. All Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Cole Canyon Farms - Doin' The Damn Things!

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms in Montana again. I think for like the fifth time maybe.  Good afternoon, Morgan. How are you? Good afternoon, good afternoon. Yeah, we've gotten to chat quite a bit since we met a few years ago over those little groovy goats. So I'm excited to be back on.
00:27It's funny how podcasting can create friendships, real friendships.  Yeah. Yeah. It's  actually really honestly the digital age. It's crazy how we can create friends that we don't even see in person, but they, they're a real friend. It's I, mean, there's pros and cons to digital, but that is one of the things I love about it. Like the community I've made and met and the people like you I've gotten to meet have really shaped Cole Canyon farm.
00:55to what it is today, honestly.  Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that. How is the weather in Montana today? It's hot.  We've been in the 70s. I'm not even kidding you. Like, I had shorts on and this is like unbelievable for Montana  to be this warm. So I think it's like 70 today with light breeze. So it's a good, you know, a good day to start spring cleaning and getting all of the, you know, future projects we have done. How's your weather?
01:24It is partly sunny. is 68 degrees. Feels like 68 degrees. I'm looking at my weather app right now and there's hardly any wind today. So that's a nice change from Saturday. Saturday, the wind was blowing so hard. was making the house creek. man. Yeah, it does that to our house. We've had like, so it's windy where I'm at, right? So I'm not ever shocked by wind, but in the last few years, we were seeing more and more gusts. I remember when like
01:5075 mile per hour gusts were huge a few years ago and now this is the second time in the last six months we've had 90 plus mile per hour gusts here. Yeah,  I,  this, I don't even know what to say. I've talked, I talk about the weather on every single episode and I am literally out of things to say except that it's just weird. It is the apps never correct. Like we had rain last night. We could hear it cause we live in a middle, like a metal tin boot.
02:20like 10 house, you Yeah. And I could hear it and my husband, it was like, I don't know, we got in a bed kind of late last night because I went to the auction, the horse auction. So I had a lot to film in on about.  Did not come home with anything, side note, good thing on that. But, you know, we heard just this light pattering and I was like, is that hail? Because like that would normally like snow hail season as this season, right? Yeah. And we were like, no.
02:46No, actually that it's sprinkling outside and the app never updated never said we had precipitation nothing. So I bought uh I think it's a hydrometer or whatever where you stick it outside. I need to figure out the real name for it, but I just called the rain catcher,  but it will tell me how much rain we're getting because I think to be honest with you, they're not they're not as accurately recording what's going on and being a farmer. That's super important. So
03:13because the digital age has changed and we can't rely on these apps anymore as much as we did for weather, I'm having to learn  the old ways, which is always good, right? Like if the electricity goes out, you need to know how to do this. But I've started turning rain myself, so it'll be interesting. I need to look at what we got last night, but I don't think it was enough to even register, honestly, Mary. But yeah, we've had  strange weather here too.
03:37Yeah, I'm at the point where if I want to get kind of an idea of what the weather is going to be in a few days, I will catch the morning news.  Yeah. They seem to be more accurate than the weather apps.  And if I want to know what the weather is right now, I literally step outside.  Yeah, that's how I am too. Like we live kind of on an outlook, right? So the storms whip around us because we're on the top. We're kind of on like it's called a rim out here, but it's like a fat uh kind of a flat  plane that's in the middle of
04:07Some canyons right there's canyons in the middle of it where it popped up. Well, you know it'll if it goes around us left  If it goes around us left then Will sometimes get rain but if it goes right which is into Laurel the city Yeah, then we don't ever see it So you can almost stand on the flat and it'll say that it's you know, hailstorming and it's not where we're at
04:35We don't even have any hail or snow, nothing coming. But in town, they're getting like beaten with golf ball size, literally golf ball size pieces of hail. So I'm, I'm like you, I just walk outside and I try to look, you know, and see if there's any storms blowing in. But you just, don't know. I pack enough clothes, I guess, with me for any type of weather. I've got bibs, I've got jackets, I've got shorts, I've got t-shirts in the truck, right? Like, yeah.
05:01just changes often, so you just go with the flow, but it is gonna make farming interesting this year. So I think having,  like you said, just some idea of where to look for reliable stuff is important. It is, and it's so funny because  I listen to a lot of podcasts about podcasting and everybody's like, don't talk about the weather, it's boring. But anytime I ask someone who is farming, homesteading, ranching, it's not boring.
05:30It's really interesting to hear everybody's take on what they've got going on and what it's doing. Yeah, it literally, I mean your whole life as a farmer is based on an amount of rain that's going to come down if you don't have irrigated land. And  we sadly have to haul every drop of water on and off this property, know, like there's, it's not an option for us. My leach field is green with three or four inches of grass already, which is crazy. The horses love it, you know? So
05:57I think it's going to be great for the animals. They've had a rough swing this year. know my animals really need some extra TLC after going from 70, not even kidding you, down to one degree in less than 24 hours. That's really a big swing. So I think, you know, it's important to watch the weather because of that, but just knowing how to adapt to it. that's something that I'm actually planning my whole life around is all these weather changes, like building more greenhouses this year.
06:27Yeah. Trying to  make more wind blocks. Like that's a whole thing. We've been looking up the Texas Ys.  They're like in Texas, they're known for it. You get a lot of wind there, right? So it's like a Y shape, but they use it for cattle and horses. We've been trying to plan how many of those we're going to need because if not, my poor horses, it doesn't matter where they stand in a shelter, they're going to get, you know, soaked.
06:53with how much wind we have in the unpredictability. can't go put sheets on them, you know, because I don't know when it's going to rain.  exactly.  All right. So let's let's go back to when you and I first talked. When you and I first talked, you were Groovy Grazies, Grazies Montana, and you were raising  goats and taking the goats to parties and things. And the last time we talked in January, end of January,  you had gotten a couple of horses. So
07:23What I'm wondering about is how you got into horses because that really wasn't on the radar for a while. Yeah. So I'm a horse girl. I'm a I'm a covert horse girl. That's what my husband calls me. Right. Because  Andy made fun of horse girls growing up. It's actually funny. One of the girls that I'm going to buy hay from this year, she knew Andy growing up and I was like, I turned him into a horse girl.  So he's like almost completely also turned into a horse girl himself. uh
07:52But I was writing when I was nine actually, ah wild fact about me.  When I was little, ah Mike Baumgartner was my trainer out in Texas and he was like an Olympic  candidate. He actually taught the first girl ever  who was legally blind in death back in like the  1980s or  90s. I'd have to look it up, I haven't in a while to do dressage. So  I did weekly lessons and work.
08:21my hind end off for Mike Baumgartner so I could do extra lessons with him and  I fell in love with horses. My mom gets bit by horses. When she comes out here, she's gonna get bit by every single horse I guarantee you I have on this property.  Not because my mom does anything weird, it's just her energy. I think they know she's scared of her, right?  But yeah, I've been writing since I was nine and then, so Mike Baumgartner, then uh I got into hippotherapy.
08:50um Hippo, sorry, hippotherapy with the horses. um It's uh working with kids and adults on the spectrum,  nonverbal, some kids didn't move. ah And we were using horses to be a form of therapy. And I did that, uh she's almost like kind of like my mom, Tara, actually, out in Texas. And I was going to become an instructor for that. And then we moved to Arizona. So right, like my whole childhood, I was just immersed.
09:18emerged into riding and being around horses. They were kind of my calm spot. then Arizona, I got really, really sick. January 11th, I can tell you the day of 2020. was riding before that, I was riding some Western Pleasures out there with Heather Meyer. So people are horse people, they'll know her. She won some world competitions in Western Pleasure and I was riding some really high end horses and just learning the ropes of that after being in the military. So the military was my big like kind of Hades on.
09:47on writing because in Japan they don't have anything but ponies out there and on the island. So,  you know, I came back uh after my divorce, went to Arizona, wrote for Heather Meyer for a little bit, um learned a lot from her. And then I got sick and stopped writing literally for six years. Just Mary woke up one day and couldn't do the thing that kept me sane.  Oh, yeah, it was rough. So that's why I didn't even talk about it. That's why I wasn't even on the radar. So that's why I'm giving you that backstory. Like, yeah, that's fine.
10:17I never thought I was gonna ride again.  I had a hysterectomy at a young age and I'm very open about that ah because it's a lot of things, a lot of women are having to deal with that. And honestly, it has to do with the chemicals that we're exposed to. So like that's a whole nother tinfoil hat thing we could go down to, but right. So I had a hysterectomy  and didn't ride. And then I got cleared a year ago. So actually it's coming up.
10:42I didn't really talk about the one horse I had because he wasn't on the property a bunch and he wasn't really involved in the business. But  I've had horses my own for about a year now, but I've changed out obviously quite a bit  when I've had as we're trying to figure out the direction of them. But horses are my hobby. So they will never pay for themselves.  They will. I mean, they can. Later on, I'm going to breed.
11:09I've got to throw a bread  off the track. I'm going to breed to my friend Shire that's registered and I'll get a registered baby and that'll move us down the path. like, eventually maybe they'll kind of cover themselves, but they are truly a hobby. So I always tell people like,  you got to decide on your items if it's a hobby or if it's a farm, right? And horses are a hobby for right now. um We do want to get into driving and stuff, but yeah, so that's kind of my background. um I'm a covert horse girl, not your typical horse girl.
11:38and I'm turning Andy into a horse girl himself. He's doing so good with training the babies and gentling him up. And he's seeing the quietness that you have in your brain. Have you ever been around a horse, Mary? Have you ever been? I have. Yes, I have. OK, so are you a horse girl? I got to know now. I am not a horse girl. I would have loved to have been a horse girl, but no one I knew when I was growing up had horses. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was a city girl, right? So it's funny. A lot of people don't know that about me.
12:08Well, I mean, like people that listen to this do, but like a lot of people just assume, you know, that I came from the country and everyone had them, but no, we drove like, I want to say it was like 30 or 45 minutes, one way to Mike Baumgartner's place. And I did that once or twice a week. And that was the only way I could ride. then I, mean, Texas, everyone rides out there or has a horse at a stable. So because I was a horse girl already riding, I just kind of found the rest of the horse girls. So that was really.
12:38of my thing. yeah, so my program right now  is my son's paint,  Liberty. She was born on 4th of July, which is really cool. But he  wanted a really bad so I was bidding at the auction house, which is now my new favorite. uh It's the cheapest thing I can, well, if I don't bring anything home Mary, it's the cheapest. But um you know, I go, take coffee, I buy a drink and a little snack and I go and I'll sit there all day and
13:08And just watch, I mean, it's interesting to understand the horse market, especially if I want to make this not a hobby. I need to understand that. But yeah, I'm going to be offering weaning startings.  I'm going to work with my friend, Hannah Jones, ah to start understanding how to do the missing link. I've ridden,  I've never had a baby this young or ever really, right? Baby horses, never. I've never gotten experiences. So this is all first. And I've done basic groundwork on horses that have been trained.
13:38but never like started. So Hannah's gonna kinda help me start them. But I do plan  on being able to help friends consign their horses and ride them and stuff. Cause not everyone wants to go ride in the auction house. Me personally,  it doesn't bother me, right? um So that's kinda like how that'll play in a coal canyon farm. And eventually we do plan on having some like horse driven, my husband's obsessed with it, horse driven like a...
14:06hay balers, swathers, things like that. He's gone down a whole thing because how diesel's like five bucks here almost. he's going down this whole path because we believe everything here at Cole Canyon Farm has to work for itself. So I still do goat parties, by the way. It's called  agri tourism, by the way. I didn't know that. So like I'm so behind on the time. So I caught up to that wording. was like, all right, cool. But um we're only dedicating
14:35Friday, like Fridays and Saturdays, I have an employee that I've hired. Not an employee, like kind of like a subcontractor. She'll come and help me. And then if she wants to host her own parties, she can use the name and stuff. I got to look into it, right? Like I'm still in the works of like getting insurance fully done because of our expansion, making sure my employee is under there or she has to be a 1099 contractor, making sure I do the right thing for her. And then...
15:04we have the sheep, so we've expanded. So we're still doing groovy grazers that helps the goats pay for themselves. I'm still milking them. I'm about to start milking today actually, because I've had some babies  and they're past their two week stage where I don't really want to milk them. So I've got some does I'm going to milk finally, and I'll sell my milk for that.  I'll have to get tested. Everyone needs to know that if you buy goat milk, you need to ask them. It's not the...
15:31It's not a requirement in every state and it's not really even a requirement in Montana, but a good breeder should have biosecurity screening  down to CL. And if you don't know what CL is, you can totally look at my page. I'm going to put together some courses for that, like basics of buying that'll just be free  information for people.  But CL can be zoonotic and then like making sure if tuberculosis,  fever, mastitis rate. So I'll send off my pathogens.
15:59My stuff for pathogen testing it'll come back. I'll start selling I do sell at 30 a gallon I encourage all of your listeners to do the cost if you were selling it ten fifteen dollars a gallon You are not breaking even it may feel like it but in the long run you are not Yep I believe it.  Yeah people undervalue it. That's a hobby. If you want to be a hobbyist do that. I'm not a hobby
16:27I am a cottage farm that are selling the extras and if I'm going to sell them and my family's not going to consume it, then it needs to be worth my time, right? Because cottage farms, you're allowed to sell your excess. So the goats are still milking. We had sheep. I had  every you drop a baby.  My first year breeding. I'm so proud of myself because sheep is a learning curve.  How many babies? Okay, so tragic story.
16:55But Betty, the one I talked about, because she's like kind of the most important horse here um because of her like role in our whole program eventually. But she's going to make painted pretty mules eventually.  which is our gold mules. I have Betty hits the sheep two weeks before she's due. They're like playing in the field and we're throwing hay, right? So like I'm setting the stage so you understand. So they she runs her over the sheep  and we like checked out the sheep. She seemed fine. Betty was fine.
17:25But like Betty stepped on it and like with the wool kind of like rolled it and it's because they were staring at me with the hay, but super excited, right?  So that  one did have a dead on arrival uh ram. And it was really kind of sad because it had crushed parts of the baby when she stepped on it. I'm glad my U is okay.  And I didn't even like, there's nothing you can do at that point, right? So sad part of farming, that's the reality of it. One of them was born dead. I do know why, which is important when you farm too.
17:55So one ram, then we had two healthy rams born and then two ewes. So I've had five babies, four alive, one dead. So that's a really good ratio because these are first time moms. So I think we talked about it  two episodes ago where we were talking about the changes and why we're moving to sheep. So these sheep  were bred  at nine months old. They have now dropped after a year. So it's five months, right? So they're about a year.
18:24year and a half. They have now  had their babies.  So now these babies will grow up and then they will then be bred this year. All of them will be re-bred. So now next year I'm moving in with seven ewes into breeding season, the end of the season, right? So next year I'll drop seven different ewes. I will butcher one of the lambs,  one of the rams. I have to pick the two because my current ram is a shy eater. I did not know this was a thing about sheep.
18:53that some sheep are shy and they don't want to eat in front of  other animals. So he like literally was withering away. I, because I never saw him eat. I just didn't ever think anything of it because I would catch him kind of by the pile. But because we've been outside a lot more, he wasn't eating.  So I had to move him in with like a really tiny little buck that I have. He weighs like  seriously no more than 30 pounds. So I've got my ram.
19:17in there with this little Nigerian dwarf buck and their best buds and that goat taught him to eat. But because he has this like undesirable trait shy eating, we will process him also. So I'll process two lambs this year, which we will probably put honestly, both of them into our freezer because of the fact that food, right, food scarcity, diesel going up, just kind of the writing on the walls. I'd rather have some meat in there and not the excess.  lamb is really yummy.
19:47Oh my goodness, I breed cheviyat and I encourage people to look at them. They're such an under underrated sheep because they only get up to like 120 pounds as a you, maybe 160 as a ram. they were they're from England and they are meant to graze. They're specifically made to grass grass finish. And I don't want anything that needs to be corns or fed really heavily because I'm I that's more input.
20:15It's not even because of like how unhealthy it is that you eat all the soy and stuff through the animals, but literally because it's more input, right? So that's why I picked these cheviyats. So they're really interesting breed, even though they're smaller. I am getting them sheared this Thursday. So I'm gonna, I'll get to learn about the wool. We'll eventually process that, right? So the sheep really are just kind of coming along as the backbone because Groovy Grazers doesn't pay for itself. And that's where I had to decide.
20:43are we gonna continue down the road, which you and I had kind of talked about on the, a few episodes ago about changes and when we came out with Cole Canyon Farm. Graziers is great. Pivot was a big word in that one, Yeah, exactly. We pivoted, right? So Groovy Graziers is great, but to make it sustainable, it's only got a six month season. It's not really worth it because it's a lot of work and time off the farm for myself. Each visit, if it's an hour long, it's a minimum of three hours off the farm.  If it's a two hour visit,
21:12now you're talking four hours off the farm, right? So it was becoming like a job where nothing was getting done at home, but now we have a lot going on. So another pivot that my son wanted to do was we got pigs. So not only are we now doing sheep, we've got the Nigerian dwarf for milk and parties. We have pigs. My son bottle fed a pig, which was really a good thing for him.  And he decided he wanted to get into them. So we're making a pig pen because I didn't know this, but pigs are like called mortgage lifters.
21:42Yes. Have you ever heard that? Yes. I have never heard that, Mary. Yeah, they're they can be the backbone of a homestead or a farm too, just like the sheep can.  Yeah. So like we got those guys now. Get it.  My friend gifted us those New Zealand rabbits. I think we might have maybe talked about them, but they've had their first litter. And  one, people want to buy them because you can breed them in the backyard. I'm going to do a whole course on how to feed your family.
22:11supplementing with like the rabbits. You can't eat just rabbits. There's a whole syndrome because they have no fat on them.  But there's a way that people can produce beyond chicken at their home and use that as fertilizer. So that's something we're kind of getting into. I had done rabbits before, but I can't eat chicken. you  know, the year just, we're kind of in cute coming to the end of Q1 after April. And so, well, we're into
22:36We were, you know, Q1, whatever. I'm just like kind of lost on the Qs. I've got to look back through them. But I know that Q1, I think ends in April or something.  And I sat down proactively and I was trying to get together what we spent the most money on.  And it was obviously beef, right? Even though I'm buying locally from somebody, which I recommend someone trying to find that or buy a half a beef or something. I buy it by the month. Butcher boxes for my friend here locally.  so beef was such a big number. Well, I did the math on rabbits, right? So I did how much feed?
23:06how much space, how much to build the cages. And I was like, well, with how much I'm buying beef, I can cut that out by half, because I used to have chicken in there. And then it got replaced by beef and raised these New Zealand rabbits. And people are buying them for trios for a hundred plus here, non-paper, just meat rabbits.  That's income. That's good income, actually, like really good compared to the output of a rabbit. So we're also doing that. So I'm really focusing on items that are going to produce for the farm.
23:36that are smaller scale. Like I don't have grass puppy money. That's what I call cows, the grass puppies. I do too. Yep. Yeah, I don't have that kind of money. I'm sorry. For a bottle calf out here, Mary, they're going for over a thousand, a thousand five hundred. Yeah. And a year or two ago, they were going for what? Four or five hundred.  They would take them out back at the auction house, the bum calves, if they couldn't get rid of them. Like if you want to be really like very stark and serious on this podcast, that's the reality of it.
24:04They were begging people to take them.  Now they're little cash cows, literally cash cows, you know, like,  so I don't have that kind of money, but that's okay. Neither do I have that kind of water, cause I have to haul it, nor do I have that kind of like workhorse with the horses. You've got to have horses if you're moving cattle or doing anything with them and any source of like making money off of them.  It's just the reality of it or four wheelers.  So Montana can't really use four wheelers.  We're pretty rugged out here.
24:33That's what we've been up to, right? Like I just launched my website. That's another big thing that happened. We're going to start doing courses. I have to change the date because I just realized I'm going to be the key speaker,  a keynote speaker. So one of the ones that are listed at Earth Day and it's like not in a big auditorium. It's just outside, but I'm going to get to make posters and talk about it. So and have like a set time. So because I got invited to do that.
24:58I'm going to be moving the mini garden course that I'm doing. It's called Garden versus Grocery Bill because let's  be honest, that's how we all feel. ah Right now, yes, we do.  Yeah, so I'm going to move it. It was going to be March 18th, but I'll probably move it, um you know, like one weekend back or move it to a different day. I was going to do it on Saturday, but that's coming up. You can  sign up for free. It's just a free course I'm putting on. um
25:24online and I'll have like a printout. mean, my very own printouts lately, like how I plan my garden, like deconstructing my own ways. like, since we last spoke in January, I don't think I've actually pulled my head up to breathe at all.  was going to say you've taken on a lot in just the last two months. Yeah, but I've worked less. Like, I mean, I haven't like taken a breath as in like leaving for vacation or like
25:53taking a lot of time off of social media or posting or reaching out to people.  But I've taken days off. I take Saturday and Sunday off every week now. I'm a farmer, I can pick my time. Monday through Friday is great, right? We're still doing things on Saturday and Sunday, but it's family time and Sunday is a rest day. So  I wasn't doing that before. You and I talked about Melanie being my coach. She's still my coach, which is awesome. uh
26:21and has been helping a lot, but her biggest thing was like, rest when you need to rest and work when you're inspired. And lately, like I've been doing that. So I just feel really inspired lately to get all these things done. And like some of it,  it's  more aimed at the farm. So having somebody that can help me means that I don't always have to leave, but then like bartering, right? I can barter with my employee for time on the farm too. Like, hey, you know, can I?
26:50have you help me here and then you can take these goats for this party and I don't need a fee at all. Like there's, don't know if that's, you can do that. I don't know, I'd have to check right with a tax person, but  that's kind of our plan is to be spending more time on the farm and then we see the food scarcity. So I think I just feel really inspired lately because of that right there. Like  that's a main driver for me, especially being a veteran. Like Americans not eating and going hungry is like,
27:21I could stand on a soapbox for hours on that one. Like it's really, it's really disappointing to me that we have that um catastrophe in America. So if I can feed people and make some money off and make some scratch, you know, to feed my animals and feed my family, then I'm absolutely going to do it. So that's why I think we've just expanded into just meat animals. It's there's a market for it. There sure is. And Morgan, this is my podcast and I get to say this because I am the one will get in trouble  for it.
27:51Not you. Yeah. People going hungry in this country is absolute bullshit. It  is. I am upsetting. I am  livid  about what is happening in our country right now. And I don't want to get into politics. I don't want to blame anybody in particular, but we all need to stop and look at our lives and figure out what the heck we're doing.  Absolutely. There's no left and right here.
28:20This is Americans helping Americans guys. Like I have the chills saying that, but like my mom's not from this country. My mom's from Iraq,  right? Like I grew up with a very realistic like view that there were kids in this world not eating. If there's  one single person going to sleep at night in America that is starving because they've been denied help, not the ones that don't want help, but denied help makes me as a veteran.
28:50Question what did  I  serve for? Yeah, and I will stand on that soapbox and some people don't like it They tell me that I shouldn't have that view that I should know better as a veteran. Well, yeah, I do know better and that's why I'm upset Yeah, I think there's an awful lot of upset in the world right now and I eat not just in America, but in the world and It's so  hard
29:18And I had a day last week, I didn't do a whole lot of interviews last week, I just didn't. And I had a day where I was like, do I want to keep doing this because I feel like I'm just screaming into the void. Yeah, but you're not.  then I decided that yes, I still want to keep doing this. And I just want to keep pounding on the fact that we all have the right to grow our own food. We have the right to get to know our local growers and producers and support them.
29:48uh And my husband and I, as long as the garden does well this summer,  we'll be donating food to the food shelf. So yes, we are going keep going. Yeah, and you can get tax write-offs, by the way, for donating by pounds.  And like if you want to go become a master gardener, like that's one way that you can donate your time. I recommend Master Gardening course. I went through my local extension office and I did it. I didn't take the test because I know that we want to consult.
30:15people across America and having  that title kind of I Couldn't use it as like a talking point, right? And then it also makes things more conflicting  and I would have to donate hours So for me, it just didn't make sense to get the Master Gardener title But I think for folks that are just looking for a way to help their community Like you can donate food and keep the Master Gardening title and then you're a part of a really cool group or organization without having to search far
30:45or trying to find something to do that you can do in a group, can garden alone, but having access to the books that they hand out. Like my book is specifically for Montana down to when to plant and when to start harvesting.  Nice. That is fabulous. That helps. Yeah. So like,  I think for me and my focus on my farm that like I wanted to talk about was just expansion and how we're securing our animals, how we're securing our food. Like  I'm worried about food.
31:15I will  not have my family go hungry by choice, if that makes sense, right? Like if there's catastrophes, you know, that happened, then it is what it is. But like having to report every year how many head of sheep I have and horses and then get charged for them locally, like for my property taxes is unacceptable.  Having to notify people when I put in a well.
31:42Okay, like I can understand some of it, but like having to have your water tested or them like I've heard of people getting in trouble for not testing their water, you know enough times or whatever and it's expensive Like we shouldn't it's not why is it a pay to play in America? Like it's a pay to live in America like it's  uh The boys describe it my husband and son describe it as like a video game. That's free to play But all the upgrades you have to pay for so like if you want to harvest your water in some states you can
32:10You got to do it illegally. That's not okay. Yeah. You know, like, and then all these data centers, Montana has 11 coming. am pissed about that. Yeah.  I,  I have all kinds of  opposing opinions about AI. Yeah. Because  some of what AI does is really good. Some of it is really terrible. Yeah. Like  I personally don't.
32:41Yeah, I there are some of it. It's built into everything. I'm so tired of everything I used by force having AI somewhere in the background and it not being announced. But then there are some great things that you can use AI for. Like my website builder, I typed in what type of website I needed help with, and it just is going to pull and it did pulled from basics that were like that. Now I went in and had to adjust every single thing in there to be custom.
33:11But that AI usage, okay, whatever. Like I don't have money for a web designer. If I had money for a web designer, I'd go pay somebody, but I just don't, right? As a small business that's trying to help people. So that's where like, I have leniency, but when there's big companies using AI posters, get out of here. They can afford an artist. exactly. You know, so I don't want to, I don't want to make this an hour long episode. already at 33 minutes. Yeah, you're good. But
33:40What I wanted to tell you is I am really freaking proud of you. Thank you. For all the things that you're working on just in the last two months. I mean, I knew you were a go-getter because your catchphrases do the damn thing. Yeah. But, darlin', my god, you are, you are kicking ass and taking names. Yeah, I just want to leave a mark on this world. I'm going to leave this world with only my name. Nothing, none of my worldly possessions, just my name.
34:09So I want everyone to know that like when they hear, right, like my name, they're like, oh, Morgan Cole. Yeah, she did this. Oh, yeah, I learned this from her and it did this for my family. Right. Like, yeah, I'm not here. I could care less about money. I'll be honest. Like, I know I need it. I know I do. But like at the end of the day,  I want to do the thing that I wanted to do in the military, which was make Americans lives better and not even just Americans, anyone's life better. Right. Like I just wanted.
34:39there to be  a world that could coexist. And if me being on this platform doing what I'm doing right now is what I'm supposed to do, I am so here for it. Like I will always do the damn thing. And that has been my thing. And so I'm seeing such a huge gap online with needing information that's correct, not AI generated  and full of crap that doesn't mean anything actual real world experience.
35:07because we used to all sit around and do it, then that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm proud of you too, because I know there are days where I wanna give up farming, but then I remember it and like your podcast does matter. I mean, it  does help people. Like I like the new podcast. I love everything that you're doing, but I think it's so hard for everybody like goes through this where they lose sight of what they're doing because they don't feel that they're making a big enough wave.
35:34just because they don't see it. Like I guarantee you, like you found out today, you're a huge reason why I've shifted the way I have. I've listened to podcasts that you've personally hosted and been like, oh yeah, actually if I did things this way, or listen, they're doing it this way and they're getting really good success, let me try that. Like having that community that you build has been priceless. And like, I have met some of the followers on here. Some of them have messaged me, right?
36:02So connecting people I think is your skill and I think you're really, really damn good at it. And I think you're really good at getting your word out there. Even if the people are silently listening to you, I think you just don't realize, Mary, how many people depend on listening to your episode. Like when you post them, they used to barely get 120 views after a week. You have 100 plus views on some of these episodes the first day you post them. Uh-huh, it's crazy, isn't it?
36:30Yeah, I've seen it grow. So I'm proud of you too. But like also know that I'm sure there's more people that you've touched their lives or changed their lives in a way that you have no idea. And like me personally, I think it would be really cool if people under this episode could post like, what have you learned off of Mary's episodes? What have you learned from another homesteader? Because I want to learn, I want to learn what they may have picked up on that I missed. So like,  I think that
36:56Continuing to do what you're doing, even if you keep interviewing some of us over and over again, there's so much. And I mean over and over again, like, but through time, right? To see the changes, the literal changes that we make as farmers is also very important. So like, I never mind clearing an hour of my day to come on here and answer questions that you have or tell you about what we're doing. Because I think this is like the reality of how we're all going to learn if we want to learn real information. Yeah.
37:24Thank you for saying all of that. And I actually love sitting down to chat with you  every six months. is very short turnaround on this one, but  I love talking with you because  I  know  when we did the first episode where you were at. Yeah. And I've had four times now to see where you're going to through what you're doing now.
37:53And I feel like it's a series. It's not just one episode. It's five episodes. It's a series. Yeah. Maybe you should like group it out in that. Maybe people you interview a bunch, because then people can like tune into this episode, but then they may not realize that was Groovy Grazers before. If they listen to Groovy Grazers that we turned into Cole Canyon. Like that may be even something for you to like expand on, you know, because you're good at that. You're good at showing the changes and showing the like evolving of us as
38:23cottage farmers and homesteaders because there is so much involving pivoting, changing. These are all key words we've talked about.  And I think that's why people are drawn to farming and homesteading and ranching because it's never boring.  mean,  it may hurt like hell when things go wrong. It may make you higher than a kite when things go right, but it's never boring.
38:47No, no, no, there's like literally nothing ever boring in my life. Like if someone asked me what I'm doing, I probably have some crazy story or they're catching me at a horse auction. I'm like, yeah, can't text right now. I'm watching horses go through at, you know, a minute, 30 seconds a piece here at BLS auction, right? Like  never do I have a boring day in my life. There are some days where I'm cussing at the sky, really pissed at my life because of some things that have popped up, you know, but then there are days like today where I'm like,
39:16I walk around, things are a lot cleaner, we're getting things finished, we're buttoning up some projects, and I'm like, damn. Three years ago, there wasn't crap out here. There was literally a tin-like building that my husband lived in with a studio and a little horseshoe dirt mound, and now I have four horses and a pony, and I'm breeding a mare this year, and I've got pack goats, and I've got a pig for...
39:44goodness sake, I've got baby sheep, they're so cute. Oh my god, they're so cute. You're gonna have to include that on the preview. I'll send you specifically the picture. It's smiling. Sheep are so cute, right? But like, had I given up when I wanted to, I would never get to experience this life. I wouldn't get to experience my kid riding around on a horse. You know, I wouldn't get to experience all these things that I wanted in my childhood, but now I'm able to give them. And my parents just, they didn't want to the country life. Fine.
40:12but I wanted to live this life, so I'm gonna do the damn thing. like, everyone listening, you can farm, and I call it farming, right? Because you're producing stuff. You can actually profit off of an acre or less, and that's something else I'm gonna be going into on a whole fricking course because too many people think because they're in town on a quarter acre or less, they can't produce their own food. But there are ways, and I think...
40:37that these types of podcasts are going to be the way that Americans will continue to feed themselves. And I think you got to remember that. Like you're helping people actually feed themselves. Yeah, I'm trying and I'm, I'm so thankful for all the people that have talked with me to share how they're doing it.  Um, real quick. Yeah. I understand what you're saying about when you first moved there, there was nothing cause, uh, you knew about how we put up the hard side of greenhouse. Yeah, I remember. Yeah.
41:07or we're planting seed, we have planted seeds in there this year. We have no  seedling trays on our kitchen table this year. Everything is being planted in greenhouse. way. I remember that being like a huge stress for you too. You're like, there's everything everywhere  in my house.  like,  I remember when you got to eat some strawberries out of the greenhouse. Last spring, yep. Yeah, you were so excited about that. We're going to be building some tunnel greenhouses where
41:35you know, winter, you'll winter it normally, we get a lot of snowfall. like, well, and you've been getting snow too. So everywhere, everywhere has been getting snow. But you know, like that's something I'm going to be working on. So I can't wait because I was telling my husband, I was like, oh, I can't wait to tell Mary when  I eat my first strawberries out of my greenhouse, because my husband builds them. That's something he like professionally has done um for dispensaries and stuff. yeah, I'm it's gonna be exciting. I think we should definitely check back in at least six months.
42:04This fall.  Yeah, this fall. See where we're at. I'm like fully booked for May already with goat parties. Yeah.  So in April is filling up. So I think like it'll be really cool to see what changes are next. You never know. Maybe I'll find a unicorn.  If you do, I want pictures.  Oh, I will totally send you pictures. Maybe if it has wings, it's a Pegasus. Maybe I'll fly and come see you. That'll be my new transport with gas these days.
42:33Wouldn't that be great?  Yeah. Thanks for having us on. I appreciate you so much. And  if any of the listeners feel like compelled um to reach out to me or if you have questions, like please do. Like that's that's my favorite thing to do is answer questions or help people get started on their journey or try and find hang ups, you know, that they're having because I think that human connection is so precious  and we don't I mean, we all take it for granted. So like, please reach out, ask questions like I encourage you.
43:02to connect with us. Yep, absolutely. Your website is coalcanyonfarms.com. Yep, .com. has an S on it. So Farms with an S, because we will eventually be buying more. So it's Farms. And then Facebook is Coal Canyon. And then Instagram is Coal Canyon Farms. OK, awesome. As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Morgan, I love you.
43:31Keep up the good work. proud of you. I love you too. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you in, well, we'll say six months, but let's see where  we're at next time we meet up, okay? All right. Thank you. Bye.
 

modernhomestead95

Today I'm talking with Westen and Taylor at modernhomestead95. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Taylor and Westen at Modern Homestead 95, and I'm sure we'll find out what the 95 is about.  In Arkansas, did you say, Westen? Yes, we are. We're  in Northern Central Arkansas.  Awesome.
00:28I told you to shut your video off because it uploads better without the video. But from what I saw before you shut the video off, it looks beautiful in Arkansas. Is it gorgeous there today? It is. Yeah, it's a 55 degrees and it's spring's starting to show itself. So we got all the trees blooming and the grass is turning green and starting to grow. things are all coming alive. All the bugs are coming out. Yeah. favorite part. Homesteaders.
00:57Favorite time of year, I swear, is March and April. Yeah, it's a good time. Get everything going and just life seems to be waking back up. So yes, the long,  horrible winter is almost over.  I'm in Minnesota. It is sunny. is windy as hell this morning  and uh it's only about 35 degrees. So  I was going to say probably still cool up there.
01:22Yeah, we had a 90, not 90. I think it got to 81 last weekend. Okay. And then it cooled right back down. I was like, okay, that's the second fall spring. Maybe the next one will be the real one. You know, we've done that a couple of times down here too. We kind of warmed up. What was it the other day? 89? Yeah. Yeah, I think we might've even hit 90 and then it's, it was 35 last night. So. Yeah. 90 in March is just gross.
01:51Yeah, it's like we're not ready for summer yet. No, no, you cannot go from winter to summer overnight. We have to have spring. Yes, yeah, much nicer with them intermittent gradual incline. Yes. So the name of your place is Modern Homestead, Modern Homestead or 95. What's the 95 about? So my wife and I were both born in 1995. Okay.
02:19So, yeah, we... It's a good year. Yeah, it's a good year and Modern Homestead was taken and so this is Modern Homestead 95. Well, that is a brilliant thing to call it. My kids are 36 and 34 and 28 and 24. So my older two are
02:48are right around you guys' ages. yeah, yeah, it's perfect. Yep, it's so funny because I used to think that 30 was old. No, 30 is not old. Right. Yeah, I just realized that a little while ago. Yep. turning 30, we're like, no, we're still some spring chickens. Yes, and even at 56, you can be a spring chicken. Just make sure you take care of your health until you get there. I remember that. Yeah.
03:17Tim McGraw has a song called in my, I don't know the name of the song, but the chorus is in, or the verses start within my next 30 years. And in my next 30 years, I want to be 25 again. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So what do you guys do at the Homestead? And did I read that it's, you've been, the Homestead has been a hundred year in the family? Yeah. Well, it's not in the family. we bought,
03:46our property and house two years ago in 2023 and we moved out here to Arkansas from California. Oh wow. Yeah, so we were just just tired of all the the nonsense that California has going on with it. Just we don't need to get into politics and everything but we don't agree with a lot that the state has going on and the way they handled
04:15COVID and  everything, we just didn't feel like it was the right way to go about it. um we've been looking  for a place to move for already a year when  COVID started going on.  And we had traveled around a couple of different states and  looked. I've lived in Texas and Mississippi and driven from coast to coast and back.
04:45And we took a trip out to Florida and looked  and it was just getting pricey  and we couldn't really afford what we wanted.  And  one day we were sitting  in our apartment at the time. We had a little 600 square foot apartment or something.  And  my wife Taylor was like, have  you thought about Arkansas? And I was like, I don't know anything about Arkansas.
05:12We started just looking it up  and  researching and it's just kind of checking the boxes.  And we had a pretty good list of stuff we were looking for, wanted and needed and things like that. And  so we just kind of went down the list  and it seemed to align pretty well. And we were like, let's take a trip out there and see what it's all about. And we did. We spent two weeks  or a week,  one week driving around in the car.
05:42and just sleeping in the car and  fell in love with it. Trying to find where we wanted to be in the state. But yeah, we did. We  really liked just the landscape and the people are laid back and just down to earth.  you know, we'll help you if you need it.  just lots of God fearing people and beautiful country. And  the price was right. We found a spot. um
06:11not too far out of town and we  bought a house with seven acres  and we've just been... uh The house is what was 100 years old and just needed everything. um I mean, we've... Gosh, we've done so much in the last couple of years since we've been here. Gotten dropped by our homeowners insurance a couple of times for things and, you know, had to rush to fix stuff to get...
06:40our insurance back and yeah, actually last week we just got kind of to a stage where we're going to call it in quotes, let's say done. We've replumbed the whole house, redone all the sheetrock and texture and paint inside and move some walls around and tore down some walls and
07:07We completely redid the whole kitchen, reframed the floor in it and everything, new cabinets, all new appliances. Went through the outside of the house. We got a new roof. Just sealed everything up, painted the whole house. So it's been a journey. And along with all that, I work full time and we were pregnant when we moved out here.
07:38with our first kid  and had her  and then  got pregnant again and we just had our little boy, our second kid. um in the middle of all that, we decided  we,  you know, wanted to  do what we came out here for  and that was  just kind of be a little more, I don't want to say self-sufficient because self-sufficient is such a uh big encompassing uh umbrella.
08:08But I think we just wanted to be a little more, I guess, stable kind of in our own environment where  we know where our food's coming from a little bit and it doesn't have all  the chemicals and pesticides and everything that are on it from the store  and, you know, good,  healthy meat that's been  treated right and just free-ranged and um
08:37grass-fed and  and so we  built a chicken coop. I went down to the mill here in town. We have a redwood  cedar mill  and bought a bunch of first cuts which is just the like a half round log with one flat side and so I bought like four big bundles of those hauled them on our flatbed here and  and
09:06pressure wash them and ripped them all down and built this chicken coop we have out of red cedar.  And that was a really fun project that uh kind of got the  online presence started. I was just doing all this work and I was like, you know, I
09:27I  want our homestead  to  not only  generate good food and good things for our family, but I also,  if it can, you know, provide a little bit of, uh you know, monetary money for our family. uh The whole goal for me is to
09:55not be working full time  and  being able to have some more time with my kids as they grow  and my wife and just just
10:07That was another one of the reasons we moved out here is the cost of living is a little  less  than most places.  And  in the goal of all that, was hoping to set up the homestead so it can provide for our family in a way where we spend less money. And so we have to generate less money  and I can have more time. So the whole  goal in this thing is really freedom. um
10:36Good healthy food and freedom, I guess. That sounds like a lot of the people that I talk to on a weekly basis.  Very impressed that you guys managed to do this young, because not everybody who's young has what it takes to do it. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to just take that compliment and say thank you, because yeah, it's not easy. um
11:05just got up and worked hard every day to be here. Before my career has, I've been an elevator mechanic. so, and before that I was in the Air Force. And so, I did my Air Force career and then I jumped into the elevator mechanic thing, did that for about 10, 11 years.
11:36And then I actually broke my back in a motorcycle accident  and  got laid off and  got hired with another company and just kind of set the wheels in motion ah for this all to happen, I think. um
11:56So it can be done at any age. Like we were talking earlier, age is just a number on paper. And you just get up and make it happen.
12:14pray, pray  to God that His will be done in your life because it's really not up to us. We can do everything right, everything wrong, it doesn't matter. It's really what it comes down to is God's will in our life.  Yes.  So, number one, thank you for your service. Number two, congratulations on achieving the dream and
12:42I know that the dream isn't done because if you're a homesteader, you always have new ideas you want to try, right?  And congratulations on the new baby  and the fact that you guys are raising a little girl and a little boy. Kids are great. I miss my babies so much. Like I love that they are functioning adults. are good people, but man, there are days where I'm like, you know,
13:11They were very sweet when they were babies. I know. feel like we're already going through that because our daughter, she seems light years bigger and older now that we have this little baby. Oh yeah. we're just trying to soak up every moment we have because it does go quick. Yes. The minute you bring a newborn into the house, if you have an older child, that older child seems like they're already full grown to you. I swear. It's so weird.
13:41Okay, so I could hear your chickens squawking in the background. How many chickens you guys have? So we have 11 right now, which is the lowest number we've had in a while. We started with like 22 or something. And just nature kind of took its course. Chickens are good food for everything. And we have some neighbor dogs that were out roaming around. They got a couple. We had a
14:09a couple hawk attacks  and then  we had a couple guineas that were just  being mean. They were rooster uh guineas  and  so I actually processed them along with another  rooster  and so yeah, now we're down to 11. And then we had another two hawk attacks or something after that  down to 11.  But  I do have an incubator in the mail right now.
14:39and we're gonna put 20 eggs in there when it shows up.  Good plan.  Have you ever done that before? uh We have not. No, it'll be our first time hatching.  Okay. um I haven't done it before, but I watch a lot of videos about chickens and quail. We're looking into quail right now because my husband was like, we should look into quail. was like, okay.
15:09Yeah, the thing that I have been seeing a lot of is it's the humidity in the incubator that can be the problem. So be sure you watch that. Gotcha. Okay. Good to know.  And I guess that sometimes when the eggs hatch,  the chicks don't come out quick enough and the membrane in the egg can get wrapped around them and dry out. And there are two schools of thought.
15:39You either give them a little time to see if they figure it out and get out of the egg  or  you don't and use tweezers and you try to pull the egg off of them.  And I guess there's an amniotic sack that is attached to the chick when it first is hatching.  If you rip that amniotic sack, the chick will die. So you got to be really careful if you're going to try to heal m the membrane.  Help them. Yeah. So I hope that helps you.
16:09I don't know, I haven't done it.  And this is another thing that's kind of like on my mind  when  we  do this.  So we have uh a really mixed flock. I mean, we've got a couple of... I don't want to say everything, but... We've golden comets, blue sapphires,  cinnamon queens, a silky rooster,  and guinea hens. And some guineas. And so  it's...
16:38I don't even know if the guinea hens  eggs are fertilized. ah I'm going to have to crack a couple and see, but pretty much everyone else is it seems like, but they're all fertilized from our silky splash silky rooster. Uh huh. So is it good to  mix  silkies with all the other breeds? mean, is that, are we going to have like issues?
17:04or like  mutation issues or is it just gonna be fine? I wish I could tell you because I don't know the answer but what I can tell you is that people have been cross breeding creatures forever so  the worst thing you find out is that you shouldn't do it.
17:24You know? Yeah, that's kind of where we were at and we  just figured we'd give it a try, see what happens. Yep. And Google supposedly knows everything, so you could always Google it. Right. Yeah.  And at this point, it's like, you know, once you have chickens  and you look at the price chicks cost, it's, you know, five to eight dollars for one of them.  Nowadays, yeah. It's like, this is crazy.
17:54I have chickens, I have eggs. em You know, I'll just hatch my own. That's kind of where we're at. Yep. Try it. See what happens. I mean, again, the worst thing that happens is that you can't cross those, but you could probably find somebody who's got a rooster that would make sense. Yeah, exactly. So the next step in our kind of homestead journey, I think, is this year we're going to work on getting the garden going. em We had a couple planters on the porch last year.
18:24And we got some tomatoes and jalapenos and bell peppers and a lot of strawberries and some spinach and stuff like that. But  just want to expand and get some in-ground stuff going. I have an avocado tree that I need to transplant  that we started from seed and.
18:45Get a little, I'd love to get a little orchard going.  Probably gonna just start some stuff from seed and then obviously get some root cuttings.  So that'll be fun.  Yeah, that's kind of where we're at now. um And just sharing our  journey with everyone.
19:09Yeah, I saw that you started a YouTube channel in 2025 and you have a ton of videos already up. Yeah, so I was trying to do a couple a week there and I did for a good while. And I've tapered off recently just because of life and if I don't make any excuses, I just need to...
19:38start doing it again. But we have been busy just with the house and and the new baby and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Suck that baby up because it doesn't last long as we were saying. Just spend as much time with him as you possibly can. Yeah. That's what we've been doing whenever he's not in the wife's arms. I usually got him. So. Uh huh. So speaking of well two things. If you're going to plant are you going to plant apple trees?
20:09I do have some apple seeds and I was going to plant those and hopefully some root cuttings. Apple trees take at least three years from sapling stage to produce apples. And I know this because we put in saplings and it took almost four years for us to get apples. So don't count on apples the first year because there probably won't be any. Yeah, I was telling
20:38Telling Taylor, just don't count  on anything from  the orchard really.  Cause it's just gonna be  a long game. is. It's a long tail game and it's hard to wait. We just got our first really good harvest of  honey gold apples this past fall. Well, congratulations. That's great. That was fabulous, except I don't like them. They're like golden delicious apples.
21:08And I don't like Golden Delicious because they're kind of grainy. don't like them.  However, my husband loves them. So he was eating an apple a day until they were gone. Oh, that's great. Good. Yep. I'm waiting for our honey crisps to actually produce because I love those. Gotcha. Gotcha.  OK, so not that you aren't wonderful to talk to, Weston, but I would love to hear from Taylor about how she feels about  the experience that you've been going through for the last year. Absolutely.
21:37Absolutely. So Taylor, tell me what you're thinking. Yeah, I know it's been great. It's been such a fun journey to embark on with my husband and starting a family out here in Arkansas has truly just been,  it's been amazing. It's been filled with um a lot of growth as well.  I think that it was a  a very bold move  to do what we did,  especially in the midst of finding out that I was pregnant.
22:06But so so happy that we did because looking back we're just two people that  have really  grown so much and have accomplished so much together So it's been a really cool cool journey to go through I'm glad to hear that my second question for you Taylor is do you have a community of other women who help you because  I? Did not really have a community of women when my kids were babies, and I wish that I had so do you have one?
22:34So yeah, mean,  to be honest, that's actually been kind of hard to cultivate. I am proud to say that uh now that we're a couple years in, because I think we've been here for almost two and a half years,  I think over the last about eight months, I've really been able to kind of find my tribe  of other moms who have kids ah of similar ages um in the community and have really kind of bonded with several uh women.
23:04and moms. And so that's been really great because as you know, we moved from California. So we actually, we don't have any family out here. So it has been, it has been difficult. But yeah, I am, that's kind of the next phase now that the house is done and we have some more free time and  you know, cultivating friendships as an adult is, is a lot harder than it is when you're a child, just cause you don't have the time that it takes. So um
23:33I am starting to get that and I'm so thankful for the friendships I've made. Good, because I've said this a couple of times to a few people in the last month or so, especially brand new moms or brand new moms, but they also have older kids. You have to have other women to tell you stuff. Because no one hands you a freaking guidebook when you have a baby. I know. And what's funny is...
24:01You know, we talked to like our moms and it's been, you know, 30 something years since they've had babies. And so it's even hard for them to recall certain like, you know, nuances of what it's like and how they did this and things like that when the babies are young. So it's definitely important to have some, some other women to bounce some stuff off of. Yes. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if they did give you a guidebook when you went home with the new baby? I'm telling you. Yeah, it would be.
24:30The other thing that is hard is that things have changed so much since our mothers had babies. Right. I mean, funny is things have changed even from our first born. uh Like in the hospital, you know, they kind of go over a few things and there's even some guidelines that have changed just from two years ago.  Yeah, it's nuts. And the one guideline that is always a constant is just love them through everything.  Yep.
25:00If you can do that, you've got it beat by a mile. And Weston, I hope you have dad friends because men need friends that have kids too. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I'm going to start putting some more energy towards. Plus, you miss out on all the dad jokes you need to learn if you don't have dad friends. He's pretty good at those, I have to say. Good. He's a natural. All right.
25:28A question for both of you and I want two different answers because I want  both of your perspectives. What is your favorite thing that has happened since you moved to the homestead?
25:41Well, for me, I mean, I don't know if I'm biased, but I mean our babies, our babies and having chickens. Having chickens has always been something that I've really wanted. And so just going through that and having them out in the yard and holding my babies and soaking up the sun, it's been like the most fulfilling experience. Okay. Weston, what about you? I think.
26:11just watching  Taylor and I's marriage grow  and  just become what it is because we've been out here um by ourselves. We've just kind of had to rely on each other. And I think that just cultivated a strong bond that we have that just can propel us through.
26:41trials  and  just showed us how much each of each other really care about one another and we're willing to  you know sacrifice  and and take care of each other no matter what's going on so  spoken like a man who adores his wife awesome ah okay so I know you guys have chickens do you have other animals too
27:10We don't right now. We used to have a little  dog when we moved out here and we sadly had to  put him down for some health reasons.  yeah. Thinking about sheep. oh Sheep is  potentially sheep or goats. We haven't really decided because both are fun, but both come with their own stuff. um I got to the yard fenced. Yeah. Yes.
27:37Yes, but good fences make good neighbors and that doesn't just apply to human neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep those dogs out.  Yeah. For sure.  And yeah, go ahead. We're right now,  the  incubator is coming and we're working  on,  I got a clear a bunch of trees for the garden area and I think we're just going to
28:08plant in the ground this year and just try and get something  and then next year  work on maybe some raised beds  and then probably getting the fence in and stuff like that. So.  Very nice. You guys have so  much to look forward to in the future.  I had another question and I forgot it because that's what happens when you get over 50. You forget things really easy. um
28:37Or just when you're pregnant. feel like my brain never recovered from the first child and then now having the second, it's like compounded. So I'm constantly like, what was I doing? What was I about to say? Maybe that's what it is. that maybe having all those kids just screwed up my brain forever. Who knows? So I don't know. don't know if I have any more questions for you. I am very
29:06excited for you both.  I  love it when young people get into this and I just remember my question. I knew as soon as I started making small talk it would happen. um Have you guys gotten into the food side of homesteading like preserving or canning or sourdough or any of that? Not yet. That's definitely going to be something we do get into though. Once I think the babies get a little older and I have some helpers,  that's definitely going to be um
29:35We're gonna be doing a lot of stuff in the kitchen  from scratch. Yes, and I just, have another podcast that I do with a co-host and we just recorded an episode about cooking from scratch and if you'd like I can send you the link when it's released. Yeah, that would be great. Okay, cool. The other podcast is called Grit and Grace in the Heartland and we have been having such a good time with it since January. We just started it in January.
30:04So other than that, I don't think I have any other questions and I try to keep these at 30 minutes and we just rolled to 30 minutes. That was perfect timing. Where can people find you guys? They can find us at Modern Homestead 95 on Facebook and Modern Homestead 95 on YouTube. That is the only two platforms we're on right now and we are just so thankful.
30:30that we were able to talk with you today and having us on. And hopefully we can do this again soon and maybe after we have a little bit more growth here. yeah, we just appreciate your time and hope you have a great rest of your Saturday. I would love to have you guys back. And as always, you can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com.
30:54You guys, so proud of you. Keep doing the good work and bring those babies up in the Homestead Life cell. You're doing them a huge favor if you do.  Thank you so much. All right. Have a great Saturday. You too. Thank you. God bless you.
 

Redwood Seeds

Today I'm talking with Kalan at Redwood Seeds. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Kalan at Redwood Seeds in  California. Good morning, Kalan, because you're not in California right now.  Good morning. Yeah, it's 10 a.m. here  where I am in New Zealand. Tomorrow, for me, right? Yes. It's Tuesday for you.
00:28Yeah, that's right.  Yeah, I've interviewed a couple of people in Australia and New Zealand and  it's so confusing because for me it is  4.03 in the afternoon on  Monday.  Yeah, definitely. It's confusing for me as you've seen trying to um set up meetings with people, especially the states just went through the time change.
00:52Now it's a four hour difference for me. then when New Zealand goes through its time change in about another month, then it becomes a five hour difference the next day. Uh-huh. I, every time I talk to somebody who's that far away, I say that it's, it's actual time travel because it might as well be. Yeah. feels like it. Whenever we travel down here, we basically miss a day.  It's crazy. You lose an entire day. oh
01:19Okay, so I want to talk about redwood seeds, but I also would love to know why you're in Austria in New Zealand.  Yeah, definitely. Well, I married a man from New Zealand 20 years ago. So we come down here  a couple of months every year during our off season  and spend time with family. Well, that is a hardship to have to go to New Zealand, boy. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it's different. We come down here or not really tourists, so we don't like.
01:49You know, it's less of a vacation and more just like my kids, go into the public school system when we're here and we  sort of just live normal life, you know, but we get to stay on the farm with em my in-laws. And that's really, really wonderful. That's really interesting. What do they farm?  They're both retired now, but my husband grew up on like a mixed em sheep  and cattle ranch. oh
02:17the kind with like 2000 sheep, they're shearing for wool and that kind of thing. Okay, cool. That you are a very interesting lady. I'm very glad that I asked to talk to you. so tell me all about Redwood Seeds and what you do. Okay, well, we are based in Northern California. We're about three or four hours north of San Francisco up in the foothills of Lassen Volcanic National Park, actually. So if you're looking at
02:47California, we are in the eastern slopes, the eastern foothills at about 2,500 feet. And we have a organic seed farm. We grow organic vegetable, herb, flower seeds, and sell them in packets, essentially. We started doing this in 2009. And then...
03:11have  now we're expanded into like about 70 different retail stores. So we have seed racks in those stores and send seeds to the stores, you know, a few times a year for customers. And then we also have a website where we sell our seeds.  It's redwoodseeds.net.  And  sometimes I sell at like different festivals and markets and things like that.  I would say that I call us a farm based seed seed company.
03:40grow the majority of the seed that we sell. I do  purchase some  extra seed  from other organic seed farms, mostly in the western states.
03:54Yeah, we usually offer about 150 different varieties. um All of our varieties are open pollinated, which means that you can, they're not hybrids, essentially is what that means. And you can  use traditional seed saving techniques  and uh save the seeds  and you'll get trutatite results. Most of, many of them are heirlooms,  which means that the variety is like pre 1950.
04:22but we also have a lot of really great varieties that have been bred using traditional plant breeding techniques  since 1950. Okay. So since you do this for a living, I have a question.  I bought a 60 day watermelon seed from, I want to say it was burpee, but I could be wrong  and I'm pretty sure it's a hybrid. Okay. So,
04:51If we were to save, if we get any melons out of it, I bought 12 seeds, we're praying we get watermelons out of it this year.  If we get watermelons, which means we get seeds, and we plant those seeds, if we save those seeds and plant them, is there any chance that  we'll get seeds producing 60 day watermelons  next summer? There's a chance, yeah.
05:15The way that it goes is that hybrid, it's called the F1 generation. Sometimes you see hybrids referred to as F1s. That's the first generation after the cross has been made.  That watermelon had two different parents that were crossed together to make the hybrid. Then when you save seeds  from the hybrid, the next generation is called the F2 generation.  That's when you start to see the genetic diversity come out. Seed breeders do this on purpose. A seed breeder
05:45would make the cross, get the F1, then save the seeds from it, and then plant them. You might plant 100 seeds from it, and you might see 20 or 30 different types of melons pop up, or however many, but you'll start to see genetic diversity. So you could theoretically plant out a lot of that F2 generation and look for the 60, whatever is closest
06:14to the 60 day melon that you loved and save seeds from that one and then do that again for like seven more years. And you might be able to stabilize that hybrid into an open pollinated variety. That's like backwards breeding, right? Yeah, that sounds like a really fun science project. may have to try that. Yeah, that's what seed breeders do. Okay. I just, knew there was something about hybrid seeds that it may not come back true.
06:44That's the thing. That's why when you're saving seeds, um that's just to start with open pollinated varieties. And so that's what we do. We only grow open pollinated varieties um so that we can save seeds from them and we know that they're going to be true to type. Okay. Thank you for  humoring me in my question because  I wanted to ask somebody who really, really knew and I figured you would really, really know.
07:12No, it's kind of a common question actually, or like people have this thought that you can only grow heirloom seeds if you want to save seeds, but it's really the term is open pollinated. Open pollinated means that basically it's not a hybrid. Okay. Thank you so much.  As I sit here with a big smile on my face, because now when my husband asks, I can be like,  yes, we can save the seeds. Yes, you can plant them, but,  but is the key word there.
07:41Okay, so do you have a background in this  or  how did you get into savings? Yeah. uh No, I don't. I mean, if you had asked me when I was a teenager,  if I thought I was going be a farmer, it would have been like the last thing on my mind. um And  I didn't really know what I was going to do. did go, um I went to UC Santa Cruz  and was a language studies major. So I learned to speak Spanish really well. um
08:11but and studied like linguistics and journalism. um But it was during  that time, like in my early  20s, I also became garden curious  and started taking, like I took a garden class in college. And then I um met my husband and he was traveling through Santa Cruz,  doing like a rock climbing tour of the Western States. um And  I went and visited him in New Zealand on my spring break.
08:40And he had a big garden going over there. so I remember we, we just sort of started gardening together really.  Um, and then we lived in New Zealand for nine months and  his parents let us  put in a garden, like, you know, in the back, couple acres of their property.  And, um, I don't know, we just, got really into it and we traveled back and forth between New Zealand and us for a few years. And then we ended up.
09:11buying some land in Northern California where we didn't really know what we were going to do, but we knew that we wanted a rural lifestyle. We ended up starting to grow seeds on contract for larger seed companies like Seeds of Change and Fedco Seeds. And we did that for a few years from like 2006, 2007. And it kind of quickly became obvious that
09:38to really make a living doing it, we needed to get our own label and start packaging seeds in packets rather than selling like a pound of seeds um for a relatively low price. um So we did that in 2009. We just kind of got some coin envelopes from Office Depot and had a stamp made and started stamping packets. And my husband started making wooden seed racks and we  literally like showed up at Chico Natural Foods
10:07with a seed rack and seeds in the back of our car and asked them if they wanted to  start carrying our seeds in their store. And  luckily somebody was in a good mood that day and they said yes. em And we're still in that store today. So. so that leads me to my next question. Are there regulations from the state of California about selling the seeds that  you produce?  Yeah, definitely. I mean, you have to register with the CDFA. em
10:37California Department of Food and Agriculture.  And we are registered seed sellers.  As a registered seed seller, you have to like adhere to their packaging requirements and their germination standards and all of that. And they have, you know, like the local county ag inspectors who can and do sometimes do inspections.
11:00So, okay. I figured the government would have their fingers in it. Yeah, definitely. It's not, it's not onerous. I mean, the, the  more difficult standard is the organic certification. You know, we are certified organic by CCOF California certified organic farmers and have been since 2007,  I think.  Um,  so that's a yearly inspection where an inspector comes out and they mostly want to look at our
11:29paperwork uh and then they tour around the farm as well. So how hard was it to get your certification because I keep hearing that getting certified organic is an utter pain in the ass with paperwork and it's expensive. It is expensive.  It's about a thousand dollars a year. uh California has, ah oh they did have, I mean I'm not sure how much of  a cost share they're gonna have this year. It's been kind of
11:57decreasing, but it used to be a 75 % cost share where  you would get reimbursed that much by the state of California for becoming organic. um Now that I know what to do for the certification, it's not that difficult. um when you start out and you just don't really know what they're looking for, and maybe you don't really know how to keep records, ah it can be much more difficult.
12:26I became certified organic when I had to like fill out a paper form, but now it's all digitized, you know.  So I don't know, I have a friend who's, who's signing up on it right now. And honestly, if you, if you know how to fill out applications and tick the boxes, then  it's not too, too difficult. If you're on a piece of land that has previously been farmed conventionally,  then it becomes more difficult um for sure.
12:55Okay. And then  since, since you're someone who sells seeds that you produce yourself,  um,  I assume that every state is different, but if you were,  if you  grew,  I don't know, some tomato variety and you save the seeds and you wanted to give some to a friend in California,  that's fine. Right? That's fine. Yeah. But
13:23If you wanted to sell it to a friend, can you do that on a small scale and not have to do all the bureaucratic stuff or is that a no-no?  Oh, I'm sure you can do it. Yeah. I mean, and I think that like you don't have to become a licensed seed seller in every single state to, my business is based out of California. I'm selling the seed from California. So that's where I have my seed selling license from. I mean, that would be.
13:52really a lot of paperwork if I needed to become a seed seller in every state. We definitely ship seeds all around the country. Yeah, it's so funny since I started the podcast over two and a half years ago, I have talked to people all over the country and many, many of them, I'm guessing at least 85%, maybe 90 % have started a business.
14:19around their homestead or the craft that they make or the food that they produce. And every single state has different laws regarding that kind of business. Yeah. And I'm like, could we maybe find a standard here for everybody? That would be cool. definitely. Yeah, know that. Yeah, definitely. There are also many different standards. It's true. It's true. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's
14:47That end of things, mean, there's always,  for me as a farmer, and I'm sure a lot of other farmers, it's like, we started because we just want to farm and we want to do agriculture, want to grow things or um work with animals. But the business side is always a steep learning curve.  And definitely for me too. mean,  if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have probably studied like plant biology and business or something, you know, or
15:16Kind of business major and when I had the chance to be in university, um I back in those days, I looked at business majors and I thought they were like selling out to the man or something. uh,  but now it's like, those are the skills that farmers also need to succeed in having your own business. So, um, I've had to like belatedly learn all of that.  And in fact, I'm, taking an accounting one-on-one class at my community college right now.
15:46Um, so. Well, that's good. mean, I, I  say that I have got to know itis, which means that I have an overactive need to know.  And I'm always taking some kind of course, whether it's a lady just sent me a course on raising quail.  Interesting.  Cause we're, looking into doing that on our place. Cool.
16:13I haven't had a chance to sit down look at it yet because I've been busy with podcast stuff and oh yeah, dishes. There's always washing dishes to do here. Definitely. And so I'm hoping to get a chance to sit down tomorrow afternoon and look at the course and see if it's videos or if it's written or how it works. But very excited about this. I don't need to know how to raise quail. I could probably just go get some quail. My husband will build the coop and we'll figure it out from there.
16:43But because it's interesting and because I have got to know it is I have to the course. There you go. Okay. have, I have questions about number one,  what kind of produce do you grow to save seeds from? And then number two, what's the process that you go through to save the seeds? Yeah. Um, you know, we really  save seeds from just about most crops.  Um, everything from corn and beans to lettuce and tomatoes and squash and onions and.
17:14Um, most of the major vegetable types we save seeds from and increasingly more and more, um, flowers too. Like I would say that flowers are, I don't know, 30 % of our seed sales now are 40%. Like it's more and more. When we first started, really, I don't know that I was anti flower, but I was definitely like, if I'm going to grow it, has to be something to eat, you know,
17:43But as we've progressed, I see more more uh value in growing things for pollinators and just for beauty.  so we have more flowers now  and a lot of herbs too,  medicinal herbs like yarrow and milkweed and  things like that.  I'm so happy to hear  milkweed because we need the monarchs to keep coming back. Yeah, definitely.  We have a really big patch of milkweed now. uh
18:13And the thing is, like, I never see monarchs. Like, rarely do we ever see a monarch.  Instead, we get that milkweed beetle that loves the milkweed, that red beetle. um But it's there in case they want to find us. So,  you know, we grow all the produce, but uh and my family eats from our gardens, but  we don't sell any produce. So it's really different than
18:40a regular mixed veg market garden operation. Our process is that we plant our main summer gardens usually about May 20th through June 15th. It takes me about three weeks to plant everything. And because we're up in the foothills, like our growing season, I don't bother getting things in the ground before then because we can have frost in mid-May.
19:07I will have all my spring crops in like lettuces and things that can take a light frost. um But that's our main planting season is the end of May.  And we basically like plant these really big gardens,  which  it really is like some like we're farming, but we're also like garden scale. Like we have five gardens spread out on our 40 acres.  So each plot is about, uh,
19:3860 feet by 60 feet or they're not huge. Like I did the calculations last year and we actually like grow all of our crops, like 60 to 80 seed crops a year on about only a half an acre. Like not a really big space. It's really intensive, like mixed production. You know, like I'll have like 30 tomato plants and maybe 200 lettuces and
20:08like 100 squash plants  of a variety. And so we plant everything and then we can basically just let it grow all summer  and do the weeding, but we're not like continuously harvesting the vegetables like you would for  a market garden. Instead, we just let everything ripen and go to seed. And then our main seed harvest  starts like kind of the end of August.
20:34through the end of October. So we like two or three months of intensive  seed harvesting and cleaning. the process for each variety is really different.  Okay, yeah. So what's the most difficult seed to save? ah
20:55They're all just really different. um Like for example, know, tomatoes, I'd go out and I pick tomatoes into five gallon buckets. And then we smash the tomatoes  up into like this pulp. And then you let them sit and ferment in the buckets for three or four days  and stir them daily. And that actually like um breaks down the enzyme coating around the seed to that inhibits germination. um And it also kind of
21:25breaks down all the tomato pulp um and then you add water to those buckets and pour off all the pulp and you're left with the seeds at the bottom of the bucket using water to clean them. So  that's not extremely difficult, but it's like a process, you know? um And um so there's the things that you  harvest and you process wet, like tomatoes and squashes or melons or cucumbers.
21:52Those,  all, there's a degree of like cutting open the fruit, scooping out the seeds.  And then you have to figure out how to separate all the pulp and the gunk from the seeds. And usually that involves water. It's kind of like gold panning, actually.  Often, often the good seed will sink to the bottom of your vessel and then you pour off everything else with water and then put it on a screen  and let it dry.  I would label the ones that you have to do wet as squick.
22:22That would be the squick,  squick, squack process. Yeah, definitely.  Um, yeah, I mean, it's kind of fun. It's,  it's really hands on.  Um,  and then everything that you process dry, uh, that's like most of your flower seeds, your lettuce seed, all the brassicas,  like kale or cabbage,  um, radishes, carrot seed, radishes. Radishes are actually very difficult because it.
22:51I don't know, have you seen a radish going to seed? Makes those like kind  of... Yeah, it's like, well, each of those pods only has like four seeds in it. They're not very,  and the pods are really difficult to shatter. It's different than like kale pods. Kale pods or arugula, they just shatter right away. But the radish, man,  you really have to bash them. And we don't have  really fancy threshing equipment.
23:18I have some equipment for winnowing, the threshing part, um so there's a lot of stomping and stuff that goes into radish seed. um But basically it's like you harvest the dry seeds and you have to thresh them. So you like break open the pods. um Same with beans.  And we often like
23:43just throw all the seed on like an old bed sheet and then literally stomp things with our feet  or  things like that. And then you have to winnow it. So you use air to blow away all of the chafe. And so we do have some equipment for that. We have this really cool  machine called a winnow wizard that was created by Mark Lutera up in Oregon.
24:08and it has a huge hopper that you can pour the seed into and a fan and an agitation tray. And so it's cool because I can like turn it on and get it set right and then walk away from it for a half an hour while it just continues to winnow the seed and the good seed falls into a bucket. yeah, I mean, there's a lot of like harvesting seeds, piling them up in bags.
24:36where they continue to kind of dry for a couple months and then cleaning them as we, as we get to it. So my house definitely like  in  this time period of two or three months, there's a corner of it that just gets like stacked full of bags of drying seeds. Well, I was going to ask you what kind, I mean, I don't want you to tell me exact numbers, but  what kind of space do you end up needing and  what's your inventory like? I mean, are we talking?
25:06hundreds of thousands of seed packets?  Yeah, well, I would say that  we maybe sell about 50,000 seed packets a year, but we have an office space. yeah, we used to have this whole thing would be in our house and then it moved to a back shed and it's moved around a lot over the years. uh There's definitely like now there's the farm production part of it and then we have an office uh at our
25:33It's our old elementary school was closed and now it's our community center. And so I rent the old teacher's lounge as my office space. So  all of our like cleaned seeds that are just in bags  live there in the office and we do all of our seed packaging in the office, um not in my home anymore. So um I don't, we don't like pack everything into hundreds of thousands of packets. Instead we pack.
26:02more like as we need. So we'll pack like 50 to 100 packets of a variety at a time and then sell through those or send those to stores  and then pack more as we need it. So the majority of our inventory is stored as bulk. um like on-demand printing? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like that. Cool. Yeah. So, but we pack it all by hand.  We basically know how many
26:31Seeds are in these little spoons that we have. We have like these little teeny spoons, some like from tablespoon size down to like 1 64th of a teaspoon size. Maybe we even have a smaller one than that. And so we've counted, you know, over the years several times and we have that recorded. So we know that like a quarter teaspoon is about 25 cucumber seeds. So we pack, pack the packets like that.
27:00Nice. Okay. I try to keep these to half an hour or at like 27 minutes. So I want to say for the listener, anybody can save seeds. We do it with basil seeds every year and we haven't had to buy basil seeds in four or five years now. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody should try to seeds. Yeah. And they come back beautifully.
27:28Yeah, I will say that if people want to hop on my website, I do have a pretty robust section about seed saving on there. So uh there's a lot of information  and I have a YouTube channel that has like two videos on it. But one of the videos is like an hour long seed saving uh Zoom class that I taught a couple of years ago that gives good info to. That's super to know. Thank you.
27:56And  I mean, if people don't want to save their own seeds, I'm sure that if you want to buy seeds that have been saved, Kaylyn  would be happy to sell them to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.  But there are things that everybody can do for themselves on a small scale that are really simple. And I feel like if I'm in Minnesota and I can save basil seeds from the basil we grow,
28:22probably smarter than buying it from Kaylin in California for me to do. Yeah, absolutely. The more people who are saving the seeds, the more secure our seed supply is. Yep. And with all the crazy that's going on in the world right now, I'm going to say it again. I say it almost every episode. If you don't know how to cook from scratch, learn. If you have any place to grow any kind of food, grow it. Learn how to do it and grow it.
28:51And if you don't know your local grower, your local producer, get to know them because shopping locally, supporting your local growers and producers will save your butt 100 % of the time.
29:06Absolutely. I will die on that freaking hill.  All right, Kaylin, where can people find you?  At redwoodseeds.net  and at redwoodseeds on Instagram. Okay. Are you on Facebook at all? I am on Facebook. Yep. Redwood seeds on Facebook. Okay. So if anybody has questions or if they want to go see the video about saving seeds that Kaylin put out,  that's where you find her. oh
29:36Thank you so much for your time, Kalen. I really appreciate it. Nice to chat, Mary. Thank you. As always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Kalen, I hope you have a great rest of the day because you have a whole day in front of you. Yeah, I do. Yeah, it's awesome.  Yep. Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye.
 

Tryna Homestead

Today I'm talking with Kendra at Tryna Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Kendra at Tryna Homestead in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Kendra, how are you? Good, how are you?  I'm good, and I'm not gonna lie.  When I looked at who I was talking to today, because I have it in my calendar,  I saw Tryna Homestead and I was like, you know,
00:28I hope that's trying to, you know, a play on trying to. if your name is Trina and I've been thinking it's Trina, I'm going to sound really dumb. How is the weather in Wisconsin? Did you guys get all the snow that we got on Sunday? We were supposed to get 12 to 18 inches, but we're right up against the river. And so it kind of buffered us and...
00:53I think we only got about eight. It's hard to tell though, because we had the blowing snow and the blizzard conditions. So we have spots where it's fair and then other spots where we have two feet there. we  definitely got snow.  Did it start for you Monday night? No, we, started Saturday night while we were actually outside boiling sap.  Oh. sitting in it as it started. And then  it went, it was still snowing through Sunday night. And then
01:23uh Yesterday and today have just been cold and sunny but cold. Okay. Where are you in Wisconsin? We're in Western Wisconsin,  Northwestern. We're right on the border with Minnesota.  Okay, because I'm in Minnesota and  it started for us about nine o'clock Saturday night. Yeah, think it ended about, it really ended about seven Sunday night. But
01:54The wind was so bad that you couldn't see anything. All day. insane. Yeah. Yeah. It was so loud. Like all Saturday night and Sunday night. was so loud. The wind was just whipping. Oh yeah. My Australian shepherd, she sleeps downstairs and my husband and I sleep upstairs. And about every couple hours Saturday night, I would hear, Arf! Just one Arf every couple of hours. She was barking at the wind.
02:23I believe it. I was just like, there's nothing you can do about it sweetie, go to sleep. It's all good really. The house is not going to collapse, I promise. So yeah, it was some wild weather and I don't know about you, but it's the first real snowstorm we've had all winter. Yeah, it's the first we've really had in the last three years, be honest. Yeah, it's been so bizarre and
02:49when I talk to people who don't live in the general Minnesota, Wisconsin area, they're like, oh, it's, been a real winter for you. I'm like, we're having a real winter at least five years. Right. Yeah. I,  I love winter. It's actually my favorite season  and I love the snow, but March snows are actually my favorite because at that point I'm done with winter. I'm focusing on spring.
03:15But when we get snow, I know it's not going to last, it covers the brown for a little bit. uh Saturday morning before the storm hit, we had green grass showing. Yeah. I was like,  we don't need a foot of snow. This is ridiculous.  So the reason I open the podcast every time with how is the weather or did you get the same weather we got is because weather is a big freaking deal for people who grow things.
03:46and you have a homestead. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah. So we,  my husband and I, we've been homesteading in a rental for seven years and we just bought our property last fall  in like middle of August and we're just on four acres. And so this is our first year really getting to do the things that we've done on a really small scale  in our apartment for the last
04:15seven years. um We raised chickens down at my parents place, but I'd have to drive 45 minutes to go take care of them. And I would garden in containers and fill our tiny little patio. And now I'm actually getting to have chickens right in our backyard and a large in-ground garden. So we're really excited.  And all the things that we have dreamed about  doing,  we're finally able to start putting those plans into action.
04:44now that we have our own space. You sound like me  five and a half years ago when we moved from our tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it to a 3.1 acre property. That's about we are just shy of four acre. We have 3.98. They couldn't give us the point oh two.  Yes, exactly. em
05:09So I have a question. When you moved and you actually realized that you've done it, did you step outside and look around and go, oh my God, we did it? Oh, we walked around this property so many times and we're just looking at each other going, is this really ours?  Someone needs to pinch us. Is this real? we actually do this? Because with the way the housing market was every year,
05:37Our five-year plan turned into a six-year plan, turned into a seven-year plan and it was feeling less and less likely. And the day that we closed, we just stood in the backyard looking at everything going, is this really ours? Like, is it really, really what we have been dreaming of is actually here and happening. And it was such a surreal moment to realize that all those years of hoping and praying for this property is actually happening.
06:06Yep. I love it when I talk to somebody like you, who is like me five and a half years ago,  because  I,  my son and I had to come down and spend the first night in the new place by ourselves because my husband had to work. And where we lived at the time was an hour drive for him. And if he had had to stay here with us, it would have been an hour and a half drive for him to work.
06:33So he stayed up at the old house and we stayed at the new house. We had to be here overnight because early morning they were gonna be a brand new gas stove for cooking, because the house didn't have a stove. And we had to be here for the internet to get hooked up because Lord knows you need internet.  I made it a point to get up before sunrise, it was August of 2020.
06:59And I made it a point to get up before sunrise because there's a beautiful, huge window above the kitchen sink.  I did not have a window above the kitchen sink in the old house. And it looks out over, it was an alfalfa field and it's all wide open sky out that window. And I was like, I have to see the first sunrise the first morning I'm here. And I stood there and cried, Kendra, I cried. I believe it.  And I was like, oh my God, I have.
07:27hot coffee because the first thing you put in a new house is the coffee maker if you're a coffee drinker. And the sun is all cotton candy pink and coral orange. Beautiful. And I'm just standing there tears dripping off the end of my nose and I'm like, I'm so freaking happy. Yeah, it was ridiculous. And it was the best happy cry I think I've ever had except when my kids were born. Yeah, it it was such an overwhelming feeling. And it's funny because you mentioned having a
07:57big window over your sink. Yeah, we did not have one in our rental either. And that was one thing I always wanted.  And we have one now and it looks out over it has an eastern view.  And so I get to see the sunrise every morning from the kitchen as well. And it like, to this day, we've been here eight months now, almost nine.  And still every day, we just were like, is this really ours? And it's
08:25so overwhelming to know that what you've worked so hard for, what you've dreamed for, for so long is finally here.  Yes,  it's so hard to explain the feeling to someone who hasn't achieved a dream like that. I mean, you can say it a billion different ways, but until the person has something they want so badly come true, they don't understand  that big feeling in your chest and in your heart.
08:56Absolutely. know that  once we actually got everything moved in and we were done with the old house because we sold the  old house after we bought this place.  And I remember the last time being in the old house and it was just empty and I raised four kids in that house.
09:17And I was a little sad about, you know, leaving the place that I raised my kids.  But drove back here and there were boxes everywhere. And I just looked around and I was like, okay, I'm over it. I don't ever want to go back to the other house. I'm done.  Yeah. And I also remember  once we were completely moved in, sitting  on the bench that we had refinished to have on the patio, because we have a little cement pad  outside the front door.
09:45and sitting on that bench and looking around and looking at my husband and going, what do we do now? Yeah, it's kind of it's almost that feeling like when you get married and you're like, okay, now what? Like that's how I felt with like we purchased the place and then we still lived in our
10:13apartment for three more weeks because of when we could actually get our stuff up here. Yeah, because it's about 40 minutes or so. And so we were just I every day I was making two or three trips a day coming up here bringing stuff, unpacking coming up bringing stuff unpacking like for two weeks and or like two and half weeks until our big move. And then once we were all moved in, and you know, we got everything here, we were done with the apartment. I can't look at my husband. was like, now what?
10:42Like, you almost are like, this is really it. But now what do we do? Like we did the whole go through the move thing. It's like, okay. Yeah. And moving is exhausting. Oh, I don't ever want to do it again. I say that every time. I don't either. There are days where my husband and I are like, well, now we're nasty, nasty, uh-huh. Empty nesters.
11:11Do we really want to stay? You know, is this where we want to die basically? Yeah. And some days we're like, I need to sleep on it. And then other days we're like, nah, we would be nuts to move again. Yeah. I'm, I'm okay staying here for a very, very, very long time. It's not a curse. Yep. Well, it became real to us when we ended up buying, I think we had 40 chickens at one point and I was like, so are we chicken farmers now?
11:41And my husband was like,  no,  there. are a farm to market gardeners. And I was like, but we have 40 chickens. And he was like,  yeah, and that's probably the highest number we're going to have. I was like, don't say that out loud outside. You're going to jinx it. We're going to have 300 chickens.  Oh, but no, it's so lovely. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to say the whole 40 chickens thing is making me laugh over here because
12:10uh We  tracked, I ordered 20 chickens or baby chicks that are coming in through April. Yeah, yeah. But Tractor Supply got us and we ended up with six turkeys. And then the next Wednesday Tractor Supply got us again and we ended up with six more chicks. uh And then the next day we went to a different feed store and we ended up with six more chicks. So we currently have six baby turkey poults and 12 chicks in our basement with 20 more chicks coming.
12:38Chicken math is real and they multiply before you even realize.  I think in your case, it's poultry math.  Right?  For sure.  That's okay. Those turkeys will come in real handy. Yes. We were hoping that we have a hen and a tom  in at least, we have two different breeds, three of each. And we're hoping we have a hen and a tom  in at least  one of those breeds, if not  both, so that we can
13:08have some  for meat this year, but then have longevity with our trippies. So that's the goal with those.  Yes, it's really nice when the livestock reproduce because it's basically free food. For sure. Very expensive free food, but it is definitely free food.  Well, to start with, but there are dividends. So.  But my husband and I, he's like, you know, we should put a lot of money into these  free eggs that we're going to get.  So we always joke that.
13:38It's very expensive free food because we didn't have go to the store to buy it, but we had to, you know, feed it and water it and care for it and it's expensive and all the other things. Uh-huh.  I asked my husband  if the chickens are paying for themselves because we sell eggs. Sure. And he said yes.  But there was kind of a  weird note to the yes. And I said, okay, what are you not saying? And he said,
14:08They're keeping us in milk and butter because we don't have a cow to make, you know, to have drinking milk and to make butter.  And I said, okay, I can, I can live with that.  He said, and he said, we are never without eggs for ourselves. And I said, I can absolutely live with that. So it works out great.  So when I was looking at your Facebook page and you were telling your story at the beginning of this,
14:33You were doing homesteading in an apartment. We were doing homesteading in an 800 square foot house and a tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it. And the thing that I love when I talk to people who are doing homesteading, not on homesteads as people think of it, is it proves my point that homesteading is a state of mind. It is a way of being. It is not owning property. Totally.
15:02One of our big things is we always say a home setting is a mindset, not a location. Yeah. That I have it written on many shirts, actually, because it's so true. It's not about where you are. It's about what you're doing with what you currently have.  And when we were in the rental, we like I mentioned before, we raised chickens somewhere else and we had small little  container gardens everywhere we could put them. But we learned
15:31canning  and preserving  and we worked with other farmers and local gardeners to get the things that we didn't have and to make those relationships and we had we have met so many great people in our community that they were like hey I have a ton of apples on my apple tree and I don't have time to pick them or I've picked all I want does anyone else want them and we were able to go get them for free  and make applesauce with them and then I would give them some applesauce as a
16:01thank you and then year after year they would contact me first, hey, would you like apples this year? And we made so many  great connections with people,  just looking for other people that were like-minded and  trying to achieve the same thing or maybe had more than what they could handle with those things. Yeah,  absolutely. And there's a joke about chickens are the gateway to homesteading.
16:26But I beg to differ. I think that if you start learning to cook from scratch, that's the gateway to homesteading. For sure.  mean, when you start realizing, I mean, it's all connected in one big rabbit hole. But when you start looking at what's in the food, in the stores and on the shelves and all the preservatives and the things that are in there and you start realizing, I can make something fairly quick that tastes way better.
16:55that doesn't have all these extra things added to it that's much better for my health and my family's health. And you start doing that and then you start looking at all the other areas of things that you can do and okay, well now let's get chickens and now let's, you know, have a really large garden so I don't have to go buy the things that we eat. I can just make it all from scratch here as much as we can. We'll never be a hundred percent able to grow everything, but  we do what we can. Every little bit helps, yeah.
17:24For sure. Yep. We're trying to be really aware about what we spend for money at the grocery store right now, because we have food in the house. There's no need to go buy food that's already made. And we had a few containers of homemade sloppy Joe and homemade taco meat in the freezers. And we, Sunday, we're like, what do you want to eat? And my husband was like, I don't really want pot roast. That's what I was supposed to make.
17:54I said, I'll make the pot roast tomorrow. What do we have in the freezer? And he pulled out what he thought was the taco meat.
18:03I ate a sloppy Joe taco with taco sauce on it.  I don't recommend anyone do this. It really wasn't great. It was food and it was edible, but it was not great. And I looked at my husband afterwards and I was like, I must be taking this not buying already made food thing really seriously. And he said, why? I said, cause that was the most unsatisfactory filling meal I've ever had in my entire life. And I don't want to do it again. Oh, that's funny.
18:32It was not great. And luckily,  luckily he knew because I told him that one of the containers was sloppy. Joe me and he had already he had uh him. can't talk.  He had thought out an actual taco meat one as well. So he had a sloppy Joe in a rolled up tortilla and he had a taco in a rolled up tortilla. I was like,  I'm so mad. I wish I had known because I would have had you eat the sloppy Joe tacos and I would have had the taco taco.
19:03He's like, you're a good wife. I was like, yes, I am. Don't you forget it.  Oh, that's so funny. But point being is that even if it doesn't turn out the way you thought it was going to, it's probably still going to be okay. For sure. There's always things I feel like that you can, like you learn, like, okay, maybe we need a better label or organize things or.
19:32you learn of like, maybe if I, instead of adding taco sauce, if I added something else, maybe it would have been better.  And who knows? You can always change things around.  was hoping the taco sauce would make it taste like taco,  but a sweet taco is not a great thing. promise you. was about to say the sweetness of that poppy joke was probably a little much.  It was very funny and I did not vomit. So we're okay.
20:00But  I don't want to do it again. I just thought it was a funny story because sometimes we might take things a little too far.  And  if I had been sick on it, that would have been a little too far, but it was fine. So you have chickens, you have turkeys. What else do you have? So that's well, we have a golden retriever, but that's we have for right now. But we have  we have plans for adding some Gloucestershire old spot pigs at some point. Not sure if that'll be this year or next.
20:30year. I'm kind of hoping for this year but budget-wise it's probably going to be next year. So  there's so many things that we want to do but we're not in a hurry to  do it all right now. We want to thoughtfully plan it out and make sure that we're doing the best that we can with what we have  and doing the best for the animals. We don't want to get them and then risk them getting out because we didn't plan their structures out well enough.
21:00you know, any other scenario like that.  we're  my husband is going slow and plant thoughtfully planning things out. And I'm thinking of all the things that we should do.  So he balances me out in that way, thankfully.  Yes, that's what spouses are for.  I'm always saying start small, dream big. Yeah, that's actually our tagline, which is really funny.  So we say at the end of almost all of our videos.  Yep. Because if you dive in, m
21:28head-first, you better pray there's a lot of water or a lot of money in the bottom of that pool.  Right? oh And it's usually not money. No,  and if there's no water, you're gonna break your neck. yeah, starting small,  looking before you leap, thinking it through is all really good advice. But the worst advice  is don't dream.  Everybody needs a dream.
21:58Absolutely.  And the other thing is that a lot of people,  they're researching, they're planning, they're dreaming, but they don't ever take that first step.  we always say,  you just have to start at some point. Just do it, just try it.  This year, so this property that we moved on had five silver maple trees. And this spring, we're like, we've never tapped maple syrup or maple trees before.
22:26and made our own maple syrup, let's just try it. Let's just see how it goes. It is a lot of work. We spent the last two weekends, both Saturday and Sunday, each weekend, 12 to 14 hour days making maple syrup. Like it is a lot of work, but we have this beautiful golden maple syrup that tastes phenomenal that we made and we did it. And we wouldn't have had that if we hadn't done it and just tried it. Now there's a lot of things that we're going to
22:56change and do differently for next year knowing what we know now but we wouldn't have learned those things if we hadn't just done it. We did do  a little bit of research before but and I grew up around ah maple tapping and sugar bushes. The farm that I grew up on we own half of the woods and the other half is owned by a sugar bush that they tap they've always tapped my family's trees and so I grew up around all this but I've never actually done it and
23:26It was such a good learning process. But if we had just said, you know what, let's just hold off until we know everything. So you have to find that balance of don't just rush in  and do it all at once. Pick one thing. But at some point you do have to just start.  Yes. And sometimes your friends help you along the way. My friend brought me some sourdough starter that was very well established and beautiful. And she was like,
23:53Here's what you do. I wrote out the instructions, blah, blah. And I kept it alive for about a week and I went to move the jar and it hit the floor and shattered.  Oh no.  Yes, I was very sad.  And then I got over my sad and I was like, I can  make a new one. And I did the flower and water thing in another jar. And I actually made two loaves of sourdough bread out of that sourdough starter that I started. They both kind of turned out.
24:23um bagel-y like bagel texture. Yeah. They were good  and then it got the dreaded pink mold. I've talked about this a few times in the last  two it had to go in trash and I cried over that because that is not okay. That's not fun. Especially when you start it from yourself that is so hard to do. ah Yeah so I waited until about a month and a half ago to start a new one.
24:51They got the pink mold back in September, I think it was. So I started new one about a month and a half ago. And it's now at the point where I might actually be able to make some sourdough bread again. And it's got all the little bubbles on the side of the jar. And I'm like, oh my God, it's alive and it's working. That will never not make me giddy. When I wake up in the morning and I see those bubbles on the jar, I get so excited. Over bubbles.
25:21It's so dumb, but it's so smart at the same time. It's such a rewarding thing because it doesn't take much. It takes five, six minutes to feed your starter. And then it's just time. You're just waiting. You're not doing anything. And then you come back and check and it's alive and happy.  It's just, it brings me such joy.  I think the reason homesteaders like sourdough,  you know, the process is because it's keeping another thing alive. Right.
25:52There's lots of chaos in our life. Let's just keep something else alive.  I was gonna say it's not enough to grow plants and animals. We need to grow bacteria too. Right.  Well, let's grow it all.  But I'll tell you there is something  really special when you make your first loaf of sourdough bread. Out of sourdough starter,  you start it because it is literally all on you.  100%.
26:20I was so thrilled when I pulled the first loaf out and it was bagel-ish, bagel-y, however you say that, because I love bagels and I happened to have a brick of cream cheese that we had just bought in the fridge. I was like, I can't make a bagel to save my life, but I can make bagel sourdough bread. I love it.  Oh, I bet that was so good. Especially, like you said, when it's your first loaf that you did all of it from start to finish, there's,  it just...
26:46adds to the flavor. Like it'll taste good regardless because you did it all.  Yes and I feel like it's a true homesteading skill which probably sounds really dumb because all of it is homesteading skills but  I feel like it's what people associate homesteading with.  For sure there's a there's a few bigger things like there's like three or four things right we have sourdough, chicken,
27:13canning and gardening, those are the things that people really associate with.  Home setting.  There's so much more to it than that, but those seem to be the big things that people recognize as home setting. Yes, one of the first things that we did when we kind of got into this, and it was more me than my husband because he was the breadwinner. He was gone all the time.  We're raising four kids on one income and I was like,  the kids need scarves. I can learn to crochet. So I learned to crochet scars for the kids.
27:43And I was trying to be really  aware of our food expenses because kids eat a lot.  so  I to make oatmeal raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies and any kind of cookie or banana bread kept them very happy and snacks. none of them were fat. They were always running around doing stuff. So they were like, can I have a cookie? Yes, please. Before you're too skinny to live, you know.
28:12And it was just all things that I was like, okay, if I make cookies, it's going to cost me less than buying cookies.  Absolutely.  So for us,  was a way, frugality was our gateway to homesteading. I know a lot of people that that's how they start because they don't have the option to  buy  the extras at the grocery store. They can buy the necessities and that's about it.
28:41flour, sugar, milk, bread, right? Those kinds of things. And then they start realizing, well, if I can buy those things, I can make the bread and then I can make the cookies and I can make all the other things. And it is a way for them to save money in the long run.  Yes. And I felt like I had to because
29:05I love my husband and I loved my kids. I still love my kids, but they're adults now. They make their own cookies.  And I felt like if I was going to be home with the kids, because I wanted to raise them myself, whatever I could do to save us money was making us money.  Oh, for sure. So it was a big deal. And my husband would get asked at his job, they'd like, they'd say, what does your wife do? And he would say, well, she is at home with the kids.
29:36And they would say, isn't she bored?  And he would just laugh. He was belly laugh.  He was like, okay, you understand that my kids are 13, 11, um six and one. And they're like, well, yeah, but three of them are in school. And my husband would be like, yes. And one of them is one year old. She's got four more years to go for the last one in school. No, she's not bored. And she's smart.
30:06she saves us more money than I make. And every time he would tell me this story, I would just feel such a sense of pride because I was like, I am earning  my keep and not that I was ever told I had to. Right. But I am, I am so lucky to be able to have my kids leave my house and I'm home. They come home, I'm home and I get to be here for them. Yeah, it's such a great feeling knowing that
30:35these short 18 years that you get to spend with them because those years, it's the smallest part of your life is when you're under 18.  So  bidding to have your kids in your home with you  and spending the life together and doing every single day in and day out together for those short 18 years  is, in my opinion, worth the sacrifice. um
31:05And then it takes because living on one income is hard. And we have so we homeschool our son. He's 13 and my husband works full time out of well, he works from home quite often, but he has to go in on surveys and things like that. But. I work two part time jobs that I get to work from home, so we're still able to homeschool and do I. I'm still able to be home with him and still make
31:34some money for the family and things like that. we made the sacrifices and the things that we gave up so that we could have that time with him because it goes so fast. It doesn't last very long. No, it does not. And that's all I have to say or I will cry. Also, every human being
32:04has the opportunity to make a choice about how they live their life. And some of us come  at it from a privileged place, some of us do not. I'm not saying that the homeless person in Minneapolis has a lot of choice right now, so don't get me wrong. But if you happen to be lucky enough to make choices about what you want to do with your life, you're one of the luckiest people on earth. And not everybody has to be a homesteader.
32:34I get that there are some people who want to be in an office building  as a CEO of a big company and that is totally fine. You do you. But  I love that we get to make these choices. I love that my husband and I are thinking about getting into raising quail, have not actually decided yet,  but it's a choice we get to make this year. I love it. My husband wants to raise quail.
33:03Yeah, we've been looking into that too. They're so cool. I've been diving deep on this for  a couple of weeks and hopefully  we can make a decision this weekend about what whether we're going to buy an incubator or not. That's that's the next thing on the list is to decide that. So  exciting.  It is. It's really fun. And  I just I looked up the little quail scissors that you use to clip the eggs open.
33:30I was like, oh my God,  I'm actually looking up quail scissors on Amazon. I've got to be out of my freaking mind. I love it.  A friend of mine raises them. And so she gave me some eggs, some quail eggs and eggs and the quail egg scissors uh in exchange. We were bartering. don't remember what  I had and we exchanged. And I love a good barter and trade, by the way.  Oh, yes, my favorite thing. And so
34:00my friend who raises quails, she loves to barter and trade as well. So we're constantly finding things that the other one wants or needs.  We're exchanging things and she keeps telling me, she's like, hey,  I'm going to have eggs  if you want to have quail. And I'm like, we do, but we might need to wait a year for that.  But oh, it's so tempting to do it this year because they're so cute. I love them.
34:29I'm,  I,  I am going to have a hard time spitting this out. I am very excited at the idea. I am very concerned about the actual doing it because where we live, I'm not sure there's a market for quail meat or quail eggs.  And they don't want to get deep into this until we know that we can move a quail meat and quail eggs.  So we're going to start small.
34:58we're only gonna get like 12 or 14. And that way if we can't move them, we just don't do it past butchering the quail that we have and having them in our freezer for ourselves. That's a good place to start when you're trying to figure out if this is something that's doable and starting with just a few because and that's kind of what we did with the turkeys. We have six and so we're like if this goes the way we want to go.
35:26and we get the breeding pair and things like that, then we do potentially have a future. If not, we have six that are going to our freezer. Yeah. And again, start small, dream big. 100%. Yup, exactly. I'm so excited to start a new project with the husband because like I said, empty nesters. And when we get snippy with each other, it's time to get aligned on a project again.
35:57But I'm like, okay, so we have chickens, have a dog, we have barn cats, and you're gonna be getting  into the gardens again this year.  Do we have time for a new project?
36:11That's the hard part.  Because like I see all these different things that we want to do. But each one of those will take a certain amount of time. It's like, how much do you want to put towards one thing? Because that's how much you're taking away from something else. So it's definitely a balancing act to try to figure out how much you actually want to do each year.  And it's okay to try something one year and then realize, hey, it wasn't worth the time and the effort.
36:40next year or you know we're kind of with that with the maple syrup because of all the time into it we were looking at each other as the snow was flying on saturday night and we're still not done  and we're like is this really what we're doing is this worth it and we're like do we really want to do this again next year but then you boil it down and you look at it and  we're like okay this was this is a short season it's
37:08on a great year, it's a month  from start to finish. Yeah. And there are some years where you're lucky if you get a run for three days because things warm up too fast  and the trees butt out. And so we're like,  what we get from it, the time spent outside,  we literally every day, every Saturday and Sunday for the last two weeks, my husband and I have spent outside together or in the house finishing it off.  And like,
37:37Just spending time outside together, just us around the fire while we're boiling saps. It was so fun.  those special moments, like, that makes it worth it for us, even though it's  really long hours and it's a lot of work, but it's only for a short time where there's other things that, you know, it's every day for a year, you're feeding an animal.
38:06two, sometimes three times a year, or a day for an entire year, and that might not be worth it depending on your schedule and other things you have going on. And it's okay to change from year to year what you put your focus and your time into.
38:26Certainly, absolutely. And again,  if you guys don't want a maple syrup next spring, you don't have to because  those trees don't care whether you get the sap out of them or not.  Right. We definitely will be.  But  there was a moment as we're sitting in the start of the snowstorm looking at each other going,  is this really worth it? But  it is. It really is worth it for us. Just the time we get to spend together and then the syrup.
38:56we go through because it's really the only sugar source that we use except for a tiny bit of raw cane sugar. And so for us, it was worth it because we go through two to three gallons a year. And that's a we have right now just over two gallons. So it's almost a year's worth of syrup in essentially two weekends worth of work. So for us, it was worth it at least.
39:21this year.  Another year if it only runs for three days and we only get you know a half a gallon it might not feel worth it. So it's okay to change from year to year. Exactly that's what I love about this particular life choice is that again you get to choose what you want to put your time into. And the other thing is that I feel like the halfway mark on anything is the hardest part.
39:47The beginning is exciting and fun and the end is satisfying. But the middle is the part where you're like, why did we start this? It drags on. It's just like when you decide to clean your closet and it feels like a really great idea in the beginning and you get everything pulled out and you look around and you're like, oh, I have to put it back. I like that feeling. Yep, exactly. It's new energy is amazing.
40:15Finished energy is amazing. Middle energy sucks.  100 % on almost every project I feel like it. m Yep, that's how it always is. I'll be feeling that way tomorrow or Saturday when I make my next sourdough loaf because anyone who's ever made a sourdough loaf knows  that it's not the actual making of it that's the pain in the ass, it's the waiting time.  100%. That's what takes forever.  Yep.
40:45I was like, you're kidding me. I do the pull, the stretch and pull four times and then I have to wait half an hour until I can do anything else. A lot  of it's very, it's very needy. Like  every 30 minutes you're doing something, but then you need to wait.  Like, can I just do it all and be done and move on?  Yeah. My husband is the, uh, the yeast bread maker. He's very good at it.
41:12And he was like, I can't believe you're going to do sourdough when you could just do yeast breads.  The issue is, that every time I try to make yeast bread, I kill the yeast. We cannot figure out how I do this. And he's really good at making yeast bread. And I was like, I just need to be able to say that I finally made a freaking loaf of bread from scratch. Give me the sourdough.  Yeah. I did sourdough for years and I did gluten-free sourdough for many years. then
41:41we found a flower that my son could tolerate. And so then I do regular sourdough and it wasn't until about, think it was January of this year, maybe early February that  I  tried yeast bread for the first time in probably 20 years.  And I don't know why I had never really made sandwich bread and I decided to try my sourdough sandwich bread. I didn't like how many holes were in it.
42:11It wasn't great for sandwich for me. And so decided to try yeast bread and now I'm hooked. And now I actually haven't been doing sourdough for a while because I've been making every week, I've been making two loaves of yeast bread and then pizza dough. I'm in my yeast era at the moment.  My husband is always in the yeast bread era. He's been making, he's been making four loaves of bread every other weekend.
42:41because he really likes bread with his eggs in the morning for toast.  the least expensive bread at the local grocery stores is terrible. The only really good tasting bread is like $7 a loaf right now.  At the least he was like, I'm just going to start making bread. I said, okay, how's the smell amazing every other weekend? And he was like, yes, will.
43:08So we've been reminded that frugality has lots of benefits. Oh, for sure. When you start looking at well, and so my son can't have gluten or dairy. so when we would go to the store and I'm looking and I'm gluten free, anything is a minimum of eight dollars, if not 15 for a tiny little package of this thing. I just like it.
43:37It's so expensive. Now  there are occasions, right, where we'll get it as a treat and then it's something I don't have to make for that week. But  I have started making so many things and it does come out of necessity because if I bought  everything that we eat just pre-made from the store that's organic and gluten-free and dairy-free, oh my goodness, I cannot imagine my grocery bill. It's already high enough that is it it?
44:04as it is just eating organic. It's maddening how expensive things have gotten. Yeah. And that's all I have to say on that too, because boy, we don't want that soap box coming out either right now. All right. This has been so much fun, Kendra. And I am not saying that everyone should become a homesteader.
44:29but I would be remiss if I didn't say this again. This is my public service announcement for every episode. You ready?  If you don't know how to cook from scratch,  learn. And please get to know your local growers and producers because  it's so important to have a local source because supply chains do  have problems  and things just keep getting more expensive. Please learn how to take care of yourself. Absolutely.
44:58Where can people find you? So we are on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram as Trina Homestead.  Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Kendra, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. All right. Have a great day. You too.
 
 

Three Birch Homestead

Today I'm talking with Andrea at Three Birch Homestead.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Andrea at Three Birch Homestead in Canada. Good morning, Andrea. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Canada this morning? um It's a little bit cold. We had like a really warm spell and now it's kind of freezing again.
00:30Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and we've had a couple of really beautiful days  and they're saying we're going to get snow tomorrow, a little bit of snow Thursday, and then they're kind of hyping up a bigger storm over the weekend. And I'm like,  it's March. Could we please put it to bed now? Please.  Yeah,  I'm ready for spring. There was actually a really like  heavy windstorm here the last couple of days and the power's been out, I guess, like all over the place.
01:00um But because we're off grid, we like don't even notice. We just hear about it from other people.  Uh-huh. It's one of the benefits of living off grid. You've got that covered.  All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself, please. um We live in northern BC, Canada,  off grid um on a property, like a rural property.  We're about 45 minutes from the closest town.
01:30an hour and a half from like a bigger center. So it's a bit of a drive. There is like a small community about  half an hour from here. um But there's just like a general store and a post office. It's not, there's not a whole lot going on there. Yeah.  So  and  we raise animals for  meat  and we um have kids and
01:59homeschool and yeah, just sort of try to do as much as we can on our own and provide as much food as we can for ourselves.
02:11Okay, I have a question. You have kids. How many kids do you have? um I have five kids. Two of them are adults, so they don't live with me anymore. And then I have  a  14 year old son and then a two year old and an eight month old.
02:29Okay, having raised four kids without a whole lot of family around, because my family lives in Maine, uh how has it been for you? Do you have family at all in the area that can help out or is it just you? um When my other kids were little, I lived in a different area and I did have family around, so that was very helpful.  Here, we didn't have much family around, but my husband's parents recently moved to the area.
02:59They live uh here half the time and then in Ontario half the time because they wanted to be closer to their grandkids.  So, um because the  two boys are their only grandchildren, so they wanted to be close. And so that's been really helpful.
03:16good because when I hear moms having more than a couple of kids and I don't hear anything about extended family being able to kind of help out here and there, I worry because I did a lot of the raising of my four kids myself and it is a lot of stress and a lot of energy and I loved every minute of it but it would have been helpful to have extended family to step in. Yeah, it's definitely nice to have somebody. So I thought I
03:48Yeah, I thought I would ask because  I don't recommend anyone do  homesteading or off-grid living or anything else like that if you don't have some form of community to  call on if you do need help. It's definitely nice. Yeah. you you disagree? Yeah,  I agree. It can be really isolating. When I first moved out here,
04:12Like where I had lived before, I did live out of town, but I only lived a couple minutes out of town and I had lots of friends around. And so when I moved out here to live with my husband, like my now husband, I didn't really have that anymore. it definitely, I didn't realize how much it was going to affect me until I got out here. And then I was like, wow, like I don't have anybody. And so I was pretty lonely. And then my son joined Taekwondo.
04:42which helped us to meet people. And so now I do have some friends around, but they're definitely not as close. they're, you know, a good 45 minute to an hour drive away. So I don't get to see people as often as I used to, but I've kind of learned to adapt. It's given me a lot more time to do stuff at home, which is nice. I spend less time socializing and more time making bread and doing other things that I wanted to do before too, but didn't have time for because I would be out and about.
05:17Absolutely. I am an extreme introvert and I spend most of my weekdays from about 730 in the morning until about 430.  Just me. And I love it because I get so much done and I can pursue the things that I'm interested in without anyone being like, why are you watching about chickens?  Why are you reading a book about cows? know? Yeah.
05:43So, all right, so tell me, tell me your, your living situation. Are you in a home? Are you in a cabin? Are you in a trailer? How does that work?  Um, we're in like a cabin, I guess it's,  it's not huge. It's  maybe like, there's probably 700 square feet in the main space.  And then there's a bit of an upstairs with the bedroom. It's pretty small. Uh, like I came from a house that was like,
06:112500 square feet.  it's definitely like been a transition, especially once we added two more kids to the mix. My teenage son has his own little cabin, which is nice. um And so  but then he's got to like run his own fire as well. So we've got two wood stoves that we have to maintain. But yeah, so it's it's a nice little like, long cabin. But we need more space. We're definitely planning on adding
06:40some more space in the future. This summer we actually want to, we have a deck  and it's a really nice deck.  It faces a mountain and it's  a lovely view but we're actually going to enclose it and turn it into part of the house  and forego having a deck because we need the space more than we need a deck.
06:59Yep, yep, understand. And that's the joy of being off-grid. You can probably add whatever you would like to add as long as you have the fundage or the bartering skills to get it done. Yes, well, and like where we live, there's not like building codes. Like we don't have to get a permit or anything. We can just kind of do what we want. And Will's parents are really good about helping us with that stuff. So they're going to help us build.  They've helped us build like all of our additions. My bedroom is actually
07:28like upstairs and it used to just be like a loft and then there was like a big open like high ceiling and we basically closed that in so  we don't have the nice expansive high ceiling anymore, but we have like a whole bedroom up here now, which  we really needed because there was only one bedroom in the whole house and so  Sweet awesome. That's fantastic uh
07:54Okay, and so do  you just heat with the wood stoves or do you have another source? Just the wood stoves, yeah. Okay. And do you have a... I assume you do not have a well, so how do you get your water?  There's a creek on the property that runs through and it's  basically glacial-fed water, like it comes off of the mountain. So we drink from that. It must be amazing water.
08:23It's pretty good. Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, pretty pristine.  It's very cold.  I love that. My parents, when they built their first house when I was like six, we had moved from a suburb and the water was terrible to taste to drink. And when we moved into that house, the new house, they had an artesian well dug for it. And I can
08:50vividly remember getting the first glass of cold water from the faucet and it tasted like heaven. It was so  clean and so cold and so sweet. And I was like, this isn't water.  My mom said, yes, it is. And I was like, it tastes really good. I could drink this all day. She's like, please do. It definitely makes a difference. Water is very important.
09:16Yeah, where we live now,  my favorite glass of water is when it's minus 20 degrees outside because the water from the faucet gets so cold because again, it's a well. And  I really love my water  almost ice when I'm drinking it.  I understand the whole  glacial water is really, really good compared to just regular water.
09:40Okay, so you have animals, what do you have for animals? We have um two milk cows  and a bull and then we have a steer that we're raising for meat. We have chickens, turkeys, pigs.  We have goats, but we're actually getting out of goats. We're going to sell the goats off. We use them to  clear land, like clear brush, to  create more pasture land for cows.
10:08and they've done the job well  and  we really love having them like that when they have their babies. It's just like such a wonderful time, but  it's just a lot of work to move them around the pasture. So we're just, yeah, we're going to sell them off  and  focus on the cows. We got goats originally because  we wanted, well for pasture clearing, but also  we wanted to start with a  smaller animal for milking.
10:34And so we did that, but we don't really enjoy drinking the goat's milk. We like, like I made cheese with it and the cheese was really good.  But so we, got a milk cow and we definitely like prefer the milk cow.
10:50Okay, so as I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm assuming that you use the animals to feed yourselves. And so when you make cheese, how do you store it? Because obviously cheese needs to be refrigerated. So do you have like solar energy or how do you power your appliances? Yeah, we have solar power. We also have a generator. And yeah, so
11:18The cheese gets stored in a fridge.  I vacuum seal it and then store it in the fridge. So a lot of our fridge is taken up by cheese and milk.  We don't have a lot of room for other things.  So we have to be careful about what we put in our fridge and we have to use up our leftovers like fairly quickly. uh But I haven't had to buy cheese at the grocery store in like a few years now, which has been lovely.
11:47I was going to say, isn't that a great feeling just knowing that you are set because you did it? Yeah, I don't have to like really spend any time in the dairy section of the grocery store.  Okay, so now I'm going to ask an uncomfortable question because it makes me uncomfortable to ask it. But do you have a job because even if you are off grid and living quote unquote self-sufficiently,
12:13money still does buy things that you can't make. So do you guys have a job or are you doing this all without jobs?  Yeah, for sure. It's definitely like a big question that people ask is like, how do you pay for this? And it was something that I asked too before,  you know, living like this. mean, I've always been interested in homesteading and I've always done a little bit here and there. But yeah, so I work online.
12:42And then my husband has a glass studio. So he does some glass work. He makes jewelry and stuff. So that  funds like quite a bit of what we do. And then, you know, we have, we don't have a mortgage.  We don't pay an electric bill. Like, so we don't,  costs are low,  but we do, yeah, still need money. You could never not need money. I think it's.
13:10silly to think that you could live without money.  Yeah, the reason I said now for the uncomfortable question is because I always feel weird asking people stuff about their  income or their finances or how they fund things. But people need to know that  even if you're going to be a homesteader, you're probably still going to have to have some kind of jobby job to fund it.
13:36Yes, for sure. need to bring in an income. I get real twitchy when I have to ask that question. And I always preface it so that you guys brace for it, you know? Yeah, I don't like asking people how they make money either. I'm sorry, say it again. Oh, I don't like asking people how they make money either. Like it's one of those questions that's sort of like, it's like not really any of your business. But then I also totally understand why people ask it, you know?
14:13Yeah, it's kind of like asking a mom these days whether their newborn son was circumcised or not.  It's a really slippery slope for a conversation.
14:27Okay, what else can I ask you? um You're in Canada, it gets really,  really cold in Canada in the winter. So  when you have to get up  at, I don't know, 5, 6 a.m. and go milk the cows or feed the animals, how  many layers are you putting on in the morning? Because I know it gets really cold. Yeah, we live in like...
14:57sort of a coastal area so  it's not quite as cold here as some places in Canada but we do still get like cold snaps where it's quite cold  and I actually don't go outside and do the chores I'm inside with the kids and I make the food and  stuff like that and then my husband and my son my teenage son go out and so  usually they're wearing
15:22you boots and snow pants  and a jacket. If it's really cold, they're putting on like Bella clavas and,  you know, heavier wool underneath their jackets and stuff like that. But yeah, this year we haven't had any like really cold weather. It's actually been like quite mild this year. So that's been nice. If I go out, like if I'm milking the cow that I was milking the cow before I had my ah my last baby.
15:51And  yeah, I would wear, you know, a sweater over top of like, I've got a lot of like merino wool base layer stuff.  And so, you know, leggings and pants and snow pants and wool socks and boots and wool hats. And yeah, you're definitely covering up everywhere.  Yeah, it's  interesting because my  mom used to pack away the summer clothes in October.
16:20and pull out the winter clothes from the attic. And then in the spring, she'd pack away the winter clothes and unpack summer clothes again.  And I'm like, I don't even understand this concept anymore because in Minnesota,  you can have a 60 degree day in December. And I don't want to be without a tank top if it's 60 degrees outside because I'm going be outside and it's going be warm. And so my mom mentioned this to me that she had packed away
16:49the summer clothes this past fall. And I said, you know, you don't really have to do that. You can wear the clothes all year round. And she laughed and she said,  you do your outfits the way you want to. I'm gonna do mine the way I want to. And it's funny because we all have our systems and our habits and the way we do things. And she said, seriously, you don't pack away your winter clothes in springtime? I said, no, because  it can be
17:18in June in Minnesota and I want my sweater. And she just giggled and she lives in Maine. It's not that different.
17:28Yeah, I do usually put away the  big winter gear  because  it doesn't get cold enough in the summer for us to need  snow pants and heavy woolies and stuff like that. But I will keep out some of the warmer clothes because at night, in the evenings if we're out, it gets chilly. um
17:51Yeah, and actually, like I do keep a lot of  summer stuff out now because our house gets so warm because it's so small and we have like a big wood stove like right in the center of it.  It'll be 30 degrees in here at 30 Celsius. I'm not sure what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's it's warm.
18:17Yeah. Okay. So what led you to wanting to live off grid? Um, I mean, I've wanted to live off grid for a long time. I, I've always been interested in gardening and wanted to have like my own animals and a milk cow. A lot of it is for health benefits and just having control over my own food source. But like my ex husband,
18:46was not, he was sort of into that stuff, but not really. And so we never really like, actually were able to pursue it. I would do some like, I would dabble, you know, I'd do some canning and I did some wild harvesting and we had chickens and I had a garden and stuff like that. And then I got divorced and so I, I was, you know, on the market again and sort of was looking for, you know, someone to spend my life with and
19:16that was definitely like something that I was looking for was somebody who was into those things, know, into self-sufficient living and stuff like that. It wasn't like it had to be somebody off grid necessarily, but just somebody who was living, you know,  on the land and gardening and  growing food and  raising animals and such.  And so when I met my husband, he was into all those things. So we hit it off pretty...
19:42pretty quickly and he lived off grid, which was lovely. It was like, oh, that's cool. know,  I mean, we had a long distance relationship for like three or four years before I actually moved out here because where I lived, like my kids were attending the high school and  you know, I wasn't really able to move. Plus when I met him, he lived in just like a tiny shack. was just, it was like a non-insulated building.  The cabin that we're in now wasn't here at the time.
20:11So it wasn't really like practical for me to move out here. ah But  yeah, like I definitely was attracted to the off-grid lifestyle, mostly just for self-sufficiency because you're not connected to, you know, main power grid. You're not paying a big corporation for your power and,  you know, they can hike up the prices at any moment and  stuff like that.  So.
20:37Yeah, exactly. um We keep talking about looking into solar panels again. We have a big pole barn and it would be great for solar panels.  And every time I even dip my toe in the water to research it, I see big, big numbers to get solar panels installed. And I'm like, yeah, we don't have it right now. I want to real bad, but it's going to have to wait. Yeah, it's.
21:03not a cheap thing, but I guess supposedly the prices have gone down significantly from when they first came out.  So the technology is getting better and  that's what we were told by someone that we know who installs solar panels. He was saying that  the prices have gone down significantly from what they used to be. em Well, maybe this fall I'll revisit it.  Yeah.
21:31They now have like these bifacial ones too that capture sunlight on both sides,  which then you can kind of have them standing up. Like they maybe wouldn't work as well like  on a roof, know, like  mounted to a roof. But if they're standing up, then  you can get the sun from both sides, makes them more efficient. Very nice. That would be very cool. ah So  are your
21:57I guess your younger kids don't know any different than living off-grid, right?  Yeah.  I mean, they're still young, like, so they don't really know  even what off-grid is, but  yeah, they won't know any different. Like, we have a composting toilet and we kind of joke about how our son is going to be like,  know, weirded out by like regular toilets when we go to town.
22:26Yeah, the noise will scare him. Yeah, and like there's no water in our toilet and  you don't flush it.  But I mean, he has seen toilets in town, so I don't know if he'll actually be like so weirded out by it. But I'm sure at some point he'll ask us a question like, why,  why is our toilet not like this? Uh  huh.  Yeah, it's stuff you don't think about like that,  that when it comes up, you're like, oh, wow, I hadn't even thought of that.
22:55Yeah, the craziest thing to me about like living off grid versus like living on It's like here. We...  Oh,  sorry. Yeah, just the  biggest thing that I've noticed with living like off grid versus living on grid is like when I go visit my friends who live on grid.
23:13Like they're running, know, they've got their coffee machine on, they've got their microwave going, they've got their vacuum going, they've got like all these things running at the same time. And I just like, I can't live like that anymore. Like we can't do that.  You know, if  we're running the vacuum, it's like, that's the only thing that we're running. You know, we're not, can't use the toaster at the same time as the water pump.  you have to be really like.
23:39careful about like what you're using when and so that'll be something that my kids  will  be used to and so you know maybe when we go visit other people they might be like why are they doing all these things at once like that's so crazy
23:59Yeah, I feel like homesteading and living off grid makes you far more intentional about what you do and when you do it. For sure.
24:17I lose you? No. Oh, sorry. I was really quiet there for a was like, Oh, sorry. for sure. then I paused. Yeah. I need to ask a couple of questions because it's three birch homestead and you're off grid. So
24:37Yeah, no, that's okay. So again, three words.
24:48Sorry, think we have a delay going on here. So, okay. No, we just have a delay. I can, I can tell. There you go. Okay. So your three birch homestead and your off-grid. So have you learned how to make your own soaps or your own lotions or do you do sourdough bread or any of the things that people usually think of when they think of homestead and off-grid?
25:15um I don't make soap or lotion.  I buy those at the store from one of my friends makes soap. But I do  make bread and I make cheese and  cook most of my food from scratch. ah I have made sourdough, but  I haven't in a while. I recently got  a mixer for my birthday and so I've been making more bread. So I want to get back into sourdough.
25:42I found that like hand kneading stuff just, it took too much time. So I just didn't bother. em But now that I have a mixer,  I am on a  major baking spree.
25:57Yeah, my husband is the yeast bread maker. I've said this before, I kill the yeast every time I try to get it to bloom. I don't know why, it just dies on me.  And when  he wants to relax and  zen out, he will hand knead the bread dough. But when he just wants to get it done, he uses the KitchenAid mixer. And I always know when he's really thinking about something, because he's like, I'm going to make bread. And he gets everything ready and he gets the dough together.
26:26And he slaps it on the island top and starts to hand knead it. And I'm like,  are you considering an idea or are you upset? Because the only time you need dough is when that's going on. And it's always a hint to me that he's in a state of mind about something.  could see that being like a therapeutic thing for sure. Yeah.  And the thing that I love most about cooking from scratch is that the house always smells good. Always. Yes.
26:59My favorite thing that he makes is cinnamon rolls from scratch. And he makes the cinnamon rolls and I make the frosting and I always try to have lemon juice on hand so I can make a lemon frosting because lemon frosting on cinnamon rolls is amazing. That sounds really good. I've been making cinnamon buns too, actually. I  do like a sticky topping. So I cook like  that, right? I make butter and sugar and then cook it in that. um But yeah, lemon frosting. That sounds really yummy.
27:30It's a drizzle. shouldn't say frosting because people are probably thinking of the buttercream frosting and I try to make it a drizzle  because if you try to put buttercream frosting on a warm cinnamon roll, it just slides off.  doesn't do any good. That's true. em
27:46So,  all right, well, I try to keep these to half an hour.  I appreciate your time so much. I know you guys are all busy and you take time out of your busy days to just  basically entertain me and by default, entertain anybody who listens to the conversation. So,  where can people find you, Andrea?  I'm on Instagram at 3birchhomestead.com.
28:12pool,  I will make sure I put that in the show notes so people can go look at your pictures because I did and I was like, wow, that's awesome. I  want to come back in my next life as an off-grid homesteader because right now on-grid homesteading is good enough. um As always, people can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com. Thank you again for your time, Andrea. I hope you have a great day. You too. Thanks.
 

Greenbush Twins & Company

Today I'm talking with Sidney at Greenbush Twins & Company. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Sydney Greenbush at Greenbush Twins and Company in California.  And  is it 11 o'clock there? Yes. We just had daylight savings times,  you know, so that it would normally be 10, but now it's 11.
00:25Yeah, so I would say, well, I'm in Minnesota, so I'm two hours ahead of you. So good morning to you and good afternoon to me. Good morning.  I am so happy to have you as a guest. I saw you on Facebook, your page, and I was like, hmm,  there's a story there. I've got to talk to her.  But before we get into it, I always say, how is the weather wherever my guest is? So how's the weather in California today?  Oh, it's really windy today, but the winds are supposed to...
00:54die down. So we have the Santa Ana winds, which are the winds that come from the inland and blow out to the ocean. And they get very strong. You get gassed up to, you know, 60 to 100 miles an hour. So  we're all like  really ready for them to die down today.  I feel like 50 to 60 miles our mile hour and a winds. I can't say it.  I feel like 50 to 60 mile per hour winds.
01:23are a weekly occurrence where we live in Minnesota. So  I'm used to it.  Yeah. We,  and for us, the winds aren't  the bad part of it. The bad part of it is when we have obviously the wildfires on top of it. So everybody kind of gets a little anxious because you never know when  one's going to pop up or where. Um, and so you're always kind of like got that little bit of guard going.  Yeah. Especially after last year, I'm sure you guys are on a swivel.
01:52Yeah, and so for us that live in this area, we've had a few  really bad fires.  The last one was obviously the Palisades and the Altadena fire.  But years before that, we had the Woolsey and we've had um really bad fires in the  80s and stuff. One year,  actually burnt down part of  Johnny Carson's home.  So  it almost becomes a way of life here on the coastline around by Los Angeles because
02:20It's not if you're going to have a fire, it's when are you going to have another fire? Because it's just the way that eh the vegetation and the habitat  kind of the ecosystem is. Well,  I'm always astounded at people who want to live in California. My daughter lived there for a few years and she loved it. She loved everything about it. And then she fell in love and moved to New York and now she's in Florida with her husband. So. uh
02:49Yeah, it's amazing where you'll move for the person you love.  So let's just address the elephant in the room. If Sydney's name sounds familiar, it's because she played along with her sister, Carrie on Little House on  the Prairie. Right.  And Sydney  is  way more than just that. She has started a new project  and I think it's fairly recent, like in the last year. Yeah.
03:18Well, the, really started in December was the official launch of the website and the ramp up for the book, the seven sisters, lantern of humanity.  And so it's all just very fresh for, for me. And it's been an amazing trip so far and I can only imagine what the future holds, you know. Yeah. Are you still riding the new energy high of a new project?
03:46I am because I keep thinking at some point, you you try and build your audience and I keep thinking at some point, okay, it's going to taper down because it's not quite so new anymore.  And it's been about six months that we've been, we've been talking about it. But every day I'm so surprised because I, I log in and then the number has increased and sometimes it's not like a major increase, but it's still that momentum going forward and it hasn't tapered off yet.
04:16And then I start to get excited and I start thinking, oh, I could do this and I could do that and I could do that. And I'm like, OK, slow down. You got to focus like one one thing at a time. Let's get through the first one first. You know, so. Oh, yes, I woke up this morning and I know I was going to be talking with you. I knew I had to get two podcasts ready to go out for tomorrow. I also have a course that I'm supposed to be taking that someone gifted me about raising quail that I need to sit down and look at.
04:44And I was like, I can't do all three of these things at the same time this morning. So one thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. And if I don't get them all done, it's OK. Right. Yeah. And  see, I'm, you know,  I'm easily excited about things that I want to do.  And so that's where I really have to manage my focus, because it's easy for me to start something. Right.  But the hard part is.
05:11Seeing it through to completion, right? So  I have to remind myself before I get off on another tangent like I really need to do this especially when it comes to like housework because I Really don't like it. So I have to go. Okay. Yeah, you need to really do like your laundry or clean the kitchen You know that kind of stuff that we all have a tendency to put off a little bit but em But it's all good once you know those things about yourself and your personality
05:39and you acknowledge it, it's much easier to manage it, you know? Absolutely. And housework never ends. So you just do it as it comes up. um So tell me, tell me about, tell me about um Greenbush Twins and Company. Well,  Greenbush Twins and Company,  the and company really refers to other artists, other collaborators and our  our followers, right?
06:08an idea that none of us can do something completely on our own, that we do need each other and together our differences and our experiences, they  make us  stronger. Because I might have experience in one area, but when I decided to do like the children's book, that's an area that I didn't have any experience in. But I was willing to,  you know, try and take that adventure.
06:37but you need somebody really that has the experience to help to guide you, to show you  the ins and the outs and the dos and the don'ts.  And so that's really what Greenbush Twins is meant for. And it's also meant to help support the small batch makers, the smaller artists, people that  may not get the...
07:02notoriety because  the marketing may not be in their budget or uh they just haven't  got to a platform where they can really, really shine  and uh sustainable living and all that stuff. So it's really a platform  made to be a hub where, say, if you're looking for a hair product or you're looking for a piece of artwork or something that's uh special, that's handcrafted,
07:31You can look through the directory that we have,  the products that we represent, and you can see if you can uh find what you're looking for.  And if you can't, there's a few of the  collaborators and artisians that do  custom work. So you can reach out to them or we can facilitate reaching out.  And uh that's really what it's meant to be. uh Corporate America really doesn't...
07:57care about people. They don't care really what they're putting in their products. And this has really uh been  shown by like, for example, everybody thought it was so great when we got non-stick pans that were coated in Teflon, right? But then they found that Teflon caused cancer and they knew about it, but they didn't take it off of the market. So it's really an aim at  bringing products that don't have those
08:26conservatives, those toxins, those things that you may not see them affect you today, but down the road, it will have an impact on your health um and try and come back to the more  natural holistic living like you saw, you know, even in little house, you know, a lot of things were handmade.  And I think that  as a community, we will be stronger because we'll be able to
08:54do things that  are more sustainable in the long run.  there's,  Los Angeles is known for having a huge um garment district. But now you're seeing that there's garment companies that take in, they recycle clothing so that it stays out of the landfills.  And there's companies that go to like the fashion district and they um buy all the fabric from the previous year from the fashion shows that didn't get used.
09:23And they repurpose it, break it down and sell it out to  people that sew and create  and upcycle.  And so that we're not always just making the planet toxic  by shoving all this stuff in the landfill that takes so long to break down.  Absolutely.  I haven't bought new jeans in over five years.  I have three pairs of jeans that don't have any holes in them at this point. oh
09:53And  I  patch my jeans with the old jeans that do have holes in them that I can't wear anymore. So I know what you're talking about. Right. And it's so stylish now to take those holes and put like  patterned fabric underneath it and let it peek through. then that um what normally would be  considered like  a uh flaw in that actual pair of pants. Now you've actually made it into a fashion statement that, you know,
10:22can go forward on its own, its own design.  So it's really incredible a lot of what the people that are um doing the upcycling and stuff um are doing with  fabric. And there's people taking old lamps and making them into  plant stands and different things. And I'm  always amazed at the creativity of how people repurpose something into something else. I've
10:48I would be like, I never would have even thought of that, but it works so perfectly the way that they've done it, you know? And so  that's the really fun part of the journey  is sharing the creativity with other creative individuals.  Yes,  there is nothing more beautiful than seeing somebody's light shine. Right, yeah, exactly. And  I love, you know, trying to help people  get their light to shine because
11:17A lot of people will say that they're not creative, but creativity isn't something you're born with. It's actually a muscle that you exercise. And I think John Cleese one time uh explained it the best that it's like it's a mode of operating. It's like a perspective that you have. It's not anything that you can't learn or do. It takes practice like any other art form, but it's something that is available to everyone. Thank God.
11:46Otherwise it would be a really boring world.  you said  back a few minutes ago, kind of like on Little House. So that leads me to a question that I feel comfortable asking you about Little House on the Prairie.  Did it inform who you became as an adult  in acting as Carrie in that particular timeframe? Did it color who you became?
12:11Well, I believe that all our experiences kind of color who we are,  even if we don't, you know,  directly recognize that they did, they even subconsciously have  an influence. But yes, it did because  we started so young.  And when we started Little House, we actually had come off of another movie called Sunshine with  Cliff DeYoung and Christina Reigns.
12:39And having a father that was an actor and a mother that was in  a model, a successful model,  it kind of gave us an open door that a lot of other people don't have.  But we started so young that we really didn't know anything different. We thought everybody did this, that this was like the normal way that you grow up. So when I think back on childhood or I talk to people about their childhood, there are
13:08certain things that  are missing, like there's gaps, because we spent so much time on the studio set or there was  birthday parties that we couldn't go to because we were working or my mom used to trade out,  because we went to public school when we weren't uh working.  so  certain years, my sister is in the school photo and certain years it's me because my mom used to take one of us to work and then one of them would stay back for the  annual.
13:37you know, class photo and such. So yeah, directly it shapes a lot of  who you are. And then  when you're a kid, you see how other people treat other people. And that is a guideline for you too. And the messages in the themes of Little House as we got older and we started reading the books, they resonated  also because then you understand, you have a better understanding of the purpose of the whole bigger picture of the show. Yeah.
14:07Absolutely.  I grew up on the East Coast. I grew up in Maine. And I think the fifth or sixth  novel book I read when I was seven years old was the first book in the Little House series. And I ended up reading all of them and had no idea that I would end up living in Minnesota.  And so when I moved here, I was like, oh, man.
14:34I live in the state where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family spent some time. Do you think I've been to any of the places that  commemorate that? No, I have not yet.  I live half an hour from Mankato, Minnesota.  Well, we'll have to change that one time when I'm in,  next time I'm in Minnesota.  yeah, I would love that. That would be so fun.
14:58Walnut Grove is actually one of my favorite places to go and when they have Laura Ingalls Wilder days, um every year that the museum has asked me to go, like, just tell me when to be there. I know it's July, but just tell me when. And uh the people in the town are so hospitable. And then you always hear the story of the people that came. It's like their family vacation and they've saved for it all year.  And it's a really big event.
15:26And sometimes the stories are just so incredible because you'll see that um everything in somebody's life is totally breaking apart and they've got these huge things going on. But the one thing that gives them solace and consistency is watching the Little House on the Prairie  series and reading the books. And so a lot of times they'll tell you these stories and they make you teary-eyed because to have such a
15:53profound effect on somebody's life. It's not anything you ever imagined you were capable of doing, you know,  so  it is  it's just really it's hard to articulate  the profound that effect it has on the cast as well as uh the fans and we're very appreciative of the fans because we know for all those years that we were
16:19uh on NBC and the years after if it wasn't for their loyalty and their patronage, we wouldn't be able to do the things that  we have done like  for the 50th. They took  a uh group of the cast member to Monaco and they did a big film festival in Monaco. And you know, when  I was like, you know, seven or eight and doing the show, that is not, I mean, I didn't get to go.
16:44because I didn't have my passport at the time, but  that wasn't anything I ever thought would be an offer for us to do. So it's just amazing. It's special in the truest sense of the word. Yeah. Yep.  And the other thing that I would tell you is that in reading the Little House on the Prairie books and watching the show, it colored my perspective and
17:10I'm sure that's why I live on a 3.1 acre homestead with chickens and a dog and a garden and barn cats, because the stuff that you read when you're a kid, it sticks. It sticks in the back of your head and it, it paints a picture of the things that you could do when you're a grownup. Right. Right. And who doesn't want to have like a Jack or a bandit or
17:35you know, a raccoon that stays in the barn  or a bunny who doesn't want to go riding on bunny all the time, you know,  and  there's a lot of those connections just not between people on the show, but between, you know, humans and animals and stuff like that. You know, you get kind of like the little lassie theme with with Bandit, you know, where he seems to have this understanding beyond just being a dog, you know.
18:03uh And those things are really, I think, important to kids to inspire them to use their imagination and think beyond the social restrictions and not everything fits in a little, know, perfectly little neat compartmentalized uh box, you know. So it's important for them to know that there are alternatives out there if you don't want to settle for what is right in front of you. Yep. My bandit is named Maggie and she's a girl dog.
18:33Mine is named Rios. Rios? Uh huh, Rios. Nice, okay.  So tell me about your book. I didn't realize that you had written the book because I glanced at the picture and didn't realize it was your book.  Yeah, it's my book and uh it's geared towards children ages two to nine. So it's  more, you know, pictures rather than actual uh written word.
19:00But it's based on  the seven angelic virtues  and there's the seven sisters each one of them embodies  one of the virtues and is named after them and then they're sent to  the earth to help the humans because Psyche who is known  as the mother of the soul in Greek mythology she  was a human and then got turned into a
19:28or God later, which is a whole another story.  she creates the seven sisters and sends them to Earth to help humans learn how to cope and manage.  then she gives them the  lantern of humanity, which is a beacon and will shine a light when somebody is struggling and lead the sisters to that person to help them uh work through a resolution together. So it um
19:59It fosters that even though you may have a personal struggle, you're not alone in your struggle. There's others that can help you.  And it really kind of uh echoes that through teamwork, ah we can do  incredible things and make changes. That's beautiful. Did the book just come out?  It's actually being delivered today, believe it or not. So we were taking pre-orders and then...
20:26We're gonna start uh mailing them out this week.  And the first 150 of the books are limited edition series  that have an authenticity certificate in the back of it.  They're numbered and they have my signature. And then they're in a hard laminated cover for longevity and durability so that uh they won't get  bent or tweaked out of shape.
20:56And then the spines on them are all hand bound  and there's beautiful illustrations in uh them. it's been so interesting because when we made the illustrations, I didn't have any experience doing a book and neither did the illustrator that helped me. And so when you do it, you're supposed to use a little extra room so that some of it can fit into the binding.
21:23And I didn't know that so that we had to go back and rework all the images so that when we bound them, all the um story wasn't in the the seam of the of the book. So I delayed us a little bit, but it's probably going to be better in the in long run, you know.  So, yeah, so so excited. I'm very excited to see them  with the certificate of authenticity and everything today. And then I'm going to do like an unboxing.
21:53video so that everybody can kind of open them with me for the first time.  I'm so glad you said that because I was just going to ask you if you're going to do that because I would love to see your face when you open that box of books.  Yeah, I'm not uh I'm not  technically  good enough yet to do like a, you know, a Facebook live, but I will do the actual, you know, real video footage so that people can can see it and then.
22:22Eventually I'll get there. I'll get to where I can do like the podcast and the live and all that stuff. But it  just has picked up so much momentum  since December that I'm caught a little off guard because I never did all the social media stuff  before. So now I'm having to learn it along the way too.  Just if you get frustrated, take a breath and walk away from it.
22:51do something else like dishes by hand because it will give your brain a chance to catch up. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And there are times like that. And I think that's totally normal for everyone. So I have to remind myself because we always hold ourselves to a super high standard and I know I do. And so a lot of times when I'm trying to do some of the reels, I might have scripted out the keynotes of the dialogue.
23:21that I want to use or the key points that I want to hit. But I try and keep it a little bit fluid because it's easier for me because as soon as I lock it down and it has to be certain words, I get super tongue-tied. And the more I get tongue-tied, the more frustrated I get. And there are times where I have to do exactly that and go, okay, just take a break for a minute. It's not such a big deal. Like we've got all day to do this, you know.
23:50And you step away for a second and come back because uh you  start thinking like, you know, why can't I do this? Why isn't this easy? And one of things I had to adjust to is like when you  use like your uh cell phone to do a video, you're actually seeing yourself in the video as you're talking. And so that can itself can be a distraction. And then you start getting self-conscious and you're like,  well,
24:20Do I really move my hands that much? Do I really make that face? And then all of a sudden you're off track from what you're trying to do and you're like, okay, okay, like just take a minute. absolutely. People think that doing social media, know, doing videos is easy. It's not. I refuse to do them because it does the same thing to me. I get distracted by the phone and I cannot think. And it's been something I've really had to
24:50adjust to. never realized like I've known people that did like, you know, TikTok videos, and they call them influencers and that kind of stuff. And I was like, Oh, yeah, great. But I really never realized how labor intensive it is, how detailed it is. Like when you get into the marketing of it, how you can break it down into different demographics and stuff. And it's just way more
25:18uh technical  than I ever gave it credit for. So  to all the people that do social media and run their own sites and their own pages,  you have kudos from me because it's way more work than anybody ever gives, probably gives you credit for, you know? It is. And it's funny because I  don't, I do two podcasts. It's easy because I don't go on video ever.
25:46So I don't get distracted. get to focus on the person I'm talking to.  And it works great. And I keep thinking I really should do video. I don't want to. Probably never will. We'll see what happens.  So I have one more question about the Green Bush Twins and Company project that you're in the middle of, the beginning of. um Is it just California artisans or is it  nationwide?
26:14No, it's nationwide and eventually I'd like to be, you know, worldwide. um Really, we're all just uh human beings. It doesn't matter if we live uh in Europe or if we live in  the United States or if we live in South America.  We're all just humans trying to  get along and  do our thing. And so  it started here in California because I am here, but it's not
26:43uh restricted to anyone. I really want it to be an open format where everyone is welcome,  every voice matters, when we get to the part where we can share stories and uh experiences, then we can get there too. uh And it's  really  making those human connections. uh We  as a society have
27:08lost some of our human connection, right? Because everything's um online now. And although you can connect with people  visually and auditorially, m you lose that touch and that feel. So eventually we'll go out and I'll do um site, like we can call them site visits, but um public appearances in different places and.
27:34help to bring people into that area. And if anybody ever wants to be involved in the site beyond just being in like a joiner of the community, like if you make things and you think you've got something that you want to  propose to the site, by all means contact me, you know, because that's really what it's meant for. Like  it's to shine a light on those individuals that may be
28:02uh can't reach out to a lot of people but have stuff that they believe in or they want to promote or  they want to show you that there's an alternative uh product that  you don't have to necessarily use the stuff that  Big Pharma or corporate America tells you  is what is proper to be used.  love that you're doing this, Sydney. Thank you for doing it.
28:32And I love the concept of your book and I will tell you why. The reason why is because the last probably five or six years have been scary and chaotic and  weird and there is still light in the world. And I think that you are  like one of the brightest lights shining in it right now. Oh, thank you so much. That's sweet. But  I agree with you. I've seen that too.  When  I was a
29:00a kid, you know, we were always talking about the golden rule. And sometimes you ask kids today and you ask them, do you know what the golden rule is? And they'll say, oh, yeah, that's Bitcoin. And they don't they don't have those little sayings and phrases that we had um growing up. And so it's really to to try and show the younger generation that  even if something looks scary or looks different,
29:27It's not something to be feared. doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing. You know, it could be a great thing, but you won't know until you, you know, try. um so, yeah, it's really something that  has come around because of my time on Little House, but it's kind of the same um lessons and morals, but in a fresh uh format, you know.
29:56There, for some reason I lost you. Oh, you can hear me now? I said, I here's an older, an old saying for you too. Don't hide your light under a bushel. That's right. That's right. That's a good one. I like that one. Yeah, I'm 56. My mom is 79 and my mom had all kinds. She's still with us by the way. But when I was a kid growing up, she had all kinds of sayings like that. And I remember all of them.
30:23And I will say them around my grown kids. And they're like, that's so old fashioned.  It's it's funny because you and I are the same  age. I'll be I'll be 56 in May.  But yeah, you you you say that to people and then you go, oh, my God, I sound like my mother. Where did that come from?  Well, I love my mom, so I'm OK with sounding like my mom. And  my dad had sayings, too. He's still with us as well. He's 82.
30:51I insulted him the other day because I said he was 83 and he was like, I am not. I was like, well, I just gave you back a year of your life then. but, but if you're lucky enough to have parents that share things like don't hide your light under a bushel and do onto others, it's, it's a great thing. Oh yeah. I mean, I, a lot of those little things are
31:18Because the way Seven Sisters was set up was to be a series of seven different books. so  obviously the first one is easiest because it deals with envy and greed, which are really common themes. then that's some of the later stories are going to be,  know, don't  be afraid to be you. Don't be afraid to be different.  know, not everybody has to be the same thing. And  we're actually better when  we're different, you know.
31:47So if you come up with any other good things, send them to me. Variety is the spice of life, my dear. That's one for you. Yeah, that's a good one too. All right. Sydney, this was a joy. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Where can people find you? Well, you can always contact me through the website, is greenbishtwins.com.
32:12or you can email me at info, I N F O at greenbushtwins.com. And both of those come straight to me. Okay. Fantastic. And your green bush twins and company on Facebook as well. Right.  And Facebook, Instagram, and in LinkedIn, think we have LinkedIn too. All right. Fabulous.  Um, as always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com and
32:38Sidney, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend. Oh, you too. And thank you for reaching out to me.  Thank you for having the time. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks.
 

Small Scale Rebellion

Today I'm talking with Emily and Nathan at Small Scale Rebellion. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm.
00:26A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Nathan and Emily at Small Scale Rebellion in Canada, and  Emily told me, where in Canada?  Where in Canada are you, Emily?  We're in the West Kootenays of BC. Okay, thank you.  Welcome, you guys. Good afternoon. How are you?
00:56We're good. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I always start every podcast with how's the weather? How's the weather where you are? That's a little gloomy. Yeah, we're over winter. It's just dragging on. But the words are coming back and you can kind of tell that spring is just around the corner. So it's like the final stretch. Yeah, I stepped out on my porch about two hours ago, maybe three hours ago now.
01:25and I could hear birds singing and I was like,  oh, the blackbirds are back. have a, um there's a word. Can't think of it.  We're in a flight pattern for these blackbirds.  They come back every spring. Migration pattern. There we go.  And this is the earliest they've come through in the five years that we've been here. So I think we're looking at an early spring.  Yeah, for sure. It was like a really mild winter,  all things considered here.
01:55So we are looking forward to hopefully an early spring, but also a moderate fire season because normally if the snowpack isn't very good in the winter here, we have like horrible fires.  So fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I'll cross everything I have for you because wildfires are a terrible thing.  And that does not mean that burns are a terrible thing.
02:22Burns are important for agriculture and for growing things, but they need to be  not taking down structures that people live in or killing people. So that's my caveat there.  All right. So I was very excited to stumble across you guys on Instagram. Tell me about yourselves and what you do at Small Scale Rebellion. So  we're farmers first and foremost. um Our farm is called Confluence Farms.
02:49And we started Small Scale Rebellion as a way to teach other farmers how to have profitable farm hubs. a farm hub is composed of four components. It's online ordering, a, help me out here. Home delivery, a collaborative.
03:13a full diet offering. we do local food aggregation. So we've become like a one-stop shop for all things local.  And then we also do free choice  ordering exclusively.  And so people can order what they want, when they want. And then we even have like a credit-based CSA. So people buy credits to our store. And then that way we get money upfront, very similar to  a CSA, except you don't have to commit to like a weekly CSA box for 20 weeks. You can just pay us. uh
03:43for credits and then use them whenever you like. And what we discovered is that  when you make eating local easier, a lot more people will start doing it. Yes, because humans love convenience.  And instead of fighting that, I think it's important to,  you know, just embrace it  because if you don't, it's really hard to make it as a farmer. Oh.
04:11Absolutely. And what you're doing is amazing. So  what made you decide to do this?
04:19Um,  well, it kind of happened by accident.  We actually started, um, we had this  kind of goal of just growing all of our own food for a year.  And  when you start growing food, you always end up having too much food. And so you end up giving it away to friends and neighbors.  And we were doing that for a few years and then COVID happened  and  we didn't really have, uh,
04:48That kind of affected our income.  And we were getting ready to grow like a half acre worth of food, which  thinking back now for two people is like an insane amount of food. Like it shouldn't have been growing that much, but we, didn't know what we were doing. We're just like, Oh, let's just grow a little bit of everything. And then COVID happened. And then we were kind of locked inside and thinking of ways to make money and we were already growing food. So we're like, Oh, why don't we just start selling the food that we grow? And so we decided to grow even more food. And then.
05:18because of lockdowns, like, well, what if we do like online ordering and home delivery? And so we started doing that and then that started taking off.  And then we had an opportunity to move to the Kootenays where we are now and start a farm on  an elderly couple's  homestead who were looking for farmers to come in and kind of take over the farm and to help them with the property. So, and moving here was like our ultimate dream. Like our ultimate dream was to start a farm in the Kootenays.
05:45And then we just kind of stumbled our way into it. And then, yeah, it's just been kind of growing ever since. we've been refining the model and making it better. And now it's at the point where it can support the two of us full time, full year round with just a half acre and the two of us. no, employees or volunteers. Wow. That's, that's amazing. Okay. I have two questions. First one is what, what are the Kootenays? Is it mountains?
06:13Very mountainous. Yeah, it's like rural, very rural BC.  We're in the boreal forest. So it's like green mountains in every direction, lots of rivers, huge  freshwater lakes. It's a really, really beautiful and popular area. There's a lot of actually Americans that live here too. It's like an international kind of hub because there's lots of  snowboarding and things like that here too. So there's like Australians and New Zealanders and Americans.
06:42people from all over the place kind of in this one little unique area.  Okay, thank you. Cause I didn't know what they were and that helps.  Um, and then  if you are growing more than a half an acre of food, you must have equipment. You must at least have like a bobcat tractor or something.  No. we're doing a half acre like exactly.  And it's all by hand.
07:10That's one of the really like when we started our farm, we had no money like  negative amounts of money  and  we've just been very scrappy  at um Making it work  and  We don't have like a walk-behind tractor. We don't have anything with an engine except for our Delivery vehicle, so it's all no till um regenerative  ag
07:38And we have permanent beds  and  you know, we just make it work.  Um, and you know, we would have, if we had money in the pat, in like the first couple of years, we definitely would have bought a lot more tools,  but not having the money  made us half to get creative.  so we like borrowed tools, we got tool donations.  Um, we traded neighbors for different services, like tilling.
08:06And we just kept everything super duper lean  because we don't own our land  and we've had to move our farm three times,  four times  in the past five years.  we just, you know, having a bunch of equipment wasn't  an option.  And it actually turned out to be good because like, what we realized is that you don't actually need to spend a whole lot of money to  farm.
08:36You just need like really good systems. And then if you do like things like local food aggregation, you can get your sales up by collaborating rather than trying to grow everything yourself. oh So it was a very interesting experiment that actually turned out to be a blessing because, um you know, we've been able to stay small and manageable and profitable with just a very, very simple setup. And very little overhead. And that's also because, you know, you can't really invest.
09:05in leased land very much. So working within the constraints that we have has been kind of like the theme. Okay. So what do you guys grow? So we focus on growing all of our summer stuff, like everything that's perishable. So we grow kind of like most of the normal things you would see at a farmer's market, know, carrots, beets.
09:35all the salad greens, the lettuce, cherry tomatoes,  the hits, cucumbers. We also grow flowers,  which we just started a couple of years ago  and  is something that I really love doing. ah So what we don't grow  is all of the storage crops.  And we actually have a very long winter here. So we actually  buy in enough storage vegetables to last us like seven months of sales. So we buy in.
10:04potatoes, storage carrots, onions, garlic, rutavega. All the root vegetables. All the root vegetables  and those in general come from farms with tractors. So we're leveraging the equipment that other farms have instead of investing in our own.  That's  smart. That's a really great business plan. uh
10:34Okay. So the other thing I wanted to touch on, as you mentioned, COVID.  I can't believe how many times COVID comes up on this podcast. I swear it should be a drinking game.  If you hear a COVID, take a shot, you know,  and don't do that. I'm joking, but that's how it feels.  And I feel like COVID  really kickstarted what was already a movement into a runaway train.  Yeah.
11:04One concerning  thing that a pattern that we see and one of the reasons we started Small Scale Rebellion is that there was a lot of farms that started during COVID  and a lot of those farms end up failing, um which is not good for the local food movement  and  we don't want that to happen. So that's why we're sharing everything that we've learned with farmers so that
11:34you know, we can make local eating mainstream and we can make sure that farmers are thriving instead of just surviving or going out of business.  Yep,  absolutely. And I'm going to say it again,  if you, for the listener, if you don't know your local growers and your local producers,  you should start getting to know them because the supply chain issues that happened during COVID, that's not necessarily a one-time thing.
12:03It could happen again and again and again. Yeah. I mean, it's inevitable.  It has happened for us before too. It's not just COVID. It's like if there's a natural disaster, like a fire is like the trucks.  But there was another time where trucks, uh, the food trucks couldn't get to where we're at. And some of the shelves went bare again and people were freaking out and they were all,  you know, excited to eat local again and reaching out to local farms. then once,  once the food's back on the shelves, they just.
12:32people forget and they go back to their normal routine and it's just like this cycle of, you know, fear and then back to normal.  Yeah. And it's so frustrating because I feel like the stuff you get local tastes so much better than what you get at the grocery store.  100%. And I mean, in our area, the price, like, I'm not even, I need to go and do like a more thorough price comparison, but like the prices really aren't
13:01very different.  And that's probably because we're in a very isolated area  and  it costs a lot to get things to us. And so local things are, you know, naturally a little bit cheaper. But I don't think that the price difference is that big or as big as people think it is in their minds. And then when you add in the fact that
13:30you know, it's more nutritious  and it's strengthening the local economy, which has like a huge beneficial ripple effect. I think that  local food is the way to go.  Yeah. think it's, um, it's too inconvenient for most people's lives. And so people would eat  local more if it was more convenient. And then that's kind of what we discovered and that's  kind of what we feel. And that's kind of what we're trying to convince other farmers.
14:00to do because there's this mentality like, the customer needs to go out of their way to support local. Like, why don't they care enough to go out of their way? But what we're saying is like, they do care. They just need to be easier. And if it's easier, they'll do more of it. Mm-hmm.  Yeah. And what I would say the average American, but I think the average human  doesn't realize is that the longer the produce has to travel and has to sit and then is stocked at the grocery store.
14:29the nutrient denseness of it drops by grand percentages. Yeah. And then you're getting even less value for your money.  Right. Yep. So  again, for the listener, if you want nutrient dense,  really fresh,  good food, find out who your local growers and producers are because you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. Yeah. And I will, I will.
14:58I will die on that hill, damn it. Go ahead, Emily, you were going to say. Support them all year round too. Not just during the peak season, like farmers need income year round. Like one of the big things that we have an issue with is like, we have lots of variety of winter crops, but people just lose interest like dramatically during the winter and then they come back in the summer. And like, that's just not a sustainable way to.
15:28you know, keep farms alive. No, yeah. And it's, it's like a cultural thing. I think, you know, people are used to eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers all year and they just don't really know how to cook with winter vegetables or they don't care to,  you know, so it's definitely like, we've done a lot of education with our farm around eating seasonally, particularly in the winter. And it's pretty hard to move the needle. Um, but it's something that we're, you know, committed to doing.
15:59Yes, and I call winter soup season. Yeah. Would you believe that I have not made a single soup this winter because we've been eating a lot of hamburger based meals. I haven't made a single soup this winter and winter is almost over. That is like a sin in my house. I need to make some soup. Damn it. Yeah. Before it's too late. Yeah. And the other thing is I refuse.
16:28to eat tomatoes from the store in the wintertime because we grow tomatoes here in the summer.  our garden fresh tomatoes are amazing.  And ever since we started doing it, tomatoes from the grocery store tastes like cardboard to me.  The reason I say this is I am really craving bruschetta. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah, really craving it. And I have been debating. uh
16:55picking up some vine-ripened tomatoes at the store.  Because really what I want it for is that kick you in the face balsamic vinegar and olive oil flavor.  And I suppose that I can spend $15 on crappy tomatoes to get the flavor hit that I want. But I was thinking that maybe I should just pick up some organic  zucchinis, know, the small ones. Cut.
17:22those up into small pieces and do that instead of tomatoes because the tomatoes here in Minnesota in the winter time  are not great.  No, I mean, it really like  when you can't have something all the time, it makes it way more special when you can have it.  Yep. Yeah.  Yep. That's why we all  love Thanksgiving and Christmas.
17:49Because there are things associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas that we eat that we don't eat any other time of the year. Mm-hmm. Yeah So I love summertime I We didn't have we didn't have any cucumbers last year because it was so wet and then it was so hot and then it was so wet and then it was so hot that they got blight  and they all died  So there was not  one single cucumber out of our garden last year
18:18Usually we have great success with cucumbers and I eat a cucumber and tomato every day the minute they start coming in. Yeah. That's Christmas for me.  Yeah.  So I love the name that you chose, Small Scale Rebellion,  because I'm always joking that if you can grow something on your property that feeds you,  you're a rebel.  Yeah.
18:47And it's true because I don't know what the government is like in Canada, but the government in the United States probably isn't thrilled that we're not spending our hard-earned money on stuff at the grocery store.  We're spending it on seeds so we can have food out of our garden. Yeah. It's,  you know, it's definitely an act of rebellion.  Yup. Be a rebel. Grow something you can eat.
19:17I need to get t-shirts made.  a rebel. Grow your own food.
19:23You guys should do that. Do you have t-shirts? Haven't got around to it yet. We haven't even made t-shirts for our personal farm business confluence and it's been like five years. Well, it costs money to get t-shirts printed. So, this food hub thing, is it, are you going to have a website and set it up so that people can find where they can get locally grown food or what's the plan?
19:51No, the plan is to teach farmers to become  farm hubs on their own. Okay.  And so it's kind of like a franchise model where we teach farmers the business model and then they use their own farm name and their own branding to promote it. Okay.  But it's like a full business model. we build them a website, we teach them how to work with other farms, we teach them marketing, which is lacking uh greatly in the farming community.
20:20And we just teach them how to manage their money and how to become profitable so that  they can become  this convenient hub for  customers and then also a reliable sales channel for the farmers that they work with in their community. Cause a lot of farmers, like wholesale accounts are kind of dwindling year by year as supermarkets get bigger.  so farmers need wholesale accounts  and  customers need more convenience. So we're trying to kind of promote that whole model.
20:50But it's all based off of our own  farm hub, which we do have a website for and you know, all of our sales come in through the website. So it's, it's all online ordering with free home delivery  and all of the systems that we teach we've perfected over the last five years  in our own business. What's your delivery radius?  It's like an  hour.
21:19And a half at most.  So we live in a weird area. It's a very rural  and everywhere is like  minimum 30 minute drive away to go anywhere or do anything. So it's, go to the two  towns that are near us. So one of them is a 40 minute drive and it's a town of like 10,000 people,  maybe a little more. And then the other one is a  20 minute drive and it's like 8,000 people. And then there's like,
21:49you know, some people in between there. So we basically drive to the town and then we stay within the city limits and then come back home.  OK, so it's not it's not like you're driving eight hours  on way. That would be. Yeah, we've actually been shrinking our delivery zone over the years because,  you know, there's enough people to support us. So at this point, we just need to be more efficient. um And it sucks to kind of like turn people away. But, um you know, your deliveries have to be quick.
22:17Otherwise you'll spend your whole day driving around. Yeah, so this is a no to lot of people who just like live in the country. You know what I mean? Like we drive straight to town. We stay inside town pretty much. If somebody wanted to get produce from you and they were willing to drive further than that, could they come to your place and pick up produce?
22:40No, we don't do any pickups. It's only home delivery. also don't have any meetup spots  or any pickups in town. And that's for two reasons.  One, to streamline our process because it just adds a lot of complexity, believe it or not. Communicating with people, arranging a time, making sure that they remember, et cetera, et cetera. Like  it's just not worth it.
23:07And then also they can't come to the farm because we lease land and our land holder doesn't want people showing up at his house.  That makes sense. I completely forgot that was leased. I know you told me, but I wasn't thinking about that.  Yeah. again, constraints.  Yeah. We stopped doing our CSA because  it  was fine, but we only had a few people who signed up every year.
23:35And sometimes they would forget and they would have to make a different time to come get stuff and My husband really enjoys going to the farmers market. Nice. Yeah farmers market is on Saturday morning from 8 until noon  That was when we used to have people come pick up the CSA stuff He can make more money on a weekly basis at the farmers market than we ever made through the CSA So we had to make a choice. Yep
24:03Yeah, it's kind of tough like cutting things out. mean, what do you guys, what are you guys doing now? um Just the farmer's market and we have a farm stand on our property. Okay, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And are you, so are you growing vegetables?  Yes. Yes, we are. And  my husband is the gardener. I always give him all the credit because I am not the one out there in the dirt.  I used to be.  I don't love it as much as he does. So that's his Zen.
24:29That's what he wants to do and I'm like go play in the dirt. Have fun.  But he grows tomatoes, grows cucumbers, he grows summer squash, he grows winter squash.  He has gotten into growing cabbages. He grew the most beautiful cabbages last spring. Nice. And people loved them. Like he did 50 I think  and when they were done people would be asking him if he had any cabbages.
24:57And he would say, no, I only planted 50. They're gone. And people, people would be crestfallen on their faces. There were no more cabbages. Yeah.  That's the power of food when it tastes really good. Yeah, it was really sweet. I don't know what variety it was, but it was  really good.  Um, I also found a short season, personal size watermelon variety. Nice.
25:26that we're gonna try this year.  It's a 60 day watermelon. What's it called? I don't know. I would have to look it up.  And I know exactly where the seed packet is downstairs. We haven't even opened the envelope that they came in yet. So when I open it, I will find out and I will message the variety to you. Cool. Sounds good. I'm sure you guys would love a 60 day watermelon. Oh yeah. I mean, we haven't grown watermelons um since we first started just because of space.
25:55We're at the point where a half an acre is not really enough space, but we don't have other, we don't have anywhere to expand into. our climate is our growing season so short. Like you can, you can barely even grow a buttermoth here cause it won't ripen in time. I'm so sorry. It pretty much shows like the worst place to start a farm. Well, Canada has a short growing season.
26:25over much of the country,  Yeah. And it's also very snowy here. Yeah. mean, I'm in Minnesota. I'm right over the border from you. I mean, I'm not. I'm like eight, 10 hours from the border. But  we have  a shorter growing season and we don't plant anything  usually until Mother's Day  because by Mother's Day, we're pretty sure the last frost has happened. Yeah.
26:56Yeah, we had one year where we had a frost on June 15th and it killed all of our tomatoes. They frosted back down to the ground, but then they bounced back and they were fine. And we actually had tomatoes only like one or two weeks later than normal. It  was quite the experience. Huh, I didn't know they'd bounce back. They had established enough where
27:23They did. They sprouted from the base of the plant. They were very, very, um,  branched that year, but they were fine.  Huh?  I did not know that. I will have to let my husband know we may have to do an experiment. Yeah, just give them a few weeks to see what happens. if they're, if they got roots, you know, they'll bounce back. So if you think about how many like runners they, they, they give out, right? Yeah. They'll just do that from the base. Okay.
27:53Well, we have a hard-sided greenhouse that we're going to be starting seeds in here. I think he said this weekend. I'm not sure. It might be next weekend. But we've never started seeds in there before. We've had it up for two seasons now. A lot of people are writing. I asked him the other day, said, are you going to bring in the seed trays and do them on the kitchen table? And he said, no, we're starting them in the greenhouse this year. Nice.
28:20And I said, are you sure you want to do that?  And he said, yes, I do. He said, because I've been keeping track of how much. OK, little tiny backstory. Most people who listen to the podcast have heard this before, but you guys probably have not. um We have IBC totes that we painted black filled with water  in the greenhouse.  as the sunlight comes in the greenhouse, heats up the water and it disperses the heat at night when it cools off outside.
28:49And so usually by mid-March, it's not gonna get below, it's not even gonna get near 32 degrees Fahrenheit in there overnight. It's gonna stay at like 50, 55. And for seedlings, that's perfect. So this is the first year we're starting the seeds in the greenhouse. And I am nervous. I am very nervous that this is not gonna work and he's gonna be really, really disappointed.
29:17As I keep saying to everybody, keep your fingers crossed that this works. For sure.  Well, know,  the ceilings are, they're very cold hardy when they're started cold. Like we don't have a nursery.  We've never used a nursery.  And I start my seeds and I put them outside way before you're supposed to with some cover, but they, you know, seem to do fine. As long as you're  very, um,
29:45careful about starting them cold and not like giving them a huge shock.  Plants  hate, hate shock from temperature changes. Yeah. They do not enjoy it and they may survive it, but I'm, I'm just praying and I'm not a praying girl, but I am praying that this, this goes well because if it does, it means that  two springs from now we can really do a whole lot more.
30:15Yes. Because the greenhouse is over 15 feet by 25 feet.  So it's a good size greenhouse. Yeah, nice. Yep. Very, very excited about all the things that it opens up for us. anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there. Where can people find you?  You can find us on Instagram.
30:42Small scale rebellion or also our farm account is called Confluence Farms Kootenays. Okay.  Awesome. I hope that people go and look at your stuff because I think what you're doing is amazing. Thanks, Mary. We appreciate that. All the best, you guys. Thank you. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Nathan and Emily, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks. You too.