A Tiny Homestead

Open Road Ranch

Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch in Wisconsin. Good morning, Julie. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm wonderful. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather there?  Sunny and beautiful. It's so nice to see the sun.  Oh, we had that  yesterday and the day before. Right now it is inco...
00:28incredibly overcast in Minnesota, but it's warm. Yes. It's nice, isn't it?  Oh my God. This last two weeks of  like living in the Arctic tundra.  Yeah. I had forgotten how terrible a more than a couple days stint of those temperatures is. Yes. I woke up on like the 13th day and thought to myself, if this doesn't break soon, I don't know what I'm going to do.
00:56Yes, we just need like a day of sun to remind us or just a windless day or something just to hang on. Yeah, I grew up on the East Coast and I remember the song, the  song Oklahoma, where the wind comes rolling off the prairie. Yeah. And I had no concept of that because my house was surrounded by trees. The wind didn't roll across the prairie because there was no prairie. I moved to Minnesota and I learned real quick about wind rolling off the prairie.
01:25Oh yeah, I just saw the other day  someone said the quote, it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the wind, said every farmer ever.  Yeah, absolutely.  It's just crazy. And I open every podcast with How's the Weather? Because I just feel like we're all in ag and it's important to talk about the weather. Oh yeah. I used to work office jobs and I worked in a basement office with no windows and weather was just, I'd never even thought about it. It could be light out, could be
01:54night, could be raining. It just didn't really have any effect on my life whatsoever. Now it's everything. Yeah, absolutely. It literally is everything. okay, I don't do a lot of the outside work. My husband is the outside guy. I do a lot of the cooking and the cleaning inside. And even I pay really close attention to the weather because I'm like, I saw it's going to snow tomorrow. Are you set to plow the driveway?
02:22Or I saw it's going to be minus 40 windchill three nights from now. Are the chickens going to survive in their coop?  And he's like, you never really paid attention to this before we moved to Homestead. I said, no, I didn't because I had no reason to pay attention to it. Yeah, you're so into your lives, you know, your animals.  It totally changes your perspective and the way that you live your life. And I kind of love it.  Yes.
02:50All right, so tell me all about yourself and what you do. um I  am a first generation farmer. I'm a very new farmer. This is our second year in farming. um So all very new, um very new small business owner. um Just learning as I go.  We have a small farm in Greenbush, Wisconsin, um is five rented acres of family land. So Tony's folks live up the road and
03:19our crop farmers corn, soybeans and wheat  and they very generously um are renting us five acres to start our farm here and they're very helpful with their farming knowledge and experience just up the road and so it's because of them that we're able to farm and so we have five acres here  and looking at right out the window in our backyard we have pasture raised hogs, uh have uh pasture raised sheep and we have some chickens that aren't  doing much of anything right now it's mostly for us m
03:48but I did get three eggs the other day, so that's exciting.  we sell our pasture-raised um pork and lamb.  And  I also make lard products with lard from our pasture-raised hogs  because one of my missions when I first began was uh education and also to use as much of the animal as possible. So I dabbled in  trying to  tan sheepskin hides that didn't go very far,  make dog treats out of the organ meats, just different creative ways  because these animals give us such a gift.
04:17you know I hate to see you go in the trash when especially our ancestors you know  would be you know grateful for the whole gift and use as much of it as possible and they needed to use as much of it as possible  but I hope to still  tap into a little bit of that so ah we use the lard from our pasture raised hogs to create um bombs, dish soap, shampoo bars,  things like that because lard is just incredible for us and  so I also feel strongly about educating people about  the wonder of  those
04:46what are often considered waste products that are so wonderful for us and such a gift. Awesome. Tell me about lard dish soap, because I have not heard those words in the same sentence before. Yeah,  me neither until recently. And I had been making lard bombs for about a year and I thought, well, what else can I do  with this lard?  Because the bombs were going really well and I thought there must be some other things um that our ancestors used lard for that we can use it for. Because it's just full of vitamins and minerals and such healing properties.
05:16uh You would not think that lard would clean dishes. You're often trying get lard off of your dishes, so I didn't really believe it either. ah We mix the  lard with lye and  some lemon. That's your degreaser. It's really pure and simple. ah It's just a uh dish soap bar, so it takes some getting used to, but you just use a sponge or a scrub.
05:41You just get it wet and then you use it like you'd use  dish soap and it works wonderfully and it's clean and pure. It's not full of... um One of the reasons I started this is because laundry soap and  lotions and  shampoo bars and all those things, they're just full of so many chemicals. And I know people, myself included, are looking for clean things to put on their body and use in their homes.  And so it's just pure and simple, non-toxic.  So that's another reason I started making them.
06:10Nice. Okay.  The reason I was so confused is because I always think of liquid dish soap. I didn't think of a soap bar dish soap. So  I didn't know you could use lard for dish soap. I am going to have to look up a recipe and maybe try that. Because we make, we make cold process lye soap here for  baths and showers and  love it.  Like all of our kids grew up using these bars of soap since we started making  them 15 years ago.  And, uh,
06:39My youngest asked me the other day, said, can I have like four bars of that soap? I said, yes, you can.  Well, they last so long and they're so versatile.  And yeah, they're just wonderful. Yeah.  I have a daughter and three sons. The daughter is the oldest.  The oldest of the boys lives in Nebraska. And he also had asked for some soaps to take home with them a couple of years ago when he visited.
07:05And he and his wife are now making their own cold processed Lysol. That's wonderful. It's such a good feeling to be able to do that. It's such a skill. So excited that the things that we tried to teach them really did sink in and sunk in enough that they want to do it too. Yeah. It does work. It does work. If you model good things for your kids and you make it fun, they'll probably want to do it too.
07:32Yes, it's quite different than just telling someone to do something when they see you doing it and enjoying it and what can come from it. Then it's quite different than just telling someone very much so. Yeah. And I always say this when I bring up the soaps. The reason we started making cold process lye soap is because store bought soap makes my skin itch like crazy.  And I had bought a beautiful um honey oat bar soap.
08:00from a lady that has been making them for years. And I just loved it so much, the way it smelled, that I was like, oh, I can't wait to take a shower with this. And I used that entire bar, went back to store, bought soap, and my skin was itchy, but the whole time I used the bar I from her, my skin was really nice. And I said to my husband, I said, can we please try making cold processed lye soap? Because I can't afford to spend $7 a bar.
08:29uh It's a stretch for the budget back then.  And he said, let's look up how to make it. And we did, and he made a batch and it was unscented and we loved it. And we gave a couple bars to people to try to see what they thought. And they were like, can you make a lemon scented one?  Can you make a lavender scented one?  And then we got into the essential oils and it was just, it was so fun.
08:53to learn all the things and all the properties and why lavender is so good,  why lemon is so good.  And we still do it now. So I just, always rave about the cold process Lysol because yes, it has some things to be careful of,  but  once you've made a couple of batches and you know your process, it's one of the simplest ways  to improve your life. Yes. You get so many out of a batch.
09:22You get like eight or 10 bars and so much more cost effective. And um yeah, you have to be careful with the lie, but like anything, it's a skill that you learn. then, you you use safety and you get the hang of it. And then, you know, you get this cost effective product that, you know, saves you money. You can share with family and friends. It's really wonderful. And it's  satisfying, you know, you.
09:46You make that soap, you use that soap, and I don't know about you, but I just get this bubble of happiness in my chest that we can do this, that we did this, that we use it, that it's good for us. Yeah, my first bar of soap, I couldn't believe it. There was no soap there, and then I made soap. It's something that you think you can only get in stores, and I made it. It's such a neat thing to know that you can do those kinds of things. There's such a sense of...
10:13Accomplishment and pride when you create something with your own hands and it has like a different feel to it  Because you had a hand in it and you created it and it's just yeah Really nice. Humans are really skilled really special creatures. We are very good once we set our minds to things. Yes. Yeah  Okay, so uh I'm gonna bring up the fact that your place is called open road ranch not open road farm. Oh,
10:40I have been told by a few people that typically a ranch is a property to the west of the Mississippi and a farm uh is a place to the east of the Mississippi.  So is there a reason that you named it ranch?  We like alliteration. Okay. So it just sounded nice. And actually we looked up ranch versus farm just to make sure we were being technically accurate because I didn't quite know the difference either. And I actually had not heard that.
11:09ah But  my understanding was that  a ranch was primarily  livestock based uh and a farm could be produce or uh livestock. So  a farm could be a ranch, but a ranch couldn't be a farm kind of  thing. And I don't know if that's right. This is probably just on Google. uh But we are  livestock only and it  sounded nice.
11:36Yes, we went with ranch, but I often call us a farm too. feel like  in a lot of ways they're interchangeable and in a lot of ways I'm sure they're quite different. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I don't have an opinion on this at all,  but my thought before a couple of people told me about the West versus East of the Mississippi thing, my thought has always been if it's a farm, it's more produce. If it's a ranch, it's more livestock. So I'm in the same boat as you. Yeah.  Interesting.
12:05So do you have lots of pigs?  I wish I had more. um Well, it's always changing as  some go to the butcher and then we get new piglets. last  couple of weeks ago, we took five of our big pigs in and so now we have five um left. So usually I do batches of about 10 at a time. um And then once the  littles start getting big, then we'll get some more littles in so we can kind of.
12:32face it out so we're  quite a small farm um and so we're still growing our avenues for selling and we're still getting freezers and things like that so that felt like a really manageable uh amount to be able to have enough to sell um without gaps and to be able to manage here from our little farm and our little farm store um but we do hope to grow  and I've just absolutely fallen in love with pigs so I love  tons of pigs and um
13:02The sheep we rotationally graze  as well, so that takes  some thought with  how many acres we have and how many can  rotationally graze on the pasture and have enough to eat and  have that be beneficial for the land and the soil um to not stretch that. uh And so it's just kind of working out um between the sheep and the pigs  what's best for the animals and the land and how much we can feed and how we can grow.
13:29So right now we have five um red wattle Berkshire crosses  for hogs and we have  seven  sheep. Some are south down and some are heritage breed called Jacobs.  I'm 19 Langhans. I just kind of hang out.  Are the sheep the hair sheep or are they the wool sheep?  They are wool sheep. Okay.  I don't know the names of the breeds well enough to go, oh yeah, that's a hair sheep or oh yeah, that's a wool sheep. I'm  not up to date on my.
13:59My shape breeds.  We have 18 or 19 chickens. Last I was told we have 19, but there may have been one that decided to on alive itself. I'm not sure. Oh no. Are you getting eggs? Are they layers or? Yeah. They're the  ISA brown breed. Yep. And we have a light in their coop. So they  lay during the winter. Oh good. There's nothing like a farm fresh egg.
14:26So I missed them during their sabbatical. Yeah, we're actually swimming in eggs right now because the weather's been so cold. People haven't been making the journey out to our place to pick up eggs from the farm stand.  And I'm glad we're talking about this because after I'm done talking with you, I need to post on Facebook and be like, there's eggs and it's warming up outside. Please come buy eggs. Please. Yeah.  We need you to take our eggs. Yeah, exactly.
14:53um My husband brought in, think,  eight dozen from the farm stand a week or so ago  because  they  were getting to the point where we need to get them eaten up.  And I was so excited because as anyone who raises chickens for laying eggs knows,  you can't really, well, you can hard boil a fresh egg, but it doesn't peel very easily. You lose about a quarter of the egg white.
15:19And he brought in all these eggs and I was like, yes, I can make egg salad again. Yeah. Oh yum, that sounds good. We made that in a while. Yeah. So I've had, I've had egg salad like three times in last two weeks. I'm probably going to do it again today because I really like egg salad. And I hadn't had an egg salad sandwich in a year because people were just buying the eggs before there was any time for them to be over two weeks old. Yeah. Yep. Eggs are like gold.
15:47Yep. I love having chickens mostly because I feel like we're helping our community. sell our eggs for $5 a dozen. I don't know what eggs cost at the store now because I haven't bought eggs at the store in almost a year, but there for a while eggs were really freaking expensive and we were still selling our eggs at $5 a dozen. So we were trying to help and I'm a big believer in help where you can. Uh, yeah.
16:17Yeah, yeah. That little touch point, that little access to food,  even if it's just a dozen eggs,  well, you know, connect someone to the farm and the farmer and kind of open doors, I hope. Yes. And the other thing that's  interesting, and I don't mean to make the interview about me, but we're talking about stuff I actually know about. Usually I'm talking to people and they're like, we're raising horses. And I'm like, I don't know anything about horses. Let me ask you a ton of questions. In the spring and summer and fall,
16:46when people come by to get eggs and they've never been here before.  I watch them get out of their vehicle  and they're kind of tight in the shoulders when they step out of the vehicle.  And then they kind of stop and look around and I watch their shoulders just relax.  And I'm like, oh my God, our property, just being on the property helps people. And it just makes me so happy. Yeah. A lot of people don't have access to, of course, like
17:13you know, being around pigs or sheep or chickens or anything like that.  I just, or just even out, you know, in the quiet and the fresh air and green grass and all that stuff. So it's just, it's a really nice, I absolutely know what you mean. Yeah. It's really fun when you get to observe people quietly, like they don't know what you're noticing.  Because if I said to them, did you have a rough day?  They would look at me like I was crazy. Yeah.
17:42But you can see on someone that they've had a very stressful day and you can just watch it kind of melt from their shoulders down to their fingertips when they are  able to take that long deep breath of fresh air. Yes. I try not to take that for granted. because I grew up in the city and I've only been living out in the country and on the farm for a little bit.  I mean, when I see the sunrise or sunset or, you know, the pigs are running around as God intended and...
18:07all of that, like I just try to pause and think like what a gift it is to be able to see pigs out our window and you know, sheep and  these sunrises and sunsets and you know, this fresh air and all these things that like some people might not  be able to have every day and how much that, how good that might feel and yeah. So what,  what pushed you to do this because you said you're, you're not, this is two years in.
18:35So  what made you decide to do this?  I read a lot of Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin  and was just really moved by their works. I think it was just  a curiosity about where my food came from, which can, you know, uh results in all sorts of things like either just, you know, buying  organic or going to a farmer's market. And for me, it manifested in  becoming a farmer. ah
19:05I just, yeah, I started to really think about and care about where my food came from. I was a vegetarian for 20 years and a vegan for three years. And now I raise animals and take them to the butcher. And so it's quite the leap, but I feel like there's a lot of fear of propaganda when it comes to veganisms and a lot of food choices. And I think it's because we are so disconnected from our food.
19:34today that when you hear things or see these videos or see these things on social media, um if you don't have experience with it yourself, it's easy  to believe those things or to not understand.  so I think it just sometimes it takes, it's maybe over simplistic, but it's a simple act of like knowing your farmer or coming onto the farm and seeing how their animals are raised um to make that connection back. um
20:01And with vegetarianism and veganism a lot, uh it's  fear-based. um And  I had gone the route of, I don't want anything to do with this.  And so I just cut it out of my diet and out of my life.  But then it was a little bit later on in life when I started reading  Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin.
20:21that I started to see that there's a different way. Like you can have meat and it can be ethical and responsible and actually good for you and good for the earth.  And I feel like a lot of times that wasn't always portrayed, at least in what I was seeing uh with that sort of diet and lifestyle choice. so,  yeah,  I feel like  if people only  knew that or were able to have access to their farm or to their food, they could see that there's a different way um
20:50to eat meat and ethically  and good for the land and good for the animals and good for us. And so part of why I love to do this is the education around that. I invite people come to our farm, see how we raise our animals, see the good lives that they live. And that makes me feel good about eating our meat is because I know how it was raised. know the life it had.  And I feel very proud of being a part of that. And I hope to educate people about that and share that with people. I love it. I love it, Julie. oh
21:20Are you a reader of the Old Farmer's Almanac? Oh, I have one. found it in the thrift store and I have not read it. Okay, well, it's not an it. It's a publication and they come out every year. Yes. And there was a rumor going around that the Old Farmer's Almanac was going out of print. It is not the Farmer's Almanac. There are two different Almanacs. The Farmer's Almanac went out of print with this year's
21:50last one.  The old farmer's almanac is still alive and kicking and doing really well. And  if you want to,  you will learn a whole lot of things about farming and ranching and growing produce and growing animals. It's only like  $10 to buy a copy and it's for the entire year.  Like it's one  little publication for the entire year. And the thing that I love about it is that
22:21It has like days for everything like this is a good day to wean calves or this is a good day to plant seedlings and  It will take you all year to get through it. It's over 100 pages
22:36But anyway, I was just curious if you were a devotee, because a lot of the people I talk to, they're like, oh yeah, I read the farmer's almanac every spring and I mark down what the days are for the things I'm going to be doing, blah, blah, blah. OK, it sounds like I would love it. I am going to open it up. Yeah, it's very fun. I can't remember the name of the website. I think it's just farmer's almanac, but I would have to look it up. It'll be in the show notes.
23:05Hi, what else can I ask you?  You said that your pigs are red wattle and what?  Berkshire crosses. So those are both  heritage breeds.  A red wattle is a lard breed,  which I'm still learning about. um But  I believe it just has that really good  fatty marbling and really good taste.  Yeah, and they're like furry, right?
23:34Oh yes, so our hogs have actually been sleeping outside. If it's above 10 degrees, I would say, and you know, windless night, I'll come out in the morning and we have a big brown hay bale out there for them to grab hay from and they can stuff their huts or they can hang out there. And they'll just be laying outside under the, you know, under the moonlight  in  their hay pile all night. They're very tough  because they you know, raised outside and they have thick fur. So  yeah.
24:04Yeah, people think that pigs don't have fur, but a lot of them do. Yes. And it's interesting to depend on the breed we've had, like durochs and yorks and, all different kinds. And the Berkshire breeds will have, yeah, quite a lot of hair and  it does help them, you know, be pasture animals. Yeah. I know just a little bit about the red waddles because I knew people who had them and they're, aren't they kind of friendly? Aren't they pretty nicely demeanored as it were?
24:34Yes, they are. mean, and I think that's too,  most of the pigs we've had have been really friendly demeanor just because we have so much contact with them. You know, we're out there  two, three times a day.  Um, you know, they have that one-on-one interaction and, and I sit and talk to them and, know, I'm friendly with them. So I think you get out of them, what you put into them. And so I think like the more contact you have with them,  um, they'll, they'll be friendly, but all the breeds we've had, we've had durochs and Yorks and a hundred percent Berkshires. We've had a ham.
25:02Hampshire and they've all been, you know, so friendly. em Yeah, I think pigs are just very quite social and curious and friendly creatures um in general. yeah. And the sheep, are they, I don't know anything about sheep. Are sheep friendly or they just kind of aloof? uh Not compared to the pigs. They're quite aloof.  So they're just more skittish around. And again, it's what you put into them. So, um you know, we've had sheep
25:29where, you know, we're out there, they do need less, um I would say, day-to-day care than  the pigs, especially in the summer. ah You know, you're not feeding them like you are twice a day with the hogs, and they're just rotating on the pastures, and you just need to make sure they have water.  So there's a little bit less contact there,  but we have had sheep.
25:50where we're around them often and they get to know us. But even still, even when they know us quite well and we spend a lot of time with them, they're just generally tend to be a little bit more skittish. And the pigs, they're just so curious. They'll run out to the road when people walk by or a tractor goes by. They're just very, very curious and social animals. So I'm very smart. Okay, cool. So what would you say if you made a new friend at
26:19the feed mill or the library or some place where people actually talk to each other. And that new friend said, I really would like to buy a couple acres. How should I start my homestead or my little tiny farm? What would you say to them? Oh boy, that's a million dollar question. It sure is. It almost reminds me of that joke. If you're a farmer, how do you get a million dollars start with 2 million? Yes. It's because I
26:49I uh there can be oftentimes this romantic idea, which absolutely, this is like incredibly romantic  way of living, but there's also hard realities too, especially, I feel like there's not a lot of conversations around  maybe finance all the times and how much it costs uh to start a farm, to run a farm. um And uh there's those realities. uh
27:12And I would say  too that you don't need to own land to  start a farm  because I was looking to buy land for quite a while  before I had this opportunity to rent land here. And so I know a lot of successful farms that start small and you can just rent land and kind of get your feet wet.  I would also say that  farmers are by far the friendliest, most um sharing folks with their knowledge and with their time.
27:39So before I began farming, I spent a couple of years just emailing and reaching out to farmers coming out to their farm and they would stop their busy days and take time to walk me around and answer my questions.  And I would happily do that for anyone now. So  if you're curious about farming, reach out to someone who is uh already doing it  and ask them questions. And  I'm sure there'll be an open book and farmers wanna help other farmers and...
28:06Um, because they know how important it is for farms to keep going and how important it is for people to have access to real fresh food. Um, so I would say talk to a farmer for sure. Yeah, me too. I, I would, I really kind of wished before we moved here in 2020 that I had had someone who knew more than I did about what we were doing. I love what we're doing. are a 3.1 acre property.
28:36And we have our big old garden and we have our chickens and we have our barn cats and we have our dog. That is, that is it.  But I didn't, I don't know why I didn't think of it, but I didn't realize we were going to have to buy a small tractor because our driveway is long.  at the least we needed to be able to plow our driveway.  Didn't, didn't think about that. That a new tractor is not inexpensive.
29:03And it took us three and a half years to pay it off.  So  we didn't know that we would need that. And we didn't realize that we had, I mean, we realized we were buying a place with a humongous pole barn,  but  we didn't think about the fact that there might be something wrong with something in the pole barn. there is, there is one support  beam, but it's not on in the ceiling. It's along the wall that is starting to buckle.
29:32And we're going to have to have somebody come in and help us fix that because if that barn goes down, that takes out all of our vehicles, our tractor.  My husband's  as we call it workshop, but really it's a  bench with a bunch of tools on it. We can't have the pole barn buckle because of the pole barn buckles, we lose a lot of important things.  So there are,  there are all kinds of small things, but they're humongous things if they go wrong. Yeah.
30:02that you don't  know  to ask about or think about because you don't know. Yes, exactly. There's so many things in a day that you are responsible for, like that you can't possibly, you know,  imagine like an animal gets sick or something happens with your fencing or, you know,  your trailer pops a tire, things like that, you know, that you're all  responsible for and that all adds up and it's all.
30:29needs to be working for the farm to work. And so you have to be role with those things. And  yeah,  is an everyday education for at least the first five years. Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite things about farming is I always say like, feel like I learned something new or multiple things. Like every single day. I'm just  and I love learning. And so I just  there and I feel like it will be endless my whole life.  I feel like I will be learning something new every day. Well,
30:57The dumbest thing I've learned so far in the last 15 years because we were actually growing food on the city lot we lived on before we moved here  is Brussels sprout plants are very finicky. If you throw them, if you throw the seeds somewhere and basically forget about them, you might actually get really good Brussels sprouts. But if you throw Brussels sprout seeds  in a spot and baby them and tend to them and nurture them,  you don't get any Brussels sprouts.
31:26I have been trying to grow Brussels sprouts for oh,  15, 20 years now. And the one year that we just kind of threw a couple of seeds down and forgot where we put them, we had the most beautiful, huge Brussels sprouts  for eating. Since then cannot grow Brussels sprouts to save my life.  So the dumbest things can be the most impactful on you because I really like roasted Brussels sprouts, but I only like the ones I grew.  So that has been.
31:54That has been terribly frustrating for me. And my husband asked me the other day, he do you want me to throw in some Brussels sprouts plants? And I was like, no.  No, I do not because I don't want to be disappointed in August when there's no Brussels sprouts to eat, but there's some really pretty leaves on it.  Yes. You have to have a lot of grace with yourself.  You know, it's easy to focus on the things that you messed up or you did wrong. um Cause it's also important, but then it's,  it's nice to remember the things that just.
32:22worked out that you didn't think would or the things that you did right and the things you are learning.  Yeah. Like I said, dumbest thing ever. Cause it's no skin off my nose that we can't seem to grow a good Brussels sprout here. I don't know why I have looked up all the things and I'm like, I don't know what we're doing wrong, but I give up.  no  big deal. As long as the chickens survive the winter and we have eggs, am  all good.  right, Julie, this was so much fun. And I feel like I talked a lot, but
32:51It was really fun to actually talk about this place too. I don't do it very often.  Where can people find you? uh They can find us at  our website  is um www.openroadranch.com. And I'm actually working um on a little revamp right now of our website. So that'll change one day. And then um also  we have Facebook and Instagram, but this is relationship I really struggle with and, and, uh
33:19but I'm trying to  be present on social media and see it for the good. uh So we're at Open Road Ranch um on  Facebook and Instagram.  And then, yeah, we're in Greenbush, so if anyone is local,  they are welcome to stop by our farm store  or just call or email if they wanna come get anything from us, and  we're here. Fabulous.  As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.
33:48And if you like this podcast, you should go listen to grit and grace and the heartland women in agriculture.  Cause that's my second podcast. started a little over a month ago  with a cohost Leah. She's clear Creek ranch mom on Facebook. And we are having such a good time  with the fact that 2026 is the year, the international year of the  woman farmer.  thank you again, Julie. I appreciate your time so much.
34:18Thank you, I really enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate your time as well. Have a great day. You too, thank you.
 

Ranch Wife Marketing

Today I'm talking with Alisha at Ranch Wife Marketing. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Alicia at Ranch Wife Marketing in North Dakota. Good afternoon.  How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing?  I'm good. How's the weather in South Dakota this afternoon?
00:22North Dakota, um but it is getting better. We did have a negative 50 wind chills just a day or two ago, but now we're at least above zero. So for us, we can finally go back out in a sweatshirt. Nice. Did I say South Dakota? I swear my brain is not working today. You did. It's okay.  Oh, North Dakota, the one above South Dakota. Jeez. uh In Minnesota today, it is really cold.
00:50I am looking out my bedroom window at uh the tin roof of the bedroom next to me  and the snow is all sparkly in the sunshine. It's really beautiful, but it's too cold.  Oh yes, I get it. We don't get a ton of snow, not as much as Minnesota.  I was born and raised there, so I know how much snow falls there. We're a little drier,  so we don't have em as much snow, but we do have a little dusting currently.
01:17Just out of curiosity, where are you in North Dakota? I'm actually on the  North Dakota-South Dakota border. I live about 20 miles from South Dakota. um We live on the Standing Rock  Sioux Reservation um in a small, tiny town called Selfridge. Okay, cool.  Well, for the people who are following along on the podcast about my barn cats, um
01:46We had a stray barn cat show up here a month ago maybe, and she has been kind of hiding out. She'll come and eat every other day.  And we have three kittens that we got a couple months ago. They're about five months old.  And  today is the first day that I have seen her, seen the stray hanging out with the other kittens in the dog house in the sunshine on the hay bales. And I think she's probably around the same age as the three kittens.  So,
02:14That was the banner moment of my day was seeing this beautiful tortoiseshell stray cat hanging out with the kittens.  Oh, that's amazing. We have plenty of cats around here, um both indoor and outdoor. I love seeing all the kittens as they grow up in the summer. Yeah, it's really fun. And this cat showed up out of nowhere. I was like, why is there another cat? We don't have six cats.  We have five.
02:42and my husband happened to get a photo of her and I was like, Oh, I hope she sticks around because she's beautiful. And from my local listeners, we have tons of chicken eggs in our farm stand. Farm stand is heated so the eggs don't freeze and we have lots of eggs in the farm stand for sale every day. So if anybody needs eggs, come on by. And that's it for my updates for my house, my homestead. Alicia, you are
03:11farmer, but you're also a marketer. So can we talk about both? Yeah. So if my husband listens in, he's going to cringe because we're actually ranchers. worries. Some people call it cattle farming. Some people call it ranching. It's all about where you are in the world. But yeah, so we have a cow-calf ranch. We run about 500 mama cows.
03:37about 200 heifers. We breed some bulls and sell some bulls as well. And we also have a quarter horse operation. So we have about a hundred horses. We run about a 65 to 75 mare brood band and have about six stallions. So that's kind of our ranch side. Wow. That's a lot.
04:02Yes. Yeah, it is a larger  ranch. as much as I'd love to do the homesteading thing and like have the garden and all the other little animals,  we have plenty going on that my husband's always like, no,  you don't need to add more to our plate.  Yeah, I wish that my husband understood that concept. He's always like, I want to try this. I want to try that. And I'm like,  I think we need to get good at the first couple of things before we add more in.
04:30I know. I really want chickens because I love fresh chicken eggs. And he's just like, just go across to our cousins. They have chickens. Honestly, it's easier if you just get them from somebody else. It really is. um We have 18 chickens  and  keeping chickens is not hard. I'm not saying don't get chickens. I'm not telling anyone to not ever get chickens because it's not that hard, but you have to make sure that you have bedding in the wintertime. If you live in a winter state, a Northern tier state,
05:00And you have to clean out their coop at least once a month, if not twice a month in the warmer months because it gets stinky and that's not a fun environment for them to live in. So if you don't want to deal with chicken poop, don't get chickens.  Yeah, that's definitely a thing. I have had to babysit the chickens across the  way a few times and they are a little bit of work. I think they'd be so fun and my sons, they love the chickens.
05:30Yeah,  I love watching the chickens. I just don't love going in the coop in August when it's been a really hot day and the coop needs to be cleaned.  And I have to hold my breath for the whole time and they're getting eggs, you know, it's very stinky.  But they are they are gorgeous. Even the most, I don't know, plain Jane chicken like we have, we have the ISA Browns. They're just a reddish brown chicken.  They're really pretty, too. So  I don't know. Chickens are great, but
06:00I think that you probably have a very nice setup with your cousins across the way to get eggs from. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does work.  And there's other people in our community that do eggs as well. m I hear one of your kitties in the background.  Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I'm at my desk, she has to be right here with me and she is a old girl. So she likes to complain. Does she help you type?
06:26She would love to sit right on the laptop the entire time if I let her. Something about the warmth of it. Yeah, we don't have any indoor cats anymore, but we have a dog and she barks in the background. Probably  one out of every three recordings I do.  And sometimes I edit her out and other times just leave her in because we live on a homestead. There's going to be animal noises. Oh no. Yeah, exactly. I have my dogs right beside me too. And if she heard a noise that sounded like a knock,
06:54She would be extremely loud.  huh. Yeah. Maggie's like that too. The trash truck pulls in the driveway and she loses her mind for the entire time.  I'm like, you know, even if you caught the truck, there was, there's not anything you could do about it. So just stop  and she won't until it pulls out of the driveway. She will not stop barking. And as it's pulling out of the driveway, she does this raw, raw, raw, like, yeah, get out of here. Exactly. sounds. m
07:24It's very, very funny.  So, um tell me how you got into this marketing thing, because I looked at your website and I know the story, but the listener doesn't know the story. Okay. So, um I originally got into it by doing it for  the ranch. So, my husband is a fourth generation rancher and  we have the Quarter Horse Program, which is where it mainly started and
07:51They always sold locally and by word of mouth, they got it out and kind of were selling their horses for the last,  they started in like  the mid 1900s. So it's been a long  family operation. And in, you know, 2012, 2014 ish when  Facebook came out,  we started using Facebook to market the horses. And that's kind of when the program blew up.
08:20We don't do any  modern day bloodlines. We don't show our quarter horses. They're just ranch bred horses.  And when we were able to show them off online using social media and the internet and a website and all the things, um we started selling them all across the U S and now we have even started selling them overseas.
08:45And when I was working for the farm service agency, before I had my, well, up until right after I had my son, I was always talking with the farmers, the ranchers, the stay at home ranch wives that had smaller businesses or the little businesses in town. And they always struggled to market their stuff.
09:11like further than just going to the local elevator or the local sale barn or just farmers markets and things like that, especially in such a small rural community where we live. And it was hard to, for them to make side hustles or side businesses really work in such a small community. And they just, you know, always were at awe. Like, how do you guys sell your horses? You know, so
09:39to so many states and now you've even shipped them overseas or how are you getting your cattle to be hitting the top of the sale barns every time you guys bring them to the  sale barn and most of the time we sell right off the ranch private treaty  because we're able to market and get a good deal where we don't need to take them to a sale barn and give up that commission.  so  kind of, yeah, questions kept coming up and people asking advice and that kind of
10:09made me want to help people do it  the way that we're doing it. So  I built the business, quit my full-time corporate job with the Farm  Service Agency and started doing this full-time alongside moming and ranching. Yeah, and that moming job is the most important one of the three. Yes. Now we have two boys and it's been uh such a blessing to  not worry about going back to work with my second.
10:39Yeah,  I imagine it probably has been. I did not ever have a job when my babies were babies, like from the minute they were born until they were at least two and a half.  having the privilege to be a full-time focused mother  is one of the joys of my life. raised three that I birthed and one bonus child. have a stepson.  And that first couple of months home with those babies are my favorite memories.
11:10Oh yeah, I know. I was so burnt out and just drowning. I went back to work part time at six weeks because I got 12 weeks of maternity leave, but I knew that if I spent three whole months at home that I was not wanting to go back. And we didn't really want to give up the health benefits and all the things yet. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to do this slowly and went back part time at six weeks. And I ended up
11:39quitting when he was 13 months old because I was just like, no,  I'm going to find something else and do something else. during that time from about, I probably started,  I started Ranch Wife Marketing  when I was eight months pregnant with him officially. And then I really,  you know, got into it and got it to where I felt comfortable leaving my job by that time that he was a year old. um
12:09And so it's just kind of worked out to just leave and come home full time. And I, it was the best thing I've ever done.  Awesome. I'm so glad you found something  that you love and that works for you and your family.  So do you consider yourself a coach or how does, how does farm wife marketing work? So it started as coaching as a one person team. I didn't have, you know,  the, um,
12:38capacity to run enough social media accounts while still ranching and being a mom  to bring in the kind of income I wanted to. So I started as a coach and more of a do it with you. um That way I could kind of have a  more,  at that time I could do  more with my time. I could set up, you know, three hours a day where I did client calls.
13:05That way I could have multiple clients throughout the week and then um able to just assist them. We would just sit down in that hour and we'd go through what their marketing plan was  that week, um what goals they wanted to hit and kind of just work on their marketing strategy and get them all set up um for whatever the retainer was, whether that was three months, six months. um But it had then...
13:32Um, this summer I had expanded it into a marketing agency and we're starting with social media. So we're doing social medias for businesses that just don't want to do it themselves. I also created courses and guides and books. So I have all kinds of little, um, low ticket or, um, medium ticket. can have like things that you can, uh, buy and do it yourself and.
14:01kind of have your own education without having the coaching side or me do it for you. Okay, that makes sense. So I don't want your secret sauce because your secret sauce is the reason that you have a business and you're making money at it. But what would you tell someone who knows nothing about marketing their homestead or their little farm or their small ranch? I don't know there's such a thing as a small ranch, but we're going to call it that.
14:29What is the first thing that you would tell them to do as their first step in marketing? The first thing is just visibility. You just need to be able to get yourself out there. um it's probably the biggest thing that, biggest hurdle that people have to get, especially in rural communities over is like  putting themselves out there for people to see them. um And
14:56Showing up on social media, even if you don't have a plan, telling the world what you have, what you offer, that is  by far the first step. If you can get  started doing that, the rest will fall so much more naturally when you can start implementing strategies and plans.  Yeah, that's what I would say too. And I am not a marketer, but I worked for a PR and marketing company for about five years and started out just helping my friend who owned it.
15:25do filing because she had a brand new baby boy at home and she needed some help. I learned so many things working for her  as an office assistant in the five, six years that I worked for her. And  it has helped me  so much with what we do here because we have a farm to market garden and we have the eggs.  And I'm always in the summertime when my husband's taking stuff to the farmer's market. Every morning he sets up the booth and he sends me a photo.
15:53And I write a little blurb and put it on Facebook.  Kyle's at the farmer's market. Here's what we have for today. Stop by and say hi. He would like to, he'd like to say hello to you or whatever I say. And he always comes home and says, somebody stopped by and said, they saw that I was at the farmer's market because you posted on Facebook. So it does work.  Oh, definitely. It is such an asset. If you can just post on social media. um
16:19A lot of people, especially probably my older clientele are so against it. But once I show them that it can be simple and easy and um you don't have to spend all day on it, just literally get a post out there  and it will even a little bit, even a couple of times  whenever you got something going on is going to help so much. Yeah. And once I feel like once people get past the, don't know what to say  thing.
16:48They find out that it's fun. Yes. Oh yeah, it's  so much fun interacting with people  on social media. I've met so many people through social media that I would have never met if I hadn't started this business or  hadn't marketed our horses in the conversations that we've had with people over the years just from finding us online on social media.
17:13Whichever business it was that I was working for, um it's just incredible the relationships we've built. Yes, and it is all about community and relationships and it needs to be right now.  I don't want to get into it, but it's been rough living in Minnesota for the last couple of weeks and we need more people talking with each other instead of at each other.  Exactly. Yeah, we don't need to get in it, but I do have an immigrant stepmother  who's living in
17:43suburb of Minneapolis. So I do understand the struggle. Yeah, it has been a very, very  long  January and we're not even,  what is today? The 27th? We have a few more days of January and I don't see February being any, any faster. It's been a very rough start to the year here in Minnesota. uh So  I need to pick your brain for a second on email lists because I keep hearing and I keep reading.
18:11that it's important to have an email list because that keeps you in contact with your customers.  Even if Facebook or Instagram or whatever social media platform you use goes down.  Do you think that an email list is really important?  Absolutely. It is one of the things I get people set up with  right away uh is how they're going to collect emails and how they're going to nurture that  email sequence because
18:39I'm actually a great example.  So when I first started Ranch Wife Marketing, I had an Instagram page where I focused on helping burnt out moms  in the rural community, the ones that were like me working 40 hours a week, trying to start a business, trying to be a mom, trying to help their husband on the ranch,  um, find a way to  make that side income a full-time thing. And I had over 10,000 followers and my Instagram was hacked.
19:09and taken away. I lost all my leads,  all my customers, all my potential from that um Instagram. And now the one I have now, which I know I'm not sad about,  followers don't mean sales,  but having a nice large follower amount. Some people are like, oh, she knows what she's doing. And now my current one is only around 1300.  But you have an email list now.
19:38but I have an email list  and I was able to email all of my  email lists and tell them, know,  you can find me at this  Instagram now instead,  or I was able just to keep in communication with them.  own, once someone gives you their email, you own it. Like that is your information, that is your data. They have consented you to contact them through email  and it doesn't,  it's like,
20:07on an Excel file or wherever you keep it, you have it to reach out to them.  Where social media,  you can lose that lead easily, they can easily change their username and you can't find them. ah You could get your account taken down. ah They could easily block you by accident even sometimes. ah So there's just a lot of things with social media that a email list helps  navigate if you can
20:37collect those emails from your following. Okay, so here's where I get stuck because I just built a new website for the other podcasts I'm doing now. It's called Grit and Grease and the Heartland  Women in Agriculture and I  just set up the email list thing and I haven't sent out the first email because I'm going to do it in February because then I have all of January to draw from.  So
21:03My thing about email lists is that I never know what to say in an email if I'm not actually selling something. I'm just promoting the podcast. So my plan  is to email people  a synopsis of  what the things are that we talked about in January  and do a little teaser at the end of the guests that we're having in February. Is that  a
21:30good thing to do for an email list? Yeah, that sounds great. I honestly believe in one of like my foundation  beliefs in my business is that you shouldn't be selling every single time you post something, send something, whatever it is. It should be 80 % nurture and value and education driven  and 20 % selling because if we're not giving ourselves to our customers, why should they
22:00open their pocketbooks to us. Right. Yeah, exactly. So  if someone is  selling their produce in the summertime and they have an email list, should their email they send out  once a month or every two weeks or however they're timing it,  should the first like 60 % of the email be about what they've been growing, what they've been seeing?
22:29the cute garden spider that they found in the middle of the garden and it scared them to death. And then what they're going to be selling and where they're going to be selling. Oh, yes. And even if like, especially in that niche, if you can throw in gardening tips or certain varieties you came across or new things to try, throwing in any kind of little bit of knowledge or entertainment.
22:55it before you actually lead to the sale is going to up your conversion rates so much.  That's what I figured. We have a beautiful photo that my husband took uh of an orb weaver garden spider. And it is orange and sorry, it's yellow and black and it's a beautiful spider, but lots of people are really scared of spiders.  he said, he said, I took this for you. He said, cause you're not scared of spiders. He said, but do you think that it'll get
23:24attention on Facebook or an email and I was like probably because people are  arachnophobia is a real thing eh
23:35Yes.  No, and uh I actually,  I'll even  use my husband as an example. So he's scared of snakes, but you know, he'll sit there and watch  a  TikTok or any real video about snakes and just be like  grossed out the whole time, but just interested because  I don't know what it is about it. But um yeah, they just are drawn to watching them even if they're scared of them.
24:03It's like Gawker's in a bad car accident. I swear that's how the brain works. um So I have one more question about a marketing tactic and then we can, I actually have questions about your quarter horses too. Art, do you think that podcasts are a good way to market? Yes, if you can market, well,  so podcasts.
24:27You have to be able to also mark the podcast, but then the podcast itself is a great way to nurture your audience. It's a great way for them to learn, know, and trust you and lead them to your offers by providing value, entertainment, and things like that. I have considered even myself starting a podcast. The only thing holding me back from starting a podcast is my time. I have
24:56two under two and like I said a lot of livestock to take care of but I think once my boys get a little older it's something I even want to do so that I can teach on my podcast and then market my services through it. So definitely it is a great place to do that. And I want to tell the listener it is really easy. It will probably cost you anywhere from 25 to 100 dollars a month to do it.
25:25because it does cost money to have a host  for the files. you have to have a way to record if you're doing guests. there there are expenses around having a podcast, but it's not  exorbitant. It's not a ton of money. And you can pick up a headset like I wear and the sound is fine. You don't have to have a fancy boom mic and the big fat earphones that don't stay on my head. Well, that's why I don't use them.
25:54don't love them.  It's fairly easy. is  not hard to do. it  is my podcast, this one,  and the one I just started, it's a joy of my life right now because I get to talk to people  who are helping me educate people in the world about agriculture and about food and about cooking and about animals. And it just tickles me to no end when I get up in the morning and I know I'm going to do an interview with someone. It just makes my heart.
26:25first, you know? Yeah, they are. I love listening to them too. And I've been on a few and they're always just a pleasure to be a part of and also listen to. And I always get little  golden nuggets from every single podcast I ever listened to.  Yes. And the best part about podcasts is that you can put your earbuds in and you can do dishes or you can cook dinner or you can muck stalls or you can brush a horse.
26:54You know, it's something that you can learn from without having to focus completely on the thing that you're learning. can be doing something else in the process. Oh, definitely. I love them. I think they're great. And I would say that because I have to. And Alicia, your voice is beautiful. You would be great at a podcast. Oh, thank you. It's actually one of the things I'm insecure about. I feel like it's high and whiny. Oh, no, you would be great. You would sound
27:23perfectly fine for a podcast.  the other podcast that I do is with a cattle rancher and she's in Nebraska. And so we talk a lot about her livestock, but we don't talk about quarter horses because they don't have quarter horses.  tell me about quarter horses. What are quarter horses for?  What's their purpose?
27:47Quarter horses were bred to be very versatile. um So  there's not really a true purpose to them. They are so versatile, they're used almost in every uh equitation out there.  Originally, they were kind of  raised to...
28:10have a little more strength than a thoroughbred  and um some endurance and be able to kind of go all day on a ranch chasing cattle and things like that  instead of breaking down like thoroughbreds  and then having a little more strength than Arabians  to be able to rope and pull cattle.  They're kind of  built through
28:36those breeds and even crossed with some draft to bring in that strength. um So that's kind of what they were built for just to be your all around do anything and everything horse. They're  going to excel in those Western cattle  areas, but they're definitely,  they can be quick. They're used for racing and endurance. can climb mountains  and yeah, that's just kind of where they came from was.
29:03a breed that could withstand that rugged American terrain that we have. they a smaller horse? Are they like 14, 15 hands or are they a bigger horse? So because they come from so many other breeds originally, they are anywhere from pony size. Like some of them even fall under 14. I think one of our mares is right at 14 hands.
29:31And then they can be, I mean, we have 16, 16, two hand horses as well. I've seen quarter horses get as tall as 17 hands. Wow. Okay. All right. So they're, I'm going to use a bad word. My, the best dog that my parents ever had was a mutt. He was, he was not a purebred anything. And they only had him for about a year because he got hit by a car and he was the loviest, most healthy.
30:01most uh athletic dog and his name was Lucky, which was  unfortunate because he was not lucky.  And we love that dog.  definitely were a mutt in the beginning. that is a great ex- now to the now they're just so old that it's now a purebred themselves. But yeah, that's where it came from was just that hybrid vigor of  combining a bunch of different things together. Yeah, I was a rare uh
30:29I was afraid if I said the word mutt, you're going to be offended.  think a lot of quarter horse people probably would be,  but I completely understand where it comes from. um So  though we, all of ours are purebred, they're American quarter horse registered.  But yeah, if you trace any quarter horse back far enough,  you're not going to find a quarter horse at the end of the trail.  Exactly. I think that's what I was trying to get at.
30:57I don't know enough about horses to talk to it  smartly  and that wasn't really smart either, but you know what I'm saying. I don't know enough about horses because I've never had any. um So I guess my last question, because I try to keep these to half an hour,  is are  some horses still used for work, like for hauling a cart  or for pulling a plow or any of the things that horses were used for 150 years ago? Yeah.
31:25Yeah, there's a lot of people that still use horses for work. um Amish is a great example. um There's a lot of Amish communities still um in the United States. We have a lot of Amish customers  that uh use their horses still to  pull  carts and plow and work on them. So  yeah, it's definitely still a thing.
31:54Okay, because a lot of the horse Facebook pages that I follow, I follow a couple,  they're more for racing or for showing. oh Or just for having because they're great. Horses are amazing animals. And I was thinking about the other day, and I knew that the Amish still use horses for actual farm work. But the average person who owns a horse, they don't typically use them for farm work. They race them or they show them.
32:23Yeah, I would say we use ours for work, but not for farm work. have tractors and plows and all that stuff, but  we use ours to  herd our cattle. We to rope the cows and treat them out in pasture to round them up just because,  you know, a four wheeler or a dirt bike or whatever. lot of people use, especially where we live in North Dakota, we have a lot of rugged country. Can't get to where the cows can get, but a horse can. Yep.
32:52Yep, that makes all the sense in the world.  All right, Alicia,  I appreciate your time so much as I do everybody who talks with me on the podcast.  Where can people find you?  You can find me by Googling Ranch Wife Marketing. That will bring you to my website. You can find me on Facebook, oh Instagram, TikTok, all with Ranch Wife Marketing.
33:16Um, the actual at is ranchwife underscore marketing on both Tik TOK and Facebook. Um, and I love chatting and I'm always just a DM away or an email away if anyone wants to learn anything about marketing, your rural businesses. Or if they want to buy a quarter horse. Yeah. We, yeah. you want that's Freilich legacy quarter horses. If you want to look into our quarter horse program. Okay. Awesome.
33:46You can find me as always at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support.  And if you like this podcast, check out  Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. That's my other podcast.  Alicia, thank you again for your time. I appreciate it. Yes. I had a great time talking with you, Mary.  Have a great day. You too.
 

Santa's Crew LLC

Today I'm talking with Sara at Santa's Crew LLC. Sara and her dad raise reindeer!
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Sarah at Santa's Crew LLC in Wisconsin. Good morning, Sarah. How are you? Good and good morning.  How's the weather in Wisconsin this morning? Because it's damn cold in Minnesota.  It's very cold here as well.  Getting through it.  Yeah. um
00:29I know we shouldn't complain because we had a very long, extended, beautiful fall, but spring can't come soon enough, honestly. Yeah, I don't mind cold weather, but when it's like way, way in the negatives and it causes things to break or have issues, then it's like, okay, now it's maybe a little too cold. Yeah, I am prone to migraines. It runs in my family, and when the temperature drops like this and the air gets dry,
00:56My head tries to hurt every morning when I get up and I'm like, spring's only a couple months away. I will survive it. Yeah. I would definitely be looking forward to it as well if I were you. Yeah. It's no fun getting up in the morning and you get that little twinge and you're like, okay, so am I going to be down for three days or is this just a few seconds of dry air bothering my nose causing sinus headache?
01:22It's very frustrating, minor. There are worse things in the world. I'm not worried about it. I just don't enjoy it.  So um Sarah talked with me a week or so ago about their dairy farm  and she let it slip that she and her dad have a reindeer raising endeavor as well. And I was like,  oh, will you come back and talk to me about the reindeer? And she's back. So  how in the heck did you guys get involved in raising reindeer?
01:51Right? It's not something you're, you know, not very common. uh But our neighbor used to have them.  And  I did go to one of these events one time and, know, it was a lot of fun. I did grow up on a dairy farm. So I grew up around animals and training animals  at, you know, going to the fair. So I was familiar with that.  And
02:12we found out he was selling and my dad and I kind of talked. It was kind of spontaneous. It wasn't something like we planned. It was just kind of like the opportunity was there  and we're like, let's do it. So we kind of went in partnership. I was 17 at the time.  Um,  and  we started with  two baby calves  and kind of expand from there was a male and female. So they were calves. We showed them that first year.
02:40And the following year they would be a breeding pair. So then we had to get another female, um, because during the holiday season is when the males are in rut. So you don't want to bring them out because they're very aggressive. So usually people will bring like females or steers. So then we kind of started with three animals within our first two years. And then, um, the third degree added another one. So then we had three females and kinda, oh um,
03:07went with that and then we had three breeding females. But yeah,  we slowly built it. was, uh yeah, it's very fun. m Reindeer are different than  cattle in some ways. They have their similarities but their differences.  And growing up with dairy cattle, when I got the reindeer, I'm like, oh, reindeer are much quicker and  more nimble than  cows. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
03:34And now we've been doing it since 2016, which is crazy to think that time's flying by that fast. do you have a big herd now? We're at eight right now,  which is a good size. I don't think we'll get  bigger than that um at all. We're pretty with the amount of space we have for them. It seems to work well.  It's enough  animals for like the holiday season. And then we do have some breeding females.
04:04So we can kind of get calves. We'll keep a few every once in a while and sometimes we'll sell some to people who don't breed or want, you know, new genetics kind of thing. So other people who have reindeer or want to get into it. we had, let's see, last year we had two, but we were expecting four. We're hoping to have four. We had four breeding females. This year we have five that were in breeding.
04:34with breeding bulls.  And we think the youngest one isn't bred because during the holiday season, we think she was in heat because the steer was kind of trying to jump on her. like,  oh, I think she's having a heat. I don't think that one's pregnant. So maybe we'll have four calves. Like, we'll see. um We'll just have to wait and see. How long is gestation for the babies?  Oh, two.
05:02Why am I blanking on the exact? uh Let's see, October is typically when hours are bred and then they calve in springtime around April or May. Why? I'm blanking on the number of days right now though.  So like eight, nine months.  Yeah, yes. Yep. Around that. Okay. Awesome. And is it set in stone? They only have babies in the spring? Yes. Yep. Because rut.
05:32For the males, always, usually the end of August is when it kind of starts.  So it kind of starts around there.  And then they drop their antlers in December or January, which means rut season is done. But we pull the females out of the breeding pen in October because if they get bred any later than that, then they're calving.
05:55into like late spring and summer and it's really, you know, warm for the baby calves. They usually don't do as well  when it's that warm.  Once they get older, they're really good with like the warmer weather, but it's just the baby calves seem to take it harder, you know, in their first few weeks. So we just don't want to have any late late calves. So we just pull them in October. oh Okay.  I have so many questions for you because I out and did some reading on reindeer this morning and
06:24Reindeer and caribou are not the same animal. They are cousins. Yes. And reindeer come from Siberia area, right? Yes. Yep. Across seas. They're native over there where caribou are native to North America. Okay. So how did reindeer get to the United States? Do you know? Yes. So, I guess I'll kind of go back and kind of tell people that
06:53I go to so many events and people say that they're the same thing and they will argue with me and that they think that I'm just  lying, I guess, at like Chris said, that I'm like, am not. are completely like, they're separate animals, but they are close cousins.  They are the same species, but different subspecies. um Because even like national geographic or prominent zoos in the US will wrongly classify these animals, which is kind of why I think.
07:20people get confused because you can research it and get different things. But they have done research  on the migration patterns of the two of them. they are close cousins, but they are different animals. And reindeer domesticated  have been domesticated where caribou aren't. So  some people will kind of make the comparison.
07:44to kind of make it a little easier to kind of understand it as like wolves and dogs, like they're close related, one's domesticated. I guess it's kind of a way to put it in perspective in that way. yeah, so reindeer first arrived in Alaska in 1892 by a boat, obviously, because they weren't.
08:10Unlike Caribou, they were already here because Caribou basically used the land bridge to kind of come over here and then you know, that's how that worked and they were shipped from Siberia. So you're right there. And they ended up having their peak population here for 640,000 of them around the 1930s, but they say there's only roughly 20,000 of them that are in Alaska today.
08:38I'm not sure we're in Canada. I know there's some hers in Canada, but I don't know exactly what the numbers are over there. Okay.  And  I'm going to be bouncing all over the place because stuff's going to pop in from what I read this morning.  You and your dad raise reindeer to  take them to Christmas things or have people come see them at Christmas, right? Yeah. We travel with them  to all different places. We're in Wisconsin, so we...
09:06basically stay in Wisconsin because there's enough events to fill the mid November through Christmas. It's a very short window to kind of get to all these places and jam pack it all in. So we do a lot of traveling with them and we do two teams. We started with one trailer and we travel with two at a time because they're herd animals.  they like to be with another one, seem to do better that way. And so we travel with two of them. We bring a whole display pen. We set it all up.
09:34get, you know,  I'm in there with the, with the reindeer on a, uh, with a lead rope and, know, I'm able to kind of, you know, talk to people, educate them, and they can kind of take photos with the reindeer as well.  Um, and then we just, we added a second team a few years ago because there was just so many  people wanting the same dates.  And so now we travel with two teams on some of the days. So, um
10:00four animals out at once and my dad will take one team and I'll take the other if we happen to have like double bookings that way. Um, but we will not add a third team. That would be really chaotic and a lot. we're, we're going to kind of two teams is good enough. Okay. And have you guys trained the reindeer to pull a sleigh yet? Not yet, but we have one that we are  hoping  to or working with. Um, it's a steer.
10:27So he doesn't have the testosterone like an intact bowl, so he won't go into rut or anything like that. And he's like a big puppy.  Your steer is kind of like, you know, even in cattle, your steers are very, very calm, nonchalant.  And he's  bigger than two in size.  And I think he'll be, you know, a really good sleigh puller where the females are usually they should be pregnant during the holiday season. We don't want to have them, you know, being a sleigh puller during that or anything. But we're working with him. He's young.
10:58He's going to be two this spring and we're working on that. So we'll see how that goes. But that is a goal to have a sleep holder. Fun. So much fun. So I don't want to, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but do people raise reindeer for meat as well or not? Not around here. There's not really a market for that around here, but like in Alaska or like, uh, Norway, Siberia, Siberia over there, it's you.
11:26They can, or there's a market for it, but down in the lower 48, it's mainly to just kind of have them for either just to have them or to go to events or some people will have um their own farm where people come to them. Kind of like tree farms, some tree farms have them or they just want to have an experience  on their own property with them. Okay. I was really curious because we have.
11:53We eat venison here. I don't love venison. My husband and my kids do.  And so we've had venison in the house off and on for years.  And I didn't, I really didn't think that reindeer were for that because  it's an expensive animal to raise, would assume.  Yeah.  So it's like where they're more like in Alaska where they have like more herds or
12:19You know, they raise them more for meat up there.  I haven't had any,  so I can't speak on how it tastes. Yeah.  Haven't had any personal experience tasting it. oh But yeah, we, there's really no market down here for it. Otherwise you probably see it more on menus or in stores.  Yeah. Yeah. That's what I figured. Okay.  And are they,  I don't know how to ask this.  Are the reindeer friendly?
12:49Yes. Well, the bulls when they're in rut, they're not, they're  all full  of testosterone, but when they lose their antlers, then they're back to like, testosterone's low, they're kind of back to their normal self, they're not as crazy. But yes, they're friendly. Okay.  And when the mamas have their babies, are the mamas super protective? Are they good with you being around the babies, but nobody else?
13:16They're actually usually pretty good with us. We have one female that is a little more  iffy on it with us, a little more protective, but for the most part, they are all pretty good. I need to find somebody who's closer than Wisconsin who was raising reindeer. Cause I really want to hold a baby reindeer before I die.  They are so cute. They are. They're so tiny.  Yeah. 12 pounds on average.
13:43Yeah, yeah, like 12 to 15 depending. Yeah, yeah, they're, not that big and they're like all legs. It's so funny. And, they  start walking pretty soon after they're, they don't like lay, like, you know, some animals you would think like they, they aren't mobile, but they're up and around really soon after and doing zoomies and yeah, they're, it's pretty impressive.  So much fun.
14:09It's amazing to me that they are 12 to 15 pounds at birth because my dog weighs like 36 pounds. So they're about half of what she is right now. Yup. Yeah. When you put it that way.  Crazy. Crazy. She would love to have a baby reindeer friend. Maggie would just be the best mama to a baby reindeer for five minutes. It would be amazing.  Okay. The other things that I read are the female reindeer keep their
14:37antlers longer than the males do because they use them to  make sure they can get food so they can feed their babies. Yes, yeah, they keep theirs on longer.  So when the males lose their antlers, the females are the ruler of the roosts. They have the advantage of, you know, being able to kind of pick on them if they need to and defend their babies. Fabulous.  That mama bear energy. It's mama reindeer energy. We do have a few that will
15:05not often, but there will sometimes be females that'll lose one  before they calve.  I think we've had one lose both of them before she calved, but usually they keep them on. um Sometimes right after they have the baby, soon after they'll lose them, it just really depends from reindeer to reindeer.  But yeah, they do keep them on till spring. um Some males, I know there's like a thing out there where all males lose their antlers in December, and that's not the case. We actually have a bull.
15:33that still has his antlers on. He is younger and it seems to be when they're younger, they sometimes keep them on maybe a little longer. And our steer still has his antlers on, so it's not always the case. But  a lot of males will lose theirs in December, but some of them will keep them till January. Do you do anything with the sheds at all? Right now, we've been just kind of stockpiling them.  I tried to do some macrame designs on some.
16:02Um, but it's just, it takes a lot of time. I enjoy doing it. It's just getting the spare time to do it.  Um, and then there are some people who are interested in just having, you know, the sheds, like they're all like, they just like, if we sold them, they just want, you know, a reindeer shed. But we  have a big stockpile of them. I think now we're going to try to part with them since we've got a bigger herd now and they grow them every year. So we just keep getting more and more.
16:31Yeah, I was reading that even the babies within four or five months start growing antlers. Oh, yeah, right away. So they're born with, you know, nothing. And then  all of a sudden you'll start seeing little tiny nubs forming and then they just keep getting longer and longer. And  some of them will just be little tiny ice picks. Some of them will have a few points, but they're on the smaller side. And then the following year, they just like triple in size. It's crazy how much how big they can get.
17:00in such a young age from year to year. the racks  on caribou and reindeer are just gargantuan. Once they get to be about what, three or four years old, they're just huge. Yeah, yeah, they are big. And the males especially, obviously the males, their antlers are much thicker and larger in size. It's pretty impressive on how big they can get. And we bring  some sheds to events.
17:27um And that's one thing we have to remind people. They look at them and they're like,  oh, they assume it's from a dead reindeer that we killed the reindeer or something. I'm like, no, they shed them every year. So those sheds, you know, they fell off. So it's kind of like a, you know, educational point as well for people. Cause some people just don't know that, you know,  deer,  you know, the species, that's just something that happens.
17:53ah But yeah, the males, theirs get large real fast. It's very impressive in how fast and sometimes daily when they get really big, you'll just notice a difference daily on how much bigger they're getting. Well, I was reading that they can grow an inch or two a day. I was like, oh my God, that's got to hurt. Yeah.  I don't know if the growing process technically hurts on them, but they are very sensitive when they're growing because they're covered in this fuzzy velvet.
18:21And it's just a bunch of blood flow that's just basically going through them to keep growing. And so like they're very sensitive. They don't use them. They don't want to touch anything with them. And if they even nick it just the littlest, it just bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. It eventually clots, but it's just if you nick it just a little bit, almost like if you cut yourself with like a razor, just doesn't want to stop. And it's just like the smallest little thing. So they're very sensitive and they're just full of blood.
18:51through that process. then end of August is usually when they harden. Sometimes some of them will be a little later like September. had a steer this year was really late on wanting them to harden and then they just rub all that velvet off. They don't have that feeling and sensation once they harden. I mean, when they're rubbing that velvet off, there's some of that blood left between the velvet and the hard antler.
19:20And so people think it looks painful when really  it's not. It's just a little bit that was just left on top of that hard antler. So it looks like a  bloody mess sometimes because they'll just rub their antlers in trees because it's like an itchy feeling for them. They want it  off.  And it just looks funny because it's just like their antlers will just look kind of bloody at first when they're doing that.  And it's just a natural process. It doesn't hurt them.
19:49Yeah, I was talking with my  son like a year or so ago and I made the mistake of calling  deer antlers, deer horns.  And he said, you know better than that. And I was like, better than what? And he said, antlers are not the same thing as horns. He said, antlers are a living part of the animal up until they start to harden off. He said, horns are not alive. And I said, um
20:18actually I didn't know that. He said, you're kidding. I said, no, I didn't know that. He said, yeah. He said the horns on a cow or steer, you know, bovine. He said, those aren't the same as antlers. And I was like, oh, I learned something new today. I was schooled on the difference between antlers and horns. Yeah. Yeah. There is a difference.  Um, cause obviously with reindeer, they fall off  and they grow a new set where horns, just, you know, they, and they grow from the base  of like,
20:48the head  of cattle where  the antlers, growing from the tips. The tips keep growing because of all that blood flow. So they're not actually growing from the base. yeah, you don't think of that when you're just looking at  them, but yeah, they do grow differently and they are different. and getting schooled by my kid is my fault because I'm huge on semantics. And he was like, for a lady who's big on semantics.
21:15I can't believe you didn't realize that there was a difference between antlers and horns. And I'm like,  you can stop now.  I have been schooled, now I know you can stop harassing me. And he's just laughing.  So it's great when you raise your kids to be smart because then they outsmart you.  It's a challenge then  for them probably. Yes, exactly.  The other interesting thing that I read is that reindeer on their hooves, they have a dewclaw.
21:44like a dog has a dewclaw or a cat has a dewclaw. And I was like, what is that for?  And then I continued to read  and it's so they can walk on the snow and ice easier. Yep.  And, uh, and it kind of, cause the cows even have dewclaws, I kind of, cause they're hoofed animals, I kind of compare them. Their hooves are different than cows or even horses, but they have that dewclaw and it looks funny cause it looks like they need a hoof trimming, but they don't.
22:14And  we do have trim them. So obviously they can get longer than what they should. But yeah, they are for that traction on snow and ice and their hooves are really big because it accesses no shoes  and shovels in the snow even. And if you looked at the bottom side of the hoof, it kind of indents a little bit. So they are really good shovels for the snow and they can dig as deep as three feet. Wow. OK.
22:43um I was looking at a photo of a reindeer hoof  and it reminded me of the chunky  platform heels that were in fashion a while ago. was  like, oh, they have fancy feet. And they're softer  and they say like,  not saying super soft, but they kind of are like a little softer in like summer, more spongier.
23:09And then in winter, they harden up a little like more firmer, you know, for that ice and snow.  in summer, so it's easier to do their hoof trimming in summer versus winter because they're very, very hard  in winter.  Yeah. Do the babies have the same  like angel feather thingies on their feet when they're born the  eponychium or whatever that's called for cows and horses?
23:38Angel feather? I'm trying to think of what you're referring to. So that the hooves don't cut the mom when they're coming through the birth canal. Oh, yes. Yeah, their hooves are tiny. They're not like really big when they're first born. But are they soft? Are the bottom of their feet soft? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah, they're more rounded, smoother. Okay, because with horses and cows, they look almost like little flaps.
24:07on their hooves when they're born and it's so that they don't slice mom on the inside of her body. It's so cool. is amazing how she takes care of things. because with our dairy, because I grew up on a dairy farm, yeah, their hooves are softer and then they're hearted and they're just different. it's weird how they're made that way. It's always interesting how things change too so fast in the calves.
24:35Yeah, they go from being completely defenseless to able to take care of themselves really fast.  Yeah, yes. yeah, the  reindeer babies. So it's interesting because they are a little different  than like cattle. You you feed calves twice a day, bigger amounts, and they get that curd in their stomach and it kind of slowly releases throughout the day. But then you have reindeer babies, they drink
25:03very often in small amounts. milk is really, really high in fat and protein content  as well. So that's also probably why they don't need like a ton at once, but yeah, they drink very often.  And  reindeer do have four teats, um not like goats where they have two. So  they have four and they're really, really tiny. Oh, okay.
25:29And they usually only have one baby. are occasionally twins, but it's usually one baby per mama, right? Correct. Yes.  And  we actually had a set of twins.  What was that? Not this last year, the year before that.  So yeah, twins are very rare. They usually just have a single calf.  And when we had the twins, we were kind of calling around a bunch of other reindeer owners who've been in it for
25:57a while, like did you ever have twins? Did you have to pull them both? So you had to feed them, like did you have to bottle feed them or did they do fine on the mom?  And the mom who had it, she's our oldest in our first range. She's always been amazing with all of her calves.  And at first we thought she was like pushing one away, the smaller one. The female was more runtier, she was smaller. And then we realized she was making them take turns. So like at night she was trying to let one drink.
26:27And then she would let the, you know, she was trying to kind of give them turns. So she was, it was very interesting because at first we thought, oh, she's just pushing one away and that wasn't the case. So, and then you have to think, is she going to produce enough for both? You know, you want to make sure they're both getting enough nutrients or is that bigger one going to drink more? And then, you know, when the other one wants to drink, is there going to not just be enough? So we ended up having, we left them on the mom and we would kind of every like,
26:57So if you ever bottle feed reindeer, we keep ours on the mom because we've just had good luck with that. And our moms have always been really great. You have to feed them like every three hours, almost like a baby human because they drink that often. And so we had to go out there. I had my cousins help me a lot. They were great. I actually just had my newborn son at the time. So I was already feeding my baby every like three hours.
27:26So they would go over there and help and feed them,  the baby twins, and try to make sure, like see if they would drink off the mom. Then they had a little like, you know, syringe, like just to kind of do little, slowly put a little bit in their cheek at a time and  kind of see how much they would take  and record that  every day or every feeding. And then we'd weigh them.
27:55Yeah, it was it was a very interesting with reindeer every year you learn something new there is And that was something that year I'm like and they live we showed them at shows there that first year with the mom They took turns we always bring the calves to events with the mom  They always do you know really well that way and then this last year we brought the twins out together So that was really fun that they were able to kind of go to all these events together awesome
28:24So yeah, the babies, it's crazy that, oh, and I found what I've been looking for. Cause I'm like, I don't know the percentage of fat and I'm like, I'm just trying to find it  in their milk. So  this reads here, is it?  Reindeer milk is very high in fat compared to milk from other domestic species. Like a Jersey cow is known for its high butter fat content,  which is
28:49which only has about 4 % milk fat, reindeer milk registers at 24 % milk fat. They rank first in fat content among milk consumed, or they rank, yeah, first in fat content among milk consumed by humans. People do not consume reindeer milk in certain parts of the world. some do, like, know, where reindeer are native, there are people, you know, in Norway, like you were saying.
29:19And Siberia where they rely on these animals and herd them and this is like their food source and,  know, they, you know, have to drink their milk too. So, and they use, you know, they butcher them too. And it's crazy how  much the fat content in these animals are so high, but they are also native to those really harsh, cold climates too.  don't know if that's also why. Probably.
29:48And what you're telling me is reindeer milk would make excellent ice cream.  Yeah, that would be interesting to try.  Yeah, it would be the smoothest ice cream ever known to man. Yeah. Oh, and then it does go on to say polar bear milk is 31 % fat. So yeah, it's interesting how  like they did this research on all these other animals and the fat content in their mouth and how it really, really varies.
30:16I mean, even a dairy cows like jerseys just have more just naturally than Holsteins. You know, it's just interesting how that's just how nature works. Did you know that the milk from cats has a very high fat content too? Oh, cats. Okay. I don't know too much about cats. I mean, we have tons of bark cats, Yeah. I was reading about all this stuff this morning and I read the same kind of comparison that you just read. And it said that.
30:43is that cats have a very high fat content in their milk. And I was like, I am not milking a cat.  That would be very hard.  I would just frustrate the cat and  I'd probably get sliced up pretty good. So no, we're not milking barn cats around here. That seems like a bad plan.  Okay. Well, Sarah,  I  would love to talk to you for days about this because I  love it that you're raising reindeer. think that's so fabulous.
31:09There is just so much to them. It's endless amount of information I could give.  Yeah, I have one more question and then we'll wrap it up. When little kids come to the event and they see the reindeer,  do they get to actually pet the reindeer or do they just get to ask you a bunch of questions and stare at the reindeer? So for us,  we don't allow the petting of reindeer just for biosecurity reasons. For us, um
31:36and liability, not that our reindeer are aggressive or anything. It's just,  it just puts a peace of mind. feel like for us, cause I'm not, we have two  teams and if I'm not at the other one, there's other, you know, I have helpers and if something happens, whether there's a person who doesn't understand what they're doing or a PETA person who wants to make a scene, I don't want them to have that on their shoulders. So it's not, I don't.
32:04I allow it for that reason and just mainly biosecurity too, because you don't know  what those people, if they have animals either. There is something that sheep and goats can carry. It's called MCF and they can carry it. doesn't affect them. But if reindeer end up getting it, it's deadly to them. So if I ever have any helpers of mine and they have,  there's some who have sheep and goats at home and like you cannot wear any of the clothes or boots that you have that you go out.
32:33by your sheep and goats because I just don't, it's a big risk. know, it's something that if reindeer get it, it's not a good situation. ah But yeah, the reindeer are very, very friendly. So we let people take photos with them and  I do bring antler sheds so people can hold those  and touch those. And then yeah, we get lots and lots of questions  about them. Nice.  Awesome.  All right. Where can people find you Sarah for your reindeer business?
33:03So we do have an Instagram and Facebook. It's called SantasCrew  LLC  and we also have a website as well. um And there's a page if you just want to learn more just about reindeer in general, there's a ton of information on reindeerowners.com.  An abundance amount of information there. um So yeah, it's  interesting. um Some states don't allow people to own reindeer, which is really interesting too.
33:31um So if you are listening and you're looking into wanting them, just, you know, first of all, check with your state's rules and regulations.  That's what I would say first before going on and trying to find some reindeer to purchase. Cause that would, you know,  you want to make sure you can get them to begin with  and then making sure you knowing the  facility you need. Some states require double fencing, some don't, you know, all those things, every state's a little different.
33:59How expensive is it to acquire a reindeer calf? It varies. um It's quite a wide range.  It could be 12,000 and I see up to 20,000. It really depends.  Bottle raise seems to go for a little  higher for some reason.  And some people prefer that, which  is totally fine. It's just preference. We don't bottle raise. We do work with our animals though, too. um
34:28So it's just really, really depends on that. And can you even get them from certain farms? So it depends on certain states. um I can't sell to certain states because of their regulations,  but I can sell to some others.  like, for example, I can sell to the of Texas. Their regulations currently is you can't have a CWD case  within a certain mile radius. Yep, chronic wasting disease.
34:58Yes. Yep. And  I meet that requirement. But if someone else in Wisconsin has a case that was just within that radius, even within a mile, they cannot sell a reindeer to that state, which is, which is so crazy. Um, so I can, it can make it hard. There is a state I could sell to and they just change the regulations and now I can't.  Um, so it's,  it's a really, really interesting market that way, how it's constantly changing and it makes it harder.
35:26to acquire them or sell them. So yeah, it's very interesting and constantly changing. Well, you're never bored. So that's good.  No, no, never. And like I said, we learn something new every year with these animals. So we'll see what happens this year. I mean, if we ever get twins again, we've been through that.  So  I think it's fascinating. And I'm so, I don't know, I'll use the word impressed. Probably not the right word.
35:54So impressed that you do this with your dad. think it's great. um As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support.  Sarah, thank you for coming back and talking with me. Oh, of course. Thank you for inviting me back.  I loved this conversation and I have not talked with anyone about raising reindeer before. So this was really interesting. Thank you so much. Yeah, you definitely, you're welcome.
36:23All right, have a great day. You too.
 

Cole Canyon Farm - The Impact of Having A Coach

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm. Learn about how having a coach can change your perspective.
 
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00:00You're listening to a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon farm in Montana  for like the fifth time, I think. Good morning, Morgan. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. Yeah.  What a journey this has been um from Groovy Grazers to Cole Canyon farm to more surprises. feel like
00:26We have so many pivots you've had to cover, so I can understand why we've been  on quite a bit.  Well, you're also really listenable and you're really fun and I like you so much, so you make it a joy to talk with you. ah Morgan has been,  I don't know how to say it, she found herself a coach. Yeah. And I wanted to talk with Morgan about how that is changing things for her because  I feel like coaches give us perspective.
00:53That we need that our friends give us so tell me about how that's going Yeah, so we talked a little bit about the last episode. I was like alright. I just did this crazy thing I signed up for a coach, I've never signed up for a coach. I've actually never spent I Would say probably more than two three hundred dollars on continued education for myself, and this is thousands of dollars But it's really important that you invest in yourself just as much as much as you invest in your property right so
01:23um I do some silver and gold stuff with a friend  and her name is Diane Graber. She has a homesteading thing that she just launched. So I'm going to have you talk to her about Mary because her and her husband have been doing this for well over a decade. Like,  yeah. So  she's coming out into her homesteading area as I was coming into my set, you know, my,  golden silver era. Like I was just learning about it. Right.  And she.
01:52came into my life about a year ago and she was helping coach me and that was really great, but I just had a lot going on. We covered a lot of what was going on in 2025, know, just lots of pivots changes. And she asked me about, I don't know, two weeks before the class, she was like, hey, jump onto this class, just say yes. It'll change your, change your whole world. I've worked with this woman before in previous adventures that we've done.
02:21And she's a great person I just reconnected with her after 15 years. So was like, all right, cool. Like I'm, I love meeting people. That's how Mary and I met. If people don't know, she just messaged me on Facebook. Like I love talking to people. So it was one of those things where I was like, fine, I'll jump on. I don't have a problem. It's free, right? Like for me, income  is lower in the winter time. It's kind of a squeeze here in Montana.  And
02:49So being free was great. It was something I could commit to.  I got on  and a coach is a vibe. Let me tell you, like you  will not vibe with every coach. You will not like what some coaches say. You will think that it doesn't fit your niche, whatever, be it right. Like coaches are, they attract their vibrational group is what I'm gonna say. Like, sorry. uh
03:18the wind's bad here, you're going to attract the people that need to be around you. So somehow I landed up, landed in this class and I was listening to it and it was about being a millionaire. And I was like, well, don't, I'm not just try, I don't strive to be a millionaire. And it's not that I think that it's unhumble to be a millionaire. It's just like, for me, 250 K a year would be life-changing enough, let alone 500 K in a year, you know, so.
03:46For me, was like, all right, I may not vibe with as much the millionaire side of this, but  I can get through the whole breakthrough concept of it. So I think there's a lot of like shame around having coaches or being open about having coaches. But there's a reason why in corporate America there's bosses and those bosses have supervisors and supervisors have supervisors. It's a checks and balance because like you were saying, Mary, it's a perspective.
04:16So I got on, Melanie talked, it was two days. I really liked what she said. I had some really big breakthroughs about throwing spaghetti on the wall. I've said that here on this show before. If you've heard me talk on here before, I've talked about how we love throwing spaghetti at walls. We don't  anymore. And all  throwing spaghetti at the wall does is it either gets butter on the wall or it gets spaghetti sauce on the wall and it makes a mess. Correct. Yeah. So like...
04:43In the past, was like, I'm just, and I was real honest about it. Like I didn't try and tell anyone we had every, you know, my ducks were not in a pond and we all knew that they were like in everyone's property. Um,  and so  Melanie was like, girlfriend, like you got a lot of potential. You got to lead with your feminine side.  I  grew up  in a home with a first generation American as a mother from Iraq.  And my dad is a Marine.
05:13So  there was no sugarcoating involved in my household. And so I speak sometimes from the masculine side of life. And sometimes people don't vibrate with that. And she's not saying that you have to be, know, whatever weird version we think women and men should be. It's just to say, you know, she was just saying like, you got a lot to say, use a softer voice, you know, like use my good storytelling voice and I'll capture a lot of people. And like you said earlier,  I have fun talking on these podcasts as much as I do.
05:42um hearing what people think about my storytelling. My son loves when I tell stories. So, you know, it just naturally makes sense that this would be a calling for me. And, you know, she was like, just kind of pull yourself back in. And had I not done this coaching, to be honest with you, I wouldn't have written my mini gardening guide already. I wouldn't have completed also my full gardening course that I'll be selling this year.
06:12I wouldn't be getting set up for a website so then I could actually get help because I was paying for Wix and I was paying for the $50 a month program.  And that was great, but I had to do all the work. spent,  Mary, I spent like four or five hours a night, some nights, for weeks on end trying to get Wix to operate the way I wanted it to.  And it's still not operating correctly for Groovy Grazers.
06:39Yeah, I'm working on the one for the other podcast right now, the Grit and Grace and the Heartland  Agriculture podcast.  And I'm trying to get the social media buttons to work on the theme that I chose and it's not working. I'm probably going to have to look at a different theme. I do it through WordPress.  once you get your website built the way you want it to be, it's plug and play. It's easy. You just update it. But getting them built is a pain in the butt.
07:08Yeah, which by the way, I'm just gonna blurb in if any of the listeners on this show have not listened to the new one. You gotta go. You should be like running to your search button right now getting that in. Hopefully Mary will link the link below for it. like, yes, you should. Absolutely. Because  I yeah, my son even listened to it with me. Like he was like, Mom, this is great. And like he loves the fact that 2026 is the year of women's agriculture, like
07:37you know, especially being first generation farmers. that, that was something that you also had completed. So you can understand we're kind of in the same process of like getting something up and going and people don't realize how many hours you put behind this. So all it took, and you're going to be just floored. It took Melanie a 30 minute session with me. That was it.  That's all it takes. Like,
08:05you don't have to pay for hours and hours and hours of coaching. I'm taking a course that is self-paced and there's like, you know, twice a month Zooms  where we can all meet together. You can watch a replay and I jump on the Zooms because I think it's really important to be present and plugged into what I'm doing, especially if I'm spending a few thousand dollars on it, that it's got to be priority at that point. Or then I feel like I wasted, you know, my own money and
08:33that came included with it. to,  I am going to get more like one-on-one sessions with her because it was very minimal information that I gave Melanie, cause this is just like an introductory one-on-one, but she told me that  my whole goal has been  since doing  Groovy Grazers was to teach because I find that that's my passion.
09:02and what I love to do the most.  being able to teach, but just not in my area, but all over and then creating a community, I've have probably been on the soapbox more times than I can count about community being so important and what we do. And so being able to create that was really kind of seamless for me after she explained that I needed to get a Facebook group going, which I did, Built From Dirt Facebook group.
09:29We have over 400 members and as Melanie said on the master class a few days ago, like we have active members and it's because I'm not just blasting people with just like, I'm not just trying to sell them something. Like I want to build a community and that is my honest mission in doing built from dirt farm school is having a place that we can all bounce.
09:54bounce off of each other, but then also help elevate each other's businesses because most people that are in the ag industry, like as we all know, you can't have every single type of livestock and excel in any of them. You've got to really kind of hone in on one. So most ag businesses were all kind of like just a few small streamlines that kind of play together income. So, I mean, I've, I,
10:21personally also changed a huge mindset of like and I'm not biblical or uh Religious in  any sort of normal sense. I'll just say it that way, right? like I just kind of believe what I believe and My mother just came from Texas who  is from like the Bible Belt, right? And she is a I will love you so much as my neighbor type like I just absolutely adore my mom and her views and
10:50She told me, and I can't remember what scripture it is, but there's a scripture about like what you say you create. And that theme kept coming up. First, it started with my mom saying it. Then Melanie brought up exactly the same thing. And that was during that masterclass. And then one of my good friends, Harley, she said the same thing too, right? Because I'm sure you saw Mary, but  for the listeners, Bambi is having to be put to sleep. And I'm sorry if I get emotional. No, it's okay.
11:21Our Philly is lame beyond being, man, I'm sorry. I was hoping I wasn't gonna cry. No, it's okay, honest, it's okay, because I do it all the time, Morgan. I don't think I'm gonna cry, and then I'm like, oh no, here we go again. Yeah, Bambi has some issues, and you can't fix her, and I'm sorry. Yeah, and it's okay, and that was our $100 gamble, right? But to
11:48To tie it into what I'm talking about, about what you create, we're sitting there and we had just posted the really heavy news. And this was after I had signed up for  my coaching with Melanie Greeninoff  and a thousand dollars later, the vet was essentially like Tyria Heid also.  And we're like, there's nothing we can do.
12:11the hawk injury she sustained, like there's nothing we can do with that, even if we did surgery on the left leg, which it was up to $3,000. And we were considering it like Bambi, Bambi is a one of a kind horse.  And so  we get inside, I sit down and I'm like, everyone's going to start texting me because everyone knew that this was this big appointment. I just sometimes I'll just post on Facebook because it's easier to update the masses, right? Sure.
12:39I get a message from ah Hannah. She's another farmer out here and she's someone you'll have to talk to too.  They raise cattle dogs, but she had given us Pearl and she said, hey, I got a filly here for you.  She's papered and she had a tendon surgery, but she's going to track sound. Montana equine did it. I said, oh yeah, she's super cute. I didn't understand Mary that she meant free. Oh, okay.
13:07Yeah, so right like kind of like you you're like, oh that's cool. Like someone's offering you a horse right away. What a not good time, you know, and and I I don't know hannah very well actually i've I met her through getting the dog but um, she had uh Someone in her family passed away and so she's been dealing with that since i'm like bought since I went and got pearl our little uh, cauli dog, right? So hannah's like yeah, she you know explaining me
13:37Yeah. Yeah. oh
14:07So right, like I'm telling you this emotional story because these are all the things that led up to like where I am today and man has it been a rocky 30 days. But when Harley said that I had to remember that like  I always said that even if Bambi couldn't be pasture or  riding sound if she could be broodmare sound. And then when broodmare sound was really not looking great I was like if you can just be pasture pet sound right.
14:34And then she wasn't past her pet sound, but I said, I told my husband, said, it's okay. I know it's really hard. We'll save up some money. Cause it's really expensive to get horses like that are paper. Oh Oh yeah, it is. Yeah. So I was like, it's okay. We, we took this hundred dollar gamble. We failed out on it. Well, I wouldn't say we failed out because literally the vet Dr. Campbell was like, you have some of the nicest babies I've gotten to handle with. Like
15:00thanked me for how pleasurable my weanlings were to deal with, which is so cool because this is our first time having babies, right? So I  have taken so much pride and I do take a lot of pride in the way my animals are up kept, their behavior, their mannerisms. And so it felt really good for her to say that, but  she told me she was like, definitely let this one pass, but I mean, know that you...
15:26that you've done a great job, this is nothing you did wrong, right? So I told my husband, I was like, the next one will be papered. She'll  be papered  because Betty is papered, my other mayor is papered. I mean, papers don't mean everything, but if we're trying to run a good program, like what is probably in the works right now with our friend Harley, then we need good mayors. So I sent Harley the paperwork on this mayor and she's like, yeah, absolutely.
15:56Yeah, yes, that's really cool. And she's like, wow, like that is a nice mare. And it was all because Hannah said, um
16:06you guys will do right by this mayor essentially. Like,  we're not going to overwork a horse, we're going to do right by them. But like in  another sense, like the vet being impressed, right? So, but I started speaking that into existence right away. Like as soon as we got the news before Hannah had messaged me, like we're going to have a papered horse. We're going to, we're going to recover from this. It's going to be okay. Maybe it wasn't great that we had three.
16:35Three under three, right? But I had it horse style. I was like, it'll all be okay. And then we get the message from Hannah. So speaking  positively and speaking  the outcome you want is so, so important. And I think that's something that I've probably really failed at in the last few years of my life.  And it's  something that I had to come to terms with was sitting there and being like, man.
17:05I have spoke like the most absolute negativity through this lawsuit over the land. I've spoken the worst about not being able to afford a house, which by the way,  we're getting pre-qualified because we are actually moving.  know, but that changed too. Yeah, it's a big change. don't want to, I'll be honest, Mary, with you, I can stay on this 20 acres and I can live around all these people that absolutely do not want me to farm.
17:33And they're going to listen to this episode because that's on track with what they do to see what we're doing next. Or I can just say, I'm going to go farm somewhere else where there's water. Yep. Yep. I'm going to in just for a minute. There's a saying about when one door open or closes another or a window opens or something like that. I think that the Bambi situation is that.
18:00And I listened to the free masterclass that Melanie, your coach had put on this week.  I missed the first hour because I had other things that had going on. But I listened to the second part yesterday and  she's big on the things that we worry about. We invite into our lives. Yes. And the one thing that I really got out of the 45 minutes I listened yesterday was that because I was like,  you know, I used to know that.
18:29I used to be like, I'm not going to think negatively. No, I'm not going to worry about not having enough money. I'm going to manifest money. I'm going to think it's going to be okay. The money will come or whatever it was that I needed. And in the last couple of years, things have been rough and I have not been thinking positively. And when I got done listening to her, her second half of her webinar that she did,
18:58I was like, oh, that was the thing I was supposed to take away from it. And I woke up at three o'clock this morning thinking, okay,  I have to get that website thing figured out and I'm going to make it work.  And  Morgan's going to talk to me today. That's exciting. And I didn't wake up worrying. I woke up excited. Yeah. It's different when you do that. Like even with Bambi and like, I don't think that there's such thing as like test, but I think that that was.
19:26whatever you believe in's way of showing me that like, no, actually your mindset did change because like, instead of being down and feeling like I completely let down this Philly, which I didn't, I went above and beyond anything that I could do for her. ah I was like, it's okay, life's okay. Even if, you know, we  end up not getting this free Philly, like that, that still wouldn't make me go back into a negative mindset because that's...
19:56It is what it is. It was a gamble, right? And I think that in this day and age, we're  all... Like news used to cycle, Andy and I were talking about this,  news used to cycle like a week, right? Like they would be replaying the same stuff. I remember when I was little and I like swear that I called this an existence sometimes. I'd be like, why isn't there anything new on the news? Why hasn't anything new happened? It's not like that anymore.
20:26That it cycles out between 12 hours, a whole new string of stories every day.  Yeah. And it's getting really exhausting. I have had to actually turn the news off lately unless I see something really important come through on my phone, AP app.  I'm like, no, I can't, I can't listen to this anymore because it's all  negative. Yeah. See? So like that's exactly what I was getting to. So we're just  all.
20:57Trying to escape the negativeness in life so we think something shiny and new or great needs to happen every single day because everyone makes things look like an Instagram story and like that is the last of the dreams that I could ever show like is a false Morgan like I
21:17If you ask people about me, they'll tell you like, I just am who I am. Like, you never have to guess. I'm just going to say the things that might upset you, but I'm the same person in every room. And that's something that I'm really big about. So I try to share even on my Facebook, the good and the bad, because if everything you see is just positive all the time, and it's fake positivity, like you can tell. You're like, there's no way that there's something new.
21:44and great happening every single day in somebody's life. But if you can take from the fact that I can create a good mood every day, and that'll lead to the next big positive thing in my life, then that's, I mean, that's really ideally it. Like, yes, you should wake up and feel like a million bucks. Yes, you should wake up and think you're gonna get a lot done that day. Because if you don't, if you only get two things done, that's a lot.
22:12Right? Like that's still two more things that you've completed in a day instead of being like, man, I wrote a list for 15 things, but I only did two. So now I'm going to get down on myself. So as a woman in agriculture, taking a coaching with a woman that who does have a background  in  farming, her family comes from farming. we like vibed on the first webinar because I was talking about sheep farming and, and Melanie, what I like about her is it's
22:41It's not just network marketing. It's not MLM stuff. She's actually teaching you how to  be the best that you can with offerings. like she, that's what that 30 minute was about was to figure out what offerings I could offer to help bring an income to offset while the sheep herd is growing. Cause eventually the sheep herd will kind of take care of itself. But it was how do we get from point A to point B  on limited income?
23:11And I can write my own courses. I've done that kind of stuff before. I've written my own Zooms, my own webinars, you know, on my own research and then the love for teaching that we have. um Now, Groovy Grazers, is it like dead? No. I mean,  I'm going to find an employee this year. So,  I mean, as much as I hate to tell all of my reoccurring  clients, it may not be me this year coming in, but it's going to be somebody that I've trained.
23:41you know, then I can still keep that portion alive. But being away from the farm is hard. And it even though it was bringing in money, it was  as hard as having a nine to five job. Yeah, it's not harder. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, because I'm tired after that, because I have health conditions, you know,  and I want to spend all my time farming. But one thing I've really like, slacked on is gardening. Andy uh
24:09My husband is an expert in organic living soil. So if anyone has questions about this regenerative farming word that's going on, you know, how to no till and all that stuff, we, that is something we specialize in and that is really our passion. So  Andy just has a lot of knowledge. He's just a hermit. So he's always been called a hermit. He's just kind of more in the background.
24:34When it comes to teaching but Melanie was like you need to get your husband out there like you and you guys doing it as a wife and husband duo is like That's so cool. Normally. It's like just the husband wants to do one portion of it The wife wants to do another or like they don't want to do it together And I'm like, well, I personally couldn't imagine farming with anyone other than my husband So  it makes sense that we going on go in on the farm school together, but also knowing that
25:04You can offer like there's something like Mary, I'm sure there's something you could probably talk about doing podcasts, right? Yeah. And help other people that are doing podcasts and just give them a formula essentially of what you've done. That's something you could offer. You know, um, the next farmer down the road, well, maybe they offer chicken eggs and that's the only thing they offer. Right. Melanie would be able to tell you how to do that  or how to at least assess it to make sure it's, it's profitable or not. And so.
25:35That's something  that I think coming from a third party is a little easier.  dreams sometimes, I don't know if you dream big, I dream for the moon sometimes. I used to until I got really negative with the lawsuit stuff and I felt like that was never ending because we're like year four into that and it's still going, you know, like still  actively not even hit the first courtroom.
26:00You're talking another three more years. That's seven years by the end of this. That's why we've decided to move because I'm not doing that at all. And I want water. We were already looking at a property that's 40 acres, by the way, with a well  and flood,  38 acres of flooded pasture, all within my budget.  So  good things happen, right? I spoke that into existence. I want, I'm going to find a house that's going to fit all these and we're going to get pre-approved for it. And so.
26:27That's one of the biggest things for me is creating though a positive mindset that you can have like in a space you can't. woke up this morning at 3 a.m. You knew that we were going to talk and I was going to light a fire underneath you. Well, you usually do somehow, yes. Yeah, which is that's I mean,  we were destined by the universe to light a fire under each other. So I love it. That's why love coming and talking to you. uh
26:54So you knew you were gonna do that. You knew that either you're gonna have to get these buttons to work or just change your theme.  Not once did you say, man, if I have to change my theme, I'm really gonna be disappointed. You just said, well, that may be what I have to do. Oh yeah, I honestly don't care what the theme is as long as the background that I'm working with does the thing I need it to do. Yeah, but you didn't even go down  that mindset. Do you know how many people would have like,
27:21snowballed all the way into the worst computer program ever and they can't do this. Oh, yeah, that was me about 15 years ago when I first started screwing around with websites. I was like, oh, this is such a learning curve. Holy cow. But all learning curves are hard. And that actually leads me right back around to what I was going to say, because we're running out of time here. We're at 27 minutes already. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It flies. You don't have to...
27:51Morgan loves Melanie as a coach and that is fabulous. I'm really glad that you found somebody that you vibe with. But there are coaches for everything.  Every coach is different. Some of them are very soft and very sweet and they still get the point across.  Some are very harsh and very direct and they get the point across. So you have to figure out what works for your style  with their style. uh
28:18Some coaches are really expensive. Some coaches are not really expensive and you've got to figure out how to handle that too. Yep.  Yeah. So, um, I love that you went and listened to the new podcast and I want to talk about that just for a minute.  Um,  the new episode comes out on Monday and it's actually about how the immigration situation in the United States right now is impacting agriculture and women in agriculture. Yup.
28:48I just, we were going to talk about it  shortly after that lady got shot here in Minneapolis by the ICE agent.  Yeah. And I couldn't talk about it without crying. And  Leo was like, let's wait a week. And  I really needed to talk with my dad about it because he's like my anchor when I'm spinning. Yeah. And talked to my dad about it. And  he said,  I don't want to make things harder, he said, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. Yep.
29:18And once he said that, I took a big deep breath and I was like, okay.  And then I started looking into how important people from other countries are to agriculture because they come here to work and they work hard and they're good people. And they're sending a lot of the income home to their families to support their families. They're no different than you and I.
29:41Exactly.  so Leah and I talked about that and so that one will be out on Monday and then the next Monday,  I think  the episode is about 4-H because  Leah has been involved in 4-H since before she was born, she says, because her parents were involved in it.  I love that. No, that's going to be a good episode. So I will definitely be tuning in and I'll share that also on Cole Canyon Farm because that'll be a good episode. That would be fabulous. Thank you.
30:09The new podcast is called  Rit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. uh tomorrow we're interviewing the head editor, chief editor, whatever,  of the Old Farmers Almanac, Carol, I can't think of her last name.  Carol, I interviewed her on A Tiny Homestead, but we're going to have her come and talk to us on the other podcast too, because she is,  she is absolutely a woman in agriculture and she is
30:39deciding factor in what gets published in the Old Farmer's Almanac. Wow, that's really cool. It's gonna be so fun. I'm so excited.  So Morgan, I am so proud of you for investing in yourself and having to make all of these decisions from a place of positivity instead of negativity. That's amazing.  People can find you at Cole Canyon Farm on Facebook and are you, you said you're working on building a website or getting your website? Yeah.
31:08The website will be up and going we're coal Canyon MT  as in Montana.  Yep. As in Montana on Instagram. Okay. Awesome.  Thank you so much for sharing your experience with getting a coach because I'm not sure that  I think that people think that coaches are woo woo. Like, like only weird people get themselves a coach and that is not true. Yeah, no, I'm glad we got to talk about this because there is a big
31:37dark shadow around coaching. And honestly, it's just a third perspective and it can excel your business. So yeah. And in case it didn't come through and I'm afraid it didn't. Morgan is a coach. Yes. Yeah, I do coach. So if you need help with gardening or I don't know anything else that Morgan's doing and would like to teach about, you can contact her at her Facebook page and eventually the website and
32:06She will be more than happy to help you  get started on your next project. Yeah, absolutely. We're super excited. Thanks for having us on, Mary.  You are so welcome.
 

Frostbite Family Farm LLC

Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm LLC.
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm, LLC in Lonsdale, Minnesota. Good morning, Addie, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you?  I'm good. We're having some really gray weather this morning. We are. It's coming after a lot of sunshine though, so I can't complain.
00:25Yeah, we're supposed to get snow tonight and I'm kind of hoping we do because the cornfield is looking very bare right now and it looks kind of ugly. So fresh coat of snow would be nice. Yes, we have some livestock and it actually gets harder when things warm up and get a little wet. So the dry snow is always a good thing. Yeah, I was just talking to a dairy farmer. I don't if it was this week or last week, but they were saying that it had been
00:54like really muddy. And I of course assumed that the cows were out in the field and I said, I hear that wet weather is not good for cows feet.  And he said, oh no, he said, they're in the barn or they're on a dry lot and it's actually dry. He said, they're fine. He said, but yes, it can wreak havoc with their feet. And I was like, okay, cool.  Yeah, that is the difference between large dairies and small ones. So we operate a micro dairy.
01:21And all of our cows are out in the field. So they have a good space to roam around in, but mud definitely affects them. Yeah. And, okay, I don't want to get too far into dairy stuff because I've interviewed two people about dairies in the last two weeks. But when you say microdairy, how many cows? So right now we have 16 cows. That includes our calves. So we are milking 10 currently twice a day. Okay. And I'm assuming you're not milking 10 cows by hand a day.
01:50No, we use a surge bucket system. It works really well. My husband and I team up and do it together and it gets done pretty efficiently that way. It kind of keeps it cleaner than hand milking. Yeah. I think the days of hand milking have kind of flown. They've kind of gone away. Unless you just have one cow and you really like milking cows. Right. And even then I'm like, okay, you get a bunch of stuff that kind of flings into it and it's just, they make smaller systems now.
02:20It's really easy. Okay.  So  I want to know how your farm got its name, because I love the name. Sure. Yeah, that is  always a topic of interest. It's so funny.  We picked that name after we didn't start out farming.  My husband and I got married and lived in an apartment. And I've always had this love of plants and food and good cooking. And  as we had kids, it developed into  including health and
02:50um eating at home and making things ourselves.  And we sort of realized over time, like, I think we need to look for some land. I think we want to do some of this ourselves. And we began our land search, but at the same time realizing that neither of us had come from agricultural backgrounds. We decided to try to find people locally that were doing what we wanted to do or close  and  get to know them.
03:17and hear their processes.  And um apples were a big point of interest for me. I love apple trees and  just the amount of food they can supply is amazing.  So  we found an orchardist in Northern Minnesota who was organic for a really long time.  He has this amazing little orchard on acres and acres of planted trees, really well maintained. A lot of them are like the semi-dwarf stock  and we would go visit every year with our little kids.
03:46It was one of the only organic orchards that we had heard of locally.  It was about a two hour trip for us, so it was always a big event taking the kids.  And  as we had gone over a couple of years, we got to know the owner, and he is incredible  and would give us so much of his time walking around the orchard telling us all about his trees and the ones he was breeding and the different varieties he chose and why. I just...
04:11I felt like I could just consume that information all day and he was so gracious with his time and he would walk around and show us, this is the triumph apple. It's a new one I'm trialing. You know, taste it. This is what I like about it. This is what I don't like about it. ah And on one of our trips up there, I mean, he was showing us the inside of his buildings and where he would make cider and all of these things and ah he was like, hold on, you got to come with me to the back of the orchard. He's like, my favorite apples are planted back there.
04:41And as we took the trek back, he was telling us about the frostbite apple. And it was developed in Minnesota.  It's like a great, great grandparent of  Honeycrisp and some of the  original apples  that were planted here in Minnesota. It's this tiny little burgundy apple, and it kind of cracks on the top a lot. It's not really grown commercially because of that. It's not good for shipping. um But it's a dessert apple.
05:11and he was like, you have to try this. Come over to the tree, like, here's how you pick a really good one. And he just like watched us and you know that's the sign of like a really good, a really good food. He's just like waiting for us to enjoy it. And I remember biting into this apple and thinking I had never tasted anything like this. And you your mind starts thinking back to other ones you've eaten, like the gala apples and things like that, where they're like a little mealy, not a ton of flavor.
05:39maybe a little dry, and this apple, I mean, it tasted like brown sugar,  just molasses, it had these really complex flavors. uh And I remember just thinking, it crossing my mind that if somebody didn't care enough to plant these varieties that maybe don't ship so well, or maybe oh aren't great for grocery store, they're not perfect, uh I would never have gotten to experience this.
06:05And it is one of my favorite apples. we, every year we go up there, we get a little box of them and our kids, you know, we all fight over them and we share them with people and  just watch people's faces light up and they go, I've never tried an apple like this. I didn't know they could taste like this. em And so as we were thinking about our farm and what we wanted, what our mission was, what we wanted to do, em the frost by apple kind of came up in our mind. It's like, we want to be the people who cultivate varieties that maybe
06:35aren't the most popular but still deserve a place in the food landscape.  People should try these in their lifetime. We should not go our whole lives thinking apples are these boring standard  and not let little blemishes stop that.  we do a lot of different fruits and vegetables.
06:56This last year was our first year at farmers markets  and selling produce direct to consumer and a lot of our vegetables even. love to pick heirloom varieties, weird shapes, weird colors. When we started, all of our ideas rolling and what we wanted to do, this was kind of the theme. And I had a lot of people actually look at me and say, this is not gonna work. People are not going to want a black tomato. They're gonna look at it and say, ew, that's gross.
07:24We don't want to try that. Give us something, you know, the normal bushel boy tomato. Just stick with the normal varieties and then you'll be successful. And I just, like, you could not force me to grow a normal red tomato. And I've always been like that. I think the colors are so fun. We're losing varieties and people need to care about that. So yeah, just kind of come to that. I love that story. That is so beautiful.
07:53And I'll tell you a secret, my husband and I have been talking since oh, a few years after we got married about wanting to do the homesteading thing and we're doing it now. We've been married for over 20 years and we bought this place in 2020. the first thing that got planted here was apple trees because we had talked and talked and talked about our dream.
08:20for years and apple trees were like always at the top of the list. We wanted our own apple trees. So I get it, Addie, believe me. Yes. Yeah, they're so beautiful. They produce so much food.  It's an investment. It takes a lot of time. But we, the property we moved to  has two apple trees. They're a semi dwarf, so they're not super tiny, but they're not super large either.  And I am consistently baffled every year. Like we, my family,  have
08:48I married and I have four kids and we could not get through all of those apples if we tried. There are so many, they're abundant. You know, we end up finishing our pigs on apples and giving them to the cows and chickens and all of that and selling them and giving them to friends. And it's just amazing how much food  one tree can produce. It is insane. And I have another story about apple trees.  The lady that we got our dog from.
09:17She lives in Montgomery, Minnesota. Her name is Jean Bratz. I don't know if you're familiar. She has the  Minnesota farmer Facebook page.  Okay.  They raise small scale. They raise steers. They have many Australian shepherds that they breed and they sell the puppies and take incredibly good care of the puppies from when they're born until they go to their new homes because they have seven children.  Sure. So almost every puppy is assigned a kid basically.
09:47Oh, but  they have apple trees in their backyard,  like many apple trees. And we were over there in the spring one year and all the trees were blooming and all you could smell when you opened the car door and got out in their driveway was apple blossoms.  And she has the the Wolf River apple trees, the great big apples. Oh, sure.  And  I
10:13keep meaning to get hold of her. need to do it this year and ask her if there's any way that we could get  a cutting  of a branch so we can graft it onto one of our trees because I would love to have Wolf River apples as well. That's the thing. There are so many varieties and that is also just kind of what makes me sad about our whole food industry is we have reduced
10:37reduced plants to a handful of varieties that  ship well, store well, all of that. And you just don't know unless you look.  We planted 40 apple trees this last spring in our  backfield. And looking through the varieties, it was so important to me. Sure, we'll do a couple of the honeycrisp and things like that.  these incredible trees that have existed forever, that have stories to them, and that have been lovingly cultivated over
11:04centuries, we planted this black Oxford apple and it is almost entirely black on the outside. Inside looks like a standard apple. The flavor profile is very similar to a honey crisp.  But again, like we would not know that these varieties exist unless someone cared enough to continue to cultivate them. So I think that's so important. Get the cuttings, graft it, plant it. You know, there's a lot of work before you ever see the fruit.
11:33You know, what do they say?  The best time to plant an apple tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. I've always heard it the best time to plant a tree is a hundred years ago. Oh, sure.  I guess  the more modern varieties if we're grafting under rootstock don't typically last as long. some of those other ones, they're incredible and they do last, you know, a hundred years.  Yep.
11:59I don't know why we were so fixated on apple trees, except that my husband and I really love applecrest in the fall. And we were like, if we had an apple tree, we'd be making applecrest by now  instead of having you buy apples at the local orchard.  But we planted  honey gold. We planted a regent. We planted a harrelson. then my husband went to Fleet Farm for something and he came home with
12:29some other apple trees.  And I was like, where  are we putting those? And he said on the other side of the property. And I said, okay.  And  I was talking,  I was writing a piece for Homestead Living Magazine that got bumped because of their holiday gift section. I'm so sad. uh when I sent her the draft, when I sent the editor the draft, she said, you guys have a small orchard. And I had to look it up.
12:57If you have more than six apple trees, you have a small orchard. And I was so excited that we are technically the owners of a small orchard because we have like 20 trees. Yes, I love that. That's awesome. Yup. I didn't know we had a small orchard, but we do.  So that was, that was pretty awesome.  Um,  I would love it if you could give me a rundown of the, the farm things that you have going on. So you have apple trees, you have some.
13:26you have dairy cows. What other projects do you have going on? Sure. So something that was important to us was uh just the cyclical nature of farm life and how, you know, when we monocrop one thing, kind of, you you end up having to outsource things where if you have a bunch of little endeavors, they can all sort of feed off of each other. So we started with  one dairy cow  and her calf  and have quickly expanded from there.
13:54um We came here really wanting to do market vegetables. So right now we have about 10,000 square feet of growing space out in our field  and we  applied for an Equip High Tunnel grant and ended up  being awarded the grant and we built a 100 foot by 30 foot high tunnel. So we are currently getting set up to start planting in there for the spring already.  We do  some poultry.
14:23We were surrounded by a lot of woods so we don't free-range our poultry, but we do them in tractors behind the cows in our field through the summer and then they're in a stationary coop in the winter. And then this last year we added  meat chickens  and  feeder pigs. So we ended up doing four feeder pigs. We have a lot of woods again with a lot of oak trees em and acorns and  we ended up building a big paddock in the woods and
14:51putting the pigs in there and it was awesome. we're, we do some cut flowers too. What kind of cut flowers? I love flowers. Yeah, we do. I'm trying to think how many beds we have right now. I think it's 30 to 40 beds that we do have cut flowers and we sort of do some of everything. We've got some perennials in there. I planted yarrow and what are my other perennials I have in there? Some echinacea.
15:19Things that self-seed too, we grow lot of chamomile and calendula. And then we've got the kind of typical  zinnias.  And this year we're doing lyseanthus and ranunculus,  dahlias, bachelor buttons, cosmos. I just placed my seed order, so it's all kind of fresh on my mind right now. m Those pro-cut sunflowers, those are a really good one. And then a lot of just like greenery, filler, we do some basil.
15:49What else? Eucalyptus. Things like that. Yeah, this was our first year, this last year selling market bouquets and it was super fun. Awesome. We grow peonies because they're my favorite.  And this year we'll probably have enough to actually sell quite a few if people want to buy them. That's awesome. Yeah, because it takes three years for peonies from when you get the roots and put them in the ground until they start to produce flowers.  Really. Yeah.
16:17So it's the first year is creep the second year. No first year is sleep. Second year is creep.  Third year is leap and my peonies leaped this past spring. I had so many blooms. I was in heaven.  Oh, that's amazing.  We grow sunflowers.  think we'd.  I can't remember the name of it. It's a little yellow flower. It looks like a daisy and I thought it was rununculus, but it's not. I'm almost positive it's not.
16:45And we have yarrow growing here wild. there's baby pink yarrow. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. We, we ended up starting, you know, if you go to like a green house and you buy like an established yarrow plant, they're like $15 a plant. And I was like, I really want these. So we started them from seed and in the first year we ended up getting blooms and they were like full size. was blown away by how quickly they grow. Yeah. And they're such a pretty plant.
17:16and medicinal and all of that too. Yeah, the leaves are really pretty. They don't even look like a leaf. They look like a pine needle. Like a fern, yeah. Yeah, they're really lovely.  I am such a sucker for plants. I, if I had my way, our whole property would just be all peonies every year. That would be amazing.
17:37But I don't have my way because I am married to a wonderful man who wants to grow vegetables and apples and pears and plums and peaches. We don't have pears yet. So he wants all the things and I'm just like, why can't we just pick  one and make it great? And he's like, because it's boring. And I'm like, okay, yes. I'm in all the things.  I'm in all the things person. think, you know, peonies even where they're they're done after a certain point. Oh, yeah. Short, short bloom season.
18:06I just want stuff all year. One  of my kids was like, oh, what is your favorite flower? What's your favorite smell? And I was like, it's not a flower. It's a tomato plant. I love how tomato plant leaves smell. uh It's just the joy you find in all the different things. And plants are definitely good for that. Oh, they are.  I  can't have lilacs in the house anymore because I sneeze. Oh, no. Didn't used to.
18:33But in the last year or two, if anybody has brought me a lilac stem, I'm good for about five minutes and I walk by it and it makes my nose tickle and I sneeze. It's not really an allergy, but it's just a little tiny irritant. But I love how lilac smells and we got some  lilac fragrance oil and made  lilac candles.  And the lilac candles don't bother me at all.  I still get to have it.
18:58I still get to have lilac in the house and I don't actually sneeze every time I walk by it, which is great.  Yeah,  lilac has always been one of my favorites.  But this last year I grew stock. Have you ever grown that? No. Okay. It looks sort of like a snapdragon. It's a barassica. So it really likes those cool temps and it has the most unique scent I have  ever had with a flower.
19:27like a little spicy, super floral,  the smell. had one stem of stock in our house and the whole house was just full of the fragrance of it. And it was so beautiful. We're going to do a lot more this year. just, we do  a lot of our seeds through Johnny's seeds and they have the varieties they have are so beautiful. The colors, that's another one. If you want to grow something that smells really good.  cool. I'll have to look it up and add it to the list.
19:56The list just gets longer every January. Yes, January especially. These winter months are rough for us plant lovers. Yeah, although I'm really glad that I asked you to be on the show now because I think if I had asked you to be on the show in May, you would have been like, Mary, I'm not going to have time until January. Yes, that is definitely the downside of this life is you get busy. It keeps you busy.
20:22Oh, yes, it does. And especially the younger you are because you have way more energy in your 20s and early 30s than I do at 56. Yes, there are a lot of things that we, you you get in January, you get really motivated and you're like, I can do this, I can do this, I'm going to start all of these projects. And then July, you looks back and is like, girl, what were you thinking? You do not have the time for this, but we do it anyway. It's great.
20:48I figure I have one more weekend before my husband says I'm going to bring in the seed trays and get things started. Yes, that is my day today. Actually, that's what I will be doing after this. We're going to start some seeds.  Yeah, I'm hoping he holds out until at least the first weekend in February because if we start them now,  I will not have my kitchen table for 12 weeks. That that is a problem. We ended up.
21:13with all of the growing space in the high tunnel. That's sort of how we started, but we transitioned into our garage is heated. um We insulated, got it heated and do grow shelves out there. And that has made it so, you know, the like LED glow where you're like, don't, we don't need this surrounding dinner and everything all the time. So that has enabled us to start those early crops sooner and not be bothered by that as much.  I made the mistake of buying the pink  grow lights from Amazon.
21:42I thought I was getting the white ones. No, we got the pink alien looking ones.  Yeah. And that was like three years ago. And we have windows right all around the table in our kitchen  and they face toward the road.  And I said, you know, anybody driving by is going to think we're growing marijuana in our kitchen. And my husband laughed and he said, we have moved to the country.  They know we're growing vegetables. And I was like, okay.  Yes, that is a thing we've had people ask.
22:13Yeah, but that pink glow is so creepy, especially at three o'clock in the morning  when you wake up and need to use the bathroom and you come downstairs and the whole kitchen is bathed in pink light.  Yes.  It's like, oh, there's aliens in my house. OK, cool. Yes, we started our growing  project before we moved out to the country. We lived on a little lot. ah And I was like, you know, if we want to grow, we should practice here. So we started growing some of our own things. And in our city house, I did the same thing and got
22:43the blue purple lights and so many of our friends as they would come and go from our house would joke about that. Oh, what are you growing? know, like just tomatoes. That's it. Basil. have to leave to bite into it. It's basil. It's great. Yep, exactly. And honestly, marijuana is not as big a deal as it used to be. So I'm not always worried about it, but it just made me laugh when I saw that they were pink lights, not white. I was like, oh, I
23:11I clicked the wrong thing on Amazon, but they're cool. It'll work.  So I try to keep this to half an hour. We're only 23 minutes in, but I wanted to talk about barn cats with you because  on your Facebook page, you have a photo of a beautiful long haired,  I assume it's a barn cat.  And we have a kitten who's about 16 to 20 weeks old. We don't know who got her from a friend.
23:37who looks exactly like your cat. Our cat's name is Smokey. What is your cat's name? Her name is Floof, but I am not responsible for naming the kittens. Are you kidding me? That was our mama cat's name. Really? Oh funny, my three year old named her. yes, they get to pick the names for the cats.  Oh, we don't have Floof anymore. She disappeared.  Oh, that's the worst. Yeah, we've had that happen. Was your Floof a black, white and orange?
24:06Calico by any chance, because that's what ours was.  She is a tortie. So she's dark, kind of gray and has some orange in her and got the long hair. That foofy hair, I think, lended to the name. That's exactly why we named ours Floof, because my husband was like, what do we name her? said Floof. She looks like she's going to explode. That's so funny. We had two of them, actually.  We had friends pick up the other one and it was Poof and Floof. uh Our Floof.
24:35had three litters before she disappeared and we have one cat left from her. He's a little over a year old. He is an orange long haired cat. Oh nice. And his name is Fluffybutt because he has his mama's extremely long hair.  is name of Fluffybutt.  Cat names are the best. have some just outrageous names.  One of our cats name is Garbage. um
25:01Constantly gets into our dumpster. So his name is garbage, but then our neighbor cat who's a long orange haired is Stanley So, you know you're out and you're like, hey Stanley you're walking a garbage. We've got you know, it's a whole thing Well the the one that looks like the cat that you have on your Facebook page Her name is smoky because when she moves  she is basically a dilute calico So she's got some buff and some really silvery gray  and
25:29I don't think there's a speck of white on that cat,  but she looks like smoke when she's moving  and she's gorgeous. And then her sister is shorty because she looks just like Smokey,  except that she's got short hair. Sure. And then the third one that we got is another orange kitten that looks exactly like  the one that's over a year old that we had to begin with.  And his name is Junior because we can't tell them apart when they're away from us.
25:58So yeah, I love having barn cats. Like when I was a little kid, we always had a pet cat and we had one at a time. And I said to my mom one time, said, why can't we have more than one at a time? And she said, because they're basically indoor cats.  We live in a thousand square foot house. I want one cat.  I said, well, I want all the cats. And she said, I know you do. You have loved kittens since you were a baby.  And now,
26:26Literally, I could have all the cats I wanted to and they're outside and they're not a problem. Yes, that has been our experience.  I grew up my great grandparents going to their little farm and they had kittens, you know, when we would go over there and it was like the highlight of our day, my siblings and I.  And we have some allergies to like pet hair and stuff.  you know, when you have like a lot of little kids, you're like, I don't need anything else in the house to clean up after.  We've just decided no indoor animals  and for mom's sanity.
26:55So when we moved here and there was a cat, my kids were just enamored with this cat. She's a barn cat, little standoffish at first, but had kittens and it, you just watch their faces light up and how much fun they have. And it's just been one of the highlights that we didn't know was coming with the farm that, you know, they just thoroughly enjoy every year.  Yeah. A um lot of people don't like cats and that's fine. They don't have to.
27:24I love cats because cats, they decide that they are your friend,  it's an honor because cats really have no use for people. All they want you to do is feed them.  Yes, we have uh my husband is a cat lover. I'm a bigger dog fan, but I think especially as we farm, I appreciate what the cats do so much. You know, they'll come in with rabbits and different mice and things they catch. And I see they're so functional, but we will with our little micro dairy when we milk.
27:54We have, you know, when we milk each animal, we'll strip out the first couple of squeezes of milk out of each quarter. And then we have this cup we strip into and there we tap it on the ground and all of our cats know they will come from near and far when they hear that tap on the concrete. And we pour it out into a little dish for them. And it's like the highlight of their day. They love it. It's so fun.  It's treat time at the farm. Yeah. And the other thing is, that we literally only had two cats.
28:24up until a month ago, month and a half ago. Both males, one fixed, not fixed. One fixed and one not fixed. There we go.  And my husband was like, this is a problem. And I said, why? And he said, because they're not going to be able to keep up with the rodents in the string in the summer. He said, right now, everything's kind of quiet.  He said, but that humongous pole barn is going to be overrun with mice if we don't get some more cats.  And I said, well, considering we have two males, that's going to be a problem. he laughed.
28:53Um, our friends over at O'Connor Family Acres here in Lesor,  um, Tracy and Paul have some barn cats and they happen to have some kittens and they brought us the three that I was talking about.  cannot freaking wait for fluffy butt and smokey  to get together and have babies as strength because they're going to be the longest haired, most beautiful kittens ever known to man.  Yes, they, we have.
29:19We have the Siamese cat that we originally got with the house and then a long-haired orange cat that's our neighbor's cat and they we went from having  oh my goodness two females to having over the summer 20 um cats with all of their litters  and all of the kittens are so fun and so beautiful and it is  pure comic I mean fun to watch them all just like explode out of the barn door following their mamas around it's amazing but at the end of
29:48the summer, we were like, okay, we got to find some new homes for these guys and found a couple of local families that wanted some barn kittens and you just, you you're like, we're good with one or two. But when you have animals and you have grain and feed and chickens and all, you know, I've seen people with like massive rodent problems and we just don't have any of that. And I attribute that 100 % to the cats and you know, it's it's great fun for the kids, but it's also functional.
30:18Oh, we wouldn't have as many cats if we didn't have a big old  pole barn that needed to be patrolled for mice because that would not be a good plan. ah The saddest thing I've seen so far regarding kittens and dogs, we have a dog and I talk about her a lot. I haven't talked about her a lot lately though.  Her name is Maggie. She's five. She's a mini Australian shepherd. She would have made the best mama.
30:46ever, but we didn't want puppies. So she was spayed when she was six months old.  She loves it when  the kittens come out of the barn and get introduced to her. And  she freaking knows when there's babies in the barn. oh Because my husband and my son would go out and play with the kittens to get them socialized so they were friendly. So she would smell the kittens on my husband and my son  when they would come in the house.  Saddest thing I've ever seen.
31:15We didn't have any kittens this past summer because flu flaked off and that was it. We didn't have any female cats. And uh Maggie kept looking over toward the barn all summer long, like, where are my friends? Where are my babies? And so the other day, the three new kittens were in Maggie's doghouse. And I say that loosely because Maggie barely uses the doghouse. So the cat take it over  and Maggie can reach it.
31:42and the kittens have discovered that there's hay bales in there and that it's a nice warm place to hang out. So Maggie noticed movement in the doghouse and went over and stuck her nose in and smelled the air and you saw the tail start to wag. She got a nubbin. She's not a tail, she has a nubbin. And I was like, oh no, this is going to go really good or really bad. And she was barking at the cats because she didn't know they were there to begin with.
32:11They're not little babies. They're not six week old babies coming out of the barn. They're almost full-sized cats now. And I was like, oh, this is going to go bad. And after she got done barking at them and they managed to get past her and get back to the barn, she came trotting over the door like, I have new babies. Oh, cute. So saddest thing ever this summer, because there were no babies for her. And I think that she really missed them. And then
32:39happiest moment of her life was discovering that there were new cats in her  doghouse once she figured out they were good kittens, they were fine.  Sweet. Yeah, we have an Anatolian shepherd. He's gigantic.  And he and the cats have a love-hate relationship, but he is a guard dog.  But he and the cows, when the cows have babies and stuff, it's so sweet. I love those like...
33:06interactions they have with each other and the friendships they make and one of our cows is his best friend and it's just it's so funny to watch and we love it.  It's so funny because growing up I thought that cats and dogs hated each other. m Because you're told that as a little kid. and dogs don't get along and I'm like yeah okay I know better now because  Maggie would raise a litter of kittens even though she's a dog every year if we love. Oh sweet.
33:36And she would let them just like curl up against her. One of the last kittens from the last litter  tried to nurse from Maggie. And  Maggie very gently put her nose right under that kitten and lifted up and moved it out of the way. She was like, no, I'm not actually your mama.  Yeah. was very sweet.  Very, very sweet.
33:58There are so many moments like that when you live on a farm or a homestead and you have animals because they do the craziest, funniest things.  On the flip side, when a cat gets hit by a car and dies, that's hard too. Yeah, loss in any way. have,  you've heard  the phrase where you have livestock, you have dead stock.  You're like, it's just part of raising animals, right?  You get to enjoy them during their lives and then...
34:28Then when they pass, it's always just so sad.  Yep. First barn cat we lost the road. I cried all day.  All day. Beautiful, beautiful silver tabby.  And the second one we lost, I slammed cabinets and yelled and said a few choice words and didn't cry because you got to get used to it. Yeah. have, unfortunately with dairy cows, specifically with the jerseys, the calves can be fragile and it's
34:57It's an adjustment when you are not used to that kind of experience with loss  when you lose calves and it's just, yeah, you go through all the range of emotions.  Yeah, and you lose the potential of that animal. That's the hardest part because you have all these  hopes and dreams once you find out that your cow is pregnant. Yeah, it's a long process.
35:22Yeah, and then that baby doesn't survive and you're like, but I had such great plans and now they're not going to happen. Yeah, and we bottle feed our calves too. So our kids are really involved and it's been rough every time it's happened. you know, you're like, it's all about teaching kids too. I feel like right now a lot of people don't have that hands-on experience dealing with loss anymore.  We're not close enough to nature. We're not close enough to things that are fragile.
35:48And so we just try to really walk with our kids through that and be like, okay, you you take care of animals in life and you take care of them in death and uh having compassion and understanding the cycle of life has been really valuable. Another thing that I just, you you  look forward to a farm and all the things that you will learn and glean from it, but it's those little things where you weren't necessarily thinking that was going to be a huge part of it, but it is.
36:16Yeah, there's a couple of things that I hold on to when it comes to loss.  One of the things that I tell myself all the time is that the price for loving something is knowing you're going to have to say goodbye at some point. Yeah.  And there's another one. And of course, now I can't think of it. Oh,  how lucky are we to be able to have that depth of feeling of love? Yeah. Those are the two things that make it easier for me. Yeah.
36:45I have seen some posts recently about how cruel the dairy industry is and, you know, I'm not saying that that is never the case, but you know how calves are just a commodity and I'm like, oh, you know,  you've clearly never cried over a calf. Like, m you don't know until you find good places to get your dairy, find good places that really value their animals because there are those people out there where it really does mean a lot to them and it is their literal blood, sweat and tears that go into.
37:12raising these animals and creating amazing genetics and the next generation of milk mamas and Yeah Yep, I am so proud of all you ladies who are under 40 who are taking all of this on Because it's a lot and it's a lot when you're raising kids along with the animals Yeah, it is. It's everyone warns you you know, oh this is
37:40going to be so much work, you're not going have a choice. You're going to have to put it as completely different when you're experiencing it in those moments where you're like, okay, you know, my kids still get sick, and I still have to milk. You know, where you're like, there are still things that have to happen. There aren't days off, you know, it's negative 60 wind chill, all of that, you're like, it still has to happen. And walking through it is really the only way to fully grasp what that means.  Yep, absolutely. And you know that 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, right?
38:09I had not heard that. Wow. It is. And you are doing it. So again, really proud of you, Addie. Thank you. All right. I try to keep this to half an hour. We're a little bit over. Where can people find you? We are actually going to be putting up a website in the next couple of weeks. So I don't have that info yet, but you can find us on Facebook or Instagram, Frostbite, Family Farms, LLC. And we would love to connect with you over Messenger or I think my phone number is on there. Yeah.
38:39still love the name of your farm.  I  love wintertime and I  love frost.  I don't love frost bite, but I still love the name. I know it's still fun.  All right. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast,  you can find that at AtinyHolmstead.com slash support.  And if you like this podcast, you should listen to  the new one that I just started with.
39:07Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook.  It's called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture.  Addie, thank you so much for taking the time and I appreciate it and keep doing the good work. Thank you.  All right, have a great day. You too.  Bye.
 

Day by Day Dairy

Today I'm talking with Sara and Nick at Day by Day Dairy.
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Sarah and Nick at Day by Day Dairy  in Wisconsin.  Good morning, guys. How are you? Good and good morning. Good morning.
00:21How is the weather in Wisconsin? Snowy. um looks like it's all trying to melt today, but it's going to be like 40 today. Yeah. Not a warm spell before it gets cold again, but  never stays cold too long.  I'm your, I'm your neighbor in Minnesota and it's supposed to hit 40 today and 45 tomorrow.  Oh, okay. Yeah. It's, I prefer to stay frozen all winter instead of the thawing and I'm like freezing and muddy mess.
00:51I'm sure it's not good for the cows feet.  They go out on a concrete this time of year. We have them on a concrete cow yard and the ones there in the tie stall barn, they go in and out. They'll go in and out for a little while, but then we put them back in the tie stall. So yeah, they don't see too much mud this time of year. Try to keep them clean and dry as best as we can with  the weather, you know.  Good, good.
01:15My husband watches videos of farmers and dairy farmers and cattle, know, steer  meat, meat farmers on YouTube all the time. And he's watching, he's always watching these shows where the  cows' hooves are all messed up from being out on wet pasture. And I'm like, it's so gross. Why do you have to watch these? I, isn't Nate the hoof guy? I watch his videos. He does, he does pasture or  um, hoof trimming. Yeah. He does hoof trimming.
01:44It heat up pasture  and uh a freestyle barn cows. So it's kind of a mix, but I don't know why it's satisfying. like watching it.  When we let ours out on the pasture, we rotationally graze all of our, all of our heifers. So they're always on fresh grass from probably beginning of May to almost first a week in December, sometimes a second week in November, depending on the weather. And the cows go out in a dry lot that has some.
02:14green on it, but um just because they have a totally different ration, the milk cows do.  We haven't figured out a way yet  to perfect that intakes that they eat out and out if we do rotational grazing. yeah,  no, definitely, we do get them outside quite a bit when the weather is appropriate.  Good.  All right. So since I knew I was going be talking to you,  there is a song that I learned in school, I think.
02:42And it's something about day by day, day by day. Oh dear Lord, three things I pray. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard it, but I had to learn it for a musical chorus thing back in probably sixth grade. So it was a long time ago. And so thank you for sending me into the way back machine by your name. And how did you, how did you get your name? Well, we were trying to think of names for a while.
03:09And I'm like, Oh, what should we do? We had a lot of different like ideas, none of them just felt right. And one morning Nick woke up and he's like, I think, I don't know he said something about taking things day by day or something. Yeah. We're just trying to take it day by day to get to the next day. So then we're like, Hey, day by day dairy.  It just kind of happened. Yeah. It just kind of happened like that.  Awesome.  Um, and also Wisconsin.
03:38As far as I know, last time I looked it up, which was a few years back,  Wisconsin is the or  pretty much the state for milk production in the United States. Is that right? think California passes us in fluid milk production, but I think we're still number one in cheese. ah I believe California, because they have... Yeah, go ahead.  Is that how you guys got the cheesehead moniker?
04:07Yes, yes. Yeah, there's like a cheese store. There's so many cheese stores all over.  Yeah. Both proximity.  Yeah.  Oh, yeah. When my husband and I make road trips to go see my folks in Maine, we go through Wisconsin because we drive and there's a uh Dane DeForge exit and there's a cheese shop there.  And the first time we drove to Maine, he was like, we have to stop there. He grew up not far from there.
04:35Well, he didn't grow up far from there. His family is from there. He grew up in Minnesota, but he used to visit family in Wisconsin.  And he's like, we have to stop there. And I said, why? And he said, because they have the most wonderful Granny Smith wine, Granny Smith Apple wine. He said, and they have chocolate cheese.  And he was raving about this chocolate cheese. And I was like, okay, so is it like fudge? He said, I can't explain it. You just have to try it. And I'm not a fan.
05:05It is the weirdest like fudgy cheese thing ever and  I it smells like fudge but you bite into it and it's really smooth and and soft like cheese and He gave me a piece. I ate it and I looked at him and I said I'm glad that you like it because it is all yours  Yeah, I don't think I've ever tried chocolate cheese
05:30Yeah, it's really weird. I mean, if you love fudge and you love hot chocolate, you're going to love this. But I just, couldn't get past the texture of it. we ship our mouth to a cheese plant too. Yeah, a little one. A small one. Yep. Screes. So our mouth goes to cheese. Is that all it goes to? It doesn't go to butter or anything? Well, I mean, some of the cream gets separated out when they're doing
06:00when they're doing their process to make cheese, but that goes to, that would go to a different creamery. I mean, that's what most cheese plants, and then you, you know, you got your whey products too that come out of some cheese plants when they take out the whey. So I mean, there's a lot of things milk turns into when it gets turned into cheese. Okay. So usually, you know, your whey gets separated out from your milk and your, and your,
06:29and you usually get some cream and that's on a cheese plant what they end up doing with that because they buy the product off of me. But um there's a lot of different things that milk gets turned into, you know, like your protein powder on your,  your, oh, I can't think protein shakes and stuff like that was where a lot of that way ends up. Okay.  And uh do all your creams, your cream factories take that and turn it into, you know, like your whipped cream and stuff like that. And, but
06:57Yeah, no, mainly all of our milk here goes for goes for cheese. There's only really off the top of my head. I think one real local fluid milk plant. And when I say local, it's Appleton would be the Lamers that does liquid milk, drinking milk in the in the area. And when I say in the area, that's an hour and a half away. So there ain't too many plants that do drinking milk around here. OK, cool.
07:25So how did you guys get into this dairy farming? That's a lot. We start way from the beginning. Well, ever since I was a little kid, I grew up on a dairy farm. My dad would have been the...
07:44fifth generation dairy farmer and I'm sixth.  But he milk cows for a while, him and my mom did, and they ended up changing career paths.  Probably when I was about 14, the cows ended up going and we converted it to like  a beef operation and we calved out our calves,  cow calf operation is what they call it. All your animals freshen in and you raise them through the summer months and.
08:13Me and my brother would work with them, cows and the calves in the summer months when they're out on pasture. And then every fall we'd sell the calves and put the cows, you know, back in the barn, take care of them all winter, get them bred and do it all over again. And we did that for a little while and I kind of got some steers and stuff through that, but I really just always felt like I was, if I was gonna farm, I was gonna do it as much as I could, as young as I could. And the only way I could feel like I could really do all.
08:41farm  and get the calf, well was, you know, a milk cow you have 365 days a year and you get milk out of it and a calf where beef cow you only got the calf. And I was a lot more hands on with the dairy industry and I always kind of liked the dairy industry and I always milked for other farmers after my dad got rid of the cows. So, uh, yeah, I just, when I turned about, I think it was 20 years old, I started milking a few cows  and I kind of.
09:10and renting out a barn. And I got one site that I rent out is where the milk cows is at. And then my home farm is where we do the rotational grazing with the dairy heifers and the dry cows and all of our young stock is at the home farm. And all of our, go ahead. So it's in your blood is what you're telling me. It's pretty much. mean, my grandpa spent a lot of time with me ever since I was real little working on the fields, fixing stuff. I mean, he's really the reason I'm doing what I'm doing. So yeah.
09:41Do you still absolutely wholeheartedly love it?  Most days, but you know, you have your good and your bad days, I guess, just with anything. Let's put it this way, I've tried probably, I don't know, how many different careers or how many different jobs, and I just always say, I'm just gonna farm.  So I mean, it's just, I don't know, just something I've always probably do for as long as I can.
10:07Okay. Is the dairy you guys' only job or do either one of you have a jobby job as I call it? So  I also grew up on a dairy farm.  Nick and I met in high school.  So we've been together since then. But once I graduated, then I um ended up working  off the farm  and doing that for a while. And then once we had our kids, we had two kids back to back. They're 11 months apart. So then
10:37We were like, well, they're only young for, they're only at that young stage for, you know, a short period of time.  And so we made the decision that I'll just, you know, raise the kids  at home on the farm. Um, so that's kind of how that came about. Otherwise, um, we did have that income too. Um, and I also have, I also own a reindeer business with my dad, which I started back in high school. So we've been doing that.
11:07on the side.  So busy with that as well, especially during the holiday season. yeah,  I'm sure that you were very busy here a month or so  ago. Baby reindeer are my favorite, favorite baby animal. They are so cute. They are, and they're so tiny when they're born. They're like 12 to 15 pounds. Are they as soft as they look? Yes.
11:35They are very soft.  I'm so jealous, Sarah. I've never been able to pet a baby reindeer before.  have  been able to pet white-tailed deer because we used to go to a place when I was a kid, um Maine Wildlife Sanctuary or something like that. And there were always fawns in the spring that had come in with their moms.  And you could feed the moms and of course the babies would come up with them and you could pet the babies, which was really fun.
12:03If you know anything about white-tailed deer, they are very soft, but it's more like a sleek soft and the baby reindeer look like they're just smushy. Like you just push your fingers into their fur. Yeah. And they're fluffy, very fluffy. Yeah. Yep. Boy, I am so envious that you get to deal with calves and baby reindeer. How lucky are you?  Lots of animals. Yes, absolutely. So I just talked to a young woman.
12:30Uh, Friday, I think it was Friday for an episode for the podcast that came out today.  And she is also a dairy, but it's just her and she only has 15 cows and milk right now. And she only has access to 30 cows right now. So do you guys have a lot more cows than that? Or are you a small dairy as well? We're small. We keep 50 milking. There's usually about,  and then between dry cows and heifers and
13:00If we have a couple of steers or anything else, there's, there's another probably 50 to 60 heads. There's around 110. Well, and then you got your calves. So you're always about 110 head roaming around here someplace between the two sites. And, uh, and, know, I guess, uh, and then we do cash crop land at the other site where we do our rotational grazing and stuff. So there is, you know, we do have other, uh,
13:28I guess just get at it. It's pretty diversified.  I guess there's cash dropping. We sell hay. We do a lot of different other stuff too, I guess.  I'll still farming, but yeah.  I keep hearing that from a lot of people that if you're going to be in agriculture,  you probably are going to need to be diversified because  if something goes wrong in  one section, you have the other section to rely on of your business.  Yes. Yes.
13:59Yup.  Agriculture is one of the most interesting fields to be in, I swear, because there are so many avenues to go down and you don't have to just focus on one. Actually, it's smarter to focus on more than one.  Yeah. And then because you talked about that  one girl, she had a lot smaller herd. But when we say because some people will probably think our  herd is big, but actually like in our area.
14:26It's small. It's very small. There's there's thousands and thousands of cows of dairies around here. I think there's what more cows and people in our county. Yeah. And this side of the Mississippi. It used to be the statistic. The statistic. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. But yeah, no, yeah, it's there and it's you know, they all kind of go hand in hand. The crops kind of go with the cattle because if you're not going to grow a really good crop, you're going to get any.
14:55good milk out of your cows, know, and cattle like eating good quality, healthy plants. it always kind of, everything kind of seems to go together. So yeah, it does seem like multiple different avenues, but it's all kind of neat at the end of the day when you come in the barn and they're full of milk that's all from work you did out in the fields and that you did obviously with the cattle every day. It all kind of bundles up into one thing that goes into one silver.
15:20stainless steel tank that gets picked up every other day. It's just kind neat that way.  Yeah, it all works together in a circle and  that's what agriculture is. mean, we don't have cattle, we don't have goats, we don't have sheep, we don't have any livestock here except chickens. And I'm not sure that chickens count as livestock. I think they're little dinosaurs and  herding dinosaurs is not the easiest thing on the planet.
15:50We do have a 50 foot by 150 foot um farm to market or farm to table garden. And we have the chickens and  the garden scraps feed the chickens. The chickens make eggs, the eggs feed us, the eggs feed our neighbors. And then we continue to have the energy to grow the garden.
16:15So it is just a circle here too. All of everything in agriculture is just one big circle. uh Yep. That's amazing.  It's almost like nature had a plan, huh?  Yeah. It's almost as well, guess seeing you brought up the chickens, uh, this last summer, we tried some chickens out in pasture and it is amazing to see what them chickens will do. We, we moved them around in their, uh, chicken tractor, it's called. Yep.
16:45And it's amazing to see the amount of clovers and other plant vegetation that comes back  out in them pastures, you know, because it was just grass before, like your fescue and your timothy. It's amazing to see the amount of clovers that's out there and the diversity from there from, you know, that chicken manure being applied to that area. It's really neat. yeah. It's almost like magic. I just, love everything about it. And that's why I love this podcast because
17:14You guys know this stuff like the back of your hand, but when you're explaining it to me, I feel like the little spark comes back in your voices about how it all works together. Yep. Yeah. You get to interview all, cause in agriculture there's, a wide range. I mean, more than just dairy farming and beef and you get to talk to a ton of different people. I get to talk to people who buy acreage and turn it into, um, agritourism places. Oh.
17:44Okay.  Which is really fun because people are so inventive. I mean, I talked to a couple months ago, they have a lot of them forested acreage and they put up a cabin so that people can come and spend a night or a couple nights or a week in a cabin in the woods. There's no outhouse, there's no shower, there's no nothing. It's very rustic. But the people who go there love it because they get to just decompress.
18:13They're told what the rules are. Don't leave food out because there are bears around and they will come get your food. And if you're in the way, they will get you.  And I just love that they took something that was not  necessarily growable or harvestable. And they're growing it in a completely different way.  it's a good like people who want to experience that but don't own it or don't have, you know,  access to it. That's a nice thing that they offer to people.
18:42even if it's just a short period of time.  exactly. I mean,  you don't have to buy an acreage and get cows and ducks and chickens. You can like think outside the box and use it for something completely different. If you want to. Yes. Yeah. It's like we are putting in more fruit trees this year because fruit trees do really well on the land that we own.  And we got
19:12apples last year, like more than enough for us to eat and to sell some at the farmers market for the first time since we moved in five years ago. And we always wanted apple trees. Like my husband and I have been together for over 20 years and we used to just sit and dream about what our homestead would look like if we ever got one.  And the first thing out of both of our mouths was apple trees for sure.
19:36Can't tell you how delicious that first apple tasted because we've been waiting a damn long time for them.  I believe it.  So, um do you guys have a specific time that you calve? Is it in the spring because it's warmer or do you end up  with calves in the winter?  Well,  with the dairy and us  being in the milk business, we calve year round.  I mean, there's no... m
20:04Back in the day when it was a cow-calf pair, we always tried to have the calves in the ground, know,  middle to later spring. But with the dairy cows, I mean, we're calving year round, you know, trying to keep five to six animals coming in the barn  between the heifers and stuff a month. Sometimes that works out. Sometimes you only have two or three. It all depends on your breeding and how it goes. But yeah, we try to keep a uh decent  flow of  animals calving monthly.
20:34You have babies all year round? Yep. Oh my God. I'm so jealous. I mean, I know it costs you a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy. And I know it's a job, but how sweet is it to have those calves every month? Yeah. There's a lot of them. There's a lot. Well, they add up. They add up. They add up. You don't think there's going to be a lot? Oh, yep. There's quite a few.
21:03And then, sometimes I like little jerseys, but yeah, yeah,  I to know. Yeah, two of them are coming, but the jerseys were kind of something I thought I'd be fading out of. And they kind of came back with a vengeance. I had more in the barn at the other place than I really thought I had coming up. And I thought I was down to about two and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have seven again. So  as most of the herd Holsteins, yeah, most of the herd is Holsteins.
21:29I say this all the time when people bring up Jersey cows, they are my favorite cow. I love their faces.  know. I agree.  it's like a... oh Holsteins are beautiful animals, but Jerseys just have this thing about them. It makes them look like a stuffed animal and I love them. I think the calves,  look like some kids, like I think it was my nephew, they call them a deer the first time they saw...
21:57Jersey calf they're like deer. I'm like, nope. It's not a deer.  It's a calf  Yep, and the other thing that's that's really funny is I for a long time called any bovine a cow and My dad after years of this growing up. He was like just so you know, not all bovines are cows and  I said they're not and he said no he said a male  Not able to reproduce bovine is a steer
22:28He said, a male bovine who is still able to produce is called a bull. He said, and there's a whole bunch of distinctions for the female cows, but they're cows if they're female. And I said, why didn't you tell me before? And he said, because cows are cows. He said, we're not raising them. And I was like, okay, why are you telling me now?  And he said, because you are so curious about everything. He said, I thought I should tell you before you ask.
22:56So  the distinction for  the female bovines, a heifer is a cow that hasn't had babies yet?  am I mistaken?  what's the name for a cow that  has had babies? Is there a different name? No, no, no, no, you're a cow. No, it's a cow. oh then if you really want to get anything under a year, it's called a calf. And then when they're
23:25a year they're called yearlings the heifers are now and then when they're bred a couple months just short bred and then when they're within a month or two don't quote me on that definition they're called springing heifers.  Oh okay. Yep so yeah so yeah I guess there's a uh plethora of terms if we really want to get down to it otherwise it's just calf heifer cow. And then there's steers. Steers and bulls.
23:52Well, the whole point of the podcast is educate the general public on all the stuff they don't know. So I figured I would take the chance to ask experts. Yeah. That's a big misconception. And some people think, a lot of people don't know the difference between beef and dairy either, that there's a difference between the breeds. Yeah. And there is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, there is. There's a lot of people who don't know that either. Well, a lot of your beef cattle, like what I
24:21when my dad was converted to for a while there, um they're bred with just the idea that they're going to be meat animals and they're going to produce meat and they're going to, and then the,  then the cows are going to grow calves and they're going to nurse on over five months. And then those are going to be either their replacements eventually, or steers where your milk cow is obviously produced to have a calf, produce milk and get bred back and do the cycle over again.
24:52Yup. Okay. So I know you guys are a dairy, but I also know there's no guarantee that all of your cows are going to have female calves. So do you guys sell the male calves off? yeah. Okay. So yeah, that's a loaded question with our breeding. A lot of the dairy industry has gone to, they look at their cow and they're only breeding. I'm just going to throw a random percentage out there. Like the top 10 to 15 % are getting bred with.
25:21Sex semen  so you're getting like sex hosting calves usually on the ground.  They're female  and then you're breeding them bottom half to or the bottom third or whatever um You're breeding them to beef So they're getting crossbred with like a beef animal like we talked about before and that beef animal is then put out to market, you know,  Like an Angus or Simitol there's uh
25:49Usually them are the two main ones, but there's quite a few beef breeds. But yeah, that's usually when that's kind of been the new trend that has been happening. Probably, I mean, 10 years ago, a bunch of old farmers thought it was never going to happen. And now, I mean, it is something that happens quite a bit. And it is really kind of taking the industry over, I'd say, a lot, a lot. You're seeing a lot more cross-bred calves go to market, which is
26:18probably for the best, because now you have a high quality meat animal instead of a Holstein bull calf that, yeah, it's going to still put on meat, but it's not going to be as high quality as a cross animal. um yeah, that's kind of what happens. oh cool.  And then I have another podcast that I've started with a lady that is a rancher  in Nebraska.  And  she was telling me that this past year, 2025,
26:47was a banner year for beef cattle producers. Is the dairy market not keeping pace with that at all? Well, the calf market, you know, guys are having the dairy producers are able to capitalize on this calf market really, really well, because replacements for these beef industry is so tight. that's something that
27:15really, I think is really a good thing for the dairy industry. um But as far as the milk goes,  I say average and I say now it's starting to get a little below average. um Supplies there's enough milk out there by the sounds of it again.  But I mean, that's just with everything in this industry, it goes up and down. We've had some real good years in the past, but it's it's breaks are getting pumped and it's it's it's going to be a couple tight.
27:43tight years coming up ahead for milk, I would say. Please don't stop doing it because I love milk. I just drank a whole glass of whole milk with cookie, with ginger snaps that my husband decided to make this morning for breakfast. Do not stop, please. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be here too. I mean, when I started, I went through COVID when that happened. I remember getting $10 a hundredweight and way back when I first started it was $13 a hundredweight.
28:13And just to put that in perspective, a couple of years ago, I'd say last year, I think we hit 24 in July. It always goes up a little bit in summer. But like right now, if you look on the board for CMEA, it's gonna be down in January here to 1475. And our costs have not gone down any. And you're talking about being in margins or...
28:41The price of milk being within a dollar of a $13 a  hundredweight that 10 years or eight years ago was tough floating for a lot of producers. So, I mean, just put that in perspective for you. mean, that's kind of the way the industry goes every now and again. Granted,  you know, through time, we tend to get more milk and, you know, more diversifying, like with the beef cattle and everything else. But  that just seems to kind of be the trend with that milk price.
29:10Yeah, and the average consumer has no idea what it takes to raise dairy cows. They have no clue, the heart and the soul, number one, how much it costs to feed those critters,  not to mention any care that they need, like veterinary care. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.  And  yeah, it's  like I said,  I think that, you know, I'm glad I started when I did.
29:39Cause everyone when I started thought I was nuts. You remember you had a hard time finding?  Wasn't the plants, certain plants? Yeah, was a hard time. It was hard to get into plants. know it's a lot of plants weren't taking, but I mean,  it's, how do I word it? I'm glad I started when I did, cause you just eventually got to hop on the bandwagon and you know, it's gonna, it's a roller coaster just going up and down no matter what,  no matter where you jump in on it. So when I started,
30:08I was able to buy cows fairly reasonable. I'd buy cows from farmers that, you know, their barns are full and it was probably the bottom end of the herd, but I still took it home.  I, you know, and  with that beef market starting, I was able to breed some of them to beef and maybe kind of gave me time to breed my better ones to sex semen, which that helped a lot to grow the herd.  Um, cause yeah, I mean, when I think about what I started with, I want to have now for cows.
30:35and how I was able to do it in such a short time. And I think about how like my grandfather and my dad farmed and they always said it takes a lifetime to get a herd of cows. ah I feel like I'm my cows now. I know I don't have the best of the best by any means the word, but  I feel like compared to when my dad and my grandpa's, you know, were done, I feel like I'm very competitive with what they had, you know, I feel and granted, you know, there's a lot of time lapse there, but
31:05It took eight years instead of a lifetime. Just the genetics in these animals and the genomics is just,  it's outstanding what  has taken place in eight years that I've been doing it hard where I've been in the bar, melting cows. is just, it just floors me  how we were able to produce these animals now and for health traits and everything. It's amazing. Yes. It's amazing how when nature and science come together for good, actual good things happen.
31:35Yep.  So for funsies, have a parting question.  Do you have a favorite milk cow out of your herd? The one that melts the most.  I like all lineback cows. I know Nick is, that's a,  we don't have a lot of them, but I think they're so cute. No, I got an old cow that she was going with me.  She was a calf when I started.
32:04So she was born in that first batch, out of that first group of heifers I had when I started. So she's, she's what? I've been milking for probably eight, eight years. She's nine. She's no, well, she's eight years old. So she's on her sixth lactation. I don't know. I always really liked that cow. She never, never gives me no trouble. She's always there. Because she was there from the beginning. Yeah. Was she a calf when you got her or was she a cow? She cowed, her mom calved on the farm.
32:33Okay. So she was a calf that I raised. One of the first ones. Uh know, when I started milking, milking cows. so eight years ago she was born, you know, so yeah. Don't hear. Yeah. 24 months later she had her first calf. So yeah, you got a couple of calves in the barn, but yeah, she's hopefully we get her bread and she can have one more at least. And I lied. That wasn't my last question. Cause I meant to ask you this earlier. Sorry about that.
33:01I don't know what the laws are in Wisconsin for raw milk. So what are the laws in Wisconsin for raw, not pasteurized milk?
33:12My understanding, it's illegal. it? Yeah. You can't. Yeah. You can't. In Wisconsin, at least. I know I've heard some states, they're way more lenient. I think Minnesota just passed a lot. Is that correct? I feel like it wasn't Minnesota. Somebody just joined the raw milk. There was some legislature, legislature, the legislation that just went through. And there's a handful of states that have passed it. But.
33:41think it might come to Wisconsin. Um, I've been doing a little research on it and I think, you know, there's a lot more to that than people really  seem to look into. Like your water gets tested and, um, a lot of other things that need to be done. But I think it's, could be a real good opportunity for some smaller producers down the road. yeah. Um, yeah, I hope something happens with it. really do. Yeah. Cause we did look into it, but yeah, the state of Wisconsin is harder.
34:10for that, the raw milk.  Does Wisconsin have the thing where you can sell raw milk  only for pet consumption?  That I do not know. I'm not sure on because we were looking at for farmers to sell. To sell to people. Yeah, I don't know. yeah, I kind of get scared when we start talking food and drug administration regulations, I guess.
34:35You know, I just try to ask anyone who's in the industry because it is different in almost every state. Yeah. There is a handful of states. I know that just passed it because I remember reading some article, but,  um, feel like there's a lot more of a demand for it too. Now for people who want that as well, but it's just not as easy to get it because of those regulations. Yeah. The law here in Minnesota is that the farmers can sell raw milk out of their tanks.
35:04as long as the person buying it  comes to the farm where the cow lives and where the cow was milked and where the tank is. And I'm not positive, but I  think I could be wrong.  I feel like the law is that the  consumer has to bring their own container,  but I could be wrong. Like I said, I did not  look in it that deep. mean,  it is something that I think  will eventually
35:34just like everything will kind of pass, especially with all this stuff going on in West Chase of Nile with regenerative agriculture and everything else. think we're, it's an incredible time to really be doing this. There's gonna be a lot of changes in the next 10 years, I think, on these smaller farms, probably towards this. So I think it's gonna be interesting to see.
35:56Yeah, I'm all for it because I absolutely love love raw milk, but I can't afford it right now in Minnesota. It costs too much and I want to be able to pay it, but I just can't. Yeah. How much is it in there over there? The last I looked, it was over $10. I want to say for a half gallon, but it could have been a gallon. don't remember. No, I, yeah, I, there was a podcast I listened to about it. Shera pointed me towards it.
36:26Yeah. And there was a guy, a gentleman owned in California who started it and explained it. yeah, it is, it, could really do a lot of good for the industry if something like that would come ahead. And it just, to the testing that will be involved in it. Once they figure that out, and I think a couple more states do it and they have it for a while. I think that it's going to be an easier thing to get past probably in states like Wisconsin. But yeah.
36:56Yeah, the best thing about raw milk is that you can make cheese from it. If you try to make cheese with pasteurized whole milk from the store,  it doesn't usually turn out the way you want it to.  No,  no.  And the thing is with, uh you know, with raw milk, it separates. So I know a lot of people like to use that cream for many different things  that you can just do at home with.
37:22Yeah,  the cream from the unpasteurized milk is fabulous in coffee. It makes it into this decadent dessert drink, not just coffee. Yep, I believe it.  So yeah, I will be a happy girl when I can go to the regular grocery store and buy unpasteurized milk and know that it's fine. That'll be a great day. Maybe I will live long enough to see it. We'll see what happens.  All right, guys, this has been
37:51Fabulous. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Where can people find you? We're on TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, day by day dairy.  Fantastic. As always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  If you want to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support  and just started a new
38:16podcast with the lady I was talking about and that podcast is Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. uh You guys, I know you're busy. Thank you  so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No, of course. Thanks for inviting us. All right. Thank you. You have a great day. You too.
 

Wilson Dairy Farm MD

Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm MD. You can also follow on Facebook.
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm in Maryland, I think it is.  Good afternoon, Hayley, how are you? Good afternoon, I'm great. And yes, you're right, we are in Maryland here, Baltimore County. All right,  and you guys  are a dairy farm and
00:27I've actually been really looking forward to this because I don't talk to people who do dairy. I talk to people who do  cattle for  eating the meat more often. So, uh number one, how's the weather in Maryland today?  Today is absolutely gorgeous. We hit 50 degrees and it's been sunny and just a light breeze and it feels like a nice spring day in January.  Yeah, oh in Minnesota it is pushing 40 degrees. Everything is melting. There's no wind.
00:56It's sunny, it's gorgeous. It feels like April, not January. Yes, I'll take it though. Yeah, me too, because I figure two weeks from now it'll be minus 20 with a wind chill of minus 40. Exactly, we don't quite get that cold, but anything under 30 degrees is cold for me. Yeah, it definitely gets cold here in Minnesota for sure.
01:21We had a night last winter that was pushing minus 50 windchill and I thought you know, maybe the northern tier states aren't as much fun as I as I think they are so I bet All right. So tell me about yourself and about your dairy farm because I am so excited to hear your story Sure. So my name is Haley Wilson. I grew up on a commercial dairy farm My dad milked around 220 Holsteins at our biggest
01:50So we were a small commercial dairy farm because there are a thousand head dairy farms out west. There's much bigger farms than that. for us, that was a lot. We milked 200 cows a day. It was about three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We had some family trouble over the property about six years ago. My dad's siblings had all left the farm when they were young.
02:15like a lot of small family farm disputes go, they came back and they wanted their inheritance. we were in a lawsuit during the COVID timeframe between 2018 and 2021. And um because of COVID, we actually never got to see a jury trial. We had a judge who just decided everything. And because my grandfather's notes that said what he wanted to happen with the land were not notarized, he said none of them could be
02:43admitted as evidence. So we actually ended up losing everything. had around 350 acres. it was all, yeah, it was all gone to my aunt and uncle who live in Virginia. They're not even local. So that was something we went through a couple of years ago that was really heartbreaking. And there were a lot of emotions surrounding the lawsuit, know, anger, frustration, just disappointment all around. My dad really took it hard.
03:09And  my sister and I kind of felt the weight of the family and we kind of had to figure out how to keep things moving. As far as the dairy cows go, I was able to keep a couple of my nice show animals.  I just kind of took them to different dairy farms around the state of Maryland, actually. People were very generous and would house them for me. Just last year, I found this farm  about 10 minutes away from my home farm where I grew up.
03:33and the people who own it were renting it out to a family who were moving and I reached out and everything worked out perfectly. I was able to move in last fall. I brought all of my young animals, so like my little calves and my breeding age heifers, no one who's in milk yet. I brought all them home here about a year ago.  And for the last year, I've been working on fixing up the farm  and getting a parlor built.
03:58When you're going to milk more than just two or three cows, you've really got to have the facility for it. And since I planned on shipping milk grade A to a cooperative, like my dad did, I had to have the facility to match their standards. So I just accomplished that here in November, and I'm shipping milk for 25 cows for the last 60 days. So that's catch up to where I'm at. Is it just you? It's just me.
04:24Yeah, it's just me. My parents live in a house that they rent down the road. My sister has a little farm she does ag tourism business  with, but I'm the only one that lives here. So whenever I say we, I mean me and the dogs, me  and the animals. We is a me and my animals concept. I um don't have anybody that lives with me or helps me. It's just me. Wow. Haley,  I am so impressed and so proud of you. Thank you.
04:53That is a lot to take on as one person.  It is definitely a lot. Once I got a routine, know, things have, it's like anything, you know, once you get a system down, it becomes a little bit easier, but there, you know, there's definitely tasks out there that I have to wait until I can call my dad or somebody to swing by and help me. It's just not possible to do some jobs by yourself. So I do my best,  but I do have an intern that sometimes will come down from Penn State when she's on her breaks and she'll help me occasionally.  So.
05:21People are very generous. Our community being in Baltimore, it is a big city below us, but ultimately the area that I'm in in the county, the community members are great. If I need help  fixing the manure spreader or fixing the tractor, there's people I can call that'll run over and just do me a favor and they'll help me out, which has been life-changing. Yeah, community is so important, especially when it's just one person trying to do what you're doing. Yes,  absolutely, yes.
05:51I mean, community is important anyway, but boy, you are really fortunate that you have people around you who are more than willing to help. That is fantastic. So how many cows do you have? So I'm currently milking 25. Now with the whole community concept, they're not all my milk cows. I only owned about 13 milk cows. So the other cows are actually from three other neighboring farms who said, hey, this young girl is trying to get started.
06:19go ahead, you can take a couple of our cows because I have to have enough milk to reach the agitator in my tank. They were willing to give me their money producing asset because they believed in helping a young person get started in the dairy industry. So I actually only own 12, I think it's 13 now, I just had one calf, 13 of my 25. I own them, they're registered in my name, but the other half of my milk cows are actually belonging to neighborhood farms who are trying to help me.
06:47get my feet under me and get started here. Because the rule is when the milk goes in the tank, you have to have enough milk in it to reach the little agitation stick that's in the tank. And if I didn't ship enough milk, it wouldn't stir and it would create bacteria. So there's lots of regulations around that. So  I own about 13 of my milk cows and then I actually have another 13 of the younger stock, which would be the calves and heifers that are not milking yet. So I own about 30.
07:17Wow. Oh my God, Haley.  I'm so blown away by everything you've just said. There's a  lot to it and it can be very overwhelming. It should throw at you all at once. So if I have to repeat anything, if you have further questions, feel free to stop me.  No, I just, can't believe how everything is coming together for you to do this. Yes. Nope. I don't believe it some days either, but I have to say I have faith.
07:44And not just religious faith, but faith in myself, faith in the goodness of the world, faith in just things working out. And I hate to say it, but if I wanted to get this far or to even go further, I have to have that kind of just belief that things will work out because there are days, there are really cold days when equipment won't start or the days where maybe a cow is sick or if I lose a calf, they're really tough. And the only way to get through them for me is to have faith that things will  work out the way they're supposed to.
08:14Yes,  and things do work out the way they're supposed to. The problem is sometimes the supposed to part isn't the way you wanted it to work out. Very true, very true.  I understand that completely. I've had a lot of those moments in my life, but I'm 56 years old.  I have lived a great life so far and it all does kind of come out in the wash. There's some really terrible things that happen.
08:42And there's some really fabulous things that happen that offset the terrible things. yeah. Just keep moving. Just keep going. It's all perspective. It really is. Yes, exactly. Wow.  I am just sitting here dumbfounded. I cannot believe all the stars that had to align for you to get where you are.
09:03Me as well. definitely, this fall as things were coming together, I, you things fell together and people offered, whether it's a manure spreader to borrow or coming to chop the corn. So I'd have feed in my trench for this winter to milk the cows, all those little things. I say little, they're big things, but like you said, everything just fell together so great. I will forever be in debt to lots of people around here. Well, I'm sure that if they needed something, you would be right there for them too.
09:32Yes, absolutely. Yep, because that's how this works.  You don't receive the kind of blessings that you're receiving on this without giving some back.  Correct. And if you own animals, if there's people who have  homesteads and they have any type of sick livestock where they need medication and it's nine o'clock at night, you're calling your neighbor who maybe also has animals and has something in stock. So that's just how it works when you have animals and have to take care of everybody.
10:00So if it's just you, do you manage to get any sleep at any point in time? I do. So I try to go to bed by 9.30 and I get up around five. So I do get  some hours of sleep. uh I do work a day job also away from the farm. And as sad as that sounds, I can't afford to pay my bills if I don't do it. So I wake up at five and I'm usually working outside until about eight or 8.30, depending if anybody needs to be bedded up or if I have to restock any hay or feed.
10:29and then I'll eat breakfast and I'll go to a day job from about nine to one. And then from one to three, I either run some errands or I come home and just try to relax. And then I'll feed the cows and do some afternoon projects and start my feedings again. And I'm usually finished by about six, 30 or seven at night. And then I have about two hours to do  whatever inside I might want to do. Sometimes it's just hanging out, but.
10:55Sitting still is not something I do well. So it's almost good that I'm this busy. Okay, tell me again how old you are, Hayley. I'm 29. Okay, so you're still in the, the, I'll sleep when I'm dead, 20s phase. Yes, yes.  Yeah, I was raising kids in that timeframe  and uh I was busy from,  oh my God, two o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night because, because kids, you know. Yeah.
11:25Kids don't necessarily sleep from  eight o'clock at night until six o'clock in the morning.  And I had four kids.  And my youngest didn't sleep through the night until he hit kindergarten. So  that was a rough five and a half years.  bet.  I can't imagine.  So when  you're talking about all the stuff that you're doing, I am absolutely blown away.
11:52But I also know what I was doing when I was your age and people were like, I don't know how you do it.
11:59Yes, yes. It has its perks. I do  feel tired more so than others other days, but that's usually in response to like mental exhaustion.  Like you said, the physical exhaustion, I can get through it, can  push through it. But usually if I'm very stressed, if something  takes a toll on me mentally, those are the days that it can get to me and get caught up on it. Yeah, for sure.
12:29brain is good when your mental health is good, you can go without sleep for a while.  But you get that mental health thing dragging you down and you're not sleeping, it's not gonna go well.  Exactly, and I think that's very important to mention. In the dairy industry in general,  they talk about dairy farmers having a suicide rate higher than any other occupation, even above veterans. And that's one of those things that it speaks to you, just about how much of a toll that these people go through. uh
12:58you know, and there's nobody there speaking for them and the number of dairy farms is shrinking and there's so many people who just don't relate to what they go through.  And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this as well is having a social media presence and sharing the  problems and  the challenges with the dairy industry. I love what I do, but  even in the last 60 days, I have learned so much of how much these industry
13:25cooperatives that I am tied to, you I'm under their thumb because they are the ones hauling my milk. They're the ones finding a market for my milk. So I'm at their mercy when they want to change prices, when they want to change my hauling price, ah the  flexibility of their hauler or lack of thereof.  I've had to take buildings down. I've had to move my driveway. I have no choice. And most industries are not like that. You have some say or at least you get a day or two off here or there.
13:54As a dairy farmer, you don't have a say and you don't get a day off. So it does become exhausting.  absolutely.  Okay. So I have a question for you that might be touchy.  Is raw milk illegal in Maryland? It is. Raw milk is illegal for human consumption in the state of Maryland. It can only be sold from a farm if it's labeled as pet consumption only. That's correct. So if somebody buys it under that  label,
14:22and they choose to use it for themselves to drink. Is that  okay? Yes. Yep.  I know lots of farms who have said, know what, forget the co-op that I'm signed with. They're not doing anything to help me. Instead of getting 40 cents per gallon of milk from the grocery store, I'm going to sell directly to the customer, whether that's listed as raw milk or actually getting a grade A permit to process their own milk, either way.
14:47They'll sell directly to the customer and get three, four, five dollars per gallon in their pocket. So people can do what they wish with whatever they buy as long as the label meets the standards of the state and the federal government, the farmers in the clear. Good. I haven't had raw milk in Minnesota in  years, and part of that is because  I can't afford it anymore.  I looked the other day.
15:14I was just curious to see what some of the local farms were selling raw milk  at.  Over $10  for a half gallon. Oh my gosh. I was like, yeah, that's too rich for my blood. That champagne taste on a beer budget. I can't do it.  That's very true. And I think maybe some farms have gotten a little aggressive with it.  I have not gone down that route yet, but...
15:39I know around here people will pay double digits for a good raw gallon of milk. And maybe that's because where we live, cost of living in Maryland is extremely high, but their incomes is reflective of that for the most part, so they can swing it. But most parts in the country are not gonna pay 10, 12, $14 for a gallon or even a half gallon. That's crazy to me to hear as a farmer who produces milk. Yeah, I...
16:08I want to be able to pay it because I think that anyone who takes care of cows  earns every penny. But I just can't. I just can't do it.  Of course, of course. So, and I love raw milk. It is one of my favorite, favorite things for coffee in the morning because it is so good. Yes, I love raw milk. I have been drinking raw milk my whole life and I'm  happy to  share it with people who ask. It's just one of those things that I just do it quietly.
16:37If people ask, we're like, yeah, bring a container over, I'll get you what you need. But it's not one of those things I'm allowed to sell for a profit. Right, yes. And I'm going to tell the story again. I've told it like five times in two years on the podcast. We drove home  to Maine. I grew up in Maine.  And  milk is actually allowed to be sold  in grocery stores in Maine. That's raw milk. And I didn't know that. That was not the case when I lived there.
17:06And we went to the little general store down the road from my parents and they had glass bottles of raw milk.  And  I took a bottle up to the counter and the girl behind the counter, said,  how long has it been legal to sell raw milk? And she was like, I don't know where you from. I said, well, my parents live up the road. I grew up in Steep Falls, Maine.
17:30I said, but I live in Minnesota now and it's, don't find raw milk in a store. You have to get it from the farmer at the farm. And usually you have to bring your own container. And she was like, oh man, I knew you weren't from Maine, but I didn't know you grew up here. I said, yes, I did. She said, I don't know how long it's been legal to sell it in Maine, but it's been a while. She said, cause we've been doing it for a while. She said, we're not allowed.
17:58She said, it is frowned upon to advertise that you're doing it.  And I said, frowned upon. And she said, yeah, the state of Maine doesn't really like us to promote it.  And I said, okay, so every state has different laws about this. She said, they absolutely do.
18:21Yep, yes, that's correct.  So yeah, it's crazy.  I... People drink raw milk for  a very long time before we've got into the pasteurizing and  putting parameters on what we as humans get to choose to drink.  it bothers me to no end, but I always have to ask if somebody's in the industry. Sure, absolutely.
18:48And two, with pasteurization, know, back 100, 150 years ago, 200 years ago, when people were getting sick from raw milk, they did not have the regulations that we have now with the stainless material of the pipeline,  the cleaning regimen, whatever it is that the state requires. Each state's a little bit different. But I know the crucial testing that I had to go through, and I get test results every single week from my co-op. And I will tell you that our milk, whether it's, I say our milk, the girls' milk, my milk here,
19:17is cleaner than anything else you're ever going to get. I believe it. And the other thing that a lot of people don't know is that if you  sell your milk to whoever the hauler comes and your milk is tested, the whole truck gets thrown out if something's wrong with the milk, right? Correct. Yeah. If you test positive for antibiotics, if a cow is sick and I have to treat her just like we would treat our children or ourselves, you go to the doctor and you get antibiotics because you have to kill.
19:47that bacteria, whatever's growing, you've got to get ahead of it or it could kill you. It's the same with the animals. They have to be treated.  And then that milk has to be dumped appropriately for the right amount of time. And I have snap tests here. If anybody works in a vet office or even a doctor's office, they might've heard of a snap test. You can test milk, you can test blood with them. And my test specifically tests for antibiotics. And if I mess it up and I ship it,  I have to pay for the whole truckload. Yeah.
20:13does that whole truckload get dumped? It's useless? that's I thought. that's correct. They can't do anything with it and they don't want us to contaminate any other milk at the processing plant. Yeah, that's what I thought because that's how it is here too. Yep. And it's really important that that's the way it is because, you know, we've got to have safe food. It's just really unfortunate that things like that happen. And I'm guessing it hasn't happened to you yet.
20:42Not yet. Knock on wood. I am very adamant. I try to use leg bands to mark the cows if they need to be treated. I put it in my phone as constant reminders as to when was the last treatment date. I will test once in the morning and if it's questionable, I'll test again in the evening. It's just one of those things I'd rather be safe than sorry.  I can't afford to make the mistake. So fingers crossed I never have to do that, but I know new accidents happen  and it's just a good thing there's so many checks along the way to catch it.
21:11Yes, exactly. And I'm going to say this too. I was talking with Joel Salatin back a year ago for the podcast. You know who he is, right?  The name sounds familiar, but place him for me. Okay. He has Polyphase Farm in, I think it's Virginia or West Virginia. And he's big in the homesteading uh realm.  And he raises cattle and pigs and chickens and
21:40He's just really famous in  this circle.  And  he was saying that when he went to college, he went to college for becoming a journalist.  And uh when he told somebody he was going back to the family farm, they said to him, you're way too smart to just go be a farmer.  And the reason I share this is because  from what you just told me, you are incredibly smart.  You have to be.
22:10to be doing what you're doing. Farmers are smart. They have to be. I agree with that. And I feel like farmers are smart in a funny sense. And when it comes to troubleshooting and trying to solve problems, a lot of people think, well, I'll just call the plumber to fix it. I'll just call the electrician. As a farmer, can afford $180 emergency call for the plumber. So guess who's just going to figure it out? You know, we're smart along the sense of being, I don't know, personal,
22:41as troubleshooters. You know, we're always trying to find solutions. So we're forced to think outside the box when it comes to solving things. Well, the other reason I said that you're smart is because you have a lot of things you have to keep track of. And you have to be organized and you have to understand why you're doing the things that you're doing. That's correct. Yes, that's true. So I bet you're smart as a whip.
23:05Ma'am?  try to be pretty quick. You know, you to stay on my toes. And I think a lot of dairy farmers are like that. So that's a good uh analogy. Dairy farmers are pretty quick. And if they're not, you'll see which farms maybe struggle.  You've got to be able to stay on top of it. And you've got six million things going on at once, just like a mom, just like a parent. You've got so many things moving at once.  You've got to stay on top of it or things get dropped. Yeah,  absolutely. So are your cows Holsteins? Because you mentioned Holsteins in the beginning.
23:34I do have a couple Holsteins, that's what we milked growing up. So I kept a couple from my original family line. My dad did buy me a Brown Swiss when I was eight years old. So I have actually transitioned primarily to my Brown Swiss. So my herd of my 13 or 30, if you want to look comprehensively, is probably 80 % Brown Swiss. And then the last couple will be my Holsteins. Okay, I've never heard of a Brown Swiss. Tell me what's special about that breed.
24:02So the Brown Swiss are from Switzerland. They are one of the  main seven dairy breeds in the world.  They have the high butterfat content similar to a Jersey or a Guernsey. So they're a color breed is what they're called.  They have big white fluffy ears and a nice dark gray coat. I just I love my Swiss. They're like big puppy dogs and they are a bigger breed. So they're going to grow to be some of the biggest in my herd.
24:27but they're so docile and so slow moving.  I just love the personality of my swiss. They're super sweet and loving and like a lot of animals,  any breed can be that, but every single one of my swiss has been great to deal with.  I can hear the love in your voice and I am like that about the Jersey cows. I love them so much. Yep.  They are my favorite cow to look at. They are my favorite cow.
24:56to actually go up to and pet if I'm allowed to. Yep.  They're gorgeous. So I get it.  Everyone has their own favorite animal. Yes, that speaks to you. It speaks to you in a way that just touches your heart. And my Swiss,  I love them to death. They're great.  Uh-huh, absolutely. um So how many gallons of milk does a um brown Swiss? Is that what you said? That's correct, yep.
25:24How many gallons of milk on average does a brown Swiss give a day? So it depends on what stage of lactation she's in. Most of my brown Swiss are going to peak around 70 or 80 pounds a day. And when I say pounds, that's what we get paid in. So we're looking at pounds as a dairy farmer. Now, a gallon of milk weighs 8.6 pounds. So if she's milking 80 pounds in a day, that's about nine gallons. So she's not
25:51white as high of a producer as some of my Holsteins who could milk 100, 120 pounds a day. But ultimately the Swiss will have your higher butter fat and protein content. And those creamy, those creamy factors are actually a higher pay scale for the co-op because the co-op is going to pull that butter fat and protein out to make your cheese and your butter and your ice cream. So they,  what they lack in quantity, they make up in quality. uh Absolutely.  You've got this down, ma'am.
26:21I'm so impressed with you. Well,  I've done a lot of studying and I told myself if I'm going to do it, I've got to at least be somewhat prepared. em I understand I'm still learning every single day and I'm still calling my neighbor and saying, hey, this cow doesn't look right. This is when she calved. Her eyes are little sunken in though and she's not really milking right. You know, what would you recommend I give her?
26:45and we'll go through the list of medications and treatment options. So there's still things I'm learning every single day.  ultimately my goal is to have happy and healthy cows. Obviously I want them to milk as much as they can because that affects my milk check,  but I do not push them beyond what their body is capable of. I'm a competitive person. I want to do well,  but ultimately I love my animals and I want them to do the best that their health can allow. Yep. That's exactly the reason to do it.
27:15You don't get into raising dairy cows for  grins and giggles. That's correct. That's very correct. Okay. I don't really want to end this on a bad note, but  I know that dairy farmers in America  do not make a lot of money in their chosen profession. That's correct.  So you guys do it because you love it. And that is fabulous. But I really, really hope that
27:45The love of it makes up for the lack of income because I worry about you guys. We need milk and I worry that a lot of dairy farmers are just gonna go away because they just can't afford to stay in it. That's correct. And a lot of legislation, a lot of the rules and like I said, the co-ops, the bigger dog people don't care about the small farmer. They're always looking at the dollar and unfortunately the small farms are not being taken care of. So your options are get bigger.
28:13or sell direct to the consumer or be done. I have to weigh my options as well moving forward and see what I can sustain. I love what I do. I will always milk cows. I just have to figure out what would be the best for both them and myself right now. Yeah. And it's a very fine line. And I really hope that you get to continue to do what you love with the cows. And if you don't, don't
28:41look at it as a failure, please, because you are doing the best you possibly can. Thank you. Thank you. Like I said, I didn't want to end this on a bummer, but people need to know it's really hard being in agriculture and it's doubly hard being a woman in agriculture. Yes, that is 100 % true. I know this year they've delegated 2026 as the year of the woman in ag.
29:09So I'm curious to see what programs and what they're able to provide for women in ag this upcoming season. Yeah,  I'm just thrilled that there's finally a  year  of the woman farmer. Yes, yes. It's only taken till 2026 to make it happen. I know,  I know people. We're a very reactive country. We are not proactive. And that is one of the things that's driving these small dairy farms into the dirt as well.
29:39But unfortunately we cannot change the mentality of the masses, but those who see it, know, those are the people who can step up and make a difference for some of these small farms. Yep, absolutely. And I'm always saying on my podcast,  know your local farmer,  know your local  producer, you know, gardener. Because if the shit hits the fan and our grocery system goes down,
30:08it's gonna be really important.  And it's important either way, but it's gonna be really important then. Correct. Everybody should have some type of garden and even like a goat or a sheep.  That is a huge thing that I would love to see 90 % of the country, which I know populated cities isn't ideal, but I would love to see a higher percentage of the country have some type of animal more than just a dog or a cat  to raise their kids to take care of.
30:35It just teaches so much responsibility and caring for life and understanding death and everything that comes with it. Like you said, even just having that relationship with your local farmer or producer is golden for people now. It really is. It's so incredibly important. And  important has become trite. That word has become so overused.  And I don't have another one. So it's the one I'm going to use.  All right, Haley, I tried to get these to half an hour. Where can people find you?
31:05Sure, so you can find me on Facebook or Instagram. I post on both.  Facebook is Wilton Dairy Farm MD.  Right now  I'm growing steadily, so hopefully I'll see some people's new faces here soon.  Nice, okay, awesome.  As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to AtinyHolmstead.com slash support.  And there's a new podcast.
31:32that I am doing with a co-host. Her name is Leah  and she's from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook.  And um there's two episodes out already, third one on Monday and the website's being built right now  and the first three pages are up. oh The website  is Grit and Grace in the Heartland and the podcast is Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture.
31:59Haley, this was great. Thank you for filling me in on dairy and cows and how hard it is and how much you love it. I so appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on today. Thank you. Bye.
 

Mystic Roots Homestead - Herbal Simples & Apothecary

Today I'm talking with Corey at Mystic Roots Homestead - Herbal Simples & Apothecary.
 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Corey at Mystic Roots Homestead, Herbal, Simples, and Apothecary  in Kentucky. Good morning, Corey. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm good. Good. How's the weather there? It is sunny  and almost in the  50s in South Central Kentucky today. It's really kind of crazy for it being January.
00:29Yes, I'm in Minnesota. It is going to be 40 and it is sunny and we have about three or four inches of snow on the ground right now. my goodness. I would love for some snow. had a very, very dry Christmas this year. So does it snow in Kentucky? You guys are pretty south, right? It does. I think in 2015 we had, or no, 2014, we had about eight feet here and I'm closer to the Bowling Green area. I was working at
00:58I was a dispatcher then actually, and we had so much snow that we had to close the interstate down. It was rough that year,  but it does. It's not been bad or equated to a lot in the last few years, but we've kind of been waiting for it. The woolly worms have been telling us it's coming, but it's not showed up.  And the woolly worms lied to me this year. I saw seven different woolly worms and all of them had different stripes.
01:27different width stripes. And I was like, okay, I need some consistency here, guys. And see, we've been all of the  persimmons have been given a spoons shovels, but we've not seen  it'll probably be here in mid February is when we'll see it. Okay, so for the listener who doesn't understand what we are talking about,  woolly worm caterpillars are are black and like a reddish brown.  And the ends of the caterpillar are black and the middle is brown, I think. And
01:56The middle band of the caterpillar tells you how long and how hard the winter is going to be.  And all of them I've seen have been different. And the persimmon fruit, if you cut them open,  it looks like a spoon or it looks like a fork, right?  Or a knife. A knife, okay.  if it's  spoon, fork, or knife. Okay, so if it's a spoon, it indicates lots of snow. uh If it's a fork, it indicates what?
02:24It will, I think it's very mild and then the knife it's going to be frigid. It will like, the knife will be cold enough it'll cut through you. Yeah. So it's a very frigid winter. Fork is very mild, but a shovel, you're supposed to be shoveling through that stuff. And that's what we've had, but we've not had it yet. Yup. I understand the last two winters we've had, not counting this one, we had a foot of snow each winter. That was it.  And the reason that I wanted to clarify what we were talking about is because not everyone is up on their,
02:53their weather lore. And if you want to learn about it, the old farmer's almanac talks about this stuff all the time. It'll even tell you when to cut your hair. Yes, it will. It will tell you when to breed your cows. It will tell you everything. We do a lot of stuff based off of the almanac and the cycles. We like it and it works that way. They've been doing it that way for hundreds of years. Why would we change it? Yeah, if it works, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't fix it. Exactly.
03:22All right. So tell me about your homestead and what you do. We started full on homesteading  last year. I've been staying at home for about three years now with the girls  and  I got a few quail and then I got some ducks and I got some chickens  and I started a hatchery.  We wanted to gear more towards sustainability  and
03:51I had a lot of hormone issues and we had some fertility issues and I started falling in the rabbit hole of herbalism.  And that brought me closer to my spirituality because it allowed me to learn about the land and the things that are provided here that are local that I can forage,  but that also heal my body. And that led us into homesteading and it blew up.  You fell down the rabbit hole.
04:19Literally with everything Just right in like Alice  Mm-hmm. Yep. Absolutely. That's how it happens. You get sucked in and you and you learn things and you're like what else is there? Yes, and now my family I Usually they come to me for little things. We don't get sick in my house a lot  So they're always like what are you doing? What are you using and I'll be like, well, here's some tea and
04:46I say community herbalist because I just offer consultations to people now at this point and if they want product,  I just let them have it. And that gets them an entryway into this  and it's an amazing place. It really is. um I am trying so hard to remember  to this spring, get um bird netting over my elderberry plants. Yes. Because they're trees.
05:15Which means we're gonna have to figure out a way to throw it over the top of the trees and they're at least six feet tall.  I would just grab a ladder  and tie some rocks to the other end of your net so it's heavier when you toss it. Yep. And that will help.  I have a friend that I used to teach with and she has a farm that's about two  minutes from my house  and they have a light.
05:42Grove of elderberry that's wild and I made four gallons of syrup this summer. Wow. Okay. So  I'm going to ask you because I keep looking it up and I keep thinking I need to make a bookmark and I always forget and have to look it up again.  What do you do with the berries to make it into syrup? Do you put them through a juicer? How do do it?
06:02You boil them on the stove. There are some people that will make an oxymilk first with apple cider vinegar, which allows it to be more shelf stable.  But what I do is  I put all of the berries into a big pot and I boil that down on a slow cooker for like seven hours.  Some people boil it because you have to  use that heat to break down  the bad chemicals in the elderberry because they have cyanides in them.
06:32from the seeds. But when you do that, that breaks that down, that heat breaks that down and it makes it tolerable for you to use. Okay. So I don't even know what the inside of an elderberry looks like. Is it a little tiny seed or is it, is it like-  So you know how like blackberries, each blackberry little pod has a seed in it that's about the same size of the berry? Yes. It's about the same. Okay. And then  after it boils down, I run it through a fine mesh strainer, put
07:01equal part honey to it and refrigerate it. Okay. Can you  okay. So  we have a pressure canner and we have a water bath canner. Can you can it too? You can if you use I believe the shelf stable version. I don't make the shelf stable version so it needs to be refrigerated. So it's only good for about three to four weeks  on um outside of the refrigerator but then it lasts for about six months in refrigerator.
07:30Okay, so it might be easier just to put it in the refrigerator. Yes, and there are tons of recipes. uh There is the Appalachian Forager. She's from Eastern Kentucky. She's got a big following on Facebook as well. She has a wonderful shelf stable recipe for it.  I've just not tried it yet. Okay, I'll have to look her up too because she might be somebody I want to talk to on the podcast. she was the possum festival queen as well, I believe. She's cool. She is amazing. She's big into fungus and mushrooms.
08:00So she's, she's who  got me started. found her and I was like, if she can do this, I can do this. She's not far from me. And I, she's,  I, oh, she's amazing. I'm going to have to look her up. Okay. So  I didn't mean to go off on a tangent about elderberries, but every time somebody brings up um foraging, it's the first thing comes into my head and we have been here for five years.  I have not gotten a single elderberry yet because the birds get to them before we do. They are so quick.
08:30Yep. And they're so quick. And that's why if it's the minute you have to watch them about every single day, the minute that they start ripening, you got to grab them. Yeah. The minute that they're good, grab them. The birds will get them. Cause if you go back the next day, they'll be gone.  Uh huh. Oh yeah. The birds love them. Yes. And it's so funny because I didn't even know we had these two elderberry trees until the second summer we were here. And I was like, I swear that's elderberry.
08:56And my husband said, okay, we'll look up how to identify it. And I did. And I said, does it have thorns?  And he said,  no. And I said, that's elderberry.  I have a little bush that's growing in like my tree line. It's only ever had like three flowers on it. So it's not really worth breaking anything off of to use for myself. just leave it for the birds to carry around and hopefully they'll spread some more. Yeah. But, um, when I saw it, I saw the flowers and I was like, Oh, what is that?
09:26And then I learned that it is also  very easily mistaken for em nightshade  and also wild carrot.  like, not nightshade, hemlock. Yes. So hemlock and elderberry and wild carrot all favor a lot. So you have to be very particular, but they're  all larger plants than each other. Like wild carrot looks more like  a wild flower.
09:56And hemlock grows up to like 10 feet. Yeah. And hemlock has some, has some medicinal properties, but if you're not careful, it'll kill you. Yes,  it will. And it's spreading so much in our area that I've offered to come and pull it  and remove it for people so their kids don't get into it  and things like that. Cause it's dangerous even to touch if you're not careful. Cause it has that powder on it. Yeah.
10:27So,  yup. Do you guys have wild plum that grows in Kentucky?  We don't. have, um, pawpaw trees  and,  um, I've never found one, but those are common here. Well, we have wild plum all over Minnesota and it's one of the first trees that blooms in the spring.  I would love plum jam. Uh-huh. Oh my goodness. We have a, we have, uh
10:54It's really hard to explain. We have a wild plum tree, but it was actually five that grew right tight together.  it looks like a massive wild plum tree, but it's actually five different trunks. So you have a little grove. Yeah, it's really weird. It looks like one tree and then you walk up and you're like, oh, there's five trunks here. All together, like touching each other.  It's really bizarre. And my husband picked some and brought them in just for fun this fall. And I
11:22They have little spots on them because they're buggy. not going to spray a wild plum tree. And I basically like cut it in half, washed it, cut it in half, took the pit out and ate the plum. And it was so good. They're so good. So sweet. And I said to him, said, if you and the boys want to have a plum picking party this fall, I said, I will help you make wild plum jam. And he said,
11:48This year, 2026, that's what we're going to do. We're going to try to get enough Oh, that's so exciting. Yep. Oh, I wish you were closer to me. Well, maybe if we make it, I can let you know and I can ship you a jar. Yes, I would pay for it. You don't have to, and it's not allowed. We cannot. In Minnesota, we are not allowed to ship anything that is bought. Bought. Okay, got you. But I can send it to you as a gift and no one Absolutely. I would love that.
12:18Well, I will see what happens.  I'll have a little box together and send you some remedies as well. Because there's some I can say I can send things as long as it's not glass.  Yeah, and we can send a glass jar. It's fine. We just can't I just can't sell anything that I make  that I cannot ship it.  What are like,  I'm unfamiliar because of course, it states very but what are like your all's cottage laws there?  Okay.
12:45This is one of my favorite and not favorite subject to talk about ever.  In Minnesota, there is a cottage food  registration.  It's not a license. It's called a registration.  And you sign up, you register for this registration and you can sell things out of your home kitchen, but they have to be shelf stable products. Right. So  no cheesecake.  Um,  no oh
13:14No buttercream frosting. Right. No, no dairy that hasn't been cooked into something. Right. We, I think it's similar here. Nothing that has to be refrigerated or warmed up. Yes. Yep. And, uh, the other thing is that in, I think it said 2027 in the email that I got, we're going to be able to ship our products within Minnesota. Well, that
13:43opens up some new doors.  helps. Yes. But that's good. But it'd be really nice if we could ship anywhere. That would be great. Yeah, that would be. think I'm not real, I don't deal with food stuff. And when I talked to  my local health department about the herbal stuff that I was doing,  with Kentucky, you have to be careful because of the realm of cosmetics.  So if it can absorb into the skin,
14:13You have to be very careful with what you call things. That's why soaps are okay. Like goat milk soap and things, but you can't make lotion  and sell it because it falls in the realm of cosmetic. So you have to be really careful.  That's why I geared more towards, I'll give consultations. I don't really like to sell my products, but I'll teach you  how you could do this for yourself at home.  Do you make lotions, Corey?  No, I make some balms and salves, but I've never
14:42dabbled in lotion.  Yeah, I tried making a lotion for my kid. He had some really dry skin on his face and he  wanted a homemade remedy. And I used um cocoa butter and coconut oil and something else. Can't remember what it was now.  And I was trying to make a lotion and that was what the recipe that I pulled off the internet said it was, said it was a lotion.
15:06And  when I put it all together and stirred it, it was like a lotion. And the next day it had set up like a salve. And I'm like, missing an ingredient. I don't even know how to make it lotion. And I don't know the science behind That's why I like salves. I like something that I can like  dip my finger in. And  I  use beeswax.  And however much beeswax you use will determine the  stiffness of your salve, which just works better for me. m
15:34If I'm using anything for the face, I'm going with tallow. Yep. Yep. I didn't have any tallow at the time, so I ended up using the cocoa butter. Cocoa butter's great. Shea butter's great. I love  aloe butter.  Aloe butter's a good one too. Yeah. The thing that we discovered though when I made this for him is that cocoa butter smells like chocolate. Didn't realize that it would. And especially if it's raw cocoa butter.
16:04Yep. And so he went to use it and he said, my face smells like a of hot cocoa, hot cocoa. And I well, I said, it's too bad you don't have a girlfriend right now because she would be kissing your face all over because most women love hot cocoa. They do. We do like hot cocoa.  It smells, it's, just such a rich smell because of the cacao, but it's so  fresh.
16:33I like hazelnut for that reason too, because it smells rich. It's a really good fragrance. Oh, absolutely. I love hazelnut coffee. Yes. And you can smell it when it brews through the entire house. It's... Yeah, husband made coffee scented soap last weekend. I it was two weekends ago. And the whole house smelled like coffee all weekend. I was just like, can make coffee scented.
17:02Soap anytime you want. Does he make goat soap? Nope. He makes just the cold process. I gotcha.  Cause we have friends that have goats, but they actually sell their goat milk to people so that they can drink it. So they don't always have any extra. And well, it's a very lengthy process to do goat. My mom used to, we raised Nigerians at my mom's for a long time and we would milk them and make soaps with them. And the curing process is very
17:31lengthy comparative to like cold processing. But  we loved it. My mom, she loved making soap, but she  got busy. She started teaching and  the goats were not suffering, but she wasn't spending the time that she wanted to with them. So it was better for her to discontinue her herd. Yeah, it happens. It takes time and it takes energy to raise animals.
17:57It does the stewardship and it is a dedication that a lot of people don't have  and it's hard work and discipline. And even if you're sick or cold  or it's ugly outside, they still have to have care. Yes. I always say that when you take on animals, you're taking on another kid. Yes.  And we, have hundreds of chickens, goats, or not goats. have sheep, quail.
18:28I  have rabbits now, we have pigs. They all have care. They all have to be cared for, but they're all like my children. Yep. it's,  again, I'm going to say it again. It's so hard when you have animals because  you  love those animals. And my dog yesterday, no, two nights ago was acting off.
18:54She was acting like she was starting to not feel good and I was like, please don't make me worry about you right now. Everything is going okay.  Do not be the problem child. She's the only  dog. And I got up  the next morning and she was back to her normal self. But I looked at her I said, thank you for not making me worry about you today. Right. Yeah. Like I can't handle that today. I had a bunny that was acting funny the other day. We had moved some cages around because I had a bunch of grow outs and I was looking at them. was like, tricks dude.
19:24I don't know what's wrong with you, but like we can't be having this. And the next day he was fine. Yup. It's so, it's so  heart wrenching when you think something's wrong. And then if it turns out to be actually wrong, it's even worse. Yes. And I think  it bothers me in the world that we're in because people don't understand.
19:50the difference between that some of my animals are pets and some of them are not pets, but they still receive the same amount of care and love.  And I would not let anybody suffer and
20:07That care that we give to them doesn't differ just because we choose a different timeline for specific animals for the needs that they provide on our farms. Yeah, absolutely. We just lost a chicken yesterday and my husband came in from feeding the chickens and he was like, we're down a chicken. And  I said, you kind of thought maybe we might be down one sometime soon. And he said, yeah, he said, I, I wish there was a vet to take chickens to.
20:37And I said, if they didn't expect you to pay the cost of 50 chickens to take care of the chicken, that would help too. Yeah. And that's the thing is with you, you have to, as a homesteader or a farmer or animal steward, you have to make those decisions. Like, am I going to pay a thousand dollars to take one chicken to the vet?  Or  am I going to do everything that I have in my resources and power? There are things that I keep here on hand.
21:06I've spent a lot of time learning how to doctor the chickens through the seasons. So that way we stay ahead as a preventative maintenance. Anytime there's a shift in the air, they get oregano oil. Yep. And that cuts respiratory issues about like 75 % on my farm at least. We're going to have to try that. We put apple cider vinegar in their water.
21:34I like the oregano oil because  oregano actually acts as an antimicrobial.  And so it's  wonderful for your gut health, but it will also take care of any kind of bacteria that could be happening that doesn't need to. I'm going to have to add that to the list. Thank you, Corey. You're so welcome. love it. We,  um, I use Tygaard  if there needs to be treatment, of course, which is available on Amazon.
22:04but  I also get oregano oil in a dilute form and it's on Amazon too. Okay.  I will have to look that up and acquire some and add that. think,  I think we'll probably still do the apple cider vinegar because  it to help  too. Yeah. Our chickens have been laying humongous eggs lately because we have a light in the coop.  Yes. And that's
22:33People are like, it's cold. They're not like, it's not the cold that does that. It's the light. sun went away. Yep. They need 12 to 14 hours of sunlight a day to produce eggs. Yep.  And people don't understand that. And you can,  which a lot of people do do artificial. I have so many  birds that I don't have to, we still get enough that I have a plethora of eggs.  Um, but with my quail, I have to substitute light sometimes where I won't get anybody laying. Okay.
23:03Um, I have a question about your quail. Do you have a lot, do you have a lot of quail? Yes. Do you sell the eggs to restaurants? I have not ever had anybody inquire. We considered it, especially being so close to Nashville. Um, but I am not producing that many. Um, we just hatched a close to a hundred in September and I've been going through and regrouping everybody. So I've got four.
23:32No, five different coveys with at least 20 hens right now, but I've not been  supplementing light for the last month. Okay. So what do you do with all the eggs when they're producing full tilt? My dad pickles them. Okay. They either get pickles, he eats them, he likes them as well, or I feed them back out to the flocks or the dogs. Okay. And they're little tiny eggs, right? Yes. I can just toss them out to them and they just eat them.
24:03Okay. That makes sense.  Um, if you ever do have a chance to sell them to restaurants, you should look into it because restaurants really like quail eggs. Yes. And I thought we have some interesting restaurants here in Bowling Green, of course,  because it's like the third largest city in Kentucky, but there's just not a huge market for it right here.  For me, at least that I found, and I may not have done enough.
24:32digging, but maybe I need to, have some friends.  need to dig around more. Yeah. I mean, I'm not telling you, you have to do it. I'm just saying, there is a huge market for that. Yeah. And even like the duck eggs too. Yeah.  I was very surprised. We were selling our friends, duck eggs in our farm stand this summer. Could not keep them stocked in the farm. People love them. Yeah.
25:03And people, there are tons of people around here that like the quail eggs too because of the nutritional value that they offer compared to a chicken egg. Yep. hear that a lot. They've got, they're so nutritious.  I don't, I'm not an eggy person, which is so weird because I have so many birds that lay eggs, but  I usually  gift eggs. think in the last six months, my male lady has gotten a hundred dozen eggs.
25:33She's the best, so she gets all of the eggs.  Nice. I'm sure she appreciates it. She's wonderful. But we also raise button quail. Not just, I have catornix and buttons, which are like oriental to look at quail, and they're tiny. And when they hatch, they're about the size of a bumblebee. Oh my God. They are so little, but they're so fun.  And they whistle, and it's like,
26:03And it's so cute. I didn't even know there were button quail. I learned something new every day on this podcast. They're not really worth anything to a homestead, but somebody that would want maybe a little ornamental bird, but didn't want like a parakeet. They're great. They covey the same way. They are a little bit flighty, but they're so cute.
26:31Yeah, there's a lot of they're so cute on a homestead. swear. They will. there's because it's everything's so cute. How do you not like farm animals? Yeah, it's ridiculous. I am a sucker for a baby goat. My  husband's mom or my husband's mother-in-law  and his sister all or my mother-in-law and his sister all raise goats. We have hair sheep. Yeah,  I prefer the sheep to the goat. They
27:00behave a little bit better.  do. And it's funny because my husband and I have talked off and on for 20 years about how great it would be to get a couple of baby goats and raise them. We have been on a 3.1 acre homestead for five years. Do you think we've gotten any baby goats? No. Do you know why? Because they're a pain in the butt. Right. That's what I told Jared. We've only got about five acres right here, but we've got neighbors. And I was like,
27:28Honey, the pigs get out enough. don't need the goats getting out too.  which we have wonderful neighbors. They love all of the things that we have because the chickens and the roosters especially, they crow all day every day because there's so many of them. They just talk to each other and they're like, we love it. It's so funny. We get so tickled at it. And I'm like, I'm so glad you don't hate me. Yeah. Our neighbor, our closest neighbor is a quarter mile away and I wish we lived that for far.
27:58They are industrializing our area. We're hoping to move soon,  um, on further away from  Bowling Green. We're 30 minutes away from Bowling Green and it's still growing fast and fast.  So we can't get away from it fast enough. Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with that because the best thing we ever did was move out of the town that we lived in.
28:27So we were right in town. We were townies. And now we live in the middle of cornfields and soybean fields and we love it. And our neighbors have a rooster who crows every morning. I hear him at 4 a.m. and he's got the softest crow. Like if he's crowing hard, something's wrong. Right. And they have at least one donkey and I can hear it bray now and then.  We would love one. And they have they have at least one.
28:56bovine, I don't know if it's a steer or a cow. And every once in a while I will hear it doing the lowing sound that they do. The really low, soft moo. I grew up on a dairy, I love cows. Uh huh. And I just, when I get up in the morning, I sit on the porch with my coffee and I just listen to all the animals waking up at our neighbor's farm. And I'm like, hey, better them than us. Cause I get to hear it, but I don't have to take care of the critters.
29:22Well, like we're in one of the smallest counties in Kentucky  and I'm nestled right in Mammoth Caves back door. Like I'm five minutes from the whole entire park. We're from Edmondson County, which holds the majority of the park itself.  So you wouldn't think that it would be as populated,  it's Bowling Green is growing. So now Edmondson County is growing.
29:49And so on the side of the river that we're on, on the South side, it's just becoming more populated. I want to go to the other side where it's not, and there's not so many people. And so we wouldn't be going far, but far enough that it's not populated as bad. Yeah. Yep. I understand, Corey. I really do. Which is just, I think it's just happening everywhere now.
30:18It's at pop, people are moving.  There've been an influx  of people from California here, which is great. I love that. Come live, come live here. It's not a slow life. It's not simple either, but it's not as fast as the city. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.  All right. I try to keep these to half an hour, Corey, and we are there. was an absolute joy talking with you. Where can people find you?
30:45They can find me on Facebook,  Mystic Roots Homestead,  Simples and Apothecary, Herbal Simples and Apothecary.  I have a TikTok page as well. TTS, Mystic Roots. I do TikTok shop, wellness stuff that  I align with and then of course the bunnies.  But that's the two places they can find me. You're not on Instagram yet?  I have a personal Instagram, but I don't use it.
31:14I don't know. I got so focused on TikTok and the farm page on Facebook. I was worried to take on too much at one time. That's probably smart. The best advice I've gotten since I started the podcast two years ago  is to pick a couple platforms and stick with them, the ones that work for you. Yes. And that's what they said. That's what I heard as well. And that's what I did. And so far it's working really well.  I would like to advance more in meta because I feel like
31:44There's more growth as a content creator, but as far as like, if you're doing anything with affiliate, it's TikTok right now. Yeah, I don't even, I have a TikTok account only because my daughter posts things and a friend of mine posts things and they're like, you should have a TikTok account so you can see what we're doing. It's fun over there sometimes that people can be mean because there's of course billions of people can be mean anywhere. I don't understand that. It's free to be kind to just go on about your day.
32:14I'm going to say this. I haven't said this on the podcast ever before. takes  less muscles to smile than it does to frown. And I feel like it takes less muscles to be nice than it does to be mean.  I agree. I agree wholeheartedly.
32:31I don't know why people have to be mean. It's one of my biggest pet peeves ever and I try not to talk about it it just makes me mad.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. If you want to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  And I've started a second podcast with  Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook.  The podcast is called
32:59Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. There are two episodes posted. Love that. Yeah. And we have a website that is, building it. It's like three pages in right now. And that's gritandgracenheartland.com. I will run over there and give you a follow. Everybody else should too. Mary, this was such a wonderful experience for me. It was really fun and I learned new things. I love you guys because you teach me things every time.
33:29Well, I would love to chat with you another time. Anytime you let me know if you want to. Yeah, I would love to hear more and half an hour is not nearly enough time for everything I want to ask. So we'll do it again in about six months. Okay. Sounds good, Mary. We'll talk to you later. Thank you, Corey. Thank you.  Okay.
 

O'Connor Family Acres - Surprise Piglets and a Soap Business Begins

Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres. 
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres in Le Sueur, Minnesota. It's a hyper local episode. Welcome Tracy, how are you? Hi Mary, thanks for having me. I am doing well today. It seems like it's going to be a little warmer today here, so very excited. And we're supposed to get freezing rain later today too.
00:28I mean, why wouldn't we? It's Minnesota. So  yeah, it's very gray, but that's why we're warmer. so yeah,  Tracy's been on the show before. It was a little over a year ago. And we talked about that you had just gotten pigs,  mangalitas, mangalitas. Yep.  And um that was the newest thing then. And Tracy has been selling her duck eggs in the summertime, all this past summer.
00:58at our farm stand, at our place. So it's been kind of fun. Yeah, it's been a great collaboration. I really appreciated the opportunity and it's been nice because we,  springtime and summer, we are  overflowing with duck eggs and then they take the winter off  and  know, hunker down, I guess.  Yeah, about the time they stopped really laying, we had a couple of people stop in and ask if we had duck eggs and I was like, nope, they're on vacation until April.
01:27It's very true.  they yeah we and you can put heat and light in the coop But we kind of let them follow their natural cycle. That's just you know, the way we've we decided to do it. So Yeah,  when they lay they lay very proficiently and when they don't they don't so You know, so what else is new on the farm in 2025 because I didn't talk to you on the podcast since December of 2024
01:57Yeah, so we've really just been expanding the goats.  We've had some baby goats this past spring and so they've been doing really well. um Getting kind of a wrangle on what the ideal number of ducks are.  So we've been working on that. And then we had  baby piglets  unexpectedly this fall. I mean, kind of unexpectedly. We knew the boar was in there with her, but...
02:25We didn't realize she was pregnant. that was a fun uh adventure.  And thankfully, our mama pig, Fiona, her name's Fiona,  has been doing  really well with the piglets. So  we have six  gorgeous little baby piglets running around. How old are they now?  Oh,  they would be about two and a half months. OK. Yeah.
02:53They were right before Halloween. just, yeah, just over about almost two and a half months. And they are so adorable. Like so adorable. I saw the pictures on Facebook that you posted, but I couldn't tell from the pictures how big they were when they were born. Were they the size of your hand or were they bigger than that? Yeah, they were probably the size of two of my hands, I would say. But they were, I mean, they were teeny teeny.
03:23um And then of course it was October in Minnesota, so we got to pick them up and bring them in the barn and mama did great with that. She was  not overly thrilled but was not aggressive, which was great. And then  we were able to, after a bit of time, coax her into the barn. um And we had the heat lamp set up in there and  they have a big enough paddock where they can
03:49go to the other side or come back and be under the heat lamp if they want. And they are just, they're doing super great in there. So yeah, looking forward to figuring out what we're going to do with. So what'll be eight pigs now, two adults. We have the male boar and then the female. And then we have the six piglets and of the six, I think only one is male. So all the rest are female as well too.
04:19Oh wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah.  Okay. Well, you might be in the market to sell a couple sows in the spring.  Exactly.  Exactly. I don't think they're called sows until they have babies. don't know  what version Yeah, I'd have look. It's... guilt? Are they guilt maybe? Yeah. Yeah,  I think that's right. I don't know. I'd have to Google it and I don't...
04:46want to make the clicky clacky noises on the keyboard right now. So yeah, no, I feel you. Yes, exactly. And then I've been doing soap. Soap has been my new adventure this year. yeah, tell me the story on how that happened because I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, I kind of fell into it, which was awesome. So my neighbor has the soapies is the name of the business.
05:12um And the soap bees has been around for 20 years, over 20 years. So my neighbor, Anne, who is amazing, um was looking to retire and not do soap anymore. um And  she asked if I would be interested in taking over the business. And so we made some soap together and I was like, oh my gosh, I love this. Absolutely, I would do it. So I have a full time jobby job, um you know, so it's really more of a
05:41you know, a part-time  pay for my hobby kind of job.  You know, maybe make a little extra money, but not, you know, I'm not trying to do it full-time, full-time, but um so I do probably one,  one show a month or so  and um just, you know, direct sales then  and um
06:04She mentored me for about seven months. made soap together.  I have her recipes, so it's all the same recipes that she's been  using for the last 20 years. um And the soap is amazing. Absolutely love it. And then  I ventured into,  also do, we do a shaving soap puck.  And then  I also ventured into dish soap this year. So I've been making that bar of
06:33of dish soap. So that's new just in the last couple of months. um So yeah, I was really fortunate to have an amazing mentor  and um you know, she told me the do's and don'ts so I didn't have to learn those on my own through  trial and error, although I've made plenty of trial and error my own self once I was flying solo. So, but it's been good. It's been really good. Good. Have you had a batch Cs on you yet?
07:03Absolutely. Yes.  Yeah.  It's  not fun at all.  And I just had my first batch  I  made.  So the soap or the shaving soap recipe is less because I put them in the round molds instead of the big square loaf molds. Yeah. And so it's less butters and oils  and  I put in the fragrance for a one tray of the square ones.
07:33instead of the lesser. And so now I have this chalky,  crumbly soap and I'm like, oh great.  So that batch is  going to get tossed probably. But yeah. hate it when that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I've had a few where, um, so the other thing too is the sense that she was using the company that she went through. I took over the business in January and
08:01end of January, they went out of business. I was like 90 % of the  sense that she had been using were from that company. And I was like,  okay. So now I've  been kind of trial and erroring, erroring, trial and erroring soaps,  our fragrances. And so that's been a whole process as well too. But I feel like I have a good core group now of
08:27sense and then I just kind of mix stuff in when I feel like something new. So that's been good. So what are your usual sense that you make? Yeah, the big sellers are, mean, oatmeal, milk and honey hands down is the like best seller and I put ground up oatmeal in there as well too. So it has a little bit of exfoliating action and also it's very soothing for the skin. So I have people who
08:56have sensitive skin that order, I mean, like 15 bars at a time.  They just love it. And then um Angel Smiles is another big seller for us.  Sweet Rain has been an amazing one.  But I have a lot of the tried and trues. I have a cotton,  I have a eucalyptus, uh lemongrass is my personal all-time favorite.  I love the lemon smell. That's a good one.
09:26Um, and then I tried a new one this fall called crackling birch. And that one has been a great seller. So that one smells really good too. Nice. Um, Kyle and I have had one batch of soap seized on us and it didn't all the way, but we just, we just went ahead and poured it because it was still pourable, but it was starting to get thick, thick. Yeah. One hadn't poured it and let it cure.
09:54And it turned out that it was usable, but it was ugly as sin. And so we didn't share it with anybody. We just used it till it was gone, because it was fine. It was just, it just looked wrong. When we sliced it, had like little air bubbles in it. Yeah. Which you're I actually had a batch of eucalyptus that did that.  And the best advice I ever got was  just...
10:19Basically just sell it. Don't worry about it because at the end of the day people understand that it's handmade and that You know, it's you're not a machine pumping it out. There's imperfections. It's gonna look a little different sometimes um and I was  Honestly, I mean there's times when I've been like, I'm gonna mix these colors and it doesn't work, know, or I'm gonna do I'm gonna make this. Oh, I did um
10:45I did one for Valentine's Day last year  that was going to be, was the, the fragrance was sensual. So I'm like, oh, that's perfect. I'll do red. It'll be great. Right.  Um, it turned brown.  So I was like, wow, that's  not very sensual.  Um,  so I ended up calling it Woodland Bouquet and it was one of my best sellers. What did it smell like?
11:14It smelled like woodland flowers basically when I first smelled it and that's the other thing too, which I'm sure you guys know from doing it.  Sometimes what you smell in the bottle when you get it is different  once it mixes with the oils and the lye and you know all the stuff. And so when I opened it, it smelled like, I mean, old lady perfume to me, honestly, like in a not good way.  And I was like, oh no.
11:43But once it cured through the soap, oh, it smelled so good. It was just like, yep, like walking in and picking a bouquet of woodland flowers. That's what it smelled like. So that's why I called it woodland bouquet. And I figured,  you know, brown woodland. That's okay.  Yep. And honestly, not everybody is hung up on the names.  They want whatever they want. And if it smells good and it does the job, they're going to buy it anyway. uh It's so true.
12:12Kyle made a batch of leather soap the other day, last weekend. eh That  leather scent that we get from Bramble Berry is  so strong when  you open the bottle em and it gives me a headache. So he told me he's going to make leather soap and I said, let me get some Tylenol on board before you start because it's going to make my head pound. And he was like, okay, I'm going to start in an hour. was like, okay, let me go grab two Tylenol right now.
12:41Yeah. Did not end up with a headache, which was great. But the reason I'm even sharing about the leather soap is that I would never want a soap bar that smelled like this stuff when you opened the bottle. It's very, very strong and it's very chemically smelling. Yeah. But the bars of soap when they're done, they smell just like walking into a Wilson's leather shop. It's so good. Yeah. It's so nice. Yeah. It is so true that there are some where you open the bottle and you're like,
13:11And there are some that are just not my cup of tea, but they sell well. So when I'm making them, I'm like, oh, I'm going to smell like this  all day.  But they sell really great. And someone had asked me that actually at the last show I was at. And they were like, are there any scents that you don't like? And I go, oh, absolutely. But I will not tell you which ones they are.  I'll never admit it.
13:40Yeah, and I actually told you wrong. made the leather ones two weekends ago.  He made coffee soaps last weekend and that's always a happy day in my house because everything smells like coffee  all day long when he makes that. And then as it's curing, the whole upstairs smells like coffee.  Oh, and that's got to be your absolute favorite because you are a coffee fanatic. I love it. I do. I love the coffee soaps when they're curing because
14:05It just permeates the whole house and it smells like there's brewing coffee even  though there isn't because I'm down to a,  we make a pot in the morning  and I only have about two cups a day now. Whereas I used to drink a pot and a half a day in my younger days. Yeah, I hear you. I feel like as,  as we get older, things affect us differently, especially caffeine and alcohol and you know, all the things, all the fun stuff, rude.
14:33Well, I used to say all the time I would sleep when I'm dead and now sleep is my favorite thing ever. So that has changed too. It's so true. I feel like that's a whole nother podcast though. Yeah, the one about peri, menopause and menopause. exactly. The minute you hit 40, 45, everything changes. It's so true. It's so true. Okay.
15:00So I just made back to sorry, back to soap. I just made a fresh batch of my first batch of coffee soap. So I'm going to have to bring it over and compare it with your, like do a smell comparison with yours. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I got to wait for it to cure. So well, we can, we can trade. you like ours, we can give you a bar of ours. And if I like yours, we can take a bar of yours. Yeah, that'll be fun. That'll be so fun.  I love it. I love that you're doing so and
15:30Kyle said to me the other day, said, you know, he said, I think I just want to make the business a hobby. Because we don't live in an area where it's going to really make money. And I said, that's true. And he said, so we should probably fold the LLC. And I was like, before you do that, said, I've got a podcast and I've got a second podcast starting here.
15:54let's keep the LLC for a little bit because the podcasts might actually grow this year more than they have. And he was like, okay.  So, so we're basically gonna still sell at the farmer's market and still sell at the farm stand. But, his big dreams for being, you know,  rich off of our little business are  done.  Yeah, I don't, I feel like anybody that I talked to that does it, you know, on a smaller scale is.
16:24You have to have two jobs or you have to have a breadwinner and someone doing it, you know, separately because there's just with the cost of everything, there's just no way to, you know, unless you're like really hustling and really, I mean, you have to, you have to really dive in. And to your point, I mean, there's so much in the market that you have to kind of, you know, really
16:53I don't know, really hit a sweet spot  or, you know, travel a Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard. Yeah. There's got to be something unique because if you're just making the same thing everybody else is making, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yep. Well, and I think like I've definitely been at shows where you can tell vendors when you can tell the vendors who are doing it for their sole income versus people who are not. mean, they're sometimes it feels there's like this
17:23energy where it's really like intense. went with a friend. I met a friend  who started doing charcuterie boards with the em acrylic inlay. ah And I was like, oh, bless your heart because I can't imagine working with acrylic, but  she does beautiful work. so we were chatting, you know, shows and things like that because she knew I had done some shows and you
17:52How do I figure out which shows I want to do and yada yada. And we were walking around this little vendor fair and we went to a soap booth and this lady had a laundry stick stain, which I love a good laundry stick stain. So I was like, oh, can you tell me what's in your laundry, you know, in your soap here, in your laundry soap, stain soap stick, I don't know, whatever. And she was like, no, I cannot tell you. And I'm like,
18:23okay.  It was just so she's like, and then she went into the, 12 reasons why she won't tell me what's in there. But we were walking away and I told my friend, I was like, mean, good luck trying to find the right ratio of those ingredients to get the exact same thing. said, I literally have my ingredients on my label. I was like, you know, but good luck trying to figure out how to mix those seven butters and oils together to get the exact recipe I have, you know.
18:52Um, so I just feel like sometimes people are really intense with it. Yeah. I have stopped asking people questions like that because, and if I do, I'm like, okay, I don't want the secret sauce thing. Just give me a basic idea of how you make the thing because people do get really testy and I'm like, I don't want to steal your idea. I just want to know what I'm going to be putting in my body or on my body.
19:20Yes, exactly. Like knowing what's in there, like knowing it has coconut oil or shea butter or whatever is one thing. But if you're like, oh, I need to know, do you have seven ounces of this or do you have like, that's a fully different question. But just knowing what's in there. I what if you're, I had a, had a lady who came up and I have coconut oil and she's extremely allergic to, one of the ingredients, maybe it wasn't coconut, it was something.
19:51And I was like, oh, yep, don't touch it. It's in there. oh It's important to know what you're  putting in there. then there's, people have  certain, um they want certain things in products or don't want certain things in products and that's your personal choice. if it doesn't align with what you want to utilize, then  you shouldn't have to.
20:20Yeah, it's kind of crazy, but  I've really been enjoying it. The shows are fun. It's nice, especially since I work from home. It's nice to be able to get out and  see people and interact with people. um And for the most part, everybody's been extremely supportive, extremely friendly. um You know, some shows are great successes and some not so much. uh that's, you just kind of take the good with the bad. And you know, I always look at it as an opportunity to get out and try new things.
20:49Yes, and you are a social butterfly, unlike me, who is basically a caterpillar still in the chrysalis. You're so sweet. I always say I'm an introvert that presents as an extrovert. I am great small group and great one-on-one. If you get me in a massive crowd of people, I'm like, ugh. I still force myself to do it, but I am...
21:17I'm much better one-on-one in small group, which is perfect for affairs and stuff because it's small, you  you're talking to individual people. You're not having to, you know, speak in front of large groups or that's not definitely. I can do it. I don't love it. You know, I'm sitting in my sunroom right now looking at the birds outside, which is perfect. um I love your sunroom. Your sunroom is so cool. Thank you.
21:45It is, it was a big selling point for their buying point for the house. guess it would be buying point. um Yeah, we were, I really love this room and it's my absolute favorite. Thank you, Mary.  Does it stay warm in the wintertime? It stays. Yeah, it does.  There's in floor heat, which is nice. um So it works out really well. um So the thank you to the people who developed this.
22:12end of the house before we bought it.  It's beautiful though, so it's great. And I just refilled the bird feeders this morning, so, I knew we were going to be chatting and I'm like, oh, you can sit out here and relax a little bit while we, while we, while I get to talk to my friend Mary. Yeah, I'm going to fill in the listener here. I, my husband and I have been over to Tracy and her husband Paul's house once. I have been there once and the sunroom she's talking about.
22:40It basically is uh windows on  one whole wall. And I can't remember if the other short wall is windows or not. Is it just one more? Yeah, it's got one like big sliding glass door basically. m Yep. uh behind their house is a ravine.  the glass wall looks out into the trees  that are at the top of the hill before the ravine.  And uh it's the most peaceful thing to sit there and
23:07have a cup of coffee and chat and just be looking outside at the birds and the bird feeder. It is my absolute favorite. Thank you so much. Yeah. And I, um, you know, I have house plants in there too, so you kind of get the oxygen and the greenery going. So yeah. Yeah. We need to have you guys over again soon. we do. And today is not it because I'm not going anywhere in freezing rain. That is fair. But, uh,
23:37Yeah, my favorite room in our house is my kitchen because  I've always had either an apartment with a kitchen, which is not fun.  And the house that Kyle and I had before had a galley style kitchen and it was very small and it wasn't a room that you could sit in and have a cup of coffee. And I love our little breakfast nook thing at the end of the kitchen because we didn't have that before. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and for the listeners, we've been to your house a couple of times and
24:05There's an amazing island in the middle of the kitchen where we get to sit and have coffee and chat a bit while the boys are out talking garden stuff. And uh we've had dinner over to where we've sat in  the nook and had dinner, which was great. It's great conversation and it's warm and  welcoming and I love it.  Thank you.
24:29And our little nook has windows that look outside into the trees too. So I think Tracy's going to have a running theme about wanting to look out into the trees and see the birds.  Exactly. Exactly.  All right. So  I wanted to share this too. Tracy gave us three beautiful kittens about what a month and a half ago, maybe less. That's about right. Yep.  Because we needed some more barn cats because we were down to two.
24:56and two is not enough for humongous pole barn and a 3.1 acre  lot. uh the kittens have decided that they are brave. They have finally come out of the pole barn  and they were up on the steps this morning and they are gorgeous. And anyone who has a ranch or a farm knows that barn cats have their place and they need to be here to do their job. But I also fall in love with them just a little bit.
25:21We were holding off on naming them because we were afraid that they would run away when we let them out of their carrier. They did not. They have stayed. And the long haired grayish,  blackish  one  is Smokey  and she's female. The one that looks just like her but is short haired  is named Shorty because she has short hair. And then there's a long haired orange one that we don't know the gender of yet.  And his name is Junior because he looks just like our other orange barn cat.
25:51And thank you, Tracy, for sharing the kittens with us because they are so special. thank you for taking the kittens because we,  anyone who knows who has a farmer ranch knows they multiply very quickly. So,  um, yeah, no, it's been great. We, I'm glad that they're doing so well and I'm glad they're venturing up to see you, which is good. So they're, they're great. The cats are the, you know, just.
26:20They're  to your point, they have a purpose, right? They're rodent control for sure. And they a really good job. A great job. Yeah. But they are also, you know, they're fun. They're fun to interact with and pet the kittens and, you know, watch the cats do funny things and  they're fun.  So I came out the other day, I went out to feed the goats and the pigs and I turn around and it's, you know, just like late.
26:48dusk so it's almost night but there's just enough light you know yeah um and i turn around and there's cats in the tree like up in the tree over  where the roof is and i'm like what are you doing like there's four cats up there what is happening right now  um and they just you know they were just chilling they went up there after something i'm sure but oh crazy um
27:17The kittens that you gave us, can't remember if was last weekend or the weekend before, whatever the last weekend was when it was actually sunny for an afternoon. We've only had a few of those lately. um All three of the kittens and the older orange cat were out in where the doors are to the pole barn, like where the track is.  They were just roughhousing and rolling each other and then they would be nice and groom each other and they go back to rolling each other.
27:44And I sat there and watched them for 15 minutes because it was just so entertaining to see them playing. Exactly. It's so fun. I know I'll always get caught up, but sometimes when the baby goats are running around, I'll watch them play with each other, have a good time. I sat out there, I threw some hay out for the pigs because they like to kind of burrow and make a nest. so I threw a couple of hay.
28:11pieces of hay over  and the pig was literally picking it up and throwing it and putting it everywhere, strewing it everywhere. And it was just really fun to watch him just love life. um And so that's always, you know, it's such joy. It brings such joy for sure, which is a lot of uh fun. Simple joy.  We humans think that we're the only ones that play.
28:38but almost every animal will play when they're young.  Oh yeah. So apparently it's something we actually all need is to play.  Yes. Yeah. Well, it brings joy for sure. And then seeing other animals, peoples, humans,  know,  laughter  is definitely the best medicine. Someone said that.  I don't know who said it, but I'm glad they said it. Yes.  Agreed.
29:06All right, Tracy, I tried to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there.  Where can people find you?  Yeah, so I have,  we have our farm pages, O'Connor Family Acres um on Facebook and I also have the Soap Bees, which is on Facebook as well. um So those are my two, my farm, you my homestead page and then my soap page.  So both of those are on Facebook and I...
29:36You know,  do so I do ship my soap. um I actually have a customer in Massachusetts I ship to and a customer in Florida that I ship to. So, ah you know, just I post  a list of my sense every now and again, and people just message me through Facebook to order. So very nice. So these on Instagram. ah It is not, but I was actually just looking the other day about setting up an Instagram account. Do you have an Instagram?
30:03I do. don't like Instagram because I still don't understand how the algorithm works. Yeah. Okay. I'm going have to, I'll do a little more research on that. Yes. And I have been asked by customers to set up a website for orders. So that's on my 2026 bucket list, but you know, there's an expense with that. So I also try to keep it as, you know, I try to keep my prices as low as possible. And some of that is, you know,
30:32considering those things, but um so eventually I'll probably get a website together, but right now I'm all on Facebook.  Well, it's free and it works for now.  That is true. That is true. Thank you so much. It was really great to chat with you today. It really was. And I will talk to you after I stop recording about the website thing because I have a couple of things for you. Okay.  Oh, perfect. Love that. Thank you. All right. As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.
31:01And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  And I have a new podcast,  the first long episode. I did a teaser on Friday, but the first long episodes is going to be dropped tomorrow morning.  And the new podcast is called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Which was amazing.  The teaser.
31:24Anyway,  I did listen to it. You guys did a really nice job. It's I think it'll be  it'll mirror this nicely, but with a different focus, which will be awesome. um And you do an amazing job. So I'm excited to hear more about the women in agriculture.  Well, 2026 is the International Women in Agriculture,  sorry, International Year of the Women Farmer. So.
31:51Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I learned that on your podcast. So  women are starting to really step forward and we, Leah and I really wanted to die.  Cannot talk. Talk about it in more depth. There we go. Perfect. Another cup of coffee coming. That's what I hear.  Oh, for sure.  All right, Tracy, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Yeah, thank you for taking the time. Have a great day.
32:21You, too.  Bye.
 

Cole Canyon Farm

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
Built From Dirt : Farm School
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm in Montana.  Morgan's been on the podcast a few times under a different name. So hello, Morgan, how are you? Hello, I'm doing good. Yes, most of your viewers know me as Groovy Grazers, which we're still doing, but...
00:26We had talked about last time trying to come up with a farm name. And so we finally figured it out and it's coal Canyon farm. So we're super excited to finally have that done after two years.  That's a long time to settle on a permanent name.  Yeah. Yeah. It was hard to name the land. We live in a very unique area. We live in canyons, ah but there is  a Canyon battlefield. We were trying to take on like not your atypical Montana name, you know?
00:55It definitely fits. We're excited. We got to come up with our brand next. That's going to be a nightmare. guess trying to get your brand registered here can be really hard and there's not very many like single stick brands left. So that's man. I hope that doesn't take two years, but that's next on her on the chopping block. So  I don't know that we have that situation here. When we started our place, we just picked a name, registered it with the state and that was it.
01:21So the name's okay. I can pick my name without registering that with the state, but I mean, we don't have cattle right now. We have horses um and the sheep don't have to be branded. So it's not like a super big rush, but if I'm going to have horses, especially being in Montana,  going missing is not uncommon or they get out.  Brand, brand, brand. get it. Okay. Brand. It's okay. Yeah. I'm talking like iron brand and like,
01:51either freeze dry or hot iron brand um because that's like one of the next big things that you do in Montana. You pick a name and then you figure out your brand  and people sell some brands for thousands of dollars if they're a single easy one, but it's only 250 bucks to register with that, I think with the state here. So that's not bad. That's one of the less expensive things  to have to do. Okay. Okay. oh
02:19because I'm looking at a computer and because I know Facebook, was thinking brand as in brand like, Oh yeah. I mean, your brand is so important though when you're a farm, right? Like that's why I built it through Groovy Grazers, even though we didn't have a name because I was like, well, this is how we're going to operate anyways. Like having some type of grazing or deal going on, whether it be sheep or whatever, I just knew we were going to eventually be a farm face. And so I didn't want to wait on that. So yeah, like if you're a farm and you don't,
02:49have a Facebook page, you don't have an Instagram.  mean, TikTok is one of those where I'm back and forth on if you really need it, but Facebook and Instagram for sure, or a website. If you don't wanna do social media, it's really hard, you gotta do more advertising and word of mouth, but having a brand is so important, like your colors, the way your logo is, can you put it on items? Like these are all things that people don't even think about, and that's actually why we did Cold Canyon Farm, and we built our, oh
03:18Facebook group, it's called Built From Dirt Farm School. Because a lot of people, they don't know how to do this. Yeah, I was going to ask you about the farm page too. I didn't do my weather update. what's, I usually open it with how's the weather. So how's the weather in Montana today? Oh man. So I mean, it dropped from like 34 down to one degree last night and we have like a powder.
03:43that came so like not feet of snow which can happen here but it's just the swings are ridiculous this year it's not good for the animals how's your weather? we are in a blizzard we are officially under a blizzard warning and you can't see to the road from my house and that's about 200 feet whoa look at this dedication though this is what it takes to like do any type of business right to be honest Mary like the fact that you're here still trying to do this is awesome you don't want to get you down
04:11Oh no, no, no, no. It always makes me laugh when I see blizzard warning because we've had blizzard warnings before and it hasn't really been a blizzard. This is a blizzard. Like this is a for real Minnesota blizzard. And I'm like, this is great. Our house is warm. We're having roast chicken and winter squash and broccoli for dinner. The dog is fine. chickens are all nice and cozy in their coop. We're fine. We're going to ride out to No problem.
04:40Yeah, when you have that. we went without power like two weeks ago for 36 hours. Oh, I traded which this is awesome about farming to we bartered six goats for a frickin wood stove, dude, like nice. Wait, because we don't have any heat in the house. We just have radiant floor heat, which is propane fed through our instant water heater. But if the power goes out, guess what? It does not work at all.
05:10So,  you we went 36 hours without heat. Now, granted, was in the  50s, but like right now, it's, I mean, it's probably less than 10 degrees outside.  And  the floors are keeping the house warm and the oil heater is, but if we went without power again, our house would be cold.  So we traded for wood stove. Because then once you're in that position of being self-sufficient, like you guys are with your generator and stuff, then you're like, okay, it's okay.
05:38uh Everything can burn down outside, but I'm okay right now. It's warm. It's good. We're okay. Yup. I will tell you something funny though. I said to my husband yesterday, I said, if you, need anything from the store, you should probably go now because it is going to be impossible to drive by nine 30 tomorrow morning. And he said,  Oh no, we're fine.  And then he got up this morning, grabbed his coffee and he was like,  I'm going to need to go to the store. And I was like, for what? And he said, sugar, we're almost out. And I said, we have enough sugar.
06:07to last for at least a day and a half. I said, it's gonna be snowing by the time you're ready to get out. I said, do not, do not go anywhere. It's gonna be bad.  He's like, okay, we'll see. And then it was snowing by 9.30, I think. And  he looked outside and he said,  yeah, I think we have enough sugar to last us. I was like, yeah, I think so too. In that moment when you're like, I told you so.  I didn't say it. I tried really hard.
06:34to say that out loud because it's really insulting and he gets really offended so I don't say it but I think it really really loud.  Okay so that's the weather update it's blizzarding here it is not blizzarding where you are that's good yeah  and you have all kinds of things going on since I talked to you only like a month or two ago. Yeah pivots right?  Big pivots so tell me. So no more throwing spaghetti at the wall.
07:00that like, you know, we kind of talked about that last time we were like, we're just gonna kind of throw it and see what works there. And  really just spent like the last month since we talked, making some hard cuts, the goat market is down, sheep market is stable, the cattle market is insane, right? Like it's high, but it's dropping again. And so just trying to figure out like where
07:24Where do we fit? We're staying at the property. So that helps a lot to write. We know what's going on.  Um, I think the last time we spoke, we had one horse, maybe two horses.  had the fillies. Yeah, we just had, yeah. So we had the new Philly, which is a paint,  um, Betty. And then we had Bambi, my husband's $100 BLS  Philly. And then I traded my six year old gelding, um, with a gentleman who really needed a mount.
07:51This was before the horse herpes outbreak, EVH, which was turning neurological and killing a bunch of horses within 12 hours.  I traded because one of his horses had passed away, uh my six-year-old gelding for a Kiger Mustang. I have uh three young fillies. One is going to be two this upcoming year.  And then I have the two that are turning one on January 1st.
08:16Quite the young gang here, which is fine. That's why we were kind of talking about branding in the beginning because I want to make sure if I'm gonna put all this time and money into them I have a marked em as mine  and We came up with farm school. There's a lot of downtime in Montana  and We've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall. So one of the things about Cole Canyon farm is that you should know we're working  Actively on our farm as a family. We're diversified
08:44farm, so not all of our streams of income come from what we produce. And it's not a hobby farm.  when we last talked, Groovy Grazers is 100 % a hobby farm. It was not making hay. It made half the hay this year that it needed to. I was working my body to death. think  the hustle culture in farming and homesteading needs to stop. You need to work when you're rested and inspired, and you need to
09:14rest when you're tired, which is hard to say, but in the last month, I've taken three days off  and I have literally transformed our whole farm into what I've been dreaming and kind of alluding to in our last conversations over the few podcasts we've done is that this is what we wanted. We wanted to be able to educate the public ah and build systems from scratch. on  on very low income, I think we see too many Instagram farms where these people
09:44have made six figures doing something else, now they get to Hobby Farm. That's a Hobby Farm.  A real working farmer is very different. You know, we've talked about finances, we've talked about how do you decide what's working and what's not. And I think that Andy and I have thrown enough spaghetti at the wall that we can help others. uh My big girl job before  I became a fully disabled veteran was working at Intuit. I sold accounting software. So all I did for
10:1210 hours a day was pick apart other small businesses. And I really loved auditing the farms,  not auditing their numbers, but auditing their systems, figuring out what's working for them, what's not working for them, where might there be uh fat that they can trim off their bills, like all of these things are where my passion came from and why I was so good at selling QuickBooks accounting software.
10:37I mean, I was top 10 % in the first six months. It was almost unheard of what I was doing. And it was because I had such a passion for helping people figure it out. So was like, well, how can I take that passion and still help other people? And that's why we made Bill from Dirt Farm School. You know, it's practical education for new homesteaders, single income families, because I think that's an untouched area in our industry. Nobody wants to talk about one income.
11:04Women starting over that are trying to homestead by themselves on low income and really honestly just folks tired of working themselves broke like that's that's farm school Nice  nice Did you say that you you hired a coach did you tell me that yeah, so I actually hired a coach Which I think is a big thing. So that's what helped get me focused So like I'm not gonna sit here and say that I did
11:34all of this reorganizing on myself, what I did is I hired Melanie Greenenough.  She's been on multiple areas, you know, lots of different podcasts all over the world actually. And I got hooked up in one of her free trial classes and I sat down and it was all about how to brand, how to make sure that you're using your time wisely, all these things that I knew how to do, but I needed a system put in place.
12:04So  I thought about it and I was like, well, I can do this with farms. I may be not good at helping other people set up like a networking  or setting up. I mean, she is in the networking space, but that's not all she's doing. She's actually teaching me how to run my business and where to figure out when to hire like employees, when to. um
12:29Like when to have somebody that's more specialized because you could be doing other things. So a lot of this is us going back to the education because she's like, you guys have so much life experience. We have  Andy, my husband, who  is  absolutely an expert in living organic soil on the biomes of dirt and stuff. And she's like, why are you guys not spreading this information farther than just Billings, Montana?
12:57And was like, yeah, I guess I never thought about that. Like, do people really want to take online classes? Are they really doing that? And I guess because I'm so  adverse to being  online because I worked from home for many years, actually, way before COVID, I did  a little bit of online work that I was like, well, people want to get out and see people. But that's true.
13:22But there's not a lot of people educating others because it's like this gate kept secret. Like, yes, there's some knowledge that in farm school will charge for, but not everything has to be charged. It's all about making a community.  And so that's what Melanie brought us to is like Groovy Grazers is great. But when we do the ROIs and we do the projections, it's just not going to work when I can't sell a Nigerian dwarf that's clean tested  and could be papered for $50.
13:53Yeah. Yeah. There's no way, but I needed somebody  that was above me to say like, Hey, not above me, but somebody that worked in multiple business spaces to be able to say, this is just, here's some direction. like the coaching is definitely a huge part of why I've gotten focused because I needed that check of like, Hey, this is
14:19The way you're doing right now isn't sustainable for 15 years with my body. It's not. Like  I am disabled even though I don't look like it all the time. I have problems and I'm starting to slow down. My whole dream was to do goat milk, right? To milk the goats. Now we're doing sheep because sheep market is more level and it's multiple streams of income.
14:45So that's all I needed somebody was like Melanie to sit down and also inspire. So I think a lot of people forget how inspiring it is when you have a group of like-minded folks who all want the same thing. Like it's powerful, it's vibrational. If everything has a vibration to it, if you are low, you know, low hanging fruit that's vibrating low.
15:11your life is just gonna bring in chaos. But if you're around other people that are successful and trying to be successful, even if they're not in the same industry as you and if they are even better, but it brings in this like, okay, I can do this.  You don't feel so alone. And that was why I decided to do coaching this year is because we live rural Montana. If you can hear the ticking in the background, that's the one I apologize. It's making our vent go, but. uh
15:40We're in rural Montana. I don't get out of the house often. I'm a homeschooling mom, but there's ways that I can connect with other homeschooling moms. So that's why there's been so much change. And I think sometimes people need to understand that getting a coach doesn't mean that somebody is telling you how to run your job or how to become a brand. It's just direction. And that's what the farm school is built on. It's just trying to give people direction. Yes. And having a coach.
16:10It gives you direction, but it also lets you see what you're doing from someone else's point of view. Yeah. She can use strong points. didn't even think of Mary. Yeah. You can't see it the way somebody from the outside can see it. Yeah. She was like, Morgan, get online, start educating, make a Facebook group so you don't feel so alone out in the middle of nowhere, Montana.
16:36and connect with other homeschool moms that are in the same boat as you. Find other veterans, find other people that feel like they can't do this. That's why it's called built from dirt. We are built from dirt. There's not high revenue streams coming in on this farm. We are trying to do this as little debt as possible. I have less than $7,000 in debt other than my truck.
17:00which yes, that is 45. Everyone needs to understand trucks are not cheap anymore. That's an F-150. And then we have, of course, our house note, but those are have-tos to survive. You've got to have at least one working vehicle and a home. Yep, absolutely. To even homestead. Yeah, yep. I am so excited for you that you're going to go in this direction because you have the best energy. Like every time I've talked with you,
17:28You sound so full of positivity and good ideas and you're so willing to help. Of course you're going to teach. Yeah. And like that was her whole thing. She was like, Morgan, you are a little fire. Go light other people's fire. Essentially what she told me and like doing the consulting, the one-on-one and farm audits. Like we're going to help people with land, but no clear plan. Right? Like we've done it. We've,  I've done multiple.
17:55of places, I had a small micro farm with my ex-husband  and we were planning that. That was in Louisiana. I farmed a little bit in Texas. I grew up in Texas, ah you know, in the horse industry. I lived in Arizona trying to farm there  and then I've come to Montana. So I've been in a lot of different areas. ah You know, this is going to help people that are bleeding money on feed and animals because it's really hard to understand when you're just starting out.
18:23what goes into an animal. Like it's more than just the feed, the minerals, the medication. It goes into time. It goes into hoof trimming. It goes in to water if you have to haul it or owning a well and maintaining it. Like there's so many things that people don't realize and really just new farmers that are too overwhelmed with too many ideas. Cause like you said, when you have a coach, they stand back, they see all the good and
18:51And let's be honest, the bad that you may not see.  And they're able to gently tell you, in a very  polite way, this is what I'm seeing, and then directionally point you. And I think that comes from the way humans used to live, know, hundreds of years ago, there was always like, you know, the elders that would kind of help out the youngins and help point them in the right direction. And so most coaches are going to be older than you. Some might be younger, but you got to look at their life experience.
19:21You know, we're going to be able to help people with their livestock based on the acreage, the time, their physical ability, their cash flow, right? Like one of the things I'm really good at doing is looking at history, computing it into like some graphs and really taking a look at it and then also being able to understand grazing. OK, if you have this many head of cattle, this is where you live.
19:47take a picture of it, go cut me a one by one square and bundle that up. How much hay do you have in there? How much grassland do you have in there? I'm gonna be able to give you an idea.  I'm not saying that I'm gonna change somebody's life just by consulting them. I'm saying that I'm gonna give them the right tools and help them see the things they don't see. There's a lot of things, turning animals into meat, breeding stock, fiber.
20:15You can turn it into your own classes. I'm going to host a whole, like, probably a six month course on how to do a petting zoo. I did really well with Groovy Grazers. I do daycares for $2.50 an hour. There's nothing secret about it. You can go on my website. $2.50 an hour is what I was charging in the beginning  and I didn't do it with any employees. If you had employees that leaves room for it, right? So ethically,
20:42Treating yourself and your employees is a thing. Like you  are an employee of the farm.  Teaching people how to do tours of their property. I've had so many people out here. Now I haven't been charging for this because our property is a little crazy right now. We're overhauling completely, but I like having people come out here because it's helping hone in my skills. So then when we do tours, we're gonna have a whole plan. There's a farm, TNC Farms out here. I'm gonna have to try and see if...
21:12I can get you to interview Bridger because he is just, that young man is so brilliant,  absolutely brilliant on uh how to rotationally graze, but they do a wool festival  and they do  a pumpkin patch at the end of the year and they do tours and they have big homeschool groups come in and like there's so many things people don't realize that you can do without having to even sell an animal. There is income and you have to have multiple streams.
21:42when you're a farmer because it's not good enough if you just have a day job and then it brings in a few hundred bucks a month. I mean that's a hobby.  Yep. Absolutely. You  definitely get me his contact information because he would be really fun to talk with.  Okay. Well, it sounds like you have a lot going on. There's a couple of things I want to tell you about that  is here.  Number one, I am an award winning podcaster officially.  I saw that.
22:11Congratulations. I'm so excited because I've been on the show, what, two years now? Yeah. And like, I remember you're like, one day I'm going to get recognized for doing this and look at you. Like two years is awesome, Mary. Congrats.  Well, thank you. And I want to I want to tell you what it is because not everybody who's listening knows about this yet.  It's the Corporate Visions Media Innovator Awards 2025.
22:36And I got sustainable living podcasts of the year 2025 USA because they're based out of England. That's so cool. That's even cooler that you have like an English following like being worldwide. Like that is really cool. I'm so proud of you. Thank you. It's so crazy to me. I they emailed me and they were like, do you want to be part of the pool for this this prize? And I was like, what do need to do? And they were like, fill out this form.
23:05So I did and I told them about my podcast and I won this award and I was like,  I'm not even sure what this means, but I think it's really cool. No, it is cool. So what are your next steps with this award? you  going to do a different, like what  all is coming from getting this award that you're going to do? I have no idea. I just think it's super awesome, nifty that I want it. And then the second thing that I wanted to tell you.
23:32is I'm starting a second podcast for sure. Yeah.  It's called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Oh, I love that.  And I will definitely talk to my co-host about having you come visit with us because I think that would be really fun.  Yeah. My co-host is a lady named Leah and she is Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook. Okay. And she has the biggest heart. She is a fifth-generation
24:00fifth generation cattle rancher with her family. love that.  And she also had worked with the USDA, I think, for grants. Oh, that's awesome. People have no idea about grants.  Uh huh. And she's just fabulous. And we've talked like three or four times on the podcast episodes over last two years. And  I said, we never get to go deep enough. I said, do you want to be a cohost with me on a second podcast? And she said, give me a week to think about it. And I said, okay.  And I
24:30hit her up exactly a week to the day and said, did you think about it? She's like, I really want to do it. So that's going to be coming out the first full week of January.  Oh, I'm so excited for you. Like, I can't wait to just even listen to that podcast. it's just so cool to see women stepping into this place of like, yeah, we're here. We've been here the whole time helping people, know, helping our husband farm.
24:59And now we're going to talk about it because back in the day men were hunters and women sat around and got to socialize, right? And took care of the babies and made the food. Yeah, we did everything social, right? In a group and men had to go off and they were silent, right? Hunting in the woods  and to see women stepping into this like we're going to gather again, we're going to get women back together and we're going to make clear
25:28clear path for the next generation. know, Leah, right, is her name. She's a fifth generation farmer. Yep. She's like, guess what? I see so many I bet you she would even confirm it. She sees so many first generation farmers. And that's probably a lot of her drive is like, I want to help these new people. like, we're gonna have like words between humans is such a real thing, especially when you have, you know, artificial intelligence,  when you have people that just
25:58we'll kind of write whatever.  You know, it's hard to know  what's real and what's not anymore. So being able to discuss with other people, even by phone or by virtual video is so powerful. And then to have a podcast that's on the same vibrational as everyone else,  you're only gonna raise your listeners to be better farmers.
26:23but you're also gonna have all these people, women specifically, right? That are gonna come to you guys that are gonna say, hey, I wanna share my experience.  Exactly, yes. Yes, and what's even better is 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer. Did you know that? Yes, that's why Melanie was like, you gotta step into this.  Like step into it.
26:46did not know about that until after Leah and I decided to do this together. And I saw it, I was like, yes, great timing.  Oh man, see your internal instincts are just so, they're spot on, right? Like you are empathic with your listeners. You can hear our woes and you can hear the women that are like, there's not a lot of support. When I go talk and I have nothing against male farmers in this sense, but sometimes when I go talk to them and I have a throat tattoo for the listeners that don't follow me on Facebook.
27:16Um, and it's flowers, it's dainty, Geo- like shapes, nothing crazy, right? No like skulls or anything on my throat. They look at me like I'm crazy. um I have to like almost win their trust over by like giving them like, oh, you know, this little insight tip about being a farmer. And then they're like, oh, she's cool. She can vibe. And it's like, I could vibe with you the whole time. I just had to win you over.  And
27:44When I speak to a woman farmer, they're like,  no, they just listen to you. They understand you. There's no question of who you are because they've experienced it themselves. And like, I get it. There's a lot of women that come into farming and they are, they think they're tough enough to do this.  And you know, farming is not, it's not for the weak. It is not for the weak.  It's really hard.  My friend Nicole, she's somebody else that I want you to interview. She's a farrier and works with the Amish.
28:13Um, in a horse breeding program, she had to deal with one of the old guys we had taken on. He's he choked the vets out there right now, putting him to sleep.  Um, and she was out there all night long with him in the middle of the blizzard. had, you know, they live an hour away from us. So where they are, there's like six foot plus feet of snow. I'm not even kidding you in Red Lodge right now.  Um, and she lives out there. And so she was out  all night with that horse. Just sitting there.
28:41because no vet could get to him until 12 o'clock today. That's the reality of farming though. And so I'm excited for this because I think that so many negativities happen in farming that it can get people really down. So if we can get a group of women on a podcast talking about the positives,  encouraging each other, not being Instagram fake where we act like everything's peachy on our farm, right? We talk about the reality of farming.
29:08then we're going to see some major breakthroughs in our industry and we need them. I'm actually a wholesale dealer for AgriBest. That was something else that happened. um They  do Redmond, Sweetlix products. Those are products  for horses, cattle, sheep.  It's all mineral based. um And being in that industry, I'm very far and few between. And so I think it's awesome because I am going to go listen to your podcast.
29:36with Leah, I can't wait. Like, sign me up. You couldn't sign me up any quicker to just listen to it because... it was already out, you'd be like, hold on, I'll come back in half an hour, Mary. Let me go listen to the first episode. No, seriously, because  I think women...  I don't think... I'm not going to say they're smarter than men because I don't speak like that, but I think women are able to  meticulate their words better.
30:05I don't even know or articulate. Sorry. I can't think it's been a long long night But like women are just able to use their words better to tell a story So women women are the communicators and I will tell you how I know this for sure  Did you know that  men  out? Outdo women in podcasting, but most of the men fall off  they suffer from podfade and the podcast disappear but
30:33Wow. tend to hang in longer because they are the communicators. That's cool. See, I wouldn't have known that. like, that's interesting because that is true. Like me and my girlfriends, when something goes wrong, we call each other. Yeah. But when something goes wrong with men, they just text. They don't even text each other. Like they're just like, it's OK. They'll they won't question why I'm even here. And you're like, what do you mean? Like  if that was another woman, we would absolutely question why we hadn't heard from them.
31:02Mm-hmm. Yeah, the only time a man will ask for help is if it's a dire emergency. Yeah, yeah, men are so stubborn  in that sense. so I think that next year being a women's agriculture,  I'm sure a lot of your demographic is women, right? Because like women attract women  in podcasting.  Actually, it's not.  Really? You are going to die on this statistic. I looked the other day  on my Facebook page, mine.
31:32and Tiny Homestead podcast one. 56 to 60 % men listeners. was like, are you kidding me? That's interesting. I guess I need to look on Cole Canyon farm and Groovy Grazers and see what my statistics are. I haven't in a while, but yeah, that's really interesting. I think because it's easier to listen. Maybe if you're a man to like women talking, cause we paint the full picture. Maybe I don't know what it is.
32:01So interesting. Maybe some of your listeners, if you're a man and you're listening, can you chime in on the homestead page on like, do you listen to more women or men podcasts? That would even be a cool poll for you to do. Yeah, it absolutely would. OK, Morgan, you know, I try to keep these to half an hour. Yeah. So the first episode of the new podcast will be out Monday of the first full week of January. So two Mondays from now.
32:31And it's only going to be a one week,  one a week release. So one episode a week  for a while. But yeah, very, very excited.  Where can people find you? Cole Canyon Farm on Facebook. Is that right? Yes, you can. And you can find us still Groovy Grazers MT  on Facebook. You can find Cole Canyon Farm on Instagram. And we still own  www.groovygrazors.com.  And
33:01We are doing a seed giveaway right now  on my built from dirt farm page  and some one-on-one consulting. So if you guys are looking for your group, then definitely add yourself in. We're going to be doing lots of freebie classes and courses, just getting the hive mind going. Okay. I will put the link to the new  group show notes for you so people can find the giveaway and get involved.  Thank you. As  always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.
33:29And if you want to support the podcast financially, cause I could use some help, um go to atanihomestead.com slash support.  Morgan, thank you for taking the time to catch me up on what's going on with you. Cause I saw stuff on Facebook and I was like, what is she doing now? I'm not sure about this.  Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys for listening.  I'm sure we'll chat in the spring sometime soon about all the new stuff we've been doing. We have to.
33:58That's all there is to it. We've got to make it happen. All right. Thank you, Morgan. Thank you.  Bye.