A Tiny Homestead

Fameflower Farm

Today I'm talking with Sara at Fameflower Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sara at Fameflower Farm. How are you, Sarah? I'm doing good. Thanks. How about you? I'm good. You're in Tennessee? Yes, middle Tennessee, not too far from Nashville. Oh, nice.
00:26All right, well, tell me about yourself and what you do at Fameflower Farm. Okay, so we are a mini farm and we've been at this little homestead mini farm thing for about a decade now. And we, my husband and I moved here from the Chicagoland area with the ultimate goal of growing and raising as much of our own food as possible. We moved from a condo with zero land whatsoever. So it was a huge shift to almost 17 acres in Middle Tennessee.
00:56And you know, we thought it'd be easy-ish to figure it all out. And we're learning as we go that there's just so many things and everything has a big learning curve, but we love the lifestyle, the homesteading lifestyle and are really happy we have moved here and are doing all the things. We've got a bunch of different animals, huge garden and permaculture food forest and probably other things I'm forgetting.
01:23Oh, that's such a good question. Naming our farm was such a challenge. So our last name is Chodal, but it's spelled with a C-H, super hard to pronounce. So we figured that's out. We're not gonna use that name. And a lot of people name their homes that are farms based on their names. So since that was out, we had to go with something else. And we were looking for a bunch of different names and we discovered we are on limestone and we're in an area of the country that has some endangered plant species. We happen to have limestone glades on our property that grow maybe
01:51up to 10 different types of endangered plant species. The fameflower is one of those. And it sounded kind of cool, fameflower farm, three Fs, so we went with her. So what is a fameflower? It's a tiny little, it almost looks like a succulent with its leaves and it has a very beautiful, bright, almost fuchsia color of flower that only blooms in the afternoons in the summer.
02:16And it's an endangered plant species, so it's not found everywhere. It's challenging to find. And since we have it on our property, you know, that's pretty cool. Very nice. I'm always excited to hear about flowers that I don't know about yet. It makes me grin. Okay. So I really, I really want to talk about the dogs. And I mentioned this beforehand before we started recording.
02:41We have a mini Australian shepherd named Maggie that I talk about ad nauseam on the podcast. I try hard not to talk about her. So that's what we have. We have a dog. Her job is to be a watchdog. That is her only job. She does it really well to the point of doing it too well. So you raise Pyrenees poodle crosses. And they're gorgeous.
03:08But I need to know more about why that's a good mix. Okay, so we had a... Do you want me to tell you how I got into this whole dog thing to begin with? Yes, please. Okay, so we, both my husband and I have had dogs our whole lives. And we had, when we moved here, we had an Aussie poo, so Australian Shepherd poodle mix. He is an F2B, which means he's got a lot of poodle in him, essentially.
03:37And then we also had a skipper keep poodle mix. So we already loved poodle mixes. Those two dogs are just house dogs, cute, friendly, whatever. Nothing that they're gonna have work to do. And then we had a big chicken loss with a predator. So we got a great Pyrenees to guard our flock. As our great Pyrenees grows, she's just a beautiful, wonderful, amazing dog. And my mom, who had previously bred dogs like 30 years ago, kept saying Bishop, that's her name, is beautiful. You should breed her.
04:06And I told her I wasn't really sure that that was something I wanted to do because, you know, there's lots of dogs that need rescued and I don't know if I want to become a dog breeder. And then my mother-in-law also said she really wanted a dog and would love to have a dog if Bishop had babies. And they both had met our poodle mixes and everyone that we know likes the poodle mixes. I know poodle mixes are not for everybody, but they are for us. So we decided to do a litter with Bishop and a standard poodle.
04:34my mom's water aerobics instructor happened to have a health-tested standard poodle available to be the dad. So it just all kind of came together perfectly and he was a very beautiful, calm-ish for a poodle, standard poodle. So it was all wonderful, had the first litter, and my mother-in-law ended up getting one of those puppies once she worked through some health issues because that kind of delayed getting her puppy, but then everybody else got puppies and they all loved them. And one of the reasons I think they love the puppy so much is because
05:04When we first bred the dog, I posted about it on Instagram, and somebody commented and said, have you looked into puppy culture? That's a training program that you can do as a breeder. And I had never heard of it, have had dogs my whole life. I had no idea the breeder could actually start doing things with the puppy to make them a more calm, confident, wonderful family dog as they grew. So we looked into the program, got it, and started implementing it right away.
05:32You can start on day three of the puppy's life doing certain things with them. And it just makes the most amazing puppies. So after that first litter, we had so much positive feedback, we decided to continue to breed the periodoodle puppies. So ours are an F1 generation, meaning that the mom is a full great Pyrenees and the dad is a full standard poodle. So first generation F1 are periodoodles. There are other options available out there, of course, that have more poodle in them for less shedding.
06:01but we really like the F1s because they still maintain some of those great Pyrenees traits. And they're just so sweet, loving. They aren't necessarily the best guardian dogs like a full great Pyrenees would be, but they are such amazing family dogs. And as we kept one of the puppies from the first litter, she's now almost three and she exhibits some natural guarding of our kids.
06:27So she'll put herself between other people if she's concerned about the other people and our kids. It's really amazing to watch. Okay, so here's what I know about poodles. Zero. I know nothing about poodles. I have seen them. I don't think I've ever pet one. I don't think I've ever met a poodle. Okay. I have met Pyrenees dogs, many, and they are lovely animals.
06:53The only issue that I have heard about with Pyrenees is that they like to wander. And there's one that lives about eight miles down the road from us. His name is Yukon. And he came to visit us the first summer after we moved in four years ago. And my dog, I just let her outside and she's on a lead all the time because we have a big busy road outside and she yipped.
07:20And she was looking towards the side of the house and I couldn't see her on the corner, but she could. And I was like, what is over there? So I step around and there's this big great Pyrenees dog. And I was like, hi buddy, what are you doing? And he just trotted over and introduced himself wagging his tail. I was like, okay, at least you're friendly. And then he had to go check out Maggie. And Maggie is a mini Australian shepherd. She weighed maybe 25 pounds at the time. So
07:49You can imagine this little black tri, mini Australian shepherd and this probably 90 pound great parent, his dog introducing themselves. I was like, please don't kill each other. And come to find out the owners had tried many, many things to make Yukon stay home and none of them worked except that we haven't seen him this summer. So either their solution is working, keeping him on his property.
08:18or he's no longer with us and we don't know which. So, Pyrenees like to wander. We have friends that own a couple and they wander as well. Yes. So tell me about poodles. What are the traits for poodles? So the poodle is known for being very intelligent. If you look at the dog intelligent charts, you'll oftentimes see poodle at the very top. I normally see them as the second most intelligent dog, which is awesome for training.
08:48They also, if you look at their history, they are known for doing just about everything a dog has ever done to help humans, such as even retrieving and guarding and doing service dog duties. The list just goes on and on and on of things that they have been able to do for humans, depending on what you look at, since there's just so much information out there about everything. The other thing they can be known for is being a little high strung and maybe a little bit
09:15neurotic at times, some of the standard poodles or poodles in general. They also are known for not shedding, of course. So that's, I think, where the breeding of poodles with other dogs has come to become more popular because people want a specific dog breed, but then they don't want the shedding. So they mix the poodle and that breed and then they get less shedding. So that's nice.
09:45experienced the fact that great Pyrenees dogs tend to be pretty calm, pretty laid back. Yes. And so does that kind of mitigate the neuroticness of the poodle? I think yes. And we also, when we're breeding, we're looking for a dad dog that is on the calmer end of the poodle spectrum. So breeding for temperament, I think, is really important because you want to get those traits passed along. And then also with the puppy culture stuff that we do when they're young.
10:15We play the puppies classical music, and that's been shown in studies to calm them, not only as puppies, but through their lifetime. So we're doing things to help reduce any type of neurotic tendencies that any puppy might have. So we're already working with them from a very young age to help get them to be pretty chill. And we have had feedback from the majority of our puppy owners now saying, this is the calmest dog I've ever had.
10:42is this really a puppy? She seems so old, she's an old soul, that type of thing, because they are calmer with all the training and then also that great Pyrenees jeans. So you're really helping out the new owners before they even get their puppy, because you're training them from three days old. That is the goal, yes. So what really sold me on the puppy culture thing was when I looked at pictures and I saw a picture of
11:09I think it was five week old puppies and they were all sitting still staring at the person. And I thought, yes, that is what I want. It's amazing. And there's a ton of other stuff that goes into it. But to get them to do that is really not that difficult. As long as you are consistent and you work with the dogs when they're little, they can obey and just be much more calm than a regular puppy that doesn't have that type of upbringing.
11:39It's just we don't give them treats or attention unless they are sitting. And they learn it so fast when they're little. It's kind of like kids, you know, they learn stuff really, really fast. Puppies learn really, really fast too. You don't have to tell them multiple times. Just do it a few times and then all of a sudden they have figured it out and they are sitting whenever they see you because they know that you're gonna give them attention or the food or whatever it is quicker if they sit. Yep. I'm gonna talk for a minute or two about what we did with Maggie because we had never had any...
12:08We'd never had a puppy. In the 20 something years, my husband and I have been together. We didn't have room for a dog. We didn't have a yard for a dog. We did not have a dog. And friends of ours had the mom and dad, Minnie Australian Shepherd, and she, the female got pregnant and they, this was the first ever litter from the female that they'd experienced.
12:38our friends, you know, they post on their Facebook page and I was, I messaged Jean and I said, I would, we would love to have one of those puppies. We're moving to a 3.1 acre property here soon. And that seems like more enough room for a mini Australian shepherd. And I think when I messaged her, she thought that I was just like, Oh, it would be nice to have one. So it got down to where the puppies were.
13:04were starting to find homes and she posted and she said, we have two left if you want one, message me. And it was just a general post on Facebook. And I messaged her immediately and I said, I wasn't joking, how much are they? And she told me and I was like, cool, I want one. And she sent me a picture, two black tri puppies looked almost identical, both female. And she said, which one do you want?
13:29And I said, I have no idea they look exactly like. And she said, just pick one. I said, the one on the right in the picture. And she was like, do you have a name in mind? And I said, Maggie. And she said, okay, we will be calling her Maggie from now on, so she learns her name. Yeah. So Maggie knew her name long before we picked her up.
13:48So, Diesel and Daisy, Maggie's parents, the dog parents, they were outdoor dogs. They are farm dogs, they are working dogs. So the puppies spent a ton of time outside. So, Maggie was practically potty trained before we even got her. That helped too. Now, this dog had seven kids who were around all the time because Jean and her husband have seven kids. And so,
14:17Maggie was terribly socialized to children and to her litter mates, but she wasn't terribly socialized to being confined and she wasn't socialized to other people. So when we brought her home, we were trying to crate train her. We lasted six nights and we got no sleep. That dog cried and screeched and barked all night long for six nights in a row and we gave up and brought her to bed with us, which was a mistake. It's fine. She's small.
14:47Yeah. So, um, within a week of her coming home, I was trying to teach her sit, because I didn't know how to train a dog. I'd never had a puppy. And we had some little treats that she really liked. And, and I, I basically put the treat in my fingertips and held it above her head and said, sit, and as soon as she sat down, cause she lifted her head up, I would give her the treat took five minutes. This dog has known sit and lay down since.
15:16And she thinks that sit means sit and lay down all in one motion. So if you say sit, she's going to sit down and then she lays down, which is very, very cute. She's, she's been terribly trainable. And once she hit about three, she's four now. Once she hit about three, she did it. She decided that her crate is her favorite place in the world. Go fit. So if she's going to lay down and take a nap, she goes in the crate.
15:45And she's also old enough now to have the run of the house at night. So she doesn't need to go in her crate and have the door shut. So she trained herself for the crate three years later. Go fig. But the one thing that I can say about having a puppy and never having had a puppy before is the things that we tried to do was number one, always talk to her in an upbeat, gentle voice from the very beginning.
16:14Never yell at her if we could avoid it. I mean, if she was in danger, of course we were gonna yell, but that didn't happen. So she's never really been yelled at in panic or anger. And never ever hit a dog, ever. I agree, yep. Because it teaches them fear and it breaks their spirit. You should not hit a dog. The old thing about taking a rolled up newspaper and swatting a dog, don't do that. It doesn't help. So.
16:44Those are my hints on raising a puppy since I'm very new at it. What are your hints? I mean, you're doing the puppy thing that you were talking about, but what have you learned? Yeah, I totally agree with not hitting a dog and the puppy culture program talks about that a lot as well. They actually have another program for people when they first bring a dog home. So there's one for breeding breeders and then there's also one for when the dog first comes or the puppy first comes home with you.
17:13I think that's extremely useful as well. I think all their information is amazing. So getting that and then preparing for the puppy before it enters your home is always really helpful to have all the things on hand. It doesn't need a ton of things, but a crate is very helpful, I think. I know it didn't work out so well for Maggie, but for the most part, you know, crate training works very, very well. That's one of the things that we do as breeders with the Puppy Culture Program is we introduce the crate to every puppy.
17:40multiple times before they go home. They actually have a crate in their area just so they can go in and out of it. We put treats in there. We'll put part of their food in there sometimes. We'll have them have meals in there just so they're used to that confined space because our dogs, our puppies are also born outside but they come inside every day, many times a day once they're old enough and they can see in here because before they can see in here it's not really useful. And they're with mama a lot then. But since our mama dog is an outside dog, she never comes inside. So they don't come inside until they are
18:10able to see and hear, which is around three weeks old. Yeah, Maggie was born inside. She was in the house. But as soon as she could see and hear and was walking well, the puppies would go out with mom and dad. So I'm not at all upset that Maggie was an outside dog for a while when she was still with the mom and dad dog. That's totally cool. Yeah. Go ahead. You were saying. Oh yeah.
18:41Yeah, so we just try to get all them used to as many things as possible before they go home with their owner, their human parents. And we also bring people over once the puppies are old enough to see and hear and they're able to be socialized and mama dog's okay with it. Because the puppy culture program talks about how dogs do not generalize. So even if they see a person and they're used to a person, they're not necessarily going to...
19:08correlate that with another person. So they need to see as many different size, shape, color, hairdos, hats, shoes, clothing, all the different things so they get used to all of those things because they're not going to generalize from one thing to the next. So we specifically have people come over to show them different types of people and different clothing styles and different hats and different... I have my kids put on costumes, so they get used to costumes and different noises. So we're trying to get them used to all that stuff.
19:38And then when the parents do first bring their puppy home, if there's anything that they do that's specific to their lifestyle that they want their dog to be very used to, let's say they have a boat or an RV, or they go to a gym every day and they do gymnastics or taekwondo or whatever, and they want the dog to come with them, I always recommend taking the puppy with them to as many of those things as possible before they hit 12 weeks, because they say that 12 weeks is the...
20:07critical socialization period. And after 12 weeks, they can definitely learn new things. It just will take longer. So it takes one positive or negative thing to happen to the puppy before 12 weeks, and it should be imprinted in their brain for the rest of their life. And you can obviously help them if something negative does happen, but if it's a positive experience, then it's way easier to say, okay, this is our boat, and we go on the boat all the time, and you like the boat, and it's great, and you saw it before you were 12 weeks old, and now you're not scared of it, that type of thing.
20:36Wow, I didn't know it was before 12 weeks. That's good to know. The other thing that we learned when we brought Maggie home is that puppies grieve. They grieve losing their litter mates. She was so sad that first three days. I mean, she was okay, but she was just very down. And I was like, did we buy a dud puppy? She's not very bouncy.
21:05And then after about a week, she livened up. She was eating fine. That's the other thing is that they're weird about eating if they're grieving. Oh. So we had to basically feed her food out of our fingers for the first three or four days because she was just so sad. Oh my goodness. It was terrible, yeah. And I think she missed her human kids too. Mm, interesting. Yeah, when we took her back over,
21:35to visit. And I asked before we did it, I was like, Jean, do you think that Maggie would recognize Daisy and Diesel if we brought her back over? And she was like, I have no idea, but you're welcome to bring her over. I'd love to see her. So we took Maggie over to see them. And the mama dog, Daisy, she was very interested in Maggie, but I'm not sure that she realized that Maggie was her kid. But the most interesting thing of all is that
22:04My friend Jean would give each of the kids a puppy to basically kind of take care of while they were little. Yeah. Kids would have some responsibility for that particular puppy. And come to find out Maggie's puppy name was Lulu. And one of Jean's teenage sons was in charge of Lulu, who eventually became our dog Maggie. And he was standing off the side watching Maggie and I said,
22:32I said, do you want her to come to you? And he was like, yeah. And he scooched down. And I said, Maggie, it's okay. And she looked at me like, I don't know him. And he said, it's okay, Lulu, come here. And her ears perked up, her face changed, and she ran over to him and gave him the biggest dog hug I've ever seen in my life. Jean and I cried, no joke. No joke, just lost it.
23:02I was like, can I hug you? She's like, yeah, I need a hug. I'm like, okay. And Maggie immediately, as soon as she heard that first name and his tone of voice, she knew who he was. So it's amazing to me what they remember, but what they don't remember as well. Yes, for sure. We have had a number of puppies come back and either we puppy set them or just came to visit and mama dog doesn't.
23:29really seem to care. Some of them she actually doesn't seem to like that much and would prefer them to not be near her. But most of them she's like, oh it's another dog, you know, we can play and it's fine. Others she's like, well you're fine but I'm not really caring too much that you're here. She doesn't seem to recognize them at all. But they all seem to recognize me. I spend the most time with the puppies. So they definitely seem to remember me to some extent and it's really cool to see. Yeah, it's, I wonder...
23:58I really wonder if maybe the reason the mama dogs don't recognize their offspring later is because the last time they saw them, they were little, they still looked like puppies, they still smelled like where they live and they still smelled like mom. And then if you bring them back six months later, they're dogs, they don't smell like mom anymore, they don't smell like where mom lives anymore. So maybe that's part of it? Oh, I definitely think it could be.
24:26And our mama dog, she's an amazing mother, but after a while, you know, she's like, it's been six weeks of this whole nursing thing and I'm really ready for a break. Especially when there's, we've had, she had a litter of 11 for her first litter. She was done with them. She was ready to go back to work and be the guardian dog and be done being mom. It was too much. She was done. There was lots of them jumping on her all the time whenever she saw them. Oh yeah, absolutely.
24:54Daisy, Maggie's mom, she wants to be back outside running when the hups are about, from what Jean told me, from about four to six weeks old. And she won't leave those puppies that first week. She is right in the welping kennel or whatever it's called. And she'll go out to pee and number two. But that's about it. And the day that we picked up Maggie.
25:24Maggie was a day shy of eight weeks old. She was one of the last puppies to leave. And, uh, Jean told me that day that that was the first day that Daisy had really been out and running around with Diesel. Oh, wow. The daddy dog and really just letting the puppies be while she, she went and ran and checked out the farm and, you know, got reacclimated to it. So she was a really good mom. That first litter, that was the first litter she'd ever had.
25:54So yeah, I'm so glad that you were cool with talking about dogs today, because I've been wanting to talk about this in depth for a while, and I tried to reach out to a couple people who breed Australian Shepherds, but I haven't gotten any response back, because I wanted to know more about that particular breed. But I think that dogs in general, if you treat them well, if you aren't mean to them, if you don't teach them, train them,
26:23to be mean, to be attack dogs, you can have a wonderful animal and it doesn't matter what the breed is. That's my take on it. I tend to agree with that, especially if they have a good start to life because they can get real scared real fast if something bad happens when they're little. So yeah, just treat them well and positive reinforcement. The puppy culture thing, when I was going through it and every time I reacclimate before we have a litter and it just reminds me of a toddler.
26:49I just think of these little puppies as toddlers. You set them up for success. You give them a yes space. You give them things that they can have. And they just do great. I feel like they become little people in puppy suits. Maggie has all these expressions and yips and barks and whines and whistles that she does to tell me what she needs. And as long as I'm paying attention, she does great.
27:17It's when I drop the ball and I'm not listening to what she's telling me that things happen. Yeah, I would agree with that too. A lot of the things that the dogs do that you may not like are generally because there wasn't enough attention being paid. It's a lot, so I understand that happens sometimes, but if you can pay attention to them, especially with potty training and stuff, you see their cues, take them outside, less accidents. Uh-huh, yes, absolutely. And that actually leads me to my next thing.
27:48If somebody's gonna get a puppy, and I am not a dog trainer, I'm just going from the experience we've had with the one dog that we got when she was a day shy of eight weeks old. You can't just get a puppy, put them in a crate for eight hours a day, take them out, and let them be out with you for a couple hours and expect to be able to put them back in the crate all night because you're going to ruin that dog. Yeah, they need a lot more.
28:16A lot more than that. They need time. They need attention. They need training. They need love. You can't just put them in a box. That's not how that works. No, definitely not. We actually send a potty training and crate training document to puppy parents before they bring their dog home to give them some ideas of how to potty train and how often to be taking them out and things like that. A little sample schedule just to get some thoughts started and kind of get some ideas going.
28:46Yeah, I was told that the pups can hold it as it were for an hour for every month they are old and that is not necessarily true for a four week old puppy. A four week old puppy is going to pee when it needs to pee, end of story, it doesn't matter where it is. But basically when you bring them home at hopefully eight to ten weeks old, they're good for about an hour. And then as they get older, once they're a year old.
29:16They can probably hold it for eight hours and asking them to hold it for more than eight hours is a little much. I think eight hours is a good amount for an older dog and any dog really. As they get older, some of them can hold it for so long. We have had puppies go home and they're sleeping through the night in a week or two. These are a bigger dog though, so they've got a bigger bladder. When they go home, maybe they're, oh gosh, is it 10 pounds?
29:45good size and they grow to be between 70 to 100 pounds. So they're a larger dog with a larger bladder so they can hold it for longer. But yeah, ours will, our puppies, we've heard reports back that they slept through the night starting quite soon. And I'm always very happy to hear that because I want them to have a really successful integration into their new family. That must be so nice. Maggie was five pounds when we brought her home and she's 35 pounds now.
30:08And I'm telling you, we would have been totally cool with creating her at night from the beginning, but she was not totally cool with that at all. Oh yeah, I get it. So, yeah. So, I love that you're, this is gonna sound crazy. I love that you are doing this, but I also love that it looks like you only let her have one litter a year. Yes, we just do one litter per year. So she...
30:37She had a litter and then we gave her a break. There's a heat cycle about every six to seven months. So she'll have another heat cycle after that litter. And then the following heat cycle is when she got bred again. And so she's had three litters so far. She will be having her fourth and final litter next year. So we don't want her to be too old, you know, when she has more litters. So she'll be done after next year. And we're hopefully gonna have another mama dog step in after that. So you are very, very purposeful and directed
31:07this. This isn't about making lots of money. This is you're doing this because you love it. Yeah, we love it and we want to be able to provide good family dogs for people, especially now that we have young kids. I appreciate the fact that I feel comfortable with these dogs going to a home with children. And I think rescuing is an awesome thing, but I also have many friends who have been attacked by their rescue dogs. And if that were to be a child that got attacked, that is just too much of a worry in my mind.
31:35I know some people are really great at training and that works well for them, but I want to be able to provide that for people to have access to a great family dog for them and their family. Yeah. And I feel like if you're going to rescue a dog, I think that's a noble thing to do. But I also think that you need to know about dogs. You need to understand dog's cues. You need to understand how to work with them and work them through issues. And we were not those people.
32:03When we talked about getting a dog for our place, we really wanted to get a puppy because that way if there were issues, we caused the issues. We knew where it came from and we would figure out how to fix it. I did not want to go get a three-year-old dog from the Humane Society that I didn't know, that didn't know me, and they had no background on it because we were not educated enough about that to help.
32:33that dog. Yeah, I understand that. Yep. So, um, the one of the last things I will share about Maggie, because I'm allowed to talk about Maggie today, is that she's she's gorgeous. She is she is perfect. She is the epitome of a black tri Australian shepherd, except that she's a mini. She looks exactly like a normal Australian shepherd. She's just small.
33:03It doesn't look like they took an Australian shepherd and bred her with a chihuahua. That's not how that worked. And I would have loved to let Maggie have babies. The reason we didn't do that is because I don't want to be in the dog breeding business. And what would have happened is we would have let her have puppies and I would have wanted to do it every year like you do, because I love puppies. The problem with breeding puppies is that you have to find homes for them.
33:32And you have to let them go to those homes. And I would have just cried every single time. It's funny, people ask me that all the time. How do you let them go? And I always say, I don't have enough hands. You know, you're gonna have nine puppies left. I can't pet all of them at once. There's too many. They need to go somewhere else where there's enough hands to love them. Yep, I still would have sobbed every time though. Yeah. And I am so in love with this dog.
33:59that if anything had happened to her having puppies, I would have shot myself. You know, I just, I wouldn't have ever been able to forgive myself. So she was spayed at six months. Okay. And she will never have puppies. So she will basically always be my puppy until she's no longer with us. And I don't know if we're ever gonna get one again. Not that kind, not that breed. She's a very laid back.
34:28many Australian shepherds. She's very calm when she's in the house. However, we got her during COVID. We could not socialize her because we weren't going anywhere. So the dog wasn't going anywhere. And every time new people come, she barks her head off. She eventually decides they're okay and they're her friend, but it takes her a little bit. So I'm hoping that with the next puppy, maybe a lab, maybe. We'll see. Not a Pyrenees though. They're too big.
34:58But they're very big, yeah, and they do love to be outside. I know they can't be house dogs, but man, do they love to be outside. They're beautiful. I mean, if I was 24 and still had the energy that I had when I was 24 and we had 3.1 acres, I might consider a Pyrenees. But I'm 54 and I don't have the energy to run and play with a Pyrenees and I would want to run and play with it. Yeah.
35:26not happening in my lifetime. However, I do love them. They are beautiful. And when my friends, when we go to our friend's house, I'm always petting the male. The female is kind of skittish, but the male is really friendly. And he's so funny. He chuffs. You know, he does that, that kind of, it's like a snort except it's just in your mouth. He chuffs to say hi. And I'm like, I'm chuffed to see you too.
35:53So anyway, I don't know, I wanted to talk about, Maggie, I wanted to hear about your dogs and why you're doing it, and I know it's because you love doing it. And I wanted to talk about that you really have to do certain things when they're puppies if you want a good dog on the other side. So I think we covered that today. Definitely. And I appreciate you indulging me. I have been desperately wanting to talk about puppies with someone who knows what they're talking about too.
36:22Yeah, we love the puppies so much. It's so fun to have them and see them grow and learn and get it. Just so cute when you see it clicking in their heads. Oh man, cutest little things ever. And their little floppy puppy ears and head when you pet them. So, so cute. Oh yeah, do the Pyrenees do the head cock, the turning their head to the side when they're listening? Um, I would say sometimes, yeah. Not as much as our Skipperkey Poodle mix. He was...
36:49the king of head cocking. He was constantly looking at you trying to figure out what you were saying. He had those big ears sticking up that were kind of twisting like satellites or something. So they don't quite fit. The two big Pyrenees traits that I think are so cute in most situations, they hug, which is not cute when they're dirty, but they will literally stand there and hook you. And a lot of the periododal dogs that we have that have grown up, they also will do the hugging with them. They put their arms around you and hook you. And then they also smile.
37:19When they see you, they will give you the big smile. It's adorable. Yeah. Maggie smiles. And at first I thought it, at first I thought it was just bearing her teeth. And then I saw, and then I saw her bear her teeth and I was like, Oh, that's different, they're different things. Yep. It's so cute when they smile at you. And then when they're bad, they give you that smile like oopsies. I did something bad. Yeah. Maggie has the, the rosebud ears. So her ears don't stand up. They're, they're down.
37:49Okay. And when she thinks she's done something she's not supposed to do, she lays them back flat, you know, like toward her neck. Yeah. And she hasn't actually done anything wrong. She just thinks maybe she has. And I'm like, no, honey, it's okay. And she looks at me and she gives me the actual smile and she brings them back forward. And I'm like, okay, we're good. It's so weird. They...
38:16there are certain tones of voice that Maggie hears and she thinks that she's maybe stepped in it, you know? Oh, I see, yeah. And I'm like, nobody is upset with you. I don't know why you're doing that. The period that we kept, her name is Ziva, she will give us that smile in her head down when she's jumped up on the counter and grabbed something out of the compost bin when we were gone. So when I come in and she's doing that, I'm thinking to myself, is that compost on the floor again?
38:45And normally it is because she has jumped up there and I left it in the wrong spot. So yeah. Yeah. And that's probably a good way to end this. If you're going to have a puppy that you're going to grow into a full-grown dog as your pet, you have to make sure that you're setting them up for success. Oh yeah. Definitely. And I'm not saying you didn't by leaving the compost or whatever too close to the edge, but.
39:14But when we moved in here, we got Maggie like a month later. So we hadn't even fully unpacked our home yet. So there was very little for her to get into, which worked out great because there was nothing for her to eat or get choked on or trip over. And if we thought about bringing a puppy in this house right now, we've been here for years, I would have to, I'd have to completely clean my house from top to bottom to get a puppy again.
39:43Yeah, they like to chew on things. It's what puppies do. They learn with their mouth and they lose their teeth. And their teeth, yeah. They teeth from basically like nine weeks until about six, seven months old. And all they want to do is chew. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Lots of chew toys are good. Uh-huh. And they'll chew on you, too.
40:08If you let them, best to not let them go. I always switch. If a puppy puts its mouth on my hand or my arm or anything, I just grab something else and shove it in its mouth. You want to bite? Here's a stick to bite on. Here's a toy to bite on. Here's something you can bite on. Yeah. And if you look up how to stop a puppy from biting you, it says make an ouch noise. That doesn't do any good. We did that and Maggie would just be like, oh, more play now. Let's go. Right. Yeah. I switch them for something that they can have. Uh-huh. Yeah.
40:37And the other thing that really worked for us is we put white vinegar and apple cider vinegar in a spray bottle. And she wanted to chew the corners of our futon mattress on our futon couch. And she did. She chewed the corner pretty good. And I finally found out about this mix and it's called Bitter Apple. It's apple cider vinegar and white distilled vinegar. And you put it half and half in a spray bottle. You shake it up. Let it settle.
41:06and then you spray it on whatever you don't want them to chew. Oh, okay. And she hated the smell of it. The minute I sprayed that stuff anywhere, she would go and lay down and doesn't hurt them. They just don't like the scent. And she loved the taste of vinegar. Like she'd go over and lick the couch, but she would not chew on it. Interesting. It was really weird. So.
41:32We use that and we still use it. If she's being crazy for no obvious reason, like she's been fed, she's been watered, she's been outside, all the things, we just spray the vinegar in the air and she goes and lays down. I'm like, good girl. That's a great way. I love it. Thank you. Yeah. She doesn't get hurt and it doesn't mess up her brain or her nasal passages or her stomach and she would just behave. It was so great. So good tip for people with puppies right now.
42:03Try it, see if it works. Okay. All right, Sara, I really, you have no idea how much. I have enjoyed this, I learned a lot. I hope I taught some people some things too. And I appreciate your time so much. Well, thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you. I had a great time. Thank you. Have a great day.
 

Firefly Farm & Mercantile

Today I'm talking with Andre at Firefly Farm & Mercantile. 
For a 10 percent discount off a Firefly Farm and Mercantile purchase, use code Home Grown. 
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Andre at Firefly Farm and Mercantile. How are you Andre? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. You're in Wisconsin, right? Yeah. We are located right in the Driftless, right about 25 miles east of La Crosse.
00:29in a little town called Cashton. You live in one of the most beautiful areas I have ever visited. I have been to the Driftless area, and I can't remember the name of the town I went to, but it was gorgeous there. Yeah, we feel pretty lucky. It's, you know, we moved here, kind of sight unseen six years ago. My wife's like, you sure you wanna move here? We haven't been up to see it yet. And I said, I feel, I'm fine. I'm, you know, it's tired of Texas heat, so.
00:57Oh, yeah. I'm sure Wisconsin is a big change for you from Texas. It is. I was in Texas for a few years, but I was happy to trade in 110 degree summers, though. Yeah. And honestly, the upper Midwest can get kind of nippy and kind of unbearably muggy, too. But as I say, living in Minnesota, spring and summer and fall are why I tolerate the winters in Minnesota.
01:26Oh, the Four Seasons are so nice. Growing up in New England, I just loved the Four Seasons. You kind of get in those cycles of things. So as you move around the country, and I've lived in Florida and Alabama and then Illinois, I'll say the Four Seasons, I've always loved the Four Seasons. So. Me too. Where in New England did you grow up? I grew up in Connecticut. Okay, I grew up in Maine, so.
01:53Hi there, buddy. How you doing? Okay, so tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, Firefly Farmer Mercantile, we have a garden shop and farm out here in Cashton. So my love is gardening. And I would say didn't really plan on starting a garden shop when we moved up here, but just sort of it happened.
02:19We love just heirloom seeds. That's our specialty. And then kind of garden bulbs for all seasons, whether it's winter or summer, spring, fall, everything in between. We raise our own chickens and we raise our own lamb. So we sell those to a lot of restaurants. We do a lot with herbs. We do a lot, it's more specialty items that we grow for some of our local restaurants. Things that maybe no one else wants to grow or things that are just so small scale. They're like...
02:48It's not really worth our time. So I'll say we're pretty lucky that a few chefs will seek us out and say, Hey, can you grow me like three pounds of this or five pounds of this? And since we have the seeds, why not? What do you mind telling me what kind of special things you grow for them? Well, I will say that I have a request for the most pungent mustard I could get my hands on. Okay. So our wasabina mustard by High Mowing Organics is perfect for that. It gives you that pungent, that heat.
03:18We have another one, it's called Southern Curled, and that is another great little mustard too. So that's just an example. We have Red Vein Sorrel going in for a couple places. They wanted to have that for the fall, and that's a fun one. You know, and I'm surprised more people don't grow more of the perennial type greens, just because I think there's such a place and a need for them in the local food restaurants. Yeah, and
03:44Honestly, perennial things are so much easier than annual things. You plant them, they continue to grow, you do very little, I don't know, babying them typically and you're set for years to come. With annual stuff, you have to get the seeds every year or the seedlings, you got to put them in, you got to do all the work, you got to baby them. And then at the end of the season, you're done. It's so frustrating.
04:12I say that as not the gardener. My husband is the one who loves to garden. He's a lot like you. And I used to help. I don't help now. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. I don't like being out there when it's hot. I get headaches from heat. So it's just, it's not fun for me. He loves it. And he's, I've said this a billion times this summer because I'm so frustrated with it. We had terrible weather here this spring and the garden is pretty much a no show. It's, we're not.
04:42We're not getting nearly as much out of it this year as we have the last three years. And he's been so great. He's been doing what he can with what he has. And he's been terribly sad and terribly frustrated, but he's kept a really good attitude. So I'm very proud of my husband this year. Well, it was a trying year for a lot of folks in a lot of areas. June was, you know, May was warm.
05:10And then June came along and was wet and cold. Yep. So things like you traditionally would love to put out by then tomatoes, peppers, okra seeds, squat, you name it. Um, they were just slow going and it was hard. And then in July we had hot and dry. Um, so that was, you know, that complicated things, but there's things that, you know, gardeners can do to sort of mitigate, um, some of these, and this is what some of the things that we like to.
05:38talk about and teach down here. You know, one is we actually have a third acre or exhibition vegetable garden. It is one third of an acre and it is all compost. 100% compost underneath where we actually raised up that third acre by about six to 10 inches in places, which is pure compost. And why we did that is our top soil in our field was a lot of sand, but it's also low lying. And so when we get the rains,
06:09It would actually just stay and get drenched and water soaked for periods at a time. And when we put the compost in, we don't have that problem. It could rain six inches and our beds are just fine to walk on. So it really does make a difference for us folks. But you know, it's one, when I get the common question about raised beds, what do I put in my raised bed? I tell folks just pure compost. Find the best compost you can source and put it in there. You don't need any topsoil to grow, believe it or not.
06:38Yeah, we have three huge open compost bins on our property. It's three acres. We have lots of room to do that. And we've been adding compost to the garden since we moved in four years ago, but we only have so much compost to add every year and the garden is like a hundred feet by 150 feet. So we're doing, we're doing all the things to amend the soil and fix the soggy pooling problem that we have.
07:08Mm-hmm. And we started that the spring after we moved in because we moved in in August of 2020. But we haven't been here long enough to do what you've done yet. We just haven't had enough compost to do that kind of depth on it. No, it takes time. And compost is, you know, to make good compost, it's a struggle because if you don't have it covered and you get too much rain, it slows the process down and then it drives the temperatures. You can't, you know, kill your weeds. Yep.
07:37That's why I tell folks, I said, I know people always get sticker shocked when they go find compost and they start sourcing it. And I just tell them, I said, you know what? Good compost is worth it. You have no weeds. It's worth every penny, yes. Yes. I said, just imagining putting down, you know, I'll say that the three foot by eight foot raised bed seems to be one of the most common sizes. You know, and I tell folks, I said, really, for about 40 bucks, you can put about three of these beds together, three or four of these beds together.
08:07and have six inches of compost in there. And guess what? You just started off a weed free environment. Yep, exactly. And weed free environment is so important. And I'm gonna say this because we've been dealing with it since we moved in. The place where our garden is was an open field of grasses and weeds and wildflowers when we moved in. And I knew it was gonna be hard.
08:30I knew it was going to take years to mitigate the weeds. Oh yes. It is taking years to mitigate the weeds and no matter what we do, they come back to the point that we're probably going to take half of it this fall, till everything under and then use something to kill the weeds and hopefully not the bad stuff but the more natural weed killing, I don't know, products and see if that works because we're fighting a losing battle here right now.
09:00I would caution you on the tilling, and here's why. Okay. Does not think tilling doesn't have its place. You have to till big farms. You have to till big plots of land. We have to do that to a point. No till is great when the soil structure allows it. I'm a big proponent of no till as much as possible. In the garden, so just think about that six inches of topsoil underneath your garden.
09:28you know, that's a seed bank. And if you get deeper and you get down to seeds that haven't been disturbed in a while, you're pulling up seeds from the last few decades or last century, wherever it case may be, seeds that before you, they plowed them under. So you're bringing all that to the surface. Most seeds are causing you the problem that top one inch or two inches, really just the top inch of soil. And if you bring all those new seeds up, you've now just got to keep exasperating your problem.
09:57So what do we do instead? Well, I would suggest a few things. One is I love old silage tarps. So I buy silage tarps from our local farm place. I like silage tarps because they're not penetrating for light and they're not penetrating for moisture. And so I can kill very large areas very quickly and smother the weeds underneath.
10:24So when I have a large area and that may be something I just wanna say I can't kill all the weeds, but I at least wanna knock a lot of them out, I'll cover that for about 30 days if there's a lot of weeds on it. And then I will actually go ahead and just pour, put a little bit of compost on, or if I have to till, I'll call it the top dress, the bed, I may just barely, just a little bit like a half inch just to make it smooth again for planting. And then I'll go in there and...
10:54and actually go ahead and plant just right on top of that right away. Okay. And that usually does the trick. Um, the other thing you can end up doing, if you're not sure, like, um, coming into the winter months right here, you could apply that smothering right now, and then you can get crops like buckwheat or mustard, things that even do well for the, you know, until it freezes. Um, even in Minnesota, you can put a lot of these things on right in September and October and, uh, at least get a green crop on there for you for the winter.
11:23and then you have less seeds. And then come spring when you're ready to go, you can say, all right, I gotta go kill this thing. So you can take that same tarp and just smother it again, and then be ready to go. And what happens is as you're smothering that tarp, you're warming up the soil. So you're waking everything up, good or bad. And as you're doing that, as the mustard or the greens, you know, rot away, you actually are bringing up a lot of your organisms that will eat those weeds.
11:51Eat that greens and then incorporate into the ground and I think that that is It's worth doing now Sometimes you might have a lot of clay and there's other things you can't tilling make sense to put you know to put compost into It I get it But if you have good soil structure already, I would probably encourage you to try that method and said Charles doubting over in England He has a lot of great YouTube videos and I always recommend folks to just check it out He's big believer into the smothering and adding the compost on top
12:20But even if you can't quite do it large scale, maybe you find a few small beds and you start doing it with that. Like, carrots are a good example. Carrots are, it's really nice to start an area and when I do some carrots, I tend to go six to eight inches deep of compost with paper underneath. And the paper is, it rots away so fast that by the time the carrots get to be that length, it's not a problem. Okay. So.
12:46All right, you are the most recent person to make me so thankful that I started this podcast almost a year ago, because my husband is going to be so interested in everything you just said, everything. Well, you guys are more than welcome, he's more than welcome to drive out and visit us, so. Yeah, okay, so after all that, we've been talking for almost 13 minutes, and we haven't even gotten to the things I wanted to ask you about.
13:13And that's fine because I just learned a whole bunch of stuff I didn't know so thank you very much So you guys do you guys grow? The stuff that you sell or do you source it from outside or both? Mostly source so you can't grow that many seeds in one place Cross pollination is a big problem. So we use companies like seed savers out of the core Iowa very popular here in the Midwest
13:41Yeah, I'm high mowing organics out of Vermont. It's a, it's a small seed label and they're pretty popular. I say across most of us, but they're just strictly all things organic. Seed savers will do organic and then conventional, but their focus is heirlooms organic and high moans about organic and things that will grow for people so they can make a living or for gardeners so they can grow crops and food.
14:07And we have other labels too that we do Southern Exposure, New Living Sea. They're just, you know, they're mostly small farm operations for the most part. And then our bulbs are sourced from all over the world. We do grow and starting to grow our own dahlias because to try to source really great dahlias is next to impossible for the most part. And it takes when you import dahlias, you go through, it takes about a hundred dahlias to get to really like 50 or 60 good ones.
14:37And one thing I've learned as I get older, my eyes deceive me a little bit more. And I just don't really, it's harder to focus when you're trying to go through about 4,000 dahlias at that level. We, we, so we'll start growing out things quite a bit and then we're going to bring about 40 dahlias to the market over the next, every year and just rotate things on and off. But most everything is we, our main bulb company is a small family.
15:05I say small because it's small by some standards, but they have a 300 acre Tulip and Daffodil farm in the Netherlands, which is actually a really small farm for the Netherlands. And that's where I'd say I get quite a bit of my bulbs from. Other ones, you know, they're just sourced from the Canary Islands, from Peru. I mean, you name it, Israel, all places across the world. It's unbelievable where all these bulbs are, where they come from.
15:33You know, for us, we just go to the store. When I was a kid, I'd go to the nurseries and the garden centers, and they were the greatest place for bulbs. That's where I got my love of putting my hands like through the daffodils or the tulips. Very sensory that way. And I still remember that experience, but as I sort of grew up into my 20s and 30s, that disappeared. You know, there was no more garden centers really stopped carrying a lot of fall bulbs, especially fall bulbs and crates.
15:59Only because the big-box stores started getting the quick packaging, but you don't know what you're gonna get sometimes So, you know, there's just something when you come to our shop You get you know three or four hundred options and you're actually putting your hands in the bins touching the touching the bulbs that you're gonna bring Home with you. So most people just they just love that because you can't do that anywhere anymore Yeah, um, the sensory thing is interesting. My
16:30I mean great aunt and uncle, they weren't my parents' siblings or my grandparents' siblings. And they had a chestnut tree, a horse chestnut tree. Oh yes. And it would drop those, you know, when we would be up there for Thanksgiving, there would be horse chestnuts on the ground and the pointy, spiky part would be off of the nut already. And those are really smooth. They're like glass when you touch them.
16:59I can remember grabbing handfuls of stichmanoy in my pocket and bringing them home and using them almost like a worry stone. And I loved those. I haven't seen one in forever, but it was just one of those things where it was fun to put your hands on them. Yes. And gardening is so much more than just growing food or flowers or just making your house look pretty. You know, it's really this collection of experiences.
17:25It's amazing where a flower or a scent or eating something can just really bring back You know something from your childhood or something about another family member. So Yeah, um, okay. So you mentioned you you import bulbs for daffodils and tulips I have a question for you. Hopefully, you know the answer we put in tulip bulbs and daffodil bulbs Two and a half three years ago And they did great
17:54when they came up the first spring after we put them in. And now they're not coming up as much and I think it's because the critters under the ground are eating the bulbs. So is there anything that we could put in the ground around the bulbs that would allow the plant to come up through but the critters couldn't eat the bulb because this is driving me crazy? Well, a couple things. So one is your daffodils are probably coming up no problem. Not so much.
18:22Well then I would maybe say that you might have some... do you have heavier clay soils? We do, but I don't think we do where they are, if that makes any sense. Nothing eats a daffodil. So daffodils, they don't smell good to rodents. So one of the strategies is we'll put daffodils, hyacinths, around in different places where you're trying to deter some of the critters. But you know, it doesn't always do the greatest.
18:50I find that the Imperial Fertilary, that is really the best one and the alliums do great. Tulips, there's two things happening with your tulips most likely. One is if the tulips aren't, when the tulips don't come back, a lot of tulips, they grow these little things called bulblets. And when you pull up a tulip bulb after the, say you pull it up in August or July when they're done.
19:18you'd see all these little tiny bulblets right here. And you know, there could be five of them, there could be 20 of them. It just depends on the variety. And hybridizers and growers, they like the bulblets because when you put a bulb in the ground and you're getting, you know, you get some more bulblets going on, it's like, all right, I can take those up and I can go ahead and, you know, grow those. I clone it. I basically grow the same thing out every year and you're kind of on the cycle. While other tulips, they only grow maybe one or two.
19:45bigger bulblets, so they don't grow as many. And those tend to be the tulips that are more perennial in nature, I would say, where you kind of have to divide them up a lot less. Daffodils, they're not heavy feeders like a tulip. So a daffodil tends to just sort of naturalize in very long drifts, but they don't spread by seeds, so that's why we don't have daffodils popping up all over our forests and prairies everywhere. They're very much about the bulbs.
20:14So I would say that if you remember where the daffodils were, try digging them up or maybe they got buried a little bit too much sometimes. That can happen. But the tulips, I would venture that either you have something, eat some, they are the deer love the blossoms, the squirrels love the tulip bulbs. Moles really don't eat any of the plant life. They're more interested in protein around the critters that are...
20:43eating things and driving your lawn nuts, you get things like voles, of course, they'll go after them, but a tulip bulb is pretty deep. So you're not getting too much of those dangers other than maybe like the squirrels trying to dig them up. And you'll know them when they do. But if you try daffodils again, we always tend to mark things where maybe things might be so we can start digging them up. But if you're not getting anything back where the daffodils were, I would probably say they may have rotted.
21:13That does happen. Yeah. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. I don't want to spend any more money on tulip and daffodil bulbs at this point. So maybe what we'll do this fall is dig them up because I know exactly where they are and see what's going on under there. And maybe we can split some. I don't know. But the daffodils, the daffodils. So when we moved into this property, there was a lot of daffodils everywhere, but they were very...
21:42dense and they're very, so you got a lot of green but you had no blossoms. So just me and the kids are just digging them up and spreading them out. And, you know, sometimes planting things too densely can be problematic because you have to dig them up faster too. Yeah. Yep. I just, I can't, I cannot justify spending the money on the bulbs this year. It's, it's a little bit of a tight year for us. I'm not going to lie. We're doing everything we can.
22:11but we thought we were gonna have some supplemental income from the garden, which we don't have. Yeah, it can be challenging. Things like the tulips would be one where, they don't come back the greatest. The darwins do, but the daffodils and crocuses are probably the most reliable in the great pyocene. They're just, they're gonna go no matter what happens. Nothing really likes to bother them.
22:36So they're always kind of a joy to have in the springtime. But it can be trying times. It's always, as I tell folks, you're just, you know, not unlimited funds when it comes to gardening. Kind of whatever your passion is, grow that and see what happens. Yeah, my passion is peonies and everyone knows it. Oh yes, yes, we love peonies. Yeah, and anytime someone's like, I'm gonna be splitting my peonies. Do you guys wanna come help and take some home? I'm like, yes, when? Yep, yep.
23:06Because free peonies are good peonies. We have been given so many peony roots over the years and they have all done fabulously. The only problem with peonies is it takes about three years for them to really be established and give you some really beautiful blooms. So it's a waiting game. Big waiting game, because they really, even our bare roots that are harvested when they're dormant. So they go through less trauma than the splitting of
23:35you know, during the summer, the spring, the fall. And I always tell folks when you do have, when you wanna split and thin things out, I said early spring is typically the best time. Cause then it's active to get the roots in. Fall can work very well too, but you wanna give them enough of a growing season to get some roots established. And they kind of just choose big tubers cause they gotta make it through the winter time when they're doing it. But they're really easy. But yeah, I noticed when, you know, you're doing anything in the summertime, oh.
24:04three to five years you're gonna be waiting for that blossom to come and then all of a sudden it comes out like in a vengeance like oh where these 40 blossoms come from. And sometimes Mother Nature really surprises you. We put in two peach trees last year, saplings, and one of them has just shot up, has no fruit on it, it's beautiful. My husband's actually gonna have to prune it when it's time to do that. It's so big. The other sapling has 12 peaches on it. We just put it in last year.
24:36that can happen. It's amazing what the fruits can do. Everything depends on your stock as well. Is it on a semi-dwarf? Is it on a standard? Over in our garden, in our orchard section, we do what's called a permaculture orchard. It goes by the acronym NAP. N stands for Nitrogen Fixing of some sort. A for apple. Then P is for pear, plum, or Asian pear.
25:04And so we kind of just rotate things in the orchard that way where it's NAP, NAP, NAP. And you know, my wife would say, oh, we don't got enough. None of these trees over here have given us anything. I said, well, those are standards and they take, you know, five to seven years, while our semi dwarfs will take like a year or two years and you finally have fruit. So it just, it all really depends on that root stock. That makes, that does make a big, big difference.
25:27Yeah, and I have no idea. He picked them up at some store when he was out. So not a clue where he got them or what they are. But he sent me a photo from them. They're way on the back corner of our property. So I haven't been over there yet. And he sent me a photo. I was like, are those peaches? And he texted back. Yeah. He said that one tree has peaches. I was just dumbfounded. I was like, I thought it would take three years before he had peaches.
25:56Oh no, you know, every tree is a little bit different. There's a little, I prune my trees heavily and we're in a valley, so it is every year. Even my most dependable tree is a zest star tree for the apples, but the other items, we can't do peaches in our valley because we get the frost just at the right time when the peaches wanna start blooming. So that's always a shame, but you know, and we don't do cherries for that reason either, but.
26:24Hey, we can do Asian pears and a few other things, but fruit should taste good. And I always recommend, they're like, oh, what should I start my garden with? I said, put in some fruit trees. We have a dozen blueberry bushes. We're getting ready to till an area to be acidified so we can get them in the ground. We love blueberries. And the one regret is we didn't do blueberries soon enough, right? Yeah. Because if I did them five years ago successfully, but we did do them, but my dogs decided to dig them up one day. Oh no.
26:52It was not happy about that. Um, but anyhow, so we were at it again and, uh, you know, we went blueberry picking a few miles away from our house. And it was so just nice. And my wife's like, we gotta get more blueberries for, for our garden. Yeah. The, the, the battle cry or the, uh, clarion call for gardeners everywhere is we need to get more of whatever it is. Yes. You know.
27:19Right now I am loving our thornless blackberries. So between our orchard, I put shrubs in. We got currants, erroneas, buffalo berry, and right now black thornless blackberries. I have raspberries elsewhere because I don't want them anywhere near my fruit trees to get all, you know, bit up with thorns. So we'll put them elsewhere. But the thornless blackberries are really nice because we're like I need three or four of them and you get clusters.
27:47of giant blackberries. And it's so nice to go just walking through and you can stop at one bush and you can walk away with like, you know, a couple cups of blackberries and you still have, you know, 10 times that amount on the bush starting to ripen. So that's that's my favorite fruit right now going on in our orchard. What's a buffalo berry? Oh, a buffalo berry is a nitrogen fixing shrub.
28:14So it actually puts nitrogen back into the ground, so to speak. And the jury's still out on how much it does, how much it doesn't, but I thought, well, I'll just try it. They're not really edible for us. The birds love them. And that's one thing in an orchard is, you know, your winged friends, you really want them around despite, you know, maybe they're going to eat some of your currants or they're going to eat some of your fruit because they take care of like all your pests. So you know, you get the kingbird.
28:43he's my favorite bird to see in the garden and to see in the orchard because he'll eat more caterpillars and winged pests and any other bird out there than your bluebirds, of course, and your wrens. So the buffalo berry is kind of there and we just do it to feed the birds. So they're not really something for us to eat, but they're native out in the, out further west, out in the Colorado areas. And that's where I got them from a small family who has them. And...
29:13You know, they do okay. It's not like I'm gonna get a thousand of them, but they're kind of fun. Okay. I'd never heard of Buffalo Berry, so I thought I would ask. We're almost at 30 minutes, and I don't know how much time you have. I mean, I can go for another 15 if you want, but my main question left that I have is how did you get into this? Oh, well, gardening in general? Well, yes, and the business.
29:39Well, gardening in general, so the family, my family's were gardeners for the most part, growing up and my grand, my grandfather, some of my uncles were big time gardeners. My mom did like to garden. Um, I was really busy all the time. It was raising five boys, so we can be a handful. So it was kind of exposed to gardening. And then my brother passed away at when I was 12 and gardening was sort of a healing activity for me.
30:09and you can get your hands dirty, you can, it really helped get me through, you know, through that, through that, his death. And so gardening kind of always stuck with me and I learned more about it going into my teenage years and it was just always a joy and I always loved gardening. And I was toying around with an organics counselor, you know, when you become a junior or senior in high school about different career options. And you know, I said, well, I think I'm just going to go.
30:36start a garden center, maybe go to school for business or this and that, but probably just do a garden center. Yeah, I really enjoyed gardening. She's like, oh, you know, you're so good at athletics and you have a good science and math score. She goes, I really encourage you to think about engineering or just something maybe a little bit, you know, different path. And I went down different paths, of course. And then it was okay. I really enjoyed my careers. But when I left the
31:05we sort of came up to the driftless area. I was like, gosh, I really, you know, missed the gardening side. And I said, I'm just gonna start a gardening business. We have this old 90 year old barn. It's a perfect place to start some operations. And I really wasn't planning on being open to the public. I just really wanted to have some fun selling seed and bulbs and maybe growing some things around the sale. And, you know, people would just start coming at all hours of the day. Oh, can I come see your farm? Can I come see your garden?
31:33And we start talking, I start showing. And I told my wife, I said, we just are gonna have to open up our own farm and have a garden shop here. And it's been a joy. It really has been a blessing for us. Wow, that's a great story. You think we may have the same thing happening here next year. We put in a heated greenhouse this May. Oh, lovely. And we're going to be doing bedding plants and hanging.
32:03hanging flower pots, you know, like you would buy it. Walmart only, ours will probably be better, maybe. And that kind of thing. And we're just gonna have people come in and pick out what they want. You know, they're gonna come into the greenhouse. So I suspect that if all goes well, keep your fingers crossed for us that all goes well next year because this year's been a bitch.
32:27It'll be really fun to have people come see what that greenhouse has done for us over this winter and next year. Oh, yeah. And I would say that, you know, even think about things that aren't in your area. So I know the hanging baskets are fun and they're exciting. You know, there's a lot of demand, but there's a lot of supply. And I would challenge to think about what makes up your baskets to be sort of the colors people are looking for. But
32:54to be a little bit more drought tolerant. And one thing I know from a lot of the successful growers, when I bring in hanging baskets or I have them grown for me, I get the bigger baskets. I want the 12 inch or 14 inch baskets, minimum. I do not want the 10 inch, I do not want the eight to nine inch because they dry out so fast. And I tell folks, I said, you know, a hanging basket is really just, these are all kind of temporary baskets.
33:20for you. You really got to think about the plants that you're going to want to grow, they're going to need more food, they're going to need soil. Every basket you almost get, you almost need to put into a bigger container and you should almost have a permanent container of some sort. So 14 and so as you're going down this path of thinking, you know, some of these items that make them a little bit more low maintenance, you know, you can, you can actually command a bit of a higher price.
33:46But if you're pointing out these things for people, that they don't have to like come late July and then their baskets are looking like, oh my gosh, there's no soil left, it's all roots. What happened here? It's very common things I hear quite a bit. Yeah, I also was thinking that it would be really fun to have some baskets and the compost or whatever we're gonna put in the bottom of them, whatever growing, there's a word, I can't think of it. Medium. We call it medium, medium. Yeah, medium.
34:15having them come and pick out the seedlings for the flowers they want in their hanging basket and teaching them how to make one of their own. Oh, absolutely, and then you just sit there, they pack it, and then you grow it out for them in the heat. And there's a lot of fun with that. It's kind of like make your own bouquets and make your own baskets. It really becomes a big deal for them. Yeah, and I'm like the least social person on earth, and I just said that on a podcast. I don't know what I'm thinking.
34:45No, it's fine. The podcast, I'm not required to be with actual people. I just talk to people. I don't have to be in the same room with them. And I just said that I would like to have a class on how to make a hanging flower basket. I don't know what I'm thinking, but maybe it'll work. Who knows? All right. So anyway, Andre, I don't feel like we talked.
35:08about a whole lot of the other things that you're doing because I know you're doing other things, but this has been great. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, no, thank you. We appreciate it. We're excited for this upcoming year. We have 2100 seeds that we'll be bringing in and they started arriving this past week, so it's going to be really exciting. Yeah, I love, love, love when seeds come in the mail and I can look at the packets if it's the packet and be like, oh,
35:38we're going to be buying seeds soon and they probably won't come in a packet, they'll probably come in a bag because we're going to buy bigger amounts. If you buy bigger amounts, yeah, we sometimes will have like 10 pound bags of the wildflower seed. We'll get them in 25, 50, 100 pound sacks and it's always just like daunting to me to think how many seeds are in one of these 25 or 50 pound sacks. There's a lot of seeds in there. So many, yes. And...
36:04In about four months, it'll be time for garden company catalogs to be coming in the mail, and that's always fun too. It is. Well, thanks for having me, Mary, and appreciate it. Absolutely. I really, really do appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.
 

Little Blue's Traveling Zoo

Today I'm talking with Irene at Little Blue's Traveling Zoo. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Irene at Little Blues Traveling Zoo. How are you, Irene? I'm great, how are you, Mary? I'm good. You guys are in Minnesota, yes? Yes. Okay, I wasn't positive, so I thought I should ask.
00:29So what do you guys do? Well I have a traveling petting zoo which means that I just take my little crew of farm animals around to different parties. We're normally around the twin cities except kind of the area beyond. But we do like birthday parties, community events, church events, festivals, just kind of whatever anyone would want a petting zoo for. Okay and when did you start doing it? I can't talk this morning. And how did you get into it?
01:00So my dad actually started it when me and my sisters were in college. Probably about four years ago, he started it, like started the idea of it. Um, and I always called it his mid crisis that he just started a petting zoo cause he thought it would be fun. Um, but I got my degree in agriculture education and so I was going to be a high school agriculture teacher. And I did this for my dad one summer cause it was a lot busier than he thought it would be and he has a full time job. So I did it for him one summer and I decided I actually.
01:29really loved and I wanted to stick with it. And so now I'm doing all of the management side of it as well. And I love it. It's just so much fun. How much has it grown since you started it? It's amazing how much it's grown. We started out in the fall our first year, and so we only did a couple events that fall, which was a lot of fun, but that's all we did. And then that next summer, I think I did like 15 events a month in the summer, which I was ecstatic about.
01:57And now fast forward two years, this August actually, I have 39 events in August. It's amazing. I just get busier and busier and we have a second truck trailer now too, so we can do twice the amount of events. So it's just been, it's been a wild ride. Okay. And I don't want to get real personal on finances, but how much does it cost to book you guys? So my base price for two hours is $600. And then I have a trip charge of $1.50 per mile from the farm.
02:28Okay, so it's a lucrative business if you have that many people booked for August. Yeah, I mean animals sure cost a lot to take care of, but it's able to pay for them and pay for my own living expenses, so I feel very blessed. That's amazing. So you guys don't really have a homestead as it were, but you work with livestock and you have a business that serves the public, so I figured that you might fit the bill for my podcast.
02:58Um, what kind of animals do you, do you take around to show people? So I take goats, sheep, pigs, turkeys, and then I have an alpaca and a mid sized cow. So I usually take all those animals and then either the alpaca or the cow. And is it just you taking them or do you have help? I help. I have my amazing friend Jordan, who I convinced to move up from, uh, Iowa to stay here and do this job with me.
03:27And so it's both of our full-time job. Okay. So it's the two of you moving the animals from where they live to wherever they're going. Okay. Cause that's a lot of critters to move by yourself. And are the animals with the program, are they, are they on board? Are they happy? Do they love doing what they do? Do you think? Yes, they really are. Cause we have some who don't love it and they stay at home.
03:52But we have a bunch that love it. I have in particular this one goat, his name is Mr. Waddles. And when we try to leave the farm without him, he just stands at the gate and he just yells. He is so mad. He does not want to be left behind. They love going out. They love the fresh green grass that they get. And they love directing and meeting new people. Awesome. So when you take them places, where...
04:18Where are the events usually held? I mean, is it outside? Is it inside? Is it both? Yeah, most of them are outside. I have a strong preference for being outside because then we can get a nice breeze going through and it doesn't get as stuffy. But in the winter I do some indoor events and for the indoor events you have to lay down a tarp and then some shavings and all that stuff for the animals. So I prefer being outside but we do indoor events as well. Okay.
04:44So tell me about the latest event. Like I want to get a feeling for how it goes, how it works. Yeah, my last event was Kai Chai Saga days in Chasago, which is my home turf. So I love doing that one. It's just kind of their city days. And so we get there about 45 minutes ahead of time to set up, pull the truck and trailer up into the park and we have a 30 by 30 foot pen, just six foot panels that we connect to each other and make a big pen. And then we have.
05:13couple tents we set up to make sure the animals have shade. On really hot days I also have fans and a jetter all set up for the animals. But yeah we just set up their pen, water, hay nets, all that stuff for them. And then once we get started we let 15 to 20 people in the pen at a time and they can brush the animals, pet them, all that good stuff. Okay so what do people think when they come to these events or these birthday parties or whatever it is you're doing? I mean what kind of feedback do you get?
05:42I get great feedback, which just makes me so happy. The best thing that I can hear that people tell me how friendly and calm and healthy the animals are, because I really do pride ourselves on that animals are our family. It's not like we get baby animals in the spring and get rid of them in the fall. They stay with us their whole life. We just love them and we try to take the best care of them. People love it. They love how calm they are because for a lot of petting zoos, you don't get to actually go inside the pen with the animals.
06:10unlike with ours where you can come in and brush them and pet them and all that stuff. So that's the most kind of feedback I get is how calm and friendly they are. It just always makes me so happy. Yeah, I mean, obviously that's going to help if you want it to go well. I mean, I don't mean to state the obvious as dumb, but yeah, you want your animals to be comfortable with people and new situations and new places because otherwise it would never work. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, they're exposed to so much different stuff.
06:40We were at a speedway, like a racetrack, and that was really fun. But they saw monster trucks for the first time. They weren't thrilled at first, but they settled in pretty quick once they realized nothing's going to hurt them. Well, they're better than my dog. I can't take my dog anywhere because all she does is bark at people. She, we got her in 2020, so she was never really socialized to anything because we didn't take her anywhere because we didn't go anywhere.
07:09And she was a puppy. So when people come to visit, she barks at them for a good five minutes. And then she finally decides that it's safe to sniff their hand. And pretty much once she does that, she settles down. But even in the car or the SUV, we park. And if she's with us, she's in the back seat. And if anybody walks into the parking lot, even 100 feet away, she's barking at them.
07:37I'm like, you're so dumb. They're number one, they're not going to hurt you and number two, you might like them. But no, she doesn't. She does not people well. They're warning you. Yeah, she does not people well. So yeah, managing to get your farm animals acclimated to all the different things is a trick and it's a skill. And I'm really impressed because we can't get the dog acclimated to anything here.
08:04My parents have a farm dog and he's definitely not as well behaved as some of the farm animals are. Yeah, it's crazy. Dogs are supposed to be your best friend and apparently she's just me and my husband and my son's best friend and everybody else can just go away. I don't know. She's crazy. Okay, so I have questions but I'm trying to phrase them in a way that doesn't sound obnoxious because they're kind of obnoxious.
08:33So yeah, I'm stuck. The, okay, do you have rules for when people go in with the animals? Yes, I do. My two main ones that I tell kids is no running and no feeding the animals. Cause when we start getting food involved, my goats can get kind of jumpy and I want them to stay as calm as possible. And we bring pigs as well. I don't want any little fingers near those pigs mouths. Yeah, no. So those are my two main ones. I-
09:02I found, you know, if you try to tell more than three girls at the gate, kids just stop listening. You know, I don't blame them. Kids have a short attention span. They just want to come in. They want to visit the animals. So I kind of just take to those two. And then you have somebody monitoring everybody in the pen. And if they notice something like, you know, a kid's trying to touch their legs or pull on their tail, you know, you're like, oh, maybe not do that. But generally, it's just a no running and the no feeding. And that serves us pretty well. Okay. So I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked Andrew.
09:32at the St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm when I interviewed him. He spoke very highly of you guys, and I think you guys have a working relationship somewhere along the line. But I asked him, because he has the hobby farm where he has people come in and visit with the animals. He doesn't, last I knew he didn't take them anywhere. I asked him if he requires people to wash their hands, because during COVID and the bird flu thing that came through back years ago,
10:02the fares were real hesitant to let people come in and pet the animals. So do you require people to wash their hands or anything? I have hand sanitizer for people to use if they want. I mean, knock on wood, I haven't experienced any disease yet and all of my animals are fully vaccinated. One of the big things too is when we show up to places where they have other animals they didn't tell us about, I'm very clear that we need to be far away from them.
10:29They don't know what our animals have been through. We don't know what their animals have been through So I try to steer as clear away from that as possible and because we do a lot of stuff in the cities most of the City people they don't have goats or chickens at home, you know, yeah, but so I have the hand sanitizer It's a little too difficult for me to lug around a hand washing kind of station But yeah, I mean knock on wood Sophie haven't had any disease incidents
10:57Yeah, it's amazing to me how risky it is to bring a new animal onto your farm or into your property. Oh my gosh, yeah. We have to be so picky now. Some of our first animals were rescues. You know, you don't know what their background is like or where they've been. And now, you know, as much as we love to rescue, we just can't really do that anymore, especially with like our goats and our sheep, because we need to know that they came from like a tested herd or a closed herd to make sure that we don't bring anything into our own herd.
11:28Absolutely. We were really stupid and really lucky a couple of years ago. We had chickens already at our place and we went and got like, I don't know, 10 more bullets. And I didn't even think about the fact that we should have kept them separate for like a week. And so we basically let them in with the other chickens right away and everybody got along. And then I was doing some research, obviously, because I'm...
11:56about this homesteading thing. And then I started doing the podcast and people are mentioning all the time that they tend to keep new animals in isolation for a little bit. We could have killed the chickens that we already had and had no idea why they died, you know, by doing that. So we're actually going to be culling our flock here soon because they're lazy and they're not giving eggs and they're old.
12:22Yeah. And they're going to make excellent chicken stock and then we're going to get new chickens next spring. And so when we get new chickens, I think we're just going to get as many as we think we need and call it good for a while. And that way we don't have to worry about introducing any new guys to the group. Yeah, that's a good plan. It is so stressful to introduce new animals. Yeah. And chickens are crazy. They either love each other immediately or they fight. Yeah. Right. And then if there's like even just a little bit of blood on one of the other chickens, they really go for it.
12:52Yeah, they're destructive little dinosaurs is what they are. They are. I'm not a fan. I don't love chickens. I love the eggs that I get from them, but I just don't love chickens. And it's fine. I don't have to love them because they're not really cuddly anyway. It's not a big deal. Right. Exactly. Okay. So do you have, I mean, I hate to make you pick favorites, but if you can, do you have a favorite event that you've been involved in so far?
13:21Oh, that's a good question. There are so many that I love. I think one of my favorites is Little Canada's Canadian Days. It's a city in the Twin Cities. And we've been there for three years. So since we started, they've had us, which just makes my heart happy that they keep having us back. I just love the people in that community. It's always a really fun event. And the lady, her name is Sue, who organizes it for us.
13:49It's just so sweet and so accommodating. She always has the nicest area for the animals, but I really love that one. I love the people in that community. They're always just really excited to see the animals and really grateful. Awesome. Do you have a funniest story about any of the events that you've been at? Um.
14:12Hmm. It's gotta be something. Kids can say the funniest things, you know, I've definitely got some funny quotes from kids. I had one of my goats, his name is Snoopy and you know, he's a boy goat, but they still have their little udders and this little boy kneeled down behind him and pointed up and he whispered to his friend. He was like, he's got two weenies.
14:40One of the funniest things I've heard from kids, but I can't think of a specific event that was really funny. I think a lot of like the child cares that we go to just, they make me giggle just from the things that the kids say and how excited they are. Yeah, I love kids. I love kids from like, okay, my favorite age for kids is
15:03newborn to six months because they're snugly and they're not mobile yet. That's my preference. I love it when they're all snugly and they smell like brand new babies and you get to hold them all the time. I don't want any, I, Lord knows I don't want any more. I'm 54. I've raised four. I'm good, but I love babies. But I think my favorite age is probably from about four to about eight when they're still small and still pretty brand new to the world and they're still absorbing everything.
15:32And they have no online editor. Whatever they're thinking is going to come out of their mouth. I think. Yeah, exactly. I love some of the older kids too, you know, from like six to 10. I love how chatty they are. They always have so many questions for me about the animals. I did an event last week that was just these boys sat with me with one of those and were asking me just everything about how his horns work, why he's chewing his cud, all this stuff. They were asking about his hooves. And when it was time for them to go, one of the boys looked up at me and he was
16:02next time you come I want to talk about the sheep and it was just so cute they just love to learn and they're so curious I just love that. They're sponges they soak up everything if if they're asking questions answer them because it'll stick with them forever. Um okay I do have a question about why goats chew their cuds and I have another question about the regulations for all this so let's start with why goats chew their cud because I've talked to a lot of people about goats lately but that has not come up.
16:32Yeah, well, you know, the kids are always curious when they see them laying down and chewing, they're like, what are they eating? And I just always explain to them that it's their cud that they have a ruminant digestive system like a cow and the sheep have that to my alpaca as well. And so when the food moves into the first chamber, it sits there for a little bit and then they regurgitate it back up into their mouth and they chew it a second time and blow it and it moves it to the second chamber, eventually the third and the fourth and it moves throughout their whole system. But I love telling that to the kids and I'll tell them, you know,
17:02Especially my alpaca after he's finished swallowing one bite of his cut I'm like, okay now watch his neck and you see as he's regurgitating because he's got such that long neck You can see it moving all the way up through his neck until it comes up into his cheek And they just think that is so cool, you know, cuz they most of them never heard about anything like that before Yeah, I thought it was something to do with how their digestive system works But I just hadn't ever ever talked about it on the podcast and that seems like a cool thing to know
17:29Um, yeah, so so so ruminants have built in chewing gum basically exactly Although let me tell you it doesn't smell as good. Oh, no. No, no, no, it's disgusting I've I've had the not pleasure of of having that experience of smelling it. It's not great um, okay, so It's not like just anybody can go out and get a couple goats and couple sheep and some rabbits and some ducks and whatever and
17:57just be like, hey, we have these critters, can we bring them to your party and get paid for it? I know there's regulations and there's all kinds of stuff that has to happen to make this work. So without being nosy, what kind of regulations do you have to meet to be able to do this? Yeah, so to start it, I mean, we had to first just be registered as limited liability company is what we are. And so we had to go through that.
18:22whole process and then our insurance agent is just the best ever. And so he helps us with all that kind of side of it. Uh, but to do the actual events, a lot of cities require permits. And I always tell my, um, the people who are hiring me that this is up to them to look into. I'm not the one applying for the permit. They're applying for the permit and I'll just give them any information they need. They usually require vaccine records. Um, and they need a rabies certificates.
18:50and the stuff that I always have on hand for them. But that's the biggest one is that a lot of cities require permits. But other than that, I do not need a USDA license. My type of petting zoo does not require that. I think if you, I might be wrong on this, but I think if you have people coming to you, you might need that. But since I just do the traveling stuff, I haven't needed to apply for that. And so unless that changes, I don't need that part of it.
19:19The biggest thing is just the permits for us. Okay, cool. And then the other question regarding insurance. God forbid something goes wrong, someone gets hurt or your animals get hurt. Is it the person that is hiring you to bring your animals to the place that is hit with the insurance claim or is it you or is it both?
19:46You know, I haven't encountered that situation yet. Thank goodness. Yeah. But I think it will depend on the kind of events too, because me going to a daycare is a lot different than if I'm going to a huge city event where I'm interacting with the public. Yeah. So I think that would kind of make sense. But I think that both of us would really have to work on that together. A lot of the schools that I work for, they always have contracts for me. They're pretty much the only ones that ever get contracts to me.
20:15where we're working out those kind of details if something happened, you know, like my insurance would kick in and we would take care of that. So I think generally it would come to me and my insurance guy. But luckily we haven't had to deal with that yet. Yeah, there's just there's so many rules and regulations for businesses that I'm always curious to see what's involved in something like yours versus something like us with our
20:45produce from. And we had to change, well, we didn't have to. We were gently persuaded by our awesome insurance guy to switch to farm insurance instead of homeowners insurance because it covers different things and it also covers the home under that policy. So for anybody listening and looking to get into a business, always, always, always talk to your insurance person about what you're doing.
21:15what needs to happen with insurance because it is not a great feeling to have something happen and realize that you are not covered Right. Oh man. I owe my insurance guy so much. He he knows what he's doing and that's the important thing Absolutely Don't don't ever stick with the same insurance person either if you don't get along and you don't see eye-to-eye with your your insurance company
21:41You don't have to stick with them. Find someone that you actually like and click with because it makes it so much easier. Absolutely. And I mean, everybody can do how they wanna do it, but we just found that the person that we dealt with was great about explaining things in not legalese, but in layman's terms so that it was just easier to understand what the policy covered. Yep.
22:12Because Wiggly's is a lot of double-speak. It's a lot of words that you may not be familiar with. There's some Latin in there. And if you're not a word nerd, you may not understand what's being put in front of you. A lot of that just goes right over my head. Yeah, yeah. If you're not in the business, you aren't necessarily going to understand everything that you're handed at an insurance meeting. So, and it's not because we're stupid. It's just that that's not our specialty. Exactly.
22:41So yeah, it's important. And limited liability company or corporation for anybody who doesn't know, that's what LLC stands for. When you hear a company name with LLC at the end, that's what that LLC stands for.
22:57So, okay, let me think. I don't know what else to ask you. Like I'm out of my depth here. Uh, yeah, I'm stuck. Is there anything else you would like to talk about or share? Um,
23:18No, I mean, all of my animals, they live on our family farm. It's about 10 acres. And we have like 52 animals now, but that's including chickens and all that stuff. Yeah. But yeah, 10 acres works really well for us. We have full-sized horses that take up like four or five of the acres, and then a couple acres for the little animals. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. I love doing the traveling stuff. I would very dip into the...
23:46having people come to our farm territory. I'm not interested in that. That seems like a ton more work. And more liability, yep. Exactly, and my parents live there, you know, so that wouldn't be, I love doing the traveling stuff and it's been lucrative for us, so very blessed. Awesome, I do have a question. I just thought of while you were talking. Do you guys have merchandise? Do you have like t-shirts or hats or, I don't know, magnets or whatever?
24:16Yeah, we have coloring books. And my mom actually, she has a boutique in town. And so she also makes like sweatshirts and t shirts with those machines that can do that stuff. And so she makes our little blues merch for us. And so we do get that to people sometimes too, which is a lot of fun. It's fun to see people wear the little blues merch. Yeah.
24:43Yeah, we don't like we're not actively like putting that stuff out there. Um, maybe one day we will, but when people ask, we make them some stuff. Oh, okay. All right. And, um, the trailer or trailers that you transport the animals in, do you have a logo or are they fancy painted trailers? So people know what's being, who's being moved. The trailer, not, but one of our trucks has a wrap on it with
25:11It says Little Blues Traveling Zoo. It is gorgeous with cutouts of the animals and it's super fun. I love it We'd love to get a wrap for the truck But the second truck is a bit older and we're hoping to upgrade in the next couple years And so when we upgrade we'll do the wrap on the new one as well So when you're driving down the road do people honk at you if you're driving the one with the wrap?
25:36I get a lot of stares. I get a lot of looks, a lot of excited kids in the back seat of cars looking. And then a lot of people also recognize me or they know that my dad and so they'll see the business and know that's what he does. So they'll wave at me as they're driving by. So that's really fun. I love that. Do you feel like a minor celebrity in your area? Sometimes I do. Yeah.
26:03I bet little kids you see the truck that has the logo and stuff on it. I bet they're like, what is that? Is that an ice cream truck? I love when we pull up to an event and there's already kids around and they're just like, it's the petting zoo! Yeah, kids love animals. I mean I have met maybe two kids in my whole life who were skittish around animals and once they realized that they were okay, they were great with it. My neighbor who
26:33lived across the street from us back when we lived in Jordan, Minnesota. She had a little girl and I think it was the youngest one. And we had cats and she came over with her kids and the littlest one started crying as soon as she saw the cat. And I was like, oh no, no, it's okay. And the lady who lived across the street, she was like, she's really afraid of cats.
27:01I said, why? And she said, I have no idea. She said, none of the kids really like cats, but the youngest one nod into it. And I think she finally, the youngest finally did get brave enough to pet one of the cats, but you could just tell she was like, I don't like this at all. So she's the only, she's the only kid I've ever met who was that anxious about a cat.
27:27Yeah, you know, some of them are just so nervous and sometimes at events there's kids who are they're too afraid they don't want to come in the pen they're really anxious about it. But after sitting outside the pen because they'll just sit out there and look at the animals, you know, five minutes they start to get more interested and more brave. And then my favorite is seeing kids like that come into the pen and just like blossom. They just get so excited and they get more comfortable. They're not nervous of the animals anymore.
27:54a lot of times they'll choose like one animal to be like a favorite and they'll just stick by that animal. And it just makes me so happy to share them with kids who don't get to see these kinds of creatures very much and watch them become more comfortable and not as scared. Yeah. I can't imagine life without some kind of pet or...
28:18Or a livestock animal, I mean we don't really have livestock animals. We have barn cats and chickens That's about as far as we go with livestock But but growing up we always had a cat or a dog or both I mean, I don't remember a time when we didn't have a pet and The idea of not having a pet if you're a family with kids is just foreign to me. I don't get it. Mm-hmm Well, I think animals and having pets could teach a lot to children about responsibility and empathy
28:48All that good stuff, respect.
28:52Yeah, I mean, their pets are in your care. And if you're part of a family that has pets, I feel like everyone in the family should be involved in the care of that animal. And I don't care if it's a toddler, toddlers can get a kibble for the cats or the dog or whatever. And they love to do it. I had a job when I was younger as a camp counselor for a farm camp.
29:22one of the things the kids would do is help feed the animals and give the animal the water. And the little toddlers would do it and they just love it. They love that responsibility and like knowing that they're like taking care of something. No. Yes. I love it when two-year-olds say, I do it. Yes. It's one of my favorite things ever. And then they say, no, I don't want to do it by the time they hit 13, 14. So. Exactly.
29:49What happened to the excitement and the grin and the smile and the I do it part? That was great. Bring that back. Well, Irene, I really love the idea of what you're doing. And if I had small children, I would maybe entertain the idea of having you guys bring your critters to my place for a birthday party, but I don't have small children anymore, so I have grown up now. Maybe we'll see you at a public event.
30:16Could be, never know. Stranger things have happened. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me though, Irene, all joking aside, this has been great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me, Mary. It's been fun. All right. Have a great day. You too.
 

The Green Korner

Today I'm talking with Monica at The Green Korner. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Monica at The Green Korner. Good morning, Monica. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good. And where are you located again? In Houston, Texas. Okay. I didn't catch any accent. I...
00:29I could have guessed if there was an accent, but you don't have one. Oh, no. That's because I'm Costa Rican. My family moved into the States 50 years ago. However, I was born in Costa Rica and my parents brought me to the States when I was one year old. Okay, that makes sense. So I have been living in both countries since then. Okay. So you're in Texas. Cool. Yes. All right. So tell me about yourself and the green corner. Yes.
00:57Like I said, I was brought into the States when I was 12 months. My great grandparents, they used to have tobacco farms. And my grandparents, they used to raise cattle and obviously they used to grow their own food. However, I was not really raised into that environment. And that was way before my time. Just a normal person. You know, I'm a community health worker.
01:26And then we have the pandemic. And I was bored, quite honestly. I was like, oh my gosh, what am I supposed to do now? And I saw, it was a video, I believe it was on YouTube, about growing pineapples from the store. I'm like, yeah, right.
01:47little that I knew that was going to be the beginning. I'm like, hmm, let me, you know, just get some pineapples. I started like growing, experimenting. Then I went with bunching onions and name it. So my dining room became a lab. And I'm like, hmm, okay, I'm liking this. So let me just start doing it outside in my backyard. And within a few weeks, I'm like,
02:17convert my home into an urban homestead. So I redesigned my entire backyard. It's no longer a backyard. It's a mini urban farm. Every single inch, it's a racemate.
02:35That's how The Green Korner came to life. Yeah, I was gonna say, is that why it's called The Green Korner? That is why it's called The Green Korner because in the early stages, I bought me a green house from Walmart. And it was a mess. I didn't know what I was doing. I was barely learning. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this corner is so green. Because I was upset because then I had ants beneath.
03:04And I'm like, Green Corner, ooh, I like this name. That's how Green Korner, you know, the name that's where it came from. And then it was with a K because it's very distinctive. It's not like, you know, normal Green Corner. It's a very unique project and that's where the name came from. That's a great story. So.
03:32I ask everybody this, are you using what you're doing to support the green corner or are you just doing this for you? No, I'm not doing it for me. Actually my vision is to touch as many lives as possible. I want to set an example that if I did it, you can do it. You don't have to have a agricultural degree. You don't have to.
04:02know much. You can learn on your own and go from there because at the end of the day I believe growing our own food, that's what the future is. Yeah. And I feel like if you can read and you can read directions, anybody can grow produce. Anybody. Oh, absolutely. I watch infinite YouTube videos.
04:28books, now I'm attending gardening classes in my community, which are free. I mean, the resources are there if you look for them. So my goal is to be another resource to people. Absolutely. And I'm going to do a shameless plug because you gave me a perfect opportunity to do it. My sponsor is Chelsea Green Publishing, and they have so many books about
04:56just getting started and about growing things and homesteading and all the things that people want to read about. So if you want to go see Chelsea Green Publishing's list of books, it's ChelseaGreen.com. Thank you for giving me an opening, Monica. I appreciate it. You're welcome, Mary. You're the first person that I've actually been able to work that in with. So pineapples, I need to know more about pineapples. How did you...
05:25How did you do that? Pineapples, you cut the crown, you put them in water, roots will start developing and then you transfer them into soil and after two years, you will get a pineapple, mind you, it has to be an organic pineapple. It has to be an organic pineapple. Now, carrots, please, those videos are not true. You cannot grow carrots from scraps.
05:55I experimented with all of these hacks that they have. But to me that was the doorway into really learning how to grow food in a hundred percent organic way. I think that's the next step for anyone that will want to grow food. The purpose of it is to stay away from chemicals. And there's a way to work.
06:25with Mother Earth. She gives us everything. All we have to do is just learn to combine herbs with vegetables. It's that simple. Yes, and Mother Nature sometimes takes things away. We had a whole ton of rain this spring and our cucumber plants are a mess because they got light really early. And there's nothing we can do about it.
06:52It's just the way it went this year and we're so sad about the whole garden. And it's okay, you know, it happens. We had three summers of fantastic produce growing and this is the fourth summer and it has been a total wash. Oh, I'm so super excited. That's heartbreaking. Well, I'm not having good luck with cucumbers this season either. Actually, I'm fixing to plant some more.
07:21and see what happens because the heat, it's overwhelming here now. Yeah, it's I have never seen this type of heat before. So it's plants are struggling a little bit, but it's OK. We, you know, we move on and we keep on working with new crops. Now I'm experimenting with cassava. Oh, OK. Yes. So, you know, just this is just about to go with the flow, go with nature. Climate changes, crop changes.
07:52Yes, exactly. I had a lady call me this morning and she was like, is this Mary? And I said, it is. And she said, I talked to you last summer about cucumbers and you had the most beautiful cucumbers. She said, you guys haven't eaten this year? And I was like, no, I'm so sorry. And I said, check back with me in two weeks. We might buy some miracle, have some. And she was like, I will do that. And I'm thinking there's no way we're gonna have cucumbers, but I'm hoping. Just crossing your fingers, right?
08:20Yeah, we have some in our greenhouse that are blooming and there's little tiny cucumbers out there, but I don't think it's going to make the amount that she would like to buy. So we're doing what we can. So back to the pineapple thing real quick. What kind of soil do they like? And I know they like it to be hot, right? They like it to be hot and they like it to be very acid. Okay. Oh, she did not like it when I used to fertilize them.
08:49Oh my gosh, that was funny. I had like 10 or 15 growing at the same time and I did a fertilize half and the other half I didn't because that's another thing. I built the green corner for the soil not to be fertilized every single season. We need to...
09:15learn from Mother Nature and understand how she works and just imitate her. I mean, she doesn't fertilize anything, right? So, on the experimental stage, I learned pineapples do not like fertilizers. Huh, okay. At least mine. That was my experience, of course. Yeah, and is it only one pineapple per plant? It's just one pineapple per plant, yes.
09:43and do the plants take up a lot of room? They grow so beautiful. I mean, you can use them as ornamental plants. Okay. They're gorgeous, yes. You have to transfer them from, if you're doing it on container gardening, you have to transfer them to bigger pots as they grow and grow and grow and grow. I don't grow them anymore, just because now my main focus
10:12It's on herbs and other types of crops, non-fruits. So I stopped doing pineapples. Yeah, I just, I didn't know anything about growing pineapples because we're not going to grow pineapples in Minnesota. I don't think it's gonna, I don't think it would work. We could maybe, maybe do it in the heated greenhouse, but I don't know that it would be, I don't know that the return on investment would be worth doing it.
10:39No, maybe just as a small hobby experiment, but that's about it. Yes, not as mass production, no. No. No, and where are pineapples usually grown? I mean, the ones we buy in the store, where are they grown? They grow in the tropics. Yeah. They're tropical and subtropical. So mostly that I'm aware of, the ones that we get in the United States are from Central America and Mexico.
11:09That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure and I didn't want to say it and sound stupid this morning. Okay, so are you donating produce to the food shelves? Are you selling produce? What are you doing with what you're growing? Yes. Well, the focus of the Green Corner is not really to sell produce. It is more a community project slash I created.
11:38and infused basil flower Himalayan salt for culinary purposes. So that's the product for the Green Corner. It's the basil flower infused Himalayan salt. It's already on Amazon. Wow. Yes, that's the first product from the Green Corner into the market.
12:06And, but not, it's not selling produce. If anything, I'm trying to grow more food just to be able to go to the community centers and give this produce to, you know, to the ones in need. But for now, it's being mainly family members and friends. Fantastic. Share the wealth, it's a good thing to do. Oh, absolutely, yes ma'am. The...
12:35The infused salt, that must smell amazing while you're making it. Oh my gosh, you have no idea. It's so satisfying and everything is by hand. We don't use machines. Everything is by hand. So you get the pleasure because it's delightful. Uh-huh. We grow basil every year and we grew a bunch in the greenhouse this year because again, the garden was pretty much a loss.
13:03And I was drying basil a week or so ago in the oven. I was just like, oh my God, I love this time of year. I love it. Right. Yes. I'm blessed to have this type of weather in Houston, Texas, because I have it almost 12 months. Yeah, we will. We will because we have the heated greenhouse. So we're going to continue to grow basil all winter this year. I'm so, so excited about this. We're going to grow herbs. We're going to grow.
13:32leafy greens, we're going to try growing carrots and raise beds and beets and radishes and see how it goes. Yum! And maybe be able to sell locally grown produce in January in Minnesota. That would be amazing. I would be so tickled to be able to do that because it's like, it seemed impossible when we first moved here four years ago that we would be able to grow anything in the wintertime outside.
14:00And technically it's not outside, it's in a greenhouse. And I applied for a grant for building a heated greenhouse and we got it and it's built and we just have to put the insulation in and get a wood stove and some IBC containers to put water in. We use the wood stove to heat the water. The water's gonna radiate the heat out in the greenhouse and it should be about 60 degrees all winter long in there. Beautiful. Uh-huh, I'm so excited. I cannot wait to get this done.
14:31Oh wow, I'm so happy for you. Thank you and me too. This is, we really wanted to do this. We've talked about it for years and just didn't know how to make it happen. And then there was a grant that I saw and I was like, I'm gonna apply for that grant. I'm gonna say we wanna use that money to make a heated greenhouse in Minnesota. And the grant people said, yes, here, take our money and do that, please.
14:58Nice, why not? And this is the thing, you know, you have to really look for the resources. They're there. You just have to go to the grinding and you will find them. And it is grinding. I can't tell you how many hours I put in about six months ago, looking through different grants for.
15:19women business owners because I'm the owner of our business, a tiny homestead LLC, because it's better if a woman is an owner if you're looking for grants. That's right. And I spent hours combing the internet for legitimate grant offers that we would be right for. And I only found maybe four in the entire hours that I spent digging. So it is work. It's time. But it pays back.
15:49It does. So it's worth it. It's worth it. Yup. It absolutely is. And the best place to start is with any of the local to you extension service offices because they might know. And the other thing that I found is that the small business administration offices that are local to wherever you live, they have people who are specifically in charge of helping you find grants.
16:19Yes, yes, they do that. That's my next step for the Green Corner because so far I have self-funded everything. So now it's time to expand even more. Oh, absolutely, because you have to. When you're a new business starting out, you can't self-fund it forever. You will go broke.
16:48If you go quick and just having a regular full-time class, your site business is not going to do it for much longer if you want your business to thrive and if you want to really serve the community. Yeah, you'll burn out if you don't have resources to fall back on. Absolutely. It's wonderful. It's a wonderful thing to do, but it's real work.
17:15Oh, it sure is, it sure is. And I just can't wait to have people, homeowners, or even people that they live in apartments, downhouses, to come back and tell me, thank you. Thank you, you know, like now we are eating from our own hands, this is amazing. And I do picture a world where every...
17:41home will have their own garden and flourishing and you know having this biodiversity that needs our help. Absolutely, yes. And I don't want to sound panicky or anything, but I was looking at Facebook and stuff this morning because I do that trying to find more people to interview because Facebook is great for feeding me people to talk to. And there was a link to an article about this monkey pox thing that's going on right now.
18:11And I don't know if it's true. I'm not going to say it's true, but it might be the next pandemic. And I'm like, I am not ready for another pandemic. No. I heard that last year. Uh-huh. So, so it might be, I feel like it might be smart for us all to consider that COVID was not.
18:38was not a unicorn that there are other things that might come down the pike that we might want to prepare for. Absolutely. And like I said, I don't want to be alarmist because I don't like that. Don't panic. Everything's okay. But if you have the wherewithal and the means to maybe start thinking about what you would need if the supply chain shut down again and maybe start planning for that ahead of time.
19:06it might be a little less difficult. Oh, yes, absolutely. If anything, if anything, COVID gave us the tool. Exactly what you just said, you start planning, you start learning, you start implementing. So whatever comes our way, you will be prepared. Yep. And you will be able to sleep at night knowing that your family's well-fed.
19:34Yes, absolutely. And I, I hate being the person who's going to be heard saying there's this thing that might be coming down the pike. Get ready, because I don't want to be the, the person that's crying wolf because I don't, I don't want to be that person. You know? Yes. Yes. And, and I don't think, I don't think you are at all or any of us that are foreseen future events.
20:04because at the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with taking precautions. It's just like, you know, saving everybody. Now, if you have to say for in case of an emergency, well, everybody, it will be good if everybody start working towards learning how to grow what they like the most, just in case there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, that will that will give people satisfaction. For sure. My daughter.
20:33just moved to Florida over the winter and she had been living in California. And California is now having the little earthquakes. And I can't lie, I'm real happy she's not still in California. And I'm real concerned that there's going to be a big earthquake in California sooner than anybody knows. And I'm so thankful that she's not there anymore. The one that just happened in Los Angeles, she lived in LA.
21:03So she's now in Florida and I understand that Florida gets hit with with hurricanes. But I feel like maybe a hurricane might be more survivable than an earthquake right where you are. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I I lived under both conditions. Costa Rica, we get a lot of earthquakes and I lived in Florida for two years and yes, hurricanes piece of cake.
21:32If you compare them to an earthquake, obviously. Yeah. When she moved to California, she was like, you guys should come visit me in California. And I was like, sweetie, no, no, I'm not coming to California. I'm sorry. And she was like, but, and I like, no, no, you can come visit us in Minnesota where we get blizzards and we get downpours, but we don't get hurricanes and typically don't get earthquakes. Yeah.
22:02So, yeah, I saw the 4.5 earthquake news come through on LA the other day and I was like, oh, thank God she's not in LA right now. I would be crying, you know? Yeah. So, but there are things you can do to prepare for everything and you can't know everything to prepare for. So it's a double-edged sword. You do what you can. And
22:30Sometimes even that isn't enough, but at least you feel like you've done what you could exactly Exactly, and and it puts you in a track of Thinking out of the box Yeah, we uh, we don't have a lot of herbs growing this year either and I had dried a whole lot of thyme and basil and rosemary
22:56And I don't even know what else last summer when the garden was doing really well. And my son brought in some basil from what is growing out there a couple days ago. And he was like, do you want to dry this? And I said, I do. And I looked in my pantry and I have bags of dried basil from last summer. And I was like, thank God I did that last year because we're not going to have a lot to dry this year. So even in...
23:24Even in a situation where there's not something big and scary coming down the pike immediately, I still am prepared for this winter for herbs because I did the thing last summer. That's right. And that's how our great grandparents or grandparents, they used to do it. When they would stop, why they would stop, you know? So I think it's time to bring that back into our real life.
23:51Yeah, and I'm not gonna lie, basil you buy from the store in the little plastic containers that's dried is not nearly as potent as basil you grow. Of course not. No, not at all. It doesn't even compare. No, it does not. It does not. Yes. The show of life, it's long.
24:20You know, so stores, I'm pretty sure they don't control that as tight as other products. So, yes, they lose their flavor really fast. Yeah, and herbs are easy. I mean, I'm not... If you have a black thumb, which I don't believe anybody actually has a black thumb, I think they just don't have the information to work with to not kill their plants.
24:50If you want to start small, herbs are the best thing ever. Thyme grows like a weed. Basil grows really well. Rosemary does really well almost all over the United States. And it's simple to process. You literally just cut whatever you wanna use for the leaves off the plant. Just cut the stems. And then you put it on a cookie sheet and you roast it in your oven.
25:19at the lowest temperature possible for about an hour, and then you check them. And if the leaves are crinkly, when you squish them between your fingers, they are dry enough to go in canning jars or Ziploc bags. You put them in a dark cabinet, you label the jar or the bags, you know what it is. And it's good for like two or three years. It's the simplest thing ever. That's it. Or even if you don't wanna use your oven, if you are so concerned about your electricity bill,
25:49just hang them in a dark place. Yes, but you really got to check them. I've done that and I've had a couple mold on me. So, oh, really? Yep. Oh, no. Yeah, I never had mold in mine. Well, your climate is different than ours, too. Yes. Well, of course, that that also depends on.
26:13the room that you're going to put them in. But I know there's some people because they have asked me this question. Oh, I don't want to use my oven. You know, I don't want to .. I'm like, okay, just hang them in there. Yes, you're right. They need air circulation. Dark air circulation. If you have those conditions, you don't need your oven. Yeah. And our oven is a propane gas oven. So I'm not too worried about the electricity. Oh, nice.
26:41And propane gas is really efficient. I had no idea. It is. I love it. Yeah, so that's how we do it. We also have a food dehydrator that you plug in the wall. And if we're swamped in stuff, we need to get dried. We'll use that. But usually we just use the oven because it's fairly quick. Oh yes, yes, yes. I'm telling you, we have all the tools we need. We just have to use them.
27:08Yeah, I just wanted to explain how we do it because I haven't really gotten too deep into the process of how to dry herbs on the podcast. And my mom actually asked me about it yesterday morning because she has basil she needs to harvest. And she said, I'm sure you've explained this to me before, but tell me again. And I was like, it's super simple. Here's what you do. She was like, thank you so much. And I was like, you are so welcome. I'm going to talk about this on the podcast sometime this week.
27:38No, that's awesome. Well, it's kind of like me. When I was learning how to infuse rosemary into olive oil, because I love rosemary with olive oil. Yes. Yes. I had to go back to my information several times because each time I will forget. It happens. It happens.
28:06I'm with your mom. Yeah, and the thing is if you don't do it every year you will forget. That's right. I mean, I've made I've made French onion soup for years once it gets cold and every fall I have to get my recipe out and read through it again to remind myself of the steps. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely Yes, so it's not a sin to forget things. It's fine
28:34As long as you have you haven't written down somewhere. Exactly. And as you get older, your brain gets full. You know how, you know how you have to clear the cache on your computer and defrag your computer once in a while? The same thing with the brain. It's the same thing with the brain. Yes. And I don't know any way to defrag or clear the cache in my brain because my brain just soaks up everything. So I figure by the time I'm 75, I'm going to be like, I have
29:02dig way back to find the thing I want in my brain. Right, yes, and that's when writing, making lists, making notes, it becomes your best friend. Yeah, absolutely. And we're all human. We all make mistakes. We all have great successes. We all forget things sometimes. Sometimes we're talking along and use the wrong word even though the brain said use this word, the other word came out of your mouth. Yes.
29:30Isn't that amazing how it happens? Uh-huh. I've done it on the podcast and I'm like, I meant to say something else. That was stupid. And then I listened to it back and I'm like, well, nobody else knew what word I was digging for so it's fine. That's right. But either way, you are doing a fantastic thing at the green corner. I'm very excited for you. How long have you been doing it? It has been a almost four years project.
30:00Yep, you said COVID, so it must have been four years. Yes, and the basil flower infused salts, we just launched it last month. Okay, cool. How's it going? It's going good. It's going slow, which that was forecasted. I'm not surprised at all, but I'm loving every single step of the way. Okay, and the Himalayan salt with the basil flowers, you said? Yes.
30:29Yes. Is that that's for cooking with? That is for cooking. You can use it as garnishing or you can use it like in your recipes. In our website, we give recipes on our weekly newsletter at the corner.com. So people will know how to use it if they need an idea as well. Yes. Okay. I have a crazy question.
30:58Himalayan salt is good in a bathtub, right? Like you're gonna take a bath. Yes, some people use it for a bathtub. However, Himalayan salt is very beneficial for cooking. Okay, yeah, I just didn't know if maybe you could use the basil Himalayan salt in your bath if you wanted to have a basil bath. Not the one from the green corner. However, I believe you put Himalayan salt in.
31:28basil, fresh basil, would be amazing. An amazing pot. I think it would smell amazing, yes. Right? It would be great, yeah. I didn't know. I didn't know if you could do that, because there's so many herbs and salts that get used for personal care, body care, that I didn't know if it was a double dip in kind of thing.
31:49Oh no, I wish. I wish Mary it was, but this particular item is not. Okay, good to know. Well, maybe you could develop one of those too in your spare time. You just gave me a wonderful idea. Thank you so much. You're welcome. All right, Monica, I've loved talking with you. You sound so full of joy and happiness and your voice is beautiful. Oh, thank you, Mary. I had a wonderful time and I hope it will not be the last.
32:18I hope not too. You're going to have to hit me up when you develop something new and talk about that too. I sure will. All right. Thank you, Monica. Have a great day. Thank you, Mary. You too. Bye.
 

Beck's Farma

Today I'm talking with Brandon at Beck's Farma. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*
*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brandon at Beck's Farma. Good morning, Brandon, how are you? Good morning, Mary, how are you? I'm great. Where are you located? Well.
00:26The farm is located in Sauk Center, Minnesota, and I have a sister company that is called Chey En-Alise Canna Bakery, where I sell the oils for my farm in freshly baked pastries located in Minneapolis at 6001 Windale. Okay. Where is Sauk Center? What's the nearest city to Sauk Center? So Sauk Center is about an hour and a half west of Minneapolis and St. Paul on 94.
00:56St. Cloud in Alexandria, so about 20 minutes from LA. Okay, cool, thank you. All right, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, that's a long story, so I'm not sure where to begin. I was raised in Minnesota, and I ended up traveling the world for about 16 years, living in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America.
01:24And as I began to get older, I realized that I wanted to also have family in my life. And so I made the decision to return to Minnesota. And I kind of came up with the idea that if I was farming, I would be able to spend my summers with family in Minnesota and continue traveling over the winter months. And so I returned to some family land in Sauk Center, Minnesota, and I planted a vineyard in a hop yard.
01:54and started that dream for about two years. And in 2019, the farm bill legalized hemp, allowing people to grow and to harvest CBD. And that seemed like a good decision for me because the hop yard and the vineyard would take three to five years to develop where with the hemp products, I would be able to
02:23begin to harvest that fall. I was also really interested in the medicinal benefits as an alternative medicine from CBD and cannabis. I saved my money, quit my job, planted the field in 2019 and had a successful year growing, harvested that fall. The drying process in harvesting takes about two weeks.
02:52to three months of CBD in the CBD farming. It's a long process, the drawn in and curing before the processing. And so right around the time that was all done, the pandemic had happened. I had gone into growing to be a wholesaler to supply kind of the brick and
03:20who were selling oils and things like that. And I had had some contracts around the state set up, but when things started to kind of move in 2020, everything stopped moving for me. And so I had to decide what I was going to do with this crop that I'd grown in 2019. And my decision was to have the oil processed and...
03:49found my own CBD company and began selling products online. And so that was how Bex Pharma started. And I think there was a lot said there, so I'll give you a chance to, and everyone a chance to kind of catch up or ask questions. Uh-huh. Okay. So you pivoted just like a lot of people pivoted in 2020, which is great. I'm glad you had the wherewithal and the opportunity to do that.
04:19I have questions. I have so many questions because I don't use CBD at all, never have. And so I am like the dumbest person when it comes to hemp, marijuana, any of it. So my first question is, is a hemp plant different from a marijuana plant? Are they the same thing or are they different? So scientifically, they're the same plant. They're both cannabis sativa.
04:48Legally, they're different because of the contain. So basically hemp is defined as less than 0.3% of delta-9-THC.
05:13cannabinoid that is found in the cannabis plant and is what is traditionally used when you think of somebody getting high. While the two plants are the same, marijuana is more to get you high and CBD or not CBD but hemp, well that's rich in a cannabinoid called CBD.
05:43properties because it wasn't until very recently a schedule one drug. It was really difficult for scientists to do clinical research with it because of the restrictions and the costs. But there have been a few studies and those are kind of the only things that I'll talk about as far as making claims for the efficacy of CBD, but there is a
06:13a lot of benefits that are out there that are just kind of spoken or common knowledge. So things that I won't go over that people seem to really be benefiting from. So CBD was first discovered when it was found that it was able to stop seizures in children with certain types of epilepsy.
06:41And that's kind of when it first really got recognition that, wow, this is actually, you know, really going in and doing something major within the human body. And since then, it's been found that it's an anti-inflammatory. I'm trying to think now of what is actually specifically cited in science.
07:07So it's an anti-inflammatory. It's shown to lower blood pressure and keep it low. It's been shown in higher doses of 150 to 300 milligrams to help reduce anxiety, to help with people to get better sleep, like with insomnia.
07:29And I can get more scientific about something called the endocannabinoid system, but I'll give you another chance to ask questions here if you'd like, because it is a lot of information. It is. And when I looked at your Facebook page and your website, I was like, this is going to be a very sciencey discussion. But my other question that isn't quite as sciencey, we can come back to what you were just saying.
07:54Yeah. Do you grow your crop outside or do you have it in like a greenhouse? So I'm an outdoor grower. I plant the field by hand doing about 10,000 lunches in a single day. And the reason that I do it in a single day is because I know that the next day I'll be unable to walk for about the next week or so. And so I just get out there and get it in and see what comes up.
08:24kind of let nature take its course and suppress the weeds. Okay, so does it grow like a weed? I mean, that sounds really funny, no pun intended. Does it grow really easily? Well, that depends. So to create some further confusion, so we have marijuana, we have hemp, and then we have hemp that's grown for fiber. And so the hemp that's planted for fiber does grow kind of like a weed, but that's because it's really broadcast.
08:53into the field, just throwing millions of seeds together like grass as close as you can. When they grow together that way, like they would in nature, just dropping their seeds and having a field of hemp or marijuana, then they do grow like a weed because they grow very tall, they grow very fast, and they're very good at creating a canopy and taking out everything around them. But when you're growing for CBD, you have to put
09:22space between the plants so that they have room to breathe so that mold and mildew doesn't grow in the field and In these spaces, which is generally between three to six feet. I usually go around four or five between plants um a lot of weeds come in and So very early in the growing season a lot of those weeds actually outgrow The hemp plants and so it's pretty difficult. You're almost out there
09:49on your hands and knees pulling away the weeds trying to find your plants for a while and really getting after it. It's pretty labor intensive. The plants, they have three phases. They have their seedling stage which takes about a month. They're really, really small and really delicate at this time in that first month or so.
10:19what is called the vegetation stage. And the plants themselves are photosensitive, meaning that they respond really greatly to the sun. And they will continue growing as long as there's more than 14 hours of daylight. And typically that's closer to 16 hours or so. But if you were to keep the light on them for 16 hours, they would grow indefinitely into trees, you know, and get really, really big. But.
10:48the vegetation stage is also, it's faster than when they're seedlings, but it takes some time. So really about knee high by the 4th of July is pretty good. And as you get later into the year, when the sun is less than 14 hours, that's when they hit this really big growth spurt. And however big they are in the field at that time, in about September or so, they're
11:18they'll usually double their size in that last month or two of the growing season. And at that point, it's pretty easy. Then you're able to just watch it grow. And it's more like a weed to give a very long answer to the question. No, that's great because I know nothing about this. And because this is a Tiny Homestead podcast, I'm very interested in how different plants do what they do. So does it like...
11:47Do the plants appreciate like a loamy soil or do they like sandy soil? Well yeah they don't like wet feet and so but loamy to sandy is good you know as long as it drains and I find that it does the best on a hillside you know where they get a lot of water you know a lot of nutrients running down them but then they get to dry out fast.
12:17Did the rain hurt you this spring? No, not this year, but there has been, the funniest thing, so I decided to start farming. Well, Minnesota got its worst droughts in the history year after year after year. And in the middle of those was some really big weather events. I think we had a derecho where a hurricane actually came all the way to Minnesota.
12:46And that left about a four foot trough in my field, like right down the middle of it. There was just a river and, um, and the field had, you know, standing, not standing water, but at one point the water was about probably two to three feet high. Um, because, because it was so dry and then we ended up with so much rain so fast. And um, and I kind of felt, you know, some of the times in the spring out there plowing the field, almost like I had a sense of what it felt like to be in the dust bowl.
13:17you know, I'm on about a 32 horsepower John Deere with a small tiller on the back to work up about seven acres. And it was so dusty on some of those days. I think probably you could have seen me from space. Yeah. The weather affects everybody who grows produce. It doesn't matter what you're producing. If you're growing a plant, the weather is going to affect you. Okay. So that helps out a lot.
13:47is when the law went into effect, I think it was last summer about marijuana being legal in Minnesota, and I know there's a whole bunch of little nitpicky things that go with that. Did you dance a jig or were you just like, okay, cool? Well, that's a very interesting question. So legalization occurred in Minnesota for adult use of marijuana.
14:17And under the current laws, that means that adults can possess, I think, up to four pounds of marijuana, they can have a certain amount of plants growing at home and they can gift up to one ounce between each other. But the sale of marijuana is still prohibited. So it's still under prohibition and it really meant that there have been no changes as of yet.
14:46in the cannabis industry. There are some Indian reservations, I believe four, that have opened dispensaries under their jurisdiction. And so currently in the state, there are four dispensaries, but for the rest of the industry, there's none. So it didn't really change anything for you yet? Not yet.
15:14This is where it gets kind of interesting. So the, the state has, um, just started a new office called the office of cannabis management, and they're currently writing the rules for, for how the sale is going to occur and in the future. And at this point, I believe the start date of, um, where it's going to be legally bought and sold is going to be sometime mid
15:442025. So we're still looking at almost another year. Now, when that does occur, and when the new rules do come out, which it's kind of hard to speculate what they'll be, there's only going to be 150 people given a license to sell within the state of Minnesota. And of those 150 people, 75 will be from a social equity program.
16:14Currently, there are 3,400 registered sellers for low potency cannabis in Minnesota. Of those 3,400, 150 will be chosen and it's a lottery. It won't be based really on anything beyond the lottery. You have to qualify for the lottery, but beyond that, it's going to be completely random.
16:44Now there are 3,400 other companies as of now, but I know that a lot of them are putting in multiple applications, just kind of founding companies that really don't exist and throwing their name in the hat. So the real number is probably going to be closer to 5 or 10,000 applying for basically 75 spaces. Not including the social equity.
17:13program. And so it's going to be kind of interesting who gets it. And just quickly at the end, that's simply because if the 150 people that are chosen, if they don't have a supply to keep up with the demand in our state, they will kind of come into it with a shortage. So hopefully, at least one of the names will be able to supply the demand.
17:42Sure. Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that. Even if you don't, even if you don't get picked, you can still, you can still supply somebody who does get chosen. Yes. Is that what you're saying? No, no, I'm saying so, so if I was chosen, for example, it would be my responsibility then to supply one 150th of the state's cannabis. Okay. And I could probably only supply, you know, 100 or 200 people a week. And, and so
18:11So they're just, depending on who's chosen, there may not be any supply. You know, so it'll be legal. It'll be legal to buy and sell. But if the, if someone like me was the only one in control, we would only have, uh, you know, a supply for a few, a few hundred people a week. Yeah. I misunderstood what you were saying. I got it. Thank you. Um, okay. So when this, this hit the news last year.
18:40My husband and I were chatting about it because neither one of us smoke marijuana. We don't use any of it because we just don't. And I said, I feel like our government might be putting the cart before the horse on this because I'm not seeing a whole lot of what the rules are. And my husband said, I don't think they know what the rules are yet. And this was when it first came out, you know, when we first heard about it. And so...
19:05I think that this is a very progressive move. I don't think it's a bad move. I just think that maybe there should have been more things thought about before it was passed. Does that make sense to you? It makes perfect sense. And I think that your interpretation, both you and your husband was exactly right. And I think most of the people at the Capitol would probably agree except for the one or two that actually drafted the bill that went through. But with that said,
19:35They're doing a really good job of trying to keep up with what's has happened and, and not taking it back. You know, they're, they're trying to go forward and, um, the office of cannabis management, they took over August 1st of, of this year and they, they weren't supposed to do that. Uh, the, the department of health had the cannabis control under the medical marijuana program, along with, I believe the department of agriculture until August.
20:04But they opened their office about a year in advance to help kind of straighten things out and really try to get a hold on what's going on. And since they've been in control, it does seem to be working a lot better. And then I would also add there that legalization isn't something new. And I am a little bit surprised that the lawmakers don't look to other states like
20:33you know, California or Colorado or Oregon that have been doing this for years. And I think it would be pretty easy to borrow, you know, some tricks from their playbooks and, and see what has worked and what doesn't work and, and all the information's there to really have kind of a really seamless interchange from prohibition to legalization.
21:00And so it would be interesting to see if they do adopt some of those practices that are already working across America. I forget how many states now, but I think over half. So is the Office of whatever it was you just said, are they actually consulting with the growers to learn something about this or not?
21:31It's hard for me to speak on their behalf. I know that I've spoken to some staff there that I've known since 2019 as a, as a hemp grower and they're very knowledgeable and they've been pushing this forward since Minnesota's hemp pilot program in 2016, which was three hours, three years before the, the farm bill. So there are a few people that really do know what's going on at the.
21:59at the top end of it. And I think that a lot of the criticism that is coming from the public and what's being seen is that there's a lot of confusion across agencies within the government and that there is a lot of education that's happening now to bring a lot of people up to speed. But I think that there are a few people at the top that are steering the shift in the right direction.
22:29And they are very much, we were just given 122 pages of the rules, a draft of the rules for 2025 and asked by the office of cannabis management to review them and post suggestions. So they're really very open to discussions on figuring out how to make it work within the industry.
22:58And so hopefully, hopefully enough great minds are working together now to have kindness transition. Good. That's what I was worried about when this all came through. I was like, I really hope the people at the top who may not understand all the ins and outs of this talk to the people who are actually growing the plants and have, you know, expertise in what they're doing so that we've got two
23:25two ends of the spectrum coming together to make it work? Absolutely. And there's obviously going to be things that go wrong and probably some things that are really frustrating and obvious. But I believe that, you know, over the course of the next few years that things will will get ironed out pretty smoothly. Sure, of course. I mean...
23:53You gotta get in there and experience the thing before you can know what's working and what isn't. So it's like any other thing that you're growing. Okay, so I'm gonna shift back to actual growing the plants and harvesting the plants subject again, because I can't stay on one track today. When you harvest the plants, are you harvesting the...
24:18the part that you use for the CBD by hand or do you do it with a machine or how do you harvest your crop? Well, so there's kind of two harvests and I do that myself because there's male and female cannabis plants. So the female are the ones that growers and users want to target because that's the one that grows the flower.
24:44that people use to either smoke or extract for CBD or THC or the other cannabinoids. There's ways to ensure that you get only females. Like you can buy specialized seeds or you can buy clones, but it ends up costing about a dollar per plant. So my strategy is to pay about three cents a seed and just put so many seeds that I can afford to take out about half of the field mid-summer.
25:14And so about midsummer, when the sun starts to change, the plants will start to show which sex they are. And at that point, the first harvest kind of begins and the male plants are called from the field. And kind of, you know, I burn them and destroy them. And there's not really a good argument for another use for them other than feed. You know, I think it might make good feed. But
25:42but it's currently restricted under FDA laws. So to the second harvest of the year, in about October, November, if you're really lucky, they're a really, really hardy plant. You know, so they actually kind of love the cold. And I've seen my field go to temperatures as low as about, I want to say, you know, 19 degrees at night and come back the next day and live.
26:12And so, so when all the leaves are gone, when all the grass is brown, uh, the field is still green and it looks like a lot of evergreens out there. Basically it looks like a Christmas tree farm. And, um, and so at that point of the year, I'm really kind of watching two things. Uh, the weather, you know, at a certain point, the weather will ultimately destroy them and so you really have to watch that. But in Minnesota, because it's a short growing season,
26:40The plants don't get a chance to fully mature. And so I'm really trying to push my harvest date as far back as I can. And, um, a lot of the testing will begin in the field, you know, so I'll, I'll start taking random samples to see how close I am to the potency of the plant that I, I want to have and, um, and I'll, I'll base a lot of risks and, um, decisions on that, you know, if, if I'm going to have bad weather, but the CBD content is low. Uh,
27:10maybe I'll take a risk and let it grow for another week. And, but if it's high enough, I'll go ahead and harvest. Which brings me to the answer to that question is that the entire plant is harvested. And so I'll go out with, you know, sometimes a machete is a good way to do it. And basically just kind of hack the field down by the stocks, just row by row by row, and then gather them into a trailer.
27:40and bring those up to the drying facility where they're actually hung one by one upside down to dry. And at that point, start to introduce climate control with a lot of fans, dehumidifiers, checking the relative humidity, and really making sure that air is moving through those and that no mold or anything is coming. And that process, you know,
28:08It takes several months if you do it right, the kind of drying and curing process. So the work almost really begins after the harvest. So yeah, we take the whole plant. And when that's dry, and when it's ready, then we do something called bucking the plant. And so we'll go in to the, well, I'll go in to where the plants are drying.
28:37and take them down one by one and basically grab them by the root and put my other hand kind of in a circle around each stem and just buck off all of the flower and the cannabinoid-rich material into a totes. And at that point, it's ready for processing. So this is labor-intensive for you and you are absolutely a farmer.
29:06That's not a whole lot different than the threshing process with wheat. Yeah, I think my grandfather said the most important thing a farmer can put into their field is their feet. And I found that to be very true. I think there's not a day from May until pretty much December that I'm not out walking amongst these plants, whether they're in the field or hanging.
29:36the drive. It's a very much everyday job. Okay, so we're almost at 30 minutes but I have two more things. One is about do you love what you do and the other one is about do you save any of the seed to grow again or can you not do that? I absolutely love the industry. You know it's really rewarding. I have a couple of other companies like I said.
30:06But this one, really to see the changes that brings about people. You know, I've had customers who have called and told me that they used to be a potter in ceramics and that their arthritis had become too bad to be at the wheel anymore. And that after using my product, they're able to go back and actually continue doing what they love and get this quality of life back.
30:35Um, I've seen, uh, dogs that when I've arrived to a house of someone that were unable to get up from the yard to, uh, to do, you know, to greet you coming in the gates or anything, and, um, after about a week of, uh, taking the oil. So it works for animals to, um, you know, arrive to that same house and had the dog jump up and come to the gate, jumping at it with the tail wagging.
31:03And, and so to actually see these kinds of transformations in people and animals and to realize that what I'm doing, all this work in the field and in the drying and in the legal processes, that at the end of the day, it's really helping a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. Um, and so.
31:26With the seeds, I have experimented a little bit with regrowing, but you have to be very careful because if my plants go above the 0.3% level of THC that's defined as hemp, I have to destroy my crop. When I'm just taking a seed from one of my plants and putting it back in the field, I'm not certain about what that potency is going to be because I've never seen those genetics perform.
31:55So it would be kind of playing roulette with the season. And so I generally source my seeds. OK. And then I have one more question, because I just thought of it. You know how when you go to buy tomato seed plants, there's like a whole bunch of different varieties of tomato plants? Are there a whole lot of different varieties of hemp plants or not? Yeah. There's.
32:24Each one has its own specific profile. And so I would think of it more of like a racehorse, right? Where you're really looking at the pedigree and choosing it for very specific qualities. So there's two forms of cannabis. One is an indica, the other is a sativa. And the indica tends to make people more kind of tired and lazy.
32:53tends to be kind of more of an uplifting high. And so there's kind of a divide when you start to look for genetics, whether you want that up energy high or kind of that low relaxing high. And so you kind of start your search from there. And then you start to look at other characteristics of the plant, like what is the final counts on the THC and the CBD content, and you're looking at what climates they grow, you know, how much they yield.
33:22But I would say that it's probably more specialized than any other plant in the world as far as engineering. You know, people are constant. There's no two seeds that are the same. And people are really feverishly working to create new strains. So it's really interesting. That was what I was trying to find the word, strains. Yes, thank you. Yeah. Okay.
33:48Well, Brandon, like I said, I figured this was going to be a very sciencey discussion and it has been. And I'm really, really glad that you took the time to talk to me about all this because I have been so curious since the law got changed in Minnesota last year and I've been trying to find someone to interview and you're it? Yeah. I hope it wasn't too sciencey. No, no, it's fine. I can be interesting too.
34:14No, no, I think science is really interesting. And I have talked with three or four different people in the last six months about goat genetics and that's very sciencey too. And that was really interesting. So I'm all for science. I'm all for just the general discussion of what you grow and how do you grow it. But I like science. Science is fun. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me, Brandon. I really appreciate it. And what do you mind?
34:42I also have, I've opened the first Canna Bakery in Minnesota and I thought that I might mention that as well. Well, I have the chance. Yes, if you have time, I have time. Yeah, I have all the time in the world, but I know the podcast is probably limited. So in January of this year, I began the licensing processes and working with the Office of Management and the Minneapolis Health Department and founded Minnesota's first Canna Bakery.
35:12And it is what it sounds like, but it's probably a new word to everyone because I believe I may have invented it, at least in the state. So we have a bakery that serves scones, muffins, cookies, shortbread, and other pastries and items, including my CBD oil for my field. And it's the first in the state. And
35:41It was finally, all the licensing went through in about July. And so we've been open about six weeks at 6001 Lyndale Avenue in south Minneapolis. And, uh, and I'm really excited about that project because currently in the market, there's a lot of drinks and there's a lot of gummies and there's not a lot else that's been explored. You know, there's this huge industry, but everybody's selling the same two items. And, um, and now.
36:10Minnesota has a Canna bakery. That's awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. You sound very excited about this. Well, I am. It's, it's, um, it's kind of a continuation of the project that I'd started in 2019. So when the, when the pandemic came, I really got, you know, it took a lot of years to kind of recover from that. And, um, but I continued growing and continued having kind of the surplus of cannabinoids and, and now. You know, here we are.
36:41five years since 2019 that I'm able to actually kind of go back and chase that dream again within the cannabis industry. So it is very exciting. And to be the first at something is also very exciting. Oh, absolutely. And I feel like the sky's the limit for you because things are changing in this field. I hope so. Yeah. All right. So was that all you needed to say? Yeah. I thought I should mention it at least. It's Minnesota State.
37:10history. So yeah, depending on how you look at it. Well, it's the first. So I'd mention it. Blow your own horn whenever you can in a public venue if you're trying to get the word out. All right, Brandon. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. Bye-bye.
 

Civic Garden Center

Today I'm talking with Sam at the Civic Garden Center. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*
*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sam at Civic Garden Center. How are you, Sam? I'm good, Mary. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm so curious to find out about your organization and a little bit about you, so tell me about yourself.
00:30Yeah, the Civic Garden Center is an organization that's been around for a long time. My role at the Civic Garden Center is the conservation program manager. So our organization as a whole, as I said, we've been around for a while. We were founded in 1942 coming out of the big green gardens movement. So we were teaching people how to grow food at home so that they could send more industrial agriculture overseas for the war effort.
00:57And we've basically been teaching people how to garden ever since. So our mission is building community through gardening, education, and environmental stewardship. And we really focus primarily on working in urban neighborhoods within the greater Cincinnati area. Food access on issues surrounding conservation on youth education. So we have a pretty wide ranging scope of work. And our.
01:27The primary focus is the education piece. So we really try to make sure that we're spending as much time as possible training people, teaching people how to garden, how to be self-sufficient, so they can then take those practices back to their home garden, back to a public garden or another community space. And so through that work, you know, we really...
01:51We try our best to encourage people to get outside and get their hands dirty. And we try to be that resource to come back to so they can keep kind of going down their journey of learning how to, you know, vegetable garden, learning how to work with native plants, whatever kind of their passion or interest may be. We try to be their kind of educational resource for folks in the Cincinnati area. And then within...
02:15Our organization, my role specifically is focused on our conservation program. So for us, our conservation efforts are really focused on invasive species removal and establishing native habitats. So we work both with private landowners and homeowners, as well as public spaces and the Cincinnati Parks Department to try to kind of...
02:44our conservation efforts. And so I have the fortune of running our native plant population programming on site where we grow about 4,000 native plants a year and a couple hundred native trees on top of that. So we'll work to educate homeowners through classes to grow native plants. We organize a couple of plant festivals throughout the year where people can come and buy plants from us and we provide some education along with that.
03:14And then finally, I work with folks on doing species removal, primarily in public land. So at the Instant Sandy Parks, we train volunteers on how to do that removal and how to identify plants and how to work with volunteers so they can lead their own kind of neighborhood efforts doing this work. You have a Native Plant Festival coming up, right? We do. We do. We have our Native Plant Festival. It's the first Saturday after Labor Day.
03:44here in Cincinnati. It's a really, really fun event. It's one that has been, it's only in its second year right now, but it's been growing really quickly in popularity for us. And we grow plants for that festival and then we also invite other local native plant nurseries to come and sell plants and to really try to get the word out both about the importance of native plants and just try to provide space for the community of people to gather and celebrate native plants.
04:15Yeah, can you tell me about the importance of native plants? Because I know, but my listeners might not. Yeah, of course. I love to love to talk about this topic. So when it comes to native plants, you know, the importance that we really focus on is first and foremost, the ecological importance. You know, the plants are simply the plants that are indigenous to North America. So they're the plants that naturally evolved and adapted.
04:42for our climates, our soils, all of the conditions that we have here in North America. And through that process, they developed pretty tight-knit relationships with specific organisms, oftentimes insects or other wildlife in the ecosystem. And so I think the simplest way to talk about native plants are, native plants are food and habitat for our local wildlife. So without our native plants...
05:12Many of the insects, many of the birds that we all love simply wouldn't have the food or the nesting resources or some other crucial piece of habitat that allows them to survive. So native plants play a really important ecological role as the base, the trophic level, that base food source for so many organisms. And without them, many of our organisms here in North America simply wouldn't be able to complete their life cycles.
05:41And the other thing I'll add about native plants is they also provide some really great functional aspects for humans when it comes to us thinking about our gardens, especially as we're thinking about climate change. Native plants have the ability to really, because they're so well adapted for our climates, withstand a lot of these shifts that we're seeing in our climate. So native plants are really well adapted to different, you know, rain events, maybe longer periods of drought.
06:11Some of the diseases and insect pests that are common in our areas as those periods where there may be larger populations A lot of our native plants have tools to deal with those a little bit better than a lot of the non-native Ornamental plants that people often end up buying at the big box stores or other nurseries Yes, exactly. Um, the other thing about native plants is that they are beneficial to humans in that they are
06:40Some of them are edible and some of them are medicinal for humans too. So native plants are great. I'm a big fan. Absolutely. The medicinal and edible piece is something I think we really cannot ignore. I think oftentimes when people think about food sources in the landscape, you know, they think about their tomatoes or their cucumbers, or some of these vegetables that, you know, were kind of introduced to North America, but there's so many food sources when it comes to.
07:08Our native plants, our indigenous cultures here in North America showed us that they can fully survive on the plants that are already here. And there are so many medicinal and edible uses for native plants. So you can start to integrate those into your yard, not only to attract the interesting birds but to give yourself some food or some medicine right in your own backyard. Yes, that's my favorite part. We have wild black raspberries that grow on our tree line.
07:37They are a bi-yearly. Once every two years, they produce really nice berries. And so when we moved here and discovered we have black raspberries in our tree lime, we were very excited. And they are native plants. So that's just an example of a native plant. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It can just be a raspberry. Absolutely, yeah. I love being able to go on a hike and just snack as you go. If you stumble across some.
08:04black raspberries or something along those lines. I know here in Southwest Ohio, our pawpaws are starting to ripen. It's an awesome native fruit and one that I really enjoy this time of year. It has a lot of good nutrition benefits for people. And you can simply walk out to the woods or walk out to your garden where you might have a pawpaw tree this time of year and just pick them up off the ground and have a snack right there.
08:31Yep, an important safety tip. If you don't know what you're looking at, don't eat it. Make sure you can identify the thing as safe to eat before you eat it. Absolutely. And we also always encourage people that when they are going out and doing something like foraging, that you're really conscientious of what you're taking, especially if you're taking from a public space. Some public spaces don't allow foraging, and we want to be respectful of that. Some public spaces...
09:00Maybe you need a permit because there are so many people out there in the world. You know, we want to also make sure that we are leaving food for wildlife and for other organisms. So you definitely want to be conscientious when you're out foraging and snacking on some of these native fruits that we don't take the entire population. We want to make sure we're leaving, you know, seeds behind and other resources for other wildlife. Yes. You know how they say moderation in all things? Consideration in all things as well.
09:29Absolutely. Yep. All right. Well, that's all amazing information. And I stumbled on you guys on Facebook. So how many people do you think benefit from what you're doing? I mean, do you have numbers of people who take your classes? Like, can you quantify? That's a hard question. Yeah, we I would say it's a very large, it's a large number of people. I mean, we have
09:59hundreds of people who are coming to take our classes kind of throughout the year. We generally have different classes through the seasons depending on kind of what's available growing season-wise. So throughout the winter and into the spring is really heavy on vegetable gardening and focusing on growing food at home. You know, we do a few native plant classes that time of year, but usually those pick up as we get a little more into the growing season.
10:29We do a lot of classes for people that might be kind of related to food or self-sufficiency. So like recently we did a mushroom growing class. I know we've done backyard chicken classes. And it's always interesting because within the different buckets of education, we have kind of different people with passions. And so we attract a lot of different people, you know, to the different classes. Some of them are absolutely dead set on.
10:58coming to every vegetable garden class that we offer. Some of them may come to a bunch of different classes throughout the year. And the other thing that we do is that we kind of act as a community resource. So we have different community gardens here in Cincinnati who can come to us and ask for volunteer help or ask for help sourcing seeds or plants for their garden. Maybe they need help kind of working through some sort of ordinance from the city that they got.
11:28Anything like that we try to work with our community. So throughout the year it's really hard for us to keep track of all the touch points we have with people. But that's our kind of approach is this open door policy where anyone can come and ask us some questions or come and get some advice. And we try to make sure that we're as supportive as possible. And if we don't know the answer, we'll happily connect you with another great organization or person that we know locally who might. That's amazing.
11:57the services you guys are providing are invaluable. I don't know that we have anything like what you're doing here in the way that you're doing it, but Minnesota has extension services through the University of Minnesota, and they handle a lot of what you're talking about. Does the Ohio University have extension services? Yeah, yes, Ohio has their extension office through
12:24through Ohio State and so they do have a local branch and they provide a lot of really valuable resources. Oftentimes we find that they're just limited resource-wise so that they, while they provide tons of resources, a lot of good information for our region, they oftentimes aren't able to provide the same kinds of hands-on kind of engagement that we can provide. And so...
12:53Throughout the year, we oftentimes work closely with the Extension Office and some of the resources that we're providing. We'll use their resources in our education. So we do have those resources here. Fortunately, we do also have other organizations that can provide some more hands-on assistance or maybe can get people out in the field a little more easily than our Extension agents can because they're just pulled in so many different directions.
13:22Oftentimes they're a little bit limited in how much time, especially one-on-one, they can spend with a community member or somebody here in urban Cincinnati. Awesome. So I have a crazy question. I'm not a mom to small children anymore, but I was at one point in time. And one of the things that would keep me from going to things is that I couldn't bring the kids if they were under, I don't know, 10 years old.
13:51babies with them when they when they come to a class or is that not okay? Yeah, we try to be as family friendly as possible. You know, we if we are doing something more workshop style where it's a little bit more hands on, you know, we'll let people know ahead of time but we are really try to encourage people to bring their families to make it as accessible as possible. I know that especially nowadays with how insane child care costs are.
14:18A lot of times people are pretty limited and so we do encourage people to bring their kids. You know, we do have a couple of programs specifically for the kids here on site as well throughout the year. We do a lot of work with Cincinnati Public Schools and trying to educate different youth and different age groups. But here on site, you know, we do have a couple of programs for homeschoolers or, you know, if people do want to bring their kids to a class. We happily encourage that.
14:48definitely for us all about the community and if you know there's barriers for people to come that involves you know bringing their kids, we don't want that to stop someone from coming to a class or an event. Yes, and the sooner you get little ones hooked on growing plants, they're going to do it for the rest of their lives because it's really fun. Oh my gosh, yeah. Little kids when they get out in the garden and you get them hunting for pollinators or digging through the compost and finding worms.
15:17their faces light up in a way that, you know, adults just don't have that kind of, you know, euphoria with those kinds of activities anymore. And so the little kids are definitely some of the most fun to work with. And I think some of the most inspiring for sure. Yeah, they see everything so differently. It's a different lens because it's completely new to them. They're not jaded yet.
15:43Yeah, I think it's always a fun perspective to have the little kids out in the garden and see what they're noticing. They oftentimes do pick up on things that you wouldn't expect or maybe they ask you a question that seems really simple, but you're like, oh, people don't generally ask me, you know, why a flower is this color or something along those lines. And so it is always, always interesting and more thought provoking than you might think working with the little ones.
16:08Yeah, having raised four kids, they will ask you things that you never thought they would ask you. It's very funny. I can remember the kids being in the back seat of the car when we would go places and invariably one of them would pop up with something and I would have to really think as to whether I knew the answer. And if I didn't know the answer, I was very honest with them and I was like, I don't know guys we're going to have to look it up. Yeah.
16:34often get stumped by our little ones in the garden as well when we do have those interactions. Yeah. So on the opposite end of the spectrum, how old is the oldest person that has come to your stuff? We do have a lot of folks who are retired who come and volunteer with us. So I'm talking to you on a Wednesday morning and we actually have...
17:02Wednesday morning volunteer, they call themselves the dirt crew. And they've been many of them volunteering here for 10, 20, even 30 years. Um, and that group is, uh, mostly retired individuals who come and just spend the morning working in the garden. You know, they'll hang out and have lunch afterwards, or sometimes they'll plan a tour of a nearby garden. Um, so it was really great sense of community here. And I think the.
17:28especially as folks are getting a little bit older, they have that chance to connect with some of their, a little more time and connect with the resources they have here locally and can get out in the garden. I know we also historically have worked oftentimes with garden clubs and sometimes some of those groups can be a bit older, but it may just depend on the group. And so, it really ranges. I'd say we work with all age levels for sure.
17:57And, you know, we try our best to attract those young homeowners or some of those younger individuals, you know, just for them depends on how much time they have. But I do think coming out of the pandemic and, you know, people really being focused on where their food's coming from or trying to figure out how to better grow their own food or plant some native plants, you know, we've seen some really great interest in the classes.
18:25So you said Cincinnati, Ohio, right? Yes, correct. Yeah, and Cincinnati is a big city, yes? Yes, we're a pretty good sized city. It's actually within the metropolitan area. As you go up to Dayton, there's quite a few people around. Okay, so I'm assuming that Cincinnati has food desert areas, just like every other big city. Yes. So I'm...
18:53I'm trying to get to do you guys, I don't know, help support the local food shelves or stuff like that too, besides just having community gardens? Yeah, we do. You know, within our programming, we do have a physical garden space. A lot of our work happens out in the community, but we do work. We do have an eight acre park that we co-manage with, San Sandy Parks.
19:22That is our home base and our place to create demonstration gardens, have field trips, things like that. And one of the demonstration gardens we have here on site is a vegetable garden, which is managed by volunteers. And that garden explicitly does support, you know, all the food from that garden goes to local food pantries. So I think last year they were in the 800 to 1,000 pounds of produce that they produced in that garden.
19:52throughout the year. And then within the kind of broader Cincinnati community, we definitely are a city that struggles with food deserts. And like many other cities of our size, as we're trying to figure out what those answers are, it's not always straightforward. And so we do provide whatever education and resources we can to some of those income, lower income communities where food access might be an issue.
20:19And a lot of what we do is again, working kind of through our community garden model. And while traditionally community gardens entail somebody having a personal plot where they grow food for themselves. They do have, you know, we do have community gardens that have different approaches. So some gardens are pantry gardens. Some gardens maybe are growing and kind of doing their own.
20:46food giveaway within the neighborhood, or it's a come and pick what you want as you want kind of model. So really within the neighborhood, it's up to the community and up to those who are organizing the garden to figure out how they want their garden to function. And then we do our best to help them understand what that would take. So we have a comprehensive training program that is our community garden development training, the 12 week program where somebody can come and learn.
21:15not only what it takes to grow a vegetable from start to finish throughout a season, but understand how to engage their community, how to grapple with some of those questions like food security within the neighborhood, how do you find resources and grant funding and volunteer support for the garden. So it's really comprehensive and we do our best to try to provide those resources within those different neighborhoods. And so.
21:43As people come to us with ideas, we will definitely go out of our way to support in places where food access is especially an issue. That's amazing. Okay. The reason I asked about the food pantries or food shelves is not even 20 years ago, a lot of the food shelves did not necessarily have fresh produce to give away. And if they did, it wasn't very good quality.
22:11And I think as people have become more aware that produce is really important for your body, it's really important to eat good fresh produce, other places have become aware, like us here, we grow a farm to market garden and we donate food to the local food shelf because people need produce, they need that. It's part of what makes them go.
22:40you know, makes them functional human beings. And so I'm always excited when I hear that an organization like yours or a local grower or whoever is supplying good nutritional local food to the food shelves and the food pantries because just because you're not rich doesn't mean you can't eat well. Yeah, it's something that I think is increasingly part of that conversation, but I agree, I think it's something that still
23:09gets oftentimes overlooked. It's definitely not a simple thing, as we're trying to include this food access, building a community garden and trying to really support a community in a way that helps really grapple with that issue of food access is not simple. That takes a pretty big scale and a lot of work. So, oftentimes we don't think of community gardens as being the solution to a food desert.
23:39Unfortunately, just not that simple. But I think kind of what you're touching on is this idea of how can we educate more people, how can we help people provide access to some of that fresh local food. And that's where I think the community garden model really does help bridge that gap. It does provide a space right in the neighborhood where kids can come and see.
24:03where some of the produce on the shelves comes from, make sure that they understand that carrots come from the ground or that tomatoes come off of the plants. Just making those connections is really kind of step one. And then from there, you know, we can start to build in some education around, you know, what, how do we integrate these foods into our kind of habits in the kitchen. We do classes throughout the summer in different community gardens. So we'll go to
24:32gardens and we want to make sure that we're doing, you know, the actions kind of in the physical garden space that we're not just in a classroom talking about these things. And one of the things that our urban agriculture coordinator, Kimesha, has done through that program is also include cooking classes. So she will put together recipes and share those recipes and they will harvest things from the garden and that night cook them up right there in the garden and make sure that
25:02some of these veggies that maybe people didn't grow up eating, things like an eggplant that can be a little bit finicky, maybe if you're starting out with it, to figure out what to do with it in the kitchen, that people understand how to use it, how to grow it, how they can benefit from a health perspective from those different foods. So we try to be holistic in how we approach it, but I do think having the gardens in the neighborhood and having a place for somebody to try a fresh tomato,
25:31really does change their whole perspective on the benefits of some of those fresh local vegetables. Definitely. Your organization sounds like a very, very big umbrella with a bunch of stuff underneath it. How do you guys keep this organized? Because you can't be a one-man show. You must have a bunch of people. Yeah. We are absolutely an organization with a...
26:00Big umbrella, as you said, you know, we generally have one, maybe two staff people dedicated to a lot of our kind of program focus areas. We're only a staff of 10 people, so we try to cover as much ground as we can. And for us, it really does rely on two things. One is volunteers. We simply could not do a fraction of the work that we do without volunteers. We have volunteers who are here every single week who are...
26:29really dedicated to the mission who are helping us figure out just how to operate on a day-to-day basis. And then we have volunteers who are joining us on a one-off basis or maybe a couple times a year. And so the volunteers are absolutely crucial and definitely make our big projects much more feasible. Things like our upcoming Native Plant Festival simply would not happen without them. And then the other piece for us to make sure that our reach is kind of as broad.
26:58as it can be, is to really focus on the education. We are not an organization that owns lots of land. We do not go and manage a lot of different properties. We really try to make sure that we are the place to come and learn how to do it and then send people out to do it in their neighborhood. We don't have the capacity to oversee a lot of different projects at once. You know, there's...
27:24handful of community gardens and a couple of conservation projects where we are overseeing the work on a monthly basis. But generally we try to make sure that we are just an educator and not a land manager. So you're planting the ideas and encouraging the ideas and supporting the ideas with the people outside of you do the actual gardening work.
27:50Yeah, oftentimes, I mean, we, I will say our staff is still out there getting our hands dirty on a very regular basis. You know, we do have a full-time horticulturist that's working here on the grounds, but our general model is to teach people the way. Maybe we have a couple of spaces that we are more involved in where we use them as kind of demonstration spaces. But we are absolutely trying to inspire others to start their own projects.
28:19and trying to really hopefully provide the training and knowledge for somebody to organize and lead a project on their own in their community. That's great. So if anyone in your area of Ohio wants more information or wants to help, wants to volunteer, what's your website and can they find that information there? Yeah. The website is civi
28:48And we are, as I said, located here in Cincinnati. We're in a very urban part of Cincinnati. We're in the neighborhood of Avondale. So around the edge of UC, the University of Cincinnati's campus and Cincinnati Children's Hospital is very close to us. So we're in a very urban corridor and we do have business hours during the week so people can simply stop in and learn how to get involved or see our grounds and see what's going on.
29:17Starting with the website I think is a really good first touch point. And then from there, we don't have a really kind of onboarding or formal onboarding system for volunteers or anything like that. We really have a model of sign up for a class or sign up for a volunteer event. So up and from there, our staff is usually pretty happy to talk your ear off about all the different opportunities and all the different projects we have going on and how you might get involved.
29:45Okay, and tell me again when the Native Plant Festival is, just so if anybody missed it at the beginning. Yeah, the Native Plant Festival is on September 7th, and it's going to be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. And as I mentioned, it's going to have plants that we grew from seed here, a bunch of other local native plant nurseries, educational talks, music, food trucks, and so they're trying to make it so people can come and learn a little bit.
30:14buy some plants and get a beautiful day in the garden. And have some fun, yeah. All right, Sam, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're there, so thank you so much for your time today, I appreciate it. Thank you, this was great. All right, have a great rest of your day. You too. Bye.
 

Ever Green Burial Company

Today I'm talking with Joel at the Ever Green Burial Company. A little bit of cemetery history, a little bit of psychology, a lot about burial practices and their impact on the environment.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*
*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Joel at Evergreen Burial Company, and this is a hyper local episode. Joel is maybe eight miles from me. Good morning Joel, how are you?
00:28Good morning. I'm doing well. Thank you Good. Um, I'm so excited to talk to you about what this this thing is Because it seems kind of weird to be talking about natural burial practices, but it is Environmentally friendly it is a sustainable practice and that fits with the homesteading genre I guess so tell me about yourself and what you do so well
00:57First of all, thank you a ton for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of this stuff. So, I have been in the funeral industry for it's 27 years now, and I have no idea where the time has gone. And it's taken me a long time to get to where I'm at, but I love what I do. So, my main job is that I work for a, for lack of a better term, it's like a funeral home marketing company. So, we're based out of Mankato. The name of the company is Laker Planning.
01:26We work with funeral homes throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, kind of the upper Midwest. I do a lot of speaking, public speaking, and doing programs with funeral homes to talk about funeral and cremation options and the benefits of pre-planning funerals. And then another big part of what we do is talk about medical assistance rules and regulations, and that's kind of the boring stuff. But that's my main job. And the last,
01:56couple of years I've been working with, it's called Traverse Cemetery is the original name. Green Lawn Cemetery is what it's referred to a lot and if you actually Google it or look it up on MapQuest, you have to type Green Lawn to get the name of it. So it's a little cemetery just outside of St. Peter off of County Road 20, about a mile north of town. I've driven by this cemetery.
02:24a number of times on my way to do seminars. And one day, about two years ago, I swung in there, got out and started walking around. And it just, I don't know how to explain it. I was just drawn to the place and I thought I've got to be able to do something with this. And this would be a perfect cemetery to allow for green burials or natural burials. And I had no idea who to contact. There were
02:54some numbers on a little old sign outside the cemetery. So I started with that. Anyway, long story short, I got ahold of the president of the board. It's run by a board of directors and his name is Robert Meyer and started talking to Robert about allowing for green burials and what the cemetery has been doing in the past and come to find out that it had been closed for many, many years.
03:23This is about everything that I've read on this and looked up and can find, and I can't find anything to tell me different, although I have a hard time believing it. It's the second oldest cemetery in the state. A lot of these burials go back to about, you know, like the mid 1800s. There's only about 160 burials, I think, in the cemetery, and it sits on about 10 acres of land.
03:50So, with talking to Robert, I was so lucky that he is open to the idea of green burial. And we talked on and off for two years before this actually happened. I originally wanted to buy the cemetery, but it was important to him to keep the board in place. Up until this year, the board had, you know, they met once a year.
04:14All that they've done really for upkeep out there is mow the cemetery three or four times a year and that's about it. So he was anxious to have somebody who was interested in it because as he's getting older, he was wondering who was going to care for the cemetery, you know, someday when he's gone. So the timing was right. He was open to the idea of green burials or natural burials.
04:38It's something that being in the funeral industry for as long as I have, I've wanted to do something with it, but I didn't really know where to start. This idea isn't for everybody. I know that, but I talked to enough people and enough groups of people to know that there's interest in it, and the funeral industry is doing really nothing to address that. That's not really their fault. Funeral industry has always been.
05:07really slow to change and adapt to what consumers are wanting. So to be able to do something like this right in St. Peter, I'm just extremely grateful that I had the opportunity and that it worked. So what I did over last winter, I worked with ISG out of Mankato. I didn't want to go off the old maps from the 1800s. So we identified a couple areas in the cemetery that were pretty much wide open and I had them replot it.
05:36and get me some new up-to-date maps and lay out new grave spaces. So that's what I kind of worked on over the winter and then April 1st it was ready to go and so we opened it up and we are now open to allow for greener natural burials. Awesome. I'm so excited. So I have a couple things that I want to share and then I have so many questions. Okay.
06:05When I was little growing up in Steep Falls, Maine, I finally got old enough to ride my bike to the library, which was two miles away. I would think I was 12. And to get to the library, you had to drive out of my little block avenue and you had to drive a mile to the fire barn. Between my home and the fire barn was a creek and up the hill from the creek was a little family.
06:35Graveyard cemetery, whatever you want to call it like from the old old old days That's so cool. I was so I was so curious and so smitten with this little tiny Plot that I would stop by there at least once every three or four times Well, that I went to the library because it was up in the woods It was above the creek you hear the creek babbling or the brook as I was told those are called in Minnesota It's a creek in Maine. It's a brook
07:05And the birds would be singing and the light would come through the trees. That dappled sunlight, which is a very peaceful, lovely stop between the library and home. And that was where my love of cemeteries began. And I have been accused of being morbid because I, if there's a cemetery, I want to stop and check it out. And it's mostly for the history, but it's also because as I say, and it sounds really
07:33Dead people don't talk. I really, really like quiet. I like nature sounds. And the world is so noisy that cemeteries are a great place to just stop in and breathe, take a minute and just relax. And I feel like that's probably not very nice, the people that are no longer breathing, but it's a thing. I really do love cemeteries. So when we moved from Jordan,
08:03down to Lasur four years ago, I lost my two favorite cemeteries up there, the one by the Catholic Church and the Spirit Hill one, I think is the name of it. And so I was like, where's the nearest old cemetery? And we took 20 down to St. Peter and saw the cemetery on the left-hand side of the road. And I was like, oh, it's a new cemetery. I'm so excited. And then I found out the history of it. And it's beautiful. It's up a hillside. It has tons of old oak trees. It's gorgeous.
08:32So when I saw your evergreen burial company thing come through my Facebook feed, I was like, I have to find out more. So that's why you and I are talking because I am a big fan of the piece that you find in cemeteries. So my questions are, I would really like you to explain what this green burial thing is to begin with, if you could. Yeah, absolutely, I can do that. I love your story.
09:01And you are absolutely right. There is something so peaceful about a cemetery. And they're quiet, like you said. The spring was really nice out there because the water was high. The little creek that runs on the north side of it, you could hear water running most days. It's just, they are a nice, serene, and relaxing place to be. And you're surrounded by nature out there too, which I just love. So.
09:31So green burial or natural burial, you can call it either one. The main thing with a green burial is that differs a green cemetery from a modern or normal cemeteries that we have in town is that we wouldn't use any type of a vault or a grave liner. So essentially that's a container made out of concrete that the caskets placed into. And most cemeteries require those
10:00It's a maintenance issue for them. They don't want to go back and refill graves. They support the weight of the earth and keep the ground from sinking. And so that's why they're usually required for a casketed burial. So with a natural burial, we don't want to bury concrete in the ground. So the body is usually placed in a biodegradable casket. That could be a wicker basket. It could be a casket made out of just plain wood that's going to decompose over time and go back into the earth.
10:29A lot of times somebody can be buried in a burial shroud, which is a cloth that the body is wrapped in, or even a simple sheet or a favorite blanket. So the body doesn't need any type of a casket if a family doesn't want that. So the body's placed directly into the ground. And then as a body decomposes and fertilizes the ground,
10:55you know that grounds going to sink so we just have to go back and refill the grave with dirt to keep the ground level over time but if you know that ahead of time it's not such a big deal I at least to me it's not so the absence of that outer burial container or a vault is probably the biggest thing also with natural burials we would have like out at Traverse I have very few rules and regulations out there but one of them is
11:23that if embalming is to be done, we would use non-toxic embalming fluids. They make formaldehyde-free embalming fluids. So I would have that as a requirement so that we're not putting harmful chemicals into the ground. And of course, no vaults, no outer burial containers, no concrete is being buried. And then just that the casket or the sheet.
11:49shroud or the sheet or blanket is made out of cotton or some type of organic material so that it's going to decompose with the body. And then as far as other people in the cemetery goes, you know, I don't want to do a whole lot of mulling out there, which is a really hard thing for me because, you know, I've been brought up living in town that, you know, you keep your lawn looking nice and...
12:13So for me to let that go has been a challenge. But what I've decided to do instead of mowing is that I've mowed paths out there and keep the grass long in the other areas.
12:25Yes, and it looks amazing. I haven't actually been up there in a while, but the photos that you took make it look very pretty. So am I correct? I've read a bunch on this particular cemetery. There are burials for Civil War soldiers there. Is that right? Yeah, correct. There's kind of a section that would be in like the southwest corner of the cemetery.
12:51where there are Civil War soldiers that are buried there. Some are actually buried there. Some it's questionable if they're buried there or not, but a marker has been placed out there because they were from this area. When they died, there's just question whether their bodies ever made it back to St. Peter for the burial. But yeah, we do have a section of them out there. That is awesome. And so. Yeah.
13:19So has anyone actually been buried since you opened this up for new burials? Not since April 1st. I am still waiting to have my first burial. Okay. I've pulled some graves, you know, for people planning ahead, but I have not had an actual burial yet. So I'm excited for that. Okay. But at the same time, I don't wish that upon anyone. I was going to say that's good that no one's died, but it's a business.
13:49Um, okay. What else can I ask you? I was so excited to talk to you and now I'm drawing a blank. Um, also cremated remains. Yeah. So you can go ahead. Yes. So it were, I'm sorry, I jumped in. Were you going to ask if we can bury cremated remains out there at the cemetery? Yeah, absolutely. Cremated remains can be buried at the cemetery. That's not a problem. It's not.
14:19Cremation isn't necessarily a green form of final disposition. Just because of the resources we use to cremate a body, the amount of pollutants that go back into the environment when a person is cremated, but it's still an option that a lot of people are going towards. And so if somebody has cremated remains and they want them buried in the cemetery, that's perfectly fine, they can do that. We're just not gonna use.
14:48an urn that's going to decompose. It's got to be in some type of an urn that's going to go back into the earth.
14:55Okay, so is this cemetery now completely a green burial situation? Yeah, that's a great question. So what I normally talk about in like when I'm doing a program just on green burials is I talk about some different definitions or different categories of cemeteries. And so the Green Burial Council
15:21They're a pretty good resource for some of this and they've defined, you know, three different types of burial grounds, a hybrid burial ground, natural burial ground and conservation burial grounds. So a hybrid burial ground, and I'm just going to be real brief in explaining these. But a hybrid burial ground is kind of like our normal cemetery that is going to offer green burial within that cemetery. So there's other cemeteries in St. Peter. There's two other ones in St. Peter that will allow for green burials. And in
15:50in the cemetery. One of them is a resurrection cemetery that's kind of like first Lutheran cemetery and the other one is wood lawn which is past what Wing Kings, it's hobbers used to be their Wing Kings at dirt road, I can't think of the name of it, but they'll allow for it too. But the majority of their burials out there are all traditional burials with a casket and a concrete outer barrel container.
16:18But if somebody wants natural burial in one of those two cemeteries, they'll offer it. So those would be considered like a hybrid burial ground. And then the next category are the natural burial grounds. So natural burial grounds are like a true green cemetery where there is not concrete buried in the cemetery. So no vaults. Caskets have to be biodegradable.
16:46can be allowed in these, but again, if embalming is gonna be used, they're gonna ask that it be formaldehyde-free embalming fluids. And these cemeteries and natural burial grounds have a more naturalistic appearance to them. So they look maybe more like a park or a field or a wood lot. They don't look like a traditional cemetery with the headstones or the markers, rows and rows and rows of them. So.
17:16I always consider that Traverse would be more like a natural burial grounds. I can't verify it completely, but my guess is going back to the 1800s, these were all pretty much natural burials out there. There weren't concrete vaults being used at that time. There might have been some embalming to get the soldiers back, the Civil War soldiers back, but the majority of the people that are buried out there, embalming didn't really
17:45become popular in our country until the Civil War. And the reason that embalming started was in order to get the soldiers back to their hometowns for burial. Up until then embalming wasn't really used. So I think, you know, Travis was more of a natural burial grounds, kinda it would fall into that category rather than even a hybrid, but it's somewhere in between those two. If that kinda makes sense.
18:13Yeah, tell me about the conservation one you mentioned. Yeah. So the conservation one is going to be just like a natural burial ground, but the biggest thing that's going to differentiate a conservation burial ground is that the ownership of the land has to be tied to some type of a conservation organization. Um, so those we maybe only have, I think the last I checked, we maybe had like three of those in the entire United States right now.
18:43Okay. All right. And then the other thing that I read, I think on one of your Facebook posts, or maybe the flyers that are posted on your Facebook page about it is the natural stone for a marker. When you say natural stone, does that mean that it can't be engraved or does it just need to be a natural stone? So going back to when I said I have very few regulations out there
19:12Markers and monuments are one thing that I haven't defined yet. And I'm hoping that over time, um, that kind of just works itself out because I have a really hard time telling a family that they can't mark a grave in the way that they want to. So if somebody wants to use a flat marker or something like that and have engraving, I'm okay with that. That's not going to be an issue for me. Um, and I think the folks that want to have natural burial, you know,
19:42I don't think we're going to be putting up big thousands of dollars in granite headstones that are going to make it look like a regular cemetery. So, ideally what I'd really like to use is some type of cassoda stone that can be engraved on that's native to this area. We can get it easy and any marker or monument company can help us with the lettering on that. So, that would be ideal.
20:10I don't have a problem if somebody wants to plant a tree in an open area to mark a grave or use a field stone maybe that they have and use that instead that's going to look more like a big rock with engraving on it. So I'm pretty open to that and I'm really excited to see what people come up with for ideas to mark these graves. So I've kind of left that open and not put a whole lot of requirements around that. That's great.
20:39This is a, it's not a new idea, but it's, it's going to take a while for people to really embrace it. I feel like so leaving, leaving some imagination to the process is probably not a terrible thing. Um, also, also this green burial thing. I don't have a really good way to describe it or whatever. Evergreen, the green burial situation is less expensive than a.
21:07quote unquote traditional burial as from what I'm seeing too. So that helps. Yeah, absolutely. So green burials in general, you know, when we look at like a traditional funeral with a casket and a vault and a service at our church or at the funeral home. So I'm talking about for traditional funerals, you know, on average in Minnesota, that's averaging around $15,000 and up. With a green burial,
21:35We're not doing embalming. We're buying a minimal type container to contain the body. We can still have a service with it, but we're looking at costs that are gonna be a lot closer to the five to $10,000 range. And when I say 10,000, that's really stretching it. Every funeral home on their general price list is gonna have an option for direct burial or immediate burial. And what that would include usually is the funeral home's charges,
22:03their basic services for their funeral home and staff. Cost for the removal of the body from wherever the person dies. We wouldn't have embalming in most cases with that, with a direct or an immediate burial, and then transportation to the cemetery for a graveside service. You know, and that's gonna be a lot closer to that $5,000 mark. And then if somebody wants to add in a funeral service after that, you know, maybe the body's not present for that.
22:33because burial would take place in those first 72 hours. In the state of Minnesota, they say that if final disposition, so burial or cremation, takes place in 72 hours, the funeral home is not required to do the embalming. So usually the burial happens first. And then if somebody wants to have some type of a service or a lunch or whatever, they can do that afterwards as well.
22:58But I always encourage people when I'm talking about this, you know, if you're talking to a funeral home, ask them for a direct burial option or immediate burial option, because they're all gonna have it on their price list. And start there, and then you can work your way and add to that as your family needs to. Yes, and on that note, if you can get some of this stuff planned ahead of time, like in a will or in wishes for your family to know,
23:27It's a good thing because if someone dies unexpectedly, it's really difficult to think through what you want to do and to get everybody on board with the decisions for the deceased. My husband's mother passed away back four or five years ago and we knew that she was ill and we knew that she was going to die.
23:55but she had told us that she had set up a plan that the paperwork was in her file cabinet through one of the crematory companies in Minnesota. Come to find out that was not the case. So I don't wanna be a downer, death is a difficult thing to talk about, but if you are a smart human being and you don't want your family to have to be making major decisions when they're grieving
24:25panicked or just not sure what to do, have your plans on paper or in a file in the computer somewhere and people know where to find it because it's really hard to make decisions when you're grieving. You are absolutely correct. And that's one of the things that we talked about on my regular job in my seminars, just that the help that that's going to give a family someday. People don't always realize everything that goes into planning.
24:55a funeral or a cremation, even a simple cremation service. You know, there's a death certificate that has to be filed and there is information that if we're doing it for ourselves, it'll take us like three minutes to fill it out. We know that information off the top of our heads, but I don't have a clue what my mom and dad's social security numbers are, you know, and we need that for a death certificate. You know, that's just one of the little things. And then you get into planning what type of service you want and the questions that a funeral director is gonna ask a family in order to
25:24try to help them through that process, it can get to be overwhelming. Especially if a family hasn't slept much, they're sad, they're grieving, and now they're forced to plan a funeral and answer all these questions. It's gonna happen in about a week's time. Yeah, and shock is a real thing. You know when people say, oh she's in shock? Shock is a real thing. It's the way that your body deals with
25:54and it makes you go numb most of the time. And numb does not work very well when people are asking you questions. No, it doesn't. And you see that all the time. And people don't make the best decisions when they're stressed, when they're shut down. And you said it perfectly, that's just the body's natural way of protecting itself. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't even all that close to my mother-in-law.
26:23And I was still kind of shocky when she died. And I was like, why am I feeling this way? I wasn't even close with her. But it's that someone is no longer with us thing that, that happens to your brain. It's just weird. And there's so much fear and anxiety around death. And clearly I don't want to die tomorrow. I would like to live to be 99 at least. I'm 54 now.
26:51But things happen and people get real weird about talking about death. And I feel like we spend all this time planning for babies births and the joy of bringing new life into the world. But death is the opposite end of that and I think that people's lives should be celebrated once they've lived them. Absolutely and it's a hard thing to talk about because
27:22especially in our culture, we don't, we hide so much of what the death, even when the death occurs with our current funeral practices, whether that be cremation or burial or whatever, but we hide a lot of the fact that the death has even occurred because we don't want to think about it. And to try to think about that ahead of time is a really difficult thing for people to do. And everybody has some different beliefs around it and their spirituality might be a little bit different on what they believe.
27:52But the fact of the matter is, is that it's something that is inevitable. Um, and most people don't want to plan for it because they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to feel those hard feelings. Yep. Cause it sucks, but it's important to make it easier on the people who are left behind. Okay. So, um, the cemetery itself, the Traverse one or whatever it's called. Um,
28:17is 10 acres and there's only like 160 or 170 plots that are used right now? Yeah, that's correct. So there's a lot of wide open space. Maybe about three to four acres is kind of the woods surrounding the cemetery. On the original maps, that was all back in the 1800s. Those are all plotted for graves back through the woods. And I think the woods kind of developed and grew up through there.
28:46We're not using all of that back in the woods. Eventually, if this is something that a lot of people are interested in, um, I would look at, you know, allowing for burials back there. It's beautiful back there in the woods. And I'd like to have walking paths back there someday too. But for the time being, we have so much area that we're able to use, um, just in the open parts of the cemetery. And it's kind of a nice mix because if somebody wants to be buried out in the front side of the cemetery.
29:15It's all open and it's sunny and that's where the grass is really grown. Um, and, but if somebody wants to be back kind of in the trees, it's not so choked out with trees that you can't have burial back there. It's actually really beautiful. You've seen it. It's beautiful back in there. There's a lot of shade. Um, natural light does come through. Um, a couple that bought the first graves out there, they bought it up on the hill in the trees and if you're out there, um,
29:43in the evening as the sun is going down it comes right through to that area it's absolutely gorgeous. Yeah I mean the location is is gorgeous there's no question when when I first went there it was a morning I think it was 10 a.m and it was sunny and it was probably May so it wasn't hot yet and the mosquitoes hadn't shown up yet thank god.
30:07And I drove up in there, parked in that little circle, read the stone, read the little plaque. I was like, oh my God, this is great. I finally found the cemetery I get to hang out at here. And that sounds really weird, but it's true. Um, and it is, it's really pretty. It's very peaceful. It is a lovely spot. Whoever chose that spot for the cemetery did a great thing. Now the, I could rave for days. I'm not going to do that.
30:36The reason that this is relevant to the podcast, because I feel like you're going to be like, why is she talking about this? Is that green burials are better for the earth than the quote unquote traditional burials. And I think it's funny that we call the traditional burials traditional burials because I feel like the green ones are actually from way back, they should be called the traditional burials, but that's not how we're doing this. So the
31:05you're not putting cement into the ground. And that takes up room, which means the grave is bigger than it needs to be. The bright shiny lacquer on caskets, I don't know if that ruins the soil, but I bet it doesn't help it. And this is just kinder to the ground that the person is being put in.
31:32Yeah, exactly. It's, um, yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So it, the main goal with any green burial is that we're not using anything that's going to be harmful to the environment and we're going to try to do everything that we can, to be as kind to the, to nature as, as possible. Um, do you want me to read you some stats that I've got for traditional burials? What we're bearing every year?
32:03All right, so I got this off of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's website, and I've seen these a number of other places too, but every single year, 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid or formaldehyde, 2,700 tons of copper or bronze or precious metals and casket, 30 million board feet of lumber, 1.6 million tons of concrete and 14,000 tons of steel are buried in the United States.
32:32every single year from traditional casketed burials. To put that kind of in a more local level, this comes from Mark Harris. He wrote a book in 2007, it's titled Grave Matters. And he took the typical 10 acre cemetery, so that's about the same size as Traverse. But it would contain enough casket wood to construct more than 40 homes, 900 plus tons of casket steel and another 20,000 tons of concrete vault, in vault.
33:01Um, and then on top of that enough embalming fluid to fill the equivalent of like a backyard swimming pool. And then not only that, but the, all the pesticides, weed killers, the moment to keep that net that cemetery looking, you know, unnaturally green. So, um, we try to get away from all of that when it comes to natural burials and keep things as Nate, as natural as we can and as harmless to the environment as we can do.
33:32Yep, that's a lot of big numbers right there. That's not great. The other thing that I wanted to touch on is funerals are for the living. The person that has died does not care. They're gone. They are off to their next adventure. They don't care. And so when we think about funerals, we're thinking about it through our perception of what they are.
34:01not what the person that died's perception would be because they don't have one anymore. Correct. And so it's, it's up, it's up to us to decide how we want to react to the death of someone we love or maybe someone we don't love. Who knows? It could be somebody you don't love that you have to handle this for. And really.
34:27If you're basing it off of what the person who has died would want, you can't do that. They're not here anymore. So my take on funerals is that I don't attend any. I don't go to funerals because the person that died, if it's someone I loved, they already know that. They knew that. Yeah.
34:51Yeah, and I'm not gonna be help. I'm not gonna be help at a funeral because the minute somebody cries I will be crying too, even if there's no reason for me to cry. So I don't I don't go to funerals It is not my thing Yeah Yeah, it's a little bit different for everybody, you know And everybody processes that a death of a loved one or like you say a non loved one You know in just in different ways and so People need different things Mm-hmm in it
35:20It's interesting because we see so much of that in the funeral industry. People that don't want to, don't do any pre-planning ahead of time, sometimes the family members feel burdened having to make all these decisions themselves with no direction of what their mom and dad maybe would have wanted. And others, even if mom and dad made the funeral plans, they might not like that.
35:49you know, and they might want to do something a little bit different. So your point is correct that funerals are for the living. And I do believe that they should, that the survivor should have some say in what they need to start that healing process after a death has occurred. And that'll look a little bit different for everybody.
36:11Yeah. When my grandpa died, my mom's dead, I was at that funeral and I had just had a baby like eight, nine weeks before. So my emotions were all over the place. Yeah. And some of the family members kept coming up to my mom and they were just sobbing. My grandfather was well loved and my mom had to comfort them. And I walked away from that funeral just
36:41pissed off as all hell that my mom had to comfort these people. And my dad was like, why are you so mad? And I said, I said, because it's not mom's job to come to them. It was her dad. And he said to me, honey, he said, everybody deals with death differently. Yeah. And it still bothers me. Who knew?
37:05And I said, well, that's not fair. And he said, well, it's not fair that your grandfather's dead either. And I was like, well, yes, I know. And he said, your mom's strong. She handled it. She's fine. I was like, yeah, but I still hate everything about it. And he was like, you can hate everything about it. That's fine. So yeah, everyone deals with their feelings differently and sometimes inappropriately.
37:32And you got to deal with that too. I'm sure you've had that happen. Oh yeah. Yep. Absolutely. There's been some crazy things that have happened at the funeral homes without the doubt. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that you are not a unicorn. There are green burial companies all over the United States. There's not a ton of them, but I know there's at least one in Maine right now. And they are kind of picky.
38:01they do want to make sure that it's only natural stone. And I'm not even sure whether you can have it engraved and same practices, a shroud or a, a non-treated wood box or whatever. There are other places available. So this is not just St. Peter, Minnesota. There are other places that do this. Absolutely there are. And it's fun to see that and to see what they're doing.
38:28I've learned a ton in the research that I've done on this. Even before starting this cemetery, my whole idea on green burials came up because the company that I worked for, we needed a new seminar option. And one of the choices was green burials. And I said, hey, I'll take that on. I'd like to do that, learn more about it. And so I put together this presentation on green burials and it's evolved over the last three years. But.
38:58They're just doing research on different states, what they're doing, what their laws allow them to do. So they're out there, but like you said, they're kind of few and far between. But what's kind of exciting about this is that, you said earlier that the way we, this natural burial should be considered traditional burial because that's how we always used to do funerals. Funerals used to be held in the homes.
39:28Families participated in the death. Graves were dug usually by the family members. And there was no embalming. There was no fancy casket. There's no fancy headstone. They were all very environmentally friendly. That was only about 150 years ago. So this isn't a new idea. That millennial generation is a generation that really carries the torch on this. They're very environmentally,
39:59environmentally conscious. They're very green. They're concerned about the environment. But it's interesting because the baby boomer generation kind of rekindled or originated this idea of green funerals and green burials. And that baby boomer generation, you know, they were kind of our nation's first green generation. They helped with organizing Earth Day and things like that. So as you see that
40:28aging and that's kind of the groups that I'm talking to when I'm doing seminars. They're the ones who are really looking for this as an option. Yeah. And the Baby Boomers may have reinstated this idea, but I think the Gen X parents that me, I'm a Gen X parent. Yeah, I am too. I think that we instilled in our kids.
40:54the idea that you don't have to accept the status quo. You are free to ask questions and educate yourself. Absolutely, and isn't it fun to see them doing that and not thinking that they have to follow along with what society tells them that they should do? Oh my God, I think I created monsters with my four. They would be like, how does this work? And I would say, I don't know, let's go find out. And if-
41:22they were old enough to read, I would be like, there's a library at your school. I'm sure they have books. And then when they're old enough to go to the library library, I was like, there's a library down the street. Go research all you want until you can't feed your brain anymore. And not all parents do that, but my parents did it for me. They had the encyclopedia of Britannica in book form on the shelf at the end of the hallway by my bedroom door. And if I had a question and my dad didn't want to answer it or didn't have time,
41:52He would be like, we bought that whole set of books that has all the answers possible in this moment for you. Go read it. And I did the same thing for my kids. And the internet has made it so much easier for you to say, I don't know, go look it up. With the caveat that you might wanna make sure you know the search terms they're using to look up whatever they're looking up. Absolutely. So I think that we are in a time of
42:21questioning everything and that's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful that we have so much information at our fingertips. I love the time that I live in. So I have one more thing for you and then I'm gonna cut you loose. If someone, you're in the funeral industry so you probably know the answer to this. If someone dies of natural causes,
42:49It is clear that they died of natural causes. Maybe they had cancer, they're in a hospice, and they die. Or for some reason, someone dies in their sleep. Do you have to have, I don't know how to ask this correctly, do you have to have the medical examiner involved? Or can you just call and be like, yep, so-and-so passed away from cancer, that was killing them.
43:17They are now no longer with us. And then can you just wrap the body and take it to the cemetery and have the funeral? Does there have to be all this bureaucratic red tape involved all the time? Yeah, kind of. So all right, so you asked a bunch of questions in there. Let me start kind of at the beginning. That's good, though.
43:44Let me start at the beginning and I'll kind of walk through it. Okay? So if somebody dies of natural causes, so maybe they're in a nursing home or a hospital. That's going to be the easy one. They're in a nursing home or a hospital. The hospital is going to get a hold of the funeral home. The funeral home can go out and make the removal. Now, I know I'm not addressing your later questions about the family doing that on their own. I'll get there.
44:13If somebody dies at home, if they are on a hospice list and on hospice, the medical examiner is not going to have to come out. If they die at home and let's just say that they had a heart attack or didn't wake up in the morning, the medical examiner is going to have to be called. Depending on the county and where you live, sometimes they'll come out. Sometimes they'll actually take the body and do an autopsy.
44:42A lot of times though, they'll just certify that the death has occurred and the funeral home can make the removal from the place of death. Now as far as a family doing that, a licensed funeral director or recently in Minnesota laws just passed where we can have transfer care specialist make a removal from the place of death.
45:09but they have to be, they have to go through some different classes, they have to be certified to be a transfer care specialist. So either that person or a funeral director are the only people that can remove a body from where the death has occurred. So you are in Minnesota right now, you're still gonna need a funeral home involved in some way, shape or form. The other thing you need the funeral home for is that a death certificate has to be filed in Minnesota. So.
45:36Currently in Minnesota, what's done is that the funeral home generates that death certificate. They get the information to the doctor and the doctor signs off on the death certificate and lists the cause of death. And then it's filed with our county. So we need a funeral director for that.
45:59A family can transport a body after that with a burial transit permit that would be given to them by the funeral home. So if all a family wants to do is have a funeral home, you know, make the removal from the place of death, generate the death certificate and get that filed with our county, and then the family picks the body up from the funeral home and brings it out to the cemetery, they can do that. But...
46:25I guess they can't really do that because technically in Minnesota, we still need a licensed funeral director at that graveside service for a, uh, full body burial for cremator remains. We don't need a funeral director there, but for, um, a body burial, a funeral director would have to be at that cemetery for the burial. So we need a funeral director in a funeral home for a few of those items.
46:50Okay, I don't mean to be a pain in the butt, but why? Why does a funeral director have to be at at? What you just said? Director have to be involved in that. Um, essentially I don't have a great answer for that. Um, what I can tell is that We don't want the state of minnesota probably doesn't want somebody dying at home and not having that death recorded Um and certified. No, that's that's not
47:19That's not what I meant. I wasn't talking about that part. At the actual funeral at the graveside, a funeral director has to be there? Yeah, they have to be there. Why? They have to be at the graveside service. Just to ensure that that body made it into the ground is the best answer I can give you. Okay, that makes sense. Mary, I would say we live in very untrusting times. And so to let people...
47:49have free rein with that, you know, we're not there yet. I'm not saying that I agree with the law and that I don't question it, but that's the current situation in Minnesota that a funeral director has to be at the graveside service for a body burial. Okay, that's fine. I just didn't know if there was a specific reason why, and I'm always wondering why on everything because this is just who I am. Thank you, because why do you know?
48:17If you don't want a funeral home involved, you know, you don't necessarily need them there. But funeral directors aren't bad people, you know, they're there to help. Sometimes they get a bad rap. Most of them, their hearts are in the right place. Oh, yes, absolutely. One of our friends, Joe Wagner up in Jordan has the Wagner Funeral Home, I think is what it's called.
48:45And we're friends with him because he sells wonderful apples and we buy tons of apples for him in the fall. And he is so excited to answer questions like I'm asking you. But he's not doing green burials and you were the one who was doing that. So that's why I'm talking to you. Joe will talk my ear off if I asked him to be on the podcast. I probably never will because he would talk for hours. He's a great guy. I like him a lot.
49:14Okay, so I think I've asked you all the questions I probably should ask because we're coming up on 50 minutes and I try to keep this to 30 minutes. So Joel, I really, really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. This was great. Thank you at Ton Mary for asking me to do this. I really appreciate it. Yeah, have a great day. You too. Thank you.
 

Little Strawberry Patch Homestead

Today I'm talking with Nicole at Little Strawberry Patch Homestead.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*
*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Nicole at Little Strawberry Patch Farm or something. She's gonna say it for me. Say it, Nicole. What's your voice again? Little Strawberry Patch Homestead.
00:27Homestead, yes, I'm so sorry. I have talked to so many people lately and they all end their names in farm or farms or homestead or farmstead. I'm like, which is it? All right, Nicole, you're in New Jersey on a small lot. Tell me all about yourself and what you do. I was born and raised in South Jersey. We are still in South Jersey. We're a little further up in South Jersey. We're in Cumberland County.
00:56We recently moved here in 21. We have three, three children, three wild children, nine, five and four. And we live on a very small homestead. Basically it's very tiny. It's only 0.40 acres. Okay. And your house and maybe a garage is on that 0.40 acres? There is a, there is a house and a garage. Yep.
01:25been there done that except we did it on a tenth of an acre so it can be done. It really can and that's crazy. Yeah. A little aside, I was born in New Jersey and my parents moved to Maine when I was six months old so I have no working memory of being in New Jersey but it was at Fort Dix Air Force Base. Oh yeah, that's like an hour and an hour or so from here. Yeah. So I'm...
01:53I'm not a native Maynard because I wasn't born in Maine, but I might as well be and I'm actually not even there anymore. I'm in Minnesota. So I was a I was a almost native Maynard until I was 21 or 22. And I will never be a native Minnesotan because that's not how it's played out here. I am I'm going to be away and away from person for a long time. Oh my gosh, that's funny.
02:21Yep. So I never got the Jersey accent. I got the main accent. And then I got it. So I definitely have the Jersey accent majority of the time. It's not as heavy as I thought it was going to be. I was like, oh, she's going to sound like a Jersey girl. And then you started talking about Philadelphia and that's my husband. Okay. All right. Okay. So I just wanted to throw that in there because I think it's interesting. So what are you doing on your
02:50your little bitty homestead. So we initially had started out when we moved in. I obviously had to have chickens because who doesn't have to have chickens, right? And initially that was just supposed to be like a little fun hobby thing for me. And then I was like, you know, we can get more chickens because that's how it works. You start adding chickens with chicken math.
03:13And then I was like, well, we can start giving to the neighbors. Like I'd rather give it to them than them go to the grocery store. And this is when the grocery prices for eggs were through the roof. So it was like, yeah, we need to get more chickens. So we've slowly been adding chickens. We only have 10. But we're doing that for eggs. Mostly we have a rooster we might keep. So hopefully we'll have some chicks too. And then maybe we could do meat. I'm not positive.
03:43quail currently that we just got that we're doing for meat and for eggs. And hopefully we can do offspring with them too. We're doing silver fox rabbits, which we just started this year and we've built them like an outdoor enclosure. We're now going to do a secondary enclosure for them, which is going to be like double what they have. And then we're going to move our pet rabbits outside and we'll use those for.
04:12meat for our dogs, which is what we've currently been doing with them. And then if anybody wants pets, because they're adorable, they're an option too, if they would like them. And then we also just recently got dogs, which are my new favorite. We had our chicken hatch, two duck eggs, and then we have a duck that's now sitting on like a whole clutch. But we now have four, five, six ducks, adult ducks, and then we have two babies.
04:42So like overall, we're just like flourishing in the animals and we're starting to now add in like garden stuff. We have fig trees, like two massive ones that everyone loves, animals included. And my husband just recently, we just recently tilled way in the back. So we have corn going and stuff like that. Peas. And then we tried to do strawberries, but they got decimated for some reason this year by bugs.
05:09So I just let the chickens have their way with that patch. Well I'm sure the chickens are thrilled because they love strawberries. Did I see on your Facebook page that you call the ducks water chickens? Oh my god, the baby ducklings, yes. Because the chicken hatched them. Okay because I thought that was very cute because I call the calves out in the fields that we see when we're driving around.
05:36I call them grass puppies all the time because they look like little dogs out there running in the grass. That's adorable. So I was like water chickens. I love that. I have to add that to my, my lexicon of terms that are stupid and silly. Um, okay. So, so are you trying to do this to make what you're doing make money? Are you just doing it because you love it and to support your, your hobby?
06:01I loved it initially. So initially we started, like I said, chickens and we wanted to do rabbits and it was more so for me and I had to sell that to my husband because he's like, I don't really want to do this. But now he's like all for it loves the rabbits. That's like his therapy animal apparently. So we really started just to kind of share with our neighbors that we have, we have three neighbors that are real close that they share like from their gardens. So we share like what we have to give them with eggs and such so far.
06:31it started that way. And then I was like, you know, we really should start doing like me. So let's do some quail and then we'll see what we can do from there. And then it obviously the rabbits too. So the hope is that we can have our children understand where the food comes from, because my daughter has no idea besides the grocery store, which is such a crazy thing to me. And then the hope is also to potentially put money back into
07:01I don't know how much I could do here overall, but I would like to do something to make some kind of payback for what we have going on because it is going to eventually be a lot. If that makes sense. Oh yeah. Yep. Because you got to keep them fed. Yeah. And like honestly, if we could do it properly, I think it would be great. Like I'd really like to start pickling like the quail eggs because that seems like a big way to sell those.
07:29There's like a lot of different things I'd like to do. Like with the rabbits, you can dehydrate the ears for dog treats. Like there's several things that I think I could do and I just have to nail them down. Yep. Exactly. Um, so is New Jersey like super regulatory on this kind of stuff or are they pretty? Oh, yes. Yeah, very. So.
07:54that's kind of where I'm dancing in the line too because I'm not really supposed to have chickens I can have ducks which is crazy to me because this is the egg capital of New Jersey apparently. So I'm pushing the line with the chickens a little bit but I have the ducks and they're fine, the quail are fine, the rabbits are fine it seems. With the quail it seems like if you want to sell the eggs or like the animals over like state lines you have to get a permit which does not seem too difficult.
08:24So that is something I'm going to look into as well. But again, planning slowly because I feel like I'm going to stress myself out. Yeah. So, is there any plan to in the future maybe move to more land or are you not interested in that? Oh no, I'm 100% interested in that. Definitely like there's land behind us, but the guy wants to sell.
08:52all of it like spanned across wide. And we only want the spot behind us, obviously. But definitely that's what I would like to do. We would like to not be in New Jersey. We are not positive where we would like to move, but eventually that is the plan is to get more land. And then that would be more sustainable even further. Okay, yeah. We...
09:19We had a similar situation to yours where we had a tenth of an acre lot in a small town, about half an hour from where we are now. And it ended up that we had the chance, opportunity, good fortune to move in 2020 to a 3.1 acre property with a house and a huge pole barn on it. And we never in a million years thought we would actually be able to do this at all. And so just so you know, it is possible.
09:49You just got to have faith and you got to watch for those opportunities. Oh yeah, I know. I'm always looking. Yep. I am always looking because I'm like, there's plenty of space here. Like we can make it work. Like I'd really like the permaculture idea where everything is just there and like the animals are living in everything. But it's like you also have the kids. So it's like you need things for them to play with still. So it's like that's not like ideal right now here. So it's definitely something I really would want down the line.
10:19Yeah, and then I have a question about New Jersey. I have driven through New Jersey on a road trip at one point in time. And my memory and perception of New Jersey is that people are packed in like sardines. Yes. So before we moved here, we lived in basically like Kate Marriott exits here almost.
10:45there was no, like I wanted chickens there, but there was no way that would be so cruel, even to have them free range. It was like a tiny run almost. And then we moved up here and it's been like crazy, like because it's huge feeling compared to what I came from. But up here, it's a lot more, um, what's the word? Rural. So there's space between the neighbors.
11:09There's definitely still neighbors, but there's a decent space on each side, which I did not have before. And then we have just to span back and front. But definitely there is a lot of areas in New Jersey where there's either all farmland or it's packed like sardines, like you said. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask is if there's any actual open space in New Jersey, because I never was in an area where I saw that. So
11:34it's kind of split up in Cumberland County and then like Lawster and stuff like that, which is like the town or the next county over. And then you have to go up like towards the city, like New York towards that way. And there's a lot of that way as well. Okay. Yeah. I have driven the long way across New York from Minnesota to Maine, and, and it is beautiful. My God. New York in the areas that you're just driving for hours and hours is just stunning.
12:04I can only imagine. Yeah, it's beautiful. We talked about not staying in Minnesota when we were looking for the next place four and a half years ago. And it turned out that Minnesota is fairly affordable and fairly, or was, inexpensive compared to a lot of the states that I would have liked to have moved to. So we ended up staying in Minnesota.
12:32But New York, upstate New York was one of the things we considered. Maine obviously is one of the places we considered because I grew up there. Um, Wisconsin even we thought about because those are all areas with really pretty geography. So we ended up staying in a very pretty area in Minnesota, but we definitely flirted with not staying, if that makes sense. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So I understand that you're like, we're not sure we want to stay in New Jersey because...
13:01why if you don't have to if you want to try something else? Definitely if you don't have to, I would love to go anywhere, anywhere else with like expansive land. Like I like my neighbors, I love them, but sometimes I want to walk outside and them not be there, you know? And that sounds so wrong, but it's like I'm longing for that and I think I'll get that eventually. So I'm just hoping we're getting there. Yeah, when we moved here...
13:28Our neighbors, our closest neighbors are a quarter mile away. And it's, it's a big dream. Yeah. It's a big cornfield, which was a soybean field when we moved in. It's a cornfield now around us. And I had a moment like three years ago, one morning when I got up and it was still dark out and I looked outside and I was like, dude, we are, we are not anywhere near if something goes wrong.
13:55You know, if I, if something was wrong and I yelled for help, nobody's going to hear me. And I had that moment of, oh my God, what did we do? And then like two days later, we had to go back up to the town that we used to live in and all the houses are right next to each other and it's noisy and all you can smell is car exhaust and dirt, not soil, dirt. And I was like, I don't care if I call for help and nobody can hear me. Because if I have to die, I want to die there where it's beautiful. Right?
14:25It makes so much sense. Yup. And I don't intend on dying, but I think you get what I'm saying. I do. I really do. I know exactly what you mean. Anytime I have to go back down to exit zero area, it's like, oh my God, I don't know how I lived here for so long. And like, so much tree cover, like so... Oh God, gloomy, I guess. Mm-hmm. Yup.
14:51And honestly, the town that we lived in before was great for raising kids because almost everything was within a mile walking distance for the kids. So raising kids in that town was fabulous. But now the kids are all grown and doing their own things. And I was like, I'm going to lose my mind if I have to live here for the rest of my life. I know. We don't live there anymore. And it's nice that you're a quarter of a mile away.
15:20Yes, just far enough away that when the donkey at the neighbor's place northwest of us braids, it's adorable. Oh my gosh, that is adorable. And when their cow is low, it's a beautiful sound. And I think they might've just gotten a horse. I swear I heard a horse do that blow that they do through their nose and neigh the other day. I was like, did they get a horse? Oh my God.
15:48So yeah, it's really fun. And I'm not saying this to rub it in your face. None of this is like, ha ha, look what we did. It's just that there's opportunities that you can't possibly know are coming down the pike for you because that's how life is. Oh yeah, definitely. And hopefully the housing market changes. That would be wonderful. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, that would be good. And then I'll be like on board right away.
16:15Let's go. It's time. Yes. Yeah, it's time. My bags have been packed since we talked about it. Let's go now. Now is the time. Yes. We can get a horse and a cow. Yep, exactly. Um, okay. So I don't know. Did you, did you grow up wanting to have a homestead?
16:40I would definitely not say a homestead. Probably wanting to live on a farm. I've always had like a gajillion animals of all sorts. And then when we lived at the last home that we owned, it was only so big so we had cats and dogs and I couldn't have the chickens. So when we got here, I was like, it's happening. And it happened. And it's kind of explicit with animals and I love it. And the kids like...
17:06I honestly adore it. I think the only one that doesn't love it entirely is my oldest daughter, but she's getting to the point where she's like enjoying seeing the animals. She likes the little ducklings and the chickens running around. So it's like she's starting to appreciate it more, whereas I feel like she really didn't appreciate a lot of things the same. Yeah. So I would say that overall, I think that it's starting to help everybody around here. Even my husband who was like super like clean freak and now he's like...
17:35getting in the garden, which is crazy to me, and cleaning up chicken poop and duck pools. So overall, I would definitely say this wasn't the end goal. I would still love a farm, but yeah, this is where I'm happy to be for sure. Cool. So how do your neighbors react to what you're doing? I mean, when you started doing all this stuff, were they like, what are you doing?
18:04Well, we told the one neighbor we were getting chickens because he's like he's the closer neighbor. He's like on the side of our driveway basically near the garage. And then the other neighbor is kind of far. And I was like, we're not getting roosters. So I'll just let it go. But we told him and he's like, I want chickens too. But he didn't get chickens still. But he was fine with it. And then we were like, we're gonna get rabbits. And then we got quail and ducks.
18:29So now every time he'll just like pop over in the gate, like walk through and check everything out. So he's like super into it and like intrigued. And then like the neighbors across the street are like semi intrigued, but they have like a huge massive garden going on. So really nobody's really bothered. And honestly, the ducks are way louder than the chickens, I would say. Yeah, I can imagine they probably are. Cause quite.
18:54quack is a lot different than that. Yeah, you come out the back door, it slams and they are going off. Like definitely louder than the chickens. Yeah, you know what's also louder than chickens? Barn cats. Barn cats are louder than chickens. Our barn cats have the loudest meows I've ever heard. What are they meowing for? Oh, just to let us know they're there. We have two cats that live outside, so I call them the barn cats.
19:23Yeah, the littlest one is four months and a couple weeks old. And every morning he comes tearing from the pole barn over the steps of the house. And the whole time he's going, I'm here. Hello. You have a snack? I'm like, dude, I see you. You stick out like a sore thumb. You're white with beige spots against green grass. I know you're there, but he's very friendly and he's a big love. So it's fine. But yeah, the barn cats are probably the loudest thing outside.
19:53that's kind of obnoxious. The chickens aren't bad. They're not that loud. Really, they're not. They're not loud at all. The ducks are really loud. The cats can be loud too. Yeah. So, um, when you, when you decided to get ducks, did you already know what they needed? No, I had no idea. And I honestly didn't want ducks and I really didn't want ducks. And then we sadly went to tractor supply and these ducks look so sad.
20:20in the bin. Of course, they got you. And I was like, all right, we're going to bring these ducks home. And then when we brought them home, we were like immediately obsessed. So I just poured my heart into everything you could think of. We build a duck house and everything for them. And now they have two pools. But I really had no idea. And I didn't want them because they were dirty, apparently, which they are very dirty, but they're so smart.
20:48and they clean up way better than the chickens do. They eat less than the chickens do. So I would definitely say they're a very cool animal. Yeah. And the baby ones are so cute. Oh, my God. Their feet are so big and they're so tiny. So cute. You know, like they're stomping around with little boots.
21:11So have you found that one of the benefits of having chickens and ducks and rabbits and quail is that you don't have as much lawn to mow? Oh, 100%. But then we have the dogs that are, you know, fertilizing it themselves every day. So there's patches of high and then there's patches of bare. But yeah, definitely they do a lot. And like I said, the ducks do a lot with like the pests way more than the chickens.
21:39And then the chickens scratch up anything they can find. So I'm cool with that. And since you said all of that, you are definitely a homesteader because you understand the whole circle of how things work. Yeah, I really oh my God, I'm so glad you said that because I swear me and my husband talk about all the time, people are online. They're like, is it OK if my chicken has this? I'm like, if the chicken's going to eat it, it's probably fine. Like, they know what to eat, not to eat the same with the ducks. Like, yeah.
22:08If you're going to throw something out there and poison them, they're going to eat it because they naturally would eat that. But they're so like self-sufficient. That's why you see them out in the wild. Like it's just so bizarre how people try to like make it really complex and it's really so simple. And that's why it's so enjoyable because of the simplicity. Yeah. The hardest thing about homesteading, whether it's gardening or raising animals, is the work involved to get it going. Right.
22:37That's exactly what it is. It's the hardest part. And then when you get it done, it's like, you can enjoy it for a little bit until you do the next thing. Yeah. And what's funny is the beginning of anything is always the hardest part. It is because you have to figure it out. Yeah. And so people are like, Oh my God, how did you do that? That's a lot of work. And I'm like, how did you figure out how to do the thing that you're doing that you love, right? You had to start somewhere too.
23:05It's the same. And I feel like it's because they think of it as more of a hobby. But when you're trying to do something on a larger scale or maybe larger for you, and like even if they don't know how large it is to you, it's different for them, I guess, because it's not the same hobby, I guess they want to call it. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I feel like people sometimes don't think about what they're saying before it comes out of their mouth. Right. And I don't, I don't mean that.
23:35as in they're not smart. There's just no online editor to stop what they're thinking to come out their mouth. And so when they're confused or perplexed, this question comes out and you look at them like, but you did the same thing with ABCD, you know? Right, correct. And then they realized what they asked and they're like, oh yeah, I did. Okay, so it's kind of the same. Yes, it's kind of the same.
24:05It really is. You just kind of have to smooth the edges for them and then they realize. Yeah. Whatever your passion is, whatever things sparked you to want to know more and then to do that thing, it's all the same motivation behind it, if that makes sense? Definitely. It definitely makes sense. Yeah. When we got chickens, we got chickens when we lived at the old place because that bird flu thing was going through. And we had four kids.
24:35And eggs were really expensive and my children really liked homemade chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip cookies take eggs. And I said to my husband, I said, how hard would it be to get like four chickens? And he said we would have to buy a shed or a coop for them. And I said, how much would that cost? He told me. And I said, okay. And I like went out of my way to make enough money to get one of the little prefab chicken coop things from Fleet Farm.
25:04Oh, New Jersey doesn't have fleet from I don't think but. Tractors fly basically. Yeah and come to find out it was a little too small for four chickens so we ended up buying one of the the sheds at Home Depot that you can put together. Yep. And we retrofitted that sucker and it was a great coop and we had eggs for less money than we would have been paying at the store because feeding four chickens isn't that expensive. And I was hooked.
25:34I just thought this is great. These eggs are so much better than the store bought eggs. And whether they... Don't you love when you crack them and they're orange inside and then, oh my God, I got a hard boiled egg from like a convenience store because I had to go out one day and I had to get food. This egg on the inside was like almost like white. Why? I was like, this is gross. I am not eating this. I would rather starve. Yeah. And the thing is I...
26:02Every time I have this conversation with people who get it, they're like, oh yeah, eggs from your chickens are so much better than eggs from the store. And I agree, but there are reasons for that. Number one, the eggs at the store have probably been on the shelf for at least three weeks. For two weeks. Yeah. Which degrades the nutrient value and probably the taste of the egg.
26:30when you are literally cracking an egg from the chicken that just laid it 10 minutes before and frying it up, it's clearly going to taste different and it's going to look different. Oh, so delicious, yes. So, so yeah, I just, I, I always feel stuck on this point because grocery stores are important because not everyone can or will have their own chicken.
27:01And eggs are good for you. I think that people should eat eggs. I think people should drink milk as long as they don't get sick from drinking milk, you know? But not everybody can go out to the barn and milk their cow and have fresh milked. I'm sorry. Well, apparently in New Jersey, you can't even have raw milk like to sell anymore. You can drink it personally, but you have to find a way to acquire it because you can't sell it. Yep. So they've kind of taken away that right.
27:28my husband said as of I think he said 22 or 21. So it's like you can't even do milk, but it's almost like I wish they would do the day where they dropped it on your front doorstep. Just like the same thing with the eggs. Like I do think the grocery store is a necessity, but I think that there's a lot of things that they're cutting corners on that are definitely gross.
27:56So everything happens for a reason. The reason just may not be very good is how I'm gonna put it. Right. But either way, the whole point of my podcast is to let people share about what they're doing to make their life what they want it to be. And I'm so impressed that you are doing all of this on probably what, a fifth of an acre, not even a fifth of an acre? 0.40, so. Yeah.
28:26Yeah. But with the house and the garage. Yeah, really not a lot of them now. Yeah. So you're using probably every square inch of what yard you have to basically better your life. Right. Just to provide any more sustainability and to not rely, I guess, on the grocery stores as much because they're not that reliable anymore, to be fair. Yeah. I talked with a lady
28:56couple months ago and she has a little tiny city lot in, I can't remember where, and she's surrounded by a hospital and some clinics. And the doctors and the nurses who go on break, they come outside to the break area and they can see into her yard where she grows produce and bedding plants and stuff, and they come over and talk to her and ask her questions all the time on their break.
29:26Because it's probably so amazing that like, probably like crazy to see that around all that, all those buildings, but it's like so necessary. Yeah, she had five, I think she said 5,000 seedlings started in her basement. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, I loved her story. I love your story too. Because I keep saying to people, you can homestead in...
29:55loft apartment in New York because it's not about land, it's about lifestyle. It is not. I tell my husband that all the time. People in the city can have quail on their porch, they can have plants on their porch. There's so many things that people can do and I really, really want people to see that. That's really important to me because if we can do it, there's no reason someone else can't do it. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're growing something that doesn't need to be pollinated, like lettuces or...
30:24radishes or carrots or spinach. You can grow that stuff in containers on a table under grow lights in your kitchen. Right, and they have those hydro grow things now. You can do the towers. Like there's so many options. And I definitely think people are forgetting what the country was built on, which is agriculture and all that because that's necessary to learn about. Mm-hmm, absolutely.
30:52So why is it Little Strawberry Patch? Oh, Little Strawberry Patch. Well, first, because it's little. Yep. Strawberry, because we live on the road, is called Strawberry. It's a patch because it is just a patch. Yeah. And it's a homestead. Okay, cool. I just, when people have cute names, I'm like, why is it called that? Just very simple. Yeah. Ours is a tiny homestead because 3.1 acres isn't that big.
31:20So, and plus we named it when we lived on our 10th of an acre. That was the name of our business. So I was like, okay, well, we're still a tiny homestead. We're just a little bigger tiny homestead now. Yeah, we'll just drag it over. Yep. So, all right, Nicole, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. I try to keep these 30 minutes and we are there. All right, thank you so much. This was awesome. Yep. It's all right. All right, thanks. Have a great day.
 

Charlotte Smith - Farm Marketing Mindset

Today I'm talking with Charlotte Smith about Farm Marketing Mindset.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*
*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Charlotte Smith. Good afternoon, Charlotte, how are you? I'm good, thank you. Good afternoon to you too. Good, so tell me about yourself and what you do.
00:30That is a big question. So I live in St. Paul, Oregon, and I've been a farm girl my whole life. As a matter of fact, I went away to college and swore I'd never come back. But then I came back 20 years ago because I wanted my kids to have the same lifestyle. And first of all, started kind of a homestead, milk in my own cow to provide milk for my family.
00:56And as anyone who has a cow knows, one cow provides milk for like 50 families. So I started selling my milk and had a raw milk dairy at an on-farm store. And then that evolved into about 10 years ago, teaching other homesteaders and farmers and now ranchers to market and sell their products too.
01:25These are expensive endeavors and it's nice to get some money back, either to pay your costs if you're just a homesteader or if you actually want to make a business out of it. I teach farmers how to do that too. So yeah, I'm a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I like to say. Well multi-passionate is a great thing.
01:55Perferred in Australia last week and I don't know if you know about her but she does sort of the same thing you do but her focus is women over 40 and helping them find what they're good at regarding homesteading to Make money to help support the homestead. I don't know if you know about her. I don't but this You're slightly different than her number one. You're in Oregon not Australia and
02:24I just was like, I want to see what your take is on how to make this go, I guess. Sure. Well, absolutely you have to be good at it. What I always say is, what are you passionate about? Because if you are milking cows because you think you need to make money and not because you love it, you're going to be very unhappy and unfulfilled. So...
02:52I always work with my clients to make sure that yes, they're learning to make money and they are making money at something they love. Sometimes it's just a matter of telling them that yes, you have permission to say you don't enjoy it. Sometimes they're making money at things they don't enjoy because they think they need to keep doing it or need to make money. Yes, so I do similar things.
03:20Figure out what you love and what you're passionate about, and you can make a profit at it. So, yes, and live a very fulfilling life. All right, that's kinda what I thought. That's why I decided to do a podcast, because I really, really do love it. Yeah, that's wonderful. And people love to talk about what they love. So I was like, I love talking to people. People love talking about what they love to do.
03:50I'm doing homesteading, I bake, I make crafty stuff. Let's go talk to people who are doing the things that I'm doing. And it's almost a year that I've been doing this and I still love it as much as the first one I did the last week of August last year. I hear you, I hear you, I'm the same way. Yep, it's crazy. I was not a podcast listening girl. I've listened to more.
04:15podcast from other people in the last eight months than I have ever listened to in my entire life. Because I needed to know how other people are doing it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you educated yourself, huh? I had to because I was like I have no idea how to do this. I need help. And that's one of the things that I would say is that if you're going to start a business, do the research.
04:41go look at what other people are doing, find somebody who's doing what you want to be doing and ask them questions. Yeah, or go intern with them. That's my thing. Before I brought home my first milk cow, I spent a year going and visiting other dairy farmers, observing them, actually sitting next to them, milking with them, and you can do that no matter what it is you're doing on your homestead. As a matter of fact, if you do that, you'll save so much money.
05:10because you will prevent so many expensive mistakes. Yes, and there are so many expensive mistakes to be made. And I don't want to discourage anyone from homesteading life, but just understand that if you're going to be growing produce or raising animals, mistakes will happen because you can't know what you don't know. Exactly. We learn experientially as humans.
05:40kills our crop of vegetables only when we kill the crop of vegetables. And go, oh, I wasn't supposed to do that. Or cow or whatever animal it might be too. Yes. And sometimes it's not even anything that you did or have control over. Our garden right now is a huge garden of lovely grasses and weeds, mostly because it rained for a month and a half straight here in Minnesota this spring.
06:09and the garden has been pretty much stopping wet since then. So we have some things growing that we put in, but they're not doing very well. And if Mother Nature could shut off the tap for a while, it would be really, really appreciated. Mm-hmm. It's been rough here in Minnesota. Oh, no. I don't know what it's been like where you are, but this has been terrible.
06:34We get a lot of rain six months in the winter. We're a rainforest and then we're kind of a drought in the summer. We really don't get much rain. I live next to a river and I have water rights. So luckily I can keep my grass green all year, but yeah, summer's kind of a drought here where I live. Well, the joke here at the homestead has been that we didn't know that we had been transported to Oregon or Washington state this summer. Right. I was in Minnesota teaching marketing.
07:03to a group of farmers in April. And the day I left, it snowed. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna move to Minnesota. It snows in April. Yep, Prince had a song, or has a song, called Sometimes It Snows in April, and he was not wrong. Yes, oh my gosh, you're right. How funny. Yeah, that boy grew up here. I think he knew what he was talking about. Yeah. Okay, so, you have a course.
07:33that you offer. And I can't remember if it's a free course or a paid for course. So tell me about the course. I have lots of free courses and one paid course. So yeah, what I love to do is, my family farm when I grew up, when I was a teenager went bankrupt. We lost everything except the clothes on our back. Our house was sold.
08:00in the bankruptcy sale, the farmland, the equipment, you know, we lost everything, put the clothes on our backs. So that has stayed with me in my whole life. And I saw a lot of other farmers at that time do the same thing. And now today, now that I've started my farm back in 2009, I've seen so many farmers go out of business. So my passion in life is to make sure that every farmer.
08:30everywhere knows they don't have to live in poverty and they can make money on their farm if they learn the skill, the money-making skills. And for me, I teach marketing and I teach farmers how to make money. It's what my website says because as we know, this is just so expensive. No matter what size you are, even if you just have backyard chickens, it's going to be
08:59feed them and take care of them. So I offer all sorts of free courses that just help you get started. If you've never thought of marketing your products before, I have a free email marketing course that gives you the basics so you can set up your foundation. I have a free pricing course called Price for Profit. I just took all the expenses on my farm and I created some
09:29Excel spreadsheets and made it so that you can plug your numbers in. You plug in your expenses and it spits out a number of what you should be charging for your products and most farmers are shocked. And when I say farmers, I'm talking about farmers, homesteaders, ranchers, anyone trying to make money selling a product direct to consumer. They're usually shocked. So I love people to have that awareness.
09:57They're wondering like, why do I never have any money left at the end of the year? And yet we sold, we're selling more and more every year, but there's no more money left and many times it comes down to, they just aren't charging enough. And so I love that exercise and, um, I can share with you where they can find that free course if you want. Sure. Good. You can, you can email it out, but they can go to Charlotte M Smith.
10:25dot com forward slash price for profit, all one word, price for profit. And it's just a six day course. So I'll get an email every day with the spreadsheets and it'll really open their eyes to why they're working so hard for not much return. And so, so that's kind of the, the free things really help you get your foundational things set up with email marketing and pricing.
10:53And then my paid course, what happens is once you know what to charge, what's going to happen is you're going to feel really guilty charging that much. You're going to feel really scared increasing your price. You're going to think you're going to lose people. So that's where then I do my, what I sell, what I have for sale is my course called farm marketing mastery. And that is beginning through advanced marketing training. So, and coaching. And that's where once you know what you need to charge.
11:24We help you figure out number one, is that what you love doing? And then coaching you and working with you through the year to make sure you're learning exactly how to market that one thing, price it for profit, and then build consistent sales with loyal customers that come back time and time again. So, that's kind of it. My free things are an introduction. And then my paid courses where you learn to be a very confident
11:54farm marketer and actually start to make money at what you're doing, which helps you in so many areas. Yeah, because most people who start a business are not fluent in marketing or sales. Marketing sales are a whole different career than the thing that we're starting. I was lucky enough to have some marketing background because I worked for a friend for six years.
12:24She was a PR and marketing company. And I had no idea how much I actually learned from her until we moved here four years ago and we're like, oh, we're gonna do a farm to market garden and we're gonna do a farm stand on the property and we're gonna do the farmer's markets and we're gonna sell produce. And my husband was like, so how do we get the word out? And I was like, I got you covered, honey. Nice. Yep, because it was in my brain from working with her and she is...
12:54still my friend and I love her and I love her more now because she taught me all these things that I didn't even know I was learning by osmosis. So it worked out fantastically. So here's the thing with the spreadsheet thing and showing people what they should be charging for their product. That is a thing we have trouble with sometimes too.
13:23tons of tomatoes and people wanted tomatoes for canning. And I told my husband, I said, you could probably be charging a dollar to two dollars more per pound this year than you did last year because there's a demand, there's a higher demand for them. And he was like, yeah, but with inflation, I don't wanna do that, it feels like taking advantage. And I was like, it's your garden, it's your baby, it's your tomatoes, you sell them for the price you wanna sell them for.
13:52And it's bugged me since because on one hand, he's right. Money was very tight for people last year. And we live in a small town. And we were very thankful that people wanted to buy our tomatoes. On the other hand, we could have charged more than the year before. So the whole pricing thing gets real uncomfortable for people. So what should we have done maybe in that situation? Yes. Well, the...
14:21What you're describing is very real. We take it very personally, like it's our responsibility to help people's budgets. But what I see, and remember, I work with, I see big scale. I work with 300 farmers a year of all different sizes, backyards, you know, quarter acre, one acre, three acre, five, 10, a hundred, 10,000 acres. So I have a vast.
14:49experience over 10 years of thousands and thousands of farmers. And the thing is, if you don't decide to charge a sustainable price, at some point, your husband and or you will say, this is too much work for the money. I'd really like to just go to the beach more this summer. Let's just stop selling tomatoes altogether. And now you've left your community hanging.
15:16Many of them would rather pay a dollar or two more per pound and have you there to five and 10 years later. So when farmers, and it's a skill, it's a learned skill to be able to charge a sustainable price and what I mean by sustainable is you make enough money that you want to be around. You can prioritize farming over everything else because you're making
15:41a profit, it makes it worth the work and you're there to serve your community long-term. If you're not charging enough, it's unsustainable, which means you won't be able to sustain it for years. You won't want to do it to five and 10 years from now because of the effort involved for the return. So it's a mindset shift. It's purely a mindset shift. And once you get that, you realize that your community wants to support you.
16:10in being sustainable. They're like, yes, we're happy to pay one or $2 more or $5 more per pound, whatever it takes for you to be fair to yourselves and for it to make sure that you're going to be here in the years to come. So that's it in a nutshell, there's a lot more to it, but it's just shifting how you think about it. Okay, well.
16:36In my husband's defense, he's a very sweet man and he really does want to help the community so I can totally see where he was coming from. But I'm going to share this particular discussion with him sometime in the next two weeks and be like next summer we need to figure it out. We need to start in January and figure out what your time is worth, what the product is worth, and what you think you want to make for what you're doing.
17:04instead of, I'm afraid that people will starve if we don't feed them our tomatoes. Yes, and people will not starve, period. That's an unproductive, unuseful thought that is just not true. They want garden fresh tomatoes and they're happy to prioritize them. I prioritize farm fresh food for my family. Two of my kids have moved out. I have one left at home. Me too.
17:33Feeding, okay. So feeding this large family, I prioritized farm fresh food, which meant there were lots of things we didn't do. We didn't go to Disneyland. We went to, we drove to go camping or we drove to the beach. We didn't take expensive trips because of the way it was important to me to prioritize food. Everybody will choose who wants to prioritize farm fresh food. We'll do so and we'll adjust their budgets to do so.
18:03And something I say to people like your husband, like maybe he decides tomatoes are his charity and he is going to keep the price low because that's how he gives back to his community and it's not affecting him financially and he doesn't mind growing and harvesting and putting all the time and maybe that's his charity. But then you, you've got a little bit different mindset and this is why I have a coaching program.
18:32the farm marketing mastery where we coach for a year, because a lot of times the partners working in the homestead or on the farm together are of a different mindset. So your mindset is more like, if we're going to work this hard, we're going to make money at it. Now, I put those words in your mouth. And he's of the mindset, if I charge more than I'm not helping people, I want to help people. So you've got two different mindsets here.
19:02What will it take to get you on the same page? Or do you just want to focus on what you're going to produce to make money and let him have his charity, let him give away, like for instance, I had a raw milk dairy and a huge garden. I never charged for my vegetables, but my best customers spent hundreds of dollars with us every month, hundreds or maybe even, you know, thousands, which is thousands by the end of the year.
19:31I would give them tomatoes. They would get a bucket of tomatoes every week when they came during tomato season. I could have charged, but that was my charity. I made money on my raw milk dairy and the tomatoes were kind of a bonus or a free gift. So you can set it up any way you want, but at a certain point, if he says, whoa, this is just too much work. I need help. I can't do it all myself.
19:59But I'm not paying any money. I can't even pay a high school kid to come help me out. Well, then, you know, maybe he's ready to shift his mindset, but any, any way you want to do it is fine as long as you figure out how's it working for our family, our household, for our values. But no, it's absolutely not your responsibility to give people cheap tomatoes because they will, they will take them and run.
20:27Well, the good news and bad news this year is that we don't really have any extra tomatoes. So this summer is a wash. We're not even going to worry about it because I can barely get a tomato from my own salad out of the garden this year. It's so sad. Hopefully Mother Nature will be kinder to us next year. Hopefully. Have had some cucumbers though. They've been great. Oh, good. I know. I've just been eating lemon cucumbers like crazy because we have so many all of a sudden.
20:56Yeah, we don't have so many but the cucumbers that are coming in are great because who knew cucumbers actually love rain? They love water. Mm-hmm kind of like watermelons love water. Yeah watermelons without water Okay, so now that we said all that I have a couple questions for you if I can pick your brain a little bit since you're here course, we built a heated winter greenhouse this May
21:26I applied for a grant for it and we got the grant. And so the grant covered the cost of building the heated winter greenhouse. Very exciting. Now, the plan for that greenhouse was to, thank God, have it built by the time they wanted us to have it built, which we did, and then use it for growing some stuff during the summer in there as well.
21:51Thank God we have it because that's where a lot of what we're eating is coming from because again the garden is so. So this could not have been better timing. I'm so thrilled that we had this happen in May. The plan for this winter is to grow anything that doesn't need to be pollinated like leafy greens like beets, radishes, things like that and to be able to offer a fresh produce.
22:20during the winter because Minnesota, you know, there really isn't a whole lot of local fresh produce happening because it's snow covered and ice. So how can I, like I have a couple of months before we start the fall garden. So how can I get the word out about us doing this? Because I'd like to kind of jump on it in the next three, four weeks and just let people know what we're doing.
22:49So do I put it on Facebook? Do I put it on the Nextdoor app? Do I send emails to people? What's the smartest way to do this? So the foundation I teach applies to no matter what you're doing. And that is you've got to have an email list. The only legal way to let people know you have something to say by email is if you have an email.
23:18email marketing software provider. You can't just take your Gmail account or your Yahoo, or I have people still on America Online AOL and send an email that's set to blind copy 20 or 50 people and say, hey, we've got fresh lettuce for sale this winter. If you're selling some, if you're sending an email to sell something, no matter how small you are, you've got to use an email software.
23:47email marketing service. And those can be free or cheap. And so that's my free email course. That's at charlottemsmith.com forward slash free email course, I believe. It's pretty straightforward. And it'll teach you how to set that up. And then what happens is then you do use all these other places.
24:14social media, of course, wherever you go, you're funneling people to your email list. And then you just email them once a week. You just keep up with, hey, we've got you, take them on your journey. If you're not going to have anything for sale in your greenhouse until say October or November, December, whatever, it's still not too early to start connecting with them. Now people buy from you because they trust you and they trust you when you communicate with them regularly, like in a weekly email.
24:44So you can just take them on your journey of we got the grant, we built the greenhouse. This is what we're doing this week. By the time you have something to sell, they will be so happy to pay you money to buy from you. So yeah, you start now, your email list is your foundation and you use all the other places you mentioned to funnel them to get on that email list. And that's what I teach step by step, very simple step by step.
25:13in the farm marketing mastery program. Everyone thinks like, oh, let's just jump on Instagram and Facebook and tell people we have stuff for sale. Well, there's algorithms on there that prevent your followers from seeing those posts as soon as you start saying you have things for sale. So the workaround is you funnel them to your email list and you let them know you have things for sale there. So that's my like year long teaching. Well,
25:42It takes about six weeks to learn that, and I just told you what I could in like 10 sentences. So know that this is very, very brief, but that will be your foundation. And the sooner you start building an email list, the better. Okay. Well, I have a website for our business, and I have it set up so people can subscribe to the website. And then I have an email program.
26:11along with my hosting that takes all those emails and when I do a post or a blog post or whatever on my website, it goes out to all the email people that have signed up. Is that the same thing or is it different? Yeah, it is. Is your email software through your website? Yes. Okay. Yeah, so that's, I don't recommend that. It's lacking. So just throwing out some. There's MailChimp.
26:41There's MailerLite, there's Flowdesk, there's so many email marketing software providers, just choose one. But you don't want the one that's provided with the website because it's not robust. It's, it does not have the features that you need for marketing. And yes, even if you're just a homestead, you're selling not very many, you know, things through the winter, it doesn't matter your size.
27:11It will be so much more efficient. So just choose an outside provider, any one of those I mentioned or other. And then you'll just take your subscribers you've already got with the website and transfer them to there and start emailing out of there. Then you will have so much more data you'll be able to track and you'll be able to improve your marketing because of that.
27:41Okay, I thought it wasn't the same, but I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Okay, awesome. All right, so I don't know what else to ask you because I've been looking at your Facebook page for days trying to figure out questions and I'm like, I'm so out of my depth on this. I don't even know what to ask this woman. That's okay. I have a free training coming up in September. I don't know if you've attended any of the free trainings, but you will learn so much.
28:12And so, you know, again, that, I think that sign up is charlottemsmith.com forward slash masterclass. And that is farm marketing masterclass, three essential steps to building a profitable farm. There's three things you've got or three pillars. So that's in September, and you'll learn a ton, anyone who goes to that, no matter what size you are, farm.
28:41will learn so much from that class. You'll see yourself in that class. I already do. Yeah, good, good, good. Yeah, the thing that I didn't realize when we moved here is that my husband would want to make this his job. And we tried that last summer. It really did not work. And so he ended up finding a jobby job in November last year again.
29:10And he was out of work for about eight months. We had savings, nobody died, no one starved, everything was okay, but he ended up having to get a job that's off the farm again. And if he could make it so that he could just have the homestead, the farm, be his job, he would. But I didn't know how to make it go any more than it went. He certainly didn't know. So.
29:35I am really glad that I found you because I'm going to go take some of your free classes and see what we can do to make it more workable to make this his job. Yeah. So it's interesting you just said that because he did not have a mindset of making money even though he wanted it to be his job. He then did not charge enough for his tomatoes. So see, he's got...
30:05He's got, on the one hand, he wants it to be his job, but on the other hand, he's not willing to charge what it takes to make it his job. So he could totally, and this is what I tell farmers all the time, you can absolutely make it your job if you shift your mindset. It's a business, which means a business has profit left over after you pay the expenses and after we pay your husband's salary so he can replace his job salary.
30:34there's still leftover money. Uh-huh. So, but that's a mindset. Rather than if your mindset is, I am responsible for getting people cheap food, cheap tomatoes, he's not going to replace his day job. So and that is one, what I just described is one of the most common mindset shifts that people join my program to make. They're in the same position you are. Like, ah, we're not making any money.
31:01Why not? Oh, I feel guilty charging what I'm supposed to for my meat. Well, that's okay. Except that you told me you want this to be your day job, right? So you've got, everyone's got to work to make that mental shift to running a business if they want a business. Now it's okay if they don't, but like you expressed, your husband wanted it to be his business. So he can do that. And if he gets his part of his brain on board, that will help.
31:31support him in charging what he needs to charge for that profitable business. Definitely. And I'm going to tell one more little story and then I won't take up any more of your time. When I started this podcast last year, I didn't think it would go anywhere. I didn't think it would do anything. I was like, I'm going to try a podcast. Why not? And it just became monetized Monday morning this week. And
32:00I now have ads on my podcast. My podcast has been the cleanest podcast ever. No music, it's all just information. I loved it. And now I listen to them because I have to listen to them before I share them. And the ads are there and I'm like, oh, it's got ads. It sounds terrible. It's not as clean. It's not as lovely as it was. And I'm like, but I need to make money. And so I'm sorry listeners, I have to make money to continue to do the podcast. I have spent almost a year doing this.
32:29for free and I have to make money too. So that's where I'm at with the, I would really like it to be this, but it has to make money too. Absolutely. Yeah, and this is just, you know, private aside coaching is you have a huge opportunity to create some kind of online course and you mentioned that on your podcast and that's how you make money.
32:57instead of ads if you want, or you can stick with ads, except that you apologize for them. It makes me think maybe you aren't happy about the ads being there. That's what so many farmers and homesteaders are doing is they're doing their sale. They're selling their tomatoes, and then they're teaching a class on how to can tomatoes, or they're selling eBooks on how to can tomatoes, or how to grow tomatoes, or how to...
33:25have, you know, or they're selling seeds or whatever. So you could add that to your podcast and that, because podcasts are not free to produce and, and it takes money out of the pocket and as well as your time. So you could sell your online courses and every homestead or listening could come up with something they could sell. Cause many of them have podcasts or YouTube channels or something you can sell.
33:55things like that on there. Just mention it. You know, hey, and if you want to learn how to raise your own tomatoes like we did, get my ebook, How to Raise the World's Most Delicious Tomatoes. $5.99, $50 for my online class, whatever it might be. So anyway, another thing you can do to help pay for it. Yes. There is a huge market for selling educational information right now.
34:23And that's a terrible way of saying it, but I think, you know what I mean? It's people want to learn. I think since COVID happened, people have become more aware of what they're doing and why they're doing it. And a lot of people are just hungry for information on how to change whatever that means for them. Yeah. So, but anyway, Charlotte, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And I didn't really.
34:53expect you to help me as much as you have, but in helping me, I'm sure you help the listeners too. I love helping and it's fun. I want every homesteader farmer to know you can make money. You don't have to go in the hole. You can at least cover your expenses. So I'm happy to help you. And yes, definitely others will be struggling with these same things we talked about. So I'm glad you're out there sharing all this information.
35:18I am trying so hard to get everything out there I can get out there in the time that I have to allotted to me. All right. Thanks Charlotte. Have a great afternoon. Thank you.
 

Pleasant Valley Acres

Today I'm talking with Madeline at Pleasant Valley Acres.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*
*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Madeline at Pleasant Valley Acres. Good afternoon, Madeline, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm good, you're in Oregon, right?
00:27Yeah, we are in Sweet Home, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley area. What a great name for a town. Yeah. I love that. Okay, so tell me all about yourself and what you do. Oh well, we have been doing just a little bit by a little bit over the last couple of years. I got married to my husband about four years ago. And
00:54He is not necessarily an animal freak, but I am. So what turned into just a few chickens is now turned into a herd of, I think, eight goats and we raise them for dairy and show and just good milk quality. We raised registered mini limachas. OK, so.
01:17I have talked to many people about many different kinds of goats, but I haven't talked to anybody about Lamanches and I didn't know there were mini Lamanches. So tell me about your particular color or spice of goat. Tell me about the Lamanches. Well, the Lamanches, the mini Lamanches come from a standard breed of goat called the Lamancha goat. These are just essentially a smaller scale, more economically friendly breed.
01:47They are small in stature, which means they need less feed, they need less room. Um, but you're getting that small stature of a standard size or a small stature of mini goats with the production of a standard size goat. So for us, it's kind of the best of both worlds. I'm not feeding tons and tons of hay, but I'm getting lots and lots of milk. So, um, they're an earless breed of goat. So.
02:15People tend to look at them a little weird at first. But we like their characteristics. They're very mellow and easy to work with. Okay, so how big is a standard lemonsha versus a mini lemonsha? It varies because the mini lemonsha go in different generations. So you have your first generation cross, which would be an Iberian dwarf goat and lemonsha.
02:44I've seen those first generation minis range in size a lot. The farther you get, so the more generations of that mini La Mancha, I'd say that they don't usually get more. Like the doughs stay around 100 pounds maybe. Bucks getting closer to 125. Your standards are, I think the doughs are about 150.
03:13125 to 150 pounds for your standard La Mancha does. And your bucks are pushing close to 200. And I could be wrong, but they're depending on the lines of that standard size goat, they are pretty big. I've seen some of the La Mancha bucks be huge.
03:34Okay. It's really funny. I feel like my podcast varies from psychology to philosophy to science to chemistry to genetics on whatever day I'm talking to whoever I'm talking to. I just talked to a lady the other day and we're talking about genetics and I can't remember what it was about right now, but got a full genetics lesson from her and
04:02I thanked her and I wasn't being a smart ass. I actually was really excited to hear about how that particular thing worked. With the Lamanches, what they're talking about, genetics play a huge part. I'm going to relate sort of the same story I related to her to you. Our dog is a mini Australian Shepherd and she weighs about 35 pounds.
04:31standard Australian Shepherd and supposedly smaller breed dogs, but I have to look into that because I'm not sure and Our dog looks exactly like a black tri Australian Shepherd except that she is 35 pounds now Technically because I've been doing some research. She might actually just be a small standard Australian Shepherd because she's tall and she's right at the weight
05:02edge of not being a mini. However, her mama was only about 25 pounds and her dad was probably 40 to 45 pounds. So it's all crazy to me how genetics are bred into animals to get what you want. And even then sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way. Yes. Yeah. And that's kind of the...
05:27you know, the toss up with breeding, you try to pair your best genetic quality to get a better kid than their mom is. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you still get like a little curve ball here and there. And you know, that's okay. You can work with the curve balls most of the time. But yeah.
05:53you would assume that she is just an Australian shepherd because the perspective and the perception is makes her look bigger than she is. And then she walks up to you and you're like, oh, you're only up to my knee. Yeah. Okay. You're not as big as you look. So it's really fun when the looks of the animal turn out exactly correct, but the size of the animal might not be exactly what you were going for. Yes.
06:23Yes, and that's a good, that's kind of how the Manila Machos are. You're aiming for that standard size goat quality, but in a smaller package. So you want these goats to look like those standard animals, but a good couple inches shorter and a couple pounds lighter.
06:46So I have a question about the ears because you said Lamancha's don't have ears, but I know the many Nigerians do. So have you ended up with many Lamancha goats with ears? Um, I have not yet. So the gopher ear, which is like what's on Lamancha's, is a dominant trait. So most of the time this year I had one Nigerian doe that was bred to my mini Lamancha buck.
07:14and I was wondering like, man, you know, her kids get to have ears. Well, when she had them, they all had what is called elf ears. So they're just about one inch, maybe an inch and a half of ear that kind of comes out. But it's not like a full year. It's just a little little skin tab kind of. I bet they were adorable. Oh, they were precious. They all had blue eyes and they were just the cutest darn things. But so I haven't personally had it, but I have seen.
07:43registered mini lemonges that do have that Nigerian dwarf ear. It's not a, uh, it's not a flaw to my understanding for the breed standard, but it's, it's a little frowned upon, you know, you don't want it to carry on for generations and generations type of thing. Yep. Okay. So do you do other things besides the goats? Um, we do.
08:10Well, like I said, chickens kind of got me all started on this. We started with a few, a handful of chickens. I hatch chicks for people during the spring and summer and sell hatching eggs and stuff to people locally. Um, so we, we do a lot of that. We've done meat chickens in the past. This year we took a break because it's just a lot of work. Um, and we do our own personal little garden.
08:40type of things, but the predominantly is we do the dairy goats. Okay. And do you sell the milk? Do you sell the goats for meat? Do you just raise them to show them? How does this all work? We do a little bit of everything. We at least, you know, learning to try to do a little bit of everything. This year I've sold milk to people for either animals.
09:08goat milk is really good alternative, pretty much to all bottle formulas for dogs, cats, I have a gal that actually buys the milk for piglets. She has a couple bottle piglets and they drink the goat milk. We have sold it for drinking. We have a couple like family friends that will buy it for drinking. And then we actually attended our first show this past weekend. Yeah, on Saturday.
09:38We did our first bit of showing, so that was fun. Did you did you win anything or is that not how it works? Yeah, no, I only brought two of my does because it was my first time and I thought I better start small. And we had one that placed first in her class and then overall one Grand Champion in that breed group. Congratulations because that's super fast on getting to that point.
10:06Yes, thank you. I was pretty excited that when they gave her the first place ribbon, I was just like, oh my word. And then we went all the breed group went out together and then they put her grand champion ribbon on. I was just like, I was shocked. I was so excited though. So she must have exhausted her though. We brought her back to the pen and she collapsed and just fell asleep by the hay feeder for a couple hours. Like, oh, I'm done.
10:33It was the adrenaline rush from winning. It made her sleepy. Yeah, maybe. So yeah, we did some show, that show this year, and we, you know, gives you confidence to try to do more next year. So that's the goal next year is to do more shows. And then we do try to breed. I try to keep my kids and the stock I have on the wider side of things. So when we get bucklings born that aren't breeding quality,
11:02We weather them and we either sell them as pets, ideally pets if I can, but at the end of the day, if they can't go as pets, we send them either to auction yard or to a meat buyer. So they're still getting, they still have a purpose here and I don't have any extra mouths to feed. Uh huh. And that's a good way to do it. So did you want to be doing this from the time you were little or did this just become something you wanted to do later?
11:32I remember for a long time really enjoying goats as a kid. You know, they're funny and they make a lot of noise and whatnot. Um, I, so my family actually moved from Indiana to Oregon when I was 11. And when I was probably close to 13, 12 or 13, we got our first goat on the farm that we'd moved to and it was a standard La Mancha and I just fell in love with her. It kind of became my project. And.
12:02I knew it I had like I don't know quite a few standard Lamanches or Lamontra crosses that I would milk and breed and sell kids and sell the milk and whatnot. And then when I started a full time job the goats kind of went to the wayside I sold them all and then when I got married a couple years back it kind of revived itself and I started going more serious with it in the last couple years as I've been when I was younger. So they've
12:30I've been around them for a while and I've just always enjoyed them. They're just something about them. When they're behaving, they're great. Okay. Anyone who's listened to the podcast since it started last end of August knows that I love goats and that I don't have any. I love baby goats most of all. The older ones are fine, but the baby ones are special. So
12:58I have never met a goat, whether it was a baby or a grown up goat, that wasn't friendly. Are goats inherently friendly or is it just the fact that if you handle them from when they're little, they love people? I think they're inherently curious. And they're piggies. They love grain. They love treats. So I would say they are always a curious creature. I think.
13:27Friendliness definitely comes with hand raising. I've done both. I've bottle raised my babies and I have just dam raised to them. And you can have friendly, you know, dam raised kids but it takes a lot more handling. And I've learned that they really don't team down until they learn what the grain bucket is. And then they just associate you with the grain and they're friendly because you have food. The bottle babies.
13:55they want to cuddle and just be with you all the time, which is nice, but it is also annoying when you're trying to work. So there's kind of a side to each of that. It's like, well.
14:08Yeah. So I know that goats are really intelligent animals. And I always liken them to a dog, because they're built kind of like a dog, they're friendly like a dog, they like to be petted like a dog. Can you train a goat to do tricks? You know, I've never tried training them to do tricks. I will say they are smart. I'm learning.
14:37more and more as time goes on that they are smarter and smarter than I give them credit for. This year I had a bottle baby and we call it we ended up calling her Tinkerbell and I just thought you know I'm gonna see if like I could teach teach her her name and I can pretty confidently say at this point you know she's off the bottle. If I go out there and I yell Tinkerbell she comes tearing across the field. None of the other goats really come that quick but she comes running because she knows hey mom's here.
15:05You know, I'm coming, don't worry. And my other girls, if I say, Hey girls, come on, then the rest of the herd will come. Um, yeah, I have learned that they are incredibly smart, but I haven't tried tricks. So they're probably the same kind of intelligence as a dog. That's what I think. I would say close to it. I mean, there are certain breeds of dogs that are probably smarter, like your, you know, Australian shepherds, your border collies, but they are.
15:34They've got like the intelligent, I'd say, you know, like a golden retriever or a lab. So, so kind of dorky, but smart. Yes. Yep. Okay. Yeah. I always, I always wondered about that because my, my friend growing up, her parents raised goats and they had the long eared goats, they had the short eared goats, they had goats and, and her dad, God love him, taught one of them how to smoke a cigarette.
16:02I'm not kidding you, I saw it done, yes. Oh, that's hilarious. And he said, watch this, Mary. And I'm like, what? Because I was out on the barn. And he smoked. And he lit a cigarette. And he put it in the goat's lips. And she put her lips around that cigarette and inhaled and blew it out her nose. I was like, number one, that's terrible. Number two, how in the world did you get her to learn how to do that? Oh, that's funny.
16:30And he said, I don't know how she learned to do it. He said, I was just being silly one time. She tried to grab out of my hand. I let her take it. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Oh, I said, I said, you really shouldn't be doing that. That's not good. And he's, he's just laughing. I'm like, okay, it's your goat. It's your goat. Exactly. Funniest thing I've ever seen in my life and most terrible thing with an animal I've ever seen in my life.
16:58And if that is the case, then that's good, because it's probably not as bad as I think it is. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not like you smoke in a pack a day. So hopefully not. Yeah, you just see her out there with the with his whole pack of cigarettes. It was a very funny party trick is what it was. I laughed so hard and then I felt bad about it. So but anyway, I've told that story.
17:27once, I think, in the last year on the podcast. And you actually laughed harder than the other person did. Oh, I think it's great. I know my husband, man, he'd get a kick out of that. If I could teach a goat to smoke a cigarette or one of his cigars, he would think that was the best thing ever. He'd be like, you can keep all the goats you want if they can do that. Uh-huh. I wish I had video of it. But back then...
17:53You know, I'm 54, we didn't have cell phones with video cameras in them. So, yeah. Okay. So, um, what is the hardest thing about having the goats?
18:09Oh, I don't know. You know, it's a season by season thing sometimes. You know, one minute I'm like, man, I can't do this anymore. And other times like, man, this is so fun. I love having them. It's hard. We have two little kids. It's hard balancing it with the kids at times. I've got my oldest is two and a half and my youngest turns one in two weeks. So we do a lot of pushing around in the stroller with goats behind and
18:39They've learned to be very patient with me while we're taking care of this or taking care of that. The summertime is hard with them here. We get really dry ground and we have very steep terrain. So we run all the electric fence. Well, when the ground gets really dry, they don't ground. The goats don't ground well. So they tend to flip through the electric fence a lot more. So I spend a lot of August and September either tethering goats.
19:08which means moving around constantly, watering constantly, making sure no one's tangled, or catching goats and putting them back in their pen. So I would say summer, you know, summer is when I'm like, oh, I'm done. End of summer, we've got milking still going on, goats are getting out. No cute babies frolicking about to keep you happy. Yeah. Yeah.
19:35Is it, okay, I don't need specific numbers. I'm trying really hard not to ask a rude question, but I have a question. Is it expensive to have them, to have the goats? I think it depends on how you manage them. I've seen people drop, you know, they'll feed their goats only 100% alfalfa hay and that's costly. At least where we live, it's costly. And I know it varies much by, you know, what region of the United States you're in and whatnot. It's not too bad for us.
20:04We rotate great, we rotate our pastures as frequently as we can. So they're getting fresh brush almost year round. Um, that cuts our feed bill down enormously. We do our own hay. So we're not paying outside of obviously the cost to do the hay. We're not outsourcing our hay. So they get local by local, like a quarter mile away, grass hay. Um, that's local. Yeah.
20:33local grass hay and I think they they kind of want to build more once again in the summer with milking they're eating a lot more grain up on the milk stand. If the pasture starts to get a little bit thin I'm giving them a little more grain with their grass hay that's just you know free choice for them. So like I said I think it depends you know if you're if you and your goats on a dry lot and I know a few people that do yeah you're going to run off quite a hay bill.
21:01but if you've got the space for them, they're pretty low maintenance compared to more most animals. I think my chickens honestly probably cost more than my goats. Okay, so that leads me to my next question. Do you do your own vetting for them or do you have someone that can take care of them if they get sick? Um we thank goodness, knock on one. Um
21:26I haven't had too many issues when we've had the vet come out. I have a couple really good friends that are more experienced than I am with goats and they've been able to guide me like, hey, you know, try doing this. I bet you this is what she has. So most of the time I do my own vetting where I can. And we haven't had a situation where we've needed a vet. We do have one that's about 20 minutes away. And they work like...
21:55days a week. So, hopefully if the stars align and we needed him and he was happy to be working that day, we do have a vet that we could consult with. So, that's been nice. Okay. I know the veterinary costs right now are crazy. We took our dog for her yearly checkup last August. We had to get her on the books again now.
22:24I think it came to over $150 just for a wellness checkup. And I was just like, you've got to be kidding me. You gave her like one shot and weighed her and checked her out. 150 bucks. I love our vet. The vet that we have seen the last two times has been fantastic. Maggie does not necessarily appreciate the vets.
22:54who the vet is versus who the techs are. Oh. Maggie adores the technicians, the people that help the veterinarian. The minute the veterinarian walks in the door of the room, Maggie backs up towards us and just growls. Oh, dear. She doesn't growl at anybody. She'll bark, but she doesn't growl.
23:16And the first time she did it, I was like, oh no, no, no, no, this is a good person who's going to help you. And Maggie looked at me like, I don't know about this. Yeah. But worth every penny of that $150 because they take really good care of her. Yeah. But any owning of animals right now is not inexpensive. And if you have ways to cut the costs, which it sounds like you do, that's great. Yeah.
23:46Part of the reason we don't have livestock is because we would have to buy all the feed because we don't have room enough for them to graze. Yeah, and sometimes it depends on the breed. Another reason we have the mini lemontias, they just don't eat a ton. We had Nigerian dwarfs before them as well. We weren't flying through hay. In a few years from now when my kids are older and we've expanded our pasture space, we would like to get standards as well. And I'll be curious to see.
24:16the price difference or how much just feed they consume. But yes, I am thankful we have not had to have too many vet visits because like you said, they are really expensive and livestock vets are like triple vet costs and taking your dog in. I had one that came up with some astitis this year and I called and I said, Hey, just a rough estimate. How much is it going to be to have you come out?
24:43so I could get a prescription for like, I knew what medication we needed, I just needed the prescription for it. Yeah. And they're like, well, if you can bring her in, oh, I don't know, it was probably gonna be like 300 bucks for them to look at her. And then it was good, he's like, or we can come out to you and it'll be 600. And I was like, oh, I was like, oh, you know, I'm good. And I ended up just doing antibiotics for a longer period of time. Just, uh-huh.
25:11But it worked, but man, I was just like, man, that's expensive. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah. So the other question I had, and I keep meaning to ask people this and I keep forgetting because I get busy thinking about all the other things I want to ask you. When people, OK, if someone wants to get a goat, like for their home, for their homestead.
25:37Number one, I keep being told that goats need to have friends. They need, you need to get more than one goat. And number two, do you, can you get like young goats, not quite six months old? And is it less expensive to buy them when they're young versus when they're already of age as it were? Well, to answer the first question, I do think goats thrive with a buddy. It doesn't necessarily need to be.
26:06It's odd enough, I think they do better in, what would be, even numbers. So two do great together. If you do three, someone's getting picked on. And if you do four, everyone's good. You do five, someone's getting picked on. It just seems to be how it falls. You're like children. Yes. Yeah. They're best in pairs. Um, I've had goats though, that do fine by themselves, especially, especially my bucks, I've noticed. Bucks don't necessarily need the companionship. Um.
26:35I've had bucks just by themselves and then somebody else's pasture or just tethered around the property and they could care less. The doughs tend to like buddies. And then the other question, I sell my kids typically around 8 to 12 weeks depending on how they're growing and whatnot. And from my experience and like when I priced my stock, I think kids, I always priced my kids cheaper than an adult dough or a yearling.
27:05Yearlings, I think, usually are pretty expensive. And then so are your seasoned doughs. They've got proof in the pudding per se on those doughs. You know what you're looking at as far as their production, their udders, their body structure. Kids, you should still be getting what you see as far as what you look at the parents. Then you should know what that kid should be like as well. But I would say typically, you know, your kids are a little bit cheaper.
27:35which I think they probably should be. You know, you've got a lot of care and a lot of money and feed and hopefully no vet bills, but possible vet bills, you know, until you get to that breeding age. So. Okay. So if you, if you typically sell them between eight and 12 weeks, are they still nursing or are they able to just eat hay and grain? Yeah, typically at that point they're eating hay and grain. They might go in for a snack once or twice a day, but usually moms are done.
28:04I don't know much. I have one or two does that will nurse their kids as long as you let them. So I had one last year that nursed hers until she was six or seven months old. Wow. But mom's condition went really downhill. It was really hard to keep the weight on her because she was nursing this kid who did not really need it. So really just save the mom's body condition.
28:32I try to pull them at 8 to 12 weeks if I can. And I've never had a problem with the kids not growing well or keeping up with their peers. I do like to keep them on mom if I can. If mom's holding the weight and everyone's doing good and growing well, I'll let them just nurse on if I don't need the milk. But 8 to 12 weeks we seem to, seems to be a good sweet spot for everybody.
29:00Okay, so does mom wean them or do you just take them away from her? Um, I found, I will usually leave the kids on until the buyer picks them up around eight to 12 weeks. And then they just go right with the buyer. And I've never had anyone complain to me about, oh, he's just screaming and crying because they're going right into a new situation. And most of the time they're, they're too busy with that new situation that there's not a lot of whining. Yeah.
29:29I have let doe kids or kids I keep back, I'll let their mom wean them. Typically when that mom gets re-bred in the fall, she will just wean them. Like nope, I'm done, I'm pregnant, no more. I've had situations though where they don't and then you've got a year old kid nursing off a mom who just had babies and that's not a situation you want to be in. So I try to separate if I can.
29:59Okay, so the reason I ask is we have a mama cat and one of her kittens that we're keeping. All the other kittens found homes. Like two weeks ago, and the kitten's almost four and a half months old now, I think, he was trying to nurse and she growled at him and moved away and he came back and tried to nurse again and she growled louder and walked further away. He came up to her the third time and she,
30:28thumped him with her paw. I heard her hit him with her paw, like thunk. And then she rolled him, you know, like jumped on him like she's a kitten too and rolled him over and batted him a couple more times and then ran into our treeline to get away from him. And I was like, if that's how mama cats tell their kittens know, I wonder how goats and cows and horses do it. Because I can't imagine getting kicked in the head with a cloven hoof. It's a lot of fun.
30:57No, no, there's usually I had one that her kids were about three four months old and I was letting her just nurse him handle it on her own because I didn't need her milk and I didn't mind the baby's nurse and she reached the point where she was like I am done and it's pretty much any time they went in she would kind of jump and scoot away and kind of try to kick with her with her back leg and
31:23there was one that wouldn't quite get the hint and they will actually reach over and kind of bite their butt like no and Then they usually get the hint and like okay, I'll stop but Headbutting involved the milk bar is closed children. We're done. Yes. Yep That's how that's how flu was with her kitten, too So it was it was so funny to see her roll him over. I just like wow Yeah, okay
31:53Yeah, she means business. Oh, she was mad. This is the most aggressively friendly barn cat you will ever meet. To see her angry was so funny. Oh. But anyway, alright, so in sharing that story and making you laugh, I think we're good. We've got 31 minutes, well almost 32 minutes.
32:17Recorded and I try to keep these to half an hour. So I really appreciate you taking time to talk to me today, Madeline Yeah, well, thanks for reaching out and I enjoyed this thoroughly. So yeah, I hope you have a good rest of your day and Yeah, thanks for chatting with me Absolutely, I need all the stories I can get thank you so much Of course. All right. Bye. Bye