A Tiny Homestead

Wonderful Thyme Farms

Today I'm talking with Bailey at Wonderful Thyme Farms.
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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 Bailey at Wonderful Thyme Farms. Good morning, Bailey. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. And you're in Iowa, right? Yep. Eastern Iowa. Okay. Is it cloudy in Iowa right now?
00:29Yeah, it's pretty cloudy right now, but it's a pretty nice day. It's almost 50 degrees. So after we're done here, I'm headed out to get a few things done after I get done with work. Nice. Um, it's very cloudy here in Minnesota today, but it is, I think it's pushing 50 degrees too, so, so it's a nice reprieve from last week with the, uh, brutal frigid temperatures we had for a week. Absolutely. Yep. It's really nice to see the snow melting and
00:58be able to get outside and get some things done. Finally, yes, exactly. And I don't see it getting really cold again. So I think, I think, carefully I'm saying, I think we're through it. I think, I hope. Oh, Iowa usually surprises us at some point after, after we think it's all done. So I won't hold my breath until it's May 30th, probably.
01:24I'm talking about the brutal, your face hurts and your nose freezes when you go out cold being over. I think we're through the worst of that. Hopefully. Yeah. From my lips to God's ears, I suppose, but I hope so. Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you do. My name is Dr. Bailey Goose. I live on a small homestead we purchased last year.
01:51Um, before that we were renting a different homestead. Um, my partner, uh, two bonus kids, one kid, uh, two dogs, several chickens, more in the incubator, uh, we run this, uh, small homestead in Eastern Iowa. Uh, my partner and I both work full time, um, off the farm as well. So right now we're kind of in a building year.
02:21We're looking to get a bunch of projects done here, but I am a USDA veterinarian. I was in private practice for a few years before that. So we kind of have an eclectic mix of interests and hobbies and careers and everything else here in Iowa. Okay, well, since you are a veterinarian,
02:49Before we're done talking, I want to talk about bird flu, but we'll get to that in a minute. How did you decide you wanted to become a homesteader? How did you decide you wanted to buy property and have chickens and things? I grew up on an acreage. My parents have an acreage not too far, actually, from where we live now. And I kind of grew up with that whole...
03:17interest, but my mom always had a garden. When we were younger, at least when we got older, and we were quite busy with sports and activities and 4-H and all those things, she kind of had to let that go. But it was definitely a part of my upbringing as a child. My friends had different ag-related families, so one of my best friends growing up.
03:42lived on a dairy, so I spent a good amount of time on a dairy when I was a younger kid. I had friends that had chickens and I always thought that those were so cool. My dad wouldn't let us get chickens when I was little. So I kind of came into the homestead space a little bit naturally. It's not too far of a jump from being a large animal veterinarian to wanting your own livestock and wanting to be fairly self-sufficient.
04:11I've always really enjoyed gardening. So I've always had either a couple tomato plants when I lived in the city or some herbs in my window. So when I got the ability to have a bigger scale garden, I started planting one and then it's gotten bigger every year since I started. So as they do. Yep. Absolutely. So I guess I was kind of.
04:39born into the seeds of it and I kind of have let it flourish the last five years for sure. And luckily my current career and job really lends itself to being able to be flexible and be able to do this kind of on the side. I don't work a whole bunch of overtime or anything and my partner's job is pretty flexible and we don't have kids.
05:09every single sport yet. So just some sports. We do the best we can making it work here. Okay. All righty. The reason I ask is because it seems like there's people in two camps when it comes to getting into the homesteading thing. They either have seeds planted when they're little,
05:31Or they just get sick of the corporate grind and they're like, I need something completely different and they get into gardening and chickens and they're like, oh, I want to do this. Oh, for sure. Chickens and gardening is a gateway drug to the full effect homesteading. So we're not, we're not, we don't have enough space to have everything yet. So we are sticking with our poultry and our gardening and
06:00We're planning to put in a farm stand this spring so we can offer fresh baked goods, fresh eggs, fresh vegetables and fruits. We have some plans to put in several fruit trees this spring. The homestead we're at has a couple of apple trees, but I love fresh fruit, so we would like to put in about 10 additional fruit trees. Hopefully in 10 years we'll get some fruit.
06:30Um, it might be sooner than that. You would be surprised. Um, do you like peaches? Absolutely. Okay. I don't know what variety of peach trees my husband bought a year or so ago. What, what, uh, of saplings, but we got peaches the first fall after he put them in the previous fall. Oh, perfect.
06:53And they're a cold hardy variety. I just don't know what the name of them is, but I'm sure you could look up cold hardy varieties for peaches. Cause I'm assuming Iowa doesn't, isn't really warm like the Southern States in the winter time. So no, no, we got to have cold hardy things up here or down here for sure. I know it's for South of you, but we're still pretty cold here in the wintertime. Mm hmm. Yep. And I'm telling you, we didn't do anything to these peach trees. We didn't spray them. We didn't fertilize them. They just got.
07:22They just got into the hole in the dirt and dirt piled in around the trunk and these peaches were delicious I got half of one my husband brought in I think six and my son ate four of them my husband ate one I bit into the one I had and was like this is fantastic He half of it set it on a plate on the counter and when I came back it was gone And I was like where's my peach and my son looked at me said I ate it. I was like oh great
07:52And this is not a little kid either. This is a grown adult son. So they were really good. I just want to buy peaches from a direct farm to direct consumer, fruit truck every spring and preserve as much as I can. We really enjoy peaches in this house and there's nothing better than open up a fresh can of peaches in the winter time to
08:22to enjoy instead of having to go to the store and buy a can of peaches. Uh-huh. Yep. I'm actually gonna send off an email either later this afternoon or tomorrow to the fruit truck people and see if they will talk to me on the podcast because I looked at their website and they work with farmers. They don't work with factory farms. They work with farmers. So I want to find out how that all works. I have it on my calendar to uh
08:52Go pick up some strawberries from them in a couple of weeks. So, I wish we could. Our, our fundage right now is a little, little tight and we just can't splurge on strawberries this year. I'm so sad. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Um, and they're selling them in different size boxes this year. They have two different size boxes and it just depends on the size of the box as to how much it's going to cost.
09:20And I think it's the same price per pound, but it's just different sized boxes in our area. Yeah, we have strawberry plants here, but I'm ready for some farm fresh strawberries. We are almost out of strawberry jam as well. So I will be buying a couple of big boxes and putting it in the strawberry jam. And that's one of the products that I sell out of.
09:47out of our farm as well as our jams and jellies and stuff like that. Yeah, and for anybody who has no idea what we're talking about, the fruit truck, their website I think is myfruitruck.com. And basically this place transports fresh fruit across the country from wherever it's grown to all different states. And you can just, you literally...
10:12let them know that you want it and you show up at your local fairground or wherever the heck they're going to stop to do the drop. And you bring cash or a check and you go home with fresh fruits. And sometimes they sell pecans and things. So it's a really neat way to do it in the winter, especially in the springtime right now.
10:35So that's what it is. Myfruittruck.com I think is the website. But if you type in fruit truck in Google, you'll find it. Okay. So I want to talk to you about the bird flu thing because I just watched a video of Joel Salatin talking about the bird flu situation that he just put out a couple of days ago. And he was saying, and I know that he is a radical thinker. I interviewed him on the podcast a while back.
11:04I know that not everybody thinks the way that Joel thinks. But Joel was saying that in most situations when there's a flu, you let the flu run its course and then you keep the animals or the people that survived it and you use them as a source of immunity. And that's not really what's happening right now. So do you, number one, do you know anything about the bird flu?
11:30Uh, yes. Um, unfortunately in my capacity and my role as a USDA veterinarian, we are, um, we are required to direct you to the public information officer to discuss official, uh, bird flu. Um, and they would be definitely happy to help you or talk to you. Um, they are the ones that are.
11:59contracted and in charge of speaking to the public on all matters of bird flu and USDA. So unfortunately, in my official professional capacity, it's not something I can discuss, unfortunately. Okay. Well, can we make it a broader question that isn't really USDA? It's more how can I keep my backyard block healthy? Absolutely. So there is a...
12:29website. It is and it is a USDA sponsored program. It's called Defend My Flock. And it gives pretty straightforward biosecurity suggestions to backyard chicken producers, backyard poultry producers, to help keep your birds safe. So that I implement a lot of those biosecurity measures here on my own flock. They have some, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty, if you think about it,
12:59you know, the virus comes from migratory waterfowl. So being able to keep migratory waterfowl away from your backyard poultry is usually the number one recommended thing that you can do. So if you have a pond, unfortunately, you have a greater risk of spreading that to your birds. But
13:27There are some great pointers on that website on how you can, you know, just down to making sure you just have specific shoes to go out to your coop and they're not the shoes that you go to the gas station with, you know. You can pick up a virus on your shoes and take it home. So I have a pair of coop shoes that only get worn into the coop. If I've been out and about for my job, I come home right away.
13:53and change my clothes before I go out and do anything with my birds. So it's just pretty straightforward. No, not expensive biosecurity suggestions on the website. And that's defendmyflock.com. And that's a great resource for backyard producers to try to help keep your birds safe.
14:21Do you want to get a drink of water before we continue or are you okay? I grabbed my Stanley here.
14:32I had COVID at the very beginning of January and I canceled like three days of interviews because I just couldn't talk without coughing. So I understand what you're going through with the hacking. I get it. Yeah, absolutely. I have not been diagnosed with COVID this year yet, but I had it last year. And my daughter was pretty sick a couple of weeks ago with influenza, I think, and RSV. So
15:01It has definitely made the rounds in this house. So I think if you, if you haven't had COVID this year, you've had influenza A, if you haven't had influenza, you had RSV. If you haven't had any of those three, you've just had a head cold. I think that this year was the year that everybody actually got out and about and got exposed and their immune systems were actually down because everybody was so to themselves for three years.
15:29I also think that if you have not gotten any of those, you've gotten norovirus because that's also been going around as well. Yeah, we haven't gotten that in this house. Thank God. I remember back when my kids were young, my youngest had just started kindergarten and my daughter is 12 years older than he is and there were four kids. So they all came down with some kind of norovirus in the same three days.
15:57and they were all home from school for like at least two or three days. And I did so much laundry. We were one bathroom household with four kids. It was insanity. Luckily, my husband and I did not come down with it. So at least there were two functioning adults to take care of the kids, make sure they were getting cleaned up, make sure everything was getting washed in the washer, dried in the dryer, folded and ready to go. Because
16:25If one of us had been down, I don't know how we would have handled it. It was really bad Okay, so I Didn't realize that you wouldn't be able to say anything about bird flu because of your job. I'm sorry about that I wasn't trying to you know, like start anything It's just it's just protocol so Yep, and you mentioned the no-brainer things but some things people don't think about
16:52We had that situation happen this weekend with our chickens. We just bought 12 chickens two Saturdays ago. And they're going to be 22 weeks old in two weeks. So we should have eggs in two weeks, or at least begin having eggs. And we had a possum outside the coop, the run. And we're homesteaders, so my husband dispatched it with bird shot. And.
17:20I talked to my dad the next day and he was like, was that lead shot or was it steel shot? And I said, we don't, I don't think we have any steel shot for ammunition. So I'm pretty sure it was lead. And he said, just a heads up. He said, you don't want to use bird shot anywhere where the chickens are going to get to because they will eat it. And then you can't eat the eggs because they now have lead in their systems. And I was like, Oh my God, I never would have thought of that.
17:48So needless to say from now on, if we need to dispatch a critter, we're going to use steel shot, not lead shot, because our chickens do wander the property now and then. Yep. And that should, it should have been a no brainer, but I didn't even think of it. Well, when you're worried about a predator getting after your chickens, it's not something that comes to the front of mind. No, no, hadn't even thought of it. And the fact is my son does target practice.
18:18you know on the property because we have a berm and we have the room to do it and he's been using lead shot and I'm like oh god my chickens might be eating lead that's great. So anybody who didn't know about this yeah you don't want your chickens eating bird shot because it will make them sick and you can't eat them or their eggs because it'll make you sick. So learn something new from my 81 year old dad who I think knows everything he's like
18:48Well, dads are good for that. Yep. And what he doesn't know, he'll pretend he does know. So I'm just snowed. I just think he knows everything. Okay. So you said you're a large animal vet. And I assume that means like not. Oh, there's a word. You deal with cows and horses and do dogs count or a dog small animal?
19:17I was in a rural area practicing and I saw everything. I kind of specialized in large animals, so cows, horses, sheep goats. I saw an occasional pig, but not very often. Mostly cattle and horses, you know, lots of dogs and cats as well. But that was kind of the area was cattle, sheep goats, horses.
19:46And then we had a small animal veterinarian in the office as well, who saw a lot more dogs and cats. Okay. So when you're... Go ahead. And then I left private practice and I went to work for a different division of the USDA. I worked for the Food Safety Inspection Service or FSIS. And I worked in a beef slaughter plant for almost three years doing, overseeing food inspectors. And...
20:14making sure the animals were healthy that went into our food chain. And then I left that position with the USDA and came to this position now. What an interesting job. The, the, the inspection part. I, I, I know nothing about that and I don't want you to tell me anything because you probably can't anyway. But, uh, I think that that would be really interesting. What is your background? Like, did you go to college for this?
20:43Uh, my degree in undergrad, I went to Iowa State University. I did a couple of years at a community college just to save some money. Um, and at my bachelor's degree is in, um, animal science. I have a dairy science minor. And then I went and applied for vet school and I got into vet school. So I went four years, uh, Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, uh, and graduated from there with a.
21:11Dr. Veterinary Medicine. Wow, that is a lot of studying, ma'am. I'm very impressed because I did not go to college because I couldn't stand the thought of sitting in lecture halls for four years at least. I just couldn't. So I did not, and that's why I do a podcast. That's why I don't do what you do because I would fail miserably at what you do. So when you say large animals, do you go to the farms to treat them or do they get brought into the building or how does that work?
21:41Uh, most of the time, and when I was in practice, we would go out to the farms to see the animals. On occasion, they would bring calves into the building for if they had a rough calving or they found them and they were really cold. We were dealing with some hypothermia type things. They would bring them into the clinic sometimes, but most of the time we were going out to farms to see the animals or to vaccinate the herd.
22:11castrate all the young animals, depending on what time of year and what our clients needed at the time. Okay, cool. The reason I'm talking to you about your job is because we have a veterinarian group here where I live. And they do small animal and large animal. And we freaking love them. They are so great with our dog.
22:39They were great with one of our cats. And I feel like being a veterinarian is a really special calling because yes, you get to interact with these beautiful animals, but you also have to deal with a lot of messy situations. And it's not the easiest thing in the world. So I really respect what you do, and I really respect what our veterinarian does because she has been nothing but.
23:07gracious and kind and helpful. And even when it's bad news, we haven't had any bad news about our dog, but I know that if there's bad news to share, I guarantee you she is just as soft-hearted and kind, but straight up as she can be. So I really admire what you do. So tell me about your plans for your homestead because this podcast is really about homesteading, veterinarian care is part of that. But...
23:35What are your plans for your homestead? You intend to make it bigger or more or actually maybe get some goats? Well, you know, if you can keep water in, you can keep a goat in. So I think if we chose a small room and it would probably be a sheep and, uh, or some sheep, just depending, um, on the breed, there are a few, uh, bigger. Breeds of sheep that I, I'm pretty big fan of. I like doorpers.
24:04And I like Katadans as well. I like the idea of not having to sheer them. Right now we just don't have the infrastructure, the fencing necessarily to have those. So that's a next five year project. We would like to get bees next year. We just bought this property and moved in in September. So we are
24:32gearing up for putting in three big gardens this spring. The property has immense huge numbers of flower gardens. That's what the previous owners, that was their wheelhouse. And this place, this property was in Better Homes and Gardens twice in the 90s. Just because flower gardens are extensive and they're beautiful. Flower gardening is not my number one
25:01a wheel thing in my wheelhouse, but I am planning to take a master gardener course so I can be a good conservator of the land and the gardens. I think they're beautiful. So we're going to put in three big gardens for vegetables. Like I said before, we're planning to...
25:27put in a farm stand so we can sell direct to consumers. We live not too far off of a highway, so we have a lot of cross traffic, people commuting to and from work. We have plans to put in a duck and goose house to keep them separate from the chickens because everybody knows if you have ducks, you have a mess. So we would like to keep them separate from the chickens and have...
25:57duck eggs available for purchase. And since I do so much baking as well, I like duck eggs in my products as well. Like I said before, planning to put in several fruit trees this spring. We have some cosmetic things that we need to get done to the house. We'd like to put a deck on the house. And I know that's not homesteading necessarily, but...
26:26You know, we live here, so that is something that is going to make our life infinitely more convenient if we can walk out of our screen door and go right out to the garden and harvest right away in the morning before it gets too hot in July. Yes, let me stop you for a second. A deck is homesteading because part of the joy of homesteading is being able to have a glass of iced tea in July on your deck and look at your homestead. So it is part of it.
26:56Go. Yup. We have plans to, since we have moved our previous farmers markets that we attended are kind of too far away to make it reasonable to attend those. So we're looking for some new farmers markets to attend. I do also direct to a couple local restaurants for produce.
27:26Yeah, lots of big plans. Not probably in time to get it all done. But we have, you know, a this year plan, and a five year plan and then a 10 year plan. We also have 51 meat chickens on order for April. So we need to build a chicken tractor to be able to have those out in the yard, instead of in the coop with the rest of the of the layers. I have
27:5517 pullets in our brooder right now. I have 20 eggs in the incubator with the price of eggs. I just decided I'm going to fill my incubator all spring so I can have a good supply of eggs coming this summer and this fall. And then if I have extra roosters, they'll go to be butchered with the meat chickens. So.
28:23Do you have any idea on average how much a meat chicken chick is going for this year? Just one? I can. Let me pull it up in my email. I can tell you how much I paid for them. I ordered them in December before... Everything went crazy? I know a lot of hatcheries are reporting shortages of chicks. Yep.
28:54And we're lucky enough here where we live to be able to drive to the hatcheries and pick them up. We ordered 51 and if you go ordered over 50 you got a discount. Yeah, 3.26 apiece. Okay, so not terrible. They haven't like jumped to $10 a check. That's good. No, no. The reason I ask is we have friends who are going to be if they can get them.
29:21they're going to be getting some meat chicken chicks here in whenever they can find them. And I just messaged her yesterday and I was like, do you know how much they are? And do you know if you can even get them? And she was like, I haven't gotten that far yet. I was like, okay, that's fine. Just let me know. Because they were going to go in with us and raise the meat chickens at their place because we have them laying hens here. So I was just curious about that. And yeah.
29:51This whole egg situation, we live like maybe half a mile from a chicken place where they have laying hens. It's not a huge farm, but I would call it a factory farm, more than a farm farm, because they have chickens. We know they do because every time they clean out the area where the chickens are, it's very stinky. And I said to my husband, I said, I'm very, very concerned about them.
30:21getting bird flu and somehow it travels to our chickens half a mile away. And he was like, we've lived here for four years. He said, we've had chickens most of four years and everything's been fine. He said, I don't think you have to worry about it. I said, okay, let's just be aware and be careful. He's like, yeah, I would rather not lose the chickens. We just thought that would be bad. Right. Uh, I would be more concerned about, you know, virus coming out of the sky from migratory waterfowl versus.
30:50neighbors. So yeah. Luckily we don't really have any water within three miles of us. We have we have the Minnesota River which is like five or four and a half miles east of us and there's a little I don't know nature area about two and a half miles from us.
31:13But the waterfowl don't tend to fly over our property and if they do, they're way, way, way up. They don't stop and visit. So hopefully we will be fine. Good. Good. That's great. Yep. I'm real happy about that. And we don't really have very many critters that show up on our property either. In the little over four years we've lived here, we've seen two deer. One of them had a fawn with her, which was beautiful. And we've seen one raccoon way out in the cornfield.
31:42And we've seen lots of possums. Possums really like to come visit our house. I don't know why. Well, they are little egg stealers. That is what they really like to do. So. Yup. And I know there's lots of people who are like, possums are harmless. You shouldn't kill them if they're on your property. You should just catch them in a live trap and take them away. And I'm like, if we were doing that, we would be taking 20 possums away in spring. You know?
32:12So they're gonna meet their demise at the end of some kind of rifle and that will be the end of that story. And if people don't like it, I'm really sorry, but that's how we do it here. So that's the way it goes. All right, Dr. Bailey Goose, I try to keep this half an hour and we're there. So I'm going to let you go. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Thank you.
 

C&M Homestead

Today I'm talking with Morgan at C&M Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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 Morgan at C&M Homestead. Good morning, Morgan. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Is it still super cold in South Dakota? You know what's warming up? The last couple of days have been bitterly cold, but today...
00:27The sun is shining and the temperatures are warming up. So hopefully we're done with that little cold snap. Well, considering I'm your neighbor to the east in Minnesota, we're in the same boat. The sun is so bright this morning and I think it's actually above zero right now. I think it is here as well. I think we're maybe at like four degrees maybe. So not far above, but it's above zero. So that's good.
00:52Yeah, last I looked at my phone, my weather bug app was telling me it was minus two, but that was at like five o'clock this morning. So I don't know what it is right now. Okay. So we've done the obligatory weather check-in because that's what I do with all the podcasts and tell me about yourself and what you guys do. So I am the C or I guess the M of C and M Homestead. My husband would be the C, Corey. So probably about two years ago, we...
01:21decided that we wanted to do better for ourselves and kind of that's where the whole bread, baking bread started. I started kind of taking the deep dive into sourdough and it's just kind of transformed since those two years ago. But about a year and a half ago, we moved out to my grandma's farm. And so we rent now from my mom and dad, a house and two.
01:48two acres and we've kind of just turned it into our own little paradise out here. We started with some chickens and it grew to ducks and turkeys and we had a couple of friends who could no longer take care of some of their animals. So we inherited some geese and it just kind of seems to keep growing out here. And it's just fun to watch our boys. We have a
02:14nine-month-old, a four-year-old and a 16-year-old. It's his birthday today. And it's just fun watching them be involved in caring for the animals and seeing the four-year-old come into the house with a handful of eggs. And he's like, Mom, look what these chickens did. So it's just fun. We kind of just wanted a slower lifestyle for ourselves from in town in Aberdeen. And so we moved out here.
02:43We're just slowly kind of making transitions to being able to be more self-sustaining. Awesome. Happy birthday, 16-year-old. Yeah. And boy, do I know what it's like to be a boy mom. My first child was a girl, but the next three were boys. So it was basically a boy household once she moved out. Yes. And it's a lot. It's a lot to be the only girl in the household. It is.
03:10They are like, what do you mean you want to paint your nails? Like, let's go outside and like play trucks in the dirt. And I'm like, oh, all right, we'll do that. Let's go. Yeah, mom, just run a brush through your hair, pull it back in a barrette or a ponytail holder and let's go. Yes, I understand completely. Yes, they are all about being outside in the dirt with the chickens, in the duck pond with the ducks. You name it, they want to do it outside. Yes.
03:39Yes, I have a husband who's like that too and he is chomping at the bit for this weekend because it's actually supposed to be not freezing tomorrow and Sunday. And when he got up this morning after he got his coffee, I said, so should I just plan on you being outside all weekend? And he said, yep. Didn't even bat an eye. So it's a male thing. It's not a kid boy thing. It's not an adult male thing. It's just a male thing. Boys and men like to be outside. Most of them.
04:09And if they don't, then they like to be in a room with a desk and a computer playing video games or coding things. So they sure do. So when you started making sourdough bread, I need to know, did you kill your starter when you first started it at least once? Did you burn a loaf? I got to know the failures and the successes. So no, I did not kill my starter. I made my own starter. Okay.
04:37I had great success with it. I didn't have any issues kind of going through that process. I have a couple of friends in my mother-in-law who've made starters multiple times and they're like, it died and I just, I don't know how, but it's very common. So I must have been very grateful and I'm very grateful and I was very lucky that I didn't have that problem. But have I burnt a loaf? 100%.
05:08have quite the following for our Facebook page and we do some drop-offs for bread. And last week I was just struggling with my sourdough. It wasn't rising the way I wanted it to. I had to push back some orders because they weren't rising and they were like two inch pancakes. So I just took a little bit to like kind of figure out like what was changing. I don't know if it was the temps. I don't know if it was just that it wasn't.
05:38The starter was more hungry than what it usually is, and so I needed to adjust the feeding ratios, but we did some adjusting and I got it figured out and it's now making beautifully risen loaves. Awesome. I always joke that cooking is better living through chemistry because all the reactions that happen in cooking are chemistry.
06:03And I did really well in chemistry in school. I was miserable at physics. So I'm really glad that I like to cook, not like do rocket science, because I would fail. But yeah, the ratios and the temperatures and the time all impact how things work. So sometimes it happens. But I mostly wanted you to tell me that you had burned a loafer too, because people think that excellent cooks were born excellent cooks.
06:33And that's not true. You have to learn and you have to practice and sometimes things go wrong. They do and that's one thing that I really struggle with. I very much so like wanna produce a good loaf of bread or whatever I'm making, bagels, to my customer. But I also would maybe say I'm a little bit on the perfectionist side where if it doesn't look perfectly like I want it to, I'm like, I can't do that, nope. And my husband has been like, Morgan, there's nothing wrong with that loaf.
07:03There might be a little crack in it where you didn't want it to crack, but it is fine. It'll taste just as good as if that crack wasn't there. So I've had to adjust a little bit of my expectations of you can't have a perfect loaf and what is a perfect loaf? But I've also had some very imperfect loafs where I've, the timers went off and I got busy with the kids and forgot the loaf in the oven. So had to restart.
07:29Yes, and the perfect loaf is the loaf that somebody bites into and just hums as they taste it. Yes. That's the perfect loaf right there. Okay, so I've said this on the podcast a billion times, but I'm going to say it again because you and I have never talked. I don't make bread. My husband makes the breads. He is excellent at yeast breads. I am terrible at them. I have attempted to do it like two or three times in my...
07:56in the last 30 years and I have screwed it up all three times and he's really good at it so he's the one who makes the bread. I make quick breads like dessert breads and cakes and cookies and brownies. I make a killer brownie like he will never attempt the brownies I make because he's like you do it perfectly and like good you make the breads I'll make the brownies recover. But not everybody bakes the same things not everybody loves to bake the same things. So do you do other things besides sourdough?
08:27I do not. I sourdough is kind of my realm. My husband though will bake bread with the like yeast and he will do he'll do a little bit of like the baking if it uses something other than sourdough. I usually stick to the sourdough. It's what I know. And he told me he's like, you should try just making some like regular bread. And I get intimidated by it because I'm like, I don't.
08:57I don't know how to do that. Well, the big difference between making a sourdough loaf and a yeast bread, like, I don't know, a honey oat bread, is that the sourdough, you've already got the yeast. And with the yeasted breads, you have to bloom the yeast. And that's my downfall because I always kill it. No matter how careful I am at following directions, I always kill the yeast and I do not know why. So
09:26It's a different process and I get it because I have not tried doing sourdough yet and I keep saying I should, but I haven't. I suspect that if I did a sourdough starter and tried making bread with that, I would probably be fine. But I can't keep the dry yeast in the packets alive to save my life when I try to use it. I would say you should give it a shot. I feel like sourdough is very forgiving. Whether depending, I mean for...
09:52I feel like for the most part, depending, no matter what stage you're in, I feel like there's usually a way to bring it back. I mean, maybe not after you've burnt a loaf, but like the inside might, the inside is still probably good. But I've had our 16 year old help a couple of times with the bread or like mixing it and he doesn't always pay attention to what he's doing. And so we'll have a very hydrated.
10:21low for a mix of bread and water and it's like, buddy, this is going to be, well, let's add some more flour because this is going to be a soupy mess if we leave it this way. So I feel like with sourdough, it's very forgiving. It's just, you know, kind of figuring out consistencies as well. Yeah. Okay. So on that note, tell me how to make, how to do the starter, how to get it started. Oh, so I would start with...
10:50maybe a half a cup of water and a half a cup of flour and you mix it together and then you let it sit for 24 hours and then you'll take half of it out and you'll just feed it that much again. Half a cup of water and a half a cup of flour, mix it all together and let it sit again. And you do that for about, I think seven days and then on day seven, you start doing like double feeding. So you'll feed
11:18that ratio in the morning and then that ratio again at night and you take out half every time you feed it. So that's how I started and it seemed to work really well. I started with bread flour. There's a higher protein in the bread flour than in all purpose flour. But now I've kind of used it interchangeably. Some of it I have bread flour I use and sometimes I just use all purpose flour.
11:48Bread flour is a hot commodity here in town. I have a couple of other friends who also bake sourdough. So if they're out of bread flour at our local grocery store at Kessler's, I know who's got the bread flour. So can you do it with all purpose flour? You can. Okay. Yep. Does it change it? Does it make it slower or anything?
12:14I think because of the lower protein in all-purpose flour, it could take a little bit longer, but I've had other people who've only used all-purpose flour and have no issue with it also. So I think what it comes down to is like, what kind of wild and active yeast is already in like the environment, and then the temperature, I think warm plays a huge role in the...
12:39sourdough starter, just like the yeast when you make it. I mean, you don't want it too hot, but you also need it warm enough to where it rises. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna commit because I will if I come if I say I'm gonna commit, I'm not gonna do it, but I'm gonna try, try Sunday this weekend to get some started. And can I just use like a quart mason jar and doesn't have to be covered?
13:06I would use, yeah, a court mason jar would be great. And what I started with is just a paper towel over the top of it. So there's some breathability, but also like nothing's fallen in it. Okay. Yeah, we have, we're really blessed here at our house. We have Asian beetles, you know, okay. And we have a, it's a finished, it's not a finished basement. The part where all of our, our gadgets, our water heater and stuff like that is a cement
13:36but the other half is just dirt. So the Asian beetles have figured out how to get into our basement and they come up through the vents. And I really don't want an Asian beetle flying into my starter, that would be gross. So. I don't blame you. So that's why I asked about covering it. Yep, so I did the paper towel and then I usually put like a rubber band around it just to kind of keep the paper towel snug on there, but yet there was that breathability. Okay, awesome. Well.
14:05I'm going to have to get a jar and grab some of my all purpose flour because I don't think we have any bread flour in the house right now. And I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it Sunday. I'm going to take a photo and I'm going to post it on Facebook and that way there's some accountability. There you go. Because I've been saying for six months I should do it and I keep saying we're never going to make enough bread to make this worth it. But what's the worst that happens? I do it. I make a loaf of bread and I'm like, this really isn't my thing. Yeah.
14:33Well, there's so many other things that you can use sourdough starter for. My mom took a bread class or a sourdough class here in Aberdeen and she got sent home with the starter and the stuff to make the like a recipe on how to make bread. She's never made the bread, but she's found how to make discard crackers. And so her and my dad love making crackers, sourdough discard crackers.
15:03So there's a lot of recipes that don't just, that aren't bread that you could use a starter for as well. Yeah, somebody was telling me they made sourdough starter cookies. Yes, I make some chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, I was blown away. I was like, you're using a yeast thing in cookies. Don't they like get huge? So depending on like where my starter is, because I've used it active and I've used it at where it should be fed.
15:32And when it's active, it gets a little bit more, it's a little thicker, it doesn't spread out as nicely as it does with inactive starter. But the cookies are great, my kids love them, my husband loves them. I made some of our regular cookies without the sourdough and no one was interested in them. They wanted the sourdough ones.
15:58Huh, in my house a cookie is a cookie is a cookie. As long as it's sweet, it's gonna be gone. The boys are gonna eat them, they'll be gone. Okay, so we've spent like 15 minutes on sourdough stuff, which is fine, but sourdough is a big thing right now. So I've talked a lot about sourdough on the podcast. So what else do you guys do? So the other things we do right now are, we raise our own chickens and sell eggs.
16:28This was the first year we've had chickens and we did get some meat birds and so we butchered those in May of last year and we plan on doing that again. And we also raise our own turkeys and have butchered them. What kind? Do you know what kind? What breed? The turkeys were, I believe, broad-breasted turkeys. They were beautiful. They got really big.
16:58when we butchered them, I think the biggest one was almost 40 pounds. Oh, that's a big bird. Yeah, yep. That was after everything was done. That was the... Dressed and got it. Yep. So that was... They've been very big birds. We have some ducks as well. We raised ducks.
17:26But right now, I mean, the biggest thing that we are looking to do is we have a couple of friends who've reached out who want us to raise some birds for them as well, some meat birds for them and butcher them so they can have some fresh locally grown chickens instead of buying the chickens from the store. That's a good plan because the chickens from the store suck right now. They do. They definitely do.
17:51Yeah, I'm totally off chicken. My husband and my son love chicken thighs. They like them baked or pan fried. Yep. I will eat something else that day. They make dinner for themselves and I buy something else. I want nothing to do with it right now. Yeah. That's how bad store-bought chicken is right now for me. Yeah, we haven't had to buy chicken in a while.
18:21teen birds that we butchered and dressed. And I think we only have a couple left. So I'm getting a little nervous because obviously we're going to have to raise some more before we can butcher them. But I don't know that we'll buy chicken from the store. I think we'll just go without chicken for a while until we can get some more of our own. Or find somebody else who's raising chickens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned us.
18:50I've only had duck once in my life in a restaurant dish, and it was a rice pilaf with some shredded duck in it. So basically, I'd never had duck because you couldn't even taste the duck in it. And so a friend of ours gave us a duck, put it in our freezer, I don't know, it was past fall, and we finally pulled it out and thawed it out and cooked it. And I had asked my friend what duck tastes like.
19:19And she said, it does not taste like chicken. And I said, okay. And she said, it's actually a much, much, much darker meat. I said, okay. I said, no, no promises. Cause I'm really not into any kind of foul meat right now. I'm just not. And she was like, okay. So we made it and I tasted it. And to me, it tasted like a really good steak. And I was surprised because that was not what I was, I was expecting to taste.
19:46So for the listeners, duck is not the same as chicken or, or, um, I don't know, quail or any of those birds. It's just not. It's a totally different meat, totally different texture. Yes, agreed. It is not anything like chicken. No. Or turkey or yeah, it's, it's got its own, its own kind of flavor. Yeah. It's, it's like, it's like red meat.
20:12It's really weird. I was just dumbfounded because I bit into it expecting I don't know what. And as I'm tasting it and chewing it, I was like, oh my god, this is like a steak. This is really weird. Okay. All right, we'll go with that. All right. So, um, you said you have three boys. Are the three boys into the whole homesteading thing? Um, I for the most part. Yes. Okay. They um,
20:42The four-year-old loves it. The 16-year-old goes back and forth with his interest in it.
20:53He was much older, obviously, when we moved out to the farm, since we've only been out here about a year and a half. So he definitely was more used to the city life, being able to go hang out with his friends, being great in town, not having to drive 30 minutes to get to town. So he's hit or miss. There's some days he loves it, and there's other days he would much rather be in town. Okay. Well.
21:21The little ones, they're more into it. Well, the littlest one probably isn't, but the middle one is. Yeah, the four-year-old loves it. He is all about being outside, picking vegetables in our garden. This fall, he was all about that. Of course, he had to use some kind of truck to be able to pick the vegetable off of the plant and put it in another truck to get it up to the house.
21:51He was outside in fresh air. He was eating stuff right off of the plants, which I just love to see. And the nine month old, he, we had a couple of nice days in, let's see, the end of January, beginning of February. And so we took him out in the stroller and we had the ducks and the birds out and he loved watching the chickens and the ducks just kind of roam around and do their thing. So I think he'll really enjoy it too as he gets more
22:22able to move around by himself and as he gets older. Yeah, he's not going to know anything different. No, no. So it'll be interesting for you to see how he grows into it versus your 16 year old who got kind of thrown into it. Yeah, we've had kind of them in all different stages. I mean, Mason, the oldest one, he's kind of got thrown into it. Theodore, the four year old has.
22:48had a little bit of like city living, but also was still like fairly young enough to like, not really, you know, he knows, cause he knows where we lived at in town and he talks about it, but yet like, so he's kind of like the in between and then all of our the youngest, this is all he'll know. Uh-huh. Yep. I sort of understand it because when we moved to our place over four years ago, we had been living literally in town. We were a block.
23:18and a half from the main street in our little town. And my son, who's 23 now, he had a job at a comic book store and he loved it. And his boss loved him. And we had the opportunity to finally get out of town and, you know, have some acreage and a nice house. And we talked to our son and we were like, um, we really want to go now. We really want to jump. We're in the position to do it. Is this going to be a problem?
23:48And he was like, absolutely not. Let's go. And that first couple of months we lived here, I think that he really missed his job at the comic book store because the comic book store was also an arcade. And so he was always seeing his friends there and he was getting the chance to check out different comic books for free and he just really enjoyed the job. And the reason I mentioned this situation is he just went a couple of weekends ago to that shop.
24:18to hang out with a friend and he walked in and his old boss was there and he was like, hi, and my son said, I think he wants me to come back and work and I said, yeah, well, that's probably not gonna happen right now. So yeah, it's really, really hard when as the adults, you need to make a decision but your kids are old enough to have input into their opinions on that decision.
24:46So yeah, I really felt bad for a little while about pulling him from that town where his friends were and where his job was. But I was like, we're the grownups. We got to go. If you don't want to go, you can stay here with somebody. It's up to you. So it's tough, but he loves it here and he loves being outside with his dad. He loves helping with the gardens and the cutting the wood and all the things we do.
25:13Yeah, and that's how Mason is as well. He definitely misses that in town life, being close, able to ride his bike over to his friend's house. He just got his driver's license a couple of months ago, so we're working on getting that taken care of because he's got to drive for so many hours with an adult. But yeah, he loved being able to ride his bike over, but also he definitely loves being able to go outside and just kind of that.
25:43silence and peaceful quietness of being out in the country where he didn't get that in town. I feel like Mason is definitely sometimes like an old soul just wants peace and quiet and he's kind of my he's my old man child. So he just he's fun. It's fun to watch him kind of grow into an adult and help out here and he comes up with some really good ideas of
26:11what we can do with chicken coops and how we can put them in the area that we have them. And so it's fun to watch that thought process kind of evolve too. Yeah, yep, absolutely. Watching your kids come up with new ideas or learn something new is one of the most beautiful moments of a parent's life, I swear. So.
26:38Okay, so what's the plan for the future? Are you guys gonna make this more, bigger, stay the same? How's it gonna go? So for the future, what we would kind of like to do is, like I said in the beginning, right now we're renting from my mom and dad, and we're renting just two acres. So we weren't for sure if we were gonna like living out of town. So we actually have our house still in town that we use as a rental. And so we are...
27:05Our future plan would be to sell the house in town and maybe look for something that's ours that we're not renting that has a couple more acres. Because we would like to expand. What that looks like, we're not 100% for sure yet, but we do have plans to expand and grow our business and our homestead lifestyle.
27:32We're just not for sure what that all looks like yet, but we're definitely excited to see how it will evolve. Yes, and evolve it will. And it might evolve in ways you didn't expect because I feel like that's what happens to homesteaders. I definitely would agree. It all started with the sourdough bread in town. I'm telling you, that's where it started is I started baking bread in town and then we were like.
27:58we need to move to the country and then we did and then we ended up with chickens, ducks, goats or not goats, geese and we just want more. Well our homesteading thing that we're doing now started because my husband's mom gave us some iris plants and some I think lilies back oh my god over 20 years ago from her house that she was selling.
28:27We had like a tenth of an acre lot and we had this little space in front of our bedroom windows that were fronted between the windows and the sidewalk. And I was like, well, we can put lilies and irises in there. And my husband was like, okay. So we transplanted those and they did really well. And I was like, you know, we have a small backyard. We could actually dig that up and put in some food gardens. And he was like, okay.
28:52And he dug him out and rented a tiller and tilled it and put stuff in and it did really well. And we were trying to raise four kids on one income. So saving money was important. There was a lot of cooking from scratch and a lot of learning how to make things instead of buying things. That's where our homestead stuff began. And I never really thought about how it would all culminate in this three acre.
29:18property with a house and a pole barn and a garden, sorry, yeah, a farm stand and now a hard-sided greenhouse and there's going to be a high tunnel style greenhouse next to the shed. And I mean, it just bubbles up. It's like you blow up one balloon and there's 16,000 balloons that come off that one balloon. A hundred percent agreed. A hundred percent. We've talked about just several different things that we would like to do or like to see.
29:48Um, as we kind of evolve, we've talked about doing, um, like, uh, like a little flower farm or like a little lavender farm. Yeah. Um, we've talked about maybe getting some pigs or some other animals, but for right now we're just kind of holding tight until we know what, how we want to evolve and what that looks like and what fits best for our family.
30:16Yep, absolutely. And I'm going to end this podcast on a really weird note. I think that when you have success in the home studying things you're trying to do, it is the worst and best thing because the worst thing is that you gain confidence and you're like, we can do anything. And then you do anything and something fails and it really, really can destroy your confidence.
30:46You feel like you can do anything, which means nothing can stop you from trying. It does. It gives you a whole different sense of self-confidence with just trying to figure it out whether it fails or not. You've learned a way not to do it, but there's how many other ways that you could do it. Yes. And the more confidence you have, the more self-sufficient you become, the less dependent you are on.
31:15the outside world and the outside world is a lovely place and people are great and you know, good to have friends. But being kind of independent and knowing how to do things is terribly important. Yes. Yep. So that's where I think we're going to end it. Morgan, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I appreciate it. Thank you. It was fun. Bye. Yep.
 

Dailey Farms - Goatmilk Dairy

Today I'm talking with John at Dailey Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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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 John at Dailey Farms. Good morning, John. How are you? Morning, Mary. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on today.
00:21You're welcome. I'm sorry we had some technical difficulties. I don't know what's up with this app, but sometimes it works like a charm and sometimes it fights people. I think it's more about me not figuring out technology fast enough here. Well, that happens too. Yes, yes. All right, so you're in Illinois, right? Correct. We're just on the western side of Illinois here, zone six if you're planting. And yeah, we're a dairy farm.
00:50Nice and you're a goat dairy farm, right? Mm-hmm, yes. Tell me all about what you do. So about 2015 I decided to have a major career change. I was a desk jockey working in the tech and biotech world and had a career, came to a crossroads and I said I always wanted to be the million dollar question. What would you do if money were no object? I always wanted to be a farmer. And...
01:21One of the major reasons that came up and so here we are and I was over in Australia and I have lactose issues and they're like, oh, you can't have milk? Yeah, you can. You can just drink goat milk up until that point. I've been drinking almond water and coconut water and oat milk and all the different alternatives and was not a big fan of that. So...
01:51I said, why isn't anybody doing this in the States? And so I said, maybe I should be the one doing it in the States. So here we are. Yeah. Did I miss it? Did you grow up in Australia or were you just over there? Oh, no. I was, so when I was transitioning careers, I took a little sabbatical and spent a couple weeks over there visiting a friend. And that's when I came across all the people over in the, down in Australia, sipping on goat milk. Okay.
02:21Now I understand. I apologize for not clarifying. I'm born and raised in Illinois. My mom was born in Illinois and then she moved to Maine when she was like 19 years old. So wow. That's a big move. Yeah. She met my dad, fell in love with him and was like, I go where you go forever. So all right. That's pretty neat. Yeah. I have one of my old roommates moved to Maine and they are now a chicken. They're doing chicken farming.
02:51Which is funny because we're both in the tech world. We both decided to become farmers. It happens. I, my husband loves, loves, loves gardening and loves having chickens. I do not. So I do a podcast and he raises, takes care of chickens. It works out great. Um, that's a good deal there. And my dad actually was a, a, uh, electrical engineer.
03:18by trade and then became a bio med tech. Oh, wow. And now he's 81 years old, living on 14 acres in Maine and raising chickens and has a border collie. So there's something about that thing. I think so. Or maybe the romantic idea of being the gentleman farmer as well. I don't know. He's my dad has always been a gentleman. And I mean that with all due sincerity. He is the nicest man you will ever meet.
03:49So he would have been a gentleman either way. Fantastic. Mm-hmm, best man I know. Well, I don't know if I'd qualify for the gentleman part, but I definitely am farming out here. Hehehehe.
04:03No. Okay. So I saw that you have goat milk soap and it's made with lard. Sorry, tallow and lye and goat's milk. And I also saw that you sell goat's milk that is pasteurized at your local store. So my question is, do you use the just the raw goat's milk for your soap or do you use? Yes, for the soap we can luckily use the
04:31It does not need to be pasteurized. But with the process of saponification, which is what makes soap, soap, the temperatures do get up there. So it's slightly pasteurized. Pasteurization is just something the French figured out to make white to make wine and have a longer shelf life back in the 1800s.
04:57It was a beautiful thing for farmers at the time as well, because it also extended the shelf life of the dairy products they would take to market. Long-winded answer, but during that saponification process, while I'm making my soap, the temperature on that milk does get up at now the same temperature range as traditional pasteurization. The milk you see at the store.
05:25that doesn't need to be refrigerated. That's been ultra high temperature, pasteurization method, which is several hundred degrees, full other can of worms. Yeah, we make soap here too, and we actually burned our table at one point, because the saponification process gets super freaking hot.
05:51And if you don't put a towel down between the bottom of your soap box or whatever your mold is and your table, it will, it will leave a mark. It all scorched. Yes. And when you're working with that lye, it's remarkable how, you know, fast, if you're not ready for that chemical, it's like, it's not ready for the, you know, the lye to do its thing, that temperature shoots up very fast.
06:19Mm-hmm. Yes, it's not I always tell people they're always like I'd love to learn how to make you know raw soap Or whatever they want to call it and I'm like, it's not hard. You just have to be careful that's When I have people over and they see me making myself that like it looks like the guy from Breaking Bad with the glasses and Your gloves and your apron. I'm like, well, we're we're dealing with some science and some chemistry that's
06:49You know, pretty serious stuff, but you know, under under control scenarios, it's doable by the average person, no doubt. But like you said, you just need to be careful and cross your T's and out your eyes. Yeah, it can hurt you. But if you're careful, it can make some wonderful things for your skin, as I know. And as you know, and as all your customers know. Oh, yes, it's.
07:17And once they start using it, they find it hard to switch back to regular stuff. It's interesting. Mm hmm. Yup. We were out of hours for about a month and I basically begged my husband to make a new batch because I was like, I can't use the store bought soap with all the things I can't pronounce because it makes my skin itch, please make some new soap. And he did. Yes. What a gentleman. What a nice guy.
07:44Yes, yes, he is a wonderful man and I showed him what it was doing to my skin on my arm and he was like, oh my god, you have like dry skin on your arm. I said, I have dry skin all over me. I need our soap back. He was like, okay, I'm on.
08:03Thanks. And if you have all your supplies ready, you know, it's just time and curing. And that's the other thing is the patients, at least on my part, it's just the patient. I give them a pretty extended cure time. I don't have any instant cure with just the three ingredients. So I have a one month, at least a one month wait on mine, depending on how fast and all that fun stuff, you know, how fast it's curing.
08:30Yeah, we give ours four to six weeks. If I can wait the six weeks, I will. But if I want it in four weeks, it's going to get used in four weeks. So Yeah, I think that's the that was even at first speaking of the learning curve. I was always nervous, like, you know, all my instructions and everything I had studied on it says, you know, you have to allow it this minimum amount of time. And I was like, if you touch that, it's gonna hurt you. And I was very careful. But I learned that yes, it's not gonna
08:58be the end of me if I do it right at that cutoff point. Yeah, and what most people don't know about Lysol is that the reason you let it cure is because it has to get rid of some of the moisture. If you don't let it cure, then the bar gets all soft and squishy in the shower or the bathtub and it goes away faster. That's why you let it cure. Ah, yes. Well, hey, I'm learning new stuff every day. I thought it was all the
09:26All the stuff mixing together, I had to do its magic and harden more. No.
09:35Oh, please go ahead. No, it will not hurt you. We cut our bars 24 hours after they've been poured. And then that starts the drying process. But really what it is, is the soap bar will last longer, more uses, if it's dried for at least four weeks. Ah, I gotcha. Fantastic. Yeah, you can touch lye soap 24 hours after it's done its job,
10:05Good to know. And it won't burn. The fun thing is I enjoy cup logo.
10:13Okay. Good to know. Yeah, I have a couple of clients that have all, it's a wonderful thing because I enjoy always learning new stuff like this. And then I have a couple of clients who are very, very knowledgeable. One even worked at a dial factory for 20 years. There's been a wealth of knowledge and teaching me some of the other things. Just, it's a whole world of you can.
10:43You can do the basics and make yourself soap or you like you said, you can really. Um, get down into the, the, the chemical processes and you know, like, it's like a science experiment, basically. Yeah. And we make our soap differently than you do. We don't use milk or goat's milk or anything. We use essential oils in ours and we use coconut oil and olive oil and all those wonderful things.
11:11Olive oil that's why when I first started I was using olive oil as one of my bases and I still have the one of my Batches I made I still have two bars left and that was from like seven years ago They're still good. I don't know. I don't know what I had some sort of magic and I didn't write it down. I wish I didn't know Yeah, there's all kinds of recipes on the internet that will will give you new ways to make so
11:40Yes. Okay, so enough about soap. Tell me about your goats. I've talked to a lot of people about goats on the podcast, but tell me about your goats. Our goats, I ended up coming back here during the career change, working, I spent a year on a dairy farm, goat dairy farm, who was producing milk for Mount Cheve, which was a, at the time they've been bought out since they large cheese producer. So they would, you know,
12:08have tankers come and get all their milk. So I kind of learned my, earned my stars there. And I have alpine goats. And they're known for their high protein content and the high milk production. I figured if that was, if I was gonna be bottling and selling milk, I'd like to have the goats that make the most milk naturally. And yeah, so from there, I,
12:36Got approved. Got a facility built. Found my own space. Got to Milken, got approved to be grade A and here we are, Easy Peasy. Okay, Easy Peasy sounds really nice but I bet it wasn't as Easy Peasy as you're making it sound like it was.
12:57It did happen to take 18 months. It took a year and a half to get approved to be grade A with visits from the USDA and the inspectors and, you know, rebuild like changing outdoors and adding, you know, the room had to have an office, it had to have restrooms, it had to have extra sinks. So there was quite a bit of construction on top of what I initially thought would make the cut and getting the equipment.
13:26just as so to get it to where I'm comfortable operating it. So there was a few wrenches thrown in the mill before I got her up and running just the way I like it. But at the end of the day, you're just getting milk in the bottle, but you gotta get approved to be testing it and all these fun things. Yeah, how many goats do you have, John?
13:54Right now I am, where did I, well we just had babies. So there's 32 new babies at the moment. There's still a couple coming. And that's on top of my 61 goats. So that would put me in 93, I believe was my count last night. Nice, that is a goat herd. It's a full house right at the moment. So.
14:19During kidding season, we can each go, essentially have triplets and I could have, you know, 180 goats in there.
14:28but only a few twins and a few singles. Okay. So I'm guessing you're not milking by hand. You are machine milking. I have, yes. I have an individual pump that does the same thing that those giant, you know, rotating turrets do, you see on YouTube. And one at a time. And I think it allows for, you know, good inspection of the animal. And
14:59and still make things somewhat timely. I've tried doing two at a time and I end up spending the same amount of time just fighting back and forth with the two of them. Okay. Anyone who's listened to my podcast up till right now knows that I love baby goats. So the idea of over 20 baby goats in one season just makes me giggle. I love it. They are in full 100% cute.
15:28cute mode at the moment. They're, you know, cleaned up and fluffy and exploring and bouncing and twisting and doing all the fun baby goat stuff that first these first couple weeks. And that's kind of how I differentiate myself from the pack. A lot of, um, yeah, let's say my friends from my, I'm my Amish buddy. They'd pull the kids and bottle feed them and get milk in the goats right away. I keep the kids on the nannies on their mothers.
15:56to have mother's milk for several weeks before they wean. So it's kind of a different way of doing things, but it's how I get it done.
16:07So is it like with dairy cows where they do the calf share, where the calf can nurse and then you can also milk? Is that the same thing? Yes, I can do that. Towards the end of it, at the beginning, I'm kind of letting them have free rein and just keeping an eye on the mom to make sure she's okay with it. But yes, they can be milked twice.
16:37as personal preference at that point. Uh-huh. And I guess if it's goats, it's a kid's share, not a calf's share. But you know what I'm saying. Correct. There are a lot of interchangeable words there. We can't have no offense taken. We'll just call it baby animal share. And that'll cover the whole thing. OK. So I had a question. Oh. Can you sell raw?
17:07goat's milk in Illinois or does it have to be pasteurized? Now, once if you plan to sell in stores or at the farmers market, it has to be pasteurized. Now, there's people who have a license to sell raw, off-farm, direct, but that's all they can sell. They can't make additional products to sell in stores, so on and so forth.
17:32If someone wanted raw milk from you, can they come to your farm and get it from you? Or is that not allowed? No, all the inspectors frown upon it and it's not allowed because I am running the grade A and they don't want those crow mingling. They don't want the dangerous raw milk to be near my good pasteurized milk. But that's just, I like that I'm a proponent of the raw milk movement.
18:02I believe on a lot of its attributes. But I think I found the happy medium where I pasteurize at the lowest legally allowed temperature, at the lowest temperature for the shortest amount of time to do its minimal interference with that, with the enzymes and the things like that advocates are looking for. Okay.
18:28It's so weird because so many states have so many different laws regarding raw milk, whether it's goat or sheep or cow. Oh yeah.
18:39And even until I got into it, I had no idea how much went into that. But it is, there's, there's quite a bit of, uh, regulatory things and just differences state to state, which is why I'm right on the border of Iowa. And Iowa is a great market and everybody, you know, a lot of my customers come from Iowa into Illinois. You know, like, why don't you just sell in Illinois and Iowa? Well, I'm licensed in Illinois.
19:09So I cannot cross state lines and I can't just say, well, I wanna sell in Iowa too and get licensed. I have to become an international seller at that point and be licensed in every state. So I looked into that, you know, I know the rules for Alaska, Hawaii, Delaware, Puerto Rico, Florida. You have to be able to, you can do one state or all states. Okay, I see.
19:39In Minnesota, the farmers can sell goat milk, cow milk, whatever, as long as people come to their farm with their own container. Yes. And that's what, that's some, and some states where they do let you do raw milk, you have to bring your own, some states say bring your own bottle. Some states say, yeah, there's a myriad of.
20:06Very interesting things like that like if you have your own bottle, that's gonna make all the difference Yep, okay. So we've talked about goats. We've talked about soap. We've talked about rules Did I see that you just became engaged? Yes, I am recently engaged. I am Pretty longtime girlfriend here, Kayla. We're excited. We haven't set a date. We kind of have to work around the milking schedule Yep
20:35That's exciting. Well, congratulations. Thank you very much. I love love. I love, I especially love new love. I've been married for over 20 years and that new love becomes, I don't want to call it old love, but it becomes, it becomes a, it becomes a deep love, if that makes sense, like a deeper, more everyday, more, less insanity.
21:05It evolves a bit. Yeah, yeah. My husband and I have been married for over 20 years. And now when he goes to work in the morning, it's like, I love you, drive safe, have a good day and a quick peck on the lips and out he goes to work. And then when he gets home, the way I express my affection is that dinner is ready when he walks in the door or at least 10 minutes after he walks in the door. Always. It's not that I missed you all day. It's the dinner is ready. You must be hungry. Would you like to eat?
21:35Yes, so for sure. Yes, we get to enjoy that honeymoon phase love as I said, yeah and enjoy it Fall. Yep. Enjoy it because it lasts about five years and then life life becomes life, you know As a dairy farmer I look forward to having a nice schedule Yeah, that's
22:06Go ahead. We like having that structure and that reliable schedule, at least the milking schedule. It kind of spills over into life. Yeah, routine is good. Did I also see that you lost a farm dog and that you now have a new farm dog? Yeah. Well, we had lost one farm dog and then another had become injured.
22:34his replacement had become injured. So I got another dog to team up with him. So now I have Paw Paw and Jack Straw. Oh, I didn't know about Jack Straw. He is 11 months old and he's a little hot with me at the moment and he just got snips. Yeah, good job. Good plan. We're still making friends again. Yeah, they don't appreciate that very much. And they're Pyrenees, right?
23:04Pyranids, great pyranids, yes. Excellent livestock, gardening dog, known for their, you know, guarding the herd, late night prowling, watching the farm. Just a classic livestock. They're bred for this. They're in their elements. Yes, they're wonderful dogs. Our friends have two right now. And they are big dogs, but they are big loves. So it's always nice to be around them.
23:34They definitely um, by me for my attention, but um, they're learning to get along as brothers as well, which is fun and challenging. And are they, are they good about the goats? Are they good with herding them? They do a nice wide herd is their style. So it's a pretty good size circle watching the goats.
24:04But yes, when I leave, I know that they're in good hands. Never had any coyote issues out here yet. Knock on wood. Very nice. Okay. So I have another question about the goats that just popped into my head. If you have 30 something new babies already, and you have a few more do, do you keep, do you keep all of those or do you sell them? A lot of them get to find new farms.
24:34Either have them just for maintaining their farm and the fences and like him having them as livestock pets and others that are full scale milk operations, one few. And yes, so that's who's getting the. You know, but I will keep some of the girls from the moms who are, you know, high producers and my facility can handle about 75 full grown goats.
25:04So that's where I like to keep it. Yeah, I mean you could have hundreds of goats, but you would run out of time and energy. And you know, space is an issue. They can start getting some illnesses and things of that sort. If they're too compact, I strive to keep the goats living as close to as they would in nature on my farm.
25:32you know, obviously with the human hand intervening, but as close as I possibly can get them to, as they would be in nature here on the farm. Okay. And how many male, how many bucks do you have? One man does all the work out here. Wow. Elvis is his name and he's a second year buck, son of a Bojangles and he's...
26:00He's the lucky dog who has a lot of work on his plate in the fall.
26:08He's a busy boy, yes. And that was the other question I had. Do you just have one season of babies or do you do a second round of them? I do one breeding. So he's withheld all year and then when they go into their fall heat is when I expose them to the buck. Okay, cool. Yeah, cause some people do have two sets of babies a year, but it's a lot. It's a lot to try to handle all that. And it's...
26:37And it's something I would like to do, because I've been a seasonal producer, I have to reintroduce my, a lot of my customers have to be reintroduced every year to the product. Whereas somebody going year round, it's just their year round and they continue purchasing and so on and so forth. But breeding year round would allow me that opportunity to have the year round milk. But my facility.
27:05is set up just for the seasonal production. We would need quite a bit of build out for, to be able to.
27:16have it have it done that way to be year-round, excuse me. Uh-huh, okay. All right, I meant to mention this before we started recording and I didn't when we're done recording, don't leave because I need your file to upload from your side too. I will edit that out. And John, I try to keep these to half an hour but I really feel like we've gotten what I needed out of this. I'm so thankful that you had the time to talk with me because this has been really interesting. I found out new things today.
27:47Well, I appreciate you having me on and taking time to give us the invite. And this is the first time I've ever been on a podcast. So I'm very excited. Was it fun? Did you enjoy it? I had a great time. Thank you so much. Good. And you got to get out to Illinois to come out and have some chocolate goat milk or some plain goat milk and some soaps and see how I stack up. Yeah. Chocolate goat milk sounds really good. Oh yeah. You can give that a quick plug. I did.
28:12I scored a top 10 finish in the World Chocolate Milk Championships. So how did that work? How did you even get into that? Through some of the dairy letters that I get through the USDA, I saw that they had milk tasting competitions and butter tasting competitions every year. And I said, hey, there's one for milk and chocolate milk. So I was interested to see how my chocolate milk stacked up against the competition. And um...
28:41So I signed up and did all the paperwork and mailed off the first set of samples. And it was all these, I was mailing bottles of milk for like two weeks, two months, making sure they have, everybody had a chance to taste it and got her going and, uh, scored really high, which I was very impressed with. So that, that leads me to the last question. What kind of chocolate are you using the flavor? Your chocolate milk? Oh, the top secret I use.
29:10I spare no expense. I use a very high quality. I worked with a local chocolatier who's been making custom chocolates for 25 years. And I tasted chocolates from all over the world. And the one I locked down is pretty good stuff, I believe. And maybe that's what does it, but it's real, it's a real 100% cacao. And it gives it a very unique flavor in that. So maybe that's what I can just.
29:38divulge is it's a hundred percent cacao and it's a um real cane sugar not too much magic but um Where you source your chocolate from I feel has a difference I would I would imagine it probably does so top 10 percent. Is that what you said? Oh, no, it's a top 10 out of everybody top down out of everybody. That is amazing. There's a few hundred in there So I felt really um Really honored for that one
30:07Well, congratulations twice in the same podcast. That's pretty cool. Appreciate that. All right, John, you have a fantastic day and thank you again. Thank you, Mary. You have a great day.
 

Qwazy Quail Farm

Today I'm talking with Aaron at the Qwazy Quail Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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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 Aaron at Qwazy Quail Farm. It's really hard to do two QWs in a row. Good morning, Aaron. How are you? Good morning. Doing good. How about yourself? I'm doing great. You're in Ohio? Yes. We are in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, which is just east of downtown.
00:29Cleveland by about 12, 13 miles. Okay. Is it super cold there today? It is very cold today. Um, I think it's supposed to be in the teens at the highest today. Well, you've got us beat cause I don't think we're going to see above zero again today in Minnesota. It's been so freaking cold.
00:50But that's okay, we're gonna get through it and it's gonna warm up next week. And I looked at the long range forecast and we're looking at spring temperatures in about two weeks. I'm very excited about this. Yes, I know all of my birds are very excited about the warmer weather also. Yeah, and I wanna hear all about your birds. So tell me about what you do, Aaron. Okay, so what we do here is we raise Coturnix quail, Bobwhite quail, and we also raise a small flock of chickens. So the...
01:18Bob white quail we here in Ohio, because they're a native species, you have to have a special permit for those. So we have about a dozen of those right now, just getting into them. Um, as a, I'm not sure exactly what we're going to do with those birds, possibly get into a conservation program with the state of Ohio to repopulate them as due to environmental factors, uh, some farming practices, um,
01:47predators, things like that. The Bobwhite quail population has dwindled drastically here in Ohio. So I think they're beautiful birds. The sounds that they make are, it sounds like you're almost at a zoo or something like that. It's really cool sounds. The Coturnix quail, we raise several colors of those, which we raise jumbo whites, jumbo Egyptians, jumbo
02:15And then we have some Celadon and we have some black quail, which the black quail didn't come to the United States until around 2019 and they came from Germany. So there's a lot of people that are starting to get into them. Um, there's some people that have concerns. They have something called a yellow gene, which I don't get too much into the genetics. Um, I've attended a quail con last year, which was in, uh, Miami'sburg, Ohio.
02:45And they had people, quail enthusiasts and farmers from Canada. And many, many states here in the United States attended that. And they have that every year in the fall. And so there you can meet like-minded quail farmers, people that are doing this as homesteaders, all kinds of different backgrounds in quail, but we specify or specialize in the quail for egg production and for meat.
03:14We raise many of the jumbos because another thing we do is when you go to a pet store and you're getting some treats for your dogs, you want to make sure that you're offering them the best that they can get. And a lot of times these pet stores will have ingredients that have other stuff in there that's not necessarily the best for our pets. And it was just recently I had run out of our quail treats that we make.
03:42And both of my dogs ended up getting extremely sick and coughing up and puking up blood and chunks of their innards. That was from a chicken treat that said it was all natural. And when I went and looked up more information on this company, they've got a lot of lawsuits and I almost lost both of my dogs. So what we do here is we raise the quail. The ones that are going to be processed for meat or for dog treats, they go to
04:12a chicken or poultry processor that's USDA and Department of Agriculture really inspected. They're down in Baltic, Ohio called Pleasant Valley Poultry. And we take them down there and get our birds processed. We bring them back here. We put them in storage. We have our warehouse license so that we can also sell meat to grocery stores, to markets, to chefs and things like that. So.
04:39But we've got a lot going on here and sometimes I don't know how I find the time to do anything. I was going to say you're pretty deep into the quaildom going on there. A couple things. My dog is actually allergic to chicken so she never gets any kind of poultry. We actually had to switch out her dog food because it turned out that the chicken in the dog food was making her sick to her stomach. So we don't do chicken here for the dog. We do chicken for us. Chicken is great.
05:09But what I really want to get into is your expertise on quail raising, because I have talked to a lot of people on the podcast who happen to have quail or they're just getting into it, but they're not really expert or deep into it yet. And it sounds like you are. So if somebody wanted to start raising quail, what is the basic beginning and setup to do that? It can be extremely simple to get started.
05:37You can start off as simple as a plastic tote that you can get at any of your hardware stores like Lowe's, Home Depot's, Walmart, Target. And then you can get, there's two different variations of heat sources. One is a heat lamp. And then the other is like a heat pad. I don't recommend the heat lamps simply because if something were to happen on accident where that heat lamp would fall into the bedding, not only could you kill any of the chicks that are in there.
06:06but it has a potential for starting a fire very, very easily. Yeah. Um, so I recommend the heat pads and you can get those at stores like tractor supply, you can get them online on Amazon, a lot of other places that sell poultry products. So for, you know, 15, 20 bucks, you can get the, um, the tote for another 20, 30 bucks, you can get the heating pad. Um, and then for bedding for the first.
06:36two weeks, 10 days to two weeks for Quail. I found that putting something as simple as like paper towels or those blue towels that you can get at places like AutoZone for shop towels, putting those down, because if you don't put anything down, what can happen is the chicks can get what's called splay leg and that's where their legs kind of split and you can spend money to buy devices to help them with that.
07:05It just depends on what's the purpose that you're raising these chicks for, for yourself. Just to have just a few. Did you want to get into it as a business? There's a lot of things that go into first. I guess that's the very first step. Okay. Very first step is why? Why do you want to get into raising an animal? For one. Then two is do you have the time and the resources? Quail can pretty much take care of themselves.
07:33They're very hardy birds in the winter. So if your long-term goal is to move them outside, you can do that. Um, coturnix quail have been bred over for thousands of years to be domesticated. So they're not great, um, brooders. So you, you want to eat the eggs or do you want to hatch them? Uh, but they're not going to sit on the eggs like a chicken would. Um, and if you wanted to.
08:03raised down for meat. I would recommend like some of the jumbo breeds and with Coturnix quail, there's really not a different breed of Coturnix quail. There's just different colors and that's almost limitless on the types of colors, but the jumbo breed is going to be good for egg laying and it's going to be good for meat. So a good dual purpose bird and Coturnix quail go from hatching
08:31to maturity in 10 weeks. So it's extremely fast. They eat about three cents a day in food. So about a dollar 30 somewhere right around there. Um, from the time they hatch till they're ready to be processed. Um, and then, uh, water, water is extremely important to quail. They have a high body temperature and so they will drink water a lot. So I would go with, um,
08:58Any type of water that you can find on even Amazon or anywhere. Um, so people use mason jars, um, and then feed. I always start off with a 28 to 30% protein crumble mix, like starter feed. That, uh, is really good for helping them to develop their feathers. Feathers are 80% protein. And so you want to make sure that they, um,
09:26really get as much protein that they're going to need in those early couple weeks. Yep. Okay. So the other thing I really do want some answers on real quick is how how much does a mature quail weigh? A mature quail will average if you're going with just a standard size around eight to ten ounces. Yeah. Once you get over ten. So not even a pound. Correct. Yeah. And then the jumbos
09:54can get anywhere from 12 to 22 ounces. Okay, so here's the big question I have for you. And I promise you I'm not being a smart ass, I'm just playing devil's advocate a little bit. Sure. Why do people raise quail if there's so little? I mean, do they taste really good? Are the eggs really good? Because the eggs are tiny as well, right? Yeah, so the eggs, for one, to start off with those, the eggs have...
10:23a higher protein ounce per ounce than chicken eggs. Um, they chicken eggs or quail eggs are less likely to can contract, uh, salmonella. They have a membrane on them that's a little bit different than the bloom of a chicken's egg. So there's been some research, not a lot, but there's been research out there where quail eggs were less likely.
10:51to get salmonella. So that's a good health thing to do or to take into account. And again, the maturity. So my chickens would take about four to seven months before they start laying eggs. The quail will start laying eggs at eight weeks. Quail eggs are more nutritious than chicken eggs, but they're also a little bit harder to find. And so again, that goes
11:21you know, why would you want to raise quail and it's what do you want to do with them? If you're looking for the meat, the meat is obviously because it's a smaller bird you don't have to cook it as long and so the taste of it, people have asked me does it taste like chicken and the answer is simple, it's no. It tastes like quail, it's a little bit different. Now anytime you are cooking any kind of food
11:48The seasonings that you use are obviously going to make a big difference. But when you're just eating just, um, unseasoned quail and unseasoned chicken, to me, the quail seems almost like a little sweeter than chicken meat. And for people who are allergic to chicken eggs or to chicken, quail is a good alternative because the proteins are a little bit different in quail meat than chicken, and I've had people that have told me that they couldn't eat chicken.
12:17So they tried the quail and they had no problems with it. Of course you would always want to talk with your doctor and healthcare professional first, but that's typically the feedback that I've gotten from people. Okay. And like I said, I really wasn't trying to like poke holes in your, your story. I just, I just don't know. I've never had quail and I've never had quail eggs and I may have to go find somebody who has some and try it.
12:43We thought about raising quail here at our place and we looked into it. And we had so many irons in the fire at the time we decided not to, but one of the big reasons we decided not to is that I kept reading about the fact that quail are very good at killing themselves. So have you, have you had that experience? Okay. So quail, it really depends on the ratio of males to females. It depends on how much space they have, their environment.
13:14If you have too many males in with your hens, it's, they will become aggressive and they will start pecking them. When they're breeding, they will grab them by the back of their neck and they'll, they'll mount them. And sometimes people will think, Oh, well, my quail are harming them. And that's just their breeding, but you can also reduce that. That you're going to get into overbreeding. So what you want to do is anywhere from one.
13:42What the way I do it, I do one male to six hens. And so I don't have a problem with that. When I very first got started and I didn't know how to sex the birds, I was just putting birds in the cage and didn't know that much. So once I learned how to be able to sex the different, um, the men, male from the female one to six is a good ratio for me. The hens don't seem to get overbred. And then the next thing to deal with as far as.
14:11how much space do they have. I use hatching time cages and I believe it's like 12 inches high. I'd have to look up at the dimensions. But you don't want to have too much space in there. If you have too much space, they can become a little territorial. You also don't want to mix different species of quail, such as Bobwhite quail with Coturnix quail.
14:41Because there has been a lot of people that will talk about violence between the two species of quail. But in general, they're not going to attack each other. They're not going to kill each other unless it has something to do with environment or a bad ratio of hens to roosters. Okay. I actually have read about them, like startling and hitting their heads on the top of the
15:11the enclosure and breaking their necks. Does that happen? Absolutely. Again, environment is key. So if you're going to have an aviary that's outside, um, one thing that I've, I've seen people do to help prevent that or to reduce that is they'll hang like palm leaves or things from the top of their aviary because they do get spooked very easily and, um, that has happened where they'll fly up and break their necks.
15:38So the cages that I use are 12 inches high. And so they don't really have that opportunity to jump up and really snap their neck or anything like that. Um, it is possible. You just got to check your environment and make sure that you're preparing it for them. So it's the same as, as, um, taking on any livestock. You need to do your research and figure out number one, why you want to do it. Number two, if you can afford the outlay to get set up to buy the livestock and
16:07the time and the constant expense of feeding the livestock. Those are the things you need to consider. Yes? Yes. Okay, cool. All right. So, um, you also have chickens like, like laying hen chickens. Yes. Yes. So we raise black Jersey giant chickens. Um, the reason why we bought those is, um, I had done some research and found that crows or they resemble crows when predator birds like hawks and things like that are flying by.
16:36And before I had black jersey giants, I did have a problem with the hawks and there's one eagle that's not too far from our property and they would swoop down in particularly the quail because the quail were much smaller. So black jersey giants became our choice for the fact that they're a larger bird. They can get up to 15 pounds right around there and 12 to 15 is pretty
17:06They're great birds, except I might not say that about my rooster. He can be a jerk sometimes. All roosters can be jerks sometimes. Um, but no, they're very cold hearty. The adults, I haven't lost any adults. I did have some juveniles that we lost this year when the weather dropped to negative numbers, but all of the adult hens have done very well. And, uh, they're, they're just a fun breed. We have names for some of them.
17:35based on their behaviors and things like that. So we raise them mainly for egg production, but also once they get to some of their older years where their egg production will slow down, then they're a good dual purpose bird for me. Nice, I have never heard of this bird before. Are their feathers black? Yes. Okay. They do have white Jersey giants, but the black Jersey giants tend to get a little bit bigger.
18:05And so having dual purpose, that's why I chose those as well. I'm going to have to look these birds up because now I'm curious. I want to see what they look like. Um, we just got 12 of the ISA brown chickens playing hens this past weekend. We've had them before. They're very calm. They're not aggressive. They're actually kind of friendly for anyone that doesn't know.
18:28And we're very excited because we had gotten rid of our chickens last fall because we didn't want to feed them through the winter and we weren't going to get any more chickens until like April or May. And then we realized that the eggs at the grocery store are incredibly expensive right now and that's if we can find them. So we decided to get chickens early this year. Yeah. The same thing's going on here in Ohio. Egg prices, somebody just posted they were at the store and they were 8.99.
18:58Um, here in my area, um, what I asked for is $4 a dozen and ours are pasture raised. Um, a lot of times people will go to the store and there's so many selections. Well, this says cage free. This says farm fresh. This says, um, pasture. This says free range. A lot of times people are just not familiar with what all of the labeling actually means. And for ours, ours are pasture raised. Wait, what that means is they have free reign to wander the property.
19:28any grass, bugs, berries, anything out there that's more natural for them to eat. Sometimes I'll even catch my chickens up in the trees. I always try to snap pictures of that. But pasture raised is a much healthier feed for the birds. It's easier on your wallet because you don't have to supplement with feed as much. And then, um,
19:51That is, those are the ones that I see the eggs going for nine, $10 a dozen. I charge $4 a dozen here in my area. And then what I do is I also offer an incentive for my customers that if they return the egg cartons to me and they're undamaged to where I can reuse them, then their next dozen will be $2. And the reason why I do that is because it cuts out the cost of me having, having to repurchase additional cartons.
20:20But yeah, eggs are a hot commodity right now. And it's also been in the news here recently that they are now limiting the number of dozens of eggs that you can purchase. So two dozen per customer. And it's hard for me to even keep up with the chicken egg orders. Oh yeah, I'm sure you're swamped in people. Have you got any eggs? Can I get eggs from you? Yeah. All the time. Yep.
20:49Our chickens that we just got are 20 weeks old right now, 19 weeks right now. So they should be laying in the next week to three weeks because they usually start at 22 weeks this three. And, uh, I'm very excited about this because I have not been baking at all because, you know, baking usually requires eggs and I'm really looking forward to making a chocolate cake in March. Well, I would definitely recommend trying quail eggs in your next baking then.
21:17The reason why, another benefit to quail eggs, they have a higher yoke to white ratio, which that helps with binding of all of the stuff that you use in baking. Um, I have some people that will not use chicken eggs ever again after they tried using our quail eggs for baking. And because of that yoke, being a larger, um, size in ratio to the whites, um, is.
21:44That's why I have so many people that want to buy the quail eggs is for their baking. That's so funny. Cause I have a friend, hi Tracy. She listens to the podcast all the time. She likes it when I call her out. She has ducks and she's told me that ducks are really duck eggs are really good for baking as well. So with ducks, they have a higher, uh, yoke to white ratio.
22:07Well, I'm going to have to trade her some chicken eggs for some duck eggs and try making a cake with duck eggs and see if it makes any difference in how it comes out. So back to Quail for a second because I feel like we're bouncing between chickens and Quail. Does Tractor supply or I don't know what stores you have where you are, but we have a place called Baumgards and they sell chicks in the string time.
22:31Would Tractor Supply sell quail or is there not a place where you can actually go during chick days to get quail babies? I had checked with Tractor Supply a few times and even offered to sell quail chicks there. That is a corporate decision and I have not seen quail offered at any Tractor Supplies here in Ohio. Okay. Generally you have to go to breeders and the thing with quail, you really want to make sure that you're finding a good quality breeder.
23:01Yeah. I got started simply by going to the fair and I found some, that's how I got started, which was an interesting story because I went to get a rabbit and come home with no rabbit and six quail. And finding a reputable dealer for quail is, is key.
23:24I don't think I know of any stores there. McMurray Hatchery might be one place where you can buy them. That people might be more familiar with. But there is a huge Quail community out there. There's even a Quail University that offers a course for people that are wanting to get into Quail. Okay. And then there's a here in Ohio.
23:50down in the Miami's Berg area where I was talking about that quail con is a farm called my Shire farm and they have a lot of different breeds there. If anybody's ever interested, they could send me an email through our website and I can offer a lot of breeders. I myself have not sold eggs to where or chicks where I've shipped. I do have a lot of customers that will come here to the farm and
24:20or young chicks. But I don't like to ship simply because quail can be, they're not as hardy in shipping live chicks as you would chickens. So buying hatching eggs, which then you have to have an incubator. So, again, knowing what you want to begin with. If you do want to find quail chicks, if anybody wants to email me also,
24:49They can contact me and I can get them in contact with a breeder that's a trusted breeder Who has the time and experience and the knowledge of raising quail? That's going to be closer to them or as close as possible I'm connected with a group of farmers in almost every single state in Canada We really are a really cool knit group of people. I believe you I think you're very cool
25:17So the one thing I do, I do want to say, because I don't want people to think that it's just as simple as going out and buying a bin and throwing some birds in it and feeding them because it's not, you have to take care of them. Right now, I feel like there's a lot of people in the United States who are like, we should just get like four chickens and have our own eggs and that would be cheaper. And what I want to say is if you don't, if you're not already set up to get chickens,
25:46You know, if you already have a coop and the watering apparatus and the feed and everything, and all you have to do is go get the chickens and put them in the coop, you're not going to save yourself any money right away on getting chickens. You might save yourself some money on eggs if you started quail because it sounds like it's a lot less expensive to get started. It is. I would say your first.
26:14egg, even as a, if you get into quail, your first egg is probably going to be about a two or $300 egg. Right. Because the birds are going to cost money. You do need a coop that's appropriate and that can cost anywhere. The tote and the heating lamps, that's just the basics just to get started with quail. One thing that you have to keep in mind is quail grow very, very fast. Within two weeks, they can start flying around your house.
26:44Does this set up in your house? Yeah, and So you do want to get a cage and there's so many different designs and everything out there on YouTube I Started out with a rabbit hutch But you definitely are gonna want to have a cage and that's why I always say any animal that you're gonna raise It's always best to do your research online first. There's a lot of good YouTube videos out there
27:14It's less space. You can keep, um, about a thousand birds in, um, a small garage if you wanted to. Um, because a lot of the cages, uh, can hold anywhere from 20 to 30 birds each. And if you have tiered, um, it's very easy to have a hundred birds and in a, a two foot by.
27:44even four foot space or six foot space. So that's one thing to consider is that quail do not take up as much space as chickens. And then you do wanna make sure that you're prepared ahead of time. You can't just go out and buy some chickens or quail and come home and think, oh, well, this is gonna be really simple. He said just to get a tote. Well, that's only gonna last you a couple of weeks. Now you need the cage. Yeah.
28:10And you can build them yourself. It's very simple and it can be fun. Something you do with the family and the kids is to build a little coop for them. Another thing with quail, um, they do poop a lot, way, way, way more than chickens. So what you can do with that is we put it in a compost, um, pile, and then we'll throw it in our garden the following year. Um, one other thing I'm getting into.
28:39I just bought these about two weeks ago, is mealworms. Because I'm always trying to find ways to save money. And you can buy some mealworms for 15 bucks or a kit for 50 bucks. And they will lay hundreds and thousands of eggs and just keep this cycle going. And the quail, they love the mealworms. So do chickens. Yeah. And it's high in protein. And so I'm starting off small. I've got about.
29:0810,000 mealworms and I'm gonna see how that goes. If it saves me money, I'm all for it. Yes and the other thing is that I'm assuming you can't let the quail free range like you can chickens because they'll just take off. Yes. Yeah. And they can't survive on their own because they're the Coturnix quail, like I said, they've been domesticated. They can't hatch eggs on, they'll lay the eggs but they can't hatch them on their own.
29:37and they cannot fly as far away as like the Bobwhite quail. Their wing structure is different than Bobwhites and it's not meant for them to be flyers. So they can just get away from a short distance but the coyotes, cats, things like that will just, they won't last long and that's kind of cool. Yep, exactly. And I was gonna ask you back 20 minutes ago when we were talking about this and I forgot.
30:05Do quail have to have a rooster to lay eggs or are they like chickens and they'll just lay eggs without the rooster? They're just like chickens. They will lay eggs without a rooster. My quail will lay one egg every single day pretty consistently. The big thing with them is if you're going to be raising them inside either a barn or something like that is in the winter months, they need about 15 hours of light in order to be efficient egg layers.
30:34And so in the winter times when the sun goes down sooner, I will use LED lights to help with the production. But they'll lay an egg a day and they're really good at producing eggs. And how long do quail live? About six years. And do they lay that entire six years? Yes, as they get a little bit older, it can slow down. My quail, none of my quail
31:05are really older than six months because I do use them as a dual purpose. Yep. Um, so about six to eight months is the longest any of my quail live. Um, I don't raise them as pets and I have nothing against people who do. Again, they can be great pets. Some people will breed specifically for, um, their, can't think of the word right now, but their behaviors, so you can't breed them per or for their behaviors. There's a.
31:34a farm in Tennessee, I think, Kentucky or Tennessee, called Thieving Otter Farms. And the lady there, she will breed them for their temperament and they can be very docile. But no matter how you breed them, they can still be very, very flighty and very scared. But you can breed for more docile birds. If I was that tiny a bird, I would be afraid of everything too. Oh yes.
32:04They're so fragile. They're so small. Okay. I had a thought while you were talking and now I have to remember it because I got sidetracked by seeing this little bitty bird in my head. Yeah. I don't remember what I was going to ask you. It's gone. I do this all the time. Usually it's 20 minutes in today. It's 32 minutes in. And on that note, I try to keep this half an hour. So I'm going to let you go, Aaron, but thank you for all the information today. That was fantastic. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, if anybody wanted to contact me, you can.
32:34throw the website in there. It's just Quazy Quail Farm. And Quazy is Q-W-A-Z-Y QuailFarm.com. And that's our website and people can reach out and leave me messages on there. And I usually get back to people within 24 hours. And I apologize. The website is not the fanciest. I'm not a big web designer or anything like that, but they can contact me there with any questions.
33:02Awesome. And I will put that in the show notes when this comes up. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Aaron. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Sustainable Driftless, Inc.

Today I'm talking with Julia at Sustainable Driftless, Inc. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like information regarding the documentaries mentioned, click here. 
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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 Julia at Sustainable Driftless Incorporated. I think it is Inc., so incorporated. Good morning, Julia. How are you? I am good. I'm good. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm so happy to have you on because I...
00:28I have been to the Driftless area in Wisconsin once and it's gorgeous, but I don't know all the history and the stories behind it. So I'm very excited to talk to you. You're in La Crosse, Wisconsin? I would say La Crosse kind of geographically might be roughly the center of the Driftless region. I'm actually in the, I call it the suburbs of a very rural area. It's where I live on an 80 acre.
00:58Homestead. Ooh. But I travel all over the Driftless region. Today I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. And we just do a whole lot of stuff out there in the Driftless. Okay. Well, first off, can you tell me what your part in the organization is and what the organization is? Okay. Let's see.
01:26About eight years ago, I collaborated with somebody else that I had been working with on another not-for-profit. These two guys have produced mysteries of the driftless through the Mississippi Valley Conservancy, Tim Jacobson and George Howe. And the three of us got together and we formed Sustainable Driftless with the purpose of kind of shining a light on the area
01:55basic idea is that if you love something, you'll treat it well. So what we're, our attempt was and is to get people to love the driftless region, to see what is around them. There are lots of people that have lived here their entire lives and don't necessarily recognize how precious and fragile and gorgeous it is. I think you have to go outside the region to recognize how special it is sometimes.
02:25But we're shining a light on that. We produced Decoding the Driftless six years ago, which won some Emmys and worldwide accolades. And I think it's one of the number one documentaries that is shown on public television throughout the nation. And what that has done is it kind of...
02:51gets people kind of into what this special place is all about. So we've continued on with that, and we had a terrible unexpected loss of George Howe about a year ago in a farming accident. And my role as one of the original founders and vice president, and now also is to find new ways to...
03:16shine the light on the area and to uplift other organizations that are in this area that do work on sustainability and environmental and wise and smart development of the area, water quality issues, soil issues. We just want to get all those individual groups working, not necessarily working together, but aware of one another and having the general public be aware of everybody because
03:46It's a really exciting time and it's a really exciting story to see this kind of efforts for biodiversity and home setting and gardening and all kinds of good stuff. Okay, that helps. Thank you. So for those who are listening that don't know about the driftless area, can you explain what it is?
04:12The driftless area is a very unique part of the Midwest. And what it is, is over the two last ice ages, I think the last one was 10,000 years ago, there was no glacier drift as things melted. There was no glacier scraping this area. So you're not going to find drift from...
04:41Far away.
04:44that has landed in this area because the glaciers went around both times. And it's kind of like an amoeba-shaped island that encompasses 32 counties in Wisconsin, southwest Wisconsin, western Wisconsin, a bit of Minnesota, southeast Minnesota, and northeast Iowa, and a little tiny bit of Illinois. And it has karst geology, which makes it very interesting.
05:15It has what geology? Karst geology, which is kind of limestone. It's like the Swiss cheese of rocks. So the rain and the water that, and this was once underwater as everything melted, but the rain and the water that falls on the hills and at this area and the valley percolates through kind of a
05:40Swiss cheese, I would say, imaginary rock system. So the water kind of goes through it and absorbs all those minerals and ends up in a very abundant water supply in the area. Okay, thank you. I just missed the word and I didn't understand what you said. Okay, so one of the things that I either understand or misunderstand about the driftless area and people who grow food
06:09is that you're not supposed to use man-made herbicides or pesticides or fertilizers. Is that true or is that just something that I somehow got stuck in my brain? I think it's not necessarily a law, but it is kind of a momentum of the people that live here.
06:37Now, for instance, you've probably have seen on your grocery shelves the wonderful company Organic Valley. Yes. And those products, that group was formed in the late 70s, a bunch of hippie organic farmers. And they have changed the world, I think, when it comes to getting people to understand the value of organics. And that whole culture, I came to the area.
07:06gosh, 25 years ago. So I'm a newbie. But when I came to the area, I began to learn all about this. And about 15 years ago, I was involved in disaster recovery, I was the development, redevelopment and disaster coordinator after these gigantic floods that were happening to this small town. And I got to know the population and it is a very interesting mix
07:36kind of a hippie culture from the 70s, which really got that organic aspect going. A lot of Amish farmers, which also is very natural, and kind of the old school farmers, dairy farmers that, you know, do a great job and are learning along with everybody else. But just because of the geology and just because of the precious nature of this land, it was a natural to have that kind of...
08:04organic sensibility outgrowth in this area and it's just getting larger and larger all the time. Awesome because I am big believer in not using any of the man-made stuff if we can avoid it here in our our little garden at our place in Minnesota. And yeah, instead of using man-made fertilizer, we use chicken poop from chicken coop from our chickens. And lady, those are the best things that we pull out of our garden when we use the chicken poop. It's great.
08:34Right, right. Another good fertilizer is trout poop. Yep.
08:43Well, it is really great fertilizer. And it is best if you can create that cycle. The first organization that I was involved in was Clearwater Farm, and it still is going. That's over 25 years old. But that was all about getting kids connected to the land and understanding where the food comes from and having free range chickens and having compost.
09:12And we did the compost awards because that's when you take something that's kind of messy and icky and you turn it into something great. And I think composting is just the best way to go. It just improves soil health and that improves your yields and does no harm in the process. Exactly. You're working with nature, not against her. And that's really important.
09:38Had I realized how many times I was going to hear and say the word compost and how many times I was going to hear and say the word poop on this podcast when I started over a year ago, I might have rethought my life choice because it's so funny to me that I'm saying poop in a public forum. It's very funny. I know. There's other ways of saying it, but I think poop is kind of an acceptable friendly way. I think it's a great word.
10:05to use because everybody poops and everybody knows what it is. So right, right. And there's even a book for kids called everybody poops. So I think we're okay. I think it's fine. Yeah. All right. So the documentaries that you were talking about, how can people watch those if they don't have access to public television on their TV sets? You can access it through Vimeo. V-I-M-E-O.
10:34and you'll be able to download. We also have another film coming out, and it's just a short film. I think it's about 30 minutes long, and that's coming out in the next couple months. So there'll be a lot of push for people to see that as well. Again, you see it, you love it, you're more likely to protect it. And that includes how you manage your homestead, how you manage your household.
11:02things that you feel are important policy wise, where you buy your food, if you buy your food, if you have a victory garden, which I love that. And those encompass chickens too. So yeah, that film will be coming out as well and will be able to be downloaded. I think the launch is intended to be this May. Okay, awesome. Cause I will figure out how to put that in the show notes so people can find what you've been working on.
11:31And, uh, speaking of Victory Gardens, we just got our, our reas- most recent batch of Victory chickens this past weekend. We had gotten rid of our old chickens back in the fall because they were really getting old and lazy and not giving us very many eggs and we didn't want to feed them through the winter. Yeah. And we weren't going to replace them until May. And then my husband was kind of making noises that he was very unhappy with the cost of eggs at the store if he could find them.
11:59And I said, let me get hold of our chicken dealer as I refer to her, she's a friend. And I said, do you have any laying hens for sale? And she said, we do. How many do you want? And I was like, well, I'd love 200, but we really are interested in his like 12. And she's like, I got you covered. I was like, okay, good. So we have brand new laying hens. Like they're not even laying yet. They'll be laying mid-March. That was awesome. So we're very excited to have new chickens again.
12:29because we go through this about every four or five years. We get it. Yeah, yeah. And the thing about the whole chicken and egg issues these days, again, we're getting into bird flu and huge flocks and increased prices and all that kind of stuff. And you don't have to have even 12 chickens to have a great supply of eggs and a really enjoyable way of accessing and connecting with.
12:58nature in the land around you. I love going out to the garden and just clipping herbs for dinner. It's such a simple little thing or that perfect tomato or my greens or whatever. And having just a few chickens of your own that are well cared for and get that, reap those benefits I think is great. And then you also get chicken poop which is nice.
13:25Yes, exactly. And the reason I jokingly said 200 is because we live in an area where people would want to buy eggs from us. And so if we had 200 chickens, we could actually be making some money from the chickens. But that would be a lot of work and that would be a lot of chicken food. I think it would actually like bury our garden. So we're not going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is balanced, right? Yeah, exactly.
13:52And I love that you mentioned clipping herbs from your garden because right now it is like, I don't know if it's even warmed up enough to mention the number, but at 721 this morning it was minus 21 degrees here. Yeah. And I don't have any herbs in the herb garden right now under the snow because number one, there is no snow where I live. We have like a dusting maybe. And we ripped out our herb garden last year because my husband wanted to start over.
14:22So there's nothing out there. But many years ago, when we lived in town, I had a small herb garden and it had snowed enough that there was a good foot and a half of snow out there. And it was probably February, probably right about now. It was really sunny out and the edges of the snow were starting to melt where my herb garden was and I really wanted fresh time.
14:46And I said to my husband, I said, can you duck out while I'm getting this ready and see if there's any green time under the snow? And he looked at me like I was insane. And I said, honey, I said, time is a cold weather herb. I said it will continue to grow under the snow if the conditions are right. And he was like, okay, I'll go look. And he came in with like four sprigs of bright green yummy smelling thyme. And I teared up. I was just like, oh, thank God it was there. I don't have to.
15:15I don't have to eat crow on this and oh, it smells so good in February. So I totally get what you're saying about being able to go out and get herbs from your garden that you grew. Yeah, yeah. We also, in our situation, we also have a modest, not a large at all, greenhouse. And I always plant tomatoes in the greenhouse and I plant them outside. And the ones that I love about the greenhouse is I can get, I'll have fresh tomatoes.
15:44Thanksgiving. That's always the goal. That I still have tomatoes by Thanksgiving. And then it just gives you those extra months in the season if you can get it started. So I'm hoping to play out there, which is it's warmer inside there and get it started with some cold weather plans right now. And those tomatoes just keep coming up and it's always so great. But it's funny to me that,
16:13preserving food and everything. I have not been good at that. I've been good at freezing it, which is kind of silly. I should be canning. But it's just the ability to go out there and just grab some fresh stuff that you grew yourself out of pots or your garden bed or your little greenhouse or whatever. It feels really, I don't know, nurturing for your body and soul. I think it's a good thing, really, really good thing.
16:44I am referring now to the Victory Garden because I do feel that it's a way to push back and have some hope and feel, I don't know, more joy in this world. It's just to reconnect. We have been disconnected for a really long time and I think it's a good thing. Yes. And right now, especially in February in a northern tier state, anything that can make you feel magical and nurtured and content is a good thing.
17:14Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. For me, all this growing things, it doesn't matter whether it's animals or produce or flowers or whatever. I understand that it's nature. I get it. It's what has always happened because nature abhors a vacuum. If you yank everything out, she's going to put something else where you yank the stuff out. But it's also just this very magical, whimsical
17:44fantastical thing that you put a seed in the ground, you put dirt over it, you water it, and something beautiful comes out of it. It's so magical to me. And you're right, if you love something, you will take care of it. Well, we love our plants, we love our cats, we love our dog, we love our chickens, now that we have them again. And wonderful things happen here at our little homestead every summer. It's really good.
18:15I've lately for me one of the I just want to ask you a quick question. Um, I just read an article and I think raccoons are fascinating creatures and they're so cute and they are so destructive and every once in a while we'll have a raccoon party that will, you know, just rip apart things for the heck of it. And it's like, why are you guys doing this? You know, you've got, you've got 80 acres to play in. What the heck.
18:42And it's not even they're eating anything. It's not like they're hungry. They're just coming to mess with you. And then I read an article that they're more prevalent in the city. Do you have a raccoon problem, even with three acres? We have seen one raccoon way out in the cornfield since we moved here just over four years ago. Wow. But we also don't have anything for them to eat.
19:12The cats eat all the cat food that we give them in the morning by night, so there's no cat food for the raccoons to get into. We have a shed that all the feed is in, but it is locked up tight. No animals can get in there. I think mice can get in there, but other than that, a raccoon is not getting in the feed shed. We also live in the middle of a big old cornfield that surrounds us and a cornfield across the street from us.
19:39And if it isn't corn, it's soybeans, and if it isn't soybeans, it's some other green plant. So there's not a whole lot of food resources for raccoons here. Right, right. But the reason they like the city is because all of the trash cans and the dumpsters are there and they can climb up. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. So that's probably part of it. Yeah. Yep, that's part of it. So what do you do with your 80 acres?
20:08Um, my partner who I've been with for 15 years originally came to the area in the 70s. And um, I have to take a sip of water just a moment.
20:24And at the time they grew tobacco. They were actually farmers and there was a big tobacco area at the time. But over time farming is not the priority. We've got huge wildflower areas, ponds. And he originally, he started a little brewery for a bit.
20:54and then got out of that. And now what we've done is kind of in my advocacy work, we looked into bottling our water only in glass with a limited amount kind of trying to lead the way that that's the way it should be done. Like a craft harvesting with limitations that is based on like a.
21:20of rainfall that falls on the area because we don't want to hurt anything. And we also preserve the water that does come down and comes through very often based on how the water is managed. It just goes through the land too quickly and that destroys the soil. So we're working on harvesting but we're also working on
21:45soil and water management and we're also working on the limitations and trying to put that out there. The name of the brand is Driftless Fine Water and it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little company. And we've won four international awards for our water and that's the water management that my partner Jack has been working on for the last 40 some years. And there are no chemicals in the area, there's nothing in that water.
22:11And we feel that that's our harvest. We've got gardens and some horses. And just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. So that's my thing is to get away from. I want the world to get away from single use plastics. I want the world to get away from even
22:38wanting bottled water because the water supplies that we all have are so good. That's not necessarily the case even locally, depending on how the land has been managed. But in our case, we've been blessed with that and we're sharing it. So. Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. When you mentioned single-use plastics, when anyone mentions single-use plastics to me,
23:05It reminds me of when my husband used to take his lunch to work from the leftovers from dinner the night before because he was very cool with that. He didn't want to go buy a burger at McDonald's. He wanted the good stuff. He would actually take our silverware with him in his lunch box. It wasn't lunch box. It was a soft sided lunch pail. He had a Ziploc bag that he would put the silverware in. That's a single use plastic too, but it's not plastic silverware.
23:35And he would take real silverware from the house in that bag and then put silverware back in the bag when he's done with it, bring it home and just wash the silverware with the dishes and take it with him again the next day. And one time- That's just so sane. It's so reasonable. Yeah. And one time I was like, it's so great that you're not, we don't buy plastic utensils. And he was like, well, I'm using the plastic bag.
24:04put the silverware in and I'm like, okay, but at least we're trying, you know? Right. And I think that's the thing is that we can get a little too hard on ourselves for stuff. But we also forget that everything you do can make a difference. And if there's a lot of people doing that good thing, good stuff will happen. You know, it made sense to have plastic.
24:31well, it doesn't make sense to me at all. I think bamboo is even a better choice. But re just washing your stuff and all you've had to do is you bring it back and forth. That's it. And what a great choice that is. And the same thing for me. I mean, I travel so much and I got in this habit and I think it affected, it did affect my health. And that also is kind of a driver of why I want to have, I want to be part of the solution of saying yes.
24:59all natural water, no chemicals added, nothing is in there, nothing taken away. Yeah. This is the good stuff. This is what it, this is what we should aspire to. This is what we want to be able to have. But the thing is, I was in this habit where it was like, okay, I'm, I'm gassing up and I'm going to the next spot and I'm stopping at my favorite quick trip. And I've been to a lot of quick trips and they are great stores, but I don't need to be buying.
25:28plastic bottle of water and if you really pay attention you can start to taste it and then these forever chemicals are in our systems and they're they're everywhere not at our place luckily, but yeah, it's We've done this to ourselves and we can back out of it by just making just simple easy choices and there's some days You need that plastic bag and there's some days that there's no other solution except for to you know purchase this or that that
25:57is in plastic, but just that mindfulness of, I just want to reduce, even by a bit to start, all this packaging. I mean, I actually feel sick when I see there's so much packaging and there seems to be more packaging and less food within that packaging. It's like, we don't have to do it this way. We can do better. And we don't have to feel guilty that we can't be perfect because nobody can be perfect.
26:25There's so many great options these days to make it easier to do better for all of us and the environment. For sure. And my theory on this whole thing that I was talking about is that at least he was eating the food that was leftover from the night before that I had cooked from scratch so it was good for him. And that wasn't ending up in the trash can.
26:48And he wasn't buying, you know, a double cheeseburger and fries and a soft drink at a fast food place and all that packaging was ending up in the trash too. Right. So I think I won the debate on whether we were being sustainable or not that day because I pointed that out to him and he was like, oh yeah, I suppose one small plastic bag is better than all the packaging from the fast food place. And I was like, yes. And the fact that you're not going to have a heart attack anytime soon is probably a win too.
27:19And you're going to be happier because good food helps us in so many subtle ways. Um, and bad food pulls us down. So lucky him to have you doing that. That is, that's a wonderful thing. That is a great thing. Well, it's a habit because we had four kids, we had to feed on one income. So it was a lot of cooking from scratch going on in my household when they were growing up and.
27:48I still do it because I really like to cook. It's just something I always do. But there are so many ways to be sustainable and it always feels like it comes back to food and maybe it does. Maybe that is the root of sustainability. I don't know. But... I think it's... Yeah. I think it's food and biodiversity. Having a small yard.
28:16that's full of pollinator supporting plants and you're not having to mow it. One, an easy solution as you go larger and maybe you're a manager of larger pieces of land like three acres or 40 acres or 80 acres, there's more that you can do to support not just what's on your land, but your whole area. And the more people that do it, the more sustainable things can be.
28:45And then my background, take it a little bit further, you've got the food systems and you've got land management and you've got pollinators and you've got water and soil. But then what happens when we want to grow our small cities or land that is, would be ideal to have housing on it. There's all kinds of blockages typically in policy and I know this because my career has been in design and community development.
29:15that prevents the ultimate neighborhoods and communities. And it could be something as much as the zoning prohibits a chicken, or there is no provision for trails, or there is no provision for green space. And then the yards are what the yards are, and you must mow. There's just so much that can get in the way
29:43If we just stick with the same way we've been doing things, they can get in the way with sustainability and our choices and the buildings we build and how big they are and what the materials we use. There's lots of choices that can alter how something goes. I was involved in a neighborhood many years ago and what we did is we oriented the housing sites so that the potential for solar on the roof could occur.
30:11And then in the legal documents, it wasn't something that you couldn't have. And you could have solar if you wanted to. And if you built it, you built it with a chase that would allow you to, with a kind of an easy plug-in, things could, things would work for you. And those kind of forethought ideas do drive us to sustainability because not everybody can have a homestead, but maybe they can have a healthier.
30:41community neighborhood that is being built. And trees are planted and we're insisting that, everybody plants three trees. I was involved in that for quite a while. And that makes the difference. That makes the difference in our water quality, our soil health, our enjoyment of our communities. So there's a lot of choices that can be made by the individual to make a huge difference, I guess is my.
31:10summary statement. Oh, absolutely. And I, okay, I don't know how it's going to be received, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Um, where I used to live, there were a lot of new developments going up of, you know, the McMansions or the townhouse or whatever. It was, it was a minor part of our decision making to not live in that area anymore. And, uh,
31:35A lot of the fields that I had gotten used to seeing in the 20 years that we lived there were going away to these developments. I was like, if I was going to build a development in my wildest dreams, I'm not into it at all, but I was just thinking about it. I was like, if I was going to build a development, I would want to make sure there were trees just like you. I would want to make sure there was a place for the kids to play that wasn't just a plastic
32:05I don't know, silicone or whatever. Exactly. And I would want to make sure there was a place that was open for people to put in little gardens because that's important to me. And I was like, but people are people. If you made room for gardens, people would like be dumb and fight over the spaces or they would be mean and destroy the plants or whatever, because people are people. I want to have hope that.
32:33If there was a place like I'm talking about and there was space for gardens, people would like have pretty gardens and share their produce and talk and visit and learn things. But I went to high school. I know how people can be. Yeah. I have a, can I tell you a quick story? Yes. Okay. I moved to Wisconsin almost 30 years ago. And I moved into what I thought was one of the best.
33:02suburban neighborhoods in this small town in Alaska. And we were right up against two farmsteads, two farmsteads with older gentlemen, and the one was going to sell it across the street and the one next to us, he needed to sell it for a variety of reasons. And the developer had an option. And I went to the developer and I said, just like you just said.
33:29You know, we need to have trees, and we could do this, and there needs to be a central place, and why can't we have that barnstead in the middle? And he said, for five bucks, I'll give you five years, see if you can make it work. Yeah. And in the meantime, he said, write up what you think could work in terms of how this neighborhood gets managed. You know, you can do better. You can do better than just planting large and small vinyl boxes. We can do better here.
33:59And I worked with this developer for, I think it's about 13 years. We worked on about five different neighborhoods. The Clearwater Farm was developed and it had a place for people to have their little garden spaces. And it had the animals and it had programming and just people getting connections and we created the trail system. And it's like, we built it.
34:27And at first he said, this will never fly. We are not going to be able to sell these expensive lots that are right next to where roosters are going to be crowing. And the response was, yes, we can. And the results were those were the most desirable lots. And the developer made more money by allowing this to happen than if he would have done his original plan. So it can work. It can happen. Yeah, it can happen.
34:57It can happen and the people that are involved in the farm, even though they don't have chickens in their bed, their own individual backyards, they are part of a larger community that has been a neighborhood that has been created. That in exchange for their going over there once a week to do their shift of, you know, shoveling and cleaning and caring and water hauling and all that good stuff in exchange, they get those eggs. So. I love it.
35:27That's, I feel, should be the future as we develop, is to provide for that space for those kids to understand where the beans are coming from and, you know, roosters can be annoying and stuff like that. And the eggs come from chickens and milk comes from cows, yes. Right, right. I am so glad you told that story because when I was thinking about this development in my head.
35:55you know, my dream development building practice. That's how I would have done it. And I was like, it would never work. So now I know it could work if that was what I was going to do. Oh, it can definitely work. Uh, that, that farm, that small little farm, which is only three acres. And it is surrounded by, um, wetlands and then bluffs nearby where you can kind of walk up a trail to the top where the dairy cows used to go and sun themselves.
36:23But it's a tiny little space. And I'm not saying it's huge in production, but what I am saying is it gets people connected and appreciate what our farmers do, and maybe even grows a few, grows some skill sets for some kids and some families, but thousands and thousands of people have benefited from this little effort. And that developer had the sense to say, okay, we'll give it a try. And it worked out to be a win-win for everybody.
36:52over the years. So I just feel that, okay, we proved that. Let's keep going. That is phenomenal, Julia. I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. All right. So ma'am, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're at 36 minutes. So I'm going to let you go, but thank you for coming to talk to me today. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for inviting me. This has been fun. All right. Have a great day, Julia. You too.
 

Erin Anderson Coaching - How to handle the unknown

Today I'm talking with Erin at the Erin Anderson Coaching. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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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 Erin at Erin Anderson Coaching. Good morning, Erin. How are you? I'm great. How are you, Mary? I'm good. It's a really bright sunny day here in Minnesota, but it is cold. It's really cold here.
00:26Yeah, it is in Utah. It's not bright sunny either. We've got the clouds, the cold, and the uncomfortable. We had that yesterday. Today it's just nice to see the sun pouring through my window because yesterday was just gray and I'm not even sure we got above zero. If we did, it wasn't by much. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. That's kind of where we're at right now. But you live in one of the most beautiful states in the whole 50 of them.
00:54I love Utah, but you know, I've been to Minnesota too, and I've been to Montana and a lot of the 50, like the western half of the 50 states I should say. There's just beauty all over. There really is. Yes, I agree. I agree. I have done a lot of road trips between Minnesota and Maine over my last 20 years. And I grew up in Maine, so my parents and my family still live there. But
01:20Yeah, it's always a joy for me to do a road trip from here to there because it's always just so pretty. And I don't like flying, so if I'm going to travel, it's going to be by car. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. I get that. Okay. So, Erin is a coach, a life coach, I guess is what I would say. Life and business. Yeah. And that might seem weird for a podcast, I mean a Homestead podcast, but it's really not.
01:46Because there's a lot going on in the world that Erin might be able to help us understand and work through it herself. So Erin, tell me about yourself and what you do. Yeah, so let me tell you this much. I'm a homesteader myself, so there's that. We have 28 chickens. We built them literally a chicken Taj Mahal out in our yard. And so, you know, we gather our own eggs. We have family that raises dairy cows. And so,
02:15you know, we can get our own dairy and things like that. So like we totally, totally understand like the homesteading thing. But what I love to do, um, is I love helping women, especially women, entrepreneurs heal from residual trauma. Uh, because you know, there's, there's so many things that women can do, uh, especially in the homesteading community, like we're, they're creators.
02:44those women are massive creators in the homesteading community. And when we're being plagued with residual trauma, often what I see happening is we're not able to live our best life. We're not able to create the things that we want to create or even, you know, do the things that we want to do because we're always plagued with this. But what if, you know what I mean?
03:14And so the thing that I love to do is I really love to help women heal those things. So that way they can turn around and they can create everything that they want to create with confidence, knowing it's going to work out, like knowing it's going to work out, not wondering. And believing in themselves because there's something beautiful about a woman.
03:43who is really in that creative energy. Hmm. Absolutely. I agree. And the thing that's hard about living in the, the after effects of trauma is that you cannot move forward and extend the energy you're extending on feeling bad into doing something good. Yeah. Yes. It's, it's really hard. And
04:10The reason I wanted to chat with you is because right now, there's a lot going on that is making people feel kind of anxious. And one of the things that's going on is people who have homesteads are kind of concerned about their funding. People have farms or homesteads or ranches because a lot of funding comes from the government and there's some stuff going on in the government that people are worried about. They're not gonna get funding to do what they're usually supposed to do. So,
04:38How do you handle that as the person who is anxious about your future? So number one, you've got to get really close with your money story, right? When you are dealing with the anxiety of, oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm going to have that funding. I don't know if I'm going to have this. And you're feeling that there's a reason. And again, like it's.
05:06probably has something to do with some type of trauma. There's several different types of trauma. But I would guess that if you're dealing with a lot of money trauma or these fears around money, you're probably dealing with something in childhood, like some sort of childhood or developmental trauma, or it can also be a societal trauma. So if you think about like things happening
05:36in your community, things happening in your world view, right? And it can also be a combination of both, and most likely it is. So just simply understanding, what are the constant stories being given around you? Now, in the US of A right now, and this is where a lot of people love to do the homesteading, right? We do have a really big story out there about money.
06:05and how money is scary, money is not showing up. We're always hearing about the low economy or scary, scary, scary, scary things, right? Yeah. Now, I wanna say that it's not like those things aren't real, okay? But our challenge is not always just to live in the fear, but it's actually to check out of the fear, right?
06:34And you need to understand first and foremost, what it is you want to create. So we're hearing, okay, I want to create this homestead. Well, what does that homestead look like? What are the funds you're going to need to do that? But the real thing that I want to hone in here is what stops us is the belief that you can't create that money, that you have to rely on the government, that you have to rely.
07:04on someone else to bring that money in. And the truth of the matter is you don't. I mean, if you take a look at Mary right now, and I have no idea what you're earning every year or even every month, Mary, but- We'll just use me as an example, yes. Yes, we're just gonna use you as an example. But you have a passion about homesteading, right? This is why you started your podcast. Absolutely, yes. Right? And-
07:33people are listening, right? And when you get people listening, that's called a lead, that's called somebody that's a follower, right? When you're getting leads, when you're getting followers, that's a type of relationship. And it's from those types of relationships that we create cash influx. And it's usually a fairly consistent type of cash influx if we are consistently making great offers.
08:02Right? So what I'm saying here is if you're a homesteader, well guess what? You are probably somebody in a great big huge group of people that has information that that entire group needs. If we're sitting here talking about like the economy,
08:29going bust if we're talking about all this fear well guess who the people are gonna want to listen to? Halmsteders. Uh-huh yes absolutely keep talking. Yeah right because what are they asking for? They're asking for self sustainability right? You guys have something valuable to offer.
08:58So the question isn't about whether or not, you know, you guys can create the money with the government or all of the things happening with with the homesteaders, right? The question is, is what connections, what relationships do you need to create and how can you serve them? Right. Okay, that brings up.
09:26Now the second piece of this, okay, you need to ask yourself, does that light you up? Does that excite you? If not, okay, that might not be your thing. So what is it that does light you up? What is it that excites you? What gets you happy? Like obviously, like I'm sitting here, I have just talked now for the last six minutes straight about creating money, healing your stories,
09:56I'm passionate about this stuff. Guess what happens because I'm passionate. People love what I have to say. They connect to that passion. It's a trust building exercise for them. People buy from people that are excited about what they have to offer. They buy from people that are well versed in what they have to offer. It creates trust, right?
10:25And so we're told to like people buy from those they know they like and they trust and that they trust right and so when again we find that piece that we really really love so like maybe your thing is chickens right and you were really good at raising chickens you're really good at making sure that flock is just the happiest maybe they're out in the barnyard right now doing some sort of tap dance for you right like
10:55You got that piece down. Well, how many people are starting their own flocks right now, right? How many people want this type of information? If you guys listen to Revolution, it's. It's a podcast all about like how to connect with your rooster. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
11:24Got it. Revolution revolution. Right. Yep. Because a lot of people are out there. They're like, I don't know how to deal with this rooster. He's super aggressive. He's he's like trying to kill me every time I walk outside. And. There's a lot of misinformation. Well, guess what? These homesteaders figured this out, and they also figured out how to connect with their roosters. So what did they do? They created a podcast. They created a course.
11:54And they're making really, really good money. They are very well known. These people's, I think it's like Sarah Franklin, Sarah and her husband are the ones that created the Revolution podcast, right? And because of that, they're creating income for their sustainability. The thing we run into when we are worried about what somebody else can give us is that we are putting
12:24our safety in the hands of someone that may or not may not be able to provide it. Okay again that comes back down to your to your trauma stories and I'm not saying that you have to revisit like really painful trauma. Studies have shown that that's not something that's really helpful all the time, but you need you do need to be able to decide what your story is going to be now.
12:54Right? Yes, absolutely. Yes. And check into that, lean into that. What does that look like for you? Who do you need to connect to? And start working through a lot of these stories because I guarantee, I guarantee, like, honestly, I I am kind of shocked. You know, the people that I know that are the most self-sufficient are the homesteaders.
13:24Right? And so if you're worried about what the government is going to give you...
13:29I really, really would invite you right now to step back for just a minute and ask yourself why are you feeling like you have to rely on them? Right? There's something else. There's something better. Yeah. Well, the other thing that I was going to bring into this conversation is there's a
13:58There's a business coach that has a podcast that I listen to as well. Her name is Charlotte Smith, and she's really about farming. And she was saying on her podcast that don't let immediate emotion drive your actions, that if you can just get through the first 90 seconds of whatever intense emotion you're feeling, it will let go of you and then you can start making decisions past that.
14:28first rush of feeling and is that something that you know about too? Oh yes. Oh yeah. So basically what she's saying is it takes 90 seconds for the hormone or the chemical reaction of an emotion to burn out of your body. That's what she's talking about. So if you think about like a really really funny joke right? Like obviously enjoy the joke, laugh it off, don't time it and see how long it takes you to laugh.
14:57They found that it takes roughly around 90 seconds for that emotion to kind of burn out of the body Unless we retrigger it. Okay So, you know if we're wanting to talk about emotional stability here and again emotional stability that is a great topic for Homesteaders because you guys sure is. Yes, really is you guys are very very stable people and you love stability
15:26And so one of the things I would tell you is as you're sitting there in that emotion, give it that 90 seconds, just breathe through it, you know, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Right. Give it just a few minutes. Experience that emotion, experience that emotion, experience that emotion. Okay. After you're done experiencing it, this is some of the questions I would have you ask. And that is, okay.
15:56what is it that I was feeling? Can I say in just a few sentences like what that emotion was? Well maybe it was anger, frustration, sadness, guilt. You know there's a lot of emotions that are uncomfortable for us but if you understand too that emotions aren't scary they're literally literally the the pathway between your subconscious and your conscious.
16:24They're there to get your attention, that's it. And they're trying to get your attention so that way you can set some boundaries and you can create some safety actually around yourself. Emotions, especially negative ones, tend to not come up as much if we are very, very boundary to ourselves. And so...
16:50When you're experiencing anger, like anger is a really great example of this, right? We might ask ourselves, okay, so I was feeling angry. Why? Why am I experiencing anger? So we might say something along the lines of, well, I feel angry because I've been betrayed, right? I've been betrayed by my neighbor. I've been betrayed by the government. I've been betrayed by.
17:16Excuse me, maybe my ex-husband, I've been betrayed, I've been betrayed. Or maybe it might be a business partner. Or somewhere there's some anger because of something that has happened to you, right? Okay, so why does that make me feel angry? Well, everybody feels angry when something like this happens, right? But why does that make me specifically feel angry? I'm not asking about everyone else. I'm asking about me specifically.
17:47Right? Yeah. I don't like being betrayed. I don't like it when they're not listening. I don't like having to rely on the government. I don't like I don't like I don't like. And in this process, you start to find like some really good keywords and phrases start coming up. And if you pay attention to those keywords and phrases that keep coming up, you're actually going to start noticing.
18:16um maybe what your fear or the discomfort actually is like what is the actual voice of it right what's what's driving it yeah really what's driving it okay so let me kind of give you an example um from my own personal life if if that's okay like i've been doing you know coaching and emotional resilience and you know healing money stories and things like that for like the last
18:46And about two years ago, I had somebody that I was fairly close to turn around and betray me, in a sense. I had something really, really distressing happen between me and another one of my relationships. And what that relationship did was inappropriate. It was not okay, right? It was actually...
19:16kind of of a sexual nature, not okay. And I decided to create some distance between me and the other person, naturally, right? But then this other person came into the picture and took the person that had hurt me, their side, okay? And they started calling me a narcissist. They started telling me
19:46other people that I was horrible that I didn't deserve the things that I'd had. Like all of these really, really horrible, horrible things about me. This person was so angry because I had distanced myself from this other person. Right. And I was mad. I was really mad. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, seriously? Like, how dare you?
20:15And I even offered to talk to this person that was calling me all these names and taking the other person's side of things. And they didn't want to have anything to do with me. I'm just good with words is what they said, right? And narcissistic and so I'm going to twist what they say. What? That's not me at all. That's not the way that I work. But I noticed I was feeling really, really angry, right?
20:44And I'm the type of person that likes to move through my emotions really, really quickly. But this time, it was sticking. And it stuck for a while. And I was like, why am I so angry about this? What is it about this person that makes me feel so angry? Right? Mm-hmm. And so I got really curious about it. And...
21:11I've learned some really, really great lessons about it. Like, number one, I'm Christian. Totally believe in God, totally believe in Christ. And as I've been like, as I started praying about like this specific situation, I started learning more about love, right? And the action of love. That doesn't mean giving this person a pass. As a matter of fact, that's not loving at all.
21:41Because people do need to learn from their mistakes. They need to learn from their actions. But it's not always my job to be the teacher. That's the point. But I had to ask myself, do I have the capacity to still love this person? Even if it's from a distance, can I actually look at the good things that they do? The actual good things about this
22:10Yeah. Now, that was a little bit of a pill for me to swallow because I didn't want to. I wanted to see them for the horrible person they were. And like, how could they write? Like that's what I wanted to feel. But that's not in alignment with who I am. Right. That's actually in alignment with their vision of me, not my own. And so when I started asking myself, do I have that capacity to love anyway?
22:41I started looking for the good things and all of a sudden some of this anger died down.
22:47Because I started setting this boundary that even though somebody might look for the very worst things in me, I'm going to look for the very best things in them. For my own good. Right? And so you can hear that boundary. And the second boundary that came out of this was I also noticed like I was saying saying something over and over in my head like I'm holding this proverbial poop bag.
23:16Right? Right? And I'm like, okay, well, I need to clarify, like, what does that mean? Right? Well, I noticed that what I was really saying was I didn't get the opportunity to speak up. They didn't let me. And so I got thinking about that. And I was like, you know what? That's not okay. And so I sat down and I wrote a letter.
23:46this person and I edited it and rewrote it a couple of times because again I really love the fact that I'm a loving person I see the very best in people and I also love the fact that I'm a respectful person right and so I want that to really come across in the letter not for their benefit from my own because I'm staying in my boundary right and so I wrote this letter
24:16and I sent it and I don't know if they got it, I don't know if they read it, like I have no idea. But all of a sudden, the rest of that anger left because I am not afraid to use my voice. In whatever way I possibly need to use it, I'm not afraid. So the other boundary that came out of this was that no matter what,
24:46I choose to speak up. Uh huh. Whether somebody else is okay with it, whether somebody else is comfortable with it, it doesn't matter. I choose to speak up. Right? In whatever way I need to. And so this is what I'm saying, like when we get really really good at listening to our emotions and we just get curious about them, we find our divine self inside of them.
25:14because they will speak to our actual inherent boundaries. I love being a loving person. I love valuing my voice enough to not let it be silenced. I love the fact that I'm a respectful person. Even to people that choose not to respect me, that's fine. I can still be respectful because that's who I am. And so a boundary...
25:42When we're working with our emotions this way, we can actually find a true boundary because a true boundary is never about like what another person is doing or what they're going to do or what they aren't doing even, right? It comes down to a hundred percent who we are and what we choose to do. Yes, and since that was so much about boundaries, I'm gonna admit something.
26:11I did not quite understand that boundaries were not just about like, okay, so and so does this thing that I don't like, so I'm putting up a wall. That's not really a boundary. I mean, it is, but it's not, I don't think it's the kind of boundary you're talking about. And I also didn't understand that boundaries are something that we set up for ourselves. Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying here? Yes.
26:39And you know, this is why a lot of people really struggle with boundaries is because they're not well taught and they're not well understood. Right. Kind of like you're talking about when when people are saying things like, well, I just need to set a boundary, but I feel like my boundary is being walked all over. Well, it's actually because you didn't set a boundary set an expectation. Right. Yes. Thank you. Right. Yes.
27:04That's the difference. And I'm not saying like all expectations are bad, but the problem is, is when you live in expectation, you also live in disappointment. You sure do. I learned that one too. Right? Like, truly. But if you are living in intention, this is the power of the do. Right? You keep the power of the do with you. I'm actually writing a book about this very
27:31concept here. It's called the seven pillars of living the unashamed life, right? And the first pillar is actually intention and the adversary to intention is expectation, right? But people find and you hear them talking a lot about like how they feel like their boundaries have been trampled on or their boundaries have been broken. But again, like I said, it comes back down to not knowing
28:01actually. So I worked a lot with women in betrayal trauma, right, and they would talk a lot about boundaries. And they would say things like, well, if he looks at pornography again, then I am leaving. And I would always ask them this question. I'm like, okay, well, that sounds like a really strong boundary. But how do you plan on acting on that? Do you have the financial capability to act on that?
28:30place to go if you act on that. Do you have like all these pieces like do you actually know what that looks like for you to leave? And then guess what? Husband looks at pornography again and they don't follow through with the boundary and so all of a sudden they feel guilt. Or like husband love bombs them and then they feel guilty for saying that and so with that boundary quote unquote came a ton of guilt. Yeah. Right?
28:59A boundary doesn't do that. A really good boundary will not leave you feeling guilty. It'll leave you feeling empowered. Right? And this is one of the things that I really am passionate about teaching people is it all comes down to you and how you are going to choose to respond in a way that actually makes sense to you, right? And when you get this idea of like what a true boundary is,
29:29happening is you start bringing your control back to you. You are the one not controlling the other person because that's not like it's not possible and it's also exhausting. But you start being able to control the right person and that's you and staying in your lane, staying in your boundaries, right? And not leaving those boundaries because somebody is angry or somebody expects something out of you.
29:58You understand your limits. So when you understand your limits and your boundaries and who you are and you choose to live in that lane, well, what happens when somebody else does something inappropriate is it doesn't pull you out of that lane, if that makes sense. So here we have, like I said, a group of
30:25homesteading people that listen to your podcast, right? And like you were saying at the beginning, some of that fear about, you know, whether or not the government is going to help or whether or not they're going to have the funding or whether or not whether or not whether or not, right? This is actually one of the results of living in that expectation, right? Well, what if your
30:54What if that's the boundary? Well, you might say something along the lines of, well, I've never done that before, right? But that doesn't mean that that's still not possible. What it means is you've got to connect with people right now that are creating the money you want without having to rely on government assistance, without having to rely on people that aren't reliable necessarily, right?
31:24You've got to learn to start thinking the way they think. There's plenty, there are plenty of Facebook groups out there right now that are full of people that are earning six, seven, eight figures. Right? Go join one of them. Right? Start dreaming, start thinking about what you can actually create. You know, taking a look at
31:54millionaires. They didn't become millionaires by thinking they could create it. Right, yeah. Right? They actually believed they could. And then they had a vision for what they wanted to create. Right? Jeff Bezos, he's actually a billionaire, right? Wanted a shopping center online that literally had just about anything you could think of for the very best prices, right?
32:25That's what he created. This is part of the reason too why so many people trust Amazon for delivering their goods. Like you can even buy your groceries from Amazon and have them delivered to your door just about anywhere you're at. Well I can't. I live too far out in the country for that ma'am. OK. But yes almost everybody can. Almost everybody can. Right. But even then like.
32:52You know, there's still like we're still so connected as a world, right? Uh, you know, I have another podcast called the other side of the struggle healing from betrayal trauma. Um, that is a global podcast. It has over 12,000 downloads and it was something that I've done from the comfort of my own home. And though I might not be as remote as you, Mary, I'm still, I still live in a fairly remote place. Right. Last year.
33:20because I was coaching women through trauma and helping them create more money in their businesses. Because of it, my business hit six figures, right? I just did the taxes. We saw it. This year it's scaling to do even more. And the thing of the matter is, I didn't have to rely on the government to do that, right?
33:48My business coach, she lives in Australia. But yeah, I can get on and I can do a call with her or a voice chat. We've got tons and tons of apps, ways to connect. We are more connected now than we have ever been. This is the point, you actually can use this to your advantage. There's so many things out there that you can do from the comfort of your own home.
34:17There's people that are blogging about homesteading, making six, seven figures doing it, right? There are people that, like I actually had a gal that was making, oh, I wanna say about $5,000 a month, simply writing greeting cards from her home and sending it off to companies. Uh-huh, yep. Right? Money is something that we absolutely can create, but it won't happen if you are identifying
34:47Right now, if your boundary is, I have to rely on the government to create what it is I want. Right? Mm-hmm. Your boundary needs to be, I can rely on myself to create what it is that I want. Yes. Absolutely. I agree completely. And I'm so glad that I asked that question at the beginning because I have, I have seen so many Facebook posts from ranchers and farmers just not panicked, but just concerned, you know?
35:16So I'm glad that you were willing to tell me this stuff because we're good here at the Lewis household. We're fine. But a lot of people that I talk with or I see, you know, that I'm connected with, they're worried that they're not going to be fine. And I worry with them because they're people I care about. So yeah, I did want to go back to the boundaries thing real quick. Okay.
35:43The other thing that I've really learned since we moved here a little over four years ago, we did not live on a homestead four years ago, we lived in town, is that boundaries are also a thing that you have to put up for yourself against yourself almost. I'm going to explain this. We got barn cats when we first moved here and two of them were like, I don't know, six month old boy kittens, they were brothers.
36:12One was a silver tabby, one was an orange tabby. And I had always wanted a silver tabby. My whole life I have wanted a silver tabby cat. And I finally had one. And I never got to pet him. He was not into being around people because he was a barn cat. We got him from the Humane Society. And he got hit by a car. Oh. A couple months after we got him.
36:36And I lost my mind. I sobbed, I cried, I was angry, I was upset that whole day. And the next barn cat that died, I was like, oh, well, it happened again. And I swore and I slammed a cabinet door. I didn't ruin my whole day over it. And so, I guess what I'm saying is that the first time something happens that makes you hurt or angry or frustrated, you're gonna feel it.
37:06But then your brain says, OK, maybe don't fall in love with the barncats because they're not here for a long time, they're here for a good time. Right. You see what I'm saying? I can actually really connect to your story, but I want to add this piece to it. What a great opportunity for you to actually clarify what it is you want. Right?
37:30Like you're sitting here saying I want a silver tabby barn cat, like I want a silver silver tabby cat. Well you got one that was a barn cat right? Yep. So I connected this story because a few years ago we had this adorable little dog. She was fantastic, she was so well behaved. Like if she was still here she'd probably be sitting right here by my foot.
38:00just totally chill, just such a good dog, right? And she literally fell into my lap. Like I'm not even joking, she really seriously did. Like I had a friend that couldn't keep her anymore and so she put the dog in my lap and said, take her home. So we did and we kept her, but it ended up, we had her for about three years and then she passed away because
38:29her little heart was just too big for her body. Yeah. That's what we found out. Right. So she literally died of a big heart. So we grieved over the loss of our little dog. And I went out and got another one. And because I said, I just wanted a dog for my family. Well, this dog, she was cute. She was adorable. Very sweet little dog. Very sweet, but she was insane.
38:58Yeah. Like there was no amount of didn't matter what you did. You could not calm that dog down. We, we would like, we live on a half acre right here where, where I am, but it didn't matter how many times she threw the ball, it didn't matter how many times you went running with her, it didn't matter what you did. She still wanted more. There was no way you could live life doing anything else. And so it ended up that, uh, I had to actually chain her.
39:27once in a while because if I wasn't out there with her, she'd be taking off, chasing cars, chasing other kids, chasing animals, chase, chase, chase. Like, and she became a nuisance in a sense to other neighbors. Sure. So I had to chain her up until we could get a fence built for her. But what ended up happening is just shortly before we had her for a year, she was tugging so hard on her collar.
39:55that the caller literally snapped, she ran out on the road, she got hit and killed, right? Yeah. And I, we were very sad because even though like she was insane, we still loved this dog, right? But it gave me the opportunity to get even clearer with what it is I wanted. I realized that one of the things that I wanted was I wanted a dog, yes.
40:22But I wanted one that was smart enough to know when it was playtime and when it was time to calm down. I wanted a dog that would go on walks with me, but one that could actually stay right by my side. That was trainable, that wasn't insane, that could sit down and just enjoy a day with me, right? That could be really, really playful, but also really, really calm at the same time.
40:52really good with kids because I'm a mom of six kids here, right? Got to be dang good with kids. And he's got to understand commands. And, you know, and I had a list of things like I really, really clarified what it was. I wanted and then I even threw in. It would be great if I could get this dog either for free or for trade. Right. Well, go figure.
41:22I had a friend who breeds Australian shepherds, right? And I was telling her what it was I was looking for and she's like, I bought the exact dog for you. And she traded me in essential oils and now we've had Topaz, he's used my dog now for nine years and he's everything, literally everything I've ever wanted in a dog.
41:47See, the thing is, is when we get really, really clear too about this is something else I teach, right? When we get really, really clear about what it is we want, it also sets the boundary for us to receive that exact thing, right? Is it like manifesting what you want? Yes. Yes, okay. Yes, and I will tell you that has happened so many times in my home.
42:15I remember my husband, you know, we're all about food storage too. And he said one day, he's like, you know what? I want to increase our food storage by a year and a half. And it would be great if I didn't have to pay for it. Well, then one of his friends said, hey, guess what? There's this guy in the neighboring town. He just passed away.
42:41He has about 15 years worth of food storage and the family's giving it away. And so my husband went and literally picked up about a year and a half worth of food storage for free for our family and a family of eight people, you know, there's six kids and me and him. So that's a lot of food storage, right? He did this with his job.
43:05You know, he worked about an hour away from where we lived, and he did that for 18 years, driving every single day up and back, right? Two hour drive every day. And he said, it would be awesome if I could actually get a job, this exact job closer to home. Well, there was only one position, and it was already filled, and the gal that had it came up to me one day, and she was like,
43:34Hey, you know what, actually, I think I want to move up north where your husband's working. Do you think he'd want to trade jobs with me? And it's just going down to getting really clear and talking about what it is we want. And the thing is, is what you'll notice will happen is these certain beliefs start popping up. So like one of the things I've been saying recently is,
44:02I'm Erin Anderson. I'm a seven-figure business coach. I drive a Ford Explorer and I take my family on amazing vacations, right? These are the things that I'm manifesting right now. These are things that I want and I noticed like there's things that are coming up in my story such as whole seven-figures Business coach that's a lot of exposure Right like published author I got
44:30my book coach, she's a New York Times bestseller and she's like, this is going to be huge, right? And I'm sitting there a whole exposure. That's what I'm feeling right now. And I'm like, okay, guess what I got to do? I have got if this is what I want, and this is what this means, and that means I've got to get on the podcast. Thank you very much, Mary Lewis. You're welcome. And I need to start being more
44:59I need to be more visible. I need to see like allow myself to really be seen. Allow myself to even be judged a little bit, right? Like I've got to allow that kind of thing so I can become comfortable with it. And then what happens is now I move past that onto the next little pothole in my road, right? That next fear.
45:27and I can start facing it. And so when we actually sit down and we say, we're like, really what it is, say Bruce Banner, I don't know, right? My name is Bruce Banner and I live on a 10 acre farm and I own a 50 head of cattle. I'm creating, I don't know, say $10,000 a month.
45:53I don't know what the realities are of that, right? But the thing is, is when you sit there and say these things out loud, over and over and over again, you're just going to start noticing like those little potholes that keep coming up. Maybe it's, but the government promised, right? Yeah. Or maybe it's, well, where in the heck am I going to find that type of money? Right? Well, that's a relationship issue. We've got to start asking ourselves, well, what kind of relationships do I need to start creating?
46:23to create that kind of cash because all money is is it's a manifestation of the type of relationships that we have. Right. And it's the type of relationships that we create. This is why you know I can create a six figure heading up to seven figure coaching business right is because I'm creating relationships with my clients. My son you know he works
46:53He had a certain relationship with the owner of that diner so that the way they would pay him, right? What types of relationships do we actually need to create so that way we can also create the cash that we want? Where are those relationships going to be? And how can we be visible in those areas? And so these are the things that we need to start asking ourselves if we want to start creating more cash.
47:22Um, you know, again, like homesteaders having a stash of gold and silver, that's probably really important to you. But right now the way to get gold and silver is through a cash influx, right? Making sure you can buy that and putting it away. And so, you know, the, the thing that I really, really want to point out is it doesn't really matter what's happening in the world. I mean, we've been through COVID.
47:52there's a good chance that something worse could possibly come. Shh. Don't say that. Sorry. Don't say that right now. But my point here is, is you can still create. It doesn't matter what, excuse me, I'm losing my voice a little bit, but it doesn't matter what's out there. Your superpower is creation. It was from the get go. It was from the beginning. And even if say the dollar fails.
48:21Well, then what is valuable? Right. Maybe it's potatoes. Maybe it's eggs. Maybe it's eggs, right? Yeah. Like 28 chickens. Like, right? That's what we're dealing with right now. Maybe it's toilet paper. Who knows? You're going to be a rich. That's what the valuable commodity was back in, back during COVID. Yeah, you're going to be a rich lady, Erin, off of 28 chickens. I, you know what? It's, it's.
48:46Yeah, we actually are already having a lot of people, they're like, so you got any eggs? Uh huh. Yeah. So they're dealing under the table anyway, but like, you know, yeah, it's, you, we have value. Value is always measured by something. It doesn't matter if it's gold and silver. It doesn't matter if it's a dollar. It doesn't matter. There's always value measured by something. And when we tap into that, we find.
49:17great relationships and freedom. Yep. It's so interesting that you were saying, exposure, oh no. And I'm gonna tell the story and then I'm gonna let you go because we're already at like almost 15 minutes. Oh, thank you. When I started toying with the idea of starting the podcast like over two years ago now, I was very, very hesitant to even like dance around the idea.
49:46Because I was like, I've spent my whole life being told to shut up since I was little. And I was like, nobody's going to listen. I have a terrible voice. It's going to be bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the things you tell yourself. Right? But I desperately needed a project. So I was like, okay, I'm going to do three recordings with three people and we'll see how it goes. That was my boundary for myself.
50:14If it doesn't go anywhere, it's okay, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised and it will. That's what I did for myself. And over a year later and over, I think, 250 episodes later, here we are. Love it. And so I really feel like fear is the great killer of everything. Yes. And hope is the great producer of everything. Yes. So. And it so is.
50:44And you know, I can totally connect to that too, because, you know, I started the other side of the struggle healing from betrayal trauma back in, I want to say 2020, 2021, around that time. And same thing, I was like, exposure. Okay, but I'm doing this. And
51:11that podcast at this time has 125 episodes and 12,000 downloads, right? And then I get the soul nudge to jump ship, even though that podcast is still up and so you can totally go listen to that, but I jump ship and now I'm doing Bold Heart's Big Moose. Which I listened to this morning and good job. Well thank you, thank you. That makes me feel so good.
51:37Honestly, because it's still a fairly new podcast. It's like maybe six months old. Yeah But I really wanted to talk about more of this type of a thing like like let's talk about the boundaries It's like talk about healing trauma, but then let's also talk about like creating cash Let's actually open that up and right and dreams and dreams Yes, and I also have to say Mary that
52:06My first thought of your voice, because this is an audio podcast, is, oh my goodness, what a fabulous voice. Truly, it's so relaxing, and it draws people in just the very tone of it. And so it's so funny, isn't it? That whatever we've been told in childhood, if we're told something enough times, long and loud enough, we tend to believe it.
52:35But it's not true all the time. Right. Actually, most of the time it's not because until we actually get out there and challenge it, cause see, I get that. I was, I was told, you know, as a kid that I probably wouldn't ever be a great singer and I've been now asked to sing in some of the greatest places in Utah. Right. I've, I've sang on Temple Square. I've sang at a Bravonell hall. I've, I, I have a voice too for singing.
53:05We don't know until we challenge it. You know? Yeah. And so get out there, challenge the fear. You might actually prove it wrong. Yes, and I'm gonna add to that and then I'm gonna cut you loose for the day because I'm sure you have other things to do. Get out there and challenge it, but also if there's something you love to do, if you love to draw or paint or I don't know, crochet things.
53:34Do that. Do the thing you love, whether you've been told that you can't do it or not, because really who says you can't? Right. And there's always somebody out there that actually will pay for your work. Mm-hmm. That's what you ask for. Exactly. So people, get out there and do what you love because sometimes it's really, really worth it. And usually it is. It's, yes. Exactly. All right, Erin, thank you so much for your time today. I do appreciate it.
54:03Oh, I appreciate you, Mary. Thank you so much for having me. What a fun podcast. All right. Have a great day. You too. Thanks guys.
 

Hedgerow Collective

Today I'm talking with Anya at the Hedgerow Collective. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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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 Anya at the Hedgerow Collective. Good afternoon. Well, I guess it's afternoon for you, but it's still morning for me. So good morning, afternoon, Anya. How are you? Good morning and afternoon to you as well. I am well today.
00:27Pennsylvania, Southeast Pennsylvania where I live. It is a overcast day and it smells and feels like snow. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not an overcast day here in Minnesota. It is just as bright as it could possibly be and it's very cold. I don't think we've come up zero yet today. Oof. Yeah. So that's exciting.
00:53And I'm glad you opened with the weather because I usually do because like I've said, it's how I express my esteem for the people that I'm talking to. I always try to find out the weather where you guys are. So, all right. So I'm going to open this up with the fact that you're not really a homesteader, but reading your bio on your website, you are definitely a nature girl. So I figured they tie in pretty well. So tell me about yourself and what you do.
01:18I agree, they tie in so well and I actually do a little bit of homesteading but I'm very, very new at it. But I am a nature girl, I am a gardener, I am a photographer and I also do horse massage which is really delightful. And I live on a little...
01:45property in a town called Marietta, Pennsylvania. It is ancient Susquehannaq land. And we moved here about three years ago. And at the time, my husband said, we're not gonna have any big trees. We're not going to do anything wild like that. We don't want the maintenance of trees falling on the house or the leaves or anything.
02:15And over, you know, these past three years, we've compromised and we now have 11 trees on the property. Yay. Yes, and more to come. There's apple trees that are sitting in my sunroom. I have serviceberry trees that are being shipped to me. So we've created a really wonderful little habitat here that I
02:45Um, really, it feels really magical here, even though we're in, you know, we have neighbors on all sides and a road in front of our house. And, you know, I think, I think part of my goal is that you don't need to have, you know, 10 acres, 50 acres to be able to do this type of, of work and grow your own food or grow, create habitats or anything like that. You know, you can work with what you have and it's...
03:13absolutely possible. I mean, it's great if you do have 10 acres or 60 acres or 500 acres, but you don't have to have those things in order to grow some really amazing flowers or food or both. Yeah. Yep. That's one of the things that I'm trying to promote on this podcast is that you can do this stuff in a little tiny house on a tenth of an acre, or you can do it on lots of acres. But the point is you can do it.
03:43Absolutely. I mean, you can find cheap things like baby pools or old, like food grade buckets on Facebook Marketplace for super cheap and you can grow things. Yeah. You mentioned apple trees. My husband actually went out and pruned our peach trees and our apple trees this past weekend and brought in the stems and he's rooting them.
04:09so that we can have saplings because if it works, they'll turn into more trees. Absolutely. Yeah. That's great. Really excited. I have a sapling. Well, I'm trying, not quite a sapling yet. I'm manifesting that it will become a sapling of a witch hazel cutting. So that's my little project. I have it sitting next to me here and I just, I talk to her every day. I'm like, come on, you can do it.
04:38Spread those roots. Do your thing. Yeah, I was going to say talk to it and sing to it. It'll come up every day. Yeah. OK. You mentioned Susquehanna land. Is that Native American land? That is Native American land. They were. Marietta is situated along the Susquehanna River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, and it's one of the largest watersheds in Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River.
05:07is this is some fun facts here. It's 444 miles long and it is the longest unnavigable river in the United States. Because the Susquehanna goes from 200 feet deep to two inches deep so quickly, it's impossible to navigate it.
05:36with any type of boat. And historically, they fixed, fixed, quote unquote, that by using canals, the remnants of which are still litter the sides of the river. But yes, the Sesquihana people were on these shores. They were part of the Lena Lenape tribes of the Northeast.
06:04I try to acknowledge that they were here far, far longer and well before any of us were here. And it feels like it's always the right thing to do to acknowledge how they tended and stewarded this land for centuries before white folks came in. It is the right thing to do. And I'm glad that you said that. There is a rumor and I've tried to...
06:33confirm it, but I can't get any hard facts because ancestry is weird. I am supposedly descended from the Abenaki tribe in Maine, New England. I am very, very white, very pale. I used to have really bright blue eyes, now they're green. I had really dark brown hair, almost black and extremely high cheekbones.
07:02and very long fingers and very long feet and I'm tall. And the Abenaki's are very, very pale. You know, they're not dark skinned native Americans. And they were very long and lean too. So the rumor is, and I say rumor because I can't make it, I can't find out for sure. But supposedly I am descended from an Abenaki woman
07:31generations back. And it's really funny because I've been told that I would look just like a Dublin girl if I got off the plane in Ireland. And I have been told by people who are Native American who were really good friends that, yeah, I definitely could be Abenaki Indian. And I'm just like, okay, well, I'm me. But in the meantime, I try to honor all cultures I know about and then learn about the other ones. And that way, I feel like I'm doing something.
08:00productive instead of tearing things down. I totally understand that. And I wish you so much luck on that journey of finding that ancestry because I think ancestry.com is particularly good at if you're European descendant, but I think it does get a little squirrely with anything else. Well, the problem I'm having is that my dad's mom
08:30died when he was two years old. And we have basically no family history on her side of the family. And I know her dad's surname and I have traced that name back all the way to William the Conqueror in England. That's so cool. Before England was England. Correct. That's right. But in that lineage that have moved over from England across the hundreds and hundreds of years.
08:59multiple hundreds of years, someone married a Native American woman and I'm descended from that clan. Interesting. So, so I can't, the problem we have is that back in the old days, you couldn't know who fathered children. You knew who gave birth to children, but you can't know for sure who actually fathered that child. Yeah.
09:25There's missing data. Yeah, so I'm a little leery to claim anything about my ancestry, but I really kind of hope it's true. I hope so as well. So anyway, I didn't mean to go down that rabbit hole quite that far, but it's always a neat story to tell. So you're a very nature-based girly and I love that because so am I. And I always say in the springtime that my fairy, my inner fairy, you know, the little
09:54a little woodland nymph kind of fairies. It's just dancing because the light gets brighter and changes and then the green leaves come out and I know spring is coming. And I feel like you probably have an inner fairy as well. Absolutely, and February is when she starts stretching and yawning and waking up and she's like, it's almost time. Yeah. And I start some seeds. And I feel like February is this really liminal month where we're in between
10:24the deep dark of winter and the bright freshness of spring. Yes. And I can get overly eager for that springtime, but then, you know, I'm sure this happens in Minnesota too, but where I live here, you know, February is like, not so quickly, and then we get a snowstorm. Yes. So I'm like, okay, all right, calm down, be patient, but it's hard.
10:53Yeah, that's why my husband went out and pruned the trees and got the stems started rooting because he was like, I can't take it anymore. We need to be growing something. Right. Exactly. So I have the most beautiful peach branches downstairs on my, what I call my desk, but it's actually just a little console table under the window, right underneath the window frame in our living room. And the peach branches are actually starting to green up. And I'm like, oh my God, there's green, the big things in my house already. Yay.
11:24how that feeds that inner fairy. Oh, she's very happy right now. Yes. She wasn't very happy when I had to go out and drag the dog in this morning, not even zero degrees, but she's definitely starting to bop and whistle and sing in the head. Yes. Definitely waking up, huh? Yeah, absolutely. I love spring. Me too. I love spring.
11:48But I love fall more because fall is really pretty in Minnesota and it's when we're harvesting our squashes and I love winter squash. So I those that's my order of favorites as well. Fall and then spring and then winter and then summer. I am of Scots, Irish and Lithuanian descent. So my skin is basically translucent and I burn on the drop of a dime.
12:17So the summer is not my favorite time, but I get through it, seeing the beauty and the growth and everything else is so happy. So I'm like, all right. Got to have it to get to home. Exactly. Yep. And I'm going to be even more definitive on my choice of words. I despise high summer. I cannot. I hate it. Amen, sister. Will you just skip high summer? I would be thrilled. But you can't.
12:47We can't see a plant summer because the plants need that. They do. So it's a thing, but... It is a thing. Anyway, you said you do equine massage, like you go massage horses? I do. Keep telling me about that. It's really, really interesting. Growing up, I was a horsey girl. I spent all my time at the barn. I worked there. My friends were there. I mean, that was my safe space.
13:17My horse at the time, his name was Mystic, and he, gosh, one day he just didn't quite feel right. I got on him and it just, it didn't feel right. And I knew this horse. I knew this horse as well as I knew myself. And I was like, something is just not right. We did a bunch of tests. He came back.
13:44positive for limes, the negative for limes, but testing for limes in horses is very difficult because there's so many false positives and false negatives. So it's almost impossible to pin down if that's the issue. But I did hear about a local horse massager and I was like, all right, well, let's just see maybe he's tight. Like, I don't know, he has big muscles.
14:11You know, he has all the same issues that we could have. He has bone structure. He has, you know, he's an athlete. He's working his body. So I called her up. She came out and she did a couple, she did a couple things with Mystic. And the next day when I rode him, he felt like a different horse. And at that moment I was like, yeah, you know what?
14:40I can do this. So it took me some years, took me a marriage, a divorce, a child, two houses, you know, et cetera, et cetera, life happened. And finally I'm settling into kind of my new groove. And part of that is working with horses in this way. And I never thought that I would be the horse massage lady. I always thought I'd be the crazy horse lady.
15:09But I'm fine switching out hats like that. And it's close enough. It's adjacent. So I can still be the crazy horse massage lady. Yes. Yeah. And you get to visit with horses all the time. Exactly. And they are so majestic. And I just feel like massage is a overlooked.
15:35of healing, overlooked modality of healing. And part of what I do at the Hedge Row Collective is I want to make this stuff accessible. People think horses and they think, oh, well, that's really expensive. They're not wrong. But there's plenty of people who own horses who...
16:04are not wealthy, who aren't coming from, you know, trillions of dollars in backing or sponsors or anything like that. And those animals also deserve healing touch and care and all these things. Same thing with photography, you know, I mean, gosh, however much you wanna pay for a photographer, you can find, and it can be astronomical. And I don't believe that good quality
16:33photos and memories or good quality horse care or good quality garden consulting has to be astronomical. I want it to be accessible. I want people to understand that, you know, with garden consulting, like you said at the beginning of this, it's possible. Even if you just have a balcony, it's possible to grow some of your own stuff. So part of my goal in all this is making
17:03these things accessible to everyone. And I'm so passionate about that. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So I want to talk about your photography stuff and I want to talk about your garden design stuff. So let's start with photography. I looked at your Facebook page, you have a sum of samples of your photos that you've done. And there's one of a lady who looks, I'm going to use the word goth, but her hair is dark and she's like a side profile and it's kind of a dark picture. Yes.
17:32Beautiful. Thank you. You have some really, really nice photos and you have real talent. Thank you, I appreciate that. My photography journey officially started when I was like seven and my grandparents took me to Longwood Gardens, which is like a ginormous botanical garden outside of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. And it is stunning.
18:01You know, this place has been endowed with millions and millions of dollars, so they have the best of the best, the perfect environment for any plant that they're growing. I mean, it's just gorgeous. And I remember my taking my grandma's Canon camera and I said, can I can I take a picture with that? And she was like, absolutely. And from that moment, I was like, oh, yeah, this is it.
18:30This is where it's at. So obviously it took me many years to get my own Canon camera, but I did and I've always been the one who's documenting with pictures, you know, in friend groups, on trips, family events, you know, I'm always the one with the camera. I mean, it's become easier now with these really good cameras in our phones.
18:58But at the time, back in the day, I was the one who carried the camera around and documented all the things. And I love it. I think it's so important. I've watched some of my clients are, they have young children and I've watched these children grow up and it's beautiful. And to capture these moments, it's such an honor. Every time that these people trust me to...
19:26capture these moments and this snapshot in time. I recently did a session where the father-in-law of my client is sick and they don't know how much more time they have with him. And so this photo shoot was really to capture him with all of his grandchildren, him with all of his children, him with his wife.
19:54It was so beautiful and it was, it's just heartwarming. You know, everyone's on their best behavior and it's just, it's really, really special. And I feel so honored to be able to do this, this work. Yep. Well, then you do actually fit my three things for my podcast because one of my topics is crafters and photography as a craft. So hey, we found the thing that ties everything together.
20:24There you go. There you go. But you also design gardens. Now, when you say design gardens, are you saying that you sit down with someone and they're like, I have this much space and I don't know what I'm doing, help me? That's certainly part of it. Okay. Sometimes it looks like that. Sometimes, you know, it's a blank canvas and a piece of earth and people are like, I want, let's just use an example. I want butterflies.
20:53in my garden. So I'll plan depending on where they are, you know, native plants, depending on, you know, I'll take into account the water situation at their house, whether it's really wet, whether it's really dry, what the wind is like, how many barriers they have or not. And we kind of plan out their garden that way. Other times people will come to me with a really specific need. Like, hey,
21:22I have some really established gardens and I really like them and I don't wanna do anything with them, but I would like to add food to my property, more of a permaculture mindset. And so I can help them plant, decide on which cultivars to use or not, depending on what type of food they wanna grow. So we kind of go through all that and at the end, sometimes, and sometimes it's even broader than that. People are like, I'm having runoff issues.
21:52and I don't know how to slow down this water and I need help. So, you know, either way I'm going to their property, I'm looking around, I'm taking pictures, I'm observing. You know, and then at the end of our time together, people, they get a full consultation report of everything we talked about, you know, plant recommendations, erosion control,
22:21depending on whether their soils dry or needs more compost or whether they want to incorporate a compost, you know? So it really, it can take any number of turns throughout the time there and depending on what their needs are. But it's something that really lights my soul on fire. And I really, really enjoy doing that. Well.
22:47I was going to say back in the beginning, but I wanted to hear all the parts first. What I find in doing this podcast and talking to people all over the place is that the happiest people I've talked to are the ones who just took something they were really interested in or they were really talented at and made that into their job. Yes. And you are like an example of three things that just light you on fire and you've turned them into careers, basically.
23:17Totally. And it's really refreshing to have that joy in my life. Yeah. And there's a saying about if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And it sounds really trite. But it's true. It is true. And it does sound like, oh, what a cliche. But
23:45Sometimes those cliches are the most accurate. Yep. My husband worked for a company. I'm not going to say the name of the company for almost 30 years, corporate America, and he basically worked on printers and fax machines and, and copiers, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And he decided he did not want to continue with them too. Well, almost a year ago now.
24:15And he basically took a hiatus and spent the summer gardening and selling stuff at the farmer's market. And that was a little weird and a lot of it was a big stretch for us because he's always worked for that company. And then we realized that the farmer's market wasn't going to support our lifestyle because we got to pay the bills. So he found a new job in the same arena.
24:43but it's a much smaller company that does work for much smaller businesses. And he's actually wrenching on the machines now. He's not doing so much computer time, sitting at the computer. And he loves it. He said to me the other day- That's great. He said, I love my job. Just out of the blue. And I was like- That's so great. How special is that? Yeah, I said, do you?
25:10And he said, yeah, he said, I love working on all these different kinds of machines. He said it just, he said, I just get such a charge out of figuring out what the problem is and knowing how to fix it and fixing it. And I was so thrilled to hear this because he was so miserable the last couple of years of the other job. Not only that, but on the weekends, he's the gardener. He loves to garden.
25:36That's so great. And we're rolling into gardening season. So he's on a minor high right now with how great he feels with his job and the fact that we're rolling into spring. His inner fairy is also very excited. Yes. And it's been so nice seeing this man smile and come up with ideas and actually talk to me about them. It's been amazing. Oh, that's so beautiful too. Like what a beautiful season of life to celebrate. Yeah.
26:04So really, I guess the reason I'm kind of pounding on this topic is for the listeners, if you had something that you wanted to do when you were a kid, or if you are a kid and there's something you love to do, you can keep going with that. You don't have to not do it just because you're not a kid anymore. Yes. I feel like we lose a lot of magic the minute we hit 18 and it really makes me mad. Absolutely. And it's, it's, I think.
26:32If we kind of draw the lens out a little further, societally, you know, magic isn't gonna pay the bills. Magic isn't gonna do this. Feeling good doesn't matter. It's about money, it's about this, it's about this. Well, the good news is you can have both. You can do both. And even, you know, I have a day job, I'm a paralegal. Oh my, okay. But you know, that gets us, you know, that helps.
27:00and everything else is supplementary and it's beautiful. And it works for me and my family. And so, yeah, I second that with what you're saying that just because life happens doesn't mean that you have to let go of those dreams that you had as a kid. No, and you shouldn't because life is meant to be lived. It's not supposed to be drudgery. Exactly.
27:30I hate drudgery. Drudgery sucks. Yes. And then the other thing I was going to mention is I used to carry a little digital camera with me when we would hike in the woods. I love that. And I was very drawn to the little tiny things like the little wildflowers that come up in the springtime. Yes. Or the little runoff streams that go down through the ditch into the rocks and out into the woods. Yes. Or the ravine and the view across the ravine.
28:00those little things that most people don't notice at all. Absolutely. And I have like tons of photos in my computer from 20 years ago from hiking around. And one of my favorite is there's a flower or a plant called bloodroot that grows here. Oh yes, here too. They're one of my favorite spring ephemerals. Yeah, and they have these really big fat leaves, but they have these little tiny white flowers.
28:26Yes. And I have photos of those and I love those. And then there's another thing that grows here. It's called a marsh marigold. Yes. And they're gorgeous. I have only seen them once out in the wild and on the trail. Okay. I had no idea what it was. It was this really lush, beautiful, yellow flower. And I literally made my husband pull over on the side of the road because I saw it on the
28:55Oh my gosh, I love that. And I said, please just let me get these photos. And he's like, okay. So I hopped out and I got photos. I wanted to be able to find out what kind of flowers they were. Got home, went to the Minnesota DNR website and typed in yellow flower and all the things I could see in the photo. And they're marsh marigolds. And I was like, what a fantastic name for plants. We have those here too. And they are beautiful. They are really stunning.
29:25happen upon them like on a hike or something. Cause I find that they pop up in very unexpected places. Yeah, but it's gotta be wet. Yes, yes, yes. Their marsh is in the name for a reason, but they're really stunning. Yeah, they would make a beautiful potted plant, but I don't think that's what you can do with them. I don't think they would survive inside. I don't know. I don't think so either. They are meant to be observed in their native habitat.
29:54And they're a gift from nature outside. They are. Yes, exactly. And the other one that I love is jewelweed. I don't know if you guys have jewelweed. Yes, we do. I love jewelweed. The little baby orchids. They're so pretty. Yes. I actually, I was doing a branding session for a friend of mine who's a farmer and he was teaching a class and I was there taking.
30:23pictures and I got so distracted by the jewelweed, I had like, I ended up with like 10 images of jewelweed and I was like, well, I guess he's getting jewelweed pictures because they're beautiful. But they really are quite stunning. Yes. And they're really stunning if they still have dewdrops on them. Yes. Oh my gosh. Or any of those raindrops or anything like that. Absolutely. I agree with you 100%.
30:51Yes, I think you and I are soul sisters who just haven't hadn't met yet. I think that's what's going on here. I think that's right. It's always fun when I get to talk to someone who's so interested in a couple of things that I'm also interested in, like the horse massage, not so much. I'm probably never going to do that. That's not my thing, but the photography and the garden planning. I actually love planning gardens. I just don't love doing the gardening part. Yes, that's...
31:18Yes, they are very labor intensive and it is certainly a labor of love. Yeah. When we first moved here a little over four years ago, my husband was like, so how big are we going to make the garden? And I said, well, how big do you want to make it? And he said, I was thinking maybe 30 by 50 to start with. And I was like, that's fine. And he was like, I was thinking doing this, this and this. And I took a look at where he had put the stakes to illustrate where the
31:46the actual inside space of the garden would be. Sure. And I said, babe, I said, here's what I think. And it was only slightly off from his plan. And he was like, why that? And I said, because that part over there is low and when it rains, it's going to soak. It's going to hold water. Exactly. So unless you build it up, you can't really put anything that doesn't like what you eat over there. Exactly. He was like, see, this is why I married you because you know stuff I don't know. And
32:14I know stuff you don't know, we make a good team and I was like, it's a good partnership. Yeah. So I really do know just enough to be kind of a help and sometimes a roadblock, but that's okay too. That is okay too. And we always are taking photos around here. It's ridiculous. We're always. I think it's really something that I have really tried to practice in this newer house of ours is taking before and after pictures. Yes.
32:44I'm really good at after pictures, but I get so eager to start the project that I sometimes forget to take the before pictures. And then I'm like, ah, like halfway through, I'm like, ah, shoot. So I've been really trying hard on every project or even every plan that I plant. You know, here's what it looked like when I first put it in the soil. Here it is three weeks later. Here it is two months later. Here it is two years later.
33:15And it's really amazing what happens in that time. Yep, absolutely. I don't want to ride this topic too hard either because I've talked about it a lot in the last six months, but we put in a new greenhouse this spring. Oh, please ride that topic so much. I'm going to live vicariously through you. Well, it got built last May. I think my husband and son started working on it at the end of April last year. And last spring.
33:44And I said to him when they were working on it, I said, can you please take a quick photo with your cell phone at every step that's completed? Because I want to remember what it looked like before it was finished. And he was like, oh yeah. So every time they would go out and do something, he would text me photos when that part was done. Perfect. And so we have, we literally have a documentary of the steps of this greenhouse going up.
34:12I love that though, because it's easy to forget. Yeah, it is. It's easy to be like, well, I remember what was there before, it was nothing. It was just, you know, grass or this or that, but it's not really sharp. It's not a sharp memory. And so to have those images, I think, is really, really special. Yes, and we also have a photo that is tacked to the wall.
34:42that's in front of his desk downstairs of this property as it was the day we bought it. Beautiful. And now there's a little red farm stand shed that wasn't here then. There's now a greenhouse here. There will be a like a high tunnel style greenhouse next to the shed this spring. And so...
35:06Every time I'm like, what did this place look like before we bought it? I go to that picture on the wall. I'm like, oh yeah, it was big. There was a lot of space here. Yes. Oh, I love that. And we just put it in. I love that. I recently looked at Google for this property. And that's what I used to be like, okay Anya, remember how far you've come. Like you just said, remember what the property looked like when you bought it.
35:36And I went to Google to remind myself, and I went to our address, and they updated the pictures. Yep. And I was like, no. Now, luckily I had already saved the old pictures. Okay, good. But I was just like, oh no, it looks how it does now. What am I supposed to do now? Yep. But now I just have to search through my pictures to find it, but.
36:04It is really amazing. Even, and again, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, even in a short amount of time, even in one growing season, it's unbelievable what one can accomplish and change on the property, even just in a day or a few weeks. Yep. And I think that's like the instant satisfaction that I get from that.
36:32Like that is a high that I am always willing to ride. For sure. And basically everything we've been talking about, I think we're illustrating that life is not about the destination, it's about the journey. 100%. Yep, because once your life's over, you can't go back and do it. So you gotta enjoy every single freaking moment of it. Yes, and fully.
36:57You know, the good, the bad, the ugly, the blood, the sweat, the tears, it's all there for a reason. I firmly believe that even when the reason sometimes sucks or you can't see it right away. But it is, it's a, and it's really beautiful. You know, when you sit down and think about all that life that you've lived, it's really beautiful. It's, it hurts to do it, but it's really beautiful. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
37:26Okay, Anya, I feel like this was a very beautiful conversation this morning. I loved it. It was exactly what I needed for my Tuesday midday reset. Good. All right. Well, I try to give you this to half an hour and we're over that by about eight minutes now. So I'm going to let you go. But thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. This has been so amazing. All right. Have a great day. Thank you. You too.
 

My Homestead Heart

Today I'm talking with Sam at My Homestead Heart. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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 Sam at My Homestead Heart. Good morning, Sam, how are you? Good morning, Miss Mary. I'm doing wonderful, how about yourself? I'm good, and I love that you said Miss Mary because it's a very southern thing, I love that.
00:27Yeah, that's what I am. I am from the deep south. Yes, and you have the most lovely sweet tea accent. I'm telling you, every time I talk to somebody with a southern accent like yours, I just smile. My face just breaks open because it's so pretty. Oh, you're so kind. Nah, I'm not kind. I'm honest. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't say anything because I'm not rude. Well, thank you so much. It's funny that I still carry it.
00:57because I have not lived home in decades, but apparently I still bring it with me in some sort of way. However, if you were to listen to my family members, it is much more thick, thicker than mine. Wow.
01:18Okay, well they must be terribly difficult to understand because you are clear as a bell. So if it's a lot thicker than yours, I probably would be like, Oh man, my sister's her accent. She's never, she was born and raised down there and, um, I can probably count on her hand the amount of times that she has left the area in her lifetime. And she is thick, thick, thick Southern drawl.
01:47Well, I'm going to slip into it a couple of times because it's the one I pick up easiest. So don't be mad at me if I start sounding like a Southerner. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do, Sam. Well, I am a military veteran. So I served a career in the military and separated back in 2005.
02:16And my husband was still active duty. He actually just retired a few years ago and we are parents to a 10 year old. He's about to turn 11 next week. So yay on that. But, um, but yeah, we got transferred up here in Pennsylvania back in 2018 through the military and, um, just fell in love with it up here. I'm we spent.
02:45the majority of our careers down south, whether it be in mostly Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, spent some time in South Carolina, and then lo and behold, I don't know what in the world they were thinking, sending a bunch of country folk up here in Pennsylvania. But he took orders. His last set of orders were out of Philadelphia.
03:15And we were like, Oh my goodness, what in the world? They, them city folk going to come see us hauling the tractor on a trailer coming to town. But we were lucky enough to be able to find some country space out here in the south eastern part, it's about, well, we've, we rented for a little bit in, in
03:43outside of Westchester in a little Brandywine area, had found some country area that we rented until we found a place here. We moved here, it's about an hour outside of Philadelphia, right above the Maryland line. It's, you know, country, lots of Amish farms around us. And we got real lucky and found a 20 something acre little farmstead, so.
04:10You know, we just love it. We love the weather. It's not so hot up here like it is down south and just the rolling hills and man, the change of colors and the seasons. It's just, we just love it.
04:28Well good. Now you keep saying you're from the deep south. Where are you originally from? Mississippi. Okay. Way down by the in the bayou. Okay as much as I love southern accents I'm very bad at parsing which one I'm listening to so I had to ask. A lot of people say that I'm from Texas and no it's not Texas not Texas. Not many people you know we don't get a lot of tourists down where I'm from so not a little not a lot of people get
04:57experience or particular dialect, I guess I should say. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I messaged with you yesterday and you were saying that you're new to homesteading. So what inspired you to get into homesteading? Well, to be honest, you know, when we were living in West, when we first moved to Pennsylvania, my son at the time was four years old.
05:27And we were living in Pennsylvania for about six months and before he was diagnosed with some autoimmune issues. And, you know, at, um, four years old, you know, I mean, he's just a baby, right. And then, um, as his condition would progress over, you know, time, he would
05:57have more issues to have to deal with. And I just did not want to see my son on so many medications at such a young age. And so that's really where I began my whole deep dive into how can I help my baby, you know, have a good quality of life without having to take all these medicines.
06:28And so, you know, I just kind of learned a lot of information about our food systems and our medical systems and, you know, big pharma and all the things. And, you know, it was just a big wake up call. And so when the time allowed us to be able to start looking around for, you know, to get out of the...
06:55rent-in world into home ownership. I just wanted to have a place that I could, you know, start sourcing our own stuff for my family. And man, it's been a long journey of education and experimenting and readjusting your thought process and stuff. But really, that's really what brought me into this world is just wanting
07:24to take care of my family and so to keep us healthier in a way from all those chemicals and poisons that we're exposed to on a daily basis. Yup, right there with you sister. I understand. Yeah, so you know, I'm not that experienced in it. I'm just, you know, I learn a little bit as I go. But you know, we've got our own cows. We've got our own chickens.
07:54We got gardens and you know, I'm not an expert at it. I, you know, just it's a, it's every day's a learning experience. Yep, it is. And it's gonna be as long as you're in this lifestyle, you will learn something new every minute of every day. Sure. I learned how to can last year. So, you know, I'm having fun using things out of, out of our garden. And, and
08:24um, our animals on the farm and learning how to can meals and put them up for storage. And, and I tell you what, the, a lot of people homestead and can like, kind of like a prepper kind of world, but that's not really the stance that I take. I just love, you know, when we have those busy days and busy weeks, you can just go down and grab you a, a jar of
08:52you know, some canned burrito meat and just open up a can and warm it up and you got dinner for the night, you know? Easy peasy. Yeah. Yep. I've got a couple things about canning, but the first thing I want to say is I've said this a few times. Humans are the only species that will work their asses off to make something easier. Oh, I know, right? And I love that. Yeah, I love it. And then
09:18The other thing I was going to say is we started canning like three summers ago. I have not great memories of canning with my mom in the no air conditioning house in Maine in July and August. And I swear the walls would sweat. Oh, wow. So my husband asked me three years ago now that we have air conditioning in the house we bought a little over four years ago and we have a great big huge kitchen. He said, can we finally try canning? And I said, yeah.
09:48Yes. And so we bought a whole bunch of strawberries and we made strawberry jam. Oh, wonderful. And my son, I think, ate the last jar, the last half pint jar last week of that strawberry jam. And I'm so sad. I'm so sad that it's all gone. We have to get, we have to do more. Let me tell you what else I've learned. Yeah. I invested in.
10:16freeze dryer. You ever heard of that? Yep. So I will take strawberries and freeze drum and store them and those I tell you what if you want to get chips out of your house freeze dry some strawberries. Yes nature's candy and I don't have a freeze dryer and I can't afford one right now.
10:42I know, they're not cheap. I know, I know. It was definitely an investment we had to save up for, but man, it is so fun to play around with. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I really wish that the company that is the big deal in the freeze dryer world would offer me a small freeze dryer to try out and review, because I would be happy to do that, but I don't think they're going to do that. I definitely would ask about it. Yeah. Doesn't hurt to ask. Yep.
11:12But you're talking about Nutrious Candy, because you... I also have a...
11:19Yeah, exactly. I also learned how to cream my own milk. So, you know, I'll get like a few gallons of raw milk and I have like a creamer and I just pour it in there and I get my own pints of heavy cream. Very nice. Very, very nice. Are you a coffee drinker? Oh my gosh. Every day, all day. I love coffee.
11:47I don't drink coffee like, you know, normal coffee. I drink mushroom coffee. Okay. Yeah. So, but yeah, that's a, that's been a, it's been a journey. We've been here four years now. So, you know, it's been a lot. It's been a lot of learning. Uh-huh. Have you tried making, um, soaps or lip balms yet? No, ma'am. I have not ventured into that yet. Um,
12:16I don't know if I have a desire to learn all that just because it's so easy and affordable. I also love to support entree preneurship and I know that there is a whole world out there of people that make homemade soaps and stuff like that.
12:42my time and attention would be much more valuable to just, instead of me doing all that too, to just take the opportunity to support somebody else's business. Again, right there with you, because we actually started a business two summers ago and part of it was making soaps and lip balms and things like that. And it's really expensive for the supplies and it's even more expensive now. So we've done it.
13:12I get it. I'm kind of backed off of it some because it's just, it's not, I don't want to say it's not worth the investment, but it's not worth the investment and the time. Right now we have some for us because that was why we started doing it in the first place. So as long as I have soap and I have lip balms, I'm happy.
13:32Yeah. Oh, I totally get it. I mean, you definitely can't do it all. Right. I mean, you know, you can't be the, as far as my view and take, you can't be that homesteader to where, you know, you're doing your own processing of animals and, and dairy and food and cannon and all those things. And then go into the, the soaps and the, uh, you know, all that stuff. You just can't do it all.
14:00So I just kind of stick to what I enjoy myself to keep it enjoyable and fun where it's not like a chore and the other stuff I would just would rather source to a you know independent business owner. Yep. If you can't make it yourself, support someone who does make it and that way everybody wins. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So do you love what you're doing? I love, love, love what I'm doing.
14:31But that's my personal, everything that I've talked about so far is just my whole personal time that I spend doing things that I enjoy. But my employment, my source of income is I actually have a business where I represent a natural path at company. We have not a whole bunch of stuff. We've got probably about a little over a dozen products.
15:01But man, man, man, do they pack a punch. And the greatest thing that I love about it is that the ingredients that are used for the formulations, I don't have to grow them myself. Right? They have perfected already, you know, the perfect soil that you need and the perfect environment and the perfect way to harvest and source it, you know, so I don't have to worry about.
15:30you know, if I'm doing it all right or if I'm, you know, getting the best of the best because we have these naturopathic scientists that know how to do all that and then So yeah, it's basically our go-to Products that we use here in the house. It's helped my son immensely when it comes to helping with his blood sugars and his
15:57digestive issues and without having to be on medicine and stuff like that. And it's not that you can't grow a lot of this stuff yourself because you can. Not everything because some things just are not inclusive to the environment that we live in. You know, certain, you need so much sunlight and you know, more, a warmer climate and stuff like that in order to have the potency and the...
16:26the strength and the quality of some of the ingredients, but they take care of all that. So, that's one thing that these products bring into our household is that, even though they're naturopathic herbs, roots and shoots and botanical ingredients and stuff, I don't have to grow them myself.
16:56it to be to get the quality and the potency that comes in these products. But that's my professional life. That's my business. Okay. And do you do it from home? I do. I do it from home. I do it on the road. The greatest thing about being an entrepreneur is that it's your office, your rules, right? So, you work when you want and if you want to go on vacation, you can work then too.
17:25You know, you're not having to be nailed down to a weekend schedule or, you know, one or two weeks out of the year schedule or you don't have to. We homeschool, so we don't have to go by the school schedule. You know, it can go with you wherever you go. Yep. That's why I started a podcast because I want to make it grow and make it the thing I do until I retire. If I ever retire. Yeah. Excellent.
17:53Excellent, excellent. But yeah, so we are a military family, living on our retirement, but we all know that none of us in the military join for the money. Right. Because it's not a lot, as well as the retirement. It sounds good to say retirement, but that pension isn't that much. And you definitely can't raise a family on it. So you have to have
18:22some type of supplementation to go with that. And this business that I have is our main source of income actually. Nice, very nice. So can you tell me what the name of the company is? It is Bravely Global. It is rather new. I say that have heartedly because we're just entering our fifth year in business. And so we're...
18:52Past the startup phase, I joined and started building my business when we were in the startup stage. I've been with them for almost a year. We were in our fourth year, but at that time when I joined, the company, company-wide was only doing, I think, 19 million in year four or year three.
19:17They went from their first year in 2020. Let me tell you about the story of this company. In our house, we love the Lord. We are just Christians and we do our best to try to live our life that way. The company that I'm with is a faith-based company, so they love the Lord too. It was born right in the midst of COVID.
19:47back in 2020. So while everybody was, you know, running around in fear without, you know, a lot of information and on lockdown and not, you know, too scared to go out and go anywhere and, and all that kind of stuff, we have a founder that had a vision and knew that the world was going to need these products or, you know, need some help.
20:14And so this company was born in December of 2020. So if I don't know if you remember what you were doing in December of 2020. Crying, crying. Yeah. Businesses were closing, people were staying home and you know, the economy was going in the garbage and our company was born, opened its doors, you know? So she is a woman, the whole family, they're, they're, you know,
20:42have a lot of faith in the Lord and they just knew that they had a calling and a vision and they were brave enough, which you know, our name is Bravely, they were brave enough to step out in faith and put this out there to the world. And in their first year, which ended December of 21, they did a million and a half, that's it, a million and a half in sales.
21:09And, you know, they just kept plugging on in the year two. They ended with, um, I believe 6 million in sales. And then last year when right after, um, they ended their third year, right after that, I, is when I joined, they ended at 19 million and we just closed, uh, this past year in December, which would end our fourth year, we jumped
21:3850 million. So we went from one and a half million to 50 million in four years, which is unbelievable. And the reason why is because we are just very different than anything else on the market. Yes, you can get mushroom coffees, you know, from a lot of places, but our mushroom coffee is a lot different than what else, you know, everywhere else you get. We've got a product that
22:07attacks, inflammation and pain like nobody's business and keeps you having to take those daily inflammatory for people that struggle with aches and pains through whatever reason, getting old, arthritis. We've got a handful of things that do a lot of stuff. That's the story behind the company and how it was born and where it's been.
22:37my journey and when I found it and we've got products that help with all kinds of common issues and one of the main reasons why I decided this was for me, besides of all the things you've already heard, is that it really does give my son a good quality of life because we've halved his insulin doses since we've been using the products.
23:05can eat food without having stomach pain and his digestion is on point, his gut health is on point, his mood and focus. We don't have to deal with those ADHD medications.
23:33these products have done for not just for him, but my husband and me myself, it was just a no brainer. It was definitely something that I feel like the Lord put on our path. So, yeah, that's really our journey as far as all that goes. Okay, so a couple of things. I'm really glad that you found something that supports your son because I have four kids. They're all grown, they're all adults.
24:02And mostly when they were growing up, the worst things I ever had to deal with was stomach flu and, you know, upper respiratory infections now and then, and nothing that was quote unquote scary. And autoimmune things are scary. It's really hard, especially if you don't know what to do to help them. So I'm really glad that you found something that helps him and helps you guys.
24:32go hand in hand which is always really wonderful and helpful. Correct, yes, absolutely. So I love it when your core beliefs are able to be expressed in what you do in your home life and your work life because it's really hard when you have to have a job that kind of butts heads with your home life. Well, you know, I just this morning put a little post on my social media that says,
25:01You know, that talks about, um, you know, find something that you love and you'll never work a day in your life, you know? Yep. So absolutely. I totally agree. Yeah. And since you said that, um, I put out my podcast episodes every, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, and I do not get them ready until that morning because I enjoy getting up, getting my coffee, waking up and sitting down.
25:31two hours before my episodes are gonna be released at seven. And working on it, which is crazy. I could get them all ready to go on the weekends, but I just really like having that thing to get up to, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. Isn't that crazy? Oh, I totally understand, totally understand. And luckily it doesn't require a lot of editing. Clearly I listen to the episodes, you know, couple days before I'm gonna do anything with them just to make sure they all recorded right and what I need to edit if anything. Right.
25:59But because it's just conversations, it's super quick. And it literally gives me something that I look forward to getting out of bed for, if that makes any sense at all. Absolutely, absolutely. I know, I totally agree. I totally agree. You have to have ambition. Ambition is what keeps, I mean, it's just great for the soul. Yeah, exactly. And
26:29I started this as a hobby. Like my youngest was going to be moving out. I thought I was going to be going through empty nest syndrome and I didn't want to. And I needed something to focus on while he was making that transition. And come to find out he was only gone for a couple of months. And so when he got back, I was like, so I've been doing this thing and I can't stop because they don't want to stop. So here's what my schedule is like now. Please be respectful. And he was like,
26:58I'm really proud of you mom. This is very cool. And I was like, God, I love you. I love you. You are aware enough as a human being to understand that the world doesn't revolve around you. The world revolves around everybody. Oh yeah. We're, we're still getting there over here. Yeah. Well he is 10. Yours is 10. That's a different stage. Yeah. So we'll make it though. We'll get there. You will. Absolutely. You will.
27:24All right, so Sam, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're at almost 28 minutes. So is there anything else you would like to share in the last two minutes? No, I think we pretty much covered my whole day to day. If anybody wants to learn more about these products that I represent, they can always find me on Facebook. That's really where I work. My office, my social office is on Facebook. So I don't know if that's something
27:54you put out to people. I will put it in the show notes. Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much, Miss Mary. I so appreciate you. I appreciate you too. And I have a couple more things. Thank you for your service and your husband's service. My son, my stepson, but my son, he's mine. He might as well be mine, was a Marine for eight years. I think he was in for eight years. And worried every moment.
28:19every moment of those eight years, but he's good, he's out, he's thriving, he's married, he has a daughter, he's doing great. So I know, I sort of know the sacrifice that it is to have a family member in the service. It's hard. And I'm sure that being in the service is even harder. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today because I think this is super duper fun. And
28:50Your Facebook page also has photos of the stuff you're doing on your sweet homestead. So if people want to see your cows or your chickens or your garden stuff, that's all there too. So I highly recommend that people go look at the photos because they're gorgeous. Well, thank you so much. You're so kind. I'm just chatty. That's just me. All right, Sam. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
29:17You too, Miss Mary. We'll talk again soon. Alright, bye. Bye bye.
 

Blooming Health Farms

Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms.
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 Sean at Blooming Health Farms. Good morning, Sean. How are you? Hey, good morning, Mary. How are you doing? I'm good. It's, is it nice in Colorado, number one? It is gorgeous. It is chilly, but the sun here makes it feel like it's tropical.
00:31Well, we have sunshine in Minnesota too, but it's not tropical. It's probably 10 degrees outside. Oh, that's fair. That's fair. And I always ask about how the weather is, where the person is that I'm talking to because how I show my esteem for the people I talk to. So that's why. Okay, Sean, tell me about what you do because I know it has to do with chickens. Yes.
00:59Blooming Health Farms is a nonprofit aquaponic chicken farm in northern Colorado. We're located in Greeley. And I use that word aquaponic chicken farm, A, to get a little bit of attention, but it showcases some of the neat stuff we do. We actually grow some of our own chicken feed using aquaponics and hydroponic methods, as well as take care of our chickens in some really humane, compassionate way.
01:29that we do with chickens, partially to run an egg laying operation and sell chicken feed. But we also work with at-risk youth and teach them entrepreneurship and give them mental health support so they get themselves out of those cycles that they find themselves in. That is stellar. Okay. So what is, okay, first off, what's the difference between hydroponic and aquaponic? Because I didn't know.
01:58that they were separate things. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like, you know, big funny fancy words in agriculture these days. So I like to say that hydroponics is an umbrella form of agriculture, like the big thing. And it really simply means to use water to grow plants that aren't growing in a soil medium.
02:22So we're growing plants with a nutrient-rich solution, a solution that has all of the minerals and vitamins plants need. And we're doing that in something like just water or something that has an inert media, a media without nutrition. Aquaponics is a subset of that, a part of hydroponics, in which we
02:47grow fish in a body of water and then we use the fish water to actually fertilize our plants, if that makes sense. So the fish are eating this really highly nutritious, high protein fish food and their waste product is going into the water. There's a bunch of naturally occurring bacteria that live in the atmosphere and they turn that fish waste from their ammonia waste into usable plant nutrients, mostly nitrates.
03:18Okay, that helps. Thank you. Because I was listening and I'm like, I didn't know there was a difference. What's the difference? So you just defined it. Thank you. All right. So Sean, what brought you to doing this? Because everybody has a reason. Yes. You know, years ago, I found myself living up in the mountains here in Colorado. I lived in an area called South Park and I was a professional photographer.
03:46And I would meet a lot of people that I was taking pictures of that was saying like, hey, Sean, you're living the dream up here. And I would reflect on the things that I was doing. And I was living as a poor ski bum, if you will. And I really did a lot of thinking and stuff. And I decided to get myself back in school. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that, to be honest with you,
04:14I grew my first pot plant while I was up in the mountains and I did a terrible job at it. I tried to grow it hydroponically in a way that I mentioned earlier and the plant came out and it was, for lack of better words, just very poor. There were no flowers on it. So if I wanted to use it for marijuana, it was pretty much worthless. And it drove me down this path of trying to figure out how to do it better.
04:44if that makes sense, to try to grow a better plant. Well, while I was researching and studying, I saw this picture in a book of a hydroponic tomato growing in the Epcot Center. And it was this tomato in a large pot growing over the size of a tennis court. And there were these tomatoes the size of baseballs. There was like 30,000 of these tomatoes on this tennis court size.
05:12spot and I said to myself, oh my goodness, I think we should be growing food this way. And it led me down this path of trying to grow tomatoes hydroponically. So I literally rushed down from the mountains and enrolled in a community college and started studying agriculture, studying biology, studying chemistry. And I fell in love with just this whole world of trying to grow things.
05:42hydroponically. Well, I rushed off to the University of Hawaii to learn how to do all of this stuff. And while I was there, I got to work with local farmers on the islands who were trying to figure out ways to enter into the market, who are trying to use novel ways to grow plants, to save space, to save water.
06:11doing research to help farmers install hydroponic and aquaponic systems so they could grow different plants. And my whole goal was to come back here to Colorado to start my own tomato hydroponic farm. So I went through this really, really good experience in Hawaii. And when I came back to Colorado, I was struggling with trying to get this idea off the ground.
06:39And one of the reasons that I was struggling is that I personally had a problem. I used to be a really bad alcoholic. And for a long time of my life, I made a lot of poor choices that got me in a lot of trouble. And I found myself in and out of jail for many years because I would get drunk, I would do something.
07:08I'm stupid, I would get in a fight, I would find myself in jail, and then I would repeat that pattern over and over and over again. It was me, and it was falling in love with tomatoes. That changed it. It changed everything for me. And when I came back to Colorado, quite honestly, I was still struggling with my alcoholism. I was still struggling with drinking.
07:34And I ended up getting my third DUI in 2014, which really sent me down this downward spiral, which ended up being a really deep soul-searching path. And while I was sitting in jail all of these times, I ended up meeting a lot of individuals in and out of these places that I recognized had similar backgrounds that I did.
08:03that had hopes, that had dreams, and they were struggling to find what it is they wanted to do in life. And while I was sitting in there, I came to this realization and this epiphany, if you will, that I wanted to be able to help people get out of tough situations. I wanted to help people like myself who were struggling with addictions.
08:30I wanted to help people become self-sufficient. And I say that really pointedly because I got out of jail. I got sober in 2017. And shortly thereafter, I met a gentleman here in Greeley, Colorado who's a clinical counselor. And he said to me that while he was studying in graduate school...
08:56that he was learning about this prison in Canyon City, Colorado that had a farm and they had an aquaponic system. And the prisoners that were working these systems, when they got released from prison, they were less likely to come back to prison than their other inmates that weren't working on this farm. And when he told me this, I immediately got goosebumps. And I was like, it resonated with my story. And then he said to me, he goes,
09:25I want to start a business, a non-profit, helping people learn how to get life skills, learn how to learn job skills, and support their mental health recovery on the medium of a farm. And I want to do this aquaponics stuff that I read about, but I don't know how to do it. And so we met soon after, and we formed this idea that I mentioned at the beginning called
09:54started to use our skill sets to develop a working business model to try to help kids that are young adults age 15 to 24 break that cycle of getting in trouble and getting stuck in the criminal justice system.
10:13Wow. Sean, I say this to everybody who actually makes me, moves me when they tell me their story. I love you. That is fantastic what you're doing. Thank you. I'm blessed to be where I am. I had a lot of people along the way that believed in me and supported me. And now I see this opportunity where I get to do the same thing. It's really cool. It's more than really cool. It is phenomenal.
10:40what you're trying to do for people and what you're doing for yourself too. Thank you. You're welcome. So tell me where you're at with it, with Blooming Health Farms.
10:56Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when I tell that story, a lot of times I purposely leave out the chickens, because when we start talking about Blooming Health Farms, I mentioned that we're a chicken farm. We never expected, I never expected to be a chicken guy. I never expected to have chickens in my life. As a youth, I had chickens in the backyard. As a young adult, I had chickens with parents' backyards, or backyard chickens with my folks and whatnot.
11:22So chickens have always kind of just been pockmarked, scattered throughout my background. Well, while we were developing our business model, quite honestly, we were trying to take these concepts that we had in our heads, and we're trying to essentially take, you know, like a square peg and shove it in a round hole, for lack of better words, that we knew that there were people out there that needed help.
11:52And we wanted to build an aquaponics farm and bring kids in and teach them how to do the things that we needed to do to operate that farm, how to feed fish, how to grow plants, how to sell those produce that we grew. And while we were developing that, we had a lot of start and stops and start and stops from the different things that we were trying to do. But most specifically, one of the biggest obstacles that I initially saw
12:21was in getting the buy-in from the youth over the long term in what it takes to grow plants. So to say that differently, I got to see that when we would bring the youth in to have us help them try to grow plants.
12:43there was a desire to see things happen almost instantaneously, or in another way, we could say there's like a desire for instant gratification. Of course, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And as many of us out there who have grown plants or have tried to grow plants know that it doesn't happen instantly. It takes days and weeks and months to get something from one stage to the next to getting that product. And we knew when we started down this path that
13:13delayed gratification is something that is missing in a lot of our youth. And it teaches discipline. It teaches a lot of these core soft skills that we believed are necessary to help kids stuck in the criminal justice system. So what ended up happening is... So for context, I turned...
13:41my house in the city of Greeley, Colorado into an urban farm. We converted a garage into an aquaponics farm, a vertical aquaponics farm. So if you're going to, us and the listeners can imagine like a 200 square foot garage that we put a fish tank in. It had filtration system and then vertical hydroponics. It looked like there were bunk beds of
14:09plants growing inside of a garage. And we would, I also had backyard chickens at my house. So while working with some kids, I would occasionally be like, hey, can you help me go take care of the chickens? And what I started to notice was more engagement and curiosity with what was going on with the chickens. What were they doing?
14:37what's going on with their eggs. I mean, there's actually a more instant gratification nature in raising a chicken because they would be able to get an egg, if that makes sense. And so what ended up happening is in our development of creating the business, I met a local teacher, a high school teacher who had a few youth that she thought...
15:06would benefit from what we were trying to do at the time. She recognized, hey, it looks like you guys are trying to do these neat things with aquaponics and you're still trying to figure it out. I have some kids that need some help. This one kid is running a gang, selling drugs, not showing up to school. Maybe you can help him. So this kid's name is Kewani and I met Kewani when he was a 16-year-old kid and he came
15:36wooden bunk beds flowing with water. And he looked at me and he goes, is that a tomato? And I said to him, yeah. And he goes, can I eat it? And I looked right at him and I say, yeah, of course. And he goes, you mean, I can actually eat this thing? And in the back of my mind was like, hmm, I don't think he's ever had a live tomato before. And I said, oh yeah. So I took one off the tomato tree and ate one and he did the same thing. And he got this.
16:04smile on his face and his eyes looked up and to the left and he was like puzzled and he's like, wow, this is a tomato? And I go, have you never had a fresh tomato before? And he goes, no. And I was like, wow. And I knew right there, you know, boom, I had him hooked on what we were trying to do. So I showed him around, I showed him the fish, I opened this fish tank, these fish jump out.
16:31We throw some fish food in there. I tell him a little bit of what we're doing. I go in the backyard. He sees some chickens and him and the teacher and I talk and we come up with an idea, a plan, and we decide that we are, that we could help him. And we, this is really one of the first ah-hahs in a big business development thing that happened. The teacher and I formed a partnership between myself and the local.
16:59between Blooming Health Farms and the local high school to have this kid come over twice a week for a few hours each time. And he would learn how to help me take care of the aquaponics system, how to take care of the fish, how to grow some plants, and then learn how to start selling some of those plants in exchange for getting school credit. So he would get credit for biology, for mathematics, and for a home economics course.
17:30And then the school was conveniently like three or four blocks away from my house. So we had a chaperone that would come walk in to and from school. And we did this for a whole semester. And it was actually during this time, this kid, he approached me during one of these moments and said to me, hey, Sean, do you think you can teach me how to grow a marijuana plant?
17:58And I looked at him and I said, you know, I don't think your teacher would really like me doing that. That would ruin our relationship. And he looks at me and he goes, he goes, yeah, but we don't have to tell her. And I go, how about this? How about I teach you how to grow tomatoes and then you can do whatever you want with that. You could probably use those skills to learn how to grow whatever you want. Maybe even a marijuana plant. And he looks at me and he goes, let's do it.
18:27And so it started us down this path. And that's how, what I was alluding to earlier, seeing the struggles with trying to teach these individuals, these young kids that are working with how to grow plants in an instant gratification. I was trying to teach this kid, Kewani, how to grow tomatoes. And it would be a lot of like, you know, one week we'd plant the tomatoes and two weeks later he wouldn't water them.
18:56They would die, he would complain that the tomatoes aren't growing, Sean, you don't know what you're talking about, this doesn't work, and etc. etc. So it was just this start and stop. And in one of those days I got, to be honest with you, I got a little bit frustrated with the misunderstandings and I couldn't communicate what was going on in those moments.
19:20So I said to him, hey, I need you to go take care of the chickens today. Your job is to go clean up the coop, clean up the yard, and I want you to just, here's a Bluetooth speaker. You go listen to your music, do whatever you gotta do. And so I handed him a rake, and I expected three hours later for his chaperone to come get him, and then I'd be done with him for the day, and I was like, oh man, I'm done. Well, about an hour later, you know, I hear the music out in the backyard.
19:49really, really peaceful, like energetically, if that makes sense. And I go out there and I just look and this yard is immaculate. The chickens are just happy and doing their little thing. They're right near his feet. And he's just kind of dancing and swaying to his rap music. And he starts asking me these funny questions, at least at the time they seemed funny, about the chickens. You know, Sean, why is the chicken walking this way? Hey, Sean, why do the chickens rub their beak on the ground like this?
20:18Hey Shawn, why are their feathers different? And I'm looking at him and I'm like, wow, you're really paying attention to what you're doing out here. I didn't realize it and he goes, oh man, these chickens, there's a lot to that. And so I kept encouraging it. I kept encouraging him to lean into this. Well, I invited this kid, Kewane, to the farmer's market. A few months after that, we were taking care of the chickens for a while. He was doing a really great job. And I said, hey, how about we go to the farmer's market?
20:48And we showed up at the farmer's market. It was an indoor winter market, November of 2022. And I bring that up specifically because of the bird flu pandemic during that time. And we went to the market and I have this teaching style, a lot like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid, where I like to say, hey, go paint the fence. Hey, go wax the car, go Sam the deck. And then say, hey, let's go do kung fu.
21:16So with him, we walked into the market and I challenged him. I said, hey, why don't you go set up the table, how you think it would look good, and we'll go start selling eggs. I'm gonna go say hi to the other vendors and see what they're selling. So when people come over, we can say, hey, so-and-so has this, so-and-so has that. Do you need eggs? And he's like, all right. I leave the kid for about 15 minutes and I come back and I come back to the table, it looks great. And he says to me, hey Sean, I sold all your eggs. And I look at him and I go.
21:46No way. We brought like 20 dozen eggs. And he goes, he goes, oh, he goes, oh, yeah, I sold all your eggs. And I called it I called his BS. I look in the coolers and there's no eggs. And I was like, wow, well done. So here really, our rules with the farmers market are our vendors have to stay the whole time that that the farmers market runs to keep the market full and our obligation and in our own this is to bring enough produce so we can sell the whole time.
22:15And I was explaining that to him. And he looked at me and he goes, oh, you mean we can't leave? And I go, no, you can't sell things that quick. We can't leave. He laughs at me. He goes, well, Sean, you know what? We need more chickens. And I say to him, I'm like, you know, we have six chickens. We already have more than the city allows. We can't have any more chickens in the city. And he goes, well, Sean, but check this out. If we had two more chickens, we would get two more eggs a day and we could grow this business.
22:44And I looked at him and I was like, wow. In my head, I was like, this kid just gave me the most brilliant three sentence business plan I've ever heard in my life. And I immediately said to him, no, we can't do that. That's not gonna happen. Well, Mary, later that night, I went online, I got on Craigslist and I found a local farmer about an hour north of us in Wyoming, who had 100 hens, mature hens for sale.
23:13And I phoned him up and I said, hey, can I buy all your chickens? I had no plan what to do with these chickens at all. I was just like, this was a brilliant idea. So the guy's like, yeah, come on up. Pick up whatever you want. I call him back the next day, hey, can I have half? And he's like, yeah, sure, no worries. I show up and I was like, yeah, I'll take about 30. And he's like, no problem. So I bring these chickens back down to my house inside Greeley in the city of Greeley. And I
23:42and I put these 30 chickens in my backyard in a very makeshift yard. And Kewane comes to report for his next thing a couple days later and he walks out into this backyard and he looks at me and he goes, Sean, I was joking with you. And I look at him and I go, no you weren't. That was a brilliant idea. And he goes, what are we gonna do now? I go, well, we're a chicken farm now. And he goes, okay. And he puts on his boots.
24:09And he goes out there and he goes, all right, well, what do we have to do? And I go, well, the first thing is we've got to fix this fence. It's a really bad fence I made. And we started, we started to be in the chicken farm on that day. And now two years since then, we have expanded on to, um, we have partnered with some homesteaders on the north side of Greeley who have five acres and they have leased us about an acre of their property.
24:37where we now have 150 chickens laying organic eggs. And it's been a wild ride over those two years. That is the longest answer to the first question I asked that I've ever heard, but it was beautiful. Okay, I have two things. Number one, as the mother of four grown children, raising kids is a trip, and you're doing a great job raising other people's kids. Good job.
25:07Number two, you are a fantastic teacher. Well thank you. Yeah, I love, I've found my passion for teaching through this. You know, I never thought I would be a teacher, but during these things I've reflected on, you know, when I was a little kid, my teachers would often assign me to reading for other students.
25:31And I eventually was actually a ski instructor when I was living up in the mountains. I joked I was a ski bum. I actually was a ski instructor, a real ski bum up there. And there's something to teaching people through doing that I really enjoy. Yeah, yeah, no, I can tell. I mean, listening to you tell your stories, you sound so full of joy about everything you're doing. So the third thing is you need to write a book. You are so good at.
26:00at telling stories you've got to write a book about your experience.
26:06Well, I think that's, I really appreciate that. I do have a book called Thinking Outside the Soil. And it talks about how hydroponics helps farmers save water, improve livestock quality, and helping us all become better stewards. And I do weave in a lot of the story and journey that I've mentioned here. If any of your listeners are out there interested in reading about that or yourself, I'd love to send you a copy of the book. And you know, I can personally,
26:36autograph it to you Mary there and yeah, it talks about really how hydroponics is helping small scale farmers and stuff like that. And we discovered a lot of that. While I was telling Kewane to help me, we were selling vegetables at the time and our main crops were microgreens and sprouts. That's what we really were making ourselves known for.
27:03In Greeley, Colorado, for context, we are very rural. We are conservative from a political, we would be red or maybe more libertarian. We're very much, you know, we raise the food we eat, we don't eat the food we eat in a sense kind of a thing. And so for saying that pointedly is that we were selling microgreens, which are kind of, you know, what our animals eat. And...
27:33It was really, really interesting. So we were having a lot of challenges. And what one of those challenges was is sometimes we didn't sell all of the microgreens that we were trying to sell. And I naturally, like any resourceful farmer, throw them out to our chickens. And one of Kewanee's job was, hey, take some of our waste produce this week or even our leftover medium and go give it to the chickens and they can clean it up. And what happened was people started,
28:02Like now, people were like, oh, you got any eggs? You got any eggs? Where are the eggs at? And when people started telling us, man, they're like, Sean, you guys got some really, really good eggs. And we started noticing that what we were feeding our chickens was really affecting their eggs. And I encouraged other farmers to do it. And when I started telling other small scale goats and
28:30and cattlemen and those people, what we were doing, they were like, you know, it would be really great if we could, you know, grow some of our own supplements, especially during the drought or the winter times for our own herds rather than sourcing these from the big box suppliers or something like that. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, you know. And so it really, it's really started to shape.
28:58my journey of where we're at today and one of the reasons we're here on the outskirts of Greeley is A, that we can have this many chickens where we're at now. And I met a couple who has aspirations to be homesteaders. They want to be very self-sufficient. They too have four kids and are hyper aware of what...
29:26They want to be putting in their kids bodies, what they want to be putting in themselves, how they want to be interacting with other individuals, and really trying to build community amongst themselves and of like-minded individuals. I was just tickled when I got the invite from your podcast, from your show. I was like, wow, this just really fits in with some of the things that I'm getting to learn. So I got my playlist started.
29:55to play out with what I'm going to continue listening to on the tiny homestead here. All right, good. Yay. It's, it's so funny when you when you say that, because I started the podcast as a way to not go through emptiness syndrome, because my youngest was going to be moving out. And started in August of 20. August of 2023. Okay. I think it was 23.
30:25And I thought it wouldn't go anywhere. And all I wanted to do was have something to focus on. And you're not the only person who has told me that they're gonna start listening to the backlog of posts because they're interested in learning about homosteading from other homosteaders. So when you guys tell me this stuff, it makes me feel really good and like I'm doing something good. So thank you for saying that.
30:55It's an important, I see a huge movement back to it. And people like yourself are mediums for others out there to share how we can all do it together. I've started to understand more and more as I've been building a business, that successful businesses and individuals and communities that work together find ways to thrive.
31:24a lot more than those that are trying to compete, if that makes sense. When we come together, we all seem to win more. All boats rise with the tide, yes. Absolutely. And when you can start to come to these different things by being able to bring to the table these different ideas and then recognizing, all right, it's okay to...
31:47disagree and then not worry about it and not use it if it doesn't work for you kind of a thing and And well, that's one of the draws for me to homesteading is that idea of that we can find what works for us others have trailblazed paths before us and and you get to share those stories of how others have you know, you know how they've sunk their ship how the ship is now rising and and
32:15You know, one of the things I know we're really starting to find with us is that what's really set us apart is how we're feeding our chickens and our, for instance, the folks I'm working with, their names Ethan and Shay. And as I mentioned, they have four kids. The Ethan is a full-time business owner. He owns a painting business. And his, the matriarch, Shay, the wife is,
32:45portrait photographer and then a homeschool mom. And like 13 other things, because she's a creator and entrepreneur. She makes a bunch of the different things. She does, she's like a lot of us out there, I'm sure that are listening to this, that we're just, we like to do those things. Point being is that when I met them, I explained to them, I was like, I've got this really great way to work with kids, but also to get a really great product and to really.
33:13Help the Earth and the community. And I showed them how to sprout. And Ethan, without any background in biology or anything like that, took to it in a few days and has taught his kids how to do it. And we sprout in a space the size of a wardrobe or a little closet. And we're able to grow. I think we're growing about 15 pounds a day of live sprouts. And it takes them about 30 minutes.
33:43to do all of it, to go out and feed the chickens and then go about their day. And it's really cool to hear. When we started, I would go out with my chickens and I would throw the sprouts on the ground and I would go, sprout time, ladies, it's sprout time. And they would run in from wherever they were. And then people started to joke, they're like, man, your chickens are like addicts. They just come running. And we started calling our sprouts chicken crack.
34:12because the sprout, the chickens would run from all over. And now I hear Ethan's kids coming out there and they're banging on this bucket and they're like, Sprout time ladies, sprout time ladies. It just tickles my heart because I just like, I don't know, I find it kind of funny to just see the silliness of enjoyment and doing what you love translate out into different areas of life.
34:42And that's, I see that's the, what homesteading and this attempt to live this lifestyle offers at a way, there's that just pure enjoyment for whatever they're doing. And it's really neat to see. It's really neat to see and it's really neat to experience because we do, we have our little homestead here. That's why the podcast is called The Tiny Homestead. And I really, really am not a gardener.
35:09and I'm really, really not into chickens, but my husband is into both of those things. What I'm into is my dog. I love my dog, she's amazing. What kind of dog? She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Oh. I love her, she is my fifth kid, I swear to you. But we also usually have a batch of barn kittens every year, maybe two. Now you're speaking my language, I love kittens.
35:34And I really, really love the baby stage. I really love watching the mama cats, you know, grow in their pregnancy. The last mama cat we had, we lost her this summer. She looked like a basketball this summer with her last litter. And just watching her go from this skinny barn cat who was hunting mice to this round mama ready to give birth was really neat. And then seeing all the babies is always a joy. So for me, it's the dog and the cats.
36:03It's also cooking. I love cooking. Okay, so when my husband brings me in tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff I'm like, yeah, what are we having for dinner? And Then I make that work So that's a skill. I I appreciate that I am the more like your husband it sounds that I admire people who can just take those raw ingredients and Are you one of those types of people that just takes the same thing and makes?
36:32four or five different types of things out of it? Well, it depends on what it is. I mean, I love basil. And so we make pesto. We make, I always forget the name of it. I love it, but I can't think of the name of it right now. The appetizer you get at restaurants where it's diced tomatoes and garlic and chopped up basil and olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I can't think of what it's called. But anyway, it's an appetizer. And you put the chopped up stuff on the
37:01the toasted bread and just eat it and it's delicious. I make that. I will remember what I'm trying to think of an hour from now. But anyway, bruschetta. I make bruschetta. Oh, bruschetta. Yes. Pesto and bruschetta. And I use tons of basil and spaghetti sauce that's made from scratch. I just, basil is like my favorite herb ever. So I do a lot with basil. And we can tomato sauce, we can tomato paste, we can diced tomatoes.
37:30when they're coming in. Radishes. Radishes are great in salad. But did you know that you can make a quick pickled radish? I have heard that me personally. I don't I'm not a big pickled anything person. Well, pickled radishes are wonderful if you like pickled stuff. So yes, so there's all these things that you can do with what comes in from the garden, but my favorite thing is just to have him bring in a bunch of different leafy greens.
37:59and some tomato and some cucumbers and just have a salad. You know, it's easy.
38:06Yeah, I love salads. As I grew up, one of the things that was very impressionable is I had a grandmother who would always eat her salad at the end of the meal. And in traditional Americans, most of us eat our salads as an appetizer. And as a little kid, I would be like, grandma, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? And she would always look at me and she would be like, Sean?
38:34because it's like nature's broom. It just cleans everything down when you're done. And I was, and it's so for me, when I was a little kid, it shifted and it's always been an impressionable thing. And I know it's influenced me. We would be in the garden and picking all the little things until I grew up in the garden as well.
38:54Yep, exactly. Sean, we could talk for hours. You are the chattiest person I've ever had on the podcast, which is wonderful, but I try to keep these to half an hour. So would you like to come back in the fall and tell me where things are at then? I would love to, Mary. I really appreciate all of your time, and I do enjoy talking, so thank you for allowing me that space. Oh, absolutely, and I have one more question if you can make it a short answer.
39:21How old are you? Because you sound like you've lived a hundred lifetimes and enjoyed every one of them. You know, I've wondered how many past lives I've lived, but in this one, I am currently 39 years old. You've done a lot in that time and you've done a lot of good in that time. Keep doing that. Well, thank you, Mary. Thank you. Keep sharing the journeys that we have. I'm trying. This is an awesome show and I can't wait to come back. All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Sean. Thanks, Mary.
 
 

REKO- Local Food Community

Today I'm talking with Brecca at REKO- Local Food Community. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
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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 Brecca at REKO Local Food Community. Good afternoon, Brecca. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know where I was. Hello. Nice to be with you. You too. How are you?
00:26I'm doing so well, thanks. We're trying to stay warm over here in my neck of the woods, but from listening to some of your previous podcasts, we're not that cold. So we hit two degrees this morning, and I was thinking I was not having a good day, but then I heard negative 25, and I was like, I'm OK. I'm OK. Well, it's really funny, because they're predicting rain for this afternoon here. It's like 35 degrees today. Oh my goodness, yeah. No fun.
00:52It would be really, really nice if the weather would reflect what month we're actually in. Wouldn't it? That's true. My husband and I were talking in last year in January is when we got all our snow. So we didn't have snow all winter last year till January came and that's when we got pelted. And this year's been similar. We haven't been pelted with snow, but the temperatures are super cold. So I'm like, I'm ready to kind of start breaking into spring, not have the winter.
01:23It's not that far away. We are rolling into February here soon. So there's hope. And I feel like all I do is talk about the weather at the beginning of every podcast episode. But like I've said, it's how I express my care for who I'm talking to. So well, when you're talking homesteading weather, that's what we're all thinking about. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So tell me about yourself and about RICO and what does REKO stand for? It's R-E-K-O. Yeah. So
01:50REKO is actually a Swedish acronym that was put out by a Finnish farmer, and it just means fair consumption. So REKO itself here in Idaho started in 2020 around COVID craziness. So we had farmers markets that were threatening not to open because they couldn't meet the demands of city authorities and health authorities.
02:19We had restaurants that were closed down. And for all of our small producers here in Idaho, those were two of the biggest cells for their farms and their homesteads was restaurants and farmers markets. And so we had Tia Groves with...
02:40They no longer run it, but they sold mushrooms at the time. And she actually started Rico here locally as a collaboration of producers to create a way to continue to sell our goods because we were still producing them, but we just lost all of our avenues of selling them during 2020.
03:01Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Did I see that it doesn't cost money to be part of it on your website or did I misread that? So actually, so there's two different parts of Rico. There's Rico the app, which is a great resource that has been produced by a couple of tech guys out of Utah and we just teamed up with them.
03:27to be able to use the app, but the app is created with the producer in mind. So it is absolutely free for the producer. There's no cost. It is a storefront. So it's a great way to have a website that you can use that storefront of REKO through the app or if they're on a computer it goes through a website and
03:54Sorry, my computer just notified me it's low. So anyways, but either way we can go, the producers aren't paying for it. There is a small fee that's asked from the customer at checkout and that's how the app is paid for. So we have a lot of producers here that have really taken advantage of that and created websites with that.
04:22with REKO built in as the purchasing power for their website. So it saves our producers money on fees. It saves our producers money on having a storefront that's online, right? Because I know for our particular business, we have our own website and we set it up with WooCommerce years before REKO app was ever available. And we pay a lot of money for that every year. So
04:50It is REKO. The app is definitely set up with producers in mind and it is a free tool for producers when that is When we talk about the farmers when we talk about the farmers market here in Idaho We have created a collaboration of vendors that have come together as REKO Treasure Valley And we actually created a farmers market out of it. So it's an online farmers market
05:17We do charge, if you were to participate in all eight locations, it is $30 a month. So it's still very affordable. That $30 a month that we all pitch in goes to advertising the farmers market. So that's literally the only thing it pays for, but it's been a great resource for us as producers to come together and have, to help all of us, right? When the tide rises, we all rise. So.
05:46Yes, I believe that completely. Okay, so are you a producer too? Do you grow things and sell things? I, we do. My husband and I own and operate HIPWA ranch, which we, probably 80% of our business is beef and then just over the years, we have listened to our customers and started producing chicken and pork and we raise farm fresh eggs as well. Nice.
06:14How's your flock doing? Because there's been all this bird flu stuff. Is your chicken flock doing OK? Yeah. You know, our flock is totally happy and healthy. They're not enjoying the cold at the moment, so they have cut production due to the cold. But as far as health, everybody's looking really healthy and good. Good. I just saw another story come through my newsfeed this morning that another big chicken producing or egg producing place has gone down due to.
06:43Due to bird flu, I'm like, we're not gonna have any eggs here soon, because we had chickens, but we got rid of them, so we don't want to feed them through the winter. That was a very stupid idea. We should not have gotten rid of our chickens. I'm really regretting our choices right now.
06:59Yeah, nope, that's a little bit of a painful one with the current economic situation of eggs for sure. Yes, and it was a choice between feeding them all winter with the price of feed being high and maybe getting a couple eggs a week or just getting rid of them. We only had 12 and starting over in the spring. And I was like, sure, go ahead, get rid of them. That's fine.
07:24And then all this birth food stuff really kicked in shortly after we called our chickens. And I was like, we're dumb. My husband was laughing. I'm like, you know, that's one thing about homesteading and doing that stuff on your own is you live and learn, right? We make decisions and we learn like, oh, maybe that wasn't the best decision. We do it different the next time. So when you know more, you do better. So yes, yes. That's cool.
07:48We're going to do a new experiment this spring. We're going to get actual chicks this year, baby chickens. Oh yeah. We've had, we've bought laying hens up until now. And my husband was like, I'd really like to try getting a couple of day old chicks and, and doing it from there through. And I was like, are you sure? He was like, he's like, it'll be fun. And I'm like, okay, if there's a fun element, I'm in. It'll be fun or a nightmare, but
08:1812 would be high fun. I bet that would be fun. I just want to hold one of the baby chickens because I've held baby ducks and I know how soft they are, but I've never held a chick. So it'll be my opportunity to try that next. Awesome. Okay. So how many people are involved with this Rico thing that you guys have set up for your area? We fluctuate by seasons, but as far as producers, we'll have anywhere from 10 to 20 producers.
08:47throughout the year that participate in Ricoh. And then as far as customers, that's a hard number for me to gauge because I don't have access to that information. But I can tell you that, I mean, I know we probably have several hundred throughout the valley that shop with Ricoh Treasure Valley specifically. And so we are trying to grow that. We're trying to reduce the friction with the Ricoh app.
09:17Because we figure as local producers, that's nine-tenths of the problem, right, is reducing friction. So consumers need to know where the farms are first, and how to purchase. And then once they figure that out, then it's a convenience factor of making it easy to purchase. And Ricoh does all of those things. It puts everybody in one spot so people can come and they can shop from all 10 to 20 producers.
09:45and pay one checkout fee and then they show up to one location for a 15 minute pickup window. So our producers that do produce or those sensitive things that don't last forever, they love this model because they're only picking what's been pre-ordered. So all of our orders come in pre-ordered and end up...
10:12going out to specific locations for a 15 minute pickup window. So we hit three different locations on one day and four different locations on another day. And then our last drop is on Thursdays and that's out in Mountain Home, which is about 45 minutes from most of our other drops. That's wonderful. The friction word that you keep using, I keep reading a lot about friction with people trying to buy things.
10:42To me, friction is what happens when I run my finger over sandpaper or drag my fingernails down a chalkboard. And I had never really thought about that word being used as the stumbling blocks to customers getting things from producers. And so I'm trying to add this to my brain now because I just have never heard it used that way before.
11:08Sure. Yeah, no, friction is, I mean, I guess when I think of friction, I think of the same things you think of, but when we think of a business model, when we have friction, it's making it less accessible for customers, right? Like we might be out here producing and we think we have it all set up because we have a website and we're going to farmers markets, but we are in a grocery store that's on the corner of a busy intersection with, you know,
11:38signs, neon signs saying shop here and sending out ads in every newspaper every weekend. And so people who are wanting to shop local but haven't been shopping local get a little bit lost. I mean, they're just a little bit confused at how to start. And so we're just looking to make that process easier for everybody. And I'm really glad that you are because we understand it completely.
12:05We live like four or five miles outside of our town and we have a farm stand in the summer. And this past summer there was nothing in it because our garden did nothing this year. It was bad. But two summers ago, our first year with the farm stand, we had signs at the end of the driveway and I would post on Facebook. And we had people in and out of our driveway all day two summers ago buying our produce. And it was amazing. Yeah, that's awesome. Like I couldn't believe how many people.
12:35would swing out here to pick up tomatoes or cucumbers or squash or whatever they were here for. And of course it drove my dog crazy because she is an excellent watchdog. That's her only job and she does it really well. So there was a lot of dog barking going on two summers ago. But you're absolutely right. It's really hard to market stuff if you don't have a marketing background, if you don't know what it is.
13:01all the ins and outs of letting people know where you are and what you have and why you're doing it. Right. And I think it's easier too when we collaborate as producers, you know, our business model for Hipple Ranch. So to give a little history, I married a rancher, right? I didn't grow up ranching. I married into the family and kind of the marketing side and the business side of things is more my wheelhouse. And
13:30And the animal side is more my husband's wheelhouse. So we have the benefit of having a little bit of insight to both worlds. But it does become, you know, when you're ranching full-time, that's a full-time job. Like taking care of animals and keeping vegetables growing. And you know, you end up with a full-time job and then try to market on top of that as another full-time job, and then if you're meeting customers anywhere, then you've got a delivery, I mean, it just grows to...
13:59almost feel like something beyond what we can handle. But when we collaborate with those around us, that's one thing that we've always done, my husband and I, is we don't look at other producers that produce beef as competitors. Because at the end of the day, the more people we have raising food locally, the better off we all are. And when we...
14:25can join arms and realize that, you know, I'm going to hit a certain target market and there's going to be people that are attracted to us, whether it's by our brand or the way we raise or grow things. And then, you know, there might be another producer that comes and sells with us also. And they attract a different market of people that aren't interested in what we offer for whatever reason. So there's so many people out there. I mean, that's why you don't walk into a grocery store and see one option in
14:54in any of your aisles, really, you have several options of the same type of thing because everything is attracting somebody different. And I think that that's a really hard concept for some small producers. But I think that when we get away from the me, me, me, and we think more of a collaborative effort, we can all do so much better. Yes. And when you're not thinking me, me, me, and you're thinking us, it feels better too.
15:23Absolutely. Yep, sure does. And when you feel better, you do better just like you were just saying. So yes, for sure. Awesome. Well, I don't know what else to ask you because like, I don't know enough about what you're doing to have specific questions. So is there anything you would like to share that might be important about what you're doing besides what you've already said? Yeah, you know, Rico, so
15:50If you're a small producer, you have a homestead and you're looking to make it into a money thing, be able to pay for itself, to grow in any way, shape or form, I would highly recommend you check out the Rico app because it is designed specifically for producers. I know there's a lot of stuff out there.
16:12But there's expenses involved with that. And it always seems to fall back on the producer because it's an easier buy-in for a producer to think they need to do that for their business. But, um, Rico has the mindset to support the producer. So definitely check out, um, the Rico app. It's Rico hub, R E K O H U B.com. If you're in Idaho, um, make sure and check out Rico treasure valley. It's R E K O and then treasure valley.
16:42And that's where you can see all of the pickup locations for our local farmers market here. Another thing that I think that we run into issues as small producers is we've talked about accessibility, but then also to try to compete as a small producer, it sometimes feels like we don't stand a chance.
17:09And I guess I'm just speaking from personal experience. So maybe there's some people that can relate with me there, but another idea or thought behind Ricoh and this is, this is the way that we started Ricoh in 2020. So it was definitely a deliberate action to do it this way, but it is an online resource, which takes it out of city or health district hands, right? Because all purchases are being made online.
17:38We have also set Ricoh Treasure Valley up to be a private membership association. And so what that means is that we have agreements between producer and customer that we are shopping with each other, we're aware of the risks and, and we agree to shop with one another. So that takes a lot of the restriction that, that tends to suffocate out a lot of small producers out of the equation.
18:08So always something great to look into, right, is private membership associations. And I can tell you that we are just getting ready. We set RICO up as a private membership association. It's ran as a ministry of sorts. There's a lot of protections there as a church, right, in the United States. So it is set up as a church. We're here to serve our community.
18:37community, regardless of religion. I know a lot of people hear church and think, but regardless of your religion, what you do believe or don't believe, it doesn't matter. We're here to serve our community with food, good, wholesome, homegrown, home-sourced food. So, that is how we have RICO set up and we're getting ready to open in March. We will open
19:03It's going to kind of be a tester and see, I'm sure we'll get pushed back and we'll just have to be prepared for that. But we are opening a storefront. It will be an outreach program of Rico. And the storefront, I don't know how it is everywhere, but in Idaho, we have a cottage food permit. And that cottage food permit allows people to cook in their own kitchens.
19:28certain items, right? Like so the health department dictates what you can and can't cook in your own kitchen. And then they have restrictions as to how you can sell that. It has to be you selling it directly to the consumer. So you could never cook in your own kitchen and sell it through a grocery store or sell it through another avenue like that.
19:52What we're hoping is we're opening up the storefront is a collaboration of producers are coming in together to purchase or to lease the space. And then together as producers, we're going to pitch in to pay for somebody to work that space. So, it's not my business, it's not Rico's business, it is a group of producers businesses. And it's all of their business being represented in one location.
20:22And so it'll be an interesting thing because it's out of the norm and it's not the way that most things are ran or done. But I think that the benefit it's going to offer here is it's going to allow those small cottage food license producers to have a storefront, to have a place to push their items through, and it will be private membership. So.
20:48There's really no place for regulation there because it's out of the public domain. So that's where all the regulation comes in is in public domain. So as small producers, we need to be looking for other avenues. And you often words that you'll hear that you might be more familiar with in this area is like CSA, right? CSA boxes or...
21:13shares, beef shares. So it's along the same intent and idea. It's just expanding it a little bit. And that's something that we've been had success with within Rico Treasure Valley for the last, I don't know, since 2020, so the last four years going on five years. And now we're going to...
21:38push our limits here a little bit more and try a storefront and see how that goes. So you know, I'm an open resource and we're always trying things and we're trying to make things more accessible and feasible for producers to produce because I think our entire nation is going to not only be needing it but wanting it. There's already been a huge push that way anyways and I think the more of us that can
22:07and be relevant in today's market, the better. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I see bread and cookies in that storefront in March. Oh yeah. There's going to be bread and cookies and coffee and we'll have milk and cheeses and meats and produce galore. And we'll also have some crafts, some local art, art and craft vendors that will be producing and maybe even some swag, right? Like t-shirts and hats and.
22:37You want to be a member of something, you want to have some swag for that membership. So, yeah, we plan to have it all. And I'm hoping that we have that open and going by March is our goal. And everything's lining out really good right now for that. So. It sounds so fun. And it also reminds me of the general store that is down the road by three or four miles from where my parents live in Maine.
23:06I cannot think of the name of it right now because I can't. But, but when we visited last time, we stopped in and it used to be, it used to be a general store in the old fashioned sense of a general store. Like, like you think of back in the 1900s. Yeah. But, but this place is so cool. You walk in and it's just this big room. I think it was originally a barn and they have, they have.
23:35Everything is from that local area in Maine as far as I know and they have like hats that somebody Handmade and they have mittens and they have candles and they have soaps and they have tallow not they have tallow I think they have tallow. Yeah everything and they had all in season produce for sale and they had some meats and they had raw milk in the cooler and
24:00I didn't want to leave. I just wanted to hang out there for like a week because it was just so fun to see what they had. Yeah. Well, and all of those resources, when those resources are all available in our community, our communities are so much stronger because of it. So we need to help feed those communities now. And that's something that I not only preach, but my family, we shop local. We shop...
24:27I can honestly say that the only things we go to a Walmart or a grocery, a big box store for are the things we shouldn't be eating anyways. So, you know, your chips and soda and the things that maybe aren't being produced locally, but there are even, we even have a producer here in Idaho that produces some really yummy chips and they do it in the most healthy way you can comparatively to other chip producers.
24:57You know, it's just, it's just having an idea, getting out there and then grinding and just going for it and realizing that people are hungry for local connections. They want to not only be purchasing from local homesteaders and farmers, but, but they want to be building connections with those people as well. So providing an opportunity and avenue for them to do that is what RICO is all about.
25:24Well, congratulations on the store. I think that is so amazing. Yes, we are super excited and it will, um, we'll have a big grand opening around it and, and probably a potluck at opening and, um, you know, hopefully be welcomed with open arms by the community, which I foresee happening. We already do a lot of things where we have people come to this particular location to pick up pre-orders.
25:52and the thought or idea that they can come and shop the store, I think is going to be even more enticing to them to get their hands on product or see it before they buy it. So yes, for sure. Definitely. I'm like that. I can't, I hate buying stuff online because I can't see it or touch it. It drives me crazy. Right. So you know what you're getting until you order it and it's not what you thought. But yeah, I will, I will never buy a shirt online again.
26:20I bought a t-shirt one time, so I thought it was really cute. And I ordered a large because I usually wore a large t-shirt and got it. And it was like a double XL large. I was swimming in it. I was like, honey, here, take the cute shirt. I don't know, I use it for a rag in the garage. I didn't feel right returning it because it was sort of my mistake and I just didn't want to deal with it because I'm lazy. But
26:48Now, now I know that a medium t-shirt is perfect as long as I actually go and try it on. So, there you go. Perfect. Please take pictures of the grand opening and post them on your Facebook page because I would love to see what the inside of the store looks like. Oh, absolutely. We will be all over that. So we, it's going to be exciting. And, and you know, that's another avenue we found. We're actually running the storefront out of a two-door shop.
27:17And it's one that's in a residential area and we've already had a little pushback from the city about that, but it's under a conditional use permit. It's a storage facility. So, you know, I mean, just thinking outside the box and finding ways to make things work. The cost of the building itself was a quarter of what it would have been if I would have rent went and rented a commercial building. So just finding little ways to do stuff like that outside the box makes it doable. So.
27:45Yeah, it's going to be nice and it's going to be awesome and there will be pictures everywhere, I promise. Good, because I really want to see it because I fall in love with all my guests. They tell me their plans for the future and I'm like, oh, I need to see how that turns out. So I will have to check into that. We're happy to do that. So yeah, we have, I mean, we've been blessed with a wide array of producers here in Idaho. And like I said, my husband and I, we produce meats.
28:15All natural meats, we do the grass-fed grass finish and regenerative farming techniques. And then we have honey producers and we have dairy producers. All right here in our area, we do sourdough bread bakers and lots of goody makers and infused honeys even and roasted coffee beans. People will get their beans and roast them themselves here locally.
28:41So we sell all of that through our Ricoh farmers market and even apothecary, a lot of skincare products, everything and anything you could need for your hair and skin and body is also sold. So great resources and just trying to keep our community lifted by coming together is huge, I think. Definitely, absolutely. Keep doing that. It's so important right now.
29:11Yeah, for sure. I feel like so many people right now are so frustrated with each other that they can't even have a conversation. So whatever you can do to have people be happy to talk to each other, I am all for it. And you know, go back to just good old days. How are, how are things in your world right in front of you shut all the noise off outside of yourself and your community and just look at things and how they're going in front of you. And.
29:39who needs help, let's just go help them and let's just go back to that community feel and get rid of all the other noise because that's all it is is noise. Let's hope, let's hope that's all it is. I want it to be noise. I don't want it to be anything bad for anybody. I am, I'm not going to talk about politics, but I'm just feeling so defeated right now on a lot of things. And so...
30:04When I talk to you or whoever I talk to for the podcast, you guys bring me back up to sanity so it's good. Yes, all is well. I mean, in my world, you know, I look around my family. We're all fed and happy and we have a house, a roof over our head. Our animals are fed and happy. We have good relations with lots of people around us in our community and, you know, we do what we can to take care of each other. And when those things are happening, that's all we can control.
30:34So you focus on what you can control and you let go of the other stuff and makes life a lot easier. Yeah. And remember that when you wake up in the morning, it's a gift. Absolutely. Every day. Yeah. I, every morning I wake up and I'm like, I'm still alive. This is wonderful. What is going to happen today? Yep. That's how I try to start my day because I know something is going to come through my information input thing in my brain. That's going to, that's
31:04And then I go, nope, it doesn't have to stop me. I can keep going with what I was doing. It's okay. So anyway, Rekha, I'm so glad that I reached out to talk with you because this is such a good idea. RICO is such a brilliant idea and you are making it even better. Well, thank you, Mary. I appreciate your time. And I am always happy to be a resource for people who are either wondering how to get set up with RICO or wanting to start an online farmers market in their area. I...
31:33I'm happy to share what knowledge we have gained over the last five years. So well, I just happen to know somebody who might be hitting you up to talk with you about that stuff and I'll tell you about it after we stop recording. Okay, sounds good. All right. Thank you so much for having a great day. Thanks Mary, you too.