A Tiny Homestead

Tanya Denckla Cobb - Author of The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food: A Crop-by-Crop Reference for 62 Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, and Herbs

Today I'm talking with Tanya about her accidental journey from fledgling homesteader to author of The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food: A Crop-by-Crop Reference for 62 Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, and Herbs.
Also, trap crops, patience, and integrity.
Full disclosure, if you buy a copy through the above link, I receive  a small commission.
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Tanya, the author of The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food. Good afternoon, Tanya. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you. Yeah, tell me about yourself because I've done some homework and you have accomplished many and great things in your life. I'm sorry, I have to laugh.
00:29I have had many lives in this life and so I've gone in many different directions. Yeah, so I've wandered all over the place and found a place that I love to be, you know, spiritually and mentally and all of the rest. And so, yeah, I mean, I started.
00:56After college, I started in international labor rights and then relevant for this podcast and listeners is then I retired at an early age to go and the idea was we were setting up a self-sustaining homestead out in West Virginia. I was supposed to be in charge of managing a large organic farm.
01:25I knew nothing at all about any of it. And in fact had killed my two peach trees in the backyard in DC and had, you know, had many, many disasters in the garden. And so I thought I really need to get my act together around this. And then, you know, that never really actually happened, but the story around this book is really quite.
01:56quite unusual in that I didn't set out to write a book at all. I mean, that was not my goal. My goal was just simply to do a good job in managing this organic farm that we envision. And so I just started doing a lot of research, and this is in the days before Google, actually before much internet at all.
02:22This is way back in the late 80s and when I started down this path. And so the book that's out today is really in some ways, you might even say it's like a classic because it's on its fourth life and it's been updated each time and some things changed and so this and retitled and so this is
02:52book that is really one of my first babies. I mean, it was born in the late 80s for this homestead that never quite materialized, but basically threw me into sustainable agriculture. And I just...
03:13You know, was surrounded by magazines and books and was so frustrated that I finally said, I've got to start organizing this material in a way that makes sense to me for what I can do. And I, you know, just felt like, oh my gosh, here's a great thing on pests, but there's nothing on how deep to put the seeds and here's something that's great on allies and companions, but there's nothing on how to harvest. And so it's like, I needed everything in the same place.
03:43And I didn't know at the time what I was doing. I, today we might call it a kind of a database. You know, I mean, this is really, it feels like, you know, dinosaur time looking back. And so I went out to this, as part of my research, I was going to different farms and I went to this one Yupik organic farm outside of D.C. near Harper's Ferry.
04:12And they had said, I had asked if I could come and pick their brains. And they said, yes, if you weed. And so I went with a girlfriend and we brought our gloves and we spent a beautiful morning, the entire morning weeding. And so finally midday, you know, we sort of like, you know, sort of slink up to them and like.
04:37could we possibly get a minute of your time? And they looked at us and said, do you know in all these years of asking people to do that, nobody ever has, you're the first. And they said, nobody's ever actually weeded. And so you get as much time as you'd like, which was a riot. That's awesome. I know, I know it really wasn't, it changed my life because in...
05:03talking with them and getting to know them, I ended up and they were asking, obviously, well, why do you care? What are you doing? And so I very scared, sort of tentatively shared what we might be aspiring to. And they said, oh my gosh, would you be willing to share what you have put together? And I said, well, yes, but it's...
05:32It's like a lot. And they said, well, yeah, can you print it out? So this is again, the days of dot matrix printer, you can imagine it was like a box, you know, folded up. And so I did, I took the box out and left it with them. And about a week later, I got a call and they said, oh my gosh, Tanya, we wish we had had this 10 years ago. You would have saved us years of.
06:01agony and I was like, what? And they said, would you, you need to publish. And I'm like, what?
06:12And they were quite serious. They said, this is really important and helpful for other people. And I just, my mind kind of exploded. And I talked with my husband at that time and friends, and we sat around and talked about what the heck.
06:38And then I started thinking, well, my grandparents, you know, ran a newspaper. My mom and dad had started a, started a small, um, uh, academic medieval and Renaissance press, uh, you know, at a university. And I thought, well, maybe it's in my blood. Uh, maybe I'm supposed to be a publisher. And so, um, I had just enough.
07:06I guess lack of humility in that regard to give it a shot and got this thing called Dan Pointer's Bible to self-publishing before self-publishing was cool. And basically went through the checklist and self-published in 91 and sold out the first run of 5,000 in six months and then did another run. And after a year and a half or so decided, you know, I'm going to do this.
07:35This is not in my plot. This is not what I meant to do. I love to write and I love to do other things, but this is not gonna be my career. And so I sold it to Story Publishing where who has had it ever since. And they have updated and renamed and we've worked on it.
07:58three different times this last once they republished in 94 and then again in 2004 and now 20 years later they said let's update it. It is still going. It is needed out there. Let's do it. And so here it is. I'm very excited by this book. I'm so glad that you did it because
08:23I finally had a chance after having this book in my house for three weeks, I finally had a chance to look at it this morning. That's how long it took me to get to the book I'm holding in my hands right now. And did it come out in hardcover or is it all paperbacks? It's all paperbacks. Okay. It's beautiful, number one. And I love that it has an index so you can cross reference. Yeah.
08:51And I love that you basically preface it with anybody can grow a garden, really. And then there's all these things like how long germination is for basil or whatever it is you're putting in and what to do with it and pest control and stuff. I'm like, oh my God, I love this book. This is great. Yeah. I mean, that is, that was the goal. It's, is really.
09:19Um, you know, in cell in, in basically story publishing, taking this over is we reached an agreement that the vision of everything being in one place would be retained and so that if you want to find it, you know, about Basil, everything's there from the allies and the companions and the pests, and then later in the book, you, you know, you can come through and find the pest and see.
09:48you know, how do I know if this is the pest that's affecting the basil or the tomatoes? And you know, what can I grow basil for other than an herb? Well, it turns out it might be really good for stimulating growth and flavor as an ally. So yeah, all of, to me, it was just fascinating to learn about this stuff. And I'm so excited that you like what you see.
10:18Oh, it's lovely. I'm very impressed because my husband and I have been growing a garden for over 20 years. And when we started, we had no idea what we were doing. We dug up our little tiny backyard and did not dig out the over 100-year-old rhubarb patch because my neighbor said, don't touch it. It's been here for that long. It'll be here for another hundred years. And I said, okay.
10:42But we put in herbs and we put in tomatoes and we put in cucumbers and all the usual suspects for our backyard garden. And we did okay until the squash bug showed up. Then the nemesis of every backyard gardener everywhere is some kind of bug that shows up out of the blue and destroys your plants and you just want to give up.
11:05Yeah, well, not only that, I mean, the reason why I killed my peach trees in DC is because my reaction was to panic and go out and get some, you know, big guns, right? And before I learned about organic and so really, this book is a result of my own journey and learning and understanding that we really, you know, that we need to begin with this question of what is our relationship?
11:36with the other elements in our world? You know, are we, do we think of ourselves as interconnected or do we think of ourselves as, you know, the dominant power here and you must do as I say. And so for me, it really was coming to understand and this is the philosophy behind Organic is that we are in relationship with the earth and all of its elements.
12:05and that our role is as a steward. And that one of the beauties of a garden that I learned along the way is that even though there are, I don't even know how many pests, but it's a hundred and some pests, I believe, 200 pests that we've got documented in this book is really only, every garden only has, only really ever gets three to five.
12:35Right. And so if you come to understand, you know, what, what your, your particular microclimate and the plants that you're growing are susceptible to, and you can learn the organic methods, then you're going to continue to create a healthy environment for your future plants. And, and it's really all about feeding the soil. And, and that's one of the biggest lessons I had.
13:04in going organic. I want to say the other thing, I've experimented with so much through the years, and I love that you picked up in this book that I'm trying to get across that really it's for anybody and anybody can do it. It's really actually not hard. It's actually in many ways easier
13:34The message is you're really only gonna have three to five pests and that you can lose up to 20% of your foliage and not seriously, significantly impact the yields. Now, flower gardens, that might devastate you, but if really what you're caring about is tomatoes, because you're gonna put them up and make tomato sauce or whatever.
14:00You know, you can afford to lose up to 20% of your, when I read that, oh my gosh, my, my mind exploded again going, then I don't have to panic. Right. I do not have to panic. And, and the other thing I want to say that I learned that is so interesting in organic is there are all kinds of what I would call mechanical remedies, organic, um, pest control has like three different, um,
14:30approaches. One is the more mechanical, the other is the botanical, where there are sprays and substances derived from plants and trees like neem oil is well known by a lot of people. And then there's the third category of the biological where you might want to import
14:57large scale organics a lot in something called integrated pest management. But for us home gardeners like you and me, just trying to get a good crop so we can make some tomato sauce or salsa or pickles or pickles. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm now making pickles by the way, you know, the pickles with a kick.
15:27We don't, we're ideally using the botanical and the biological as little as possible. Like I really just don't ever use the biological and I only, I think the last time I used a botanical spray was maybe five years ago. But the mechanicals are really fabulous. For example, what that means is for like the squash bugs, you know,
15:56There are a couple things. I have a little Dustbuster handheld vacuum and you can vacuum them up and dump them into a bucket with some soap in it and some oil and on top to create a layer that smothers them basically. You know, you can, I will typically go out
16:25with gloves on and early morning, it's sort of like a zen in the garden where you're turning over every leaf and you're just smushing the eggs and trying to stay ahead of it. You know, doing that three times a week, I can generally stay ahead of them. So if I need to travel, that creates a problem, then the dust buster might be used. Yeah. And another thing might be...
16:51you know, something like diatomaceous earth, which I consider to be a mechanical remedy in the sense that it's just, it's this powder that gets, that gets dusted over the crop. And, and it's basically doing some pretty intense stuff to the bugs because it's got these microscopic little sharp edges from, from river beds.
17:18It basically cuts into the soft body skin. And then also because it's hydrophilic, it sort of causes them to blow up with water. And so it's such a... And it is totally non-toxic to your garden. So those are just like examples of...
17:44the wonders of doing organic gardening that can be fun and easy and low cost and, you know, not a big deal. Yeah. I agree with everything you just said, and that's all stuff we had to learn. And thank God for the internet because we had it at our fingertips, which was really helpful. Yes.
18:14He's known as the Barefoot Armor and talked with him about his take on organic. And he calls himself a worthless hippie, literally in the beginning of the interview. And I'm like, I don't think you're worthless. You've done an awful lot of good. And so he finally calmed down, settled into the interview. And I pushed him on organic, whether anything is truly organic anymore, because you can do everything you can do.
18:44to practice organic things, but there's always going to be drift from other people's properties. And he talked for, I don't know, probably five minutes straight about his take. And he said, basically, we need to work with the plants, work with the earth and work with the bugs so that they all do what they're supposed to do. And I loved that.
19:14We grow a huge garden. My husband grows a huge garden. I stare at it and think it's pretty. And then you get the word out. Yeah, I get the word out. He sells at the farmer's market. And people were asking him if we were an organic grower. And he would say no, but we do the best we can to use organic practices. We're not organic certified because it costs so much money to do it.
19:43Everybody was satisfied with that answer. And so for anyone out there who's thinking about becoming a certified organic farm, and you can afford it, do it. Please. That's awesome. But for those of us who don't have deep pockets, the answer is no, but we're doing everything we can to do the organic practices in our growing.
20:09Yeah, no question. And Mary, I love that you're saying this because one of the things that I tell people is that, you know, the word, some people think that the word was co-opted in 2002 when the National Organic Program went into play. And that, you know, it constrained that these national regulations that went into place that
20:39anybody who is selling their stuff as organic to be certified, right? And that costs, as you just said. So, you know, that can, and they created a set of regulations that in some ways constrain the incredibly large vision of organic that is at the roots of organic gardening. And so there were lots of big fights over.
21:07those regulations and there continue to be a big fight. But I love, I mean, what I tell people is exactly what you and your husband do is I say, talk to the farmer, they may not be able to afford the certification. And there are all kinds of other terms they can use, they can say sustainable, they can say natural, they can say no spray, they can say all kinds of things.
21:34You know, beyond organic is a phrase, you know, that I think Joel Salatin started here in Virginia, because he was so fed up with what he said, you know, the regulations were calling organic. So he's like, I'm way beyond organic. So yeah, you are so, what you're saying is so important that people understand that they may be getting organic.
22:03fabulous organic produce that is not certified and it's still just as great. Yeah, exactly. I have one little tiny story about basil that I'm going to share because most people don't know this about basil. You probably do. Well, maybe not. I love to learn. I am a basil fanatic. I love basil. I love to grow it. I love to smell it. I love to pick it. I love to cook with it. And we had been buying basil seedlings from
22:34nurseries for years and like eight to ten years ago, three years in a row we bought basil and halfway through the season it got this powdery stuff on it and I didn't know what it was and it killed the plants. So I did some googling as we do now and it's called powdery mildew. Right. And it will kill the plants and it will ruin the dirt you grow the plants in for that for you to grow basil there again.
23:03So we no longer buy basil seedlings from anywhere. We buy seed and that has pretty much eradicated any issues with powdery mildew. So if anybody out there is gonna grow basil, you might wanna get the seeds and just start them. They don't take long to germinate and they grow into beautiful plants that last the entire season. Yeah, I love what you're saying because...
23:30A similar thing happened to me with powdery mildew with flocks is I grew tall, beautiful, gorgeous flocks here for like the first five years we were here at this property. And then I could no longer grow it. And it took someone else, you know, sharing with me, well, it was probably something like powdery mildew because it will live in the soil. You won't be able to do it again. Yeah.
23:58But basil is like my, I want to say, yes, you can buy it commercially seedlings, as you say, but why would you want to when you can grow all kinds of basil that you can't get commercially, you know, like purple basil or Thai basil or lemon or cinnamon or.
24:26And, you know, broadly basil and just some of the, you know, the Genovese, I think, is often available commercially. But just, I think, starting it from seed, as you say, so easy and so rewarding. Yeah. We were very happy to figure out what we were doing wrong. We weren't doing anything wrong. We were just not growing it from seed. So yeah. And then I got...
24:55We had here, and I don't know if this was national or more here, but we had, I think it was a national issue where one of the big chains was selling tomatoes that was bringing disease into a garden, much like it wasn't, I think it was verticillium wilt, not the powdery mildew. And so...
25:22It just was devastating for so many farmers who had gotten their tomatoes from this chain store. And yeah, but I remember that year because I'd started buying from seed and didn't have that problem. So another, you know, just to emphasize what you're saying. Yeah. And then I have a story about squash bugs that is very funny. Oh, good. I want to hear it.
25:50Squash bugs are very stinky. They're a soldier bug. So if you smash them, they stink. And we had a cat named Honey. And she was the loveliest cat. And she loved to be on our front porch, especially who were sitting out on our front porch. And it was a three season porch. So, you know, it wasn't usable in the wintertime. And we're sitting out there one day and there was a squash bug on the screen of the window.
26:19And of course, cats love bugs. They love to chase them. They love to catch them. They love to eat them. She caught this bug. It was a great big squash bug and she bit it. And she, I can't even tell you how ridiculous her reaction was. She dropped it after she chewed it like twice. And then she was taking her paws and trying to scrape her nose off her face. And then she started frothing at the mouth.
26:49No! And I knew, I knew that she was probably not gonna die. It was just that they're stinky and they probably taste terrible. Yeah. And it was the funniest freaking thing I've ever seen in my life with a cat. And I didn't have a phone that had a video function on it back then. Wish I had. It would have gotten a million views on YouTube. It was so funny.
27:14And I felt so bad for her. She was such a sweet kitty, but oh, she was miserable for another hour with this. Yeah, did she ever try to get another squash bug? She gave bugs a pretty wide berth for the rest of her life, any bug. Yeah, well, see, she learned. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they are pretty stinky things. And that's why I try to.
27:42out in the garden, try to get them when there's just that symmetrical pattern of eggs on the backside of the leaf and smush them or get them when they're still in their soft body stage before they get hard and stinky. Uh huh. Yeah. They're just gross. They're gross. I do not appreciate them at all.
28:10And then the other thing that I was going to say regarding working with nature instead of against it is when we lived at our old house, we had climbing roses that went up trellises in front of our garage. And then in front of those trellises was where our garden was. And the Japanese beetles showed up. Oh boy. And Japanese beetles love broadleaf.
28:38plants. That's what they want to eat, but they will eat stuff in the garden. And so I saw something black on the rose leaves and I was like, what is that? And I went out and looked and I was like, oh no, they're going to eat our garden. And so we just kind of kept an eye on them. And we had a huge hedge of these climbing roses on both sides of the steps up to the garage. The Japanese beetles just kept eating the roses and they did not
29:09So for the next five years after they showed up, the roses... You kept the roses. And you know, Mary, this is what in the book, you can find information on this as trap crops. So basically, your roses were what we would consider a trap crop. And I remember seeing...
29:33the same kind of thing with one year I was experimenting. I'm always putting something new or trying something new. And so I was trying borage and oh my gosh, I finally understood why somebody had once told me trap crops are marvelous, but you've got to have a strong stomach because the entire, the plants were literally almost bending with the weight.
30:03of the beetles because they just and but they were staying off of the blackberries. And so, so I finally understood a trap crop really is incredibly effective, but you've got to have a strong stomach, because it really works. Yeah, and you've got to be willing to lose that crop.
30:33If you're going to do a trap crop, you need to psychologically put it in with that in mind and knowing that this is the proverbial sacrificial lamb in the interest of the broader health of the garden. Yeah. And the roses had been there for quite a while. They were really well established, so they kept coming back every spring. So they would bloom before.
31:02the Japanese beetles actually found them again. So I got to enjoy that first flush of roses all over that trellis. And then Japanese beetles would come in and eat everything, but they would not eat the stuff that we could eat. So I was like, I think this is a great plan. This is working fantastically. Do you still have them? No, cause we moved.
31:26So, and there has been one Japanese beetle in our garden in three and a half years. Ah! And my husband killed it and we have not seen one since. So we don't have any roses here. We don't have, well, we have apple trees, we have cherry trees, we have two peach trees that we're hoping will actually do something. Yeah. And they're not near the garden. So hopefully, even if the Japanese beetles do find our new place, they'll go to the...
31:54the leaves on the apple trees and the peach trees and the cherry trees before they go to the actual garden. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, it's so interesting because I had never, honestly, even despite all of this is where I love to continue to learn, despite all of this work on allies and companions, and I know that Japanese beetles love roses, but I never thought, never had thought of roses.
32:23as a trap crop and I just was given like eight, well it was nine rose bushes by somebody who was taking them out of these raised beds and it never occurred to me that I could use them as a trap crop in my vegetable garden. Well now you know. I know. And it took somebody who doesn't even like the garden to tell you about it. I know. It's a fabulous story. And this really goes back to what you were saying.
32:53you know, about, about working with the garden and working with nature and saying, okay, let's give you something to eat. Right? So let's give you if you, if you are prevalent in this particular microclimate, which they are where I grow, you know, what can I do to make you happy so that you don't eat the things that I really want to keep? And that's the whole idea behind a trap crop.
33:21Yeah, I didn't even know it was called a trap crop. So we both learned something great today. Yeah, awesome. I love it. I love talking to you and to everyone else I've talked to so far because I learned something new every single time. Well, I'll tell you one other thing about Japanese beetles that was shared with me by a viddieculture.
33:49farmer, I guess, a winery, basically somebody who's growing a vineyard. I was just saying, how the heck do you deal with Japanese beetles in a no-spray vineyard? What the heck? The answer was, we are up and out very early. For those who do have Japanese beetles, you know that they are really...
34:18like asleep in the morning hours when it's cool. They are not moving. They're sedentary. They're not flying off. And so what this farmer told me is, he said, we lay down these long tarps, we lay them down and we have a broom handle and we basically are tapping all of the grapevines
34:47And guess what? They nicely fall off onto the tarp. And that's when that bucket of with water and a layer of oil on top, you don't need kerosene. In the olden days, it said you needed some kerosene in there with some oil. And I have found they suffocate just nicely with everyday olive or whatever kind of oil you're using. And you dump those beetles.
35:14into a bucket and they suffocate and it is a completely, you know, harmless to the rest of the garden. Yeah, so that's a really, you know, low-key, easy thing to do. You can put a sheet down, put an old sheet down, put newspaper down and just knock the babies off when they're, you know, when they're cold in the morning. When they're when they're napping, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
35:42Well, that'll help some people, I'm sure. I'm hoping it helped me. Yeah. I.
35:52Gardening is is Okay, I don't love it. My husband is obsessed with gardening. I've talked about this Ridiculously long on a lot of these episodes. He loves it. He adores it. I used to like it now I'm not as into it, but it's how he de-stresses he goes out. He gets his hands in the dirt He he prunes the tomato plants when they're ready to be pruned. He harvests he sells he loves it and
36:20He'll come in and say, there's a bug that I've never seen in the garden. And I'm like, what's it look like? And he brings out his phone and shows me the picture he took, of course. And we had potato bugs show up like two summers ago and tomato bug. I'm sorry, not tomato. Potato bugs are a real problem and a really hassle. And he tried for like a week to just pick them off.
36:49And he said, I can't keep up with it. He said, they're going to destroy all the rest of the potato plants. I said, honey, I said, the only thing I can tell you is what my dad did. And you're not going to like it. And he said, what? And I said, he used seven's dust, one, one coat of it and they were gone. He said, but I don't want to do that because that's bad. And I said, um, I'm still alive and I ate the potatoes from the potato plants that he seven dusted.
37:19I said, it's not great, but it's a choice between losing the 20 potato plants. Oh my Lord. Or using seven dust. I said, it's up to you, but that's what he did and it worked. Wow. So he went and got some seven dust and he did one shake of that on those spots where those bugs were and they were dead and gone the next day. Well, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Finish.
37:47and then it rained and washed all the powder away. So I don't know if it was a bad thing or a good thing, but we ended up with good potatoes. So. Well, I think what you're talking about is a really important choice that we have to make. And one of the things that organic growers talk about is that the focus is not on the plants per se, but the focus is really on healthy soils.
38:17and making sure that... So soils are, some people call themselves, you know, like they call it dirt. It's not dirt. Dirt is something that's grimy and stuck on your clothes, right, but a soil is alive and it's a thriving, you know, micro ecological system. And...
38:46and it is full of microscopic and macroscopic types of animals. And, you know, from the mycorrhizal fungi to earthworms and more, everything in between. And so, so one of the things when you're thinking about, well, what the heck am I going to do about these, these potato beetles? You know, you have to think, well, what, what is
39:17What are my principles? What are my basic principles? And if the basic principle is that I wanna make sure that I'm protecting the soil, then what do I do? And so that's what, because something like seven and others actually might be persisting in the soil. That's the difference between an organic remedy and one that is not. An organic remedy does not persist in the soil over time, whereas an organic remedy will not persist.
39:47It's biodegradable, et cetera. And organic sort of comes, the word relates to living organisms. It relates like organic chemistry, relates to carbon compounds and living beings. And so if we think about that, well, is the seven or whatever I'm gonna put on it gonna harm the soil? Then we might wanna say, well,
40:15what else could I do? I mean, for potato beetles, I'll just say that, you know, they are, they are pernicious. They're awful. And, um, you know, there are supposed to be organic remedies. Um, there's a new thing that's, that's a fairly new thing that's out that I have not tried. Um, but is supposed to be really good. And that's a thing called spin of sad.
40:44I may not be pronouncing it right, spinosad. But it is a naturally occurring substance that's made by soil bacterium and it is toxic to the Colorado potato beetle or the potato beetle as we call it and a host of other insects. And then there's a thing, you know, what I was talking about is the diatomaceous earth. If you can catch them before they get big.
41:13Like when they're still just crawling around in these soft bodies and cover them with the diatomaceous earth, that is something that can be done for the potato beetle. But I'll tell you one thing, that I actually stopped growing potatoes because I just couldn't take it. And I made that decision. But I did find out just...
41:41Two years ago, that timing is, and I had read about this, but I had never tried to do it. But some things were happening in my life that meant I was putting in a crazy late garden. Like for me, typically, you know, everything will be last frost is mid May. So imagine putting in a garden late June.
42:10crazy late and I thought half of this stuff will never mature and what I learned was I had no squash bugs because it was after the timing was so much later and I had read about this and I thought this is fascinating so then I did it again last year and guess what I had no squash bugs. And so I'm wondering it's just a question I haven't experimented but I'm wondering.
42:38Like if you could time the planting of the potatoes to be later and maybe grow a shorter season potato, could you avoid the potato bugs? I don't know. I don't know either. And I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna convince him to do it this year because he's chomping at the bit right now to start planting. And in Minnesota, we're not gonna be planting for another month and a half. Yeah. But.
43:07What he did last year is once the potatoes actually sprouted and got to be about three inches tall, the stems, he just sprayed them with it like Codoneme oil from the very beginning. And he did that like every other day and he didn't have any potato bugs. Right, exactly. And neem is called a botanical control and it will biodegrade.
43:36And it comes from the name tree. Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds like a beautiful, a beautiful way to go. It takes vigilance. You know, he's got to get it on a calendar. Yeah. Yeah, well, it broke his heart to use that sevens dust two summers ago. He was just so bummed out. He's like, I ruined my garden. I said, didn't ruin your garden. It's going to be okay.
44:04He's like, I went against my principles. And I'm like, yes, yes, you did. And sometimes we have to do that to get to the thing that you want, which was potatoes. I said, we'll figure it out. We'll find a better way. I promise. And we did. So it's all good now. I think, you know, what I love about what you're saying is that it sort of follows this thing as of everything in moderation. And so...
44:31I'm not, I am sure there are some organic growers that would not agree with what I'm about to say. That's okay. But you know, like I feel if you're doing something, like if he sprayed heavily, you know, like this entire field full of seven, you know, like that might be one thing, but you know, it's targeted towards a particular crop.
45:00It was a one-time deal. There is, if your soil is healthy, my philosophy, which could be proven wrong, but my philosophy is just like humans, I mean, humans, we get sick and we might need penicillin. We know that by taking penicillin, we are
45:25slowly creating many penicillin resistant varieties of bacteria, right? So, but we may need it. And, and, and the damage in doing that is that we're contributing towards these penicillin resistant bugs. But there are times when you need it and then you recover and you're building your immunity. So ideally what we learned from that is we need more sleep.
45:54We need to eat better. We need to maybe mask in these days. And we learn more about hand washing, about how do we protect ourselves? Well, the same kind of principle, I think, applies in the garden is there might be times when you need to do something. And ideally, you know, like you don't want to be taking penicillin every day. No. And every year, you know, like for weeks on end.
46:21Same thing in a garden, like if in our, I'm going to say it, in our industrial farms, one of the harms that we have done to massive tracks of land is we have found that repetitive, it's the repeated use of pesticides, herbicides over many, many years that has basically contributed to what I would call
46:50open field hydroponics, meaning there's nothing alive left in the soil and that you have to then feed your, you're like, you've got your soil on this ivy drip, you know, as you've got to give the soil everything it needs because there's nothing living in it anymore that is contributing to its health and wellbeing. And that is the practice that is
47:20really harmful long term, but a one-time use I have to say I'm, you know, I, I, I, as I said, some might disagree with me, but I think as long as it's not like this repetitive long time practice, you should be okay. Yeah. I felt so bad for him. He was so sad about it. And I was so proud of him for being so sad about it. Yeah.
47:50Well, I think it sounds like your husband really is connected to what he's doing, that he really cares about the ecosystem of his garden and the life that he is supporting in that soil and in the plants. And so I very much resonate with him. I understand that. Yeah, no, he's a lovely man.
48:13His garden is terribly important to him. He will do it until he is not physically capable of doing it anymore. Yeah, I would probably be like that myself. Uh-huh, yep. Okay, well, Tanya, I don't wanna take up too much more of your time, because we're at 48 minutes, and I try to keep these to half an hour, but I knew we'd run long, because I knew we would be sharing stories about growing things. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, and I will put your book.
48:43title in the description for the episode when it comes out and I don't know the link to the Amazon page and if you have anything else you want me to link just let me know. Okay, I'll do that and Mary thank you so much. It's been a real honor to be with you and I've enjoyed it immensely. I'm so glad. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Have a great day. Thank you.
 

A Tiny Homestead - All About Our Place

Today Susanne from North County Marketplace is interviewing me about our place, A Tiny Homestead. You can follow us on Facebook, as well.

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm

Today I'm talking with Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm! Listen to what he has to say about family, farming, and unexpected fame. You can also follow the farm on Facebook.
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I feel like today's guest needs no introduction. Hi, Joel Salatin, how are you today? I'm doing great, I hope you are, thank you. I am, so tell me about yourself. I did some research, but my guests don't know what I read. So tell me about yourself and Polyface Farm.
00:29Yeah, so yeah, so our family owns, co-owns Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. My parents came here in 1961, bought a property, and Dad was an accountant. Mom was a school teacher. The farm jobs paid for the land. Dad was quite a visionary and an experimenter and did a lot of experimenting with electric fencing, controlled grazing, composting, mobility, portable shade, direct marketing.
00:58It was basically a glorified homestead, so that when I wanted to come back to the farm full time, September 24, 1982, we had all this wonderful legacy of experiments and land healing things that we knew would work. We just never done it at scale or to really make a salary. And so that's what we started then. And
01:26It has been fantastic. What a run. We now have about 20, what, 2022 salaries generated from the farm. And we supply some, whatever, seven to 10,000 families here at the farm to market. We deliver, we supply some restaurants, some boutique grocery stores, and we ship nationwide.
01:56and just have a wonderful team. We're in pastured livestock. So beef, pork, chicken, both meat and eggs, turkeys, rabbits, lamb, duck eggs, and forestry products. We have a sawmill, and so we sell lumber as well. And yeah, it's a great run. It's a beautiful life, it sounds like.
02:19It also sounds like innovation ran in your genes because your dad created things and you've gone on to create things as well. Yes, when people ask me what's one of your greatest blessings, certainly if not number one within the top two, is the blessing of growing up in a family that embraced being mavericks. I just simply never had a need or a desire to
02:48to be affirmed and confirmed by other people. The Frank Sinatra song, you know, I did it my way. That was truly mom and dad's, mom was a maverick growing up, dad was a maverick. And so we just, as an entire, the whole family persona was, you know, we don't need the endorsement of others. We don't need their approval. We're going this direction because we believe it's right.
03:16And boy, is that a liberating, freeing way to live. Yeah, I'm kind of like that. I have very few close friends, and that's partly because I do things the way I do them. And if you want to come along for the ride, please come along, be ready to help, be ready to enjoy it. If you don't, that's fine, too. Yeah, it is. And, you know, I think farming, of course, everybody has a certain amount of peer dependency
03:46at some level, but I think of all the vocations out there, the different vocations, farming probably is the most, the peer dependency is the most common because farming is a fairly lonely vocation. You spend a lot of time by yourself. And so the desire to be accepted and affirmed by your...
04:15counterparts by the next door farmer and that next door farmer and the farming community is extremely intense more than other vocations that inherently tend to be more social. And so I think farming has a bit of a disadvantage in this and certainly
04:42we see that in the conservatism and the reluctance of farmers to try new and different things. Yeah. So I was watching a video this morning that you were talking on, and I don't know if it was a class you were giving or what it was, but you said something about if you are in your mid-50s and considering starting farming or homesteading or anything that...
05:10Maybe you should think twice or maybe you should have a young person who can help or something. I'm paraphrasing it badly. So tell me what you think about people who are over 50 trying to get into homesteading. Yeah, well, I would I would qualify that a little bit between homesteading and actual farming. You know, one I realize I'm I'm a whatever I'm a friend of homesteading.
05:40And certainly for our first 20 years here, this was basically a glorified homestead. There was no, this was not a business. It was not a commercial enterprise. It was not generating a salary by any means. And so, you know, a homestead where you're just, you know, a couple three acres, maybe 10 acres, and you're just basically trying to grow as much of your food as you can, you know, then 50s is fine. Probably not ideal, but it's tolerable.
06:09But if you think that you're going to, in your mid-50s, get a property and become a commercial farmer and make a living at it without a young partner, you're probably kidding yourself. There's just, it just takes too much physical energy to build fences and cut trees and do the things that it takes to
06:39have a commercial farm. Now, there are plenty of commercial farmers that are over mid-50s, 60 years old, even 70, but they have a tremendous amount of infrastructure that they developed and created in their younger years. And so if you have a going concern, you can have a pretty long tail off of that. You can enjoy a bit of a halo off of that.
07:09off of that infrastructure and experiential equity into your aging time. So just because you know a 75-year-old farmer that's doing it doesn't mean that you can at 55 duplicate what he or she was doing in their 20s and catch up to them at 75. There are just cycles of life.
07:34and realities of life that are critical. So when a person's somewhat over 60 and wants to do this, I always tell them, hey, leverage your life experience, leverage your connections, leverage your capital, and get a young partner, whether they're related or not, and enjoy that kind of collaboration. Yeah, absolutely. My husband and I are in our mid-50s. I'm 54, he'll be 55 in June. And we just bought our 3.1 acre.
08:04property back in 2020. And luckily, our 22 year old son still lives here. So he helps dad out a lot because it was a blank slate when we moved here and we had to build things and bring things in and get it started. If we hadn't had the kid at home, I'm not sure that we would have done this. Yeah, that was even and that was not even a commercial farm. That was a that was a smaller acreage, you know, homestead type situation. Yeah. So
08:33I appreciate where you went with that when you started. I was afraid you were going to say, well, we did it. We did it. We didn't have any problem. So, you're actually confirming my, you know, my whatever experience on that. Yeah. So that leads me to my next question. You are older than your mid fifties. So how much hands on work are you still doing at your place? What a great question.
09:03So I'm still the chief chainsaw guy. So whenever they need a big tree cut and they need chainsaw work done, I'm the one that does it. I move the egg mobile every morning. I handle our herd of cows here, but I don't move broiler shelters much anymore. A lot of the day-to-day, of course, our son Daniel,
09:32is absolutely in charge of day-to-day operations. So essentially, you know, I pick up pieces. I'm kind of the chief negotiator. So I do a lot of desk work, you know. Well, in fact, this morning, before we jumped on this podcast, I spent an hour and a half over with one of our landlords. We lease numerous properties in the area. And so I'm the one that goes and does the kind of periodic, you know,
09:59how are things and how are we doing and how are you doing? Are you happy with us? Are we happy with you? Those kinds of, you know, diplomat, I'm, I guess, the chief diplomat. And so, you know, I get to go out and do these kinds of things. I do a lot of the initial, initial discussion if we're going to develop a business relationship with somebody.
10:25even a customer or a business relationship with an outfit. I'm usually the first, I'm the first contact. I kind of start things, you know, rolling, get the basic pitch and then Daniel and others will sit down and actually flesh it out. Okay, you know, here's what we're actually gonna do. We're gonna come on this date, that date. That's not what I do. I do the overall, you know, kind of visioning stuff. So yeah, I'm out.
10:53I love, you know, I don't ever want to lose my calluses and my splinters. They're really good for me. Yesterday, I was out, spent a couple of hours with the chainsaw, cleaning the brambles and multi-floor rows and all about an electric fence line that hadn't been done for several years and all grown up. And so I got good and sweaty. That that's my workout. Daniel, now he he is wonderful to watch this, you know, the adult son, you know, kind of take over all this.
11:23He now appreciates, he's gotten kind of protective of me. You know, I'm pushing 70 and he gets concerned about me overdoing it, but he realizes now these workouts are what keep me young and I don't have to go to the gym and don't have to go to workout sessions, but I enjoy working here. And so he says, dad, if you want another therapy session, that's what he calls the chainsaw, you want another therapy session, we got this little project over here to do.
11:51And so he calls them my therapy sessions. They're basically, you know, uh, farm physical exercise, but I'm, you know, I'm now very much to have a part-time as far as actually out there sweating and doing the work. Uh, I probably don't do more than. You know, three or four hours a day because I'm doing a lot of desk work and phone work, and of course I'm writing a lot of articles and, and I'm traveling a lot. I'm gone. I'm gone about 140 days a year.
12:20you know, speaking at conferences. Next week I'm going to Europe for a week to speak in Austria and Hungary. And so, you know, I do a lot of traveling as well. Okay, so I know that you're terribly popular in the US. How are you received overseas? Is it the same amount of people being like, you are the smartest farmer ever, talk to us, teach us, whatever? You know, it's different in different places. And so...
12:49For example, in the last two years, I've done my first stuff in South America, Colombia, I was in Uruguay, and there the reception has been unbelievable. I mean, just like a rock star, okay, just swamped. But when I go to the most technologically advanced areas
13:19the Netherlands, it's much more muted. And what's interesting about, especially Austria and Germany, of course, they're all into precision, all about, I mean, that's where BMW is, right? Bavarian Motorworks. There's almost no outdoor grazing in those countries because they do not, they're all about precision. And they say, well, if we let cows go out and actually
13:49graze their own grass, then we can't mow it as precisely as we can with a mechanical mower. And so in those countries, virtually all the, especially the cattle, are confined in houses, in barns, and they green chop. Definitely all the dairies, I mean, even sheep dairies, goat dairies, all this stuff, I've been on all these.
14:17and nothing grazes outside. They harvest mechanically, then they bring it into the barns and feed. And they say that way they get more precise mowing of the fields and they get the manure in a place where they can more strategically apply the manure exactly where they want it instead of where the cow wants it. I mean, it's a whole mindset thing. So it's different. I was in...
14:46I was in South Africa two years ago for the first time. And there again, it was just mobbed. I think the poorer countries, if I may use that, I'm not using that condescendingly at all. I'm just trying to separate the developed, the poorer countries from the rich countries. I think there...
15:10I'm really, you know, I've been in Bulgaria, same sit, just swamp, mob like a rock star or what? Well, because what we do is so applicable in those countries, whereas the sophisticated techno glitzy countries are so enamored. And of course, the EU, the European Union, subsidizes farms so much, you know, over 70%, almost 80% of the entire EU budget is farm subsidies.
15:40And that's why the farmers are so upset there that they're starting to cut some of these subsidies. But farmers have had it so easy over there for so long with all these huge, huge subsidies so that they buy extra equipment. They overbuild their buildings. They overbuild all their infrastructure and they've just become accustomed to this subsidized fuel, subsidized machinery, subsidized buildings, subsidized income.
16:09And so the idea of I'm going to go out and move the animals, they just see it as not as precise and more work. It's easier to just go out and start the tractor, mow an acre, blow it in a wagon, bring it in to the cows, then go and watch the soccer game. Yeah. And I
16:34Hmm. I don't know if that's a better way or just a different way because I feel like it's not necessarily a better way No, no, it absolutely is not a better way and and the fact and and so the one of the reasons that I'm going to Austria this time, you know, that was one of the countries I said it's not as well received is because these as as the as the farm subsidies wane
17:02due to the EU trying to move their military budgets up to supply Ukraine with weapons in the Putin thing, the cracks are widening and deepening in that system. When you have a high capital, high energy, high depreciation, depreciable system, that works fine when everything is
17:31hunky-dory, but you start dropping capital, making energy more expensive, increasing some of those, the cost of fertilizer, all those things start putting pressure on that system and it starts to crumple, which is exactly why we're seeing so much farmer unrest in the EU right now is the crumpling of that prompt up. Well, I call it a farm welfare state. Yeah.
17:59So you're going over to talk to people about the way that you do it so that they have something to fall back on? Yes, absolutely. I can show I can show them how they can get uh, the same production at a third the cost and Yeah, we'll have a we'll have a great time Okay, good. Um So my my next question is probably a weird one. Um
18:26How do you feel about the fact that you are so well received and people mob you like a rock star? Because I'm sure when you were a kid and then when you went back to the farm to help your dad, you didn't expect this to be where you'd be at 67 years old. No, not at all. You know, when Theresa and I got married, we were living, you know, we kind of spruced up an old...
18:54Mud dauber beehive, mud dauber attic upstairs and drove a $50 car. And if we didn't grow it, we didn't need it. Our dream was just, we just wanted to farm full time. We loved the farm. We both did. We both do, still do. And we just wanted to be here. And what happened was as it became successful,
19:22we realized we were living a dream that many people have that they've been scared to vocalize because if you have any brains at all, no credible high school guidance counselor would ever recommend to an honors student, well, you should be a farmer. I still have a nervous twitch from my last visit to the high school guidance counselor, when she found out I wanted to be a farmer, you know, and I thought I was gonna have to do CPR on the floor.
19:50know, to get her back up. And she said, you know, smart people just don't do that. And so I think that there is this kind of, well, there's a stigma culturally, but there's a sequestered desire in a lot of people to do this, but they won't even let themselves dream about it because
20:20It's unaffirmed by society. And so when Teresa and I, you know, our family didn't have money, we weren't wealthy. We were just, but people saw the happiness of our animals, the productivity of our pastures, the happiness of our customers that were being able to get, you know, really exceptionally good food, you know, that whole thing. And we were not getting rich, but we were living fine, very happy.
20:47that just resonated. And so I think it's that, it's that dream. And I have, I mean, I have a stack, it's inches deep of letters from people around the world that we didn't think this was possible. And we found your stuff and we started doing it and it works. And we've left our town jobs, we're farming full time. It's just, you know, thank you for making this.
21:14possible, we never would have thought it possible otherwise. And so that that's where we are. And I'm just so blessed to have been able to, um, to encourage and inspire people who had given up on that kind of life to have hope again. Hope is a, hope is a powerful thing. It sure is. Um,
21:43I think it's just sad that farmers and mothers and people who work in the trades are considered to not be smart. It bothers me every minute of every day.
21:59Yes, yes, it does me too. It breaks my heart actually. And so society has marginalized over the last few decades. It has marginalized, yes, these trades. And so nobody wants to be a plumber, an electrician, and a welder, and a small engine mechanic, and all these things.
22:28And the trades are desperate for young people to go into them. And so one of the things that I promote is good, not bad farmers, but good farmers. And I do make the distinction there are good farmers and bad farmers, but good farmers are the first line. You know, we have the new thing in our country, you know, first responders, first responders kind of developed after 9-1-1, you know, with the fire.
22:56fighters that went into the towers, first responders, we revere first responders. Well, let me tell you something. The first responders to our nation's resource base are water, air, soil, the resource equity upon which every one of us depends for every waking moment. The first responders in that realm are farmers, especially good farmers.
23:25If we want our resources well taken care of, perhaps we need to revere again, honor again, appreciating again that vocation that's been so marginalized for a while. Absolutely. I would put another word in the middle of abso and lootly, but I'm not going to do it. You're right.
23:50I try really hard not to use the big swear words on my podcast because I don't want to alienate anybody. So I'm trying to think what else to ask you because I'm just so happy that you were willing to chat with me. I guess my last question because I'm going to try to keep this to half an hour and I figure you probably have a big answer is if you want to.
24:17farm or have a homestead or just do something that requires you to use your hands in the dirt or raise animals. How do you get started? Do you just go to YouTube and watch videos and go, okay, I get it. I can go do that. Or is there like an ABCD to follow? Great, great, great question. Yeah. So obviously today we have more information than we've ever
24:47but nothing beats experience. And so you need to fill up where you, our term here is fill it up, wherever you are, whatever you are, whatever you have, fill it up. If all you have is a condominium, fill it up. You can sprout mung beans in a quart jar on the windowsill. You can have a little 12 inch by 12 inch vermicomposting kit under your kitchen sink for
25:15you know, for your kitchen scraps. Or goodness, if you want to go a little bit higher, in my book, Polyface Micro, I have a chapter in there on how to have chickens and rabbits in a Manhattan apartment. The point is that very seldom do we go from zero to, you know, to a, if we use the mile per hour, we don't go from zero to a hundred in...
25:43in no time. It takes time. And the same thing it is with this. Seldom does your greatest dream or fantasy drop in your lap as one whole, as one complete thing. It comes over time incrementally as you show faithfulness developing your experience equity, your wisdom equity.
26:13and even your mentor equity, whether it's personal or YouTube or books or whatever, but you develop these over time. And so the critical thing is start. The last part of your question was, do you just, yes, yes. The answer is yes. You just start. You start with something.
26:44Fill up where you are and that next, whatever that next iteration is, once you've filled up where you are, that next iteration will become more apparent. You are just reaffirming the thing that I say to myself and my friends all the time. Do what you can with what you have where you are. That's exactly right. Awesome, so I'm not crazy. It is correct. Okay, good to know. No.
27:10All right, Joel, I you have no idea how much I appreciate you taking your time and sharing it with me and my listeners. I'm sure that they're going to be thrilled to hear what you have to say. Thank you, Mary. It's been an honor and a delight. Come see us sometime. All right. Thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
 

Streblow Family Farm

Today I'm talking with Josh at Streblow Family Farm. You can also follow him on Facebook.

Barefoot Blossom Farm

Today I'm talking with Jessica at Barefoot Blossom Farm about creating one-of-a-kind flower bouquets, and dahlias, and peonies, and upcoming 2024 events. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Rise Bread Company

Today I'm talking with Anna at Rise Bread Company about Sourdough Breads, Focaccia Bread, Pizza dough, and the satisfaction of baking from scratch. You can also follow her on Facebook.

St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm - Turning Tragedy Into Joy and Prosperity

Today I'm talking with Andrew at St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm. Andrew and his family faced adversity by pulling together after a truly scary event, and have begun a beautiful new future! You can follow them on Facebook as well.

Cedar Shade Farm - a deeper dive on goats

Today I'm talking with Cana at Cedar Shade Farm about goats, and genetics, and the most important things to look for if you're considering raising goats. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Summerhill Farm - Diversifying purposes of the farm

Today I'm talking with Betsy at Summerhill Farm. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Wade River Critters

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Wade River Critters.